Dev Discussion Episode 27: "Olympus" Raid & Elite Raid feedback thread

Hey hey hey!

Now that the Olympus Raid (& Elite Mode) are both on the live server, more folks will be getting to play it. I'll be tracking this thread for further feedback on this content. So please post here if you have any comments, questions, or if you find any issues. If you do find an issue, please specify whether you noticed it while playing in the normal or elite mode.

Thanks for playing, and I hope you enjoy the new content!

On test during the zeus fight the electric floating balls were doing massive dmg and 1 shotting people. Today as a 175 troll or dps i only lost about 50% health if 1 exploded right under me. Obviously the dmg was lowered. Seems to have been lowered too much maybe. Ran this raid twice today and everything went smooth as far as any bugs or broken stuff. I know the elite version is where the challenge is but both raids feels a lil too easy.

AF2 had thrones (hardest) HoH (middle/average) and LoL (easy) raids. I like the mechanics in the new raids i just wonder with the return to dlcs like before why both raids seems to be the same as far as difficulty. Im not asking for em to be buffed, so hold the freak outs please Just curious as to how the difficulty was determined for the raids. And if the devs think 1 is harder then the other. Cause i found em to both be about the same. I ran both on my tank and on my troll toons.

they probably take into consideration that not everyone on live will be 175, or have anything above 200 so.

Keep them as they are if these are the raids were going to have for maybe 6 months or longer I want to get in and out as fast as possible.

Im sure they do. And again i wasnt asking for them to be buffed. Like i said in the past we got multiple raids with different difficulty. These 2 new ones seem the same as far as difficulty. Wondering if 1 is supposed to be harder then the other and if not then how come? Thats all i wanted to know.

Well you mentioned Thrones, but remember that back then we had 3 raids, now we have 2 and both have Elite, so my guess is they want to at least let the majority beat Normal mode more than once a week. Remember this has to keep us quiet for 6 months which means replay has to come steady, unlike DWF which was a replay disaster lol.

U could be right. In fact imo u probably are. Im a curious guy and was just wondering why. Doesnt hurt to ask. If they answer cool, if not oh well.

You guys are on the right track...our goal is to try and make the raids fun for more players. I think our raids have a lot of cool mechanics and characters and stories, and we would love to see more of you guys with the opportunity to enjoy them. And when you're ready for a tougher challenge, head to the elite raids.

I'll admit that getting the balance of difficulty for raids and elite raids can be tricky. I can't say that we hit it perfectly, but I do think we're in the ballpark.

- Quixotic

The elixir we get from Hecate, is for when Zeus says "Lets see if you can withstand a fraction of my power", right?

That is one of the things he'll say when he applies the Vexation DoT to someone who must then find a way to cleanse it. Zeus has other lines for the elixir attack...though possibly a little too similar in tone.

- Quixotic

If the goal was to make the raid fun, why would you have Zeus 1shot the entire duration of test server to be nerfed on live server? Was that a last minute call for "This isn't fun, let's ninja nerf it."?

It was for sure nerfed before it hit live. Same with GoM. Now even the simple pug groups can complete these raids no problem, even with the very minimum support roles.

Still best visuals in the game so far.

In my opinion the raids are way to easy as they are now. My first run, with a group of 171 to 176 players, at different skill-levels, did both raids day one. Group was all pugs, in olympus we wiped once, where as a few more times in the other raid.
I know this was the normal versions, but still.. .the normal versions should offer some challenge.

Imo AF2 had perfect challenge levels, laby was considered easy, but still harder then this olympus raid. And HoH was considered normal to hard, Throne hard+ and the elite version was bonkers. IMO the difficulty of this raid should lie between Laby and HoH or at least on laby-lvl, the other raid should be slightly easier then ToD was day 1.
The normal versions of the raids should be buffed some, and the alert as well. It's to easy when you can pull a 168 dps through the alert without tank when all was below 175.

Oh and btw; Aren't the elite versions supposed to be somthing extra for the elite players? Im not an elite player, and rarely run elite raids, but i've been here since march 2011, so i know my stuff. Normal versions need to offer some challenge to be fun as well.

We have ended up with a game where content is easy, but you can do the Elite raids, but can only run twice a month if you dont reset. If you want a challenge. Or sometimes you have survival stuff. We have ended up with a game where the content isn't the endgame, the gear is.

On another note, the visuals, the puzzles, the cutscenes and a lot of other small stuff were very good. Buff the normal versions of the raids a bit, and the alert as well, and you have a very good episode content wise, (I still don't like the extreme grind you want us to do). Even though there is a lot from this episode and its mindset i don't like, ur on to something great. Small adjustments and this could have been the best episode ever launched (again, my opinion )

I just want to say Thank You! We've been having a lot of fun with the new content, especially the raids. I know it's easier than it's been before, but, that's exactly what we (my friends and I) are looking for in the Normal difficulty raids. Something to chill out with, be able to invite ANY powerset, nearly any competency level, and just HAVE A GOOD TIME! In past raids, when certain people want to come, we'd just have to accept the fact we weren't going to finish. That sucks and it horrible for friendships. Leads to exclusivism/etc. A lot of the people who post here are looking for great challenge and are really good players. Well, there's a lot of us that just want to hang with friends and do something fun and NOT have to exclude people.

Olympus took us about 60 mins the first time. GOM the run last night was 110 mins. That's with a group of friends on TS that were 172-180ish. Imagine what the PUG groups are like!

Of course we'll gear up and blow through it later, but, if and when we feel like a challenge, the elite raids are there. Now, I hope they are REALLY hard for the elite players. If they aren't, then those guys don't have anything to do, and aren't having fun. We might not get to them for some time, but, when we're bored with the easy stuff, or we have a particular set of players on, they are there waiting.

THANK YOU for the difficulty, we're having a blast!

I just don't like the fact that if you are going into elite content, if you're not on test server or watching videos from test server, you're not going to learn any of the mechanics beforehand in normal. If you're only taking a little bit of damage and then being healed up, most times you're not going to really push yourself to remember that mechanic and/or figure out how to avoid/counter said mechanic. You're just going to go into elite with "Oh ok, so that's a 1shot here."

I ran Olympus like 6-7+ times with just 175's for the majority of them and I only saw 1 wipe on reg when we had a tank die on Zeus. No one died to DoT damage, no one died to elec balls or even tried to move out of the way. The whole group would just sit there on top of the balls and eat the damage and get healed, 3-4 times per boss fight.

Like I remember a post from a developer in the original Oly feedback thread, and when we asked why Zeus wasn't counterable like Darkseid, the answer was so that mechanics/damage would go through along with the troll answer of Zeus being Zeus, he's not countered by our puny weapons. I don't get why you would designs mechanics just to be ignored by 90%, maybe more, of the player base day 1. When a group has more deaths from adds in the hallways than boss mechanics something is wrong imo. I can understand 180+ being able to live through certain mechanics easily, but 170-175 should die to certain things even in reg. Zeus's balls not 1shotting would be equivalent of Brainiac's spikes not 1shot'ing, people being able to stand in PBR Grodd AoE damage or being able to heal PBR first boss through the turret damage and not even having to destroy any of them. There should at least be 1 mechanic that retains its lethality in normal especially if it's going to be added onto inside of Elite. I tried to get a group for OLYE yesterday but noone was a high enough cr, but assuming his move still 1shots in there, you have the bird to worry about when he gets to low health in addition to that. You go from breezing through Reg to having to deal with the dot in a short time period, you have the bird attacking people, and the non-skull zeus attack 1shotting the group. At least beforehand, you would have practice dodging zeus's attack inside of Reg so therefore whenever you go into Elite, it's not as overwhelming. You still have the regular elite difficulty somewhat but it's not like every single mechanic is being thrown at you out of nowhere and has kill threat.

I dare to say currently, all of KCT's bosses are harder than Zeus in Reg. I've had more deaths during 1 run of KCT than through 2-3 runs of OLY.

Olympus - how? What mechanic even killed you? Or was the tank dying to basic attacks from bosses? Was burn slow or?
GOM - that sounds like even when you're on teamspeak, you didn't separate the bosses of GOM or get the lightning done correctly.

LFG for hero side at 175 USPS/USPC were doing both raids in 25-35 minutes. If you're double to triple the time period with the same cr, something wasn't being done correctly.

Friends comment: That happens in any game lol I play CoD with friends that aren't good and either have to carry them or not play with them. Same goes for League of Legends, same goes for sports irl. There's always a choice of whether you want to perform that activity well and/or compete in that activity or if just playing with your friend is important.And as a friend, they should understand. Either they should know they're not well-skilled in the game and be trying to listen and learn mechanics (I've had several that went from learning basic AM rotations to completing SM and having 150+sp in 2-3 months) or they should be asking to only run content where they wouldn't be hindering the group.

GOM 1st boss - don't stand in lava - easy
GOM 2nd boss - separate bosses - can be hard if tanks don't know how to split
GOM 3rd boss - make a straight line - easy especially with voice chat
OLY 1st boss - stand in 1 spot and kill her - easy
OLY 2nd boss - hit the switch when it comes up and kill her - easy
OLY 3rd boss - if you see lightning around you, go to a purple node, if you see a skull, drink hecate's elixir - easy

If your friends can't do that or take several wipes to do that ^ that sounds like they're not even trying to learn the boss. Only exception I would give to that is OLY 3rd boss but even then only 1 person has a DoT on them at a time if I remember right, which doesn't cause a wipe, and Zeus's skull move I'm not sure if it's even a 1shot without drinking the elixir if the elec balls aren't but still.

I'm sorry but when you don't need gear from this episode to get the feel you almost play on GOD mode, it's WAY TO EASY. 2nd Boss Gom was closest to the lvl it should be.
The time you used in these raids sounds like you had all sorts of breaks, since specially in Olympus if you ignore most of the mechanics you can easily complete in about 20min, with a group were non are higher than 176.

In my opinion If you want content to be that easy you should gear from solo and such and go back to do old content, heck bbs today is on par with these raids, maybe even the trigon raid. They need buffs, you have no challenge in these raids. It's really to bad because mechanics wise this is the best i've seen in ages from DCUO. I really miss the good old days were no one completed the top raid day one after launch. Why devs (and you) want it this easy I'll never understand.

And don't say i have to run Elite for a challenge, elite is supposed to be for those who need an extra elevated challenge, and use a lot of money in this game. Elite is not the path of progression but something extra for the hardcore, not a reason why everything not elite should be a walkthrough. A raid should never be a walkthrough before content is obselete, meaning a new episode is out. So now KCT and DWFn should be walkthtroughs with gear from this episode (they practically have been walkthroughs since KCT launched though).

If i ever bought a single mode game where lvl 1 and last lvl was about same difficulty (easy) i would be pissed as hell, this is somewhat how this game is feeling atm.

In elite and reg, Athena seems to do these random aggro drops. It's not due to someone using ice elemental. She'll lunge at someone and do a full combo on them. I don't know what's causing it. It's not an issue with the tank. None of us that have ran it, used a single target taunt on her. Not sure what the cause is, but it seems odd that it would be intended, especially in elite, when it will kill you if you're not a tank.

Last boss of Olympus, with Zeus, when you get transformed into the bird, you end up getting stuck. I was turned and couldn't move, use the taunt ability or hit O to eat an apple. Some times it will pass after about 10 seconds, but last night, I was stuck in the form for almost the whole fight, until the cut scene triggered at the end of the fight.

Second boss of GoM, one of the phoenix's, couldn't be taunted. We thought maybe it was proximity aggro, but nothing we did would make it move to where we wanted it to. I had one phoenix, that followed me, and the other was on WW for most of the fight, and then eventually moved to the other tank. We didn't have any issues in reg. But it's more of an annoyance, when we can't position the bosses where we want them.

I really thought the last boss fight was fun. Most of my league was at minimum CR so we had to deal with the mechanics on Zeus. The charging of the rods and the electromagnet idea was neat. My leaguemates pointed out that it really puts all the support roles to work in terms of removing the charge on the rods with their shields. Assigning support players to sides of the room helps.

The bird wouldn't always accept the taunt from the player transformed into another bird. So we had the player the bird was attacking take it towards the entrance door to clear it away from everyone. From there the person in bird form taunted it and it worked better in keeping it there. The player the bird is chasing should Roll towards the entrance door to avoid getting knocked out by the birds dive attack. I did notice I was transformed to it and I couldn't move but when I pressed options (ps version of start) I got out of it. Overall, Zeus fight gets an 9 out of 10.

The other 2 bosses I can't say the same. Hecate was ok but both seemed tank and spank. The cog defense reduction is an ok idea.

While I did notice that the non boss nPCs are more susceptible to longer control effect durations and shorter immunity windows, I would have also have liked to see special NPCs for controllers to deal with. Like Vexor type npcs, npcs that had significant damage buffs that need removal by controller damage debuffs like with dr light (but stronger) and more defense debuff requirements on bosses (for signifincant damage penetration).

Forgot to specify this is for elite.

Bug Report:

Getting told that my Hecate Elixier expired approx. every hour even though I have none left in my inventory.