Imo the maindifferences are the number of specials, the range of them or lack of cover, the decline of progress and the flashback.
In athel you get like 4 specials in total on legend with low cover and medium range.
In magnus you get like 5 or 6, but often with decent cover (depending on the spot) and short to medium range.
Both get mostly single spawns.
But in CoD it feels way closer to 12 combined with low cover (only the pillars) and very long range unless they decide to hop off the inner ring.
It also commonly gets two at the same time as you have to fight the elites.
The zerkers can make up for that partial, bit not completely.
I can somewhat agree with @Perteks here. A very small change to CoD end event, with a couple of the little tweaks suggested my @anon75893681 further up is probably enough - yet other end events are entirely catatonic.
Skarrit lasts less time than a snowball in hell, Fort BaconSandwich is snoozy again, Bodvar is only a little bit lively if no-one has anti armour, Troll in Hunger in The Dark is dead before he even gets onto the bridge, Righteous Stand is often just Turtle-defence mode.
I’m in favour of end events being harder, BUT Convocation is only hard because of the physical space of the end event.
Its true you see a lot of shield IBs, but i’d really hesitate before calling most of them “good”.
I mostly agree with the other stuff you said, particularly the blinding effect. The issue of splitting up plays back into my first point. So many people don’t want to be in the safest place, which is right next to the group tank. I like to tank for pubs because I’m a masochist I guess and I swear, as soon as an enemy sneezes nearby some players freak out and stay backsliding away trying to dodge enemies that are actually just jiggling from being staggered instead of attacking. Convo just punishes that more than other situations. But if at least one person is good at hugging my but in the event it gets so much easier.
Overall, I just think the difference is vastly overstated and I don’t want to see it hit with the nerf hammer. I still miss old fort bacon branches. I know that they’re really unlikely to raise the difficulty of the others, and the only thing is want changed on convo is that blinding light effect.
The issue is this event more than any other can just snowball as soon as one player dies and recovering can be next to impossible. The other night I played a legend Conv game and it went for 35 minutes, at least 10 minutes spent with me and a GK trying to get our teammates up, clear the never-ending special and elite spawns, while losing progress in the event the whole time.
We eventually wiped and I had 70 special kills alone. The spawning rate needs to be tweaked, no other event is like this and from my experience this is the way quickplay Conv games tend to go. It’s true if you sit behind a tank it’s honestly simple, the easiest run I’ve had was the entire team sharing a pillar behind IB, but if FS is balancing around quickplay this will never be guaranteed to happen.
Can’t confirm that experience personally. Had an easier time in Convocation than I did with Skittergate in a bot only game. I always got overwhelmed by adds in the final boss fight in Skittergate since I just can’t keep the little bugger staggered by myself so he’ll get casts through and summon adds.
SLeep inducing
Dificulty of V2 is pure RNG - Convo CAN spawn 2 Globes, Blightstomer, a Gattling and after 10 seconds 2 hookrats and anothergattling on legend
AND IT can spawn 9 chaos warriors ON top of all those specials
OR It can spawn 1/5 of all this and all people present into ‘‘wtf where is evertyhing’’
90% of the time its the 1st case where its unwinable unless you all SPECIFICALLY picked ranged snipers (waystalker is MANDATORY if you have spawns like I do)
My most recent loss on it was with a pub group who had done several Legend maps together with no significant problems. We also ran through Convo with no problems until the finale. What ended our run us was 2 blightstormers, 2 gasrats, 2 hookrats, half a dozen CW’s, half a dozen stormvermin, and a massive horde. We couldn’t kill stuff fast enough, and there was nowhere safe to stand either on the platform or below. The moment we got separated was what truly accelerated the loss, but the Convo finale is the most consistently game-ending section in the game right now, that and Nurgloth’s final phase. Both are overtuned in a way that simply isn’t fun, and doesn’t generally feel fair.
I strongly suspect the people saying it’s fine are mostly playing with 3 friends and using Discord, while the people who think it’s OP are, like myself, mostly solo queueing. For the record, I think balancing anything on Legend to more or less require a pre-made (or a very narrowly min-maxed loadout) is a really bad idea. I would love to watch a stream of the devs running only legend Convo for 3 hours and see if they can finish it a single time.
I play cata with 3 friends on DC (not always but we do) and Nurgloth fight on cata is just long. IF we have any of GK BH SH god forbid more, then its just - w8 for the circles / hit him / go behind pillar to a corner / kill stuff / repeat 1st steps
Convo on legend without books is several times worse, its not overtuned its literall RNG
No group on this planet will finish Convo if 2 gases 2 hook 2gattling 7 CHW 6+ SW 30 mobs and BEST part 2 blightstormers that cast from BEHIND A WALL when ~6% of their model is visible and !NO! green lines are shown Spawn
And its not like athen / stand which are basicaly the same concept where things spawn reasonably
On RS in its entirety there are 1/5 of specials than in Convo + you have WAY more room to move around + there are still very nice holdable spots + you dont loose progress + when the hammer is charged MOBS are killed period. If somethign spawns after that its just slaverats
TLDR any cata map is easier than legend convo with or withotu books, RNG dictates if you win convo WAAAAAAAAAAAY more than skill and anyone who says otherwise is either blind or uses his 5000 hours played as a argument that unless you dont have a life you are not allowed to finish this map (and even they cant finish it consistently)
Convocation of decay’s final event is not impossible of course, but it’s just not properly tunned with the rest of legend or even with the mission itself.
You need a competent party, and maybe even certain careers depending on individual skill to pull it off, this is not true for any single other point of the game on legend, where you can run whatever and do just fine without thinking too much about the rest of the party.
By this, I don’t mean there should be no challenge, I mean every difficulty should be consistent across all missions, give or take a few steps up or down depending on the missions, can’t be 100% balanced I know, but right now, that final event is not consistent, it feels much closer to cata than to the rest of legend.
It’s not that it’s not winnable, it’s that its completely out of line with the difficulty of every other legend map, and even the map portion of convocation.
Also, tone down the green blinding effects on the screen from sliding in and out of the circle. It’s bad enough when there’s way too much swarming you, then you add insult to injury of walking too close to the edge and then back in and you’re blinded for 30 seconds.
(shrug) Getting knocked literally into the ceiling and dying from fall damage doesn’t feel fair. Getting focused by Nurgloth and being unable to do anything but get knocked around the room while every mob and floor hazard takes free hits on you feels unfair. Having three down and being unable to get them back up with most classes due to the constant unblockable knockback attack feels unfair. It’s a poorly designed aspect of a mostly fun fight that’s asking players to do too much, but it’s also not the point of this thread.
Having run this map a bunch more times on a bunch more classes since my last post, I’ve begun musing more on specific feedback or suggestions. Here’s a list of items where I think changing any one of them - or perhaps even picking a few to change - could be useful. These are not in any particular order beyond when I think of them.
Controlling the spawn number of certain types of Specials more strictly. Area-denial Specials (Poison Globaders, Ratling Gunners, Fire Rats, Blightstormers) are disproportionately dangerous on this map because of how little room you have to work with. Furthermore, the layout is both open AND obstructed. Specials can fire at you, but terrain can very easily block your shots at them. It’s particularly bad when running with bots, because the AI will freak out and lose any sense of good play as soon as one of these Specials starts firing. (I’ve personally witnessed an entire team of bots stuck in a loop, running directly into a fire-rat’s flame jet over and over again with their ranged weapons out, unwilling to shoot because of the tiny amount of stagger.) Blightstormers should not be present in this event AT ALL. Not only does the storm take up about half of your space in the circle - and chase you - the Blightstormers themselves are all but invisible against the background. The only time you can see them is during the moment they’re casting, if you follow the trail back to them, which means you have a very minuscule amount of time to shoot them. Which, realistically, means you HAVE to line up the shot NOW, even if it means getting hit in the back, otherwise it’ll never happen again. For all other area denial specials, there shouldn’t be more than one of any particular type on the map at a time. There’s nothing so disheartening as being bracketed by a pair of ratling gunners - maybe managing to down one before getting hit in the back a dozen times because all your bots decided to go running waaaaay off to the other side of the map for reasons. Possibly going through a gas cloud or two to vape along the way.
Increasing the size of the “safe zone.” Currently, the safe zone and the damaging soup in the middle take up about the same amount of space. This gives players very little area to work in - and if you drop down, you’re blinded, probably about to die because you’re separated from the others, and - if everyone does jump down at the same time - you’re losing progress. If you see someone in trouble part way around the soup from you, you can either 1) pull out a ranged weapon, (likely miss because you’re in a hurry), then get hit a lot and die because you can’t block, 2) try to cut across the mix, which will damage you, slow you, and drain your stamina, ensuring you get hit a lot and die, or 3) try to cut your way around to them, taking a lot of time, meaning they’ll die. And it is VERY hard to keep everybody in a coordinated ball, rolling around the edge together, when trying to dodge four Chaos greataxes and get a shot at that ratling gunner. Heck, you could probably even do away with the danger zone in the middle completely. You’re still exposed, but with terrain blocking your shots to specials. That’s still a pretty challenging mix; you don’t NEED an extra bit of difficulty.
Decreasing the “blind” effect. This is a suggestion that should probably be paired with another tweak; fixing this alone will not solve the problem. However, it does need to be addressed. Even with your graphics set to decrease the duration of the blind effect to its absolute lowest amount, it’s STILL blinding and disorienting for far too long. Chances are, if you dodge wrong and fall off the pedestal - or you jump back in and there are enemies inside already - you’re either going to be hit a few times while flailing blindly, or block blindly, get hit enough to drain your stamina, then have your vision clear to see yourself surrounded with nowhere to go.
Everyone jumping down stops enemies from spawning. I’ve been seeing all sorts of advice about how, if the pressure is too great on the platform, jump down. But, if anything, the pressure gets worse if you do. Either your progress starts ticking backwards or you’re separated and alone, the enemies keep coming, the terrain is even more obstructed between you and Specials but plenty of things will be finding their way behind you to stab you in the back, and, if you fight your way to a wall to give yourself a breather, hahah, there is no breather: stuff will just keep spawning at you forever. If you could ACTUALLY clear a wave of multiple chaos warriors while jumped down, that would make a world of difference. Instead, you just have more keep spawning to come after you until you get back on the death-trap that is the pedestal to finish the event, or you die.
To sum up:
You don’t need to do all of these things. But doing ANY of them would make a significant difference. More tight spawn controls on area-denial specials, stopping spawning if everyone jumps down, or increasing the size of the safe zone could all be the difference between this map being a fun challenge and a fun-sapping slog you only attempt if you want the achievements. The blind effect just really needs to be tweaked.
My list of things that makes it more difficult than usual compared to other events:
Color Palette and VFX: Basically, it’s not a readable map. Greens on Green, a huge ball of green in the center of the pool, blindness if you move out of a very small fighting arena, extended darkness immediately after the blindness, blurs, ect.
Out of Bounds Attacks: Specials attacking from outside the map’s boundaries, specials attacking further than you can tag, unable to see attacks because they blend in with the map’s color palette.
Unreadable Terrain/Stuck Spots/Traps: So, you have the one obstacle in the middle of the arena. It’s glowing, it’s gross, it’s green, it saps your movement and stamina and allows enemies to walk freely through it with no problems at all. Ok, easy to understand. Outside the arena is a different story. There are numerous stuck spots and traps that look like traversable terrain but isn’t. Because of how much armor and specials this level throws at me, I find myself kiting around the arena every game and I’m convinced I’ve gotten trapped in every single stuck point haha.
Never ending spawns: Not that the level shouldn’t spawn enemies or punish you for not progressing, but it does seem a little crazy once Chaos Warriors and disablers start piling up, since you have a small effective area to fight, restricted kite area, and plenty of stuck points.
in my opinion its not that the event is too hard, its all the other map events that are too easy
if everything had been harder from the start it would have given people a chance to adjust and acclimatize to it, and nobody would be complaining about this
just a thought:
why did vt1 have harder events without people rioting about it at the same time?
Go play Cataclysm please.
And i have proposal for devs: pls make another vote for making Cataclysm have hordes consist exclusively of CWs, horde timer set to 60 seconds, all specials spawn in packs of 50 every 2 seconds and set all players hp to 1.
I’ll gladly vote for this just to make all these elite people happy.
Very constructive comment; glad you made it. Can’t wait to see more riveting contributions.
No, seriously, convocation while being one of the harder maps, is by no means too hard. It could use some quality of life tweaks such as removing the flashbanging and perhaps staggering the spawns out a little in waves so it’s not all coming at once.
It is not just one of the harder maps, it is MUCH MORE hard than every other map, including Nurgloth and pre-nerf Fort ButterBean. It needs slight nerf to difficulty, effect tweaks are not enough (i dont understand what is problem with green explosions - just hold block until you able to see anything - never had any problems with it :))
