Dev Discussion Episode 34: "JLD: Fellowship of the Arcane" 8-Player Operation

Hey again, folks!

We're excited to present new content, including the new 8-Player Operation entitled "JLD: Fellowship of the Arcane." There are 3 versions of this content: Event, Normal, and Elite.

This is the thread I'll be monitoring most closely for any feedback on this content. If you have any questions, concerns, or find any issues, please post them here. If you experience any issues, please give me as many details as you can, such as whether you're a hero or villain, and whether you were playing Event, Normal, or Elite.

Thanks for playing DCUO, and thanks again to the players who helped test the content on the Test server. We hope you enjoy the new content!

This raid is great Jack. We did both the elites when it went live and it took us 2 hours to finish Fellowship compared to the 40 minutes we spent in Shattered Gotham. I don't think there's any bugs, at least from what I've seen. This DLC was definitely better than last DLC because a LOT of people are going to need to upgrade all augments before going in there to take reduced damage.

The raids are moving in a better direction but hopefully one day the elites at least will still take more time to complete than within the first week. But compared to the last couple DLC's (except TItans first week) it's way better.

This raid is a masterpiece. The design is gorgeous, the boss fights are intense, and the mechanics demand attention. This is easily my favorite raid since returning last year. I hope you and whomever designed Hive Elite are requested to design the Elite raids from here on out.

Way too easy. I hope you guys can tune them up. Both elite raids in a single night without any effort and previous episodes gear. I really don't know after this what else I should look forward to with that episode in terms of difficulty. The other raid had at least the funny platform stuff but this one had nothing that felt special to me.

First was okay. In fact the better one of the boss fights.
Village one seems to have unannounced random one-shots but nothing that can't be bypassed with shield cheese these days. The rest of the fight is tank and spank standard. The cat felt more of a gimmick than a threat. Loved it in the duo but felt super random in this fight.

I gave this one a go and feel that it, like SGE, is a bit overtunted as well. This could stand to have some of the last minute changes that went to test rolled back.

This was had a fun and interesting pace, a beautiful map, and mechanics that felt fun to master without being chores. This is my favorite raid since Amazon Fury 2.

I'll try elite soon and hopefully it will be even more fun!

Also, any chance we can get that space/cosmos room as a base style? Gorgeous map.

ETA: Played Normal this time around

This raid was really fun to play but I have yet to do normal since I went elite instantly. The elite difficulty is very nice and enjoyable even though I have yet to finish last boss since it was getting late and I had other priorities. Even then last boss felt as if it could be finished and with every try and experience a wipe would give us our group came closer and closer to finishing.

For the first boss(Doctor Fate) I had a lot of fun and the obelisks that spawn would sometimes be easy to ignore and sometimes they would be highly noticeable which made the fight more fun and added a mechanic you had to be careful of. Fates teleport didn't seem to be much of an issue when we blocked it but if we didn't block it was definitely something dangerous.

So far the only aspect I dislike in this raid are the eyes and the hallways adds. The hallway adds need in my opinion more health since they are dying so fast and I do understand hallways aren't the most important thing in the raid but adding an extra 10 - 20% health to them would lengthen the raid and also just make it more fun to run in those hallways that do have special mechanics. The reason I dislike the eyes is simply just because I felt like they were slightly useless but I do understand why they are there and there is no need to remove them since my hate for them is simply a personal opinion.

Lastly I would like to say that so far I haven't noticed any bugs in this raid and the raid in elite is great and is exactly what me and a lot of others have wanted in terms of difficulty. You did a great job and should be proud of yourself and hopefully we can continue getting raids such as this in the future aswell.

The Elite version of this raid is perfect the way it is. Please don't change anything. Elite requires coordination and proficient roles, and especially support roles. Also, at a certain rank, the DLC specific augment provides 30% less damage from Fate's main attack.

Havent had this much spanking in ages, well done devs

Took us 3.5 hours to complete it with 8 ppl that never had previous experience with the raid, and we were mostly dying to the special attacks that Rank 21 augments reduce. So Im not sure once we have those artifacts how much of a difference it would make. Im curious if there are some of you who already have cleared the raid with and without Rank 21 and if that makes it too easy, that's the only think Im worried about. Other than that, great setting and decent difficulty.

Don't listen to the people screaming "overtuned" to these new Elite raids after ONE day of being live. If an Elite-raid can't be done by most people the first couple of days, that only means that you as content developers have done your job fairly well.

By all means, adjust/fix potential bugs as they arise, but please leave the general difficulty in these Elite raids in place for people to actually overcome, for a change. Nerfing the Elite-raids to the ground when they actually start to feel challenging would be a big mistake.

Exactly, It is day 1, the elite raids should be hard...Grab some gear and come back in week or two and they should feel easier.

Good to see Kalrion get some screen time now besides Halloween and I gotta say I was not expecting to have to ever fight Teekle. Never saw that coming. lol

Feedback is for Elite only

• In the room with Doctor Fate, you can sometimes get stuck in between the barrier and the bookcases. Our troller got stuck there, then somehow got out, then stuck again. He was still able to give power, but nothing could hit him.
• The eye thingys can detect you through the barrier. I was in the main room, and it killed me through the purple barrier.
• Would it be possible to make Fate's circle he lays down brighter or not as opaque? It's a bit difficult to see with everyone's animations all over him.
• Faust is dropping aggro when he teleports. He has the same issue in the other raid. Would it be possible to have this looked at?
• I liked how big the room is with the Doctor Fate. It's a bit disappointing going to the next area and fighting in such a small space, your camera tweaks out. Could you extend the dome a little bit so we'd have slightly more room? Not looking for it to go past the houses. But it could out just a little further and it would help a great deal, while still not including anything outside of the dome that could negate the difficulty of the fight. I like how crowded it gets, I just don't like that my camera angle gets severely messed up because of how the dome is.
• On the topic of difficulty, it seems like it's right if we were fully geared for the content. I still find it HIGHLY disappointing that this trend continues that we're beating current elite raids in last episodes gear. It almost makes gearing pointless as you're mainly doing it for the style feats. While I like this raid, I don't like the fact that we're getting "elite" raids, yet they can be beaten with zero gearing from the current episode. I really hope you guys look to making them more difficult so that gearing up is important again.

I just wanted to elaborate a bit further regarding Faust de-taunting.



This clip pretty much sums up what he does throughout the fight. It's not just that he teleports and de-taunts as he does in Shatter. In that raid he will go back to the tank after he does a combo on someone and not drop aggro again until he teleports. In this raid, he will teleport, then go back to the tank, then just randomly de-taunt, regardless if the tank taunts him. You can see in this clip, he's tagged. Faust starts walking to the tank, then just turns and kills our healer.

No matter what you do as the tank, he will continue this behavior until he's defeated.

Sorry! One more thing.

In the fight with Doctor Fate, he does an attack that looks like a barrage attack. I don't know the specific name, but it's the one where he shoots multiple projectiles at you (normally the tank). But the attack animation doesn't actually match where the damage hits. Meaning, he will shoot it in front of him, however, if you're behind him, you will be hit. It's a bit sporadic as sometimes it works properly and sometimes it does not.

I thought I had a video of it, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. If I do I will post it, hopefully, better showing what it's doing.

Seems like rank 21 gives you a millisecond more time to skidaddle out the circles...lmao! At least in elite...lol

With good coordination, burn, and a little luck with Faust not killing too many people, this raid is easy enough to spam for renown without spending too much time in the raids. I still like it a lot though, especially the second/last boss because it really gets everyone involved mechanically. Definitely not overtuned, and does require everyone to really contribute to be completed smoothly.

Thank you for the additional feedback, everyone. I'm going to take a look at a few things including the Faust blink to see what's what.

Do you happen to know whereabouts in the room where this happened? There are a lot of nooks and crannies. If you happen to know, for example, that it's happening right near the entrance, or some other specific spot(s) in the room, it may be easier to patch.

Hmm, I'm looking at the way it's set up, and it theoretically shouldn't be able to see you or attack you through walls or doors. Similar question--do you know where you were when this happened? I suspect there's a tiny gap someplace which would allow the Seeker Daemon to get line-of-sight on you, and knowing approximately where you were in the room may help me fix it.

Sadly, these changes aren't do-able at this time.

I'm pretty sure I see what's happening here, and will try to get a fix out asap.

Thanks again!

He got stuck on the right side when you first enter the room.

The seeker daemon could spot me along both walls, primarily through the barrier and not the actual wall. It happened close towards the entrance of the room where you enter.

Lastly, I added an additional issue we encountered with Fate and his projectile barrage attack that I added in an additional post. It is not hitting correctly as the animation does not line up with the damage it’s dojng. It will show as though it’s hitting in front of him, however the actual damage of the attack hits the people behind him.