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Hello Reddit! After running vault 94's mission 1 and clearing expert on the second day we had a blast throughout week 1!
However! During Week 2/Mission 2 we've noticed that the recently introduced anti exploit scripts are throttling down the instanced areas so much that we end up failing them on multiple occassions because the announcements arent triggering nor finishing in time.
This week we've had at a minimum of 19 different attempts fail due to the server starting lagging midway through the missions causing such time delays (around a minute and a half-2 minutes) before the announcements even start to trigger, this has resulted in us running out of time in both standard and expert simply due to the throttling causing such delays that we time out before we can open up the next room. This has also caused us to fail the final room on multiple occassions due to running out of time. we've failed with as high as 6 minutes remaining in the G.E.C.K room.
While issues and such is to be expected, to have the anti cheat measures flat out make you fail the run is very disheartening. As it is now the scripts run multiple times per stage to ensue that noone is cheating/skipping rooms similar to the silo exploit that was around some time ago. You can confirm the existance of these scripts if you lag and the vault doors havent loaded in, if you make it past a "locked" area you'll get kicked out of the raid.
This is great, aside from the throttling it causes.
we've noticed that swiping too many cards in a rapid session causes the instance to slow down to unplayable levels, causing the issues mentioned above
we've also had to do about 9 additional raids due to people crashing because of the PA glitch or just well, crashing. The saddest crash was at the end in the geck room at about 90% done.
we also failed one raid due to two members triggering the damage bug, but once is the exception and not the standard.
all right, now the niché comments on the actual design of mission 2 : Meltdown.
it's horrendous. the gathering of cards and such is not a fun mechanic, while one of our set team members had to go away for a few days we struggled with finding people to clear the raids with due to the lack of interest,
Some general pointers when it comes to raid mechanics in the future:
It has to be fun and not tedious. This is the most important aspect, it has to be engaging and not stressfull.
Design the mechanics to be able to be done with any build. more hacking, lockpicking and such stuff, thats great! build diversity is awesome and should be promoted, a raid should never require a specific build unless you are running on expert.
You might want to consider adding some funny mechanics like crafting food to feed a mirelurk that unlocks doors aswell, just to put a spin on it. or adding pressure plates that 3 people have to stand on while the 4th unlocks a door via a terminal, anything that promotes a teamplaying and coordinating aspect.
Collect x items to proceed isnt a fun mechanic, it's that simple. it doesnt matter if its pipes or ID cards. once during a stage is fun - building entire raids around them is not.
It needs to be lagfree. A raid should never risk failure because the servers start lagging halfway into the raid, if the extra mechanic you have to pay attention to is things like server stability and bug avoidance before entering the raid, it's a failure.
Suggested changes to Mission 2 for improved stability and an overall smoother experience:
Have all cards be used up upon one swipe, this would bypass the card swiping lag which can also take around 5-30 seconds per card on occassion.
Remove the manual pressing on the doors to unlock them, tie those triggers to the terminal and the "unlock x wing" feature on the terminals.
Make the doors instantly unlock when the announcement starts instead of when it finishes, while this would give people more time to clear the mission, the intent is to have a fun experience while doing it, not a tedious one where frustration takes over and ends up causing a rift in the playerbase because you keep failing raids due to things you cannot control.
Make the set pieces scripable and increase the amount of steel received throughout the raid, add more plans to the rewards and dont use the 3 category system, i've gone 2 raids now without receiving a single plan, im 5/5 on thorn, 5/5solar set, and 2/5 on the power armor set, yet i havent been getting any plans for it. If you lock the rewards behind daily clears for standard/expert, atleast make it a gauranteed reward and not a random one the more plans you unlock.
Remove the legendary monsters in the G.E.C.K room and add their rewards to a trunk at the end, as it is now you can only loot about 2 of those legendary monsters due to tagging still being a requirement to receive loot. If you spread out and protect all the pipes you usually end up loosing out on half the legendary monsters loot due to the distance between you and the legendary monster, if you abandon your position you risk failing the mission, it shouldnt be a choice between loot and finishing the raid.
More rewards, but what type? the apparel headgear was nice, but it needs more, please consider adding more exclusive vault tied apparels in the future. Something like:
1 special apparel per difficulty, so one for novice, standard and expert, you can use the same system as for armor pieces (novice being pretty base, standard having a more appealing look and expert looking even more badass) something akin to the drifter's coat that has a raider variant aswell, pictures below:
Example 1 for novice reward: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/8/8b/FO76_Drifter_Outfit.png/revision/latest?cb=20190419045006
Example 2 for standard reward: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/e/e7/Fo4_spike_armor.png/revision/latest?cb=20180827182344
Example 3 for expert reward: https://imgur.com/a/m9hEdfe
im sure you get the point im trying to make there :)
Can't wait to see what you have in store next week!
Edit: Added feedback regarding the loot in the G.E.C.K wing
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