WIP: Public Missions

Thanks for all the great comments and questions. I will try to address a few from the first 4 pages, and I’ll comb through the rest soon



"Will there be a time limit for how often this short group event can occur? Also, how long will the event last once it starts?"

• Yes, the timed events would occur occasionally and have a defined beginning and end. One additional possibility is that if the lowest tier event is completed with enough participation then the next tier even may start.

"I'd love to see people automatically 'grouped' for events like this"

• -This isn't currently the intention. Players should be able to participate solo or with their regular groups.

"as long as it doesn't cause the same credit issues"

• Credit/Contribution tracking should be handled by the event tracker and not just a regular encounter - so rewards are provided by contribution properly.

"If we team up with our friends will the counters move for every member?"

• They should as long as each person is contributing to the encounters in some way.

"Doomsday gets loose and a giant battle ensues."

• Great idea! That’s exactly the style of tiered event we are hoping for.

"changing the color of the font/overlay?"

• That would help a lot, and currently in our engineering request

"for a new contribution tracking system... take into account Healing Out (for Healers, Damage In (for Tanks) and Power Out (of course Controllers would need an out-of-party AoE for that )."

• That would all be part of the contribution tracking.

"Will these missions reset on a daily or weekly basis ?"

• The individual contribution mission will probably be daily, and the other events will cycle over some time. It's still all to-be-determined, but maybe three, ten minute events per hour.

"no Heroes vs Villain events"

• This would be very hard to balance and unlikely, so while fictionally the Heroes and Villains may have conflicting events they could not influence (or limit) contribution from the opposing side.

"Something like this would be my guess: Event: Mist Collection Redux"

• Right on track

"I just looked at the date this was posted."

• Well we have to go through a lot of internal approvals before we talk about stuff

"level of contribution would have to be low,"

• Any contribution counts and you will be directly compared to others in the event scenario for rewards. So it's not possible that you could be locked out of contribution by other groups - which happens in boss fights.

"Potential for expanding R&D:"

• Rewards are completely in the hypothetical stage, but cool idea.

"Seasonal / In rotation?"

• I think there is room for both here - Maybe during a seasonal event one of these short-term events will be going as well. But also there will be "long-haul" events related to fiction and DLCs - like mist-recovery in Downtown Metropolis Battlezone.

"avoiding DLC storyline events altogether would keep world events fresh, new, and always interesting"

• Again, I think there is room for both - storyline related and potentially independent events.

"Another cool feature in this zone could be a consumable store only available to the faction that controls the zone"

• This is cool and definitely something to consider, but we wouldn't want to make it Hero vs. Villain. Instead it would be more like - If my faction has been doing enough in the events we get access to a vendor. So potentially both factions could have access to the bonus vendor.

"spawned some luthors in the wt i was so lagged out because of all the people in 1 area "

• These events will occur in multiple areas in a zone simultaneously to try to combat players bunching-up, but there is also a limit to the number of players in a specific instance of Downtown Metropolis Battlezone (or the other alternate cities) that makes comparison to Watchtower performance much different.

"So to me this indicates this would take place 'in addition to' the regular open-world missions, correct?!?"

• Correct

"One question I will have is what would the rewards entail on the counter and if there is any sort of limitations on the counter being renewed like lockouts and such?"

• Current idea is that the solo contribution tracking "mission" will have a daily lockout, but the timed events will not - so you could play those as often as you like.

"That said, Bosses should scale to Group size, and Probably CR as best as possible (some sort of average). Having a Boss that assumes 8 people will be around to kill it is great and all, unless there aren't 8 people. If you only have 4 then you are basically out of luck."

• That’s why I am hoping to have tiered events. So if the players can make it past the first event then the tougher event will spawn - thus if only a few people are participating you won't end up facing a super tough boss, but if lots of people are participating then you get a tougher boss - and better rewards.

The lag feast/freezing issues with open world events wasn't even addressed and many of us would say that's the major downside to this entire concept.

The first rule of DCUO is you don't talk about the issues of DCUO.
The second rule of DCUO is you don't talk about the issues of DCUO.

^^^^^^^^^^*points*^^^^^^^^^^

Thats exactly my concern. Shared by many leaguemates & friends who don't happen to be on the forums.

On a side note... I'd also like to know if one of these events could make it so that Heros and Villains work together to take down a boss (a la Darkseid ) and pehaps one of the rewards could be based on how well one does over the other? Kinda reminds me of an episode on Justic League Unlimited... kinda. xD

I did mention that the lag examples in Watchtower (and Open-world) wouldn't be as much of a concern as we will stage the events across multiple areas and in zones that have a max population (like Battlezone Metropolis).

Technical issues are never ignored and we test everything on PS3s. However in this thread I was looking for an open discussion on the theoretical public event system - and you guys are providing a lot of great feedback and insight!

It is an issue though in zones with a max population.

I lag/freeze whenever I step foot inside Battlezone Metropolis on my PS3. It's bad enough to make me avoid that area completely.

It was addressed, though I think Dizzy is being a bit optimistic about performance in those areas.

Even the capped population of Metro Battlezone isn't enough to help PS3 players.

I agree & personally I don't do the mist bounties because of the horrible freezing of the ps3 doing these. I can get a few done & have over 25, but the freezing is annoying and obviously worse in newer content. So I have still yet to finish the 50 mist bounties feat. as my ps3 freezes after doing a few. Also open world content such as Wayword, DAWN & VENG. still have horrible freezing issues. Oolong has the same horrible freezing. Stryker's island breaks & u can't clear the inmates. The inventory bug still happens in mist. This just to name a few things. The concept, yes it is cool, however it already does NOT work well with that idea. TOO MANY D.C.'$!

Thankyou for listening. I knew that open world missions in DLC12 would not be possible atm due to PS3 issues and how unstable the battlezone is on PS3.

meh.

I've already made the switch to PS4 so this doesn't bother me but a few league members are still on PS3 and when going to Metro Battlezone it take 3-5 minutes to load in. Will this cause that time to increase? It starts to wear on you having to wait 5-15 minutes on players doing the Mist operations just so they can see things. This may cause a split in the player base to where PS3 players start getting left out groups.

PS3 players are already getting left out of groups. If it takes them more than 3 minutes to comeback in a Td run then they are replaced. I suspect in surival mode groups will be so picky to where if you are on PS3 you wont be able to join due to your high chance of freezing. which is sad, especially since some of us where disconnecting on PC.

Thanks Dizzy for answering my question!! With the implementation being delayed, at least there is more time to get this idea off on a solid foundation instead of being rushed. Definitely makes me glad I bought the PS4 at launch- which I did solely for DCUO btw; I definitely have not regretted that decision.

A thought... Would it be possible that for some of the solo level public missions for us to have enemies break into our lairs as a result of our progress? (Like after getting the progress bar to 25% we head to our lair and a Robin or Harley or somebody spawns in our lair to fight us the next time we warp to our lair....)

All future content will be geared toward PS4's processing ability so PS3 wont be considered while they're designing the newer content

I would rather have something like that for the league halls than personal bases or lairs. Dope idea tho

Maybe even both... (Where beating the solo instance attack on your lair triggers an attack on the league hall...?)

That said if we have "Player faction vs. Player faction" Public events maybe have it work something like this:

Beet doomsday
Heroes win- Doomsday secure. New mission for both factions become secure red mist. New villain mision becomes steel doomsday.

Villains win- Doomsday in their hands for experiments. New mission for both factions become secure red mist. New hero mission becomes recover doomsday.

If villains win both missions then Enraged Doomsday is unleashed for the heroes to defeat.
If Heroes win both missions then nothing bad happens.

Well all past content was never geared to the PS3 anyway.

Why don't you guys just use the old Doomsday scenario that was in the old alpha of the game there's a few videos from YouTube of it .