UberGuy

Aha.

I have to say, I would find that thoroughly annoying. I mean, in a realism sense, it makes sense he'd keep churning them out, but it's a rude surprise for coming back from the hospital to find he's been bifurcating all that time.

And that somehow sounds dirty.

That boggles my mind. I've never faced more than five, and probably usually less than three. I've taken him down with as few as one produced.

I wasn't under the impression that he stopped producing them, either. The really low Bifurcation count occurrences were on characters who were stomping his face in.

36 minute, no temp powers, no deaths, one-pass Master of The Apex Task Force.

I was on the pass before this, where we had one death about 30 seconds before Battle Maiden went down.

I didn't even know this happened, and I get Shivans solo all the time.

Since I13, it's become progressively easier to get Shivans, and I don't mean because the zone is usually deserted (though that too). I mean because almost all my characters all get +DR and +HP on top of whatever they already had thanks to the PvP zone rules. Now in I19 they basically all get three more powers than they did before at those levels because of inherent Fitness.

News to me about Tin Man / Apex, unless it went live Thursday. I griped about the change in the CoP, not because it kept me from succeeding, but because it's inconsistent.

I agree he seems to be the wrong part of the story arc to garner much attention.

Uh, no he doesn't have 100% chance to hit, on anything. Turn on toHit rolls in your combat log or something. I've done this on squishes, and I did have to use breakfrees because (IMO annoyingly) his ranged attacks seem to have Energy-Melee-level chances to stun. One Escape covered me for the fight on all my squishies so far, so three little ones would likely have worked too.

My Mid's is doing the right thing. It's +100% enhanceable Regen and +50% unenhanceable regen, meaning at ED max it should add up to about +250% regen, give or take what you're calling "max" for ED. In contrast, Fast Healing is +75% regen, all enhanceable.

I'm not clear what part you disagree with. Are you disagreeing that the players have a basis for complaint?

If so, I'm sorry, but this is one of the few times I feel justified in saying that someone's opinion is wrong. What I really think you would be expressing here, if I've correctly identified what you're disagreeing with, is that you personally agree with the devs doing this. That's not the same as saying that the players don't have a basis for complaint when the devs make changes under auspice (3). You're saying you like for the devs to do this, but that's your opinion. You're not wrong for having that opinion, but you would be wrong for suggesting that everyone else should share it.

I guess I should have said the players have a potential basis for complaint with category (3). Some may agree with a given change or not, but by definition, (3) is a mechanical change with a subjective basis. Not everyone will or should agree with the devs' subjective views. We're stuck with what they decide in the end (unless we can convince them to change it), but it's always worth voicing opinions about what we do and don't like when they are making changes - especially ones not rooted in game balance.

If instead, you feel that category (3) really qualifies for the label "exploit", I don't know what to tell you. I think that's nuts.

Edit: Let me be clear. I am not trying to say that no change of type (3) is ever going to be for the better, but I have both played under and been the game master that herded players down the "one true path" to completing an encounter. It is never as satisfying to do that than it is for the players to find a novel way to complete the encounter that has never been thought of.

"We didn't want it to work that way" is almost never a satisfactory reason for a change to any game encounter in my experience, as long as we aren't talking about something that was being changed because it was boring or something like that. I'm struggling to see how this particular change does anything to improve the experience of the Trapdoor encounter, and so to me it feels petty.

I'm really starting to wonder if there are two versions of this encounter. With me he did nothing like this, after six different times through.

Are we missing something here, like he spawns more Bifurcations if you have a lot of pets deployed?

I don't understand this. Are you saying risk is not a factor in this case? Or are you saying that it should be an exploit on the basis of risk, and thus pulling him somehow minimizes the risk?

There are only three categories of things game devs would normally change about a given scenario to remove options for completion.

1. Things that are "exploitative" in the sense that they trivialize the time to completion or blow the reward for completion out of proportion to the activity. Finding a way to kill Trapdoor in seconds or a way to make him worth five bubbles of XP would be an "exploit" under this category. Finding a way to defeat him at little or no risk of defeat is a variation on this, as it almost certainly reduces time to completion.
2. Things that are blatant violations of the environment, such as finding a way to clip through the walls during the fight. Even if this didn't fall into the category above, it would be fixed by most developers because it's a jarring violation of immersion.
3. Things that don't mesh with the developer vision of the encounter.

Item (3) is not in any commonly accepted way a sub category of item (1). It's a wholly different category of reasoning behind making a change. It is not about balance, or bugs, or "exploits" in the common gaming sense of that word. It is a change to enforce that the players to complete the encounter only in one of the ways that the developers intend.

When a change is done for reason (3) alone, I think there is basis for complaint from the players. If reasons (1) or (2) are in the picture, I don't think there is basis for complaint that a change was made, though the nature of the change may be another matter all together.

Your position seems to be that the devs are god, and therefore what they say shouldn't be questioned - anything they disagree with is automatically an "exploit". I couldn't disagree more, and I don't accept that definition of "exploit".

As a reminder, I already found this encounter almost trivially easy using brute force tactics, solo and on elevated difficulty, on every character I have performed it on. My objection to the change is solely on my objection to changes in category (3), above.

I was running level 50 Mayhem missions on my DM/Regen on -1/x8, looking for the PPD defeat badge. I had to actually take it slow and use some inspirations during ambushes, because they would regularly get me to -60 - -80% defense. They killed me a couple of times.

I can't fight large spawns of them on high settings without someone who, like you said, has very high defense or energy DR.

Maybe, but that's not the same thing. The level 50+ mobs in PI or GV still have a level label attached. They con purple, but they say their level is 50, or whatever. Will a level shifted mob say it's level 58, or whatever? Maybe. If it doesn't, there won't be any way to differentiate them if we just get con colors.

Baloney. I have never heard the word "exploit" used to describe innovative problem solving unless it gave unexpectedly large rewards. That includes completing an encounter in unexpectedly short time. I am not seeing any indication that that is the case in this scenario. If someone is willing to show otherwise, then I will accept the categorization of this as an exploit fix.

Otherwise, calling this an exploit is a ludicrous twisting of the meaning of the word.

And that has anything to do with anything I said how, exactly?

My statement stands, and has nothing to do with letting what's an exploit be defined by the players. You offered a definition of "exploit" which is "players doing anything to complete a goal that the developers did not explicitly intend". That's an idiotic definition, which gives the developers the shield of "oh, it was an exploit" for any change which herds players down only dev-approved paths to completing a goal.

What in there has to do with changes made by the devs being the correction of exploits?

This is a change that limits player tactical choice. As far as I can see, it only does so because someone disagreed that a particular tactical choice should be valid, not because that choice was exploitative. My response was to your defense of this as the correction of an exploit, and you have not rebutted that point whatsoever.