Legends PvP Testing Room

What's all the fuss about?

Right now the only way to test a legends character is either through trial and error in combat, or by getting a friend to simply stand in one place while you experiment. As someone who has written a vast number of legends guides, simply reading in game descriptions, reading guides or watching videos is simply not enough to learn much about how a legends character actually "feels", especially for less experienced players. There needs to be a dedicated area where we can go in to test legends characters.

What can be done?

This idea has come up a few times and originally my proposal was going to echo those that came before by just being a simple room with a sparring target. That really won't allow players to truly test out things beyond basic powers and will quickly grow stale. My idea is slightly more complicated.

Remember on the Brainiac ship how we had to learn about counters and there were NPC's who only did certain things; Lunging, Blocking and Block Breaking? There needs to be something similar players can access in order to help keep this both useful and relevant for both new players and experienced players alike.


(note: not my toon)

Why do we need more than just a target?

One of the things I always test for in my guides is how much damage a character can deal during the time you have counter immunity. In order to test this I require a second player to go in and do nothing but block. For players it can be somewhat difficult to get another player who is willing to simply go in and be nothing but a punching bag for varying amounts of time. Having an NPC in the instance who will do nothing but block is pretty much required.

For similar reasons there will also be NPC's who do nothing but perform block breakers and lunges. This is all on top of having a regular target that will stand there and do nothing.

Anything less than this and, as stated earlier, it will make it pretty much irrelevant outside of VERY basic testing.

Not to mention this would make it significantly easier for testers to gather feedback for new legends characters on testing feedback, making both player and developer's lives significantly easier.

What are the requirements to making this work?

In order to have something like this work effectively we will need to have a few things:

• The NPC's need to have health comparable to that of legends characters
• The NPC's cannot have any defense or toughness
• We need a switch to activate that will summon these NPC's in

Having health proportional to that of higher health legends characters such as Batman and Robin, currently at 6880 health each is essential to test how quickly one can deplete one of these characters health bars.

Having 0 defense and toughness like legends characters allows players to get an accurate reading on the amount of damage being dealt to these sparring targets just as they would on an actual target.

The switch allowing us to summon these characters in is somewhat obvious as we will not have other NPC's getting in our way. In addition to that it will allow us to not have to worry about being perpetually trapped in combat, unable to regenerate any health or power.

What can be done to further improve this?

While the idea laid out above is a very good starting point, there are a couple ways this idea can be improved though wouldn't necessarily be required.

• Enter the instance with more than one person if desired
• Allow access to every legends character in this instance only
• We need to be able to summon multiple NPC's

Allowing entrance to more than one person will allow teammates to test out various tactics, such as how they can combine their burst damage to more effectively work as a team.

Allowing access to every legends character in this instance only will benefit both SOE and players alike. This will allow players to test out characters without having access to any sort of feats from them, and quite possibly persuade them into buying them. We already have legends promos allowing full access to one character per week. Giving highly restricted access to them can help bolster sales.

Summoning in multiple NPC's is crucial to being able to test how damage splits. This is especially relevant due to the competitive mode in legends PvP being 2v2.

Questions?

If you've got any questions, ideas or comments I'd love to hear them. Just remember to keep feedback as constructive and polite as possible! Thanks for reading!

What happens if I want to test atrocitus SC to see how much lifesteal it gives, would there be any way for me to take damage?

Would there be an option where we can set infinite SC? Like no cooldown or always 100% SC, I might want to test stuff with bane, two face, etc.

The damaging aspect could occur actually since the NPC's would be lunging and hitting you with ranged attacks.

I don't know if something such as infinite supercharge would be possible, but you would be able to build it up fairly quickly since you would actually be able to KO sparring targets.

I like this. I like this a lot. Although Manhunters will probably give you stronger dummies to kill. Just saying.

Actually I did think about it some more, in addition to what I said earlier about SC gain coming from the NPC's, they could probably stick a few healing barrels around in there.

I'd be fine with having Manhunters

Yea, like I said, having an actual room to both familiarize and test is pretty much required now that legends is really coming into the spotlight more.

Awesome! Thank you for posting this. I've always wanted to post a thread about this subject. I completely agree with the requests and if I were any better I would have written the thread and asked for each request. Now onto the next part of this post... I really want to share something that has been in TF2 for a long time. It's called tr_walkway. I always suggest Sabigya to download it and practice on that particular map. Not sure if he will... Anywho tr_walkway is the ultimate training map for Team Fortress 2.

In tr_walkway you can command every individual bot to do whatever you want. (Of course this has its limits.) tr_walkway has a specific room called the "Sentry Room." The Sentry Room allows players to test out strategies, weapons, and much more on Sentry Guns. Sentry Guns can be made by the Engineer class in the game. However that's not the point. The point is simply this: The Engineer bot can be placed anywhere in the room. As long as the square you want the bot to be on is not taken by another bot.

How does this translate to DCUO? If such an instance did exist then I believe that we should be able to decide where we want our Sparring Targets to be, set their current health/maximum health, their power's current and maximum capacity, their vulnerability stance, (block, block break, interrupt, and of course roll on a timer) record our own movements then mimic them so we can have a realistic scenario, set their Legends character, whether they are friendly or enemies, and much much more. If these requests also make it into the sparring room (assuming that a Legends sparring room actually makes it to test and beyond) then I would also like to see them in an Arenas sparring room.

Thoughts or comments?

This would definitely be the next step up, though I'm not entirely certain something like that is within easy reach. It would definitely be an awesome addition though should this ever come along at some point.

Also Sab, I think he's mocking your ability to play TF2

This idea is useful enough that it goes beyond just Legends too. I'd like a testing room like this I could take PvE characters into too. Ideally you'd queue into this and be able to select yourself or any of the Legends. The enemies could just scale up based on CR, perhaps just by making them as strong as sidekicks. Since all the Legends have the same fake level, shouldn't be hard to make the special case for them.

Specific to Legends: if there was a testing room, they might even unlock it for every Legend, not just the ones you own. You'd still have to pay in order to use on in a real match that gave out rewards.

Exactly my thoughts. However I wanted to make sure that those specific requests were out ASAP.
He has 50+ hours invested in the game and I have 300+ hours. Heck 300+ isn't even scratching the surface in regards to experience.

That's actually a pretty good idea. It'll allow you to test these types of things on your own without having to worry about other people jumping in and messing up results.

I also did add in that bit for legends in the bottom. I figure it'll be good for people to be able to see what they're buying. Plus it might encourage the developers to work on balance improvements.

63+*

Went off-topic for too long...
Worth it.
Spring break.

This week.

I was looking around and remembered this thread:
https://forums.station.sony.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/sparring-target-scoreboards-anyone.231204/

In short what it is, is a scoreboard that will remain active for a certain amount of time and keep track of all damage done during that period of time. Something like this could be beneficial to a testing room as well.

A recent thread did give me an idea for this. Have a cluster of a group of sparring targets together so you could test damage splitting as well.

I'm assuming you mean in addition to your idea? Because league halls have that already.

i ll pay for that aminitie where can i buy it ??????

That's actually where the idea came from originally. Someone either here or in game had asked if we could have something similar to that in the WT.

Love the idea!

Hmmmmmmmmm...if only there would be training dummy who would randomly do tap blocks or BBs to train reactions with...
Or to take it to another level...randomly tap blocks, blocks into rolls or blocks into rolls into blocks. One of each and 1 that does them all.
That futuristic tech...probably will be driving a flying car before ill see something like that. :-(