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NPC battle design - why do we always have to fight them?
tilarta
Member Posts: 1,801 Arc User
About a week ago, someone said that Cryptic prefers us to charge into NPC mobs guns blazing over using the sneak&avoid strategy.
This is why they claimed the Stealth Module had been balancedruined, in order to prevent players from getting to objectives without fighting.
I didn't think much of it until I had to do the Vibora Bay access chain in Champions Online.
I have no interest in defeating the NPC mobs, nor it is required to do so, the only task required is to go to the final room, get whatever the goal is and then leave.
I went high, avoided combat and ended up with every enemy in the map chasing me towards the goal room.
I made it about halfway before getting defeated.
And there is only one respawn point, in the first room!
For context, I've been through that chain 14 times now, I don't need to know the story, but it's gameplay mandatory or the Vibora Bay zone is permanently offlimits.
So given all the above, I wonder if Cryptic just prefers us to get in massive NPC fights instead of taking less or non-aggressive solutions?
If you're curious as to why I put effort into going to Vibora Bay, it's the only major hub in the game that's vinegar free (mostly).
By the way, there are only two major hubs.
And no minor hubs.
This is why they claimed the Stealth Module had been balancedruined, in order to prevent players from getting to objectives without fighting.
I didn't think much of it until I had to do the Vibora Bay access chain in Champions Online.
I have no interest in defeating the NPC mobs, nor it is required to do so, the only task required is to go to the final room, get whatever the goal is and then leave.
I went high, avoided combat and ended up with every enemy in the map chasing me towards the goal room.
I made it about halfway before getting defeated.
And there is only one respawn point, in the first room!
For context, I've been through that chain 14 times now, I don't need to know the story, but it's gameplay mandatory or the Vibora Bay zone is permanently offlimits.
So given all the above, I wonder if Cryptic just prefers us to get in massive NPC fights instead of taking less or non-aggressive solutions?
If you're curious as to why I put effort into going to Vibora Bay, it's the only major hub in the game that's vinegar free (mostly).
By the way, there are only two major hubs.
And no minor hubs.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
1. Casual players want big booms and to have fun while playing. This is the majority of all gamers.
2. Hardcore gamers want big booms via their min/max strategy. This is a small minority.
People who want stealthers fall into either category, but they are more than likely a minority within both. This doesn't mean a stealther mission isn't warranted, but from how they're designing? It will be a "few and far between" item.
If there are posts here that do not appeal to you, or opinions you disagree with, the best way to deal with that is to resist the urge to add comments. Instead, engage with the content you like! Don't feed the trolls!
So naturally, my first instinct was: engage cloak to avoid triggering the patrols inside the marked area.
I'm just about to enter the marked area and there's a patrol nearly ahead when:
Dialog screen: Look, it's a patrol, avoid it.
And a moment of horror followed as I realized my cloak was deactivating.
I can't remember the details, but I think having the sensor grid detect your ship was a fail condition.
So the stated goal of the mission is to be undetected and not fight, yet the game makes you decloak anyway?
Couldn't make sense of that one.
In case you are unaware, STO and CO have the same developers.
The game engines are mutually compatible and the design flow of missions is quite similar.
So, sometimes, referencing CO can apply STO and in the example I gave, I thought it did.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Stealth-based games solve the problem by making the player character too weak to fight all the enemies, so you have to use limited stealth to sneak around them. That doesn't work if you can just say "TRIBBLE this I'm gonna shoot them."
Well, from my perspective, it was like the enemies had an absurdly long aggro range and a permanent target lock.
I built up maximum acceleration, I was flying along the roof without attacking any of them and everytime I passed over a mob, I'd collect a few more enemies until half the map was following me!
And no, you can't avoid them, the map is specifically shaped to make you pass through the groups and their patrol pattern keeps them in the travel path.
Keep in mind these are interior maps, with hallways restricting movement.
At least in STO if you run far enough, the NPCs go back to their trigger zones and forget you were there.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
You yourself said you avoided combat and got halfway through. I'd take that as meaning it's possible to avoid combat. Up to a point, at least.
I didn't say I avoided combat, just I was moving fast enough to get past them.
Each group I passed over managed to hit me once with a long range attack until eventually with 50 npcs doing it, I wasn't able to take the damage they were dealing out.
And the aggro coding is part of Cryptic's design process, so I'm not responsible for that.
If it is believed to be unrealistic, take it up with them.
Wrecker Rule #1: Guards never look up.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Apparently those minions do. There are times where a goon's intelligence will surprise you.
The Romulan Operative Ground Set from 'Survivor' provides stealthyness and Ambush buffs.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Stealth or cloaking in STO exists to get a damage buff upon leaving cloak, that's all. Actually being cloaked to avoid someone or something is not really a desired part of it since single player either forcefully decloaks you every time a dialogue pops up or the mobs simply ignore your cloak. In PvP it might still work, however I think the base stealth detection of players without doing anything is already pretty high and you probably defeat them faster by just shooting them. Most things that are not straight weapon damage have a one-click counter anyway.
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I'm not sure if that is a bug or if that's intended. If the latter, the developers might as well delete ground stealth from the game all together... It's beyond useless at that point and has no further business of being installed. Even the story mission NPC opponents with stealth are too easy to spot. Way too easy.
Space stealth works like a charm. Ground? Beyond useless...
Unless games are making specific Silent Running/Das Boot/Etc Stealth™ missions, there's not a lot of drama in disappearing at the start & reappearing at the finish. Frequently, games make their Stealth missions to be only run that way (ESO thieves' guild & dark brotherhood quests; WoW Rogue Class quests; etc), and frequently end up making stealthing past things they don't want you to (sneaking straight to the treasure chest at the end of a group dungeon, for ex) impossible.
(that "and then a dialogue box popped up, and I decloaked" thing - it's a long running issue/bug. It wasn't specific to that mission, it's just something that frequently happens when you get hailed while cloaking, anywhere. It's annoying because it also screws up the approved "sneak up & shoot 'em!" approach. Cloak, line up a run on the Bad Guy... and you get a Dramatic Conversation triggered just as you get in range, decloak, and end up having a slugfest. /sigh)
The CO mission described sounds like the one in Therakiel's temple, near the end of the Vibora Bay Apocalypse arc. The mooks look up because if you TRIBBLE up while working for, say, VIPER or Dr. Destroyer you might get a beating, or even shot forthwith, but Therakiel is a half-angel half-demon who's looking to trigger the Biblical Apocalypse so he can escape Vibora Bay - if you betray him, death is just the beginning of your punishment, so you look the hell up on guard duty.
(That being said, the Sneak ability of the Night Warrior power gets you past pretty much everything, as well as giving you a one-shot-kill attack that you can use at the expense of dropping your invisibility. Spider-Bat and Blackwing are both really fond of this.)