100 CM is no longer fun

[Grogba.6204]

There is one thing which I still consider a minor annoyance:

 

The enraged symbol above Arkk's head partially blocks view on the killer orbs. There are ways around this like taking a closer look, anticipating the attack or using Aegis (which seems to block the orbs now? can anyone confirm this?) but fighting the UI should not be part of making an encounter difficult.

[rabenpriester.7129]

> @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> I ran 100CM yesterday, it seems to be working fine! We wiped once on aartsariiv and arkk but were able to clear it

>

 

Are you sure this is how the fight is supposed to play out?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFsBv1bED4&feature=youtu.be

 

I guess you ran it once, nothing spectacular happened because your bad dps lined up with the mechanics and it turned out fine. "We wiped once" isn't an argument, if you play near perfect you should never wipe.

[spiritualabyss.7016]

> @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> > @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> > I ran 100CM yesterday, it seems to be working fine! We wiped once on aartsariiv and arkk but were able to clear it

> >

>

> Are you sure this is how the fight is supposed to play out?

>

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFsBv1bED4&feature=youtu.be

>

> I guess you ran it once, nothing spectacular happened because your bad dps lined up with the mechanics and it turned out fine. "We wiped once" isn't an argument, if you play near perfect you should never wipe.

 

From my perspective (been doing 100CM two times per day on average since its introduction) it looks perfectly fine.

 

I think I have seen every buggy state this fractal has ben in since, and i see nothing wrong in this clip.

Just get used to the anomaly that spawns in bloom phase.

I played DPS on 90+% of my runs and it is absolutely possible to do 1 bloom and kill the Anomaly on your own (read DPS class, engi in my case).

 

Just be ready for the spawn ( I have to say, that as chrono it can be painful, since you have to rely on other people to do this...)

[rabenpriester.7129]

@"spiritualabyss.7016" said:

> From my perspective (been doing 100CM two times per day on average since its introduction) it looks perfectly fine.

I know, I've been running with you a couple of times. I don't think it looks fine tbh. Take a look at when the anomaly appears and when it explodes. You have to have one dps in the middle not grabbing any orb to be ready to jump there.

 

It is doable, no doubt, but a wipe for failing this is definitly not ok. The mechanic is too random the way it is at the moment to be that punishing. Where the anomaly spawns, who has the bomb, does he/she have a bloom or is on a dps class, which tiles are missing etc etc. Especially problematic imho is that the mechanic punishes good dps by spawning during the orb phase. I mean, I have no problem with this fight per se, it's just not first try every time anymore even if you know the fight inside out and run with really good people. That's a problem for me. Because tell me, did you see anything wrong with the team comp, my chrono plays (maybe not play minstrel and sword 2 at the anomaly, but really...) or the reaction time of the players? Except maybe the Weaver, who was a 77 KP pug not in voice.

 

 

[Adamantium.3682]

> @"spiritualabyss.7016" said:

> > @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> > > @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> > > I ran 100CM yesterday, it seems to be working fine! We wiped once on aartsariiv and arkk but were able to clear it

> > >

> >

> > Are you sure this is how the fight is supposed to play out?

> >

> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFsBv1bED4&feature=youtu.be

> >

> > I guess you ran it once, nothing spectacular happened because your bad dps lined up with the mechanics and it turned out fine. "We wiped once" isn't an argument, if you play near perfect you should never wipe.

>

> From my perspective (been doing 100CM two times per day on average since its introduction) it looks perfectly fine.

>

> I think I have seen every buggy state this fractal has ben in since, and i see nothing wrong in this clip.

> Just get used to the anomaly that spawns in bloom phase.

> I played DPS on 90+% of my runs and it is absolutely possible to do 1 bloom and kill the Anomaly on your own (read DPS class, engi in my case).

>

> Just be ready for the spawn ( I have to say, that as chrono it can be painful, since you have to rely on other people to do this...)

 

I appreciate your perspective of a lot of experience, and I agree in the past killing anomaly wasn't too bad if you were watching, but have you tried since last night's update? To me it seems very fast now, different than before

[Vinceman.4572]

I was with him in the run and that situation was ridiculous. Period.

 

I'm running CM daily as well and have gone through all the existent bugs so far. I agree that the state before was embarrassing but at the moment this is no fun to play. As I stated before it's smarter to do less dps for a 2nd anomaly spawn before orb phases than executing well and having good dps resulting into a struggle.

 

[Vulf.3098]

> @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> It is doable, no doubt, but a wipe for failing this is definitly not ok. The mechanic is too random the way it is at the moment to be that punishing. Where the anomaly spawns, who has the bomb, does he/she have a bloom or is on a dps class, which tiles are missing etc etc. Especially problematic imho is that the mechanic punishes good dps by spawning during the orb phase. I mean, I have no problem with this fight per se, it's just not first try every time anymore even if you know the fight inside out and run with really good people. That's a problem for me. Because tell me, did you see anything wrong with the team comp, my chrono plays (maybe not play minstrel and sword 2 at the anomaly, but really...) or the reaction time of the players? Except maybe the Weaver, who was a 77 KP pug not in voice.

 

The problem is some things are not consistent anymore with this iteration which means some bad RNG equal wipe. 100% doable just really annoying if things decide to line up really badly.

 

 

[Vinceman.4572]

> @"Vulf.3098" said:

> The problem is some things are not consistent anymore with this iteration which means some bad RNG equal wipe. 100% doable just really annoying if things decide to line up really badly.

 

Of course it's doable but I see this change in context to the new raid wing where RNG took over again. I thought we were done with this. It's not good game design and adds nothing challenging to the content.

[Vulf.3098]

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> Of course it's doable but I see this change in context to the new raid wing where RNG took over again. I thought we were done with this. It's not good game design and adds nothing challenging to the content.

 

I mean I agree with you. We went from Arkk doing no mechanics before the patch to him going crazy in the next. A little more consistency is all that is needed here.

 

 

[Adamantium.3682]

> @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> > @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> > I ran 100CM yesterday, it seems to be working fine! We wiped once on aartsariiv and arkk but were able to clear it

> >

>

> Are you sure this is how the fight is supposed to play out?

>

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFsBv1bED4&feature=youtu.be

>

> I guess you ran it once, nothing spectacular happened because your bad dps lined up with the mechanics and it turned out fine. "We wiped once" isn't an argument, if you play near perfect you should never wipe.

 

Thank you for posting this, it is EXACTLY what I was talking about with multiple simultaneous fail condition timers in addition to a very fast Anomaly. Although in the video you didn't get the Anomaly down, I would wager that even if you had you were looking at a near impossible situation to finish the blooms in time and I feel like your group was paying attention and attended to the mechanics as soon as could be expected.

 

This is RNG that is not good for the fight. I suspect those that have had "no problem" completing it since last night were able to avoid this level of bad luck when it was cleared. That is the essence of what I meant when I said it's no longer fun, because I no longer feel like success is 100% in my group's hands.

 

I've said a few times I don't want to nerf the fight, and I really don't. I enjoy that 100 CM is among the most challenging content in the game. I think removing the Anomaly spawn during bloom phase would fix it, but it also removes mechanics and I don't like that part of it. I can't think of a better way though because even giving more time to the Anomaly in your video would have still probably led to the blooms not having enough time and failing.

[Vinceman.4572]

> @"Adamantium.3682" said:

>I suspect those that have had "no problem" completing it since last night were able to avoid this level of bad luck when it was cleared. That is the essence of what I meant when I said it's no longer fun, because I no longer feel like success is 100% in my group's hands.

 

Nah, you can easily complete it without that RNG in case you reduce your damage a bit before 80%, 50% and 30%. We did it yesterday and today after the posted run (video of rabenpriester) from above. **But** and that is my concern: Playing it like this punish good groups with well executed rotation resulting in good dps while groups with lower dps won't even get into this situation at all. I don't think that this is the intended way = playing worse = easier encounter?

 

[Adamantium.3682]

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > @"Adamantium.3682" said:

> >I suspect those that have had "no problem" completing it since last night were able to avoid this level of bad luck when it was cleared. That is the essence of what I meant when I said it's no longer fun, because I no longer feel like success is 100% in my group's hands.

>

> Nah, you can easily complete it without that RNG in case you reduce your damage a bit before 80%, 50% and 30%. We did it yesterday and today after the posted run (video of rabenpriester) from above. **But** and that is my concern: Playing it like this punish good groups with well executed rotation resulting in good dps while groups with lower dps won't even get into this situation at all. I don't think that this is the intended way = playing worse = easier encounter?

>

 

This is a good point that my group was discussing last night as well. If we have to slow damage in order to line up mechanics to a winnable scenario then our consensus was that we weren't interested.

 

I would much rather see the issues in the video fixed than have the ideal way to do this fight be slogging through it with low dps, or (more likely with high level players) stop dps and wait for spawns. That's not fun.

[Grogba.6204]

While I do think that the footage leads up to a very high risk situation, it also shows exactly how the Arkk encounter used to play out. It wasn't completely bug free (double greens) but anomalies spawning during solar blossoms was part of the CM before it bugged out for months on end. You either played with that fact in mind or delayed dps for a few seconds.

Groups used to have a burst DPS stay in the middle to react to the anomaly and druid or chrono would delay their blossom until green and anomaly was dealt with. If both got the mechanic bomb player can still push the blossom and then nova launch into the dome.

[rabenpriester.7129]

> @"Grogba.6204" said:

> Groups used to have a burst DPS stay in the middle to react to the anomaly and druid or chrono would delay their blossom until green and anomaly was dealt with. If both got the mechanic bomb player can still push the blossom and then nova launch into the dome.

 

Yeah don't get me wrong, I know exactly how it should be played. The problem is that it is random, unfun and punishes good dps at the moment.

[Adamantium.3682]

> @"Grogba.6204" said:

> While I do think that the footage leads up to a very high risk situation, it also shows exactly how the Arkk encounter used to play out. It wasn't completely bug free (double greens) but anomalies spawning during solar blossoms was part of the CM before it bugged out for months on end. You either played with that fact in mind or delayed dps for a few seconds.

> Groups used to have a burst DPS stay in the middle to react to the anomaly and druid or chrono would delay their blossom until green and anomaly was dealt with. If both got the mechanic bomb player can still push the blossom and then nova launch into the dome.

 

I don't believe this is the case. What groups "used to do" I don't believe is relevant. See this video from a clear in August when the Anomaly was working:

 

 

There is an Anomaly spawn in the exact same phase of the fight as rabenpriester's video. It spawns at 4:45 and the bomb explodes at 4:55. There is a 10 second cushion.

 

In rabenpriester's video the Anomaly that wipes them spawns at 0:51 and the bomb explodes at 0:58. There is a 7 second cushion.

 

+/- each time by 1 second if you want since I'm just pausing and looking at the timestamp on YouTube but to me it's clear the Anomaly has a significantly faster explosion now. If the bomb had exploded after 7 seconds at 4:52 it would have been very close, I can't tell if they would have made it, and I can't tell if a non-skull player was in the bubble at that time either. The point is that it's way closer than how easy that video makes it look and how much time they appeared to have.

[Grogba.6204]

Oh I am not saying this behaviour is fun. We took it as part of the challenge but I also recall the old boards having the unified opinion that lowering dps in order to deal with a mechanic is stupid.

Back then Ben or another dev stated that this was intended though to as he/they wanted to make the mechanics impactful and avoid skipping mechanics via superior dps.

[Benjamin Arnold.3457]

It's possible the iterations have reduced the response time to the anomalies, if that's true I need to add a few seconds.

 

> @"rabenpriester.7129" said:

> > @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> > I ran 100CM yesterday, it seems to be working fine! We wiped once on aartsariiv and arkk but were able to clear it

> >

>

> Are you sure this is how the fight is supposed to play out?

>

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AFsBv1bED4&feature=youtu.be

>

> I guess you ran it once, nothing spectacular happened because your bad dps lined up with the mechanics and it turned out fine. "We wiped once" isn't an argument, if you play near perfect you should never wipe.

 

Lol. Actually we had an anomaly spawn during orbs. We responded to it, completed the mechanic, then finished the orbs. That phase is really long it's not that hard if your team knows what to do.

[Benjamin Arnold.3457]

It's also not random at all, its on a timer. The original designer wanted groups to hold DPS if they couldn't handle anomalies at the same time as orbs, otherwise he would have made the phase way shorter on CM.

[Adamantium.3682]

> @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> It's possible the iterations have reduced the response time to the anomalies, if that's true I need to add a few seconds.

 

Appreciate it! Thanks for the consideration. I think that's a big step to making it less random and frustrating.

[Imhariel.5683]

So the most chill way to play this figth is to just stop your dps for a few seconds?

 

[Adamantium.3682]

> @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> It's also not random at all, its on a timer. The original designer wanted groups to hold DPS if they couldn't handle anomalies at the same time as orbs, otherwise he would have made the phase way shorter on CM.

 

The anomaly itself may not be random but I think it's fair to say once you get down to 30% and are dealing with many concurrent mechanics, the success or ease of finishing is largely dependent on chance. When and where anomaly spawns.

 

The fight having a hefty perceived RNG element doesn't have to mean the spawn is literally random.

[Vinceman.4572]

> @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> It's also not random at all, its on a timer. The original designer wanted groups to hold DPS if they couldn't handle anomalies at the same time as orbs, otherwise he would have made the phase way shorter on CM.

 

We got that. -.-

There is no problem if the anomaly starts at the beginning of the orb phase when Arkk goes invul and no orb is visible or already linked to the players or starting to link. But the timer can also be responsible for a very unlucky rng time window in which you cannot react to both properly (+ getting the floor tiles disappearing).

 

If this is all the way intended the tactic would be to have one dps in the middle (not going for orbs) to deal with the anomaly alone to prevent bad rng or stop dps before 80/50/30%. I can adapt to the first one but not the last one because that is bad design for me still.

[Miellyn.6847]

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> > It's also not random at all, its on a timer. The original designer wanted groups to hold DPS if they couldn't handle anomalies at the same time as orbs, otherwise he would have made the phase way shorter on CM.

>

> We got that. -.-

> There is no problem if the anomaly starts at the beginning of the orb phase when Arkk goes invul and no orb is visible or already linked to the players or starting to link. But the timer can also be responsible for a very unlucky rng time window in which you cannot react to both properly (+ getting the floor tiles disappearing).

>

> If this is all the way intended the tactic would be to have one dps in the middle (not going for orbs) to deal with the anomaly alone to prevent bad rng or stop dps before 80/50/30%. I can adapt to the first one but not the last one because that is bad design for me still.

 

Why is stopping DPS when you can't handle a mechanic bad game design? It actually promotes getting better that you can handle it to not stop DPS.

[Genesis.5169]

I pug 100cm everyday and all i do is lfg for arch designer title and 15 ess just wanted to put that out there.

[Benjamin Arnold.3457]

> @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > @"Benjamin Arnold.3457" said:

> > It's also not random at all, its on a timer. The original designer wanted groups to hold DPS if they couldn't handle anomalies at the same time as orbs, otherwise he would have made the phase way shorter on CM.

>

> We got that. -.-

> There is no problem if the anomaly starts at the beginning of the orb phase when Arkk goes invul and no orb is visible or already linked to the players or starting to link. But the timer can also be responsible for a very unlucky rng time window in which you cannot react to both properly (+ getting the floor tiles disappearing).

>

> If this is all the way intended the tactic would be to have one dps in the middle (not going for orbs) to deal with the anomaly alone to prevent bad rng or stop dps before 80/50/30%. I can adapt to the first one but not the last one because that is bad design for me still.

 

Obviously there is RNG, but the SAS is there to help you deal with that. For instance in the video the SAS was off cooldown but he didn't use it to close the gap to the anomaly. Instead he wasted a good 4-5 seconds that could have been DPS.

 

I'm personally not a fan of RNG encounters in general because the difficulty varies too wildly, and that definitely happens to arkk, but that's the intended design and that's what makes him challenging, to remove that is to make him easy.