**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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Raids: My Thoughts
21Eggatron
Posts: 92 ★★
Firstly, this coming from a personal perspective. I understand if you do not share my opinion, please do not disrespect mine.
Second, I will not be talking about bugs. Bugs happen, plain and simple. They're not fun, but they are natural, and since they are not intended parts of the launch of the game mode I will not comment on them.
The Good:
Fun & Feeling of Accomplishment:
Even just being Day 1, I can tell this is an enjoyable mode for me. Theory crafting since the announcement about optimal champion-buff combinations was great, and actually getting in and seeing how it feels, I'm liking it so far. The fights themselves, while I don't like the block chip, actually do feel like you're accomplishing something thanks to the missions. I'm expecting that sense of accomplishment to still feel that way even with reramping on every boss and personally I'm a fan.
Need for Teamwork:
I know the teamwork aspect isn't always huge for everyone, but in comparison to the feel of alliance quest, I love it. It feels like a lower stress version of shared fights on the old war map. Coordinating may not be as easy for everyone, but this side of the mode is a good thing for me, not a bad thing. Since the War Map changed, and since Incursions changed, most content feels like you're just working as an individual and you're not a member of a team.
Rewards:
Everyone always talks about rewards, honestly I think they're very solid. While I'm not a fan of the RNG, the wins are pretty big wins and the losses are still extremely good rewards. Ranked rewards are substantial and peak milestones for glory are nice.
Simplicity:
Considering how much raw information there is about how to play the game mode properly, I'm finding it very easy to follow once you get started. The basics of it are pick a role, pick a champion, pick a buff, and then perform a specific in-fight action until you time out, hit the cap, or die. It's not overly complex like war can be, it's not mind numbing like Alliance Quest, and if you really want to, you can spice it up by picking a different combination or even a different role.
Revives:
I am indifferent about the revives. While I understand some people want to just rush it down, I think having a bit to do every day is okay for now. As time goes on, maybe my opinion will change, but I'm not in a "let's get this over with" mindset with this content.
The Bad
Damage Over Time Role Options:
When this content was first introduced in Vancouver, it was apparently the case that champions with Damage Over Time Effects were too strong with the damage modifiers. Well, that's fine, but the chosen alternative of DoT being uneffected by the modifiers doesn't feel like the appropriate solution. While Venom, Kushala, Black Panther for example aren't unusable, they're significantly outclassed by champions whose Power Budgets don't include these effects, like Hulkling, Titania, and Storm. In my opinion, it would have been nice if maybe a tuned down version was introduced, not 100% or 0%. How would these DoT champions function with 50% of the attack modification? 30%? I don't know, but I feel like that should have been tested until a sweet spot was found so Raids could go live with all the options feeling good.
If this wasn't possible, why wasn't the pool changed to remove these DoT champions and include options that have a Power Budget away from DoT until a good potency was found? I am not an employee, nor do I work in game design, these are just questions from someone outside who doesn't know what limitations were in place, whether it be time, staff, tech or other.
The Non-Communication about the Bosses:
This one is two-fold. The lesser problem I have is Maestro was never explicitly advertised as the Act 4/Labyrinth Maestro kit and not the playable Maestro kit. Honestly, relatively harmless, but would have been nice if someone had said directly that this wasn't the meta defender Maestro that some people, myself included, have been fighting in Battlegrounds and War.
The more problematic side of this is the awakened abilities being active (and sig 200) if the alliance prestige is high enough. Not only was this not present on the CCP server, the only other time I've been able to see this as the case was during the twitch stream that showcased the game mode. No offense, but a more sizeable amount of people watch CCP members to stay informed than the twitch streams. Not to mention that if you didn't catch the stream you outright couldn't know this because the live VOD is not up on Twitch or YouTube; the 30 minute segment was posted on the YouTube channel as a separate video on the same day that raids went live. The argument does exist that it was visible in the Map Preview, but out of all the alliances, it's on average just the officers who will view the map previews and even then most alliance officers just enlist; you don't have to view the map preview to enlist. As I will get into with my next point, stuff like this needs to be explicitly said because it leads to a lot of problems otherwise.
Ultron at Sig 200:
Awakened Ultron cuts into way too much of the specially selected pools of champions for each Role.
- Vanguard is relatively unaffected outside of Immortal Abomination and Ultron himself, they were going to struggle because of immunities anyways but there are workarounds thanks to Role Buffs.
- Tactician has 5/15 options that actively struggle (Doom, Longshot, Kushala, Spidey Supreme, Doctor Voodo) with 3 more being minorly impacted (Gorr, Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel Movie).
- Assault however, gets impacted on 11/15 of available options; Kraven will struggle because of the Bleed Immunity quite a lot; Black Widow Deadly Origin literally cannot touch this guy; Masacre, Storm, Storm X and Professor X face massive playstyle and Damage Output disruptions to the point that their value is brought to the point that they're better off solely focusing on building Raid Fervor for the Vanguard; Nick Fury, OG Black Panther, Kitty Pryde, Domino, Hulkbuster and Hit-Monkey need to have Crit Crusher or will objectively struggle. Even with Crit Crusher, Nick Fury, OG Black Panther, Kitty Pryde and Domino all won't give off that feeling of accomplishment that I mentioned earlier because of different Damage Output disruptions.
Hit-Monkey with Crit Crusher, Crossbones with Crit Crusher, Hulkbuster with Crit Crusher and Magneto with Prowess Ender are the only Assault champions that will give the player that sense of accomplishment and feel fun.
Bluntly, this doesn't seem like it was properly thought out when paired with the available Role options. Again, I have to ask whether this was tested, whether this was noted as a concern, and why if this was noted was nothing done? I'm not making accusations, I'm not angry, I just don't understand.
Block Penetration:
I won't spend much time on this, but basically it doesn't feel great when a character (for example, Colossus) typically has to block for their ideal rotation, and they take a ton of damage for playing properly. This also applies to Role Buffs where you have to block to trigger the effects (like Shield Smasher), or when there's a literal mission that requires your block (Thanos Sayeth). I appreciate the need to make the bosses punishing, but in my opinion they should punish you for mistakes, not for doing the things that we need to do for one reason or another. This is another one that maybe over time I'll feel differently about because we're not supposed to exit the fight with health remaining, but initially I'm not a fan.
Champion Lockout:
There is a reason why this has been phased out of nearly every alliance game mode. Even then, it was never a full week. The common suggestion of champion swaps would help alleviate this, but again, I don't know what limitations were in place before Raids launched.
Like Battlegrounds did, this game mode has a lot of potential. It's fun, and it brings back some of that coordination that I've personally been missing since the recent updates to AQ and War. However, it does have quite a few issues on launch, and I kind of wish that it got treated like Battlegrounds, where over the course of 6 months we got multiple betas and could test and provide feedback before it became a permanent piece of our game. I have no doubt that over time these issues will be addressed, but as an overall launch, it missed the mark a bit for me.
Second, I will not be talking about bugs. Bugs happen, plain and simple. They're not fun, but they are natural, and since they are not intended parts of the launch of the game mode I will not comment on them.
The Good:
Fun & Feeling of Accomplishment:
Even just being Day 1, I can tell this is an enjoyable mode for me. Theory crafting since the announcement about optimal champion-buff combinations was great, and actually getting in and seeing how it feels, I'm liking it so far. The fights themselves, while I don't like the block chip, actually do feel like you're accomplishing something thanks to the missions. I'm expecting that sense of accomplishment to still feel that way even with reramping on every boss and personally I'm a fan.
Need for Teamwork:
I know the teamwork aspect isn't always huge for everyone, but in comparison to the feel of alliance quest, I love it. It feels like a lower stress version of shared fights on the old war map. Coordinating may not be as easy for everyone, but this side of the mode is a good thing for me, not a bad thing. Since the War Map changed, and since Incursions changed, most content feels like you're just working as an individual and you're not a member of a team.
Rewards:
Everyone always talks about rewards, honestly I think they're very solid. While I'm not a fan of the RNG, the wins are pretty big wins and the losses are still extremely good rewards. Ranked rewards are substantial and peak milestones for glory are nice.
Simplicity:
Considering how much raw information there is about how to play the game mode properly, I'm finding it very easy to follow once you get started. The basics of it are pick a role, pick a champion, pick a buff, and then perform a specific in-fight action until you time out, hit the cap, or die. It's not overly complex like war can be, it's not mind numbing like Alliance Quest, and if you really want to, you can spice it up by picking a different combination or even a different role.
Revives:
I am indifferent about the revives. While I understand some people want to just rush it down, I think having a bit to do every day is okay for now. As time goes on, maybe my opinion will change, but I'm not in a "let's get this over with" mindset with this content.
The Bad
Damage Over Time Role Options:
When this content was first introduced in Vancouver, it was apparently the case that champions with Damage Over Time Effects were too strong with the damage modifiers. Well, that's fine, but the chosen alternative of DoT being uneffected by the modifiers doesn't feel like the appropriate solution. While Venom, Kushala, Black Panther for example aren't unusable, they're significantly outclassed by champions whose Power Budgets don't include these effects, like Hulkling, Titania, and Storm. In my opinion, it would have been nice if maybe a tuned down version was introduced, not 100% or 0%. How would these DoT champions function with 50% of the attack modification? 30%? I don't know, but I feel like that should have been tested until a sweet spot was found so Raids could go live with all the options feeling good.
If this wasn't possible, why wasn't the pool changed to remove these DoT champions and include options that have a Power Budget away from DoT until a good potency was found? I am not an employee, nor do I work in game design, these are just questions from someone outside who doesn't know what limitations were in place, whether it be time, staff, tech or other.
The Non-Communication about the Bosses:
This one is two-fold. The lesser problem I have is Maestro was never explicitly advertised as the Act 4/Labyrinth Maestro kit and not the playable Maestro kit. Honestly, relatively harmless, but would have been nice if someone had said directly that this wasn't the meta defender Maestro that some people, myself included, have been fighting in Battlegrounds and War.
The more problematic side of this is the awakened abilities being active (and sig 200) if the alliance prestige is high enough. Not only was this not present on the CCP server, the only other time I've been able to see this as the case was during the twitch stream that showcased the game mode. No offense, but a more sizeable amount of people watch CCP members to stay informed than the twitch streams. Not to mention that if you didn't catch the stream you outright couldn't know this because the live VOD is not up on Twitch or YouTube; the 30 minute segment was posted on the YouTube channel as a separate video on the same day that raids went live. The argument does exist that it was visible in the Map Preview, but out of all the alliances, it's on average just the officers who will view the map previews and even then most alliance officers just enlist; you don't have to view the map preview to enlist. As I will get into with my next point, stuff like this needs to be explicitly said because it leads to a lot of problems otherwise.
Ultron at Sig 200:
Awakened Ultron cuts into way too much of the specially selected pools of champions for each Role.
- Vanguard is relatively unaffected outside of Immortal Abomination and Ultron himself, they were going to struggle because of immunities anyways but there are workarounds thanks to Role Buffs.
- Tactician has 5/15 options that actively struggle (Doom, Longshot, Kushala, Spidey Supreme, Doctor Voodo) with 3 more being minorly impacted (Gorr, Silver Surfer, Captain Marvel Movie).
- Assault however, gets impacted on 11/15 of available options; Kraven will struggle because of the Bleed Immunity quite a lot; Black Widow Deadly Origin literally cannot touch this guy; Masacre, Storm, Storm X and Professor X face massive playstyle and Damage Output disruptions to the point that their value is brought to the point that they're better off solely focusing on building Raid Fervor for the Vanguard; Nick Fury, OG Black Panther, Kitty Pryde, Domino, Hulkbuster and Hit-Monkey need to have Crit Crusher or will objectively struggle. Even with Crit Crusher, Nick Fury, OG Black Panther, Kitty Pryde and Domino all won't give off that feeling of accomplishment that I mentioned earlier because of different Damage Output disruptions.
Hit-Monkey with Crit Crusher, Crossbones with Crit Crusher, Hulkbuster with Crit Crusher and Magneto with Prowess Ender are the only Assault champions that will give the player that sense of accomplishment and feel fun.
Bluntly, this doesn't seem like it was properly thought out when paired with the available Role options. Again, I have to ask whether this was tested, whether this was noted as a concern, and why if this was noted was nothing done? I'm not making accusations, I'm not angry, I just don't understand.
Block Penetration:
I won't spend much time on this, but basically it doesn't feel great when a character (for example, Colossus) typically has to block for their ideal rotation, and they take a ton of damage for playing properly. This also applies to Role Buffs where you have to block to trigger the effects (like Shield Smasher), or when there's a literal mission that requires your block (Thanos Sayeth). I appreciate the need to make the bosses punishing, but in my opinion they should punish you for mistakes, not for doing the things that we need to do for one reason or another. This is another one that maybe over time I'll feel differently about because we're not supposed to exit the fight with health remaining, but initially I'm not a fan.
Champion Lockout:
There is a reason why this has been phased out of nearly every alliance game mode. Even then, it was never a full week. The common suggestion of champion swaps would help alleviate this, but again, I don't know what limitations were in place before Raids launched.
Like Battlegrounds did, this game mode has a lot of potential. It's fun, and it brings back some of that coordination that I've personally been missing since the recent updates to AQ and War. However, it does have quite a few issues on launch, and I kind of wish that it got treated like Battlegrounds, where over the course of 6 months we got multiple betas and could test and provide feedback before it became a permanent piece of our game. I have no doubt that over time these issues will be addressed, but as an overall launch, it missed the mark a bit for me.
61
Comments
Sig 200 Ultron is a pain. Bring a right counter or die. Worst part about him is how slow it takes for you to actually ramp up damage. You might not have thought about it, but you have to use 3-4 bars of power to finally get your role force. Depending on his AI, that is about a solid minute of the fight gone by the time you are finally doing damage. Don't even mention the possibility of him getting stun immunity by the time you push him to 50%, so you will need to immediately quit before he heals 25%+ of his health.
The Null Breaker tactic is awfully undertuned compared to basically every other tactic in existence, which makes tacticians like Kushala and longshot very bad.
The biggest thing I'd like with raids is a 5 minute timer instead of a 3 minute timer. With the insane healthpools, you will want a champion who is in the top 25% of the tactic or risk someone else who you might not get 10% damage with.
The final thing I'd like to say is gorr is fine against ultron because he places degens on those who are immune to his debuffs and his sp3 will still do like 2mil damage one you got your role force up.
The main thing I don't like is that Raid Fervor gain is heavily waited towards the champions + boost.
That heavly categorises champion/boost combinations to optimal and poor.
If you pick optimal you get to think more about the fight and less about getting your boosts. If you pick poor it ain't going to be fun.
I think in another raid there will only be a couple of combinations for each role because it matters too much.
They added solo incursions because it wasn't enjoyable that you and another person had to be active at the exact same time for hours at a time. Duo incursions still do exist but they're more for fun than anything else.
I don't think that more people will hate it over time, I think people will prefer it to AQ and Kabam will fix a lot of the issues as time goes on, not just the ones I personally brought up.
- first of all all 14 revives should be available Friday one, and you can use them anytime you can. With that increase the inventory limit to 14. Currently you can't even hold more than 2 which is nuts if you can finish earlier days.
- damage cap should be increased. At least to 25%, and if done, maybe the revive count could be lowered accordingly. It's just stupid when you play perfectly, and after 1:30, reaching the 10% you just die. If you are skilled enough, you should be able tho chip away significant damage.
- timer should be increased to at least 5 minutes. I don't know if there is a limit on the defender buffs they gain, but if yes, it should increase too, so there is a higher risk of getting KOed
- one role should gain charges to the other 2 roles, not just one. If something happens IRL with one player, then the 2 others are basically stuck.
The chest rewards needs a serious rebalance. Either be tiered, so like in the
- 1st chest: least amount of catalyst, least amount of titan or 7* shards, etc
- 2nd chest: medium amount of rewards
- 3rd chest: highest amount of rewards.
That would feel much more fair, because currently it's not really fair. Someone could get 3 whole titan crystal, while some other could get 3x different 1/4 t6c. And since it's not a crystal lottery, but work put in, it will create friction within the alliance.
All in all it's fun, but needs some improvements
Having all 14 revives available right away goes directly against the intention of the game mode. It's a week long event to chip away at, not something to just rush to get it over with. I do however understand the pain point that some people are bringing up regarding the feeling of lack of control if you're not consistently coordinated.
Maybe instead of 2 revives every day it's 4 revives every 2 days. While this wouldn't seem like a big difference, it means that you have a little bit more flexibility. You can either chip away on one day and have a day off, do some both days, skip the first day because you're busy and do it all the next day for example. It would still encourage coordination and teamwork, just not DAILY coordination and teamwork, which is what I think is the biggest issue for people and they don't know how to say it.
I agree that they should look into EITHER the damage cap being increased OR the timer being increased, not both. Having the timer increase gives a bit more room to play in the fight, especially early on when you're trying to complete missions and ramp up. Increasing the damage cap helps you feel like when you're ramped, you're making good progress. However, the increased timer and increasing the damage cap alongside it could end up resulting in the exact same feeling it gives now, where you hit the cap and still end up with tons of time on the board. I say could, I don't actually know. I'm definitely open to trying it.
Charging all Roles at the same time is an interesting one. I definitely see where you're coming from, but given this is a week long event, I'm more inclined to disagree with this than agree, especially because every battlegroup has a 10th member as back up. Over time, maybe my thoughts on this will change.
I see your point about the rewards. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but maybe a solution to this would be a solo milestone where you can get rewards based on how much health you've taken off the bosses, or how many times you've hit the damage cap, and the chests are just extra RNG rewards, rewarding those who put in work like you said. In general, I would however appreciate maybe the t6cc drops being selectors and not random, it would help even it out a bit imo.
The 3-minute timer is just a bit short as you need to ramp up every fight and waste 30 seconds and 2 of the fights require AI compliance.
10% cap, while I don't mind the cap as much as I thought it would, 20% would have been better.
Simple fix: increase timer to 5/10 minutes. Increase max damage to 20% as still needs the teamwork but can get into a nice rhythm and remove the pierce completely
Also only 2 revives is not enough especially when first starting the mode. At the 2nd fight you start with very low health so you have 2 choices: heal up and get a couple of charges or die. Then you have your 2 revives but by the time ypu are built up with charges you only have one revive or zero left.
This comes from my experience using venom vs thanos. After building up and using a aq revive of 4k health (which is <5% health for a r3) i get the block challenge and just can't do damage anymore. The only option is to die.
That can't be the point surely.
Fix the dot champs - either replace them from their respective roles or increase the dot damage. Not many of us knew that their dot damage would be gimped
Energy attackers - see above as most of them are useless against Ultron boss.
Null Break - needs to be tweaked as it is seriously underpowered compared to the others
Dot Boost - this buff seems to do nothing at all.
180k incursions artefacts or
13.5k Glory or
1,440 Units (this is nuts) or
360k Loyalty
And given the insane variation in random loot (20,000 Titan shards vs 1,500 7-Star shards) I’m not sure it’s worth playing.
Currently having the 2 revive per days means (if you are ramped up) you go in, take away 10% damage under 2 minutes, repeat, then done for the day. Sure, you don't have to spend any more time in the game but this is the other side of the scale, the time spent is so short it's just funny. However if we get the 14 revive all together, doesn't mean you have to use them at once. You still have to manage them to have enough for the 4 enemies.
But okay, let's stay in the middle and have 6 available on day 1 and the other 6 on day 4.
Increasing the timer without increasing the damage cap is literally useless, other than the ramp up phase, which is one of the things I'd say is fine. Ramped, you can chip away 10% on 1:30 or 2 minutes, so increasing the timer to let's say 5 minutes is literally useless.
I feel like we finally have the health pool to do some serious skill-based / team-based gameplay.
If you have the skill, why are you limited to do "meaningless" damage? Let's compansate it, and tune down the overall damage boost for the attacker. I'd rather chip away 20-25% health in 5 minutes (if I can), than 10% in 1 and a half minutes.
Role charge buildup. It still can be tuned accordingly. Instead of 7, let's cap the role charges per fight to 5.
The health based reward wouldn't be fair IMO, since you can just use the revives when ramped and the others are asleep. You take the boss yourself, but not because of the team effort, rather the selfishness in rewards. With the tiered system everyone would get fair amounts of the rewards compared to the others. (1/4 of a t6c against a full titan sucks, but a guaranteed full T6c feels better)
I agree in the selector part of it
1. Double or treble the time for a fight and don't kill a champion upon timeout
2. Reduce the health. It is very stressful playing against so high health pool
If the game was running perfectly it would be more tolerable.
But with wonky ai, lags and stutters. One mistimed parry and it’s a world of pain.
If the purpose is to spread out the fights over 7 days, time lock the fights. 1 fight opens each day or something like that. Some allies might wait until all 4 fights are available, but that's their choice, but it comes with risk of not having the people available at the end of the week. Again, it's about planning and rationing without the training wheels.
I like the boss rush type of set up where the battlegroup but no charges. Maybe a cap on the damage that a single member can do on a fight. Once that damage is reached, they can't enter the fight anymore until the next boss opens. Or you could set an overall damage amount for the event per member to access rewards. This would require participation from members to satisfy the teamwork requirement. If you reach your cap, you can't participate anymore. Allies could either assign bosses based on player availability, skill level, or they could spread the wealth and have everyone chip in on each fight (another management-related skill).