Not necessarily true. There are consumables (like health packs, limited become devices, side kicks, etc.) that someone might spend trying to beat an alert and health stars lost for being defeated, both of which can cost money to replace and refill. Time also can burn away bonuses you might have up like EXP bonuses.
Consumables should never be considered as 100% insurance for beating content. EXP bonuses aren't insurance either.
But false difficulty isn't about the punishment it's about the difficulty. If Champions online is less punishing then a 2D scrollers is irreverent.
The punishment is every bit as relevant and significant. In a standard 2D sidescroller the punishment = GAME OVER = Start from the BEGINNING and losing ALL progress. There is no Game Over in CO. Players are given infinite tries to overcome the difficulty and it's not impossible to do so.
Freon, Devana, Draconis and even Psimon are not so bad. Rakshasa is annoying. Jack Fool and Baron will kill you until you figure it out.
With AoQ, one person who doesn't know what's going on can screw it up for everyone, and they don't even die as a result. If they don't know WHY AoQ's health bar keeps popping up to full, and they have their chat window closed and don't see all the people screaming BLOCK, it just looks like a bug or a completely broken power or something.
If I die because I didn't block Jack Fool, it's on me. That's reasonably fair.
If I lose because someone else didn't figure out they have to block AoQ, there's nothing I can do about it except no longer participate in AoQ alerts and complain on the forums. That's not particularly fair.
Eating an unblocked Lifedrain or Devour Essence from AoQ WILL kill you unless your character has a five-figure HP count that can take a hit like that or you have crazy self-healing of your own, more than regeneration alone can provide. Chances are that players who can build to do those things know how to play the game and aren't liabilities in a group like that.
Consumables should never be considered as 100% insurance for beating content. EXP bonuses aren't insurance either.
What I'm saying is these are potential loses, I'm refuting your claim that there's no losses besides time. Using and thus losing consumables are also a drain on resources. Maybe not a big deal if you waste a couple healing patches without defeating the boss, but a limited Backup! - Witchcraft for example could be a big drain for nothing.
The punishment is every bit as relevant and significant. In a standard 2D sidescroller the punishment = GAME OVER = Start from the BEGINNING and losing ALL progress. There is no Game Over in CO. Players are given infinite tries to overcome the difficulty and it's not impossible to do so.
No, what you're saying is that if there's no punishment you can't have false difficulty, that's not true. Nowhere in any of the definitions of fake difficulty mention penalties. What you are saying is that fake difficulty was worse in those games and with that I agree, but just because this encounter isn't as punishing as one of those early games doesn't mean this isn't fake difficulty.
From that same article I linked earlier:
"Fake Difficulty was prevalent in many older games, when developers were still learning about how to make fair challenges. When people realized that sometimes, the game was hard for all the wrong reasons, they decided to make it more of a fair challenge. The unfortunate side effect are that newer games seem easier in comparison merely because they're a fairer challenge. There are plenty of other reasons for this (Such as players being aware of some persistent forms of Fake Difficulty and making sure to avoid them) but that's another article entirely. It still does exist today, mind you."
Freon, Devana, Draconis and even Psimon are not so bad. Rakshasa is annoying. Jack Fool and Baron will kill you until you figure it out.
With AoQ, one person who doesn't know what's going on can screw it up for everyone, and they don't even die as a result. If they don't know WHY AoQ's health bar keeps popping up to full, and they have their chat window closed and don't see all the people screaming BLOCK, it just looks like a bug or a completely broken power or something.
If I die because I didn't block Jack Fool, it's on me. That's reasonably fair.
If I lose because someone else didn't figure out they have to block AoQ, there's nothing I can do about it except no longer participate in AoQ alerts and complain on the forums. That's not particularly fair.
If somebody's fighting a boss with the chat window closed, they're already a detriment to the team because they're refusing to communicate with their teammates. If that person won't learn on their own and refuses to be taught, file that under "People are jagoffs, and they occasionally queue for PUGs", and move on. I put players who know the tricks and refuse to explain them to inexperienced teammates in the same category.
To me, no boss mechanic that can be learned and mitigated by skill qualifies as false difficulty. I consider Gravitar's Force Cascade chain attack to be false difficulty because the fully-charged taps exploit the game's broken knock resistance as an I Win Button against squishies. If you can resist the first tap and block the second, good for you. That's small consolation to the other players who have the wrong AT/theme to superstat STR. (Draconis, with his tapped detonation and expulsion attacks, is a mild version of the same problem, but those attacks don't do nearly as much damage and he doesn't chain them.)
But I don't buy that Ao' needs to be nerfed* because Cryptic put an interesting healing spin on two rudimentary player skills, Block and Don't Stand In The Fire, and people would rather whine on the forums than teach their fellow players.
*: Standard "something isn't scaling right in bursts" disclaimer applies, as always.
Choose your enemies carefully, because they will define you / Make them interesting, because in some ways they will mind you
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
What I'm saying is these are potential loses, I'm refuting your claim that there's no losses besides time. Using and thus losing consumables are also a drain on resources. Maybe not a big deal if you waste a couple healing patches without defeating the boss, but a limited Backup! - Witchcraft for example could be a big drain for nothing.
If the heal consumable contributed to keeping the player on their feet as long as possible, then the consumable did its job.
A 1 hour EXP boost means you're granted a boost for exactly an hour regardless of just how much base EXP you were able to gain during that hour. The EXP boost did its job as well.
If the player chose to use Backup! - Witchcraft during the fight, then Witchcraft did her job by being in the fight regardless of victory or defeat.
If the player used a consumable during the fight and the consumable did its job, then it's not a loss. The player has already benefited from it during the fight.
No, what you're saying is that if there's no punishment you can't have false difficulty, that's not true. Nowhere in any of the definitions of fake difficulty mention penalties. What you are saying is that fake difficulty was worse in those games and with that I agree, but just because this encounter isn't as punishing as one of those early games doesn't mean this isn't fake difficulty.
I'm saying that the lack of any real punishment doesn't really justify the complaint.
Fair enough, any new player who does not have a full grasp of power mechanics in the game is going to get blindsided during their first fight with Ao. Nothing is preventing them from finding out exactly what it is about the fight that made it seemingly impossible to overcome though. If they did bother to do do some advice searching then they'd learn to block during lifedrains and move out of range from devour essence. They would learn to actually pay attention to these mechanics and not just blindly attack. If it's due to them being too low-levelled, then they should get a few more levels in to make themselves more proficient.
You could say that Ao represents fake difficulty. It does not however mean impossible or even unfair difficulty.
You want an example of unfair difficulty? Try getting yourself an instant fully-charged Cascade from Gravitar the second you get rez'ed without her even turning to face you while firing it off. That's unfair.
I would argue that Ao is more about false difficulty then anything else. You learn certain skills though out the game (like blocking stops attacks) and then this encounter changes those rules.
But its not fake difficulty its a Day at the Mall for higher levels. All thats needed is...
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
If somebody's fighting a boss with the chat window closed, they're already a detriment to the team because they're refusing to communicate with their teammates. If that person won't learn on their own and refuses to be taught, file that under "People are jagoffs, and they occasionally queue for PUGs", and move on. I put players who know the tricks and refuse to explain them to inexperienced teammates in the same category.
Well I don't completely disagree with that, but the Alert system isn't exactly inductive of conversation. I try to communicate in alerts but usually the most I get to say is "gg" because there's often not enough time to plan before the start.
To me, no boss mechanic that can be learned and mitigated by skill qualifies as false difficulty. I consider Gravitar's Force Cascade chain attack to be false difficulty because the fully-charged taps exploit the game's broken knock resistance as an I Win Button against squishies. If you can resist the first tap and block the second, good for you. That's small consolation to the other players who have the wrong AT/theme to superstat STR. (Draconis, with his tapped detonation and expulsion attacks, is a mild version of the same problem, but those attacks don't do nearly as much damage and he doesn't chain them.)
Okay, the problem then is that we don't have a wiki and the only way most people are going to figure out Ao is with a walkthough. I don't disagree with you about Gravitar, also it should be noted that false difficulty isn't always a bad thing, but my big beef with Ao is that his broken mechanic is very well hidden and more likely to cause frustration then Gravitar, who hits hard, but even if you bring a very squishy character that keeps getting killed, your team is still likely to beat her, even if you don't contribute a thing. Knock back is very much over used, but boss battles is the one place I don't mind it. Minions, even the two bar ones, shouldn't have knock back.
But I don't buy that Ao' needs to be nerfed* because Cryptic put an interesting healing spin on two rudimentary player skills, Block and Don't Stand In The Fire, and people would rather whine on the forums than teach their fellow players.
*: Standard "something isn't scaling right in bursts" disclaimer applies, as always.
I'm not looking for a nerf, I'm looking for a fix or a removal from the level 10 to 15 smash and burst alerts.
But its not fake difficulty its a Day at the Mall for higher levels. All thats needed is...
Well I haven't called for his removal from the grabs. Also I have no problem not queuing for this guy but the big thing that has me concerned is the effect on new players. Seems to me there's players out there that don't even know how to exit the map without the defeat or the victory, for those folks turning off the game is how they give up on Ao, and my worry is that if they need to close CO because they can't handle content intended for everyone level 10 or higher, they might never bother turning the game on again.
Well I haven't called for his removal from the grabs. Also I have no problem not queuing for this guy but the big thing that has me concerned is the effect on new players. Seems to me there's players out there that don't even know how to exit the map without the defeat or the victory, for those folks turning off the game is how they give up on Ao, and my worry is that if they need to close CO because they can't handle content intended for everyone level 10 or higher, they might never bother turning the game on again.
Heroes dont always win best they learn that early on.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Around the time Nocturnal was put into the game the shadowform bug was acknowledge, I can't find that dev post though and the dev tracker hasn't worked since, well I don't remember the last time it was used for anything.
This would be a good point for one of our CMs to acknowledge if it is or is not a bug at this point though.
If were talking about the same bug it was fixed. Im qued up to face old snake head the now with a character most definitely not OP. Ill watch out for any random HP boosts
I'm saying that the lack of any real punishment doesn't really justify the complaint.
I just want to quickly say that fake difficulty isn't always bad. If we had a better idea what this guy was doing through unique animations or something it might make him less frustrating
Fair enough, any new player who does not have a full grasp of power mechanics in the game is going to get blindsided during their first fight with Ao. Nothing is preventing them from finding out exactly what it is about the fight that made it seemingly impossible to overcome though. If they did bother to do do some advice searching then they'd learn to block during lifedrains and move out of range from devour essence. They would learn to actually pay attention to these mechanics and not just blindly attack. If it's due to them being too low-levelled, then they should get a few more levels in to make themselves more proficient.
But this is why it qualifies as false difficulty, you need to consult a walkthough, and at the moment there really isn't one. Blocking his attacks in inductive, people see the attacks and they defend themselves against them, but they have no way of knowing that this isn't enough against the devour essence. You need to search through posts about this guy to find his thing.
You could say that Ao represents fake difficulty. It does not however mean impossible or even unfair difficulty.
You want an example of unfair difficulty? Try getting yourself an instant fully-charged Cascade from Gravitar the second you get rez'ed without her even turning to face you while firing it off. That's unfair.
I agree to both points, I don't think Ao is impossible (I do quibble at your conclusion that he's not unfailr difficulty but we don't really have a definition of what that means) and I believe that Gravitar's blasts are very unfair. However with Gravitar you are signing up for a gated level 35+ alert so you're probably expecting something to that challenge level. With Ao there's really no indication that he's extra specially difficult.
ok team make up of 14, 15, 10, 34 and me at 24 no anti snake head powers in sight.
We lost but not because snake head was super healing but because we lost the 34 as soon as we got 2 the main fight we then lost probably our best DPS after one death not even a team wipe they just failed to block a devour essence which left me, a might user and a darkness, who then quit so a fail due bad team rather than snake head OP
If anything it seems to me the only problem with snake head (baring the reveal of any major bugs) is that he offers a challenge and people don't want a challenge.
Heroes dont always win best they learn that early on.
I don't mind losing, I queue for Gravitar a lot, but then I know Gravitar is a special kind of alert. Personally I think a new player running Kevin Poe for the first time is going to lose a lot, especially if they're using some of the archetypes.
ok team make up of 14, 15, 10, 34 and me at 24 no anti snake head powers in sight.
We lost but not because snake head was super healing but because we lost the 34 as soon as we got 2 the main fight we then lost probably our best DPS after one death not even a team wipe they just failed to block a devour essence which left me, a might user and a darkness, who then quit so a fail due bad team rather than snake head OP
If anything it seems to me the only problem with snake head (baring the reveal of any major bugs) is that he offers a challenge and people don't want a challenge.
I never found Ao' damage to be over powered, that was pretty much on level for what I expect from these Alert missions, but the healing is very frustrating and yes, I think you're more likely to fail this alert because of a bad team then anything else.
I don't mind losing, I queue for Gravitar a lot, but then I know Gravitar is a special kind of alert. Personally I think a new player running Kevin Poe for the first time is going to lose a lot, especially if they're using some of the archetypes.
This Is CO there is no real penalty for dying or losing an alert, I'm sure they will get over it.
Seriously CO is one of the easiest games I've ever played. The game needs the occasional noob trap.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
This Is CO there is no real penalty for dying or losing an alert, I'm sure they will get over it.
Seriously CO is one of the easiest games I've ever played. The game needs the occasional noob trap.
Well again, I'm not going to argue that CO isn't very easy at times, but when you're dealing with something like Ao, you're not really losing so much as giving up in the smash and bust alerts. That's not a good gaming experience in my opinion. In the grab at least you have the timer that gives you an actual defeat.
Well again, I'm not going to argue that CO isn't very easy at times, but when you're dealing with something like Ao, you're not really losing so much as giving up in the smash and bust alerts. That's not a good gaming experience in my opinion. In the grab at least you have the timer that gives you an actual defeat.
Heres the thing this discussion has only led to one conclusion . You either love Ao'Q or loath him in his current state. There is no in-between it seems.
Do nothing and one half of the playerbase is happy the other will be miffed. Make him easier the same happens. Cryptic has sorta shot themselves in the foot with this one :I
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
I will agree that a new player not knowing how to leave the instance is a problem. However, that's not Ao's fault.... mainly because this can happen to a new player in any alert. Say, for example... a Grab alert starts up with any other boss... for whatever reason a person leaves... then the other 3 leave cause they don't wanna 4 man it (this happens btw, I've seen it several times .-.). The last player is then left standing there... and if he doesn't know how to exit, then the only direction he can go is forward or offline. And all without Ao having stepped foot in the joint.
So that's not an Ao issue, he just makes it more apparent. That is once again the fault of our lack of a good comprehensive tutorial.
Heres the thing this discussion has only led to one conclusion . You either love Ao'Q or loath him in his current state. There is no in-between it seems.
Do nothing and one half of the playerbase is happy the other will be miffed. Make him easier the same happens. Cryptic has sorta shot themselves in the foot with this one :I
I think this is a fair conclusion. Maybe some neutral ground would be some sort of warning other then experience that this guy can be a greater then usual challenge? My concern isn't so much for myself as it is for the game and retaining new players. Folks that have been in the game from the start of the on Alert system already know the score.
I will agree that a new player not knowing how to leave the instance is a problem. However, that's not Ao's fault.... mainly because this can happen to a new player in any alert. Say, for example... a Grab alert starts up with any other boss... for whatever reason a person leaves... then the other 3 leave cause they don't wanna 4 man it (this happens btw, I've seen it several times .-.). The last player is then left standing there... and if he doesn't know how to exit, then the only direction he can go is forward or offline. And all without Ao having stepped foot in the joint.
So that's not an Ao issue, he just makes it more apparent. That is once again the fault of our lack of a good comprehensive tutorial.
I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying that it's not an Ao issue, not often do people just leave an alert mission early, but otherwise I do agree with you here.
Edit: I should add that I like your new sig, I'm not pleased with the forum rules at times, but you have made the best out of a bad situation.
Well, one thing that isn't very cogent w/ training newcomers is that there are quite a few boss abilities that are very significant but have no warning icon or dialogue box whatsoever- but you may be made to believe that they all somehow would if you were new. Ao's DE falls into this category, unfortunately, as do others (Viper's mines and summons, Mindslayer's breach attack, Baron's block, Psimon's block, etc). It is a maintain w/ no actual wind-up, so I can kinda understand why, but its def not helpful to those trying to figure out what's going on w/ his healing.
Well, the idea of watching a boss's animation to figure out what they're about to do isn't new...in fact, it's a lot more common than our "this shape means they're doing this" system.
Over in TERA, that's the only indication you had that the boss was winding up a "WTFONESHOTEVERYONEINCLUDINGTHETANK" attack....and you had like 0.75 seconds to figure that out and react before you were dooooomed.
Depending where the "new" player is coming from, they might actually be quicker to react to the attacks that only indicate themselves with an animation, because they're not used to the whole "Big red circle means move!" system that we have, that's actually fairly unique.
Yeah, I was mostly fine w/ it in Tera because that game had the sense to make most bosses HUUUGE, so the chance of spell effects obscuring animations wasn't a big issue.
Here, though (and w/ games like GW2), spell effects are a big problem if the devs want to try to get players to just watch animations. I mean, its bad enough bosses flinch from hits and dun have smooth anims, but for instance I can't use Upheaval on my earth toons vs. Baron or noone wiill be able to see if Baron's revving his block (I could easily troll teams w/o CC by doing this if I wanted to be a prick). Its just way too easy to obscure things in this game.
Well I haven't called for his removal from the grabs. Also I have no problem not queuing for this guy but the big thing that has me concerned is the effect on new players. Seems to me there's players out there that don't even know how to exit the map without the defeat or the victory, for those folks turning off the game is how they give up on Ao, and my worry is that if they need to close CO because they can't handle content intended for everyone level 10 or higher, they might never bother turning the game on again.
You actually did call for having him removed from Grabs, both directly and indirectly.
Yeah, I was mostly fine w/ it in Tera because that game had the sense to make most bosses HUUUGE, so the chance of spell effects obscuring animations wasn't a big issue.
Here, though (and w/ games like GW2), spell effects are a big problem if the devs want to try to get players to just watch animations. I mean, its bad enough bosses flinch from hits and dun have smooth anims, but for instance I can't use Upheaval on my earth toons vs. Baron or noone wiill be able to see if Baron's revving his block (I could easily troll teams w/o CC by doing this if I wanted to be a prick). Its just way too easy to obscure things in this game.
The Baron's block is a big issue. I wouldn't put it as high as my problems with Ao, but at least there we do see a little voodoo doll in front of him. Usually after the fact, possibly after an entire party wipe, but when it happens you feel cheated and angry but at least you know he used some special power.
Yeah, I was mostly fine w/ it in Tera because that game had the sense to make most bosses HUUUGE, so the chance of spell effects obscuring animations wasn't a big issue.
Here, though (and w/ games like GW2), spell effects are a big problem if the devs want to try to get players to just watch animations. I mean, its bad enough bosses flinch from hits and dun have smooth anims, but for instance I can't use Upheaval on my earth toons vs. Baron or noone wiill be able to see if Baron's revving his block (I could easily troll teams w/o CC by doing this if I wanted to be a prick). Its just way too easy to obscure things in this game.
So basically... Ao needs to be made into a giant :O Like Psimon phase 2 size.
And Baron's shield needs to become bigger and shinier so it can overpower a bunch of player effects.
And Gravitar needs to start looking where she's shooting.
Well, the idea of watching a boss's animation to figure out what they're about to do isn't new...in fact, it's a lot more common than our "this shape means they're doing this" system.
Over in TERA, that's the only indication you had that the boss was winding up a "WTFONESHOTEVERYONEINCLUDINGTHETANK" attack....and you had like 0.75 seconds to figure that out and react before you were dooooomed.
Depending where the "new" player is coming from, they might actually be quicker to react to the attacks that only indicate themselves with an animation, because they're not used to the whole "Big red circle means move!" system that we have, that's actually fairly unique.
Well we used to have tells before the on alert system, we still do for the cosmics, and I sort of like them. I don't think we need tells for every attack, but I wouldn't mind them for the big painful ones. Tells would probably make something like Ao' much more friendly and beatable. He'd still be a tough villain, especially on a timer, but it might remove a bit of that frustration.
So basically... Ao needs to be made into a giant :O Like Psimon phase 2 size.
And Baron's shield needs to become bigger and shinier so it can overpower a bunch of player effects.
And Gravitar needs to start looking where she's shooting.
Yeah, things like making the bosses models large wouldn't fit the lore of the game at all I'd imagine, but it'd def help ><
I would second Gravi facing the next cascade target- that'd make the fight more skill-based and less random (still an issue for non-tanky melee, but can't weed out all problems). You could at least get away w/ a squishier ranged toon if you had a decent block and knew how to use it (spell effect obscuring is still kinda an issue though).
Yeah, things like making the bosses models large wouldn't fit the lore of the game at all I'd imagine, but it'd def help ><
Ao isn't from the original champs lore, he was made by a player... so they could really do anything to him. Just say he ate some museum artifact and got huge.
Ao grows after he eats enough magical dirt from Hi-Pan's backyard garden; okay there we go, player-derived lore fixed XD
Well to be honest Both Ao and Madstone are Horrors from Qliphothic Hell
POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
Ao grows after he eats enough magical dirt from Hi-Pan's backyard garden; okay there we go, player-derived lore fixed XD
or heck... all those hit points he's absorbing from us have to be going somewhere right? Maybe every time he heals himself during the fight he gets bigger, so that his animations get progressively easier to identify.
I think that would classify as a fix. Might give people a clue that there was something going on. It certainly would be better then the no warning no tell fight we got going on right now.
oh oh, and on the flip side damaging him causes him to shrink back down... so if your damage is keeping up with his healing he remains the same size, and he only grows if the group is failing :O
And if he gets to a certain size he just kills everyone and kicks you out of the instance u3u
eh, you are brainstorming more creative ways than this small dev team is capable of managing rofl (though I'd love to see more dynamic fight mechanics like that).
Okay that was a bit mean/unfair to say of the new devs.. but the lingering issue even w/ model re-sizes is that spell effects still scale up w/ them, afaik. Its making the issues w/ the fights a bit more intuitive to deal with, but not really fixing an underlying obscuring problem, for instance.
I was actually thinking that it should do more damage. Make it a fast, nasty Lifedrain, very likely to kill the schlub who didn't block.
Pain is an effective teacher. This wouldn't make the encounter "easier" but it should remove a lot of ignorance, one way or the other. At the very least, it gets someone out of the way temporarily so someone who knows how to fight AoQ can have a turn at the aggro.
Comments
Consumables should never be considered as 100% insurance for beating content. EXP bonuses aren't insurance either.
The punishment is every bit as relevant and significant. In a standard 2D sidescroller the punishment = GAME OVER = Start from the BEGINNING and losing ALL progress. There is no Game Over in CO. Players are given infinite tries to overcome the difficulty and it's not impossible to do so.
Eating an unblocked Lifedrain or Devour Essence from AoQ WILL kill you unless your character has a five-figure HP count that can take a hit like that or you have crazy self-healing of your own, more than regeneration alone can provide. Chances are that players who can build to do those things know how to play the game and aren't liabilities in a group like that.
No, what you're saying is that if there's no punishment you can't have false difficulty, that's not true. Nowhere in any of the definitions of fake difficulty mention penalties. What you are saying is that fake difficulty was worse in those games and with that I agree, but just because this encounter isn't as punishing as one of those early games doesn't mean this isn't fake difficulty.
From that same article I linked earlier:
"Fake Difficulty was prevalent in many older games, when developers were still learning about how to make fair challenges. When people realized that sometimes, the game was hard for all the wrong reasons, they decided to make it more of a fair challenge. The unfortunate side effect are that newer games seem easier in comparison merely because they're a fairer challenge. There are plenty of other reasons for this (Such as players being aware of some persistent forms of Fake Difficulty and making sure to avoid them) but that's another article entirely. It still does exist today, mind you."
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
If somebody's fighting a boss with the chat window closed, they're already a detriment to the team because they're refusing to communicate with their teammates. If that person won't learn on their own and refuses to be taught, file that under "People are jagoffs, and they occasionally queue for PUGs", and move on. I put players who know the tricks and refuse to explain them to inexperienced teammates in the same category.
To me, no boss mechanic that can be learned and mitigated by skill qualifies as false difficulty. I consider Gravitar's Force Cascade chain attack to be false difficulty because the fully-charged taps exploit the game's broken knock resistance as an I Win Button against squishies. If you can resist the first tap and block the second, good for you. That's small consolation to the other players who have the wrong AT/theme to superstat STR. (Draconis, with his tapped detonation and expulsion attacks, is a mild version of the same problem, but those attacks don't do nearly as much damage and he doesn't chain them.)
But I don't buy that Ao' needs to be nerfed* because Cryptic put an interesting healing spin on two rudimentary player skills, Block and Don't Stand In The Fire, and people would rather whine on the forums than teach their fellow players.
*: Standard "something isn't scaling right in bursts" disclaimer applies, as always.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
If the heal consumable contributed to keeping the player on their feet as long as possible, then the consumable did its job.
A 1 hour EXP boost means you're granted a boost for exactly an hour regardless of just how much base EXP you were able to gain during that hour. The EXP boost did its job as well.
If the player chose to use Backup! - Witchcraft during the fight, then Witchcraft did her job by being in the fight regardless of victory or defeat.
If the player used a consumable during the fight and the consumable did its job, then it's not a loss. The player has already benefited from it during the fight.
I'm saying that the lack of any real punishment doesn't really justify the complaint.
Fair enough, any new player who does not have a full grasp of power mechanics in the game is going to get blindsided during their first fight with Ao. Nothing is preventing them from finding out exactly what it is about the fight that made it seemingly impossible to overcome though. If they did bother to do do some advice searching then they'd learn to block during lifedrains and move out of range from devour essence. They would learn to actually pay attention to these mechanics and not just blindly attack. If it's due to them being too low-levelled, then they should get a few more levels in to make themselves more proficient.
You could say that Ao represents fake difficulty. It does not however mean impossible or even unfair difficulty.
You want an example of unfair difficulty? Try getting yourself an instant fully-charged Cascade from Gravitar the second you get rez'ed without her even turning to face you while firing it off. That's unfair.
But its not fake difficulty its a Day at the Mall for higher levels. All thats needed is...
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Okay, the problem then is that we don't have a wiki and the only way most people are going to figure out Ao is with a walkthough. I don't disagree with you about Gravitar, also it should be noted that false difficulty isn't always a bad thing, but my big beef with Ao is that his broken mechanic is very well hidden and more likely to cause frustration then Gravitar, who hits hard, but even if you bring a very squishy character that keeps getting killed, your team is still likely to beat her, even if you don't contribute a thing. Knock back is very much over used, but boss battles is the one place I don't mind it. Minions, even the two bar ones, shouldn't have knock back.
I'm not looking for a nerf, I'm looking for a fix or a removal from the level 10 to 15 smash and burst alerts.
Hmmm the other day me a few pals ran an Ao'Q at level 15 for the challenge , so you would TRY and take that away from us?
Its one of the few tricky battles in CO. We need Ao'Q exactly how he is. He's CO's biggest badass.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Heroes dont always win best they learn that early on.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
If were talking about the same bug it was fixed. Im qued up to face old snake head the now with a character most definitely not OP. Ill watch out for any random HP boosts
But this is why it qualifies as false difficulty, you need to consult a walkthough, and at the moment there really isn't one. Blocking his attacks in inductive, people see the attacks and they defend themselves against them, but they have no way of knowing that this isn't enough against the devour essence. You need to search through posts about this guy to find his thing.
I agree to both points, I don't think Ao is impossible (I do quibble at your conclusion that he's not unfailr difficulty but we don't really have a definition of what that means) and I believe that Gravitar's blasts are very unfair. However with Gravitar you are signing up for a gated level 35+ alert so you're probably expecting something to that challenge level. With Ao there's really no indication that he's extra specially difficult.
We lost but not because snake head was super healing but because we lost the 34 as soon as we got 2 the main fight we then lost probably our best DPS after one death not even a team wipe they just failed to block a devour essence which left me, a might user and a darkness, who then quit so a fail due bad team rather than snake head OP
If anything it seems to me the only problem with snake head (baring the reveal of any major bugs) is that he offers a challenge and people don't want a challenge.
I don't mind losing, I queue for Gravitar a lot, but then I know Gravitar is a special kind of alert. Personally I think a new player running Kevin Poe for the first time is going to lose a lot, especially if they're using some of the archetypes.
Thank you for your input taintedmess
This Is CO there is no real penalty for dying or losing an alert, I'm sure they will get over it.
Seriously CO is one of the easiest games I've ever played. The game needs the occasional noob trap.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Heres the thing this discussion has only led to one conclusion . You either love Ao'Q or loath him in his current state. There is no in-between it seems.
Do nothing and one half of the playerbase is happy the other will be miffed. Make him easier the same happens. Cryptic has sorta shot themselves in the foot with this one :I
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
So that's not an Ao issue, he just makes it more apparent. That is once again the fault of our lack of a good comprehensive tutorial.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I think this is a fair conclusion. Maybe some neutral ground would be some sort of warning other then experience that this guy can be a greater then usual challenge? My concern isn't so much for myself as it is for the game and retaining new players. Folks that have been in the game from the start of the on Alert system already know the score.
Edit: I should add that I like your new sig, I'm not pleased with the forum rules at times, but you have made the best out of a bad situation.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Over in TERA, that's the only indication you had that the boss was winding up a "WTFONESHOTEVERYONEINCLUDINGTHETANK" attack....and you had like 0.75 seconds to figure that out and react before you were dooooomed.
Depending where the "new" player is coming from, they might actually be quicker to react to the attacks that only indicate themselves with an animation, because they're not used to the whole "Big red circle means move!" system that we have, that's actually fairly unique.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Here, though (and w/ games like GW2), spell effects are a big problem if the devs want to try to get players to just watch animations. I mean, its bad enough bosses flinch from hits and dun have smooth anims, but for instance I can't use Upheaval on my earth toons vs. Baron or noone wiill be able to see if Baron's revving his block (I could easily troll teams w/o CC by doing this if I wanted to be a prick). Its just way too easy to obscure things in this game.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
You actually did call for having him removed from Grabs, both directly and indirectly.
Here and here
and here.
The Baron's block is a big issue. I wouldn't put it as high as my problems with Ao, but at least there we do see a little voodoo doll in front of him. Usually after the fact, possibly after an entire party wipe, but when it happens you feel cheated and angry but at least you know he used some special power.
So basically... Ao needs to be made into a giant :O Like Psimon phase 2 size.
And Baron's shield needs to become bigger and shinier so it can overpower a bunch of player effects.
And Gravitar needs to start looking where she's shooting.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Well we used to have tells before the on alert system, we still do for the cosmics, and I sort of like them. I don't think we need tells for every attack, but I wouldn't mind them for the big painful ones. Tells would probably make something like Ao' much more friendly and beatable. He'd still be a tough villain, especially on a timer, but it might remove a bit of that frustration.
I would second Gravi facing the next cascade target- that'd make the fight more skill-based and less random (still an issue for non-tanky melee, but can't weed out all problems). You could at least get away w/ a squishier ranged toon if you had a decent block and knew how to use it (spell effect obscuring is still kinda an issue though).
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Ao isn't from the original champs lore, he was made by a player... so they could really do anything to him. Just say he ate some museum artifact and got huge.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Well to be honest Both Ao and Madstone are Horrors from Qliphothic Hell
or heck... all those hit points he's absorbing from us have to be going somewhere right? Maybe every time he heals himself during the fight he gets bigger, so that his animations get progressively easier to identify.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
And if he gets to a certain size he just kills everyone and kicks you out of the instance u3u
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Okay that was a bit mean/unfair to say of the new devs.. but the lingering issue even w/ model re-sizes is that spell effects still scale up w/ them, afaik. Its making the issues w/ the fights a bit more intuitive to deal with, but not really fixing an underlying obscuring problem, for instance.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
I was actually thinking that it should do more damage. Make it a fast, nasty Lifedrain, very likely to kill the schlub who didn't block.
Pain is an effective teacher. This wouldn't make the encounter "easier" but it should remove a lot of ignorance, one way or the other. At the very least, it gets someone out of the way temporarily so someone who knows how to fight AoQ can have a turn at the aggro.