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Difficulty Issues
bluhman
Posts: 2,410 Arc User
Some stuff should be done to increase general difficulty in the game:
Pure Buffs:
Adjustments
Features - Crap that will take 2000 years to implement:
Pure Buffs:
- Super Villains/Bosses - Throughout the default PvE campaign, these guys are notorious for being no challenge at all. Seriously, they can all be one-shot by a shadow strike, don't do much damage, and just generally pose no real threat. They should just be more powerful. At some point (related to a point I'll make below) they'd ideally get additions to their attack lineup that make them quite deadly, but defeatable through guile or strategy.
Adjustments
- Difficulty vs. Reward: Biggest issue I've got with the game so far is that difficulty doesn't do jack, in terms of incentives. Only one area in the game will change the rewards you might get, and it's for a really silly looking giant sword. That's not to bash the difficulty feature itself or anything; including the ability to scale instance difficulty to your character's abilities, whether you're a well-toned freeform or a fresh AT, is a great decision. Just - why do Elite when all you get for it is a little more money and XP? You still got no greater chance of getting those cool unlocks or high-end gear than you do just running standard.
The proposal I got includes:- Higher chance of blue and purple items showing up on high difficulty
- Very Hard and Elite supervillains drop small quantities of Questionite
- Defeating lair bosses on Elite always drops unique gear.
- CC: This stuff is so messed up I'm not even going to bother prefacing it.
- Minions, villains, and enforcers are all completely susceptible to CC and will never gain resistance to effects.
- Master villains and super villains are affected for a standard period of time by CC, but still build resistance stacks.
- Legendaries and Cosmics still completely resist effects.
- Also kind of arbitrarily related to the above, maintain holds should never ****ing interrupt halfway through if a foe breaks out. That's literally the dumbest thing I've ever seen, because a good portion of those maintains would make halfway decent single-target attacks (Heatwave, Binding of Araton, etc) but noooope.
- Self-heals: The biggest thing that sets FF apart from AT is that the former almost always carries a self-heal (sometimes several!) Because of this, the FF will always outlast the AT in a battle - seriously. I've been in many alerts where my DPS-built freeform will easily last the rest of an encounter after a Behemoth AT dies, who sometimes dies in the first 30 seconds.
- Self-heal skills (BCR, Conviction, any other future active minor heals that might quickly heal oneself) now share a cooldown. Using one will place the rest on a 5 second cooldown.
- Using self-targeted heals will place self-heal debuffs on you, both reducing the strength of your heals overall, and the effectiveness of heals on yourself (reduction of outside heals). The duration of this is long, but can be quickly reduced by taking hits while blocking, being healed by others, or by using an active defense.
The strength and duration of this debuff is also dependent on role, being most severe on Hybrids, and least severe on Support and Tank roles.
These debuffs omit special or passive effects, including quick-healing specializations and the Regen passive.
- The Importance of Blocking: So, while blocking is good for surviving in instance of a team situation, or when just stopping a single attack from hurting you, its use in single-player PvE is really underplayed, mainly because large-scale blocking reduces your DPS so much that it's just more worth it to tank everything. Also, related to the above, if you're an FF, you usually can just heal through everything.
- Blocking attacks at the last second (before server can register you blocking - AKA, why knocks and holds still effect you when blocking), will momentarily stun all enemies, up to master villain rank, within 10 feet of you.
This maneuver also will cause your next active self-heal or combat movement ability (evasive manuevers, and something else I'll discuss) to operate at full effectiveness and have a 0 energy cost.
Can only occur once every 5 seconds.
- Blocking attacks at the last second (before server can register you blocking - AKA, why knocks and holds still effect you when blocking), will momentarily stun all enemies, up to master villain rank, within 10 feet of you.
Features - Crap that will take 2000 years to implement:
- Dodge maneuvers: Click abilities that will cause you to lunge in the direction you last moved. While doing these, a major defense boost is granted to you in some shape or form. (Examples: A Martial Arts dodge roll would set your dodge chance to 100+ and avoidance to 80% for a second, while something like a Brick Sprint would grant you around 200% or so damage resistance for the same duration.) These moves have a cost equal to 50% of your equilibrium, meaning there is a limit to how often you can do these.
Dodges can be ranked up, which reduces their energy cost to 38%/25% equilibrium. - Enemy attack patterns: The other big thing is that most standard enemies should carry tactics that fit and counter the adjustments and tactics that heroes got. These are just general guidelines for a generic enemy. Instead of being just plain more powerful, the enemies are now a bit smarter:
- Basic attacks - These moves, without any recharge and only minor damage output, are unchanged.
- Minions: Minor enemies mostly have attacks that hit a single target
Power Strike: Used by melee minions, these are charged attacks that do more damage. They like to use this when you block, but cannot walk while charging up; it's possible to simply walk out of the way of these.
Power Shot: Used by ranged minions, power shots are used when the foe is at range. They sometimes are AoE, and are used when the enemy is far away enough and is not accompanied by higher-rank allies. - Villains: Most villains, given an opportunity, can really mess you up.
Melee - Slam: A powerful, telegraphed, single-target attack that enemies like to use when you block too much. Usually has a stun or knock effect that cannot be blocked.
Melee - Punish: A strong, charged melee attack. This is not telegraphed in the traditional style, but by the enemy model flashing or glowing. Punishing attacks are basically reverse slams - they can knock or stun, but this can be stopped either by blocking or by moving out of the way.
Melee - Barrage: Enemy begins to rapidly strike in a cone in front. This hits rapidly, but can either be shrugged off with blocks or simply strafed around.
Ranged - Blast: A ranged, powerful AoE. Blasts are marked by prominent AoE models that show the area in which they will hit. They are fairly slow, and fix enemy direction, meaning you can run out of the way of them.
Ranged - Keepaway: A move that ranged enemies use when targets are nearby and/or they are low on health. This move either causes the enemy to lunge backwards, or do a powerful PBAoE move that knocks targets away.
Buffs: Support villains can buff their nearby allies. This can become a problem, because these buffs are really powerful - if it occurs, enemies easily are now able to deal around 3x damage. The way to stop a buff, however, is to just hit the enemy attempting to start one up - these are interruptible through pure damage. - Enforcers - These guys seem to basically have been designated to fill space in alerts. They're ridiculous and all use bestial attacks for some reason.
So to alleviate that, the guidelines for these guys is that they've got the most health of all standard enemy types (save supervillains) and hit the hardest. However, they don't have any extra defense, and can be easily stunlocked. All their attacks are telegraphed with long animations, meaning they are easier than most to just block or dodge. If they do land a hit, though, you will suffer greatly. - Master Villains - Nearly as powerful as enforcers, but a lot smarter. They use plenty of Villain-rank tactics, and combine them with other special abilities that essentially turn them into minibosses.
Passive: Master Villains carry minor passives, which can give them strategic defenses and weaknesses. For example, one master villain (an upgraded mechenforcer, for example) might take only half damage from the front, but has slow turning due to using lots of charged attacks. Another (say, an ice demon) might have a passive that causes the enemy to do more damage and take a bit less damage, but loses these bonuses when hit with fire damage. These minor passives serve to provide minute upgrades, which can usually be used to the players advantage if they can determine how to deal with them. A good example of something similar to this in the current game is the 'swarm' passive on New Shadows Bats - they take less damage from Single Target attacks, but a looot more from AoEs. - Supervillain+ - Enemies of the highest rank should basically follow a formula semi-similar to that of Gravitar (albeit a bit more manageable. Firewing would probably be a more apt comparison) - lots of use of big, telegraphed attacks, changing tactics as the enemy loses health, and (in some cases, especially in Mission situations) environmental weaknesses or bonuses that can be used.
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The changes you suggest wouldn't make it harder for me. On the contrary. I would become more powerful to a ridiculous degree. Expulse that actually pushes back the enemy - I do have a high ego after all. Once the resistance wears off my taser arrows could actually stop the enemy for a few seconds. Blocks that actually stand, so I won't be pushed across the room like a pinball anymore. And evasive manoeuvres that actually make me dodge!
If my theoretical hallmark, but practically most useless power, Focused Shot, actually became meaningful in boss fights I might even enjoy the ones that drive me to despair now.
Compared to now, the changes you suggest would make the Marksmaid considerably more powerful. For the time being there are bosses I just can't defeat with the Marksmaid on elite, no matter how hard I try. Others, where I can take tactical advantage of the environment are ridiculously easy. It took me 15 tries and a lot sweat to defeat the boss at the end of the fourth episode of Whiteout on elite for example, the final boss of the last episode is a joke compared to him; I don't usually die at all fighting him on elite. At least once I figured that it is pointless to try and stay in distance in the last stage of the fight. That is just not possible, but he is a pushover: Just don't defend or move at all, except for brief blocks for the charged attacks and keep shooting. It takes but a few seconds. If you try and stay at distance, he will interrupt everything you do and pull you across the room, rendering you unable to act at all. But if you actually stay close, he deals less damage.
And there is at least one boss that I just can't defeat on elite unless I use extremely expensive devices that would be worth more than the reward. Like the boss at the end of the second episode of Aftershock.
Characters on Primus DB (and their Nemeses):
Marksmaid | Tenebris (Xalara) | Virtue | Dawnblaze (Sister Nightfall) | Rhinegold: Julie & Magdalena
People gotta find the game within them.
Valid points. On one hand, the goal of these tweaks is not to necesarilly make the game's base harder. As NNT noted, the difficulty most certainly exists, even within the base tactics and stats of the enemies. The big problem is that there's a subset of players, mostly freeform and quite experienced (like myself) that find the game unengaging - normal certainly isn't a challenge for me, and I sure would run the game on Very Hard/Elite, if there was anything to actually gain from it. A lot of what I'm pointing out here is less fine number adjustment than it is tactical and reward adjustment, since there are certainly issues in how those are handled currently.
On the other, the point you make about ATs having an easy time with common mobs and a difficult time with supervillains does kind of change a bit of what would be prefereable in how things are tweaked. In my mind, I still kind of would like it if it was possible for a hero to just charge in and completely destroy several mobs if they feel like it. The idea, though, is that the minions, if undealt with, still pose a major threat due to higher damage and perhaps a few other support functions they have. Specifics about all that stuff, though, is left up to how people actually paid to make the game decide to do it.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
However, in some instances, trash should remain trash, super heroes shouldn't have to employ much power to remove some mooks throwing Molotov's or knives.
As for healing, I'd say leave that mechanic alone. Why? It doesn't feel super to have to turtle up behind a block because you have seriously debuffed yourself when healing. And then you apply this to a PvP setting where things like Trauma is alive and kicking.
But the importance of blocking is a good idea, I have had to scream at people ( like a Fire Ranged DPS person, in an alert) who not only RUN up to the boss and spam ranged DPS attacks but do not block clearly telegraphed attacks (such as in an Ao'healz4lyfe alert), I have taken players through instances and they simply do not block at all.
I think removing it from the tutorial is one of the things which was a very bad idea. Does Defender even yell it anymore in the tutorial?
I am really up for some of your ideas, they sound very interesting.
Now to address something:
Henchmen, Villains, Master Villains, Enforcers and Super Villains in game can all be affected by Crowd Control. However the vast majority of crowd control powers do not work on anything past Enforcer. There is only one (currently) which actually can lockdown a Super Villain rank foe, and even that doesn't work too well unless you are a real crowd controller.
You can thank the introduction of Incapaciderps to people who complained about Manevolent Manifestation in PvP, in all honesty yes it was abused, but what became of maintained holds and the crowd control system was in all fairness a death sentence.
I HATE Incapaciderps with a burning passion, I hope they die in a fire, get rezzed and burned in the eternal flames of some obscure fire pit.
I agree that Henchmen to Enforcers (Master Villains included ofc) should not gain any stacks of resistance in any way shape or form.
Super Villains should gain stacking resistances.
Legendaries - Cosmic, these guys need to be affected by CC in some way apart from spec debuffs, as this is NOT CC. But this would require an extreme AI revamp and CC revamp which aren't happening anytime soon.
Players - CC works on players (sort of), strengthening CC vs ways to break out of CC, there are SO many ways to break out of holds vs strengthening them it is sad.
I would say Manipulator needs to make breaking out of holds harder by reducing the amount of break free damage Z mashing does. AO break free numbers should remain the same.
Break free amounts should be the same for everyone unless you are packing EGO stat, in which case break free damage you deal is slightly increased.
My Characters on PRIMUS
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Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
For example Manimals. That Gorilla packs a wallop for the average build of that level if one osnt careful in melee. The problem is that the Gorilla AI rather back peddle and use what seems to be a slow recharging spear that don't do much damage overall. Then every so often they do the beat on the chest fly through the air double fist thing, which I think is an awesome power for that sort but then it back peddles to distance and do the spear thing. Hell the Bear is more of a foe than the Gorilla Master villain.
Melee mobs, don't seem too keen on using their melee powers often but those that do they punch and slash so slow. By the next hit, ya regenerated. They need to bump the attack rate up a notch and make melee toons actually be melee.
In all I don't think they have to do much to increase difficulty besides make anything, at least, master villain and up, more aggressive and use their actual powers they are supplied with and in a more aggressive manner, then that in itself will make things more difficult. Slow attack rate for minions, I get, they are supposed to be cannon fodder. But Master Villains and up especially melee ones are supposed to be on your butt like no tomorrow. And maybe a bit more able to withstand damage a bit more would help, especially master villains, so they cant be one shotted.
Of course I'm talking about the outdoor instances. Indoor, I heard mix reviews about the slider and haven't played through all slider options to see for myself yet to form opinion about what could be improved.
And on another note as theravenforce said, yeah some people act like blocking here and there will kill them. In some cases they are and addiction difficulty slider in themselves. Ao'worm dude is common knowledge known that what make him difficult is his heal. Yet and still, people get this bugger almost down and you get this one "uninformed" dude that plain wave refuse to block and then have the nerve to get mad when the alert fail and blame the token lowbie. Many occasions I had to say, "no the lowbie was doing what they was supposed to be doing. Attack and when the charge attack comes, block. If anyone messed up, it was you. "
Hm. I find that part a bit curious. I agree that it is bad that there is no particular advantage of playing on elite. But I was naturally assuming that you are referring to the game on the highest difficulty level altogether in the your initial post. On normal the game is easy for me as well, and I never optimized builds, I choose my powers thematically, which means there is a lot room for improvement, especially considering my equipment is far from the best there is as well. Level five mods mostly, two level 6 and one level 7. The secondaries are purple, but no comparison to what there is on the questionite store.
What really annoys me is that most named elite super villains, which act like they are melee do sever damage on range as well, usually more than actually ranged mobs because they are not affected by my gas arrow in the same way. (I don't know what kind of mechanic gas arrow actually uses, but from empiric impression I'd say that most elite mobs have no resistance to it whatsoever.) What is really outright dumb is that most of them have a pounce with unlimitted range, knock back, which works if the line of sight is lost during the approach and hardly affected by environment obstacles on which a player character would hang. In an open environment where I could just fly out of their range otherwise it's a different story. But in a confined environment 40 - 60 ft. max range for a pounce are enough.
What really makes the game difficult for me on elite on named boss encounters and is somewhat exaggerated imho is their stun resistance, but even more so the knock back resistance. There is hardly anything left to keep an a named elite mob at distance. When they pounce you you manage to get out of a line of sight they still hit you. When there are obstacles in the way it does not affect them in the same way as it would affect a player. The use combinations of knock-tos and knock-backs that turn my character into a pinball. That's frustrating since I don't necessarily have to have made mistake to die; the game just robs me of the control of my character and decides "you die". Additionally named bosses often use tiny push backs or other powers which are not charged and interrupt you with anything that is charged.
The one suggestion you made that I am uncomfortable with is that the block must be standing for one second to avert effects of crowd control. Primarily using the archery set (with a block from power armor, a push back from celestial and pets from beastial supernatural) my primary default attack is straight shot. If I am charging a straight shot and see the enemy charging something as well I might just hit the SHIFT key. That would mean I loose the shot though. I could release the shot at once, wait 0.67 seconds activation time and then hit shift. That means the damage applies but I don't get a stack of concentration and I apply less damage than I could have. It's a game for me to raise my block in the last possible moment and I have become quite good at it. I am certainly not perfect, sometimes I do make a mistake either by hitting shift to early, so that I loose the shot or to late so that I get the full damage, and then I bleed. But that's the way it should be. I don't fully charge my shots when I can't effort it, but I get as close as I can. Sometimes when I am not charging anything and I see the enemy charging something, I slightly adjust my positioning, hit evasive manoeuvres and then block and I don't really see what's wrong with that.
A curious question would be Gravitar. I don't usually die on Gravitar, but when I do it's usually because she throws several bolts at me in quick succession. Regardless of whether or not I have my block up since her bolts are push back, I can't bring my block up in time before the second or third bolt if the first or second knocked me back and I am still recovering from it. I wonder if you think that should be changed...
Characters on Primus DB (and their Nemeses):
Marksmaid | Tenebris (Xalara) | Virtue | Dawnblaze (Sister Nightfall) | Rhinegold: Julie & Magdalena
Okay, henchmen can remain weak, but there needs to be like five times as many of them.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
I'm serious.
You can either have players fight strong things, smart things, or swarms of weak stupid things.
Swatting at 3 gnats is neat and all... but superheroes.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
And I doubt the servers could handle that amount of additional actors in every zone.
A good idea would be a system to scale for a different group size in solo instances, though. So that you can say "I am alone but I want the enemy set up for five". You'd get tough mobs were there would be normal ones otherwise, you'd get more enemies in every group. And you would get more loot drops so it would be rewarding in itself. Works only in instances, though, would not affect the open world.
However, I like Bluhman's suggestions better.
Characters on Primus DB (and their Nemeses):
Marksmaid | Tenebris (Xalara) | Virtue | Dawnblaze (Sister Nightfall) | Rhinegold: Julie & Magdalena
Apparently it's masochistic to want more challenge then faceslamming my keyboard to beat Poe with a semi-decent build.
You laugh. I've tried it. My faceslamming beat Poe, and popped out my Y key.
Needs the difficulty of SPAZ on Insane, or perhaps Monster Hunter. Those are some difficult but fun games.
And of course, Bluh states smart things. I might not agree with every point, but many of them are well supported, and make sense. I like, like usual.
Deliciously nutritious!
Note that the following suggestions are meant to only apply to elite!
Make it harder:
Make it easier:
I believe the one aspect of elite mobs that is worst designed is the additional agro range. It obviously has a lot of implications the designers had not in mind when creating their missions.
Characters on Primus DB (and their Nemeses):
Marksmaid | Tenebris (Xalara) | Virtue | Dawnblaze (Sister Nightfall) | Rhinegold: Julie & Magdalena
More Rhetoric stuff:
Having stuff like stuns and knocks limited to charge and area-marked attacks would be most preferable - Both to keep character offense going in most situations, and to also give a bit of balance compensation to a few character types:
Archers - These get a lot of flack for their generally sub-par damage output. However,there are two big things that Archery has over all other ranged powersets - range, and mobility. Aside from maybe storm of arrows, none of Archery's attacks root the user in place, meaning that, if put in correctly, moving around while charging and maintaining your arrow shots could become a big factor in combat.
Munitions - Similar to Archery, but a bit more pure damage traded off for range and mobility. Still, the aspect is there, with things like Breakaway shot meant to take advantage of positioning.
Power Armor - This one's a biggy - while it does have the capacity to match the DPS of other character types by unloading 3 weapons systems on the enemy at once, it's very susceptible to blocking and CC. To stop from suffering crowd control effects in the current game, you always have to block - and for Power Armor, this is a big problem, because this forces you to have to restart all of your weapons systems. Much like the other two Tech ranged fighters mentioned, however, you can also still move, meaning that, if just walking or jetting out of the way were an option for CC moves, PA could focus more on positioning and maintaining weapons systems - instead of blocking and restarting weapons systems.
"trash mobs" ...here's an idea, throw out the trash, cause it's stinkin' up the joint.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
Ah 5 man instances solo
The good old days when bugs were real bugs
Nice if we could do the same w crisis missions..... well some of em.
I remember going into MI crisis with 5 other people back in the day - a team can do well at that but not 5 individuals doing their own thing lolz. I had a truly epic death that time. Having got oooh maybe half a maintain of Lightning Arc off at Teleiosaurus I was targetted by loadsa mobs of mini dinos. My lightning storm key in danger of wearing out, my sigils all gone, my drones kaput and still they came. Five after five after five. Sobs no energy left, very little health - I'm not gonna make it. They got me but there were like ramparts of dead. It was really fun!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The one who can't shut up formerly known as 4rksakes
About the @handle - it's a long story.
Profound quote.. "I'm not a complete idiot - several parts are missing."
- Give bosses plenty of ways to reflect incoming damage. The mechanic is already in the game: Parry from Martial Arts, Bionic Shielding w/ Overloaded Circuits advantage from Gadgeteering, Reactive Strikes from the Warden tree, and I think there was a boss that could put up a glowing shield to do the same. No more mindless attack spamming. As alternatives, it could be reverse damage (all incoming damage temporarily heals instead) or simple empowerment (more incoming damage -> more powerful next attack and/or short-term buff).
- Bosses should more regularly apply debuffs; whether it's a healing debuff, an energy cost increase, confusion (attack allies!), screw with the threat list (wipe the threat of whomever is aggroing the boss, reverse the order of people on the threat list, etc.) or even turning players into teddy bears. Something to make long fights a more memorable and tactical affair than a simple endurance run.
- Have unblocked shtick attacks empty out a player's energy reserves. I guess one of the reasons some people don't block is because it lowers their DPS and they can take the hit. Having their energy emptied in addition to taking massive damage would mean otherwise. For bonus points, unblocked shtick attacks should apply a healing debuff. This should get more people to block.
- Mobs on higher difficulties should have flat damage resistance bonus. They already get a dodge bonus to cover charge attacks; the flat damage resistance would cover maintain attacks.
- More enemies should have attacks that inflict the "Brickbuster" debuff (temporarily strip defenses), particularly on elite mobs. Perhaps give elite mobs a chance to inflict it?
Yeah, these seem pretty OK.
Making suggestions for this sort of stuff is really difficult - because what enemies actually do comes directly to the developers themselves. Just kind of a shame that working out specifics for every villain group in the game would get kind of muddy for a forum/a huge waste of time considering the track record so far with suggestions and actual changes.
I've got an invulnerability tank, who ought to be better at dealing with large numbers of weaker enemies... and yet if I don't pay attention, a single trash pack can eat me alive, while the bosses are generally much less threatening.
Except, of course, when they cheat. (See: Vikorin knocks, for an example. 99% of the time you can dodge those by running into the lava, and only get knocked once towards him... but 1% of the time he just randomly throws you around the room, aggroes the fire golems in the corner, and then kills you because you're too busy bouncing to do anything.)
They need more variety of attacks, encounters which require tasks to complete in addition to fighting (activating devices, destroying objects, saving civilians), and slightly better AI.
Some missions in the game have legitimately hard bosses--where you are not guaranteed to win the first time you play the mission, and are not guaranteed wins even on a replay.
Most of CO is autowin. I am not an elite player, either. My only toon with max gear is a FF-grimoire running support role. His best attack is Skarn's Bane and he uses Vala's Light for healing. Non-optimal all the way, yet he can easily deal with almost any boss in the game on Elite.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
No just some people don't want to bother doing basics. So they die. The game is ridiculously easy.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Most of the game is easy. Alerts aren't. A build that has no trouble with regular missions can faceplant in alerts through no particular fault of the player. And, of course, alerts are the primary team content (which I don't think is a good thing, but it is what it is), so that's where you're most likely to see other people playing at all.
A good build should eventually get to the point where (non-rampage) alerts are relatively easy as well, but that can take until around level 30 or so. If you want something that's strong in alerts from when you can first get into them, you need a very specific build, using either one of the stronger support auras or a defensive passive.
(There are, of course, some people who indeed don't bother doing basics; the people who don't block on Ao'q come to mind. But from what I've seen, that's not actually the majority of players.)
Perhaps not. And, thinking about it again, my post was from the perspective of someone with a lifetime subscription who doesn't make AT characters; ATs can actually have problems even in normal content with difficulty set all the way down. (Before I had my subscription, I actually quit the game for a long time when my inferno AT just couldn't do one of the missions in Canada.)
Funny considering some of us have actually tested ATs from 1 to 40. Saying it's just freeform that makes things easy when I actually have several characters without a personal heal; It isn't a matter that I haven't experienced it is a matter that I have actually played the game over multiple times, and I have sat and watched people and what they do, and I can generally tell them what they are doing wrong on a cursory glance.
The game isn't hard unless you choose to let it be hard by neglecting basics or just blaming one thing for the reason you can't do something. The game was designed without anyone using a personal heal in most of its content, its not even a requirement.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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I'm leveling every single one of em as we speak.
This is all true.
I've also brought friends with any cursory mmo experience to this place and they've facerolled it. Problem is there's a certain portion of the population (we have the champion in thread, in fact) that flat out refuse to understand that the reason lots of people hit this game and quit it is the fact that you can easily faceroll the whole thing. I have now brought nearly 50 people into game to try it. One is left. Nearly all have cited the difficulty (or lack thereof) as a reason, and most of that is because with even a bit of thought you can basically become immortal.
Here's my sister's boyfriend soloing mandragalore pre-on alert after having played for a month. Before the power creep, before 3 super stats, before power spec trees, when all you had were 2 super stats and your powers, and no shiny legion gear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzG3RqV4dvI
New player, and he built his own character. No, it's not all experience with CO. haha nail on the head: It's not being a dumbass and actually approaching things from the perspective of a gamer rather than just trying to faceroll everything you come across.
We also did this (I watched and then did it too) in every other lair, barring therakiel's which we 2 manned, so we could mirror each other in the last fight. And again for emphasis: This was before the gear/spec tree/mod/3 ss related power creep kicked in when content was still somewhat difficult.
That said? Yeah, there are moments for some ATs that make life hard. I'm rolling with a squall right now, and even at 15 I'm doing most of the tanking because of the extreme dps they throw out. 'course, I can buy heal pots, so that's a bit less of an issue. It's amazing what a few blocks and the occasional healing item can do, they really need to put a marker on the map for karneeki so AT players can realize they DO have a healing option or 2.
RIP Caine
Yes basics that people don't do.
1. Block.
2. don't break LOS with the healer.
3. Don't run in the opposite direction to the rest of the party
4. Listen when someone tells you how the Boss works.
5. If you don't have heals, visit Karneeki or recognition vendors for heals.
6. assuming you aren't doing a theme AT, take into acct your DPS when picking a TP.
Yes people die on normal,it's called learning. Learn what your character can do and when you need to block or heal.
I've been levelling AT's too, including the Grimoire(with no gear, so stuff all stats/off/def) you can do it, you just have to think about what you are doing.
same with any game, you just rush in, you will go splat.(In my case, usually while typing in zone)
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Even in Rampages as a heal-power-less AT, ya can generally get out-of-combat regen by out-ranging. I've had to do this vs. Gravi on ATs like the Blade before when the random queue put no healers in the group; just block-run to the rubble behind her and regen up (or run back by the start area). Its fine if ya dun mind taking breaks and have geared for some Con/Health, and ya can wait on heal pot cds or ADs like MD to wade back in (or ya can just be the Soldier or Marksman and 120ft-cheese ur way through Gravi and F&I). Decently-made vehicles rule the other two Rampages, so just get one if those are a major concern.
All ATs get a block power and plenty of spare adv points left over vs. FFs, so mine as well rank that block up and use it + heal pots. Pretty much anyone can spot-tank Alert mobs w/ a r3 block and some Con gearing. If ur blocking, ur allies are likely going to pull threat eventually anyways and ya can unload when the heat is off you. Then just wait for regen before you run in to engage the next pull.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
The thugs need to be tough to. After all if a super hero makes a bad call, they get picked off. Batman rarely ever dives head long into large groups of baddies, picking them off one at a time or outright avoiding them.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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I like this quote.
Anyway, I wouldn't complain if the game magically became more challenging, but I usually play other games for that.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I find myself agreeing with the majority of the Suggestions
I DON'T like that
NO NO NO NO! Leave Self-Heals alone
No the problem is ATs exist at all in a game that has free form character building. DO away with ATs except as freebies, give freebie accounts who cap one AT a single one time free FF slot and then allow them access to only power pools they have either unlocked by capping a AT of that type, or paying 10 bucks per power set unlocked for that free form slots access.
Seriously still to this day it boggles my mind why they even tried the hybrid route here. Get rid of subs, cancel all LTS bennies as they really should have been when PWE took over to start a clean slate. Make FF slots 10 bucks each and no power sets to access. Make each power set cost 10 bucks per free form character slot. This means for any given FF character to have say even a single power from another tree, and have the typical 4-5 power sets being dabbled in to build an effective FF toon, the game would be earning around 50 bucks just as the current free form slots cost, but with it being broken up enough to actually not feel like you could just go buy a brand new triple A title rather then a single character slot on an aged and low populated MMO.
While having unlimited, fairly inexpensive self-heals is undoubtedly a boon (to those who can actually use them!), you sort of have to consider that most other games, whether they're MMO or Action or RPG or Whatever, don't usually throw in this ability to do self-healing at basically zero cost. Whether it's healing potions, limited magic for healing spells, health drops from enemies, regenerating health when not taking damage (and with that, limited cover to hide behind), medkits, or (at the very best) triggered heals with mechanics (on-kill, on-hit)
In CO, being able to get your health back is just a matter of using one (or two) abilities that have recharge periods ranging from 3 to 15 seconds, and usually low enough energy costs to be offset by basically blocking, using your EB, or having MSA. You see Conviction and/or BCR on basically every freeform. The fact I'm beginning to directly call out power names instead of just naming general mechanics heuristics points to the matter of fact that there are some absolute no-brainer power choices to be made in this game if you're rolling FF. In a game that's generally supposed to be about making your own hero and tailoring them to both work conceptually and mechanically in battle, is it fair that there are basically two powers that, unless you're taking them, you're just going to be worse?
So, yes. ATs in fact completely miss out on this opportunity. You could make the argument to suddenly give several ATs the ability to cast holy magicks on themselves or focus their inner chi to start regenerating. Or, you could rebalance the game slightly to just not quite as favor heal-cheesing as much, which would do quite a bit to revitalize how the game works for some builds, including:
But really that's just part of a vision. To be honest the suggestion was written up while I was playing and examining Neverwinter, which offsets a much lower ability to heal oneself with generally much larger healthpools on characters (which might not be a bad idea if this is applied), inclusion of a lot of defense-boosting/temp-hp powers, and a battle system that very strongly bases itself around the ability to dodge or block, and every class' ability to basically stunlock mooks. Despite not having the ability to constantly regenerate my health I somehow felt more superheroic over there than in CO - probably related to the ability to completely dominate and lock down huge groups of normal enemies with my basic rotation of attacks. Also probably related to NW being stupid flashy.
But thing is? The fact that enemies have powerful attacks and buffs to mess you up quickly is what really makes it over there. If you do something wrong - say, fail to kill a man reading a damage-buff scroll, don't avoid the slash barrage of the orc, or don't roll out of the way of the cyclops' club, you will take substantial damage. You might have quite a bit of health to keep going on from there, but you will feel the tension, because that health actually matters. In CO that would basically be an injury you'd literally walk off while fighting. It's the difference between "Crap, he hit me with that. Still got 2/3rds of my health left, but I got be careful." versus "Down to 1/4th health, better just block and spam Conviction and BCR until I'm good to take another burst hit."
On Trash Mobs!: I'd vouch for them only if the game retools itself to also not have a targeting system. Lone ones would obviously not do much (and be pretty rare), but a big mob of them, backed up by a support Henchman or a leader Villain, could be a very legitimate threat.