With the release of Gravitar, and the issues people are having, I figured it may be beneficial to bring this into discussion. With enough attention, it might actually have an impact on what we see next.

Since alerts hit, only one has actually had a fun factor for me, and that's Red Winter. It had a story, an actual reason for taking place, no villain with massive amounts of hp (ie timesink) and aside from a borked reward, was even fun (for me) to play.

While lockouts and 1 shot kills are nothing new for me, it's obvious plenty of people aren't enjoying this trend.

So I'm asking the community, what have you enjoyed and why? What makes this instance or experience or whatever fun for you?

I'm weird. Itemized list:

1) I like SMASH alerts and the 'rushrushrush, gogogo' feeling they present. I think they're fine, though environmental concerns and individual villains (or in the terms of Nemesi*, entire categories of villains) need to be re-examined. The base thing is fine. Luv-luv, luvy-luv.

2) BURST could benefit from being shorter and having overall better story consideration (both in old ones and new ones). The end fights slog on forever, but the entire system in and of itself is fun. No complaints.

3) GRAB could use some light tweaking, but overall, I'm happy with the concept outside of rewards.

4) Rewards in general need to be re-examined for usefulness to characters across the board, not just at end-game.

5) Individual, custom alerts could really benefit from tighter storytelling and some better mechanics. I think this is something that can be improved as time goes on, however, but we should not apply the things we learn only in a forward-facing direction. Going back and streamlining/fixing/tweaking old Custom alerts should be on the list of things to do.

6) Better 'tells' and softer lockouts. Seriously. So serious. You don't even know how serious. Hard lockouts are silly and uninteresting. Soft lockouts can get the same thing done, add difficulty in and of themselves (if you have to fight your way back, or your team has to decide between 'DPS boss' or 'DPS new add to get teammate back' and the like), and contribute to the comic book 'feel' and story.

*(TANGENT: How do you spell that term, seriously. Not that I'll ever remember it, but still. I hate words like that. :| )

Nemeses or nemesi are accepted plural forms with the former being more common than the latter.

And thank you for inadvertently dredging up that scene from Inspector Gadget where Dr. Claw had a similar conundrum. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go find a good movie to watch to cleanse the palate.

Hooray! I got my answer, and in asking the question, inflicted collateral brain damage to someone else!

This is the best day ever. :D

Standard Alerts: fine for me. Some could be improved, but overall its OK. I wish they'd not be level 30 only. That sidekicking sucks.

Red Winter: good stuff.

Harmon, Gravitar: junk. It could be good, but contains 'now you die, coz I am uber developer and was ****ed as some bored leet dude said game is ezmode'.

Gravitar is the most fun I've had in this game in years. It's actually a challenge that requires more than 'lol I stand and DE tank with invuln'. Doing any more than maybe tweaking the timing on her yellow spheres or changing how many times she can force cascade a single target in a row would be a travesty. There's an actual risk to failure, which is something that people in champs aren't used to and you know what... they should start. I hope the devs don't knuckle under to people that want the lockouts removed or the difficulty reduced. I'm a casual player. I have no mods over level 5 for my characters I play and I spend more time RPing than I do actually playing content. If I can do it, then anyone can.

I'm getting sick of the whining (and that's what it is, whining). If you can't handle it, don't do it. Suck it up. Let people that want a challenge now and then have stuff like this. Almost all the other content in the game is yawningly easy and takes half a brainstem to complete. Or less.

I have never failed a Warlord alert. I play with people I know that can actually play the game and it's fun. It's not hard once you get what you're doing and it's fun. I'd like a bit more story in these alerts of course, but a couple of the specials do kind of have some of this and alerts really don't have time for a lot of story in most cases. The voice acting also leaves something to be desired. It is sometimes beyond bad and moving into painful.

All in all though, I don't mind the alerts. They're what they're meant to be, short, quick and to the point. As long as they aren't the only content we get from here on out... I don't mind seeing more of them. I'm always up for more variety in content we actually have.

I find it fun when I have some response time. Bam ------> Dead isn't really what I'd call a great time. One shot kills is something this game has used for a long time, I am not sure who would think that is a good time, but some of the devs must as they certainly like to use it as "challenge".

As for Alerts, everything but being knocked around by the mobs in Grab and Harmon Labs and that broken piece of crap Gravitar.

I even like Harmon Labs, and I enjoy the boss' difficulty, hell I'm even one of the people who suggested the lock out. The knocks are blockable if you are fast enough, the napalm seems to be lag friendly and doesn't burn you after you step out of it, damage is enough to threaten tanks but not instagib them, in general, you can die if you don't watch yourself, but if you do you'll succeed with close calls at worst. This isn't bad, right?

You'd think, but you know what? I'm not one of those people who can't see things the way they are, and I know these things are far more difficult and frustrating to the average player and in the long run will likely only hurt the game. I got in a group of said average players, and ended up being the HEALER just because everyone in the group didn't know how to add some meat to their build, even the freeforms, minus the low level tank we had. I could have tanked, but he wanted to tank, and so I actually ended up crit healing people to full with just Rebuke because their CON was so low.

I'm not going to put my enjoyment over these people's, despite what some people seem to (incorrectly) think my intentions are. In several of the runs I watched as the squishies were instagibbed faster than I could even target them (partially because it's instakill to them, partially because the screwed up UI) by Warlord's napalm, because for some reason he decided to switch targets from the Tank after knocking him back, fire off the napalm and then swap directly back to the Tank. I sat there and thought to myself "Fun? This person has been trying to get this one warlord item, that hasn't been dropping for them after more than half a dozen runs, and they die any time Warlord decides to target them at all."

People don't like dieing instantly and with little recourse, and everyone has a threshold. Once they get their pretty costume pieces, they'll probably never do this alert again, and for all I know they might just quit out of frustration before that. We're finally getting some sort of regular content, and this is the form it comes in, if you want to talk about ruining fun factor...

This. Red Winter was well done.

This (especially point 6).

Definitely this.

Honestly, I find none of the "alerts" fun at all. I personally find them to be the antithesis of everything I consider "fun" in a game of this nature. What I consider fun are:

1) New areas to explore
2) New stories to experience

Really, that's it in a nutshell. The "issues" and such like Serpent Lantern and the like catered to 2, but the only thing that will cater to them both are new zones. Please notice that I never said "group with others". That's because I find grouping and the entire "gogogo" and rush forward attitude to be the very thing that kills my interest. I'm a relaxed, "take it at your own pace" player.

- Polecat