100 CM is no longer fun

Fractal Spoon.9280 · December 13, 2017

Okay, after my first post I went back and did 100CM again with three different pugs.

The first run today was 100+ kp and had no issue in getting the kill, we had clutch anomaly spawns, but people were ready and it was no issue (my client had not loaded the enemy models and aoes because of a recent re-download of the entire game,so i got hit by some invisible attacks, but everything else seemed normal, that was before my first post).The second (70+kp) was a disaster, i think we got wiped two times because of 30% anomalies, then people lost focus and started to miss marbles and so forth, took forever to get the kill.The Third was 40+kp and we had literally zero problems, smoothest run of today. We had badly timed anomalies.The fourth run was a nightmare, but i can't say that was because of the anomalies, more because of the vindicators that spawned when people died due to missed orbs...

After all it is true, that some anomalies were more clutch than in previous non-bugged runs. I had to play power to get those 30% bad anomalies, no way i could have killed them with condi (which previously was possible if i remember correctly).

So i don't know.. maybe you were right and it is more difficult than before.I can see your point.

Ah and there was a fifth run somewhere there in between, where i did not get to kill arkk because i got kicked after two bad anomalies. lol

Adamantium.3682 · December 13, 2017

@spiritualabyss.7016 said:Okay, after my first post I went back and did 100CM again with three different pugs.

Thanks for the honesty and providing feedback on recent experiences. The accurate context is helpful

I believe that if Ben determines the anomaly timer should be more in line with previous releases and adjusts accordingly by 2-3 seconds the fight will be a lot more fair and fun while retaining practically everything that makes it challenging.

rabenpriester.7129 · December 13, 2017

I honestly don't know where to start, Ben.

Let me prephase this by making one thing absolutely clear: My goal is that you change how this fight currently behaves. Yes, yet one more time. Yes, I know that you probably don't like this. So I'll do my best and offer feedback and what I hope is valid criticism. If you do not appreciate this, do not care or do not intent to change this for whatever reason, please safe us both some time and state that as clearly as possible. I do not intent to waste my time on this any more than you do.

I know that did sound aggressive. But so did this:

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:Lol. Actually we had an anomaly spawn during orbs. We responded to it, completed the mechanic, then finished the orbs. That phase is really long it's not that hard if your team knows what to do.

I did exactly this one try later and killed Arkk with this group. But there wouldn't be a point to posting a video of that, right? At least not when discussing a problem with the fight and trying to show it. I just went out of my way, saved a recording I set up (because I knew there was a chance that this would happen), edited the footage, uploaded this and posted it here. And the initial response before you edited your post was "LOL you failed, we did not." Excuse me?

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:Obviously there is RNG, but the SAS is there to help you deal with that. For instance in the video the SAS was off cooldown but he didn't use it to close the gap to the anomaly. Instead he wasted a good 4-5 seconds that could have been DPS.

From my experience in... what now, over a hundred runs, I can safely say this: Had I been playing Power/Commander Chrono instead of Minstrel and had I used the special action key to get to that anomaly, I wouldn't have killed it in time either. I'd just have pushed away orbs with the impact and make things even worse in the long run (for after the explosion). That was my assessment of the situation and why I walked there with Minstrel Chrono.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:I ran 100CM yesterday, it seems to be working fine! We wiped once on aartsariiv and arkk but were able to clear it

It's not my goal to "eventually make it", I want to be able to consistently pull it off if I do this daily and not be subjected to randomness. Wiping once and being able to clear it might be good enough for you, but it is not good enough for me. And yeah, it is random.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:It's also not random at all, its on a timer

I'm not talking about when the anomaly spawns. The "when" is the smallest of the problems. Watch the video again and focus on this:

Which tiles are disappearing?
Where does the anomaly spawn?
Which player gets the bomb?

These are random. They influence how people will react and how hard this mechanic is to complete. In my case, I got the bomb with a low dps class (minstrel or not), all outer tiles were missing and the anomaly spawned right at the edge. The only way my group could have had a worse RNG would've been me also getting an orb, which would only have mattered had we cleared the anomaly. And even then it would be influenced by how we killed the anomaly and if there were any damage fields stil lying around pushing the orb around. Speaking of which....

At the moment you punish players using certain DPS classes. Conditions take longer to build up - that's ok. It's not ok while trying to kill the anomaly. You also punish classes that use damage fields to kill the anomaly, but that's a lesser concern.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:The original designer wanted groups to hold DPS if they couldn't handle anomalies at the same time as orbs, otherwise he would have made the phase way shorter on CM.

I understand what he was trying to do, I'm just saying that ... it is a really bad design decision?

Condi damage? Have fun holding your condi damage, there are no brakes on this train! Especially now that the ramp up and the ramp down (?) time are way longer. Currently is, condi isn't viable. This is just one more reason why.

Power damage? How do you imagine this will be played, should I just stand still next to the boss for 10 seconds or so, doing nothing? This can't be right. Should I intentionally play suboptimal rotations and do less damage? This doesn't feel right.

All on the off chance that we get bad RNG when it comes to the anomaly spawn during the orb phase? I'm more than capable handling the RNG, as long as they are possible to handle within the context of the game I'm playing. What I'm saying is that there are situations now that are not possible to handle, at all. Maybe my video wasn't such a situation, but it was very close to being one.

The current solution is that under no circumstances both dps classes are allowed to get an orb, and then pray for good RNG with the anomaly spawn and tile despawn.

You're tasked with fixing a bad design decision of your predecessor, and you're struggling with it. I know you must be kinda frustrated by it by now and hope to do more fun things, I mean you even deleted the wrong subroutine. I understand. I still hope you appreciate this feedback (my tone can be kind of rough sometimes and unfit for an official forum) and wish you the best of luck.

Until it is fixed, I'll just wipe at Arkk and blame RNG. Or not play this content on a daily basis.

Vinceman.4572 · December 13, 2017

@Miellyn.6847 said:Why is stopping DPS when you can't handle a mechanic bad game design? It actually promotes getting better that you can handle it to not stop DPS.

Sry, but you didn't get my point. We were able to handle it, np. I got my daily kills with no problem - today and yesterday. Maybe the post of rabenpriester will enlighten you. From my side: Standing still and do nothing is not a valid option. That's bad design.

@spiritualabyss.7016 said:After all it is true, that some anomalies were more clutch than in previous non-bugged runs. I had to play power to get those 30% bad anomalies, no way i could have killed them with condi (which previously was possible if i remember correctly).

Ty, that's what I had in mind as well.

Don't get me wrong, I like the hard fights but I'll appreciate to have less RNG in a fight if my group is performing good in terms of dps.

Ze Dos Cavalos.6132 · December 13, 2017

The fight looks the same way it was before it got bugged, don't understand what's everyone problem..You all got used to easy mode and now don't want to do it the proper way anymore.The fight was always like this for many months, there was always anomaly in orb phase before it got bugged and we always killed it in time np..Give Ben a break, the fractal is finally fixed no need to touch it anymore, you just need to git gud now.

rabenpriester.7129 · December 13, 2017

@Ze Dos Cavalos.6132 said:You all got used to easy mode and now don't want to do it the proper way anymore.

The reality is that I'll kick anyone below 120 KPs (because they didn't play before it was bugged) and/or condi players now (because it is literally impossible for condi to master some situations). No exceptions. And the poor dev, getting feedback on his work and being employed, oh no!

Benjamin Arnold.3457 · December 13, 2017

@rabenpriester.7129 said:I honestly don't know where to start, Ben.
Let me prephase this by making one thing absolutely clear: My goal is that you change how this fight currently behaves. Yes, yet one more time. Yes, I know that you probably don't like this. So I'll do my best and offer feedback and what I hope is valid criticism. If you do not appreciate this, do not care or do not intent to change this for whatever reason, please safe us both some time and state that as clearly as possible. I do not intent to waste my time on this any more than you do.
I know that did sound aggressive. But so did this:
@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:Lol. Actually we had an anomaly spawn during orbs. We responded to it, completed the mechanic, then finished the orbs. That phase is really long it's not that hard if your team knows what to do.

I did exactly this one try later and killed Arkk with this group. But there wouldn't be a point to posting a video of that, right? At least not when discussing a problem with the fight and trying to show it. I just went out of my way, saved a recording I set up (because I knew there was a chance that this would happen), edited the footage, uploaded this and posted it here. And the initial response before you edited your post was "LOL you failed, we did not." Excuse me?

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:Obviously there is RNG, but the SAS is there to help you deal with that. For instance in the video the SAS was off cooldown but he didn't use it to close the gap to the anomaly. Instead he wasted a good 4-5 seconds that could have been DPS.

From my experience in... what now, over a hundred runs, I can safely say this: Had I been playing Power/Commander Chrono instead of Minstrel and had I used the special action key to get to that anomaly, I wouldn't have killed it in time either. I'd just have pushed away orbs with the impact and make things even worse in the long run (for after the explosion). That was my assessment of the situation and why I walked there with Minstrel Chrono.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:I ran 100CM yesterday, it seems to be working fine! We wiped once on aartsariiv and arkk but were able to clear it

It's not my goal to "eventually make it", I want to be able to consistently pull it off if I do this daily and not be subjected to randomness. Wiping once and being able to clear it might be good enough for you, but it is not good enough for me. And yeah, it is random.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:It's also not random at all, its on a timer

I'm not talking about when the anomaly spawns. The "when" is the smallest of the problems. Watch the video again and focus on this:

Which tiles are disappearing?
Where does the anomaly spawn?
Which player gets the bomb?

These are random. They influence how people will react and how hard this mechanic is to complete. In my case, I got the bomb with a low dps class (minstrel or not), all outer tiles were missing and the anomaly spawned right at the edge. The only way my group could have had a worse RNG would've been me also getting an orb, which would only have mattered had we cleared the anomaly. And even then it would be influenced by how we killed the anomaly and if there were any damage fields stil lying around pushing the orb around. Speaking of which....

At the moment you punish players using certain DPS classes. Conditions take longer to build up - that's ok. It's not ok while trying to kill the anomaly. You also punish classes that use damage fields to kill the anomaly, but that's a lesser concern.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:The original designer wanted groups to hold DPS if they couldn't handle anomalies at the same time as orbs, otherwise he would have made the phase way shorter on CM.

I understand what he was trying to do, I'm just saying that ... it is a really bad design decision?

Condi damage? Have fun holding your condi damage, there are no brakes on this train! Especially now that the ramp up and the ramp down (?) time are way longer. Currently is, condi isn't viable. This is just one more reason why.

Power damage? How do you imagine this will be played, should I just stand still next to the boss for 10 seconds or so, doing

nothing

? This can't be right. Should I intentionally play suboptimal rotations and do less damage? This doesn't feel right.

All on the off chance that we get bad RNG when it comes to the anomaly spawn during the orb phase? I'm more than capable handling the RNG, as long as they are possible to handle within the context of the game I'm playing. What I'm saying is that there are situations now that are not possible to handle, at all. Maybe my video wasn't such a situation, but it was very close to being one.

The current solution is that under no circumstances both dps classes are allowed to get an orb, and then pray for good RNG with the anomaly spawn and tile despawn.

You're tasked with fixing a bad design decision of your predecessor, and you're struggling with it. I know you must be kinda frustrated by it by now and hope to do more fun things, I mean you even deleted the wrong subroutine. I understand. I still hope you appreciate this feedback (my tone can be kind of rough sometimes and unfit for an official forum) and wish you the best of luck.

Until it is fixed, I'll just wipe at Arkk and blame RNG. Or not play this content on a daily basis.

Okay I see what upset you here, my "Lol" was a response to "I guess you ran it once, nothing spectacular happened because your bad dps lined up with the mechanics and it turned out fine." I legitimately though it was funny that you were taking a jab at me and my group and implying that we were bad players. That wasn't a response to any of your points or your video. I see that that came off as very unprofessional, but my intent was not to belittle you.

I appreciate your effort and the thought you have put into your discussion, and I do not disagree with your points here. My response about RNG was purely about the timer for the anomaly and not the encounter as a whole, you are totally correct that there is lots of RNG in the fight, and yeah I wouldn't have built it this way, but I am not going to publicly call something that another designer did a "bad design" as that solves nothing.

I have a lot of friends who do this daily as well, and many of them actually enjoy the hectic nature of the fight and the RNG as thats what makes it fun to them. After running it dozens or hundreds of times, they still have a chance to be surprised. I was running with them the other day and when we wiped, they laughed and were genuinely happy, then we ran again and won.

I won't be removing the RNG elements simply because a lot of people do enjoy them. I can only promise that I will be avoiding them more in the future, at least when they overlap. I think RNG can be good as long as the RNG doesn't result in huge difficulty disparities.

Ze Dos Cavalos.6132 · December 13, 2017

@rabenpriester.7129 said:
@Ze Dos Cavalos.6132 said:You all got used to easy mode and now don't want to do it the proper way anymore.

The reality is that I'll kick anyone below 120 KPs and/or condi players now. No exceptions. And the poor dev, getting feedback on his work and being employed, oh no!

Well 100cm is not supposed to be done by everyone, only skilled players should be able to do it, too many average players got carried these last few months when it was bugged.Imagine Matthias raid boss gets bugged for 2 months, he doesn't shoot hadouken , ppl don't get poison or corruption. Lots of ppl will start killing Matthias for the first time when hes missing all these mechanics, now Matthias gets fixed and lots of ppl cant do it anymore coz they drop poison in the middle and get hit by hadouken.

That video failing the anomaly you can see only the war went there to dps it and the chrono didn't even use the special action skill to the anomaly, if it was a proper team at least 2 dps would go there and kill it in 2 secBefore it was bugged I was a dps class and I would always go to the anomaly before doing the orb phaseIf anomaly comes during orb phase just use the special skill to jump to it and kill it in 2 sec, lots of time to do orb phase after that.I think the 100cm is working perfectly now and ppl fail coz lack of skill that's all.

Poor dev indeed, has to come and respond to this type of complains.

rabenpriester.7129 · December 13, 2017

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:
Okay I see what upset you here, my "Lol" was a response to "I guess you ran it once, nothing spectacular happened because your bad dps lined up with the mechanics and it turned out fine." I legitimately though it was funny that you were taking a jab at me and my group and implying that we were bad players.

No worries, I implied that your sample size was small and that your dps happened to be in a range that did not make this scenario a possible outcome. Should not have used bad as a description because it has a normative, judging connotation. I'll learn from that.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:I am not going to publicly call something that another designer did a "bad design" as that solves nothing.

I know, I know why and I respect that. You can not do that. I almost have to as a player.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:I have a lot of friends who do this daily as well, and many of them actually enjoy the hectic nature of the fight and the RNG as thats what makes it fun to them. After running it dozens or hundreds of times, they still have a chance to be surprised. I was running with them the other day and when we wiped, they laughed and were genuinely happy, then we ran again and won.

As much as you can't possibly make everyone happy with your decisions, maybe the expectations and expressions of your friends change when they run with the guy who basically made this (or, at least, is responsible for its current state)? Maybe not, who knows, I certainly don't. Maybe the situation was different, too, because your friends saw it as a solvable problem, contrary to me. Be that how it is, you had fun for whatever reason, so that's good. :)

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:I won't be removing the RNG elements simply because a lot of people do enjoy them. I can only promise that I will be avoiding them more in the future, at least when they overlap. I think RNG can be good as long as the RNG doesn't result in huge difficulty disparities.

I'm not asking for you to remove the RNG elements completely. A second or two more is all I want.

But I appreciate the communication. As a little thanks I have a good talk about "Luck in Games" by Richard Garfield (creator of Magic the Gathering) for you

. If you don't know that yet, enjoy. It's great.

Benjamin Arnold.3457 · December 13, 2017

I'm pretty sure I did inadvertently reduce the reaction time for anomalies so I will probably be adding a couple seconds :)

Adamantium.3682 · December 14, 2017

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:I'm pretty sure I did inadvertently reduce the reaction time for anomalies so I will probably be adding a couple seconds :)

You're the man, thanks for taking a second look at that. I think that will make a big difference.

Vinceman.4572 · December 14, 2017

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:I'm pretty sure I did inadvertently reduce the reaction time for anomalies so I will probably be adding a couple seconds :)

Good that this is video gaming and not a welfare job. At first deleting a subroutine and now this. No offense, but I find it quite funny. ;)

@rabenpriester.7129 said:The reality is that I'll kick anyone below 120 KPs (because they didn't play before it was bugged) and/or condi players now (because it is literally impossible for condi to master some situations). No exceptions.

=)Yeah, that's also my thought because too many ~~unskilled~~ players were able to get 50-60 free essences over the past weeks.

Talindra.4958 · December 14, 2017

pls don't scream at me or get mad.. i say.... make it back to prepatch!!! hehe xD you happy i happy everyone happy.. happy day ever!

zealex.9410 · December 15, 2017

@Vinceman.4572 said:
@Miellyn.6847 said:There is more than enough time during the solar bloom phase to do the anomaly and the solar blooms. You are just used to the fact that the mechanic was absent.

I'm not sure about this. The anomaly is on a timer. The two mechanics can overlap pretty horribly now due to anomaly spawning and orbs already linked to players and floor timer around half to wipe. Don't think it's intended because in this case neither orbs first-anomaly after nor anomaly first-orbs after works. We had this issue yesterday and no chance at all when it happened.Safe strat can be dmg stop before the phasing but in my opinion this is a lame design.

Dealing with the anomaly is just faster

zealex.9410 · December 15, 2017

This all is prob a byproduct if the fractal feelimg diff everytime something is broken and the fixed and then broken again. I say do the same we did when it released play it and give it time. It was supposedly overtuned from day one until it wasnt. Case is the same today.

zealex.9410 · December 15, 2017

@Vinceman.4572 said:
@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:It's also not random at all, its on a timer. The original designer wanted groups to hold DPS if they couldn't handle anomalies at the same time as orbs, otherwise he would have made the phase way shorter on CM.

We got that. -.-There is no problem if the anomaly starts at the beginning of the orb phase when Arkk goes invul and no orb is visible or already linked to the players or starting to link. But the timer can also be responsible for a very unlucky rng time window in which you cannot react to both properly (+ getting the floor tiles disappearing).

If this is all the way intended the tactic would be to have one dps in the middle (not going for orbs) to deal with the anomaly alone to prevent bad rng or stop dps before 80/50/30%. I can adapt to the first one but not the last one because that is bad design for me still.

Tile stop disappearing a few secs in the orb phase. Even if you get the anomaly mid phase only 1 of 5 ppl ill be tied to the bomb while the rest can be mobile. And ALWAYS 1 player is not tied to an orb. That fifth can simply push the orb of the skull guy to its destination.

zealex.9410 · December 15, 2017

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:
@rabenpriester.7129 said:I honestly don't know where to start, Ben.
Let me prephase this by making one thing absolutely clear: My goal is that you change how this fight currently behaves. Yes, yet one more time. Yes, I know that you probably don't like this. So I'll do my best and offer feedback and what I hope is valid criticism. If you do not appreciate this, do not care or do not intent to change this for whatever reason, please safe us both some time and state that as clearly as possible. I do not intent to waste my time on this any more than you do.
I know that did sound aggressive. But so did this:
@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:Lol. Actually we had an anomaly spawn during orbs. We responded to it, completed the mechanic, then finished the orbs. That phase is really long it's not that hard if your team knows what to do.

I did exactly this one try later and killed Arkk with this group. But there wouldn't be a point to posting a video of that, right? At least not when discussing a problem with the fight and trying to show it. I just went out of my way, saved a recording I set up (because I knew there was a chance that this would happen), edited the footage, uploaded this and posted it here. And the initial response before you edited your post was "LOL you failed, we did not." Excuse me?

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:Obviously there is RNG, but the SAS is there to help you deal with that. For instance in the video the SAS was off cooldown but he didn't use it to close the gap to the anomaly. Instead he wasted a good 4-5 seconds that could have been DPS.

From my experience in... what now, over a hundred runs, I can safely say this: Had I been playing Power/Commander Chrono instead of Minstrel and had I used the special action key to get to that anomaly, I wouldn't have killed it in time either. I'd just have pushed away orbs with the impact and make things even worse in the long run (for after the explosion). That was my assessment of the situation and why I walked there with Minstrel Chrono.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:I ran 100CM yesterday, it seems to be working fine! We wiped once on aartsariiv and arkk but were able to clear it

It's not my goal to "eventually make it", I want to be able to consistently pull it off if I do this daily and not be subjected to randomness. Wiping once and being able to clear it might be good enough for you, but it is not good enough for me. And yeah, it is random.

@Benjamin Arnold.3457 said:It's also not random at all, its on a timer

I'm not talking about when the anomaly spawns. The "when" is the smallest of the problems. Watch the video again and focus on this:

Which tiles are disappearing?
Where does the anomaly spawn?
Which player gets the bomb?