Hi! Heard on the News can be a wall for sure. It's a ticky mission that asks for a lot from players.

If you're just looking to express frustration, all good, but if you're keen for some tips, we'd be happy to offer some here or in our Discord community[discord.gg].

Personally, I find Mercurial's teamup with Facet can be very helpful in this mission!

I always wonder - besides from this specific mission - if devs of a turn-based game ever played other games of the genre and heard to the community feedback.

In most recently released TBS games the most critics present are
- timers (missions or global)
- too high difficulty (even on low difficulty settings)
- no customable characters (if it´s a games around a few guys)
- too high learning curve
- too few explanations of the game mechanics

I mean, if I would develop a new game, the first thing to do would be to scout on similar games and they´re flaws - why didn´t they sell good, what´s the critics of the community or even press.

Seems also in this game, devs didn´t do that - a pitty.

I beat it today live on stream with all optional objectives done with the recommended team. Turns out to be easier than I thought.

Eventually you get to the point where you can farm the mission for hero challenges because the game stops spawning new androids.

It was a lot of fun.

I was able to beat it after many, many tries, but did'nt get any of the optional objectives. I'll look for steams of it in the future so I can see what I'm messing up.

Originally posted by csander9:

I was able to beat it after many, many tries, but did'nt get any of the optional objectives. I'll look for steams of it in the future so I can see what I'm messing up.

Going to export and post my vod on youtube later today or tomorrow so if you or anybody else want to see how I managed to tackle it - it could be helpful.

The trick was really to let the chick die and then take everything out and revive her.
Only the bots seem to come out but the androids stopped coming after a wave or two.

Oh and a Shout out to Cheeseness for hanging out with us during Stream.

I just played this mission and in my opinion it's terrible. The enemies just keep on spawning. I'm spending all my actions to pick up my koed heroes and steering the story character around the map. For me this is no fun and just frustrating.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197979710375/screenshot/2462985210709413288/

I can only recommend to undecided buyers to watch some gameplay, especially of later missions, before buying this game.

Didn't get there yet, but out of curiosity - is this happening on lower difficulty as well?

I played it on normal for the first time earlier today, finished it will all optional objectives on my first attempt (though I did load a quicksave once).

I can see how it'd hit a failure spiral once you're needing to spend actions to up downed heroes, but it seemed very possible to stay on top of the spawns with everyone up. Tempest in particular could clear a lot at a time, when the enemy was dense enough he could chain lightning and ult in order to clear an arbitrarily large number of bots. The Tachyon+Facet special move that laid a line of crystals was very important at one point to block LOSes and force them to all move to a narrow gap and bunch up.

For me the hardest part of that mission was throwing enough people off the building. It was really annoying that it didn't count if a damage+push move killed them with the damage so I had a really hard time getting points out of the little robots and the big ones were often far enough away it was a pain to get to them without getting shot.

Originally posted by csander9:

I was able to beat it after many, many tries, but did'nt get any of the optional objectives. I'll look for steams of it in the future so I can see what I'm messing up.

Here's my VOD for the Heard it on the news:

https://youtu.be/W0oNUPF7nLk?si=Qv7By5uSHvUeG3VN

Oooh, we're all sharing how we beat this one?

I had a two part strategy - run Mercurial up to the right canon with Dash, while I had the rest of the team teleported to right mid bit right in front of them with Rebound. It wasn't perfect, but it put us in a decent position to take down the middle cannon and open up the field. I ultimately had both cannons down while extracting Ignis, leaving only the far left one up - didn't need that part of the field.

Originally posted by GeneralGonzo:

I always wonder - besides from this specific mission - if devs of a turn-based game ever played other games of the genre and heard to the community feedback.

In most recently released TBS games the most critics present are
- timers (missions or global)
- too high difficulty (even on low difficulty settings)
- no customable characters (if it´s a games around a few guys)
- too high learning curve
- too few explanations of the game mechanics

I mean, if I would develop a new game, the first thing to do would be to scout on similar games and they´re flaws - why didn´t they sell good, what´s the critics of the community or even press.

Seems also in this game, devs didn´t do that - a pitty.

Couldn't agree more. The game tricks you thinking you should try to achieve the secondary objectives on the first try. It seems your rather supposed to just accomplish the mission on the first try and then come back later with a stronger crew. Homecoming (Lightning visiting his family) I could juuust finish on the first try. Later with Kinetic some thinking was still required but did "All in one" first try

Regarding this mission, I think kicking the enemies of ledges and using crystals are key here. Try to kill the spider dispensers with medium priority. The assisted teleport helps other characters move around.
Facet's crystal spawn used on the turrets blocks them

Yeah, that's mission is tough. Mostly because damn androids keep dropping whenever they please, screwing attempts on positioning.

You need Facet to get trough first half of mission, because he can block lines of sight with crystals, apply shields and tank normal shots.
Mercurial is key killer here, pushing everything from ledges.
Rebound is cruical for extra mobility.
Weatherwane seriously help with killing and can jump by himself.

If anyone is having trouble with this, it might be the hero line up. I ran it on hard and it's not much of a struggle to get the optional achievements. Mostly just leave Mindstrike at home, pay attention to where enemies can attack, and go for knocking them over the edge. Weathervane assists Rebound and Facet with the knockback, and Mercurial does perfectly fine by herself. She can also go through the turret zones without being shot (unless she ends her turn there).

Try to get the achievements in the first phase of the fight. The spawns stop pretty quickly, and the exploding bots aren't exactly a threat (because of all your knockback). Then as long as everyone is near the south side for part 2, it's fairly easy. More knocking people out of the ring, putting up some barriers, and having Rebound move people with teleport.

I've finished this mission on normal, but without the optional. Hardest part was actually Phase 2, specifically after I got the super out, because my team was all over the place trying to keep the androids busy so that the super can escape.

Originally posted by Hans Dampf:

Couldn't agree more. The game tricks you thinking you should try to achieve the secondary objectives on the first try.

Tricking players definitely wasn't our intention! Is there a different framing or presentation that you think would give the impression that the the optional objectives are OK to not chase the first time around?