New Bounties for Apokolips Gotham

Having to do Brimstone more than once to get credit for the bounty and the convoy several times is really idiocy. I know they want to retain player engagement but this is not the way to do it.

can find straggler adds in that area to avoid doing Brimstone twice..convoy is a real time sink tho

It feels like the convoy truck was meant to be less squishy and there would be more adds spawn so we’d have to follow it down the highway path it’s supposed to go down. But as it is most people in the open world kill the adds the truck’s shield goes down and the truck goes down and if you’re lucky you get maybe 15 to 20 points or so. Then you wait like five minutes for another caravan to spawn. I dunno if it’s bugged as is or it’s working as intended but it’d stupid. It’s really trying the patience of making players wait for something to kill four times without fun. Whoever decided to make a weekly bounty an escort mission, huh what? What’s the thinking on this? Just make a bunch of parademons spawn so we can kill then at least. I’m not sure of this an old dev thing the new devs couldn’t finish or they really expect us to wait around 20 minutes to kill a truck 4 times every week to make us buy marks but it’s dumb dumb and a studio such as Daybreak shouldn’t release such shoddy gameplay. Now it’s pretty clear they don’t livestream any episodes anymore yikes.

The complaints about the content 'taking too long' are unfounded. The 60s are very easy to do as each area is a target rich environment and takes the same amount of time as past DLCs open world missions do. (5 mins or less). What some aren't realizing is that several objective targets exist layered within each area, so while regular mobs can count for 1 point, other targets can count for more. With how many mobs there are around it adds up real fast.

The more annoying thing is that you don't have a centralized location for all the NPCs to grab all the quests and have to travel around to each area. The nasty green smog is also terrible looking and adds a cheapness to the visual quality that makes me want to just get the hell out of there as fast as possible. Couldn't tell if the skybox was the same or was changed, and if not changed maybe the smog was a way to hide that.

The convoy thing... time gating objectives like this just plain sucks. You get through it faster by phase hopping, but having to phase hop to overcome time limitations is annoying as hell and should never be the answer. Same reason doing the bounties in Shock to the System was such a ****** experience, having to wait for them to spawn. Outside of that, I like the convoy setup itself. They just need to spawn faster. Give it a 2 minute timer that starts immediately from the point the last convoy either escaped or was destroyed.

You can get a maximum of 20points if you hit every single mob at least once and blow up the convoy. Think the mobs are worth 10 total and the convoy vehicle is another 10. 5 phase hops and hunting took around 20 minutes in the dead of night when populations were slim. That will only get worse as the content ages out, so again, the 2 minute timer reset suggested above is the best method for this and related styled content so the need to phase hop never comes up again.

To recap:
* Ditch the green fog
* 2 minute respawn timer from point of convoy death or escape
* move all the NPCs to one central location so all missions can be grabbed in one go

Can't speak on the Brimstone bounty as I didn't know it existed. Could not locate a quest NPC for it, so again, scattered NPCs are an issue.

Also a suggestion for cutscenes. When NPCs are talking to each other you need to have them lock on to each other so their heads face each other. There always going to be multiple levels of cheapness to these animations, and zoomed in/up close shots are rarely going to look good. There's also a few bad angles that don't really work well and could have been reframed, but suspect there's some kind of issue with doing that within the game's systems.

Similarly, when one shot cuts to another, there are issues with the NPC location reset that allows the player to see the NPCs actually get dragged from one position to the next after the camera transition. It may be easier to spawn multiple of the same NPC and have them ready at location so there's no need for that warping effect, and the former NPC set could be despawned once the camera transition is finished. (So long as y'all are making sure that the scriptwork to ensure all NPCs that shouldn't be around after a cutscene has played actually works, and we don't end up with like 5 Harleys and 3 Ivys just hanging around )

It would also help if all characters, NPCs included, shared a common breathing cycle animation that would persist during cutscene animations. Just a simple rise/fall of the torso can make the overly stiff characters in these scenes appear more realistic, such as in Harley's close up shots after she gets smacked and has her hand up. Camera is much too zoomed in (FoV problems) and only highlights the stiff mesh animation and bad looping in a later scene.

Also also - about the rain effect. After reading the update notes I was intrigued to see what was done, but again, that nasty green smog overpowers the rain visual so much that I didn't notice it was raining until 12 minutes had gone by (trying to figure out the initial convoy mission setup and was just idling, waiting for something to happen).

Harley actresses attempt at a New York accent is insulting. Just no. At this point it would be easier to just tone it down and speak more normally. Game's had issues with voice direction for a while, but does better off when actors simply speak more naturally. Less ham fisted delivery and more emphasis on the point of whatever subject is at hand.

Tip if you want Brimstone go to the transporter by Nightwing and pick the last option that says Lava Flow or Cone whatever. That’ll take you to the Brimstone area where you should look for Huntress who’s hiding in the corner of the building. Again I don’t know why they’re trying to hide mission NPCs. Oh wait nevermind to increase the grind yeah. Anyways it’s hard to find that Brimstone mission but that was the easiest for me is to use Nightwing’s teleporter. There might be a teleporter at Red Tool’s hub too if not there should but yeah whatever. Worst open mission map since Atlantis in my opinion but at least Atlantis was a new map and you got use to it. This not so much and being honest here I can’t wait for this episode map to be out of endgame rotation. Just terrible terrible layout, missions and textures.

I keep hearing from people in game that if you let the convoy go further down the street more adds spawn. I followed it to the first corner but people got antsy when no adds spawned. Someone also mentioned that is is stupid for daybreak to have a bounty with this kind of delay but they did it in bottled dc as well with the tumblers.

I play casually so it's gonna be a while for me as it is. Just playing the game is the love for the game, seems casual isn't rewarding.
It's not much of an issue. It's just I have alot more focus on things and still do try to play the game for it's Lore and faith of it.

The convoy doesn't last 15 seconds when there aren't 20 people standing around for it like there was on launch day.

I played yesterday and there was only 2 people at the spawn and it took a *little* bit longer to kill. Which will probably be the standard you'll see weeks into the episode. How many people are you likely to come across at overlord in bottled DC right now for example?

It depends on how many still need their bounty feats I guess? I still need to get my max Gentleman Ghost and Subavatar feats. Hopefully there’ll still be some in those phases for the rest of the year if this episode only has a 10 minute raid.

I run several alts and the best way to keep them viable was to run the bounties every week. Doing that with convoy on my alts took half a day they really need to shrink that spawn time between them.

I personally think they should make the truck indestructible, have it drive the entire path, stopping 4 or 5 times to drop off adds. Then it would be more like the other weekly kill 100 to 200 just visually different. Like others said, I don't know if it even does spawn more adds because it is always quickly destroyed after the first group of adds.

I don't know, I followed one once and it made it 80 percent of the way and never spawned any more adds. The rest lost patience at that point and finished it off in an eye blink, cutting me out of credit for killing the truck (wasn't in their group, just following).

Yeah, I just noticed these last night. Unfortunately they spawn seemingly pretty slow and are scattered all over town by lava pits, so if you are in a good phase, you can kill that 2nd Brimstone before hunting 10 adds down. It will come in handy once the DLC slacks off though I suppose.

They should just up the point count on the Convoy adds and truck so that if you get all of it, you can be a 55 or something...so still requiring 2 goes at it, but not 4. And if you only hit a few or get there late, maybe 3, but not 4 guaranteed.

The other thing they did was to make it so 'farmer' alts have to run the solo to get to the 'free dollar' from Catwoman. Not so much recently, but I used to park all 16 alts down in the area and just pop in every day for that free buck. By the end of the DLC I'd have enough generally to buy 1 of the Shiny items when they come out. A) the price is now prohibitive to do that and B) most of those alts would be drag to go through the solo.

These are all conscious decisions that LIKELY are related.

I thought it was bugged. But I also ran the the bounties and dailys, the the solo and logged off. When I logged back in Catwoman gave me the mark. Ran a couple of my alts to figure out... you had to run the solo to unlock that "free buck"

I guess that is part of their player dlc engagement, do something a little different that takes some extra seconds to do.

Also I wonder if having to talk to Comm. Gordon, Mr Miracle and Red Tool to get missions from Harley, Barda and Nightwing, to which you have to interact twice to get them... I wonder if there is some metric involved that tabs all these button interactions from mission givers that will skew the "player engagement/experience" to make this dlc a much better reception than EP47.

Not sure why those are daily 'missions'. I get it for an original tour as it directs you to the next rooftop (I guess F The Huntress in that case...no directive for her), but there is no need to re-run these missions really...well other than the 25 bucks.

As far as adding in the solo, it's more than a few seconds. Not difficult really, on any toon that is geared, but I have farmers which have never even put their CR skip gear on...cause they normally don't need it to stand there and collect a buck. Again, I haven't been farming to a large extent (and no longer have access to 9 of those 16 toons anyway), but I'm there there are those who do this...stand around to collect the buck for 3-4 months, and this does seem like a little snub to that methodology. "Oh, you just warp to zone, then collect the dollar each day? Well...enjoy this solo and a daily mission instead!". Now...it's WAY better than the nonsense in M1 where you needed to do the solo AND the 'rescue Commissioner Gordon' mission...and as there was no pay...I use that name lightly, but it's still something, and I'd guess it's to avoid the people who farm on alts this way.

'Player engagement'? Sure. "Death by 1000 cuts" is another name.

I thought for a moment, what would personally remove my irritation about this? I am an unpretentious person ... and for me, instead of 25 bucks, for example, 10 NTX metal would be enough for this to stop irritating me the same with solo and catch-up, at each stage 10 NTX metal and I agree to play catch-up...

I was thinking about that catch up thing in the solo and it does fit a theme.

Open world...We need to defeat 2 'bosses' multiple times before finishing the missions (Brim AND convoy).
Solo...we chase Lashina down the hallway before eventually getting to finish her off.
Alert...Stompa bails out of the first fight as we are about to kick her butt (though we do get paid), before we get to finish her off in the 2nd boss fight.
Raid...1st 'boss' isn't even a boss (no loot) so we have to charge on to the next before getting paid. THEN on 3rd boss we beat on Kalibak before Darksied comes and gives him the boot and technically he gets away.

A lot of 'teasing' going on this DLC.

And right....they will start just giving us 30 Nth for pushing the buttons each day. Doubtful....unless maybe it would be un-tradable vs Account bound. I just wish we could hide the buttons. I tried hiding the missions, but you'll still get the question mark on the target person and as there is no 'loot' drop, you can't get it permanently locked in the journal to hide it by filling your inventory. Sigh.

On the solo, true. That puzzle bunk irritates me enough its not worth doing on my main now, or alts that I dont care about that mark.

Here's the best way I found to run the duo, especially that Lashina fight

Just take her down the hallway, all the way to the end and finish her all at once. No need to follow her, have her follow you.