Nightmare "Event"

colonelmarik · January 2018

So, a new event appeared on the launcher! I was excited!

I entered the game and logged into my main character, the Canadian Shield. Modelled on Superman, the Shield is by far my most durable, most powerful character. I thought he would be able to give me a sense of how the event plays, while maintaining a bit of safety.

Saw a gang of demon critters standing around near the Shield's "home" in Downtown, so I went in and attacked.

Almost instantly, my health dropped from around 11k to around 200. This is my MOST DURABLE character, and he was almost instantly wiped out in the FIRST SECOND. I hit Unbreakable and turtled long enough to get some health back and started unloading on them. I hit them with everything I had for more than a full minute, and did NOTHING to any of them. They were impervious to my stuns, impervious to my knocks, impervious to my damage.

There was literally no way to fight with them. This is my MOST POWERFUL character, and he can't damage them AT ALL, and is only able to survive through extraordinary defensive measures. NONE of my other characters will even have a CHANCE of surviving even a second against these foes.

I mean, what's the point of designing foes like this? How are people supposed to play this kind of content? Granted, there are those who have extravagant damage output who might be able to affect them, but lower level characters or characters not equipped with bleeding edge gear aren't going to be able to do ANYTHING to these things.

It seems to me to be a complete waste of time.

So, my excitement is gone, replaced with frustration and disappointment.

knedd · January 2018

It's a team event. Minimum of 5 characters as far as I can tell from reading the notes.

pantagruel01 · January 2018

With the exception of the giant skeleton monsters, everything else can be soloed with difficulty, but is designed for a team.

jonsills · January 2018

I wouldn't mind so much, except that they pop up all over the city - including areas where I'm trying to level. Icewind is on hold for now, because it's awfully hard to disarm those crates of weapons Poe handed out after booby-trapping them when the same area plays host to a bunch of Nightmare creatures. That's a level 11 mission, after all.

kallethen · January 2018

Yeah, these being so difficult wouldn't be so much of an issue if it wasn't in the way of trying to do regular missions in MC. Especially if you are a newbie level.

lezard21 · January 2018

Hey look, it's this thread again \o/

colonelmarik · January 2018

lezard21 said:
Hey look, it's this thread again \o/

Maybe it wouldn't keep coming up if they made the enemies more reasonable?

lezard21 · January 2018

I will bring up the response I bring up everytime this pops up.

Events are meant to bring the community together under a common objective, be it Bloodmoon hero train farming, or NI chicken fighting, or Winter Teddy bear murdering.

For solo gameplay, you have the entire rest of the game up all time. Events are meant to break from that monotony and have people doing some new things like teaming up.

And even then, there are multiple ways that you can solo the dailies, be it using crowd control powers, using a tanky toon, or using a vehicle among others.

sterga · January 2018

Yeah, the mobs are super annoying now. Or have been since the Warzone update.

Hey, maybe the majority of the game being so solo friendly and then suddenly not being solo friendly isn't a great idea. You can point the finger at players all you want, but it's still a design flaw. There is kind of this massive disconnect between... well between content made by every new dev team.

There is also a disparity between different level 40s. I have a melee dps that solos the Warzone with the same HP as the OP. And can solo this crap too. Which is probably harder (more annoying) than the Warzone. For a temporary event. Harder than the zone most people can't even be assed to ever step foot in. Maaaayyybbbeee that's not a great idea.

jonsills · January 2018

lezard21 said:
I will bring up the response I bring up everytime this pops up.

Events are meant to bring the community together under a common objective, be it Bloodmoon hero train farming, or NI chicken fighting, or Winter Teddy bear murdering.

For solo gameplay, you have the entire rest of the game up all time. Events are meant to break from that monotony and have people doing some new things like teaming up.

And even then, there are multiple ways that you can solo the dailies, be it using crowd control powers, using a tanky toon, or using a vehicle among others.

Yeah, that's nice.

When you're lvl 10 or 11, you're not trying to solo the dailies. Hell, you're not trying to do the dailies. But sometimes what you're doing is just your regular missions - which doesn't work very well when there's a bloody Nightmare Generator sitting right where you need to be.

It's annoying enough when you're trying to get into the bad guys' bar during the Nighthawk event, with the thugs just popping up right there by the door, but at least they're just human. All they do is shoot at you and punch you. They don't suck down your soul just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Look, some folks love fighting high-powered demons in groups. I get it, I do. But there's a Qliphothic Warzone these days for that kind of thing. Why do they have to be in the low-level areas of MC, too?

colonelmarik · January 2018

See, the thing to remember is most grouping happens in instances.

If I were designing the event, I would make these open world foes TOUGH, but not utterly invulnerable, and strong, but not overpowering. Max level characters should be able to handle them without TOO much difficulty, and lower levels should be ABLE to defeat them, but find them challenging. They would NOT be considered group content, though grouping might be necessary for lower levels to handle them easily.

Defeating the open world foes would create an instance for heroes to group up and engage in. THOSE would be the group content, with harder hitting, tougher foes. Bloodmoon does this sort of thing quite well. The zombies are not a real threat to high levels, but can seriously challenge lower levels. The zombie heroes are tough and strong, but not overwhelming. Even lower levels CAN defeat them, if they fight carefully and intelligently, and have some patience. On defeating them, the gateway opens and the player can go into an instance (of course, the Bloodmoon instances aren't really any harder than the open world content, but that's easily addressed).

THIS is nonsense, it essentially excludes anyone not utterly twinked out. Even if I did join a group, my character could not do any damage, and could not withstand them. That means I would be completely useless to the group, unable to tank, and unable to contribute any damage.

I think it's badly designed.

colonelmarik · January 2018

jonsills said:

lezard21 said:
I will bring up the response I bring up everytime this pops up.

Events are meant to bring the community together under a common objective, be it Bloodmoon hero train farming, or NI chicken fighting, or Winter Teddy bear murdering.

For solo gameplay, you have the entire rest of the game up all time. Events are meant to break from that monotony and have people doing some new things like teaming up.

And even then, there are multiple ways that you can solo the dailies, be it using crowd control powers, using a tanky toon, or using a vehicle among others.
Yeah, that's nice.

When you're lvl 10 or 11, you're not trying to solo the dailies. Hell, you're not trying to do the dailies. But sometimes what you're doing is just your regular missions - which doesn't work very well when there's a bloody Nightmare Generator sitting right where you need to be.

It's annoying enough when you're trying to get into the bad guys' bar during the Nighthawk event, with the thugs just popping up right there by the door, but at least they're just human. All they do is shoot at you and punch you. They don't suck down your soul just because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Look, some folks love fighting high-powered demons in groups. I get it, I do. But there's a Qliphothic Warzone these days for that kind of thing. Why do they have to be in the low-level areas of MC, too?

I agree, but I don't think it would be a good idea to get RID of these enemies. I don't want them gone, I want EVERYONE to be able to participate, whether solo or not, whatever their level is.

flyingfinn · January 2018

I like it.
Atleast something gives a bit of a fight and actual 'OH *HIT!' without going in the QRWZ.
You actually have to use bit of strategy (and fast feet sometimes...) to defeat the whole portal mob. Can't go in just punching bad guys like most of the stuff in the game.
Ofcourse not all of my alts can do this, but i'm, glad that couple of them can.
And all you have to find is a grey portal, jump on your hover bike and smack dat up, no need to bother with the mobs, since you get same mobs against the Big Bird and you have to team up against the Big Bird.
And all the rest of the different Event mobs are booooooring as heck to fight against....

markhawkman · January 2018

colonelmarik said:
So, a new event appeared on the launcher! I was excited!

I entered the game and logged into my main character, the Canadian Shield. Modelled on Superman, the Shield is by far my most durable, most powerful character. I thought he would be able to give me a sense of how the event plays, while maintaining a bit of safety.

Saw a gang of demon critters standing around near the Shield's "home" in Downtown, so I went in and attacked.

Almost instantly, my health dropped from around 11k to around 200. This is my MOST DURABLE character, and he was almost instantly wiped out in the FIRST SECOND. I hit Unbreakable and turtled long enough to get some health back and started unloading on them. I hit them with everything I had for more than a full minute, and did NOTHING to any of them. They were impervious to my stuns, impervious to my knocks, impervious to my damage.

So, have you ever done Cosmic fights on that character? How did that go?

Also, the Qliphothic horrors use layered defenses when fighting as a group. IE one of them can shield the group, another can heal, etc...

jaazaniah1 · January 2018

I've no idea what the OPs most durable character is. Maybe post it under Builds for feedback? Level 40 with end game gear and R7 mods? My Lightning Reflexes tank was able to solo the dailies with no problems at all.

I do feel the pain of those trying to level/do missions that find it impossible atm. I've wondered for a while how difficult it would be to have Zone 1 always be a normal zone while all other zones are event zones.

aesica · January 2018

lezard21 wrote: »

Events are meant to bring the community together under a common objective, be it Bloodmoon hero train farming, or NI chicken fighting, or Winter Teddy bear murdering.

For solo gameplay, you have the entire rest of the game up all time. Events are meant to break from that monotony and have people doing some new things like teaming up.

You're only partially right. From a game operation perspective, events are generally meant to:

1) Give players new things to do. That's your monotony breaker.
2) Keep players active in the game or lure others back by teasing them with limited-time rewards.

Hero trains or chicken/bear beatdowns are only a symptom of our current dev team's inclination toward pitting an entire zone of players against huge HP sacks. Events in other games usually contain a better mix of solo and team elements instead of CO's "team or die" proto-MMO nonsense.

lezard21 wrote: »

And even then, there are multiple ways that you can solo the dailies, be it using crowd control powers, using a tanky toon, or using a vehicle among others.

New players generally don't have access to the resources required to pull this off. All crap like this really does to them is get in the way of their leveling process in throwing murder machine packs in amidst their newbie mobs.

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

I do feel the pain of those trying to level/do missions that find it impossible atm. I've wondered for a while how difficult it would be to have Zone 1 always be a normal zone while all other zones are event zones.

Honestly, they should probably just tone down the mobs if they're going to have them in MC where newbies are questing. There's no reason the dailies need to be team-based. When people want to team, they can kill bonerchickens.

The fact that these "team" dailies, along with those in the warzone, are being soloed by people should make it pretty obvious that people would rather solo them anyway.

roughbearmattach · January 2018

colonelmarik said:

I agree, but I don't think it would be a good idea to get RID of these enemies. I don't want them gone, I want EVERYONE to be able to participate, whether solo or not, whatever their level is.

Howdy.

I think that you may have encountered "higher level" mobs.

In Champs, when mobs have the skull icon, called Scary Tech, their attacks and defenses scale a bit with the level of the attacker . . . HOWEVER, the base stats of these mobs depends on the level of the hero who triggered their spawn point.

What can happen is a level 40 flies by, the mobs appear, base scaled to that level, and then you happen by, trying to fight them. If your character is not close to that level, you might have no chance to win such a fight.

Conversely, you occasionally run into scary tech mobs that are super easy to defeat, because they were triggered by very low level heroes.

darqaura2 · January 2018

lezard21 said:
I will bring up the response I bring up everytime this pops up.

Events are meant to bring the community together under a common objective, be it Bloodmoon hero train farming, or NI chicken fighting, or Winter Teddy bear murdering.

For solo gameplay, you have the entire rest of the game up all time. Events are meant to break from that monotony and have people doing some new things like teaming up.

And even then, there are multiple ways that you can solo the dailies, be it using crowd control powers, using a tanky toon, or using a vehicle among others.

Except for the problem that there is nearly ALWAYS some event going on in Champions Online. So the novelty of them have worn thin. If they were a more uncommon occurrence I could see how they could be seen as special. With how we're basically always in event mode, yeah not so much. To me these events are nothing more special than alerts or dailies since they're always there.

avianos · January 2018

lezard21 wrote: »

For solo gameplay, you have the entire rest of the game up all time. Events are meant to break from that monotony and have people doing some new things like teaming up.

But I want to escape the monotony of having constantly to TEAM UP with other people! ಠ_ಠ

omnilord · January 2018

Level 40 toon. Lightning Reflexes. Justice Primaries. Onslaught Secondaries. Rank 4 or above mods. Can pretty much tank all alert bosses even in hybrid, and even with just under 10K health.

Dashed by some of these 'fair and challenging' enemies Cryptic's so well known for with Acrobatics 3 on my way to a chicken fight. Was quickly yank ganked twice to the middle of the mob and before I could even do the kip up, I was blasted by about 37 of their magic balls of **** you.

And I CAN solo the dailies, and STILL find these to be just too much.

Also, the 10 seconds or whatever it takes to shut down the orbs in the chicken fight is a bit much. During one fight it took me the better part of 40 seconds to shut one down because I was being looked at funny at the last possible second. Part of my strategy for the chicken fight should not be chanting "Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. "

Unknown · January 2018

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pantagruel01 · January 2018

The way Scary Monster tech (and, related, sidekicking) works could do with updating, as it was designed in 2009 for the way characters worked back then, and the difference between a level 15 and a level 40 today is much larger than it was in 2009.

magpieuk2014 · January 2018

Nah, they'd only make it so that level 40 challenged the mostest bestest level 40s and nuked everyone else. Leave well alone.

Events are meant to break from that monotony and have people doing some new things like teaming up.

There are loads of players who don't want to do the small group thing at all, loads of players who like to group but only with people they know and trust, etc, so it's a bit difficult. The best way of making the event work is to make most intro missions soloable, the Portals (the difficult bit) appear in consistent locations fairly regularly so that small teams will form without calling out in zone (like Bloodmoon), and then the big Chicken can be attended to as and when. As it stands the Portal daily is an overcooked mess (harder than anything in the QWZ) and gets ignored unless people can get on that ol' mission train.

beezeeze · January 2018

Yeah the portal daily is a bit much and you pretty much have to be in a team or bring your best of the best if you want any chance to be able to solo it, not many other missions in the game are like that so it is no surprise to me that it is a bit jarring to people. For the most part I just skip those dailies and play follow the chicken.

bluhman · January 2018

how to solo portals:
1. have invuln
2. have more than one self-heal ability
3. have either one spammable PBAoE, a really strong melee attack, or a powerful 100-ft ranged attack (if you have the last you probably don't need either invuln or self-heals).
4. If you have all three of the above wade into the portal mob and just faceroll everything until the portal is dead (and possibly everything else). If not use your 100-ft attack to snipe the portal while a bunch of big ugly gimpsuited degenerate eyeless chimpanzee-spawn knockback-happy stun-phyllic wedgie-ridden smelly butt-hugging edgy sadistic masochistic kinky dumb stupid weird Horrors stare you to from a distance.

There's other ways to deal with them solo but that's possibly the most direct way to deal with it if you don't have the gear to go all-in on super-control builds.

pantagruel01 · January 2018

It's important to remember that all of the portal summons respawn as long as the portal itself isn't dead, so there's no real point to taking them out until the portal is down. There's only one critter in each swarm that's cc immune.

It would be interesting to drop an endbringer's grasp on a portal, corrupt should work on the weaker stuff.

bluhman · January 2018

oh yeah, that point also is pertinent since the portals can just spawn another four armed nerd-monster with all its recharges reset, so if you're unlucky you can end up getting sent flying across the map twice as often if the portal just decides to generate another one of those.

I'd be less salty about the mobs in this event being 'hard' if the method of creating 'hardness' wasn't just having all the enemies spam knocks and holds constantly, that you, you know, have to be affected by in order to gain reliable resistance to. I sure like flying around uncontrollably and mashing F to pretend like I won't take enough damage first to break myself out of a hold, it's a good thing I don't have to do anything involving paying attention to what enemies provide buffs to the team or interrupting key attacks from specific enemies, now isn't it? I guess that's what the portal is for this encounter but I'm kind of busy being sent through the tilt-a-whirl knockback karnival hosted by the horrors here in order to concern myself with that.

oh also the gross imbalance this approach has in respect to different build types. So yeah stuff like:

High-hold-duration controller with large AoE hold
Casually built Invuln Tank
extremely well-built tank
100-ft ranged DPS

can in fact solo the portals, but anything else has a snowball's chance in hell of it. Seriously, Invuln is stupid in these fights. A 392 CON defiance-tank melts against horror portals and then immediately became super-viable once I decided to try out Invuln on that setup. Real great balance there.

aesica · January 2018

bluhman wrote: »

I'd be less salty about the mobs in this event being 'hard' if the method of creating 'hardness' wasn't just having all the enemies spam knocks and holds constantly, that you, you know, have to be affected by in order to gain reliable resistance to. I sure like flying around uncontrollably and mashing F to pretend like I won't take enough damage first to break myself out of a hold

Yeah, this game overall heavily abuses loss-of-control garbage as a way to fake-spike the difficulty of things, along with annoying 1-shot mechanics and oversized HP pools on bosses. I really wish they'd find more interesting ways to challenge players but that's the world we live in I guess!

bluhman wrote: »

Seriously, Invuln is stupid in these fights. A 392 CON defiance-tank melts against horror portals and then immediately became super-viable once I decided to try out Invuln on that setup. Real great balance there.

In fairness, it's pretty hard to balance a flat mitigation mechanic against a percent-based-damaged-reduction mechanic. That's the problem with defensive mechanics in general--there's not a lot of room for variety without one pulling ahead of the rest. In our case, that's Invuln for lots of weak hits and defiance for slower, bigger hits.

Unknown · January 2018

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legendarylycan · January 2018

bluhman wrote: »

If not use your 100-ft attack to snipe the portal while a bunch of big ugly gimpsuited degenerate eyeless chimpanzee-spawn knockback-happy stun-phyllic wedgie-ridden smelly butt-hugging edgy sadistic masochistic kinky dumb stupid weird Horrors stare you to from a distance.

that doesn't work anymore; i tried it with sniper rifle last time the event came around, and the SECOND the shot hit the portal, the mobs all made a beeline straight for me

bluhman · January 2018

aesica said:

In fairness, it's pretty hard to balance a flat mitigation mechanic against a percent-based-damaged-reduction mechanic. That's the problem with defensive mechanics in general--there's not a lot of room for variety without one pulling ahead of the rest. In our case, that's Invuln for lots of weak hits and defiance for slower, bigger hits.

honestly I was just shocked at the massive difference it made. I guess it makes sense, considering it's damage from 5+ different enemies, as well as the fact some of them use poison, but usually Invuln and Defiance are a lot closer in general performance than they are in this specific encounter.

shadowfang240 said:

that doesn't work anymore; i tried it with sniper rifle last time the event came around, and the SECOND the shot hit the portal, the mobs all made a beeline straight for me

All the times I remember doing it I usually was also perched on top of a tall building or object. Forgot to add that. Their aggro/mobility range might've been improved but I'm sure the navigation they use to climb tall stuff hasn't been improved. Of course I haven't tried using the sniper strat this year yet.

beezeeze · January 2018

I cheesed the portal mobs by attacking them on top of a really tall building and jumping down, they followed but for some reason couldn't get back to the top of the building in time for me to destroy the portal.(hybrid beastial build with regen)

aesica said:

Yeah, this game overall heavily abuses loss-of-control garbage as a way to fake-spike the difficulty of things, along with annoying 1-shot mechanics and oversized HP pools on bosses. I really wish they'd find more interesting ways to challenge players but that's the world we live in I guess!

I don't mind 1-shot mechanics because they are always avoidable in some way...move or block or whatever, and if you don't than it is only your fault.

jonsills · January 2018

Yeah, Beez, that's all great - for a 40. Not everyone in the game is running a 40. Nor are they all expertly-built. And some of us would love to just ignore the event and get on with our game, but that's not really possible when there are Scary-Monster-Tech mobs lying directly across the only path.

beezeeze · January 2018

oh for sure jon that is annoying...join the chicken farm, as a lowbie you'll get like 3 bars xp for every chicken down..as long as you do enough damage to get credit.

I've got my newest character from lvl 12 to lvl 20 doing this event.

colonelmarik · January 2018

A point to remember is that we're all playing SUPERHEROES, even at L1. We're playing this game to feel SUPER, and it really doesn't feel all that super to be unable to take on the bad guys... to be unable to even contribute to defeating them... to have to run away all the time... to get taken out in one shot...

Like I said, I don't want these guys to be taken away entirely. I just want to see them made more reasonably, so ANYONE can take them on with SOME chance of success. Again, L40s shouldn't have TOO much trouble with them, and L10-20 should be able to take them on with patience and care, but considerable difficulty.

Again though, that's just my take on it.

wingedkagouti · January 2018

colonelmarik said:
A point to remember is that we're all playing SUPERHEROES, even at L1.

You generally don't see a hero that has just started out try to take on eg. a Herald of Galactus without lots of backup. Heck, even several of the most experienced heroes won't go for a one-on-one fight against truly powerful foes unless there's no other choice (like being the last hero standing or similar situations).

A level 20 hero still doesn't have all their powers/gadgets/whatever, you should not expect them to be able to do as much as more established heroes.

biffsmackwell · January 2018

Used to be that the game didn't really relate game level to hero power level. Our tutorial was literally us helping the world's premier superhero team repel an alien invasion because they were overwhelmed. Sure we don't have all our powers, but that's just a limitation that's necessary because it's a game. In most superhero comics, day-one heroes can do amazing stuff; they don't have to wait until issue 40 before they start taking on world-threatening stuff.

Now, sure, that doesn't mean they should be able to take on absolutely everything thrown at them all the time, but as a general rule I don't think that "canonically" a low level superhero should be treated as a low power superhero.

legendarylycan · January 2018

level in a superhero game shouldn't even be related to your power level at all...it should be how well you're known throughout the world - your notoriety, basically

markhawkman · January 2018

colonelmarik said:
A point to remember is that we're all playing SUPERHEROES, even at L1. We're playing this game to feel SUPER, and it really doesn't feel all that super to be unable to take on the bad guys... to be unable to even contribute to defeating them... to have to run away all the time... to get taken out in one shot...

Like I said, I don't want these guys to be taken away entirely. I just want to see them made more reasonably, so ANYONE can take them on with SOME chance of success. Again, L40s shouldn't have TOO much trouble with them, and L10-20 should be able to take them on with patience and care, but considerable difficulty.

Again though, that's just my take on it.

Today I saw a Level 12 character(who had been sidekicked to 40) get to play tank in a chicken fight.... and NOT get one-shotted because they were smart about it. Yeah this person actually stood toe-to-toe with the chicken long enough to be useful as a meat shield in the fight.

aesica · January 2018

wingedkagouti wrote: »

A level 20 hero still doesn't have all their powers/gadgets/whatever, you should not expect them to be able to do as much as more established heroes.

A level 1 Sylar has only just started to telekinetically saw off the tops of people's heads so he can study their brains and learn their abilities.

beezeeze wrote: »

I don't mind 1-shot mechanics because they are always avoidable in some way...move or block or whatever, and if you don't than it is only your fault.

Usually. Tentacle Clarence doesn't do a very good job at making some of his attacks very avoidable.

sterga · January 2018

The devs want you all to know your place in the game: On the floor with the rest of the dirt.

Mob AI is really stupid still. The Warzone mobs are thwarted by blocking for the first minute of the fight. That's kind of the whole strategy to mobs. They have no parameters to their special abilities, no conditions, just blowing everything as soon as it comes off cooldown. Click the portal, run in, block. MD if you need to. Eat all the orbs... Yup...

pantagruel01 · January 2018

markhawkman said:
Today I saw a Level 12 character(who had been sidekicked to 40) get to play tank in a chicken fight.... and NOT get one-shotted because they were smart about it. Yeah this person actually stood toe-to-toe with the chicken long enough to be useful as a meat shield in the fight.

Wouldn't have to be SKed, since scary monster tech (in fact, if there's outside heals, better to not be SKed due to glitches in how scary monster works), though if a level 12, SKed or not, managed to pull aggro there was something wrong.

colonelmarik · January 2018

markhawkman said:

colonelmarik said:
A point to remember is that we're all playing SUPERHEROES, even at L1. We're playing this game to feel SUPER, and it really doesn't feel all that super to be unable to take on the bad guys... to be unable to even contribute to defeating them... to have to run away all the time... to get taken out in one shot...

Like I said, I don't want these guys to be taken away entirely. I just want to see them made more reasonably, so ANYONE can take them on with SOME chance of success. Again, L40s shouldn't have TOO much trouble with them, and L10-20 should be able to take them on with patience and care, but considerable difficulty.

Again though, that's just my take on it.
Today I saw a Level 12 character(who had been sidekicked to 40) get to play tank in a chicken fight.... and NOT get one-shotted because they were smart about it. Yeah this person actually stood toe-to-toe with the chicken long enough to be useful as a meat shield in the fight.

And that's how it SHOULD be, if he's careful, he SHOULD be able to stand up to it. If he went into one of the crowds of demon critters, he'd have been instantly splattered.

Also, I rather doubt he could generate enough threat to actually tank anything. My L28 exclusive tank character, CANNOT hold threat in most alerts, the dps guys come in and simply overpower any threat I can make.

Still, good for him.

spinnytop · January 2018

colonelmarik said:
There was literally no way to fight with them. This is my MOST POWERFUL character, and he can't damage them AT ALL, and is only able to survive through extraordinary defensive measures. NONE of my other characters will even have a CHANCE of surviving even a second against these foes.

If it makes you feel any better, there's a tiny girl in a frilly dress out there that can take care of this threat while Canadian Shield nurses his wounded ego.

It's okay, we can't all be super man like that tiny frilly girl, some of you have to be robin *pat pat*

markhawkman · January 2018

pantagruel01 said:

markhawkman said:
Today I saw a Level 12 character(who had been sidekicked to 40) get to play tank in a chicken fight.... and NOT get one-shotted because they were smart about it. Yeah this person actually stood toe-to-toe with the chicken long enough to be useful as a meat shield in the fight.
Wouldn't have to be SKed, since scary monster tech (in fact, if there's outside heals, better to not be SKed due to glitches in how scary monster works), though if a level 12, SKed or not, managed to pull aggro there was something wrong.

Isn't the score threshold for participation credit a flat amount that doesn't change based on your level?

Anyways, this guy didn't hold agro often or long, I was just mentioning it since he was smart enough that when the Nightmare Chicken targeted him he turtled like his life depended on it.

And yes, this fight had gone horribly wrong three ways. Most notable is that we didn't have an actual tank. A side effect of that is that the chicken kept wandering too close to the orbs.

markhawkman · January 2018

colonelmarik said:

markhawkman said:

colonelmarik said:
A point to remember is that we're all playing SUPERHEROES, even at L1. We're playing this game to feel SUPER, and it really doesn't feel all that super to be unable to take on the bad guys... to be unable to even contribute to defeating them... to have to run away all the time... to get taken out in one shot...

Like I said, I don't want these guys to be taken away entirely. I just want to see them made more reasonably, so ANYONE can take them on with SOME chance of success. Again, L40s shouldn't have TOO much trouble with them, and L10-20 should be able to take them on with patience and care, but considerable difficulty.

Again though, that's just my take on it.
Today I saw a Level 12 character(who had been sidekicked to 40) get to play tank in a chicken fight.... and NOT get one-shotted because they were smart about it. Yeah this person actually stood toe-to-toe with the chicken long enough to be useful as a meat shield in the fight.
And that's how it SHOULD be, if he's careful, he SHOULD be able to stand up to it. If he went into one of the crowds of demon critters, he'd have been instantly splattered.

Also, I rather doubt he could generate enough threat to actually tank anything. My L28 exclusive tank character, CANNOT hold threat in most alerts, the dps guys come in and simply overpower any threat I can make.

Still, good for him.

Post your build so that people can tell you what you're doing wrong

Unknown · January 2018

This content has been removed.

pantagruel01 · January 2018

markhawkman said:
Isn't the score threshold for participation credit a flat amount that doesn't change based on your level?

Yes, but scary monster tech is supposed to boost your damage if you're low level hitting a high level critter.

riverocean · January 2018

I just got a new toon to 11 this weekend. I'm not having any trouble avoiding the higher level mobs. They seem to have a very low aggro range. I just don't go near them. I'll try that crate mission, but I recall doing that before without aggroing the Nightmare mobs. I know I pulled off the annoying escort mission where you keep the politician safe from the Maniacs.

The nightmare mobs in general are meant for team content. Plus, I think many of us are forgetting the force multiplier effect of team buffs and such in CO. The devs don't have an easy job and players don't want their powers nerfed. Because we'd have to endure a serious nerfing of existing powers, especially the Aura Buffs, if the mobs were made easier. The outdoor mobs, just like the QWZ mobs, melt like butter under the force of at least three players working together. Especially, if a a support toon is in the mix.

Now the guys guarding the giant chicken skeleton *snort* are a different story. It takes an entire zone to take out the giant monster.

screwthisprocess · January 2018

Halloween is the only event they did right imo. That event was damn good, and a great level boost for lower level leeches like myself.

colonelmarik · January 2018

The Halloween event isn't bad at all. As I said, the foes are challenging enough without being overwhelming to less powerful characters, and lead to more interesting missions. The fact that there are actual characters with some personality helps, too.

Tonight I took on some of the Annelid groups in the town, and they're better. Still a bit too tough for lower levels, I think, but manageable at higher level. It's the demonic groups that are too overpowered, I think.

Nightmare "Event"

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