Test Discussion Episode 39: Future Metropolis New Earth

The Weekly Mission : Metropolis Meltdown for Fixing the 33 Communication Devices. needs to be reduced or there needs to be more spawn points, doing them by myself is not a problem but with more people on live there isn't enough spawn points for these. The Open World Bounties Needs some adjusting wasn't able to kill it with my group.

Wanted to add I love the New Open World Super Job !!!!

Ran twice the open world bounties (except for the final one, as Pen already pointed out that they bugged). Was grouped with someone and had others joining us. We were roughly around 8 players.

Only Saturn Girl felt to be a close call while the other 2 were no threat at all. For a smaller group they seems to be a lot better tuned than the Wonderverse bounties.

Some of the Dailies discerptions were a bit confusing
wasnt sure on what i had to kill to get credit for the mission
mostly the save the students one

Positives:
--It's the Legion! Finally!!!
--The art of the zone gives it that Legion - futuristic feel
--The time bubble entrance is a nice touch
--It's a completely open sandbox (ie: not the pathways of Themyscira)
--There is an easy weekly (huzzah!!!!)
--The Titan iconics in the open world will pick a nearby player to follow and 'assist"
--The Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl bounties are each different from one another with interesting aspects to them.
--Elite Alert! Yes!!!
--Due to the Validus fight being bugged I was able to get a closeup of Emerald Empress, EXCELLENT JOB!!!
--Omnipotent item is usuable right off the bat and has abilities in it like an Artifact. This is VERY interesting, I just wish I could see what the abilities are (no scrolling option on the data sheet that comes up when you mouseover)

Negatives:
--No interaction with the Titan Iconics in the sandboxx world. I was really expecting interactions like we had in Gotham Wastelands. Is it that difficult to get a couple of new V/O's for each character? (sincere question)
--We waited a decade for the Legion only to get the Bendis characters/outfits? Jeebus. I get that this may have been a DC/WB decision but still, to go with what is probably the worst version of the characters and their costumes after we've waited so long... #FAIL
--Most of the solos are very repetitive of previous DLC solos.
--The Empress/Validus fight is not working. A red box appears but that's it.
--The portion of the Saturn Girl fight where you have to avoid a player with some sort of notation or icon above them... whatever the indicator is, it does not show.
--Repeatedly hitting the blue X button (XBox controller) seems to do nothing for breaking out of the Saturn Girl domination (or whatever it is that stuns you). This is the exact same appearance of not-working that happens in every other instance I can think of in the game where this mechanic is applied.
--The ceiling on the zone is ridiculously low (just as it was with Thanagar). Why allow us to fly at all if you're going to cap the zone ceiling at a point well below the tops of most of the buildings?
--The DLC feels very light on content. A bounty rotation, a handful of solos, an alert and a single raid?
--The Omnipotent item is... Static's goggles instead a Legion flight ring? Seriously? Unless you have other plans for introducing the flight ring into the game (which I hope), this was an embarrassingly bad call.

Other:
--One of the interaction nodes for the weekly collection mission is out of bounds.



I was at the highest I could fly (due to the low ceiling) and the object had just changes from being the up arrow to a circle.


Overall:
--This DLC suffers from what pretty much every other DLC suffers from:

• the light amount of content does not allow for a deep enough story for the player to feel they are important to it, instead the player feels more like they are disposable background characters
• going with the Bendis version of the characters over the traditional version people are much more familiar with (and were hoping for, if the posts are any indication) comes across as tone deaf. Sure it's the Legion but it's not the Legion your customers wanted (which could have been determined ahead of time with a forum poll, but that would require a level of communication DCUO has walked away from)
• The art continues to be fantastic but that seems to be the only aspect of immersion being focused on

(footnote: I haven't been able to try the Alert(s) nor the Raid but they alone can't be enough to change the overall issues).

I'll save my other thoughts for when I know what else what I want to say, but:

Many would file this under nitpick, but w/e. Once I saw it I can't unsee it so it's driving me nuts. This is one of those things you don't see bc you've been staring at it for hours when you made it...

The scale of the grass texture is WAY too large in relationship to player characters. It's looks like it's been stretched up too, based on the resolution/pixelation at this scale. Someone could probably water the grass in the future too bc it's kinda dead. Unless it's a scarce resource?

I noticed this with the stone ground in Themyscira too (each stone would essentially be a boulder?!), but I guess no one else did, so I'm speaking up here. At least with those stones the resolution was high though so they don't look too bad.

Open world solo missions:

Can't remember the exact name of it, but the mission where you go into the phonebooth for a disguise (love this btw) is labelled "optional" when it shouldn't be. The recruits won't even talk with you unless you're disguised (racism exists in the future -- sadness) as an alien. So, it's not very optional at all if you want to do the mission.

Bounties:

Cosmic Boy fight: Cute mechanic with the cars but unless his magnetism allows him to pull objects 1000s of years into the future (spoiler; it cannot), is there any chance you guys can replace those 21st century cars with futuristic ones that look like they belong? I'm sure someone on the team wants a chance to design futuristic cars and trucks and stuff

Friendly NPC's attacking each other? is that intended?

Here's the catch though: I see all the time people b**ching about maps being re-used, reworked, repurposed, etc. Which means if they did that for another raid, people would just complain.

What I find fascinating is that in the BOP episode, when there were double/triple currency weeks, people didn't spam the raids. They spammed the Bounties. I think the devs noticed that too, and that's why they gave us what they did in Wonderverse, but surprise surprise, people complain about that too. That's what needs to be realized, no matter what they do, there will be people who are unhappy with it. Personally, I'd rather have bounties that I can just jump in on, than another raid. It's more efficient.

Yeah, a bug snuck in that caused that to occur, where that fight would frequently not play out properly. A fix should hopefully be out very soon. My sincere apologies.

Currently, yes, there is a little overlap built into the first 3 open world bosses. I'm happy to hear feedback on how well this plays. Thanks!

Thanks for the report! This will be fixed in a future PCTest hotfix (but likely not the soonest one).

Reading about the overlap of the bounties, made me think of an immersion suggestion that should be relatively painless to implement:

- Have a short non-player-interactive fight scene with LL, SG, CB and EE play out on a timer every X amount of time somewhere open where the player can see it when they zone in. I suggest putting it in the air above the mission hub for people to see right away. At the end of the scene EE wins and flys off with the captured Legionaires. Put this on loop for X amount of time.
- This fight scene is for the benefit of the players to show off these assets, make an impact/impression (wow factor) and preview how a fight with them will look.
- The 2ndary function of the scene is from a narrative perspective to setup why players are randomly fighting these characters and how they even got there (captured).
- The tertiary function is the scene serves as a timer letting the player know the bounty for them will come up after they lose this fight (bc that's how they got captured and mind controlled). When they lose and get captured you know you can look and find their bounties up.

Right now, the player is just dumped into the zone and wanders around for something to do. And then these Iconics are just plopped in and, oh a fight. There's no setup or sense of stakes and why players should even care. Unless they're Legion fans they probably won't even know they're fighting heroes and need to save them.

I believe this will greatly help.

The Museum is having a classic car exhibit Cheers!

Lol I did notice that while fixing signs around town. Sick back pedal though <3

I saw the overlap backfire one time. The group leader had asked us to "help finish off the bounty." When the group finished phasing/teleporting, the Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad bounties were both up. Saturn Girl was close to being defeated. Most of the group had no prior experience with the bounties and people were confused on which bounty to go to. Half the group went to the Lightning Lad fight. Half went to the Saturn Girl fight. Unfortunately, Saturn Girl emerged victorious with just a sliver of health left.

Oh I while I remember; thank you for finally fixing Starfire's powers! She now correctly uses green starburst / handblasters instead of fire.

Fans of this character thank you. <3

Question
After today's patch, is Lightning Lad supposed to stand in one place the entire time?

I'm on test right now. We need to test the bounties with different sizes of groups to see the effectiveness of the scaling combat according to group size.

I don't know how many phases are active in test but I would keep 1 closed for devs access only, then a dev can invite groups of people and control the number to fight the bounties.

Feedback
Just some random feedback from today's playtest session:

• On the Saturn Girl fight, there needs to be a better tell for who has the Irrational Dread Skull. It was impossible to see who had it with a lot of players around.
• On the Validus fight, I don't like how you stay locked on to a boss once he/she shields up. You should drop target once a boss enters an invincibility phase
• The combination of the stun and Irrational Dread Skull mechanics on the Saturn Girl fight feels really cheap. It is too easy for a nearby player to get the Skull while a group of players is stunned leading to a mass OHKO.
• I feel like there is just too much going on in the Validus fight. I'm not sure how a small group of players on Switch or Xbox is supposed to finish this fight. I was trying it out solo and Cosmic Boy was one-shotting me with several of his attacks while in DPS role.