Well just to reference myself here, I got ambient light on high and even maxed out SSAO and I’m not even close to that levels of darkness.
While certainly it could help i doubt its the core issue in this case.
Hopefully once Chaos Wastes it out, the dev team can take a look at feedback on CoD and get around to tuning the end event just a bit more.
Returned to play after a long reprieve, and what map do you think the game gave me? Convocation of decay. Still the same unbalanced … as before.
first of all, I only have ~80hrs in the game and I am still playing on champion difficulty because the game has not been kind to me and my weapon power is still really low. despite all of that, I have noticed that convocation is much harder than all of the other maps including the DLC maps which I find odd. traditionally in DLC maps they are typically made harder than base game maps.
from my personal observation and reading through most of the comments here, I feel like it’s the map itself that might be the problem.
1.) event is incredibly dark with a bright green hue which makes spotting specials who are also dark with bright green aspects difficult to spot. this includes poison rats, firerats, ratling gunners, and assassin rats. they basically blend in with the map.
2.) the transition from the ritual circle to the ground is tremendously horrendous. you either get completely blinded by darkness or get this ultra bright flashbang effect which limits visibility for far too long. not being able to see for extended periods of time is very detrimental to a player’s survivability.
3.) event audio and regular enemy audio seem to drown out the special enemy audio making them almost impossible to detect until it’s too late. I’ve played through most of the maps and noticed that the special enemy audio cues seem to have higher priority on every map except for convocation. I played engines of war and could hear a firerat from across the barrel event room despite being completely surrounded by all sorts of really loud enemies but I can’t hear one on convocation when they are walking up to and climbing the ritual circle. that’s weird right?
I feel like if the map visibility was tweaked a little bit, the transition from the circle to the ground was smoother, and if special enemy audio cues took higher priority over everything else including the actual sounds from the event that it might increase overall success rate for the map.
ofc, if these changes were to happen and the map is still hard then it would be because the difficulty spike is higher than the other maps and should be changed to be more on par with the other events.
I just want to note that these are the things I feel are affecting my personal success rate for this map compared to the other maps that I have played.
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Special sounds are indeed prioritized, but they do get drowned out by extremely loud noises of the sorcerors exploding - even when you set your audio to have high dynamic range in the settings, it is still being processed of course to fall into comfortable hearing range therefore extremely loud noises ‘duck’ all other sounds temporarily.
The visuals are even a bigger offender here. You can somewhat mitigate the flashbang effect by setting exposure speed to maximum in the settings, but there is still this extremely annoying ‘double vision’ (similar to one on Skittergate) which appears inconsistently around the circle even when you just walk up to its wall from below. I can vouch that I did lose a couple of times just because I was forced to walk along the inside wall of that bottom ring section and got this effect.
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yeah I noticed that last night and it blinded me! ofc I died cuz I couldn’t see anything and felt cheated … yeah, I think the map itself needs its audio and visuals fixed to see if it improves the map and the overall success rate. before reading this post, I dreaded getting this map in quick play.
Still very bad.
2-3 simultaneous globadiers and all bots will die in gas clouds in few seconds without even jumping off.
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This is probably the hardest ending of all maps, there are a lot of points that inflict this condition
- Non stop spawning specials, elites, hordes. ( I this this is the main issue, it reminds me of the old Fort Brachsenbrücke
- Too much screen/audio effects, makes it very hard to aim, hear or see incoming blows
- Small “working” area, not enough space to dodge or guard, since you can’t protect your back effectivly even when you face your back to some non spawning pillars, specials are hard to see, since the’yre often under you or above mixed with all the elites that guards them.
Also Since the pattern of spawning specials seems to be random, sometimes it its “doable” but most of them are not.
That isnt even the fault of the event, just the bots being what they are.
Bots kinda suck in this game, but make for a great way to test things, since they basically always suck. You could take the same group of people along or go true solo, but in the end it boils down to one simple comparison:
Most maps on legend are easy enough to even solo with almost any character and several builds on those characters…
Convocation of decay simply isn’t. Some people would probably add enchanter’s lair and perhaps 1 or 2 other maps, but that’s a different discussion, and personally I find CoD stand out since my success rates vs other legend maps with bots and with randoms is so much lower on it.
With premades it’s not that much of an issue, but we all know there are plenty of gamers out there without premade groups so that shouldn’t be the standard.
When making this comparison, there are 2 solutions:
- Make CoD easier (can be done in several different ways) so it fits in with the other maps on legend.
- Make the other maps harder on legend so they fit in with CoDs current difficulty and that will be the new legend standard.
Only 2 serious options honestly otherwise there will simply be an imballance and everyone random party will say: “skip grims?” or “suicide?”.
basically as simple as that 
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Any word on the patch notes for the Chaos Wastes update? I’m sincerely hoping the devs have something about making the finale on this map easier. I’m sure it’s been said a hundred times already, but it’s just far too difficult. It’s also preventing me and a lot of other players from getting the Legendary outfits.
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Hello Soldier,
I’ve had to help friends get through convocation, just make up a party of 4 (of people you know) and skip all the books. It helps to be able to heal and use pots (with proxy) to get past the waves of crap. The end event is sometimes easy and then changes how many specials spawn. The inconsistency is what cause the elitist’s to say “get gud” yada yada yada.
Doing this with rando’s is impossible most of the time. Good luck.
Other than that, if you are so “lucky” to get the SV-CW party bus at the very beginning then you’ll certainly lose.
The big problem with PUGs is most of them still take the books, even both grims.
It’s exactly this that needs to be changed. Most people don’t run around with a party of regulars, it’s randoms. If your average team of randoms can’t do the map without even books, then there’s something wrong, and it needs to be addressed.
I’m very interested in seeing the metrics of Convocation of Decay vs. a more balanced (but with a tough finale) map like Empire in Flames or Skittergate - the overall win rate, where on the map teams fail, how much health they lose over the course of it and where, etc. To me it would quite clearly show that Convo’s finale needs a serious whack with a nerf bat in one way or another.
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284 days and this thread is still going strong.
I think that alone shows how screwed up it is. I really hope it gets fixed with chaos wastes.
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The thing that really needs to change on the map is visibility. You often cannot see a Blightstorm being cast due to the green and the horrendous screen effects mess up what little chance you had surviving this. Also the fact, that you get a high density of specials when you have to kite is that you often will just get killed by a hookrat or assassin that you couldn’t hear nor see, because it jumped through a wall of elites.
Also the fact, that if you get a bunch of glboadiers simultaneous with a bunch of elites means that you’ll have to leave the platform, due to the clouds, same with an unlucky blightstorm. The platform doesn’t lend itself at all to these specials, that is the one thing that sohuld be changed, as this will usually mean leaving the platform, which is impossible to do coordinatedly as a group of randos.
If you think those are the only problems with the place then you´ve missed out 
Hookrats can spawn directly below the platform and jump up silently.
Assassins&gasrats&stormers can attack from the cliffs with no warning right after spawning.
You can get multiple chaos warrior+stormvermin waves in a row.
You can get multiple disabler spawns in a row.
And so on it goes.
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No, no they can’t. Those things never happen. Video proof or nothing. And if they do, it’s a git gud moment. It’s not like those things are common occurrences that don’t need recordings to prove them at this point or something, or that being pounced from a random direction that you can’t possibly predict immediately on Assassin spawn in a circular arena is unfair. Don’t you have eyes in the back of your head?
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Is it just my imagination or is there suddenly a powerful scent of sarcasm in the air?
My poor nose already struggles with pollen.
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…Should i be embarrassed about something? I feel like i might have written something i might be embarrassed about in hindsight.
That or i am just missing context somewhere.