Test Discussion Episode 45: Meta-Therapy Clinic Alert

Hello! This is the feedback thread for Episode 45's Alert: Meta-Therapy Clinic! Fight your way through the hospital with Static and Ebon to investigate the disappearance of Dakota City's bang babies.

Please leave your feedback and thoughts, though try to keep it constructive. Thanks!
- Beta

Known issues:
Feats are not in
Some boss mechanics are still in progress

will this have an elite mode?

Really like this alert. Really good job on Rudy! I love the nice big open rooms, and hallways. Very good flow to the entire mission. No bugs to report.

Id love a 3rd boss , map too big , surely you can squeeze the a small boss somewhere . Now for actual feed back
1- the elvator mechanic is buggy and not working well , we choose right console and it just says wrong choice
2 - final boss major force spinny lasser attack , the lasser doesnt match the hit box , also if you would please add smth we can know which way he will turn would be appreciated
3- after elevator the part of the door with blue force feild , please just remove it , it services no no purmose

The good:

• Map is really nice to navigate.
• The environment has amazing feel to it.
• There are a lot of new assets adding to this that are really cool.

The bad:

• The instance is a really long for how little of mechanics that are involved. Like hallway adds are just spread out.
• Why do we have to have a silly lock picking mechanic? This just will make a daily content a nightmare to pug because of players inability to understand how anything works. A raid, like AnB, is one thing, but a daily alert will just not be fun when you get to the elevator.

The mechanics:

• As pointed out above, Major Force's rotating laser reaches much farther than the animation, which makes it impossible to get out of the way from. Is it supposed to be block to survive or something? This will be some issues in elite, as I am sure the damage will be one shot if hit.
• Parasite fight was interesting, though it didn't feel like he was a huge threat. I suppose, something that eats your power would be an interesting mechanic. Like, he grabs you and steals power that needs to be lunged by a teammate to stop. I didn't stay in his cone aoe attack to find out what that does. I saw he does a pulse beam too, wasn't hit by that, so not sure there either.

Final notes: I like the instance for what it is, but Godseye Pyramid was a little more engaging, even though they are both a dungeon crawl. Maybe it's because the scarabs that appear and the environment traps keeping you awake. This one is very straightforward, except for the very annoying puzzle, it doesn't have a lot in the way of engagement. I am curious if more is going to be added.

I would just like to mention that the Elevator puzzle part is not doing any good for colour blind people, sadly.
I mean I am not colour blind but it took me a while to realize that the wires going to first three consoles are different colours.

Can't seem to give me option to edit the previous comment, so just gonna add this here.

I loved this map and this map should've been Raid.

This is a re-run so I know where the wires are now LOL but I still stand by my previous comment.

I have so many questions about this cutscene...

(The alert itself is ok. I feel like Parasite could use more mechanics.)

Feedback from first run:

The colour lines for the puzzle part might be problematic for colourblind people, but other than that, i think it should be more visible because it was hard to see which is correct unless you zoom in closely.

Bosses feel no threat at all but i did read that there are missing mechanics so ill wait for that.

The map layout is very cool, i feel like it should have been a raid instead with 3rd boss. But as others said, very easy to follow with new assets.

The hallway adds have the same problem as sins of black adam alert, it just drags the run too long, i think reducing adds density would be better, or more variety of adds to make it more threatening because the alerts feels like 3 dps 1 tank situation, leaving healers out.

12:18 at the video, there is a missing texture that makes the floor looks like void. The final cutscene is a liiiiiiiiiittle creepy to me. Maybe cause it was my character lol

Also, waiting on further boss mechanics to give full feedback and opinion.

You saw the cutscene in my video? My tank had the small body type and it DID NOT look right
Definitely needs some animation correction.

Desaad is that kind of creeper.

If you're using one of the larger body types, it looks like Desaad is ripping out your heart in that scene.

I don't think my comment changes... You should read some stories with him, he's really bad.

Normal/Elite Feedback:

This feedback is for both the Normal Instance and Elite as I can only see 1 change between the instances

• No Feats as of yet for either
• In elite there appear to be larger grouping of npcs in the hallways but just as normal you can skip 70% of all the adds in the instance and only need to kill the ones in-front of the doors. If you intended for us to kill all of them it would add 10-15min to the Alert duration and if you didn't intend for us to kill them this is going to lead to pug situations where they ignore and try to kill them while the rest of the group demands they skip etc
• The puzzle itself is just 3 players watching 1 player turn cogs, there should be something to occupy the group during the encounter. Have an npc that either a) guards the cog in the office that must be killed/stunned/pulled away etc so the player can safely get the cog or b) when a player activates a switch a npc runs to another cog and if he gets to that cog first then the switch is reset. So that the group would have to kill/stun/pull that npc that will be rushing the cog

Parasite:

• The only mechanic currently present is just the Acid Spit channel, which doesn't track you as a player so it can be easily avoided
• He was a npc apart of FOS Survival Mode where he has a pull in attack that would suck in players from range and then have a melee damage attack, he would also randomly lunge out at players.
• Parasite did have a self healing mechanic. If that suck in attack could be added and have that as an interruptible channel so that if the tank or a player doesn't lunge it then Parasite will self-heal. Since Parasite comic ability is absorption it would fit that point

Major Force:

• Major's epicenter is still doing no damage, just the pull in for both normal and elite
• The only difference in this encounter from Normal is that now there is a Lunge mechanic to "keep him distracted" after the lunge he will stand and do nothing while a player goes to turn a cog at the terminal "to let him have it" which summons and drops an Air Conditioner unit ontop of Major Force that explodes and deals zero damage

Feedback
Starting the first Elite fight in the raid causes almost all of the alert feats to pop:

This happened in the duo as well. The same feats popped.

Just going to be providing bug report:

Elite:

• All the briefing's for the alert are side by side at the spawn of the alert, there are no locations throughout the alert
• When banner comes up saying Stay way from Parasite He looks hungry Parasite seems to do nothing and just stands in place for approx 7 seconds then continues to attack normally
• Then Parasite proceeds to stand around for approx 35 seconds standing still not attacking
• At 25% health the battery transport phase appeared but seemed to have no impact on anything
• If you wipe on Major Force you get locked outside and have to warp rally to clear it
• No skull or warning banner on Atomic Gunshow if intended
• Rigging Terminal not working at all, cog doesn't appear
• Killed Major Force in 2min without the unit exploding on Major Force from turning the cog so that doesn't appear to be needed to complete encounter
• No damage on epicenter during brute force rigging terminal phase

Only providing bug report

Elite:

• The bang babies/citizens when you turn the cog to free them from the shade prison do nothing, they just stand in the same pose
• The Stay away from Parasite! He Looks hungry! appears to do nothing, sometimes he just stands in the same pose and does nothing. I am standing beside him as a tank through the entire phase. Health doesn't increase, no buff icon
• It appears the only impact of not transporting the battery to static is that Parasite takes very minimal damage during the phase but since Parasite doesn't attack and is only pulse beaming Static there is no negative to not transporting the battery. Group can just wait out the phase
• Group wipe on Major Force still leaves the wall up and need to warp rally
• if a player launches an attack outside of the encounter so the wall comes up and the enter encounter portal spawns if you don't enter and wait for major force to reset, the wall remains and group has to warp rally
• There is no banner warning on the atomic gunshow of Major Force. There is only 1 tell which is a slamming the ground animation which lasts 2 seconds and then the ability starts. Since there is a feat for not taking damage that doesn't leave much room for error being hit. You could leave that as intended but you will certainly get feedback that there is no skull or banner about the gunshow or for the group to know they should block it as the only way to survive
• May just be test server but multiple players and myself included have experienced the beginning of the atomic gunshow to be invisible for the first 1-2 seconds of the beam
• In one attempt there was no cog for the brute force mechanic then the next attempt there was a cog and could drop the A/C unit and have it explode for 1mm of health bar
• The majority of the Major Force fight he doesn't even attack. It will go from Lunge phase to brute force phase to epicenter phase then back to lunge phase all while he is motionless and doesn't attack.

Feedback
At some points in the Regular Parasite fight, he will just stop attacking. Here is an example:


Jump to 9 seconds to see the example.