Test Discussion Episode 35: Open World - Metal Gotham

The mission from Hal Jordan where you have to interact with the portals... 144???

1. That's FAR too many for something you have to interact with
2. There are not nearly enough spawns. It took me at least a good hour to get that many done and that was with me being pretty much the only person in the zone running it for most of that time. There were vast swaths of areas within the mission area with no spawns.

Detective Sergeant Watson:
--Weapons of Metal Destruction: Solid mission. Exactly what I would expect in any content.

Deathstroke:
--Running With Metal Bulls: Ditto.

Killer Croc:
-- (forgot the name): 323 kills, pretty standard.

"The Shipment News" Mission Feedback
I am not a fan of this mission. You need to collect 14 shipments, but a spawn can only contain between 2-3 shipments and usually has 3 enemies surrounding them. That means in a best case scenario, and only requiring to clear 5 spawns (each containing 3 shipments), you have to still have to clear 15 enemies.

It's not a tough mission, but it's a monotonous one. I'd recommend reducing the count to 7, down from 14, or giving us more progress per shipment activated.

Bug:
There's no indicator above the Escaped Inmates to let you know that you can attack them and steal their shipments.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Busted Again!" Mission Feedback
A good mission. Nice and simple, not too time consuming. One of the ones that I look forward to getting while testing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"T-Spheres" Mission Feedback
Very cool seeing references to characters who have not yet debuted in DCUO. Hopefully he isn't too far away from his DCUO debut. The mission itself is fine.
Bug:
As someone already pointed out, there is no icon displayed above the T-Sphere when you can activate it. I've often forgotten to pick up the T-Sphere because of this and moved on to the next objective, before realising my mistake.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Weapons Of Metal Destruction" Mission Feedback
Probably my favourite mission. It's really short (probably the shortest mission), really simple and perfect for the daily grind.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Running with Metal Bulls" Mission Feedback

Another quick, easy mission, very similar to the Miming Metals mission, except with Metal Minotaurs instead. As Penryn pointed out earlier, the Metal Mimes seem to have bigger health pools than anything else, which may be intended. The Minotaurs seem to have the same size health pools. If the larger health pools are unintended, it may be worth taking a look at them both.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Un-Metalled" Mission Feedback
Another favourite. It's also really short and perfect for the daily grind. No changes needed, imo.

Would love to see an Area - thats not necessarily Mission based - where a lot of adds spawn closer together and at a higher spawn rate to make the "kill 323 adds" Mission fun. Take War torn Village as an Example. It was fun to do that type of Mission there but nowhere else.

Or make the Police barricade thats close to the Spawn Area appear to be like a wave Event, similar to the Bridges with add waves in Gotham Under Siege.

Would be Awesome

During the "The Shipment News" mission, twice so far with a Rotten Oak npc. There will be the usual 3 standing around the crates, 2 of the 3 will have the symbol above their head, but the Rotten Oak in that group will not. Instead the Rotten Oak that has the symbol is by itself away from the group. It also has extremely low health, as in one range hit will instantly kill it.

Here's what I came across in a couple of playthroughs:

1) T-Sphere daily is missing icons after the NPCs are defeated. It's properly marked as whites dots on the map, but the T-spheres themselves could use a cog/timer icon.

2) Miming Metal daily may run into issues with a live population. There are not enough nodes and they are a bit stronger than most adds, so they take time to despawn/kill. Credit sharing could also be an issue (untested).

3) Riddled with Traps nodes have way too fast of a timer. If there's any lag at all, it probably wouldn't be doable. It should at best be the same speed as the dynamite strapped citizens in Earth 3. In one case I dropped from above and it immediately blew up (one of those nodes where interaction doesn't work until the camera points to it to display the icon).

4) The weekly quest for 323 metal adds is way too high for natural completion. The 144 rifts could be a bit lower, but I'm cool with it if left alone. I suggest one of these solutions for 323:
- Reduce to about 100
- Keep the 323, but include all NPC types

In its current state, it reverts back to the pointless loitering in the zone that we saw in Riddled with Crime & Deluge.

Overall I really like the Tri-corner Yards section of Gotham, so I'm happy to see it again. The nighttime lighting is perfect for the Arkham City like atmosphere.

I am getting feedback that it feels underwhelming though. I think this has to do with the NPCs not having anything with pizazz. They are simply the adds we saw in leveling wrapped in tin foil. Titans gave us new robots. Atlantis had new soldiers & giant monsters. JLD had the daemons and customized adds with player components. In comparison, Metal's adds don't generate the same fresh, exotic feel. You guys have a huge library of styles, the best in any game. You can use the parts to build dynamic looking NPCs like you did in JLD with the vampires.

Found a bug with a couple surfaces, the containers behind deathstroke and the trucks in the area where you pick up the missions to be exact. For some reason they won't let me run up them, every other vertical wall i can run up on it but those 2, took some screenshots to show what objects i'm talking about if it's not clear enough https://imgur.com/a/U22Gm8G couldn't find a way to insert them so you'll have to click the link, third picture is just to show what i was expecting to happen.

Thank you all for the feedback! I've addressed a few things already and will continue to polish and improve the open world experience.

Addressed in next update:

• Reduced count on The Shipment News from 14 to 8
• While you have The Shipment News, all enemies in those encounters should now have an icon
• T-Spheres should now have an icon when they can be interacted
• Corrected a typo or two

Other Notes:

• For the weekly missions, Metal Massacre and Rift It Up, I have some ideas to make them better. I'm not yet looking to reduce the count on either of them, but haven't ruled that out.
• Metal Massacre: Look to the docks. None of the missions direct you to the docks, but metal enemies spawn there. And nothing else. Let me know if it makes for a good hunting ground.
• Rift It Up: The count is higher than the magic motes mission because having a dot on the radar makes rifts a LOT easier to find. That's the logic I used anyway But stay tuned.
• Metal Mimes and Metal Minotaurs are intentionally a bit tougher than other enemies.
• The Police Annex where you rescue Commissioner Gordon actually back-fills as you progress. The idea is kind of that the annex is being overrun and you need to move forward rather than backtrack. Your rally point progresses as you do, so the back-spawn shouldn't be a problem if you get knocked out.
• I'm thinking that having an occasional Riddler trap explode sounds fun. At least, for me
• First, Second, and Third Aid: I'm investigating the timing of this one.
• Working on some polish stuff that will hopefully up the fun/cool factor.

- Quixotic

This appears to be a general issue with the mission journal. Tracking a mission seems to play that mission's most recent audio track regardless of whether that audio is part of the active mission stage or a previously completed mission stage. In this case, it replayed the audio from the first stage (complete the solo instance) even though you had completed it and were on the next stage.

I don't think this is a new issue, but I could be mistaken. Either way, I've passed it along but it doesn't sound like it will be addressed for this episode. Or anytime soon.

- Quixotic

During the First, Second, and Third Aid mission. Has happened twice so far when I failed to grab the enemies right off the bat, If the Metal Kelvinizer hits the officer you are helping, the damage is 50% of the officers health. Don't know if this is intended to have them hit the officer that hard.

Something more I noticed on this: it replays the mission's latest comm from a mission when it becomes your active mission. The most occurrence of that is when you change the mission you're tracking, but it also happens when you leave an operation...also known as a group mission. The operation becomes your active mission while you're on it and reactivates the tracked mission from your journal when the operation ends.

When you leave the Scarlet Speedster operation, it reactivates whichever mission you were tracking. If that mission was Metal Part 1 (which is highly likely the first time doing that operation), it replays the comm about going to Central City. The operation you literally just finished. D'oh!

I have an idea or two for a work-around but I expect some timing issues with the comms at end of the solo operation. I'll see what I can work out.

- Quixotic

The Rift mission really needs to be reduced or there needs to be a lot more, I was doing this mission for 30 minutes and that's with no one in the open world they are just so spread out there isn't anyone congested area they are in and there isn't a lot of them. I think this really needs to be reconsidered and make it if at all possible like the motes we can run up to and collect instead of clicking and a possible reduction or have more of them in the open world. Thank you

Bug Report
There are some dimensional shenanigans going on with the traffic in Open World Metal Gotham. Here is an example of a car driving through a burning SWAT van:


Also, these cars love driving over and through enemy NPCs.

Feedback
For the open world Donna Troy bounty, I'd suggest toning down her reflect attack. It seems like if you hit her with anything while that reflect is active, you're dead. I'm timing the reflect as lasting about 6-7 seconds. Outside of the skull, the Deflection VFX is very hard to see against the Metal effect. Depending on the number of people that are actively bounty hunting, visibility can be a real issue in that fight.

Bug Report
All of the dailies in Open World Metal Gotham are not showing a "Reward Section" when you go to pick them up. Here is an example:

Let me Explain to you why it sounds good but isn't fun in reality.

Having

small

Add Groups in instances is fun because you can do 1 or 2 Rotations of your Loadout (or a few Weapon combos)
Having

small

Add Groups in the Open world is not that fun because you simply kill them too fast.

The only Power with wich it Might still be fun is Munitions due to its Run n' Gun style of playing. All other Powersets have to:
Attack - Move like a turtle due to Combat mode - 1sec ouf Combat mode - Next Group of adds - Rinse and repeat...

Having a Tank pull all Enemys together definitely helps, but the amout of adds on one spot are still too few. Please consider my Idea i've stated ealier in this Thread. In the End its all about having fun in the Game and i think i am not the only one thinking the same way About These "Kill "X" amount of adds" missions.

Open world bugs:

Both Raven and Red Robin appeared at bounty spawn. Tried to single taunt one with Mesmerizing Lass and both were aggro'd.

We tried attacking and neither despawned.

On Obsidian Chill's video it shows - Defeat People Afflicted With The Metal Virus (3/323)

They may be having the respawns so you can snag a lot in a small space. Sort of like when you went into the sewers in the Themyscira controlled Gotham. All those creatures counted as kills toward the mission.

Or there just may be a feat involved if you backtrack and kill all of them.

For the record: I like the kill +++. It's something that can be done while waiting to cue for stuff and Nth Metal hunting.

not sure if this is intended but fighting 2 bounties at once??? is this a bug or what someone lemme know

now we have 2 ravens!

I posted about it above. I got beat to death by both bounties and I was a tank. Can't make sure they are properly tuned for damage if we can't do them.