Clickbait Complaint about events generally, and Malak specifically, right HERE!
Okay, I've complained about events in the past. I could link some of those critiques but that would be tedious. Suffice it to say that I have criticized as bad design using pre-loaded TM as a gear-test.
Why? Because in order to wipe out the people who are considered under geared for an event (the people that they don't want to actually have the toon), you end up with key characters being wiped out in the opening volley. The event then not only requires leveling, promoting and gearing your toons (as it should), but also an endless series of restarts waiting for the perfect RNG.
I specifically said that if you need a Gear-check to qualify, then put in a minimum gear tier or minimum gp to qualify for the event, just like we have minimum star counts on toons to qualify for an event. I specifically said that events should require more strategy and less RNG. It should make you feel like you accomplished something more than just restarting a thousand times.
I also thought it would be better if events required you to use your brain, to have qualities like a knowledge of the game and how to use your toons, not just a quick restart finger and the patience of Job. I thought it would be better if you spent more time playing the actual event, making choices for your characters, than watching the intro cut scene over and over. (That was, indeed the most ridiculous thing about some recent-past events, that surviving the first volley with the right characters intact made the event fairly quickly doable, so you ended up spending less time playing your characters than repeatedly watching cutscenes and the lethal opening volley.)
Now, it's incredibly unlikely that anything that I had to say swayed EA/CG's content creators, but whether my comments here made any difference or not, I can now say that the Malak event took these exact ideas and made them central to this event.
Rather than offering vain hope and thousands of restarts to people who (unknowingly) didn't meet the criterial developed in the EA/CG secret lair, there was a clear goal: hit 17,500 gp to qualify.
No pre-loaded TM.
No endless restarts to get the most advantageous starting conditions possible just to give yourself a chance.
The first time I tried the event, I failed. I wanted to see what the event was like myself, not just watch a video and then duplicate the strategy someone else worked out. The second time I tried it, I had thought about the strategy I wanted to employ ... and still failed. The third time I got closer, but failed again because of an inopportune taunt that caused me to bring Malak below 50% health while I was trying to finish off one of the stasis fields. I realized that I couldn't rely on so much AoE damage from Revan (as useful as that was to control Malak's Enrage timer). Letting Malak get down close to 1/2 health from AoEs just invited problems with those badly-timed taunts.
But, at least I didn't have to play the event through to the end. I recognized that I didn't want Malak to absorb that jedi and I restarted ... but here's the thing: I knew I was restarting because I had made a sub-optimal choice in throwing around Jedi Revan's AoE. I wasn't restarting because RNG had made my attempt hopeless before I got a chance for a single character to take a turn.
The 4th time I almost made it, but I couldn't do enough damage per turn to overwhelm Malak's healing. He lingered, I died.
THEN I watched a video, because I realized that I was missing something. That video gave me two important pieces of information: One, you want Malak immune to crits so he doesn't auto-inflict Fear on you, and two, I couldn't just go with the normal mods I had on my characters.
Next attempt I got my Malak.
Now, maybe you think that if watching videos and following the steps by rote is something I didn't want, I shouldn't have watched a video. But the difference for me was vast. I already knew the event. I'd already overcome many hurdles myself and had a good strategy, but it wasn't good enough. most of what was on the video, I'd already figured out for myself, but there was that one insight I was missing about crits and how getting crit damage isn't worth getting Fear.
In sum: This was an intelligent event. It set a clear qualification bar so people don't have false hope of getting Malak while under geared (esp when it's hard to tell what "under geared" means for any event). It didn't start with pre-loaded TM or force you to reload the event dozens or hundreds of times waiting for RNG to land just right. The amount of time watching the intro cutscene was tiny compared to the amount of time actually playing the event . The puzzle aspect of it was probably solvable by me, even if I ultimately chose to watch an advice video to get over the last hurdle. It engaged me instead of enraging me. And at the end, I thought that I'd accomplished something.
This is everything I was hoping would come from future events after my frustration with 3P0 and (especially) Chewie.
Therefore, as I offer criticism when I think something was not designed well, I offer my heartfelt appreciation and thanks for this event which i believe was designed well.
Great job, EA/CG. Thank you for an event that I could play and enjoy.
Why? Because in order to wipe out the people who are considered under geared for an event (the people that they don't want to actually have the toon), you end up with key characters being wiped out in the opening volley. The event then not only requires leveling, promoting and gearing your toons (as it should), but also an endless series of restarts waiting for the perfect RNG.
I specifically said that if you need a Gear-check to qualify, then put in a minimum gear tier or minimum gp to qualify for the event, just like we have minimum star counts on toons to qualify for an event. I specifically said that events should require more strategy and less RNG. It should make you feel like you accomplished something more than just restarting a thousand times.
I also thought it would be better if events required you to use your brain, to have qualities like a knowledge of the game and how to use your toons, not just a quick restart finger and the patience of Job. I thought it would be better if you spent more time playing the actual event, making choices for your characters, than watching the intro cut scene over and over. (That was, indeed the most ridiculous thing about some recent-past events, that surviving the first volley with the right characters intact made the event fairly quickly doable, so you ended up spending less time playing your characters than repeatedly watching cutscenes and the lethal opening volley.)
Now, it's incredibly unlikely that anything that I had to say swayed EA/CG's content creators, but whether my comments here made any difference or not, I can now say that the Malak event took these exact ideas and made them central to this event.
Rather than offering vain hope and thousands of restarts to people who (unknowingly) didn't meet the criterial developed in the EA/CG secret lair, there was a clear goal: hit 17,500 gp to qualify.
No pre-loaded TM.
No endless restarts to get the most advantageous starting conditions possible just to give yourself a chance.
The first time I tried the event, I failed. I wanted to see what the event was like myself, not just watch a video and then duplicate the strategy someone else worked out. The second time I tried it, I had thought about the strategy I wanted to employ ... and still failed. The third time I got closer, but failed again because of an inopportune taunt that caused me to bring Malak below 50% health while I was trying to finish off one of the stasis fields. I realized that I couldn't rely on so much AoE damage from Revan (as useful as that was to control Malak's Enrage timer). Letting Malak get down close to 1/2 health from AoEs just invited problems with those badly-timed taunts.
But, at least I didn't have to play the event through to the end. I recognized that I didn't want Malak to absorb that jedi and I restarted ... but here's the thing: I knew I was restarting because I had made a sub-optimal choice in throwing around Jedi Revan's AoE. I wasn't restarting because RNG had made my attempt hopeless before I got a chance for a single character to take a turn.
The 4th time I almost made it, but I couldn't do enough damage per turn to overwhelm Malak's healing. He lingered, I died.
THEN I watched a video, because I realized that I was missing something. That video gave me two important pieces of information: One, you want Malak immune to crits so he doesn't auto-inflict Fear on you, and two, I couldn't just go with the normal mods I had on my characters.
Next attempt I got my Malak.
Now, maybe you think that if watching videos and following the steps by rote is something I didn't want, I shouldn't have watched a video. But the difference for me was vast. I already knew the event. I'd already overcome many hurdles myself and had a good strategy, but it wasn't good enough. most of what was on the video, I'd already figured out for myself, but there was that one insight I was missing about crits and how getting crit damage isn't worth getting Fear.
In sum: This was an intelligent event. It set a clear qualification bar so people don't have false hope of getting Malak while under geared (esp when it's hard to tell what "under geared" means for any event). It didn't start with pre-loaded TM or force you to reload the event dozens or hundreds of times waiting for RNG to land just right. The amount of time watching the intro cutscene was tiny compared to the amount of time actually playing the event . The puzzle aspect of it was probably solvable by me, even if I ultimately chose to watch an advice video to get over the last hurdle. It engaged me instead of enraging me. And at the end, I thought that I'd accomplished something.
This is everything I was hoping would come from future events after my frustration with 3P0 and (especially) Chewie.
Therefore, as I offer criticism when I think something was not designed well, I offer my heartfelt appreciation and thanks for this event which i believe was designed well.
Great job, EA/CG. Thank you for an event that I could play and enjoy.
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Replies
EDIT: I do agree with the comment below mine that preloaded TM is not a real issue in events. You just work past it.
yeah, the events are supposed to be difficult. Difficult isn't bad. Watching cutscenes over and over instead of actually playing the game is bad.
Or were you saying they didn't have pre-loaded TM? I was sure the Chewie event (at least) had pre-loaded TM. Am I out of my brain somehow? Has my memory stopped functioning? Time to see the neurologist, I guess.
Hey, if they banned personal gripes from here, there'd be almost no forum whatsoever!
What does watching cutscenes have to do with preloaded TM?
@MasterSeedy
The Chewie event does not have preloaded TM. They just have 300+ speed so unless you have some really fast bounty hunters they will go first and Han of course always goes first due to his ability. If you have god mods it is possible to out speed them.
Yeah, this is what I meant. They were just very fast and had their normal abilities which included Han's shoot first and chewi's assist happening before your team moved making it look like preloaded TM.
I think they were also under ROLO's leadership so gained TM when debuffed and had a bunch of extra crit chance that made the crit avoidance arrows some people were suggesting pointless. But I could be wrong about that.
Like I said, it doesn't change your argument that it was an animated gear/mod check rather than a clever event you had to use strategy in. And if you did go in with barely enough gear and have to retry multiple times - a skip button for the cut scene would have been lovely to have.
Thanks for the correction. I do prefer to get my facts right.
@EduardoCadav
Yeah, I didn't think we were at odds, I just thought for sure there was preloaded-TM involved. I guess it was just long enough ago I forgot how it worked.