test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
Game balance and difficulty discussion thread
Archived Post
Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
In this thread we discuss the latest balance and difficulty tweaks.
This includes:
This includes:
- Sidekicking
- Critter and boss difficulty
- Difficulty of instanced content
Post edited by Archived Post on
0
Comments
MORE HP IS NOT MORE DIFFICULT, JUST TEDIOUS!
There it's said, out in the open, I hope you won't forget it.
Really, like I told Crush: bashing on a mob, for 2 hours, but never go below 50% of my own health?
That's no challenge, that's boring.
Now, Clarence, despite being a downright p.i.t.a. was a lot more fun than others.
The question is: Could you please implement mechanics that would emphasize on STRATEGY?
Example Clarence, with lower HP, very frequent huge KB attacks, BUT that can be interrupted.
Or a boss that would stop attacking every once in a while to put up a healing shield.
(A bit like Therakiel, but with a breakable guard that heals it if we don't)
Anything that would require using brains rather than spamming attacks?
That, to me would be challenge.
Now for the levels currently in-game:
Where?
Needs to be brought to the current Elite level
Buff it, and buff it hard.
(Please consider my very first point to do so... ^_^)
Thank you.
PS: Number-crunchers will be more than happy to provide actual figures, I'm not good with those. :-p.
- Hard: +25% non-shtick damage, +50% shtick damage, 10% crit, 50% intensity (overall dps gain~40%), +25% hit points, +10% damage resistance, 10% dodge, 50% avoidance (overall toughness +42%). +100% all drops.
- Very Hard: +50% non-shtick damage, +100% shtick damage, 20% crit, 50% intensity, +25% shtick recharge rate, +50% hit points, +20% damage resistance, 20% dodge, 50% avoidance. +200% all drops.
- Elite: +100% non-shtick damage, +200% shtick damage, 30% crit, 50% intensity, +50% shtick recharge rate, +100% hit points, +30% damage resistance, 30% dodge, 50% avoidance, self-heal (triggered on drop below 50%) of 50% of health (60s CD) for MV and below, SV gets heal as an MV every 30s, LV every 15s, +400% all drops.
The heals and increased damage and frequency of shticks make tactics somewhat more important, the drop modifier makes higher difficulty worthwhile without actually locking people out of content if they can't complete it on higher difficulty.Or even a mid range freeform.
At level 40 MVs 50.000 HPs, SVs 100.000 HPs
Triple damage, so that Unleashed rage can hit for 24.000
That should be enough for a decent challenge. Or bring other powersets for NPCs en par with Might
Generally, if it's a harder difficulty, you don't want your players entering "auto mode". You always want them to keep paying attention. Make sure bosses reward them for paying attention and punish them for being reckless. If they enter in an automatic cycle of exchanging blows until something dies, you're doing it wrong.
Also, difficulty-exclusive rooms, fights or attacks would be great. For example, if the players play NemCon on elite, aside from the global Elite buffs, add an extra fight right before Shadow Destroyer. Since it's a gladiator arena, he may summon a gladiator champion of his for the heroes to fight, while he observes from his throne. Only after the heroes are done with that boss, does Shadow D. step down to fight personally. Maybe he also has an exclusive attack on elite to make things even more interesting? Or maybe you modify him so that the Shadow Gladiators he summons spawn two at a time?
tl;dr: good difficulty means making the player always pay attention and never going into auto mode, and higher difficulties shouldn't be buffs only.
In regards to sidekicking: if someone is SKing UP, add a greater Primary/secondary stat boost for every 3 levels of difference between the Champion and Sidekick. This would be to compensate for the difference in number of powers.
^This^
-applauds enthusiastically-
General difficulty and balancing
Instead of having a difficulty system that only affects instances by buffing the critters in said instance perhaps we can have a difficulty system that instead places a debuff on the player at higher difficulties. This debuff would be constant (can't be removed through player powers) and would be present regardless of whether or not the player is in an instance or not. In this way, every individual player can adjust the difficulty of their experience as they see fit. This also removes the "issue" of certain drops being gated behind difficulty (always a hot topic between the haves and have-nots). Anyone that wants to farm on normal could, anyone that prefers crushing difficulty could, when people team or PUG with characters of varying efficiency they can each adjust how difficult the game is to them. No one would be left out or have grounds to complain because each would be in full control of their own experience.
On consoles, Gears of War uses a system similar to this and it works well. One player might be on easy which means they take less damage and deal more. The other might be on the hardest setting which basically amounts to their attacks doing less damage and only a few hits are needed to kill them. While we don't need an easy setting, hard, very hard and elite could simply place different debuffs on the player that result in the player taking progressively more damage and dealing less damage as the difficulty is scaled up.
I'm not getting into specifc numbers but consider something like the numbers Panta suggested and adapt those to this method (debuffing the player rather than buffing the mobs)
Special tactics
Put in more mechanics that make it beneficial for players to approach some situations a certain way. Some examples:
~Brickbusters shred our defense so when dealing with them it's generally advisable to drop them ASAP, preferably before they debuff us. Expand this, or something similar, to other mobs.
~Have more of the villians, Supervillians, etc. buffing the lower minions that are near them. This gives the player the decision of either going after the powered up minions before dealing with big bad, or taking the big bad out immediately and mopping up the little bads later and/or using crowd control to hold the little bads or the big bag while the other is dealt with.
~Enemy healing. I've mentioned this before but few enemies heal which makes all encounters a war of attrition. We just need to outlast them. Giving mobs the ability to heal (decently) would change this. Preferably have a special critter in some mobs that handles the healing. In my ideal scenario mobs would be 4 critter units consisting of two out of three special type (a buffer (leader), a healer critter, and a debuffer like brickbusters) and two lesser critters to receive the buff and healing and/or exploit the debuff. The buffer couldn't buff himself and the healer couldn't heal himself but each could affect each other and the lesser minions or debuffer. This setup potentially grants the need for some tactics and thought when approaching encounters.
Only you can prevent nuking
Grant the special critters mentioned above HIGH AOE resistance so they can't be nuked every time with the lesser critters all in one go. The player has to make a choice of opening up with an AOE to try and get the lesser minions out quick and then focus on the specials or the player has to use a single target approach to pick one of the two specials and try to take them out first. In this way the player cannot just LOLightning Storm the entire spawn every single time. They have to choose and prioritize targets.
It's a long time before the next Winter Event, but in case we have more events with bosses soon, I'd like to use Clarence as an example on how to make event stuff more fun. (For the record, I despised the Clarence fight.)
So, the event consists of gathering various trinkets, and Clarence was "only" one part of the event. He had this insane KB and insane amount of health. He wasn't difficult "save for the time limit", but that was the wrong kind of time limit IMO. Beating him didn't depend on individual performance as much as the number of people present. (Or rather, after a certain number of people, it didn't matter how each individual was performing DPS wise.)
We had all these joke items that could have been used to help people in the fight. Clarence was all about hugs, right? Why not have people use the mistletoe on him for a debuff that stacked to an X amount. The more debuffs he has, the less damage he makes or defense he has. However, if it surpasses an X amount, he'd start to overflow with love and do a PBAoE for massive damage, wiping his stacks. Maybe he'd have a countdown before doing that, like 3 seconds? That way, people wouldn't over-debuff him. On the other hand, you could ostracize him with snowballs and remove one buff per snowball hit, so people would have means to keep his love in check. What would you achieve by this? People would pay attention to the fight, be involved in some way regardless of power level, skill or role AND you'd use items from the event to help you in the main fight. People wouldn't go "Ugh, another snowball/mistletoe" after getting the perks.
So yea, I know it's much easier said than done, but instead of thinking solely in numbers, think of ways to keep people on their toes. That's not to say there shouldn't be giant, hulking monstrosities that can hit you hard, but not every boss should amount to that.
Ex:
Assume that a Boss now have a "Hold" power and a power with "nail to the ground"
Normal (R1): Hold will be use every 2 minutes, Nail will be use every 1 minutes
R2: Hold -- 1m 40s Nail -- 55s
R3: Hold -- 1m 20s Nail -- 50s
...
...
The much hated (by me) Baron Cimittierre/Semi detached whatever is name is fight in Apocalypse Aversion.
This guy is well hard esp on Elite, not his health so much as his special attacks. A rooky team can find itself wiped over and over and even a veteran team (which also happened to have the best tank/player I've ever seen) can get it's botty kicked. After we'd got ourselves stupidly killed the tank remained and nearly took him but of course the enrage timer went off and he overwhelmed her. It was an epic effort and we duly recovered went in again and did it properly this time. For example rather than getting in close with my Sword Cyclone I hung back and did some SMGing so that I didn't trip over the death sigils of instakill and could better guage when he was doing special attacks.
But none of us were total amateurs it's just that you need to read this guy very carefully so that you can see the one shot coming. I've also memorably used an electrical toon against him (no CC on that one), I had to be soooooo cagey about using my lightning arc in case he flashed up his dratted doll defence. Sigh I had a when in doubt block thing going if he did anything that even looked like a special attack. Well I did survive without killing myself on his shield or getting one shotted but yeah I had to be really careful.
Now I may hate the fight but I do respect the Baron a lot, I believe that he offers a very tough challenge and perhaps he should be a benchmark for legendary villains of all types. Legendaries are big, they are supposed to be taken on by teams and not ever ever ever to be soloable.
Summary
The Baron fight in Apocalypse Aversion should be a benchmark for all legendary encounters e.g. VERY HIGH RISK.
If you do that people will be less inclined to whine about lack of challenge.
Brick Bosses need to go away. Too many bosses in this game are Defiant Bricks that instantly spam Enrage, grow 2 feet and do huge knocks.
This is not "difficult", its annoying. And highly uncreative. You have how many power sets in the game and a good sampling of the bosses through the game are Bricks.
What this means is that extra hit points, beyond a certain point, have no effect on difficulty. They just make the fight take longer.
Ehm .. Brick Bosses are the only bosses that really are a little challenging, and i would say in the normal questing
there are not enough of them. Also there are now Brick MVs i can remember besides of Neanderthal in the Desert.
So .. nope .. we need much more Brick Bosses, or bring other Bosses to be en par with them. The only quests
where i constantly meet them are Nemesis Quests .. and they are the only Bosses where i constantly block.
Hard hold followed by instant death attack. (I'm looking at you, Teleiosaur hatchling and Shadow Destroyer.)
NOTHING ruins my otherwise good run more than THIS happening. Teleiosaur hatchling stuns everyone and then uses venom breath, nuking the team before they can break free, even WITH Active Offenses being used.
Mash block all you want, you can't even get your block ready while being held.
I've had Shadow Destroyer one-shot my squishier characters after the tank failed in his duty, but something weird happens where Shadow Destroyer targets me and starts charging an attack, then IMMEDIATELY refocuses back on the tank, but when the attack fires, lol, 10k hit, bye bye Soldier. It happens so fast I don't even realize he's still aiming for me.
These are BS boss mechanics that are mere artificial challenge. Not fun. I've also been instakilled by the Baron with that out-of-nowhere-squishy-melting attack and that put me off for the rest of the run.
Boss fights that take place on a more epic scale WITHOUT resorting to oneshotting the squishies is my ideal. No matter the situation, you should be able to do SOMETHING to avoid getting murdered.
The deflect-block only deflects the damage you do (twice) .. so if it does crazy damage, its just because you
do crazy damage. Maintains for example are nuch safer to use than charged powers.
On a side note I'm skeptical about the sidekicking down bit. I don't really understand how dropping 10 levels cuts my max hp in half.
Support every point of this post
Maybe they are safer but consider - my electric doing roughly 1.1 k per tic with Lightning Arc has maybe 4.8 k health. I need to block within 3 seconds which yeah is quite a long time in combat but I wouldn't say I felt safe.
The Baron is a good model because he can threaten any member of the team! Just because you have a tank does not mean that you can be careless. He seems particularly hard on healers who either get swarmed by serviteurs or one shotted coz they didn't have enough situational awareness.
As regards to the dratted Might based foes of decency - I seem to be building with them in mind these days. My squishies usually have some kind of ranged maintain that can be fired on the move. Hmm come to that so do my defensive passive builds on the whole! I have been building with muscleheads in mind for quite a while now - there do seem to be a lot of em!
On the mob front the worst thing I got recently (well within 6 months) was Bunker Buster with a Dex/Int ranged TK build. I may have built poorly or just not quite made the adjustment to Elite all the way. Hey I was having such fun one shotting Manipulators in Normal instanced lairs with my TKL then suddenly bam! Ouch and I do mean ouch, the minions were infernals I believe and they slaughtered my poor toon to the point where I decided to back out and come back in on Normal. I never got near any of the big baddies. I lost all stars I'm not sure it was fun but someone might wanna try and analyse why it was so rough on me and learn what makes a nasty bunch of mobs.
The build or something very much like it.
Build by championBuilder 0.4.1
Download this Build here.
Superstats:
Level 6: Super Dexterity
Level 13: Super Intelligence
Powers:
Level 1: Kinetic Darts -- Incisive Wit
Level 1: Telekinetic Assault -- Rank 2, Rank 3
Level 6: Telekinetic Burst
Level 6: Flight
Level 8: Id Mastery -- Rank 2, Rank 3
Level 11: Telekinetic Shield -- Rank 2, Telekinetic Reinforcement
Level 14: Ego Reverberation
Level 17: Telekinetic Lance -- Rank 2, Rank 3
Level 20: Conviction -- Rank 2, Rank 3
Level 23: Support Drones -- Rank 2, Rank 3
Level 26: Mental Discipline -- Rank 2, Rank 3
Level 29: Ego Storm -- Rank 2, Malevolent Manifestation
Level 32: Masterful Dodge
Level 35: Ego Surge -- Rank 2
Level 35: Teleport
Level 38: Resurrection Serum
...this^
Some alternatives to increased mob HP (note: Mobs don't necessarily need to have ALL of those, but one or two per mob might be nice):
Exactly, you constantly block because Knock resistance in this game is horrible and the knocks themselves tend to do double damage due mainly to the falls that you can't do anything to mitgate.
So one lucky knock that doesn't get blocked and most characters don't survive to get up from the fall because all their health is gone and their knocked or hit before they get up to be able to block again.
Brick bosses aren't DIFFICULT they are ANNOYING. Keep Defiance, but get rid of Engrage, or keep Enrage but get rid of Defiance. But having bosses who are already stronger than normal characters, with higher health having the ability to wipe me out in something I can't avoid (fall damage) is not a challenging fight, its "block, widdle down a health a little, block, widdle down health a little, block"
And HOPE that my block mechanic doesn't fail and let the huge knock through
which happens all the damn time.
I know that when I fight the Irradiates it takes at least a little thought if there's one of those Atomic Reanimators around.
Oh, and stop it with the cheesy enemy powers that basically make your passive or other defenses useless - I sure love fighting Viper w/ a regen char since they basically shut them down.
Have enemies run, take cover, call for backup a lot more than they do currently. How about if a soldier could run to a nearby arms locker and throw on an armored vest or grab a rocket launcher for additional attacks?
What if a member of the New Shadows would cannibalize a nearby comrade to regain health and gain a boost in power?
A member of Argent could chug a super serum for temporary boosts.
Anything that adds variety and at least a semblance of strategy would be welcome - not just higher numbers and a drawn out fight...
Co has a fantastic and highly creative community, and its costume creator and power selection are stupendous, yet the variety of enemies and encounters is painfully bland. Dipping into the creative talents of the players for inspiration should be the first recourse toward making fights both challenging and fun.
And go figure, all three of them have some mechanic that can wipe a player out in one hit if you aren't paying attention: Eyebeams of death Hold/Apocalypse spin, Suicide bomb Disable/Voodoo Reflection block, and the 20,000+ damage dragon's wrath that can easily kill a squishy even through block, respectively.
I want more of this, the only times I've ever died and felt like i was actually defeated in this game, have been from those bosses. Every other time has just been the result of some BS air juggling stun spam that i never even had a chance to counter because blocking it decided to not work.
Most of all, the AI patterns of the mobs needs to be improved dramatically, they need to work together and support each other, have support mobs, tank mobs, and dps mobs. And they all need to be acting in a way to complement each others' powers, unlike now where every mob just starts shooting energy builders at you and occasionally does a schtick attack.
Not to mention CCing a mob that can use an active defensive while CC'd doesn't solve the issue either. A lot of things will have to change about the CC system, active defenses and the like for anything like that to work.
As for alert/boss as they stand on PTS:
1. Bosses need to move around more. Running alerts has made the boss fighting experience in this game more pronounced. When you fight most bosses, they just stand there and spam attacks on whoever has the most agro. The fights look more like dog piles than a struggle between super powered entity's.
This is bad because:
a. Its boring to just form a circle around the boss and spam attacks until it dies. You may be able to create at least the illusion of more dynamic combat if we are constantly in motion while fighting a boss.
b. Bosses seem to tend to mindlessly stand in sigils or whatever pbaoe powers players have and take unnecessary damage.
c. It sucks to melee dps and just stand by the boss and spam ST attacks with impunity while the boss ignores you. Bosses should move around to keep melee players paying attention and repositioning.
d. When bosses don't move around enough they are more vulnerable to melee pets.
Suggestion:
1.Bosses should move around the map constantly, preferably to friendly npc minions (all villains should make full use of their minions)
2.Give bosses travel powers. These guys have super powers after all, how did they get to the alert scene in the 1st place? Nailed to the ground is under used in pve and this would help fix that. And by travel powers i don't just mean "fly" but also I have never seen an NPC with acrobatics or super speed. what about teleport? COX had teleporting villains and it was fun. There are too many travel powers in this game for the NPCs not to be useing them and also seeing an NPC with a cool travel power may entice players to go to the C-store and buy them for them selves.
2. Shtick powers need a serious buff in most cases.
a. all Shtick should punish players severely for not blocking. Especially on higher difficulty.
Examples:
Jack Fool:
I usually don't fight him because i don't do demon flame often but i have come up against him in alerts. I was fighting him and all of a sudden i dropped dead in one shot. I died twice before i remember that he has that "random sharp object" (AKA dragons wrath) power that needs to be blocked. I was doing enough dps to grab Jacks attention briefly (just long enough to use his Shtick and one shot me) and realized that i should pay close attention to see when he targets me so that i know when i may need to block.
Jack fool isnt the toughest boss, but atleast his Shtick power is good enough that i take notice of it and make sure i block it.
Psiman:
His Shtick is a missed opportunity because he has the dreaded "Ego Storm" but he never fully maintains it and thus cuts its hold potential and damage short. Even worse, he does not have the "malevolent manifestation" advantage would help make him more dangerous. I was talking to some one while facing Psimon in an alert about this and he agreed and went further and stated that he "wasent even sure what kind of attacks Psimon was using". If players aren't even sure what kind of attacks a named boss like Psimon are using then something is wrong.
Further more, when you get Psimon below a certain amount of HP he changes into that "psychic hulk form" which looks cool but what does it actually do? What actual combat purpose does this 2nd form have? As far as i can tell, it does nothing and is only a cosmetic change. When Psiman or any other NPC changes forms, it should have an impact on the course of the fight. I suggest that Psimans 2nd form should act as some form of active defense or offense, something to put players on the definitive when he does it.
Other alert bosses:
Its like they don't have a Shtick at all. I have spent plenty of time testing alerts and most of the bosses Shtick powers go unnoticed and unblocked. Is it even fair to call it a Shtick power if i doesn't even stand out enough for me to notice it?
TLDR:
Bosses need to move around constantly and the fight should never end where it began.
Shtick powers should be buffed to the point where they are famous among players and require blocking or a change of strategy.
At least you have to block .. since they also do a ton of damage else. Unleashed Rage of a normal SV can
hit you for over 8000 if you don't block.
Also they need both .. Enrage to do big damage .. and Defiance so that they are not dead in 2 seconds.
Just take a look at "Leet Haxxors" .. and compare Diode to Dr. Ohm. Dr. Ohm as "Endboss" is a totally laugh
against Diode.
Also you can of course avoid fall damage .. just use a flight travel power.
There is however still time to react. If you however just charged a full Gigabolt and he decided to block
then you're instand dead
Example, on normal an Argent Agent just has his normal minor taser attack, on Hard he has his Taser attack and Web grenade, on Elite he has Taser, Web Grenade, and a Take Down debuff that increases damage that target takes for a few seconds.
Hell if you REALLY want to be nice, break up mobs into three types so you can tell at a glance who does what and prioritize who you focus on based on your role like:
Raw damage / health:
Grunt / Guard / Enforcer
Buff / Debuff / Heal / Mez:
Underling / Saboteur / Overlord
Gimmicky (aka pet summoner / assassins)
Henchmen / Operative / Villain
Doing that would also let you tweak how many of each type appear based on difficulty / team size so you could have lots of simple damage with few teammates or low difficulty but elite in 5 man might have an even spread of all three.
Aside from that it also would let you tweak things by villain groups to make them more unique, like Argent might have a high amount of the second class and focus on debuffing heroes while Viper has a little of everything but doesn't really stand out in anything either while Demon might have alot of gimmicky types specializing in pet summons and Lemurians might have lots of Healers and Buffers with a bit of pet summoners on the side.
It'd make villain groups more memorable then just oh they use fire damage, that one uses ego damage with only the occasional 'oh I hate those demon chest beams' that we have now.
Like people have already said - don't just increase health. More health doesn't equal more challenge, it equals more time spent fighting henchmen and if I have to stand around having a slap-fight with henchmen then I really don't feel very superheroic.
Don't just give all the bosses defiance, enrage, and some kind of magical secret version of unleashed rage that does double damage and throws me into space. My giant growth might characters are the only time I ever feel truly "strong" in this game and then I get to fight enemies who are just like me, but inherently stronger and for whatever reason my ten-foot-tall dragon version of the The Hulk gets knocked around like a little schoolgirl. (That sounded more suggestive than I intended.)
I want more enemy types, and I want them to work better together. Playing each other's strengths, adapting to the player's strategies, and calling for backup more often. Here are just some ideas I've had from my own game designs:
I guess I'm not the best person to ask about balance, since I always play on normal and don't really feel like moving up if all it means is my attacks are going to be dodged more often. (Kind of like how my brother decided to play Dead Space on easy instead of normal after I told him all it meant was you got less ammo. As he put it, "Eh. I don't like a challenge.")
I'm really more for making combat more engaging, and a different experience every time. Maybe there could be a kind of random enemy spawning algorithm where, say, instead of just a static group of three VIPER Soldiers being in an area, there could be three soldiers, two soldiers and a healer, two soldiers and a leader, two technicians and a raider, etc. That way you could use little divide-and-conquer strategies and pick your battles, instead of being like "press 1, hold 2, 3 3 3, advance repeat".
Well balanced encounters only become possible when all characters get roughly the same challenge out of them.
- Aggro Radius
- Cooldowns
- Crit rate/severity
- Damage
- Damage Resistance
- Dodge/Avoidance
- Hit Points
- Running/Calling for Help (maybe; it's implemented in outdoor zones, dunno how doable it is indoors).
- Spawn Type/Sizes
Yeah, it would be nice if they put in some of the smarter stuff, but it's not really a realistic request.This post from another thread seemed to be in the spirit of what is being said here.
One quick solution would be to rank up the spawn size and/or type of enemies you encounter. On elite, make henchmen into villains, villains into master villains, and so on. Adjusting enemies to have more or fewer and more varied powers depending upon their rank the difficulty setting would be a step in the right direction.
Simply upping the damage and what not of enemies really only leads to pushing people more and more towards optimized builds and methodical gameplay. If your character is not capable of dealing with the whole room you just pull the opponents one group at a time, no big deal.
What the game really needs is more situations where you need to employ a correct response to something an enemy does to effectively defeat them.
For example, in Mass Effect you'll every so often have a big enemy running towards your cover, and the only way to take him down in time is to shoot the shields out with an anti shield weapon or zap it with overload, use an anti armor weapon to crack the armor or melt it off with incinerate, and then CC the enemy when his health is exposed by using a biotic ability or special shot...
That doesn't require that enemy to be smart, but it rewards players for correctly identifying the danger they were in, and employing the right steps to neutralize it.
If we really want Champions to be more challenging we need more enemies that work like that, where you can identify that they are doing something dangerous, take steps to avoid it, and then be able to win the fight if you can consistently pull that off.
Sure, it's a bit harder to do that in an MMO, since you can't easily include a constant gameplay challenge like aiming your shots, but the basic idea behind interesting enemy encounters is still ultimately the same. In order to feel like you're actually outfighting the enemies they need to be able to do something that really hurts you if you don't respond correctly.
Who cares, nobody in their right mind uses PFF anyway...
Oh I'm sorry, didn't see you stand there.
Most times I've seen a character in a game or movie use a personal force field, they have some means of getting to cover or concentrating to get ti to recharge. What I'd like to see is for PFF's regen to have some tie to your energy level - as you build energy, it either recovers its HP at an increased rate, or it places a secondary equilibrium marker on your energy bar, and getting your energy passed that point causes that energy to be shunted toward your PFF.
Enforcers would be a logical choice for the this treatment, this would mean that my lighter blows are not getting through their battle armor so I have to power up punch em so to speak.
Stupid man for example doesn't deal with tough foes with hundred hands but instead charges up the ole haymaker in order to win.
Well it seems feasible and would at least gimme an opportunity to make full use of the charge ups I cart around (me and my single blade obsession huh?). Elite PVE play is so much about maintains it would be nice to have something that would make the charge ups worth taking.
Of course that thread sank without trace.
I still find it odd that Critters in City of Heroes have better AI than Champions.
Put down a damage patch--NPC tries to get out.
Some mobs perfer ranged--NPC tries to get out of melee.
You have placed a Debuff on the mob and it can't effectively attack you---NPC flees (HAPPENS TOO MUCH) and tries to get rid of the debuff.
Stuff like this could be a great start.
There should be critters powers more noticeable and that make us choose what to do first.
You should identified what is a role of each class of critter (henchmen,villain and Super-Villain) and it should be consistent between faction (because if it's become too much complicated that's not CO anymore).
The only thing that should change is what they do.
Several idea
- for Henchmen:
henchmen individually or in small number shouldn't be a bother (charge a force blast and boom defeated).
But what could be nice is for them to have a self damage buff that go higher the more of them stand in close to each other.
- for Villain
light/medium team buff/protection (so not personal) or Player debuff
light/medium self heal or protection
- Master-villain
medium/strong team buff/protection or Player debuff
medium/strong self heal or protection
=> the strengh of what they do could then be buffed by difficulty level
(example: serpent lantern in elite spwn of 1 brickbuster and 2 Henchmen: brickbuster debuff your damage resistance and got a pretty strong self heal on top of that the 2 henchmen when staying in close range from each other have both a 10% damage buff)
AI need some work too, I'm sorry but having an henchmen come to close range to shoot feel dumb.
You can actually just wait in one place for them to come around you by themself.
Also Some of them could use a block making a block breaking power desirable for PVE as well
When the ranged NPC trying to stay on range was made it was reverse because melee character were frustrated yes.
But that was made before the melee change, since then melee can snare and lunge which shouldn't make it a problem anymore.
Since especially the Qularr bugs but also some Vipers can spread out, i think its mostly more intended.
If all mobs would do that .. in the end i would just pick Lead Tempest for them.
Henchmen should be paper period they should never pose a challenge to any hero in the game whether its an at or freeform. double or triple the number of henchmen in any given mob and leave them at the previous live stats. let them be paper and let the players really feel like heroes.
Villains should be easy, not paper but just easy.
Master villains should be a challange but should never do anything more than slow you down .
The difficulty in this game should be based around bosses and the slider, the flat difficulty rating should be very simple and easy for people. Its a super hero game, and if superman starts dropping to a bank robber there is something wrong.
the difficlty slider should have a far larger impact on the game. the current elite is not elite enough for most end game players. double what elite is now on live and that should be a good place to start, in fact double the difficulty bonusers on all things except for normal over what they are on live.
The main focus of difficulty should really be felt with the bosses in the game. fighting through the henchmen should be a time consuming annoyance, never the focus of any content. Make the bosses a challenge double the base difficulty on all bosses in the game, i know some people may not like this as you will get the but i cant solo x boss anymore but at the same time its an mmo people get some friends.
not everyone will agree with what ive posted but meh its a comic book mmo make it feel like a comic book mmo damnit.
Now with this i can agree. Making Bosses harder is ok as a challenge at the end of a dungeon, and much less
then just the annoying aspect to make fights against all trash so hard that henchmen have a 50% to kill you,
or that it simply takes 10 times longer to kill a mob, or whatever else the devs think would be great.
Indeed, for example I'm not agreeing with you mostly because your idea of a comic book superhero seem to be narrowed down to a Superman type only.