Dev Discussion Episode 46: Town Square Theater Solo

I honestly retain my feedback I had given you while on test. I think it's actually in a better place regarding Zatanna, I've felt that she's now the most dangerous one with the areal blast, but you can honestly just dps her enough and phase her out.

Not going to lie, I wouldn't change anything from what it is right now, for me and other members of the community it's easy. I'd like to remember people this is still "elite" no matter how you want to see it. It doesn't make any good to the community to make this easier than what it already is.

If you remember Jesk, back on test server I told you I was completing it in 8 mins around that, here on live it's much much faster I was only 418 when I took this screenshot.




I don't even have episode augments yet, and origin augments aren't maxed out either by the time I fully max out my character I'm going to beat it in 5 mins maybe less.

It's so bad on normal that I really had to kill wonder woman with tap range, so I could see all of her mechanics in order to get some of the feats. I wasn't understanding why I couldn't get the attack on me that I needed to block for the feat until I just killed her with taps and robot sidekick. You can really just skip all the mechanics by dpsing and this was exactly what I had said under my initial feedback.

Edit: It's also important to mention something that was pointed out before as well, Zatanna can stun WG from her skull attacks that pertain to a feat too, so if that happens and she's low health she won't do the lunge and you missing your opportunity to get the feat.

This is what I mean by having to tap range her to kill her one tap at the time. It is that bad.

Edit 2: Forgot to mention, but please in the future make feats doable in both elite and normal. I don't want to run normal to have to get feats where I can do same thing in elite.

Just wanted to provide my take on the solo.

It is a decent solo, I do have mixed feelings about the feats for blocking certain mechanics at least once.

On the one hand, it seems very basic and there is no real challenge to them, especially for more veteran players.

On the other hand, this could in some ways be a very good direction going forward to newer players (certainly in solo/duo content), teaching them about blocking, and also about specific mechanic names and abilities. I do feel as though going forward there should be better communication in content on what mechanic abilities are called, as not many players pay attention to the combat log (specifically the 'Damage In') aside from some veteran players. In a way these feats I think will revive a discussion regarding the communication and tells of mechanics in content across the board.

Maybe a cast bar UI with the combat ability underneath the enemy's name? (Similar to FFXIV).

Some last boss playing tips. Use a robot sidekick, position yourself behind it, and let zatanna use her sorcery balls (not the skull ones) and rsk will take the damage. I do the same with henchmen and my pet box. This really helps with lower end toons so you don’t get balled to death.

With that said, for toons that aren’t all Schwarzenegger’d with 200 arts and 700sp… (maybe 80-120 arts and 200sp and 416cr), zatanna is most of the time a pita. I can get it done but it involves a supply drop, a soda, maybe use a supercharge depending on power set. This is in regards to eleet. I pride myself to do this without heals but this boss is spam happy and nuts with sorcery balls. Meanwhile, supergirl just be standing there slapping zatanna…not very helpful.

I like the solo for its challenge. But all in all, it’s just to spammy for the bosses options of attack powers. I could prolly kill supergirl just by lunging her with her annoying pulse beam attack.

I want to add to the above that the difficulty is good as is. With gear and augments you can burn through it pretty fast, and avoid the arial defenders at the end.

I have noticed that wonder girl just stands there during the Zatanna fight unless I make Zatanna hit her. I usually just stand right next to her until she joins the fight. I ran the normal solo once, and she didn't even help at all. But on elite I try to get her to join in.

I enjoyed this solo on elite. Very challenging, but fun. Wonder Girl is not much help against Zatanna, but still able to get the job done. I am a solo player fan, so I wouldn't mind a solo mission every new episode release.

Peace and DCUO Forever

Would less HP have left me feeling different?

Yes and the reason I say that is because the challenge is already there or yes I would rather you add more mechanics than have such a high HP pool.

The HP pools are excessive and drag the fight out unnecessarily and effectively only add a level of difficulty through prolonging the fight, it isn't the mechanics themselves at that point that create the challenge but rather the challenge the player creates for themselves by perhaps rotating their supply, henchmen or other healing trinkets incorrectly while wearing down the fight.

The control effects can often also be excessive, but I see them perhaps as more of a challenge than the HP pool, but that of course doesn't mean it isn't frustrating to have back to back control effects impact your ability to play, which happens all too frequently. I should be able to break out and for a period be immune to a further control effect, not just be immediately stunned again only to have to break out yet again.

I don't know if its intended or not but WG actually has two different pulse beam attacks, one is light blue and the other is teal green, the fact there's 2 separate attacks means they can go off quite frequently, it's easy enough to lunge them, if you're not controlled of course, but both these attacks are what will primarily do damage to you in this instance, everything else is more easily choreographed and evaded, but those two different pulse attacks can create a frustrating level of random experience where no two encounters are the same, with some being much easier than others depending on how frequently she decides to do these attacks.

I would rather a solo be a quick sharp challenge not a prolonged, lets see if we can milk an "oopsie mistake" out of the player by stacking the boss with heaps of HP, that in my mind isn't true difficulty, it's just adding unnecessary frustration in the name of difficulty.

The fight with Zatanna is much better than the WG one, except for again back to back control effects, also the fact we have the willpower even in DPS role to pull Zatanna frequently means that we can pull her out of the attack she does at around 15% "the curtain call" where she pulls out the ghosts meaning that she just never pulls out the ghosts, this is going to cause frustration ultimately as well when it affects the instances where players have to farm these ghosts for the feat.

Also the entire difficulty of this instance is significantly reduced by the inclusion of a shield in your build, it might ever so slightly reduce your damage output, but its inclusion makes the whole thing way, way easier, undermining virtually every mechanic in there simply by having a shield and then the only thing you have left is the big HP pool to burn down, which makes the whole thing worse in my mind because it exposes how much this instance is relying solely on those large HP pools.

TLDR: Better mechanics, less health please.

At what point do you think you'll cut back on making this a part of your dailies?

As soon as I have enough marks to get what I want then I'll be cutting this solo out of my daily play or I certainly will not be running elite because of the time sink, it's under rewarding, ask yourself this, if I can finish the regular solo in about 3-4 minutes and the elite solo in 6-8 minutes depending on variables, (it could be even longer than this depending on individual skill) for 1 extra mark, why would I bother, especially when I've geared up and just going for extra marks? I definitely won't be. I think in its current state it should be rewarding 3 marks, not 2 marks, it's worth 3 marks.

I appreciate that you have to spend the time to get the marks, but on the other hand my time is also valuable and I know you could argue even if the elite is twice as long as the regular it justifies the 1 extra mark only, but it isn't just the time, it's the potential for it to go wrong, 1 mistake or wipe and it's no longer time profitable to me so I'm just not going to bother with the frustration of it, I'll take the regular instance, if that and just move on to something else, especially since I play alts and want my time spent to be as efficient as possible, if I were a "single character" player I imagine this wouldn't be such a big deal, but for a multiple character player the view of this can become quite different.

Dear Jesk,

Thank you for being this passionate about your work and communicating so frequently with us players. It’s not something we’re used to and we greatly appreciate this.

Now for the content: I think the elite solo is in a pretty good place, but I feel like wonder girl’s mechanics could be a tad more punishing. For example, the electric ball attack could be faster and the range of her stomp attack could be wider. But the big issue to me is the feats. They are underwhelming knowing this dlc will last for multiple months. We need more feats in the instance. Maybe a speed feat or a school of hard knocks feat.

No comment about the reg or event versions as I’ve not ran those.

HEY DEVS SINCE YALL APPARENTLY READ SOME CHATS THE ROBOTIC STYLE FROM THE CLASSIC GAME THAT USE TO DROP ON OOLONG ISLAND HAS BEEN BROKE SINCE OMNIBUS CLAMP. PLEASE FIX, BEEN TRYING TO GET THIS ADDRESSED, THIS MASSIVE OUTLIER BUG FOR 2 AND A HALF YEARS NOW. THIS IS THE LINK TO ONE OF MANY POSTS ABOUT IT. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dc...-oolong-island-no-longer-exists.327872/page-7

Bug report: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/jldc-solo-lb-wonder-doesnt-help.329565/

I had already made a video on test... but some people seem to struggle with that mission... so I made a video about it on Live.

After playing this for awhile now, i have found it to be really annoying. The eleet has too much health. The bosses are stun-happy as about every 2-3 powers you are on your butt or bent-over-backwards. This makes it not enjoyable and not worth the hassle for 2 marks and 100 renown. Bleh!

Head augment: stage performer. I would like to know if the solo even has an orbital strike in it. And, what attack is it exactly referring too? Which boss fight?

Try doing this solo elite as celestial or light (I do both). It's so frustratingly bad and annoying with the constant stuns, that I've outright skipped doing it frequently. It's significantly easier with other powersets.

So - the Block Party feat (regular difficulty)

I have gotten the elite version of this feat, and I just stood in the red circle and blocked her ground smash. But in regular, this is not working. The red circle / ground smash does no damage when I block, but it does cause a knock back.

So am I doing something wrong, or is this feat broken? Should the ground smash be causing damage even when I block?

Just for the heck of it, I even let her just do a normal range lunge on me and blocked (causing her to be knocked down).

I'm sorry, I was just wondering if the Coast City Alert was ever going to be put back up for players or if The Oan tech mask could be put in the Vendor.