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Doom Cycle discussion
ArmoredGhost
Member Posts: 300 ★★★
Ok so I've now done Doom cycle a few times and I have thoughts.
1) It was only difficult when I was switching the characters in order to get the 7* shard objectives. So they share a health bar but not their special timers? That means their specials all reset to 0 when switched. And there seems to be no advantage that any characters have over any others against certain doombots so there is literally no point in switching characters midway. I would have thought that Torch would be immune to the burns so you might want to use him against the red ones or something like that. If their are advantages and disadvantages already then they aren't noticeable enough to make any difference.
2)Characters: Mr F is really weak and Thing is too slow so you never want to use them at all. Torch is decent damage wise. But Invisible Woman is just clearly the way to go. She can go invisible (meaning she evades everything) and she has a crazy shield that blocks all damage and even reflects damage, AND while it's active she gains health. And she has the lowest delay so she attacks more often. Sure her damage was low at first but her evasiveness and survivability just carries you through. if you put all your mastery points into her then damage is not a problem at all.
I assume it's designed in a way that if any champ gets all the mastery points they will just clear it by themselves as well but there isn't any incentive to test this anyway.
3)The targeting system, automatic specials, and timers suck. Only targeting the first enemy is terrible because they can be at 1 health when your special is launched that is meant to do massive damage that could have been used on the second enemy still at 1,000 health. Also the buffs you get aren't paused during animations so an enemy could spend those extra seconds in their fainting animation while your buffs tick away. Those timers also continue after all enemies are dead and it's transitioning to the next phase so your buffs from specials are wasted there too when they could have been more useful in the next room.
4) It's just simply really boring and time consuming. I've finished with the 7* shard objectives and at this point I just through invisible woman in their with all the abilities mentioned above. She easily clears every room and ends the run at almost full health. But even then each run still takes 5 minutes or so. There are still 17 days left so 51 runs. I still need 46 cleared runs in order to get the last milestone. So that's 4 hours of nothing now needed to be devoted to this mode. This is why I think the perception of this mode is that it's just there to waste time.
5)Masteries - just dump em all into IW and team tabs of the other characters that help IW and that's it.
6) Testing: Due to the nature of the objectives and the limited entries I didn't want to waste any runs so I just went with what works without trying anything different which I assume is against the design.
7)Overall conclusion: It seems to be a mode without difficulty that doesn't require skill, planning or strategy and that actually disincentivizes the swapping mechanic. I wouldn't say there was anything I particularly enjoyed about the mode as I think this is a very bare bones "rogue-like" without most of what makes rogue likes fun in the first place. I play many rogue likes and there are so many things that can be improved upon.
Ways to make the mode "better":
1)In order to incentivize planning don't have them share a healthbar or let them share the Special bar so you aren't punished for swapping.
2)Give actual advantages to using one character or another against certain doombots. This also makes the player want to put masteries in multiple characters rather than just dumping them all into one character.
3)If the above is implemented it would be nice to get previews of multiple rooms to plan out which characters to use at the right time. Currently you can only see what type of doombot is in the next room which tells you almost nothing because it doesn't show you how strong they are or how many there are.
4) Another fun thing is if you could use 2 or more characters at once where each have synergies with each other in unique ways and can make cool combo attacks or cover each other's weaknesses. There are so many ways to play around with different character combinations and what order they are placed in. Maybe a defense position and an offense position or a support position etc...
5)Letting the player target a specific enemy would work wonders
6) Manual specials instead of auto would be way better as well
Or if the design was to have a casual time waster then keep it as is and keep the rewards up to date and all good
1) It was only difficult when I was switching the characters in order to get the 7* shard objectives. So they share a health bar but not their special timers? That means their specials all reset to 0 when switched. And there seems to be no advantage that any characters have over any others against certain doombots so there is literally no point in switching characters midway. I would have thought that Torch would be immune to the burns so you might want to use him against the red ones or something like that. If their are advantages and disadvantages already then they aren't noticeable enough to make any difference.
2)Characters: Mr F is really weak and Thing is too slow so you never want to use them at all. Torch is decent damage wise. But Invisible Woman is just clearly the way to go. She can go invisible (meaning she evades everything) and she has a crazy shield that blocks all damage and even reflects damage, AND while it's active she gains health. And she has the lowest delay so she attacks more often. Sure her damage was low at first but her evasiveness and survivability just carries you through. if you put all your mastery points into her then damage is not a problem at all.
I assume it's designed in a way that if any champ gets all the mastery points they will just clear it by themselves as well but there isn't any incentive to test this anyway.
3)The targeting system, automatic specials, and timers suck. Only targeting the first enemy is terrible because they can be at 1 health when your special is launched that is meant to do massive damage that could have been used on the second enemy still at 1,000 health. Also the buffs you get aren't paused during animations so an enemy could spend those extra seconds in their fainting animation while your buffs tick away. Those timers also continue after all enemies are dead and it's transitioning to the next phase so your buffs from specials are wasted there too when they could have been more useful in the next room.
4) It's just simply really boring and time consuming. I've finished with the 7* shard objectives and at this point I just through invisible woman in their with all the abilities mentioned above. She easily clears every room and ends the run at almost full health. But even then each run still takes 5 minutes or so. There are still 17 days left so 51 runs. I still need 46 cleared runs in order to get the last milestone. So that's 4 hours of nothing now needed to be devoted to this mode. This is why I think the perception of this mode is that it's just there to waste time.
5)Masteries - just dump em all into IW and team tabs of the other characters that help IW and that's it.
6) Testing: Due to the nature of the objectives and the limited entries I didn't want to waste any runs so I just went with what works without trying anything different which I assume is against the design.
7)Overall conclusion: It seems to be a mode without difficulty that doesn't require skill, planning or strategy and that actually disincentivizes the swapping mechanic. I wouldn't say there was anything I particularly enjoyed about the mode as I think this is a very bare bones "rogue-like" without most of what makes rogue likes fun in the first place. I play many rogue likes and there are so many things that can be improved upon.
Ways to make the mode "better":
1)In order to incentivize planning don't have them share a healthbar or let them share the Special bar so you aren't punished for swapping.
2)Give actual advantages to using one character or another against certain doombots. This also makes the player want to put masteries in multiple characters rather than just dumping them all into one character.
3)If the above is implemented it would be nice to get previews of multiple rooms to plan out which characters to use at the right time. Currently you can only see what type of doombot is in the next room which tells you almost nothing because it doesn't show you how strong they are or how many there are.
4) Another fun thing is if you could use 2 or more characters at once where each have synergies with each other in unique ways and can make cool combo attacks or cover each other's weaknesses. There are so many ways to play around with different character combinations and what order they are placed in. Maybe a defense position and an offense position or a support position etc...
5)Letting the player target a specific enemy would work wonders
6) Manual specials instead of auto would be way better as well
Or if the design was to have a casual time waster then keep it as is and keep the rewards up to date and all good
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Comments
Seriously, though: give the player more information on which characters do what and which enemies do what so we have some guidance to use. Separate the characters health bars, it's infuriating to get close to clearing a wave and lose your character with the enemy on love health. Either completely automate the combat by removing the stupid special business (tap the fireballs/tap up down left right etc malarkey) or allow the player to control the combat.
But, really, this mode has no business being in this game. It's not remotely what I play Contest for. It's like Avengers Alliance from about 15 years ago. I am only doing it for the sake of getting the Doombots and the hope of getting the Titan shards.