Test Discussion Death of Superman Part 2: Doomsday (Raid)

Feedback
This is just a summary of the issues/bugs I'm seeing from my runs so far:

Civilian Phase
It is very easy for Doomsday to get stuck on pets, crystals, and other obstructions during the Civilian phase. When this happens, you get in a lot of easy damage since he won't attack the group. Even when he is able to get to the target, you can get in a lot of easy damage. Here is another example of Doomsday getting stuck:


Bad Tells
There are a lot of issues here.

a) Fake Skull Warnings
You can't trust the skull warnings from Doomsday. Here is another example:


Doomsday shows skull at 13 seconds and then proceeds to block. That is followed by the Doom Jump.

I saw this happen a lot during my Doomsday runs. I'd see a skull, block, and nothing would happen.

b) OHK Attacks with No Tells
The flip side to "A" is that a lot of Doomsday's OHK attacks have little warning or are very hard to see.

Let's use the Doom Jump from "A" as an example. Doomsday does his Doom Jump to a random group member at 17-18 seconds. It initially looked like he was going to walk back to the tank. That Doom Jump has no obvious tell and is super quick in the short attack distances you see in this fight.

Another example would be the Heat Vision attack. It is a OHK attack if you aren't blocking it. However, it is very hard to see the attack with the dust in the air and Doomsday's damage aura. That makes it hard to see which way Doomsday is pointing sometimes. Against all of that, the Heat Vision initially shows up as being a very subdued reddish color. Again, there generally isn't a skull for this attack. By the time you see it happening, you're dead.

c) X Marks the Spot
The AoE damage from the "X Marks the Spot" attacks seems to be much larger sometimes than what the X indicates. Sometimes you'll think you are at a safe distance and still take a lot of damage.

d) Those Rockets/Spikes
I initially thought the "rockets" I saw flying around were from the Robot Sidekicks my group was using. After rewatching a couple of runs though, I think they are from Doomsday. I'm still not quite sure how they work. I'm guessing they explode if you get to close to them. It is very easy to miss them on the ground after they land. The rockets/spikes blend in a little too much with the crater textures.

e) Doomsday Landing
Doomsday needs a better tell for where is going to reappear after a Jump/"X Marks the Spot" attack. You'll see him reappear somewhere on the field and then magically teleport somewhere else. It can be problematic if he reappears right beside your character.


Kryptonite Turrets
Oracle tells us that Doomsday is "Too Powerful" and we need to activate the turrets. That doesn't come across in the fight very well. You see the Turrets fire some green beams at Superman/Doomsday and they don't seem to do anything. Doomsday just keeps attacking regardless. They don't seem to slow down Superman either.

Sometimes you'll activate the turrets just as Doomsday does his Jump/"X Marks the Spot" attack. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen in that situation.


Superman
Superman doesn't do very much in this fight. After one of Doomsday Jump attacks, Superman will often go to the center of the room and just wait there until he receives damage again. Beyond that, it feels like Superman is there just for the purposes of the final cutscene. I was hoping Superman would have some unique lines in the fight or maybe even a unique mechanic.


Difficulty
In its current incarnation, the Doomsday raid feels very similar to what you'd expect from an Event raid like the Anti-Monitor. The only concerns I have are for groups with mediocre DPS. I'm afraid Doomsday's health regeneration will exceed the damage potential of some groups.

The difficulty needs to be low in both version there's no gear or useful marks that your going to get so it needs to be something any random 8 people can do .

I can see the need for low difficulty in the event version but why the regular version(end game)? They're two versions, so their really ins't an excuse why the regular version cant be challenging(it should be harder than what it is now) If someone cant be the regular version, they can head to the event version. It's permanent content so you can come back and over gear it.

Feedback
Here are some further thoughts regarding the difficulty.

Doomsdays individual attacks do enough damage. They will either outright kill or inflict a large amount of damage on a non-tank. Doomsday also regenerates his health at a decent tick. That isn't a problem though if you have a group of decent DPS.

There doesn't seem to be any real penalty for letting Doomsday consume(?) the Civilians. I think he generated an aura after consuming a Civilian, but there didn't seem to be much else.

One of the issues regarding the difficulty is that Doomsday is the only enemy in the entire raid and most of his ranged attacks are single-target or cone-based. Having the group spread out in a circle goes a long way to minimizing the damage. The only large AoE attack Doomsday has is well telegraphed. There is enough time to heal back up to full health, shield, and get out of the area of the Xs. You'll probably still take a lot of damage from that AoE attack because of its misleading size, but you should live. Outside of that, Doomsday doesn't do much damage on a group basis outside of the DoT aura. All of that means it is really easy to recover from any mistakes.

Honestly, the actual fight feels rather sloppy right now. The bad tells and visual indicators are part of the problem. If you are killed by one of Doomsday's regular attacks, it probably isn't your fault. Tanks have little control over how to position Doomsday. Doomsday will walk the length of the room to consume Civilians. There is no way of knowing where he'll decide to teleport following a "Jump in the Air" attack. There isn't very much for the Controller to do either. As long as the Controller is keeping up healing/defense debuffs, they've done their job in the fight. There is nothing to stun or crowd control. Superman is just there to lounge around and maybe be a punching bag when he feels like it.

Beyond the Kryptonite Turrets, I was hoping there would be some additional mechanic in the raid. Maybe have Doomsday blow up and OHKO the group if it doesn't accomplish some specific objective after his health reaches some critical level.

Why is no one commenting about the cut-scene from this raid?

It is very much like the missing audio from the Earth 3 Duo where Owlman punches out the two cops with NO SOUND EFFECTS.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE for the love of goodness CLOSE SUPERMAN'S EYES in the final cut-scene.

Skip to 11:55 to see how AWKWARD that scene looks with his eyes open.



Other than that, the raid is on the easy side but I expected that from it since there is no elite version. Other than that it is pretty fun besides the bugs that the others are speaking of.

I think the starting off with a low health bar is a good idea.

Have the fight start off with Doomsday low health and the difficulty it is at now. then after 20-25% of his health gone, just throw in a small cutscene of him doing the "strong/pumped up " emote(forgot the name of him bent over getting stronger emote, havent played in awhile). That will give an indication that the real fight is about to begin or Phase 2.

Then there should be good memorable mechanics in this fight. You got big open field and a renown boss to work with, the imagination of mechanics is endless. For this being a "permanent event" this raid should at least make people work a bit as a normal.

Edited: Just read there will be no elite version. Forget above, make people work in this raid.

Technically in open-world, we've only repelled DD then he regenerates again. Lore wise, we're not fighting a regular big villain, Doomsday's Reactive Adaptation itself over time makes him immune to attacks. If we follow lore and story, his status, health, endurance or whatever, is a constant up until the Kryptonite turrets part of the raid.

Thanks for the report. I've got a minor tweak in the works to address this issue.

Thanks! I'm working on a solution for this issue.

There's no Elite version of this Raid, so it's not meant to be super-tough. The 'normal' version is probably tuned a little too easy right now. I'm going to try and make some minor changes so it's a little tougher.

1) Doomsday throws down other meteors from the sky at the other, smaller "X" locations. Again, I'm working on a fix for the issue where sometimes the impact happens away from an "X."
2) The story about the purple crystallized Plague is explored a little bit in the open world Doomed Metropolis when the raid gets released. Essentially it's another phase of the Plague itself. If you're near to one when it appears, you'll take damage and get knocked away. If you're near to one while it's sitting there, if you don't have your Probiotic active, you should take a little damage from it. If you're close to it when it is destroyed, you'll take damage no matter what.
3) The Kryptonite Turrets prevent Doomsday's regeneration for a while. You may be able to damage through his regeneration and ignore the turrets, but it would theoretically be an uphill battle for you.

Thanks again for the feedback!

There are 3 feats: Complete the Normal Raid 6, 12, and 18 times. The last one gives a title.

Thank you for the reply JackFrost.

1. I saw those "meteors" flying around even when Doomsday was just walking around and not doing his Jump attack. Is that supposed to happen? Here is an example:



If you look closely, you'll see a meteor appear near the center at 1 second and 5 seconds. The one at 5 seconds is a bit easier to see.



2 and 3.
I don't feel #2 or #3 is messaged very well in the raid itself.

I saw the purple crystals in the outdoor section and wondered what they were. You don't get a name or target life bar if you target lock them. They are only vulnerable to destruction by weapons and certain powers. A lot of powers do nothing to those crystals. My initial impression that they looked a lot like Zamaron crystals. I only saw they were related to Doomsday when I saw the "Crystal Crush!" feat. You take a decent amount of damage if you stand beside them in the open world.

In the raid itself, you don't get any text or messaging related to the crystals. How close do you have to be to the crystals to take damage without the Probiotic? Here is what I'm seeing:


The crystals appear at 9 seconds. I didn't have the Probiotic active and appeared to take regular DoT aura ticks. I didn't take any damage when the crystal disappeared at 22 seconds.

Regarding the Turrets, Oracle doesn't say anything about what the Turrets actually do. She just says Doomsday is "too powerful" and that they might kill Superman. Can we avoid the "Superman dies" ending if we decide not to use the turrets?

EDIT:
I didn't have an opportunity to test this, but can the crystals/turrets block line-of-sight to other team members?

Awesome! Very managable number!

Regarding the video, I believe you may be seeing Rockets being fired at Doomsday (by LexCorp operatives on buildings outside the play-space here).

Regarding the crystals, I'll see if there's anything we can do to message them better. You do have to be pretty close right now for them to do damage to you. The researcher at the entrance of the raid partially inoculates you from their effects, hence why they do more damage in the open world. But they may need to do a little more damage. And they can indeed block line-of-sight.

As for your question about not using the turrets, you'd probably just make it harder for yourself to attempt it.

Again, I'm working on making some tweaks to this instance before it goes live, though those changes likely won't be on PCTest for a couple of days. Cheers!

Thanks for the reply JackFrost.

I didn't see the LexCorp operatives on the radar. Are they targeting the Heroes, Doomsday, or both groups? They seem to have really lousy aim. I was figuring LexCorp operatives would all be knocked out by now considering the devastation.

I think some additional messaging regarding what the Kryptonite turrets actually do would help clear up some confusion.

Can the turrets target Doomsday when he is in the air?

If you're in the hero instance, LexCorp Operatives shoot rockets towards Doomsday, but since they're so far away, their aim is diminished. If you're in the villain instance, it's STARLabs Operatives shooting the rockets instead. Funny how that works.

The turrets have a pretty long range, but I don't think they can hit him while he's jumped into the sky to do his big X attack. There's a chance the turrets could fire off just before he jumps though. If that happens, the turrets should still break through his regeneration.

I've got something in mind to help messaging the turrets. Thanks!

Hey Penryn,
1) Thanks... We wanted a cool death cam and wanted the players to feel the impact of the blow.

2) There is actually... Supergirl states she is going to get the Justice League from "off world" where they are on a mission. This is also why the Justice League's "B team" are roaming the open world trying and failing to stop Doomsday. Likewise, during the outro cinematic, Supergirl can be heard saying... "We're too late..." rounding up the "I'm going to get the Justice League" point from the very beginning of the content.

3) Yes. Nightwing and Babs did date for a while... and it is plausible that is why she would call him. But the real reason is Superman was a huge mentor to Nightwing in the comics. His name, Nightwing is taken from the stories Superman used to tell Dick about the two Kandorian/Kryptonian superheroes he looked up to as a kid: Nightwing and Flamebird. Dick takes his name from the Kryptonian hero Nightwing. So the real reason, Oracle has to call Nightwing... Is because he's going to be devastated because Clark was his hero.

4) Our ESRB rating doesn't allow for that sadly...

Sorry to be redundant in my post... I hadn't seen your response.
Nice to see, the player base spreading the DC lore knowledge. Thanks!

Why no Ted Kord?!