Dev Discussion GU95: Survival Mode Feedback Thread

May I ask why you think that? Can you tell me what is the point of having 15 powersets if you expect them all to act the same? Why don't we just have 1 tank class and just copy and past all the stats and mechanics between them into 1. Even betters lets take away ALL powers and abilities and make it so that each player only has a set loadout and power tray to use because you feel that any powerset should be just as capable. No point in having any sort of player customization because every powerset needs to be able to do the same things.

Different powersets have different mechanics that lend themselves better for content with high spike damage, high single target health, and utility like teleport, stealth shields, decoy

The rest of your concerns are largely due to this SM being a 4man instance, in a 8man instance you would have much more flexibility in powerset makeup but apparently the community prefers 4man because its easier to find grounds for and feels more inclusive *shrug*

Answer: because there should be powers to use to be able to get through all 30 rounds of Survival Mode without having to significantly alter your role, in my opinion. The only thing players should have to do is tweak what is already there, not have to do a respec to change the setup of their character. For example, since I usually play support, I SHOULD NOT have to respec my character to use a DPS mechanic that is better suited for a DPS and seems broken to begin with.


A good example of this is the flurry shot WM; I have NEVER used Flurry Shot, WM or even AM when it was around; those mechanics do/did not suit my playstyle. Why should I have to use it for Survival Mode for my support characters? Do I really want to go through a respec to have mechanics I don't need for my support characters for a small piece of content? No, I dont and no player that use support role characters should have to.


As far as the size of the SM group, I don't think that would matter; in fact, it would be worse if it were an 8 man because players would ensure that there would be little to no reason to have support roles. I can see it now: an 8 man SM team would have 5 DPS and 3 tanks at the most.

The setup wouldnt change much on an 8man compared to the old ones. 4 tank powersets, 2 healer powerset at least 1 troll powerset and a variable based on the design of the content.




Independent to the response and in regards to the thread itself as feedback:

All healer powers can beat this SM. We have seen Celestial, Water of course, and Sorcery also made it through. Nature and Electricity left but both are more than capable of finishing it (I have tons of tokens left if someone needs an approval video ^^). Water just fills in the safety feel of the shields and so many people switched when they seen a water beating it. Even the roles and powersets of the others got adapted by some (who werent on these powers that time) this includes even members in our league (shame on you ).

People usually flock to what makes the progress first and adapt to different concepts at a later point.

For the next one I hope we get a room that doesnt allow certain things but with cameras being able to pan out at max unlike Trigon map. I liked the map but the camera issues made me shrugh every year. Secondly, more complex mechanics. This felt heavily dumbed down due to being 4man and one boss with a limited set of mechanics.

Getting adressed certain other issues in some way that have been mentioned throughout since the release of this Survival Mode.

Make trolls matter (more).



Last and least for now: Thanks to everyone who was involved in getting Survival Mode back. There is still lots of work to do but the outcome was still positive for me.

In terms of Precision vs Might that is just bad timing for the SM without weapons being looked at, normally that wouldn't be an issue. Might is just as capable of doing SM its just right now in a 4man setup where power is already not required because everyone is prec and there isn't enough healing needed to warrant extra power usage its been the meta. That isn't something that will be commonplace for future sm's when DW the outlier as a weapon is adjusted because there will be other choices.

8 man groups because there would be 2 bosses each round and towards the higher rounds would need 2 tanks each just like some of the bosses in this 4man sm can cater towards different tank powersets rather than just rage and ice being the easiest to use. Also boss choice is something that easily impacts that because you would never even dream of going without a troll in the past because the healers are dumping their powerbars continually but because of the boss choices this SM attacks are few and far between and you have the lunge exploit to where the tanks really aren't taking damage anyways.

In general there will always be powers that favor SM more than others. If the tank goes down only 1 power has the utility to taunt that boss so it doesn't wipe the group on a pickup and that's gadgets. There is only 1 powerset that can maintain a shield rotation which is meta after stats revamp and that is water. Presently only Nature can proc EoG for the group for multiple supercharges because its still at 2500 and the others are 10000 except water at 5000. Ice and Rage will always be better suited for high spike dmg because they don't have any mechanics in play (Earth having to worry about a pet) (Atomic needing to stay in combo) (Fire maintaing a hit combo to stay buffed defense) You have much more freedown with Ice and Rage compared to the other 3.

Even in this SM any power and any group combination can do 1-10 and even 11-20 but the actual difficulty and where SM is designed for the 25+ etc rounds is where you need specfic powers because they will put you in a better position to do well. That is the whole concept of SM

I feel like once the damage potential of the bosses and their overall health reaches such a hyperbolic point, it's really more about how everyone's playing than what they're playing, with group setups essentially adjusting a slider that ranges from "faster but riskier" to "slower but safer" which, depending on skill level, should ultimately balance out to the same success rate.

So...you believe the devs made this SM with the intention of only certain powers being able to finish? Maybe i’m reading this wrong? If so, i would think that as a paying subscriber that we could pick all powers and complete it...but hey maybe i’m wrong!

You are not suppose to complete it anyway. That people did it was not intentional. So the question answers itself.

The devs stated themselves that they didn't expect people to pass round 27. SM is supposed to be so hard that people can't finish, clearly it failed. When something is supposed to be impossible it creates different strategies that use different things that are special to a powerset, decoy is a great example.

I could understand your reasoning if SM was meant to be beaten but since it wasn't your point is invalid. Also just because people have beaten it now within a week even(myself included) does not change the fact that this was not intended according to the devs.

Also if you want to know were they said this it was on their livestream for SM

This is semantics. The question could easily be rephrased "Do you think the devs designed this SM so that only people with certain powers can attain Gold?"

So...sarcasm doesn’t exist on these forums? I mean cause clearly my statement was facetious...i saw the live stream where they said they didnt think no one would beat it. And yes i know the forum is full of sarcasm as well....

People were Beating it the first weekend

sarcasm doesn't translate well, if at all, across digital mediums.

Since any alteration to the Dodge mechanic may have major impact on the PvP side of things, I was wondering if it was possible to integrate the solution into the bosses themselves under the same "PvP" mentality? Explanation:

Bosses will block as they do today or more frequently (maybe even during special attacks, just without the animation), and a lunge by the player (including lunge into a clipped harmful power) will result in a knockdown, a prolonged - "PvP style" hard-stun knockdown, or alternatively a severe damage punishment on counter.

This ensures people who just spam lunge will kill themselves, but doesn't take out the mechanic from the game completely or affects PvP. Maybe the solution to all of this was in PvP all along?

Edit:

This was brought to my attention, so, another idea:

Heres some of my feedback on SM, I'll start off with a possible lunge solution. The lunge dodge should only dodge range weapon attacks thats it. No npc abilities like soldier's flame thrower, lightning or scatter shots should be dodge-able. Also maybe a slight cool down on the lunge dodge so you can't spam and or it will only activate on the first lunge if you do spam it and not reset till you stop. That last parts seems like a coding nightmare I know lol.

Also tanking imo isn't really tanking sometimes. I don't want to really get into that subject to much and I don't know how others feel but I would like to see more of being a real tank and using the combat mechanics and less of the tanks playing from range. You can tone down boss weapon attacks some and put more of a priority on them using abilities for high damage and making them more frequent. I'd much rather see the tank get punished from getting countered cause they were off their game then just getting hit with range taps or hold for crazy amounts of damage. This range tank meta thats going on after revamp is another reason we see the lunge used so much these days.This is more of a general statement not entirely to SM.

Now for some general SM feedback. Room mechanics, I would really like to see some sort or room mechanic maybe starting at round 10. That would keep the group more on their toes and present some danger to them unlike what we had in this SM. You have to be careful with this though cause theres nothing more frustrating then some mechanics doubling or tripling up on you and theres nothing you can do about it. Getting killed by complete rng stinks and at high rounds will be super frustrating.

Better boss selection, we need some bosses that will threaten the group not just the tank. Maybe even in some rounds you can spawn ads. Bring some bosses back from older content that we haven't seen in a long time like Ninja batman and others from nexus with the mechanics from the side rooms, heck even the shield mech from last boss would be cool. Bosses from Prime, gates and inner all the old content. Magic would be a great boss if he came equipped with the statues, pancakes and ads. Actually that would be amazing for a round 10 boss please make it happen.

Bosses from older content imo present a greater challenge then bosses from newer content and people aren't so familiar with them so for many there would be a learning process to add a little more difficulty. Also why don't we make SM actually endless? I think that would be really cool.

I got more but I'm at work so that will do for now but I'd like to say this was a good first sm and I really enjoyed it, Thanks for bringing it back!

Survival Mode it's a big ****.
I'm not surprised this game is failing.
As soon as a new superhero game arrives... i will immediately remove this experience from memory

Sm boss suggestion supreme justice with all his mechanics and adds.

I have to address to the devs about SM, i dont know where tho, so ill do it here.

I can't get into group for SM cause im at round 1 and everyone else are on 20+ rounds.
The reason im not playing SM is simply because game crashes everytime i want to get into SM.
I havent seen the enterior of SM... Ever...
Its on for quite a while and everyone talks about how devs fixed crashes, i didnt have problems with crashes until SM.
Some of the awards i really liked, but its impossible to pass the loading screen.

Its not like i dont wanna play it, ive never participated any cause of low level, now when i get the chance - i get game crash.
Problem isnt from my side, obviously, cause i dont experience crashes, just when i try to enter SM.
Can you please fix it?

Honestly this lunge cheese wouldnt be as big of an issue if tanks were sturdier. Sure rounds will get impossible after awhile and one shot but in general tanks cannot face tank as they once could back in dcuo. I miss those days when you could show what you were made of. Honestly tanks need a mechanic that will always be viable even with crazy overpowered bosses...something that will still scale and still involves technique and risk. Maybe a whole bunch of scaling defensive buffs when countering the boss successfully.

For higher rounds, boss fights take around 30 min or longer. Wiping on even rounds means doing the odd round again for another attempt on the even round. This means you need to allocate chunks of 1 hr timeslots for each boss attempt.

Please consider making progress points available after each round completion. This would make progression more reasonable for those of us who don't have insane amounts of time to spend on Survival Mode, and hence encourage participation rates.

For higher rounds, do consider implementing different mechanics to test people of each role rather than making high rounds just a test of who can endure playing continuously for long hours without the need for toilet breaks.

The ordering of the bosses could be a lot better. By putting US/Ultraman at 29/30, you effectively have the tankiest and buggiest boss acting as a 30+ minute gatekeeper for the most luck-dependent boss, creating a faux-challenge where every attempt mostly feels like pulling the arm on a slot machine that you had to wait in line 30min for. If you want to use bosses with so much RNG in their mechanics, targeting, and behaviour, don't put them at 30; Ultraman is technically no worse than Johnny Quick in terms of random gotcha bs but the CR difference makes his cheese way thicker and the probability of that cheese occurring much higher due to the length of the fight.

Tiers should have been US/Ultraman at 5/6, 15/16, 25/26 with Ultraman coming first. 29/30 should have been Manta followed by Vampire Lord. Reward tiers should have stopped increasing at 20, so less hardcore players didn't have to go as deep. This would have dramatically increased the quality of challenge and made a lot more sense, since Vampire Lord is the poster boy for this SM. Also, Vampire Lord's randomness (ie. spawn order + location) is strategic and allows for controlled adaptability whereas Ultraman is capable of too much cheesy bs, so this would have made victory feel a lot more earned. Lasso -> charges lasso target -> pvps to waste time -> charges the player forced to start the res before the cog times out -> swoops the next player going for res -> etc isn't "challenging," it's stupid.

Edit: And as previously requested, please put checkpoints before each boss. Wasting 30+ minutes of four peoples' time as "punishment" is asinine and adds nothing to the challenge except to ensure that hardly anyone actually has the time to do higher rounds. The time wasting is especially problematic when you factor in that the servers aren't flawless and the fights aren't bug-free... don't put people in a situation where they have to re-do such long fights because someone fell through a floor, or a boss bugged out, or there was a split second of lag. It's terrible design.