Snow Globe

When the developer start taking working strategies off the table, then yes it is cheating.

Players figured out how to slow (AoE mezzes & Pets) or prevent the invisible mine layers from getting close (Force Bubble), and within a week all that was removed. Oh, and the Aspect at the end of the CoP is likely still shooting through its "Only Affects Self" shield.

No, what gives me lease to respond the way I did was the incredibly stupid response I got from a certain poster.

Oh, you are calling out my post because of ad hominems, but then start doing your own. Pot meet kettle, you're both black.

And you continue to use ad hominems. Also the game is cheating.

If you want hard, then you should ask for difficulty settings that actually mean something. Oh, and ad hominem #3.

Wrong order and complete reading failure on your part.

Complete reading failure on your part.

That is generally how the term has been used for the last 2,000+ years (the phrase pretty much came from the Book of Daniel in the Bible). I can't be accused of using a local idiom in this case. It is a widely used phrase.

That is exactly what I'm saying. If the Honoree is defeated first then you click on the Honoree you will get a different message than if you defeat Holtz first.

You must be a natural blond.

Then they seriously fail at being an ALPHA slot task forces. If they are to provide challenge to characters with MULTIPLE Incarnate Slots, then let's call a spade a spade: They are mid to high level Incarnate TFs, not Alpha TFs.

It still isn't designed for the Alpha Slot, it is designed for the Alpha Slot + Judgement Slot + Destiny Slot + Lore Slot (and possibly Interface as well). As such it fails miserably on providing an appropriate challenge.

I have to fully agree with this.

Scarily enough I've had developers AND those players that have drunk a little to much Kool Aid/Enriche tell me both of these. I didn't believe it then, and I certainly don't believe it now with continued "experience" of the tasks. Couple that with the heavy handedness of the recent patches further amping the difficulty of Incarnate related tasks and it tells me that the developers haven't got the first clue as to what the term "balance" means.

I think your ratios are pretty much accurate here.

The writing is already "on the wall" in game for the Holtz/Honoree mission. Try defeating Honoree first and clicking on him. His text tells you that you have to clear the Rikti as well. So we will likely have to deal with a practically unending stream of Rikti coming out of the portals for ZERO xp/drops just to get the mission to end.

Heaven help you if you are a solo squishy vs 100+ Rikti & 2 EBs.

I've used Force Bubble on 2 separate Tin Mages since the last live patch. It doesn't work. The last time (Saturday night), I had a mine thrown into my face at point blank range.

I'm actually coming to agree with that position.

It isn't just CaptainMoodswing, but I understand what you are saying.

Tried [Force Bubble] before and after last week's live patch. Before it worked. After, no it doesn't work. The mine layers are indeed, as Arcanaville put it, intangible. That means they walk right through the [Force Bubble] and it is completely ineffective. At one point Saturday night a mine was thrown into my face (3rd person doesn't work well next to walls).

Ok, I'll grant that it isn't impossible. I'll continue to say that it is bypassing the rules the majority of players have to live with to get the badge though.

I don't consider rogues doing the hero arc or vigilantes doing the villain arc to be cheating. I also agree that it seems really dumb to either flag the badges as hero/villain only or not award to any player that does the arc in question.

I just want consistent rules for everyone. I don't think that is too much to ask.

A large portion of what people consider my "attitude" is a fundamental aspect of my personality profile (read the link, it will give you insights on how I think). It isn't something that I can "feel better" about. On the flip side, it allows me to organize things easily.

Rogues can't enter hero bases and vigilantes can't enter villain bases, so that isn't possible [edit] for the majority of players [/edit] either.

No, they do not. I can personally attest to this. A friend that had a hero in level for the arc took a rogue stalker, a certain rogue Illusion/Empath (myself), and a third character through the arc. Everyone got the No One Left Behind badge, but only the mission holder got the Helping Hand badge.

Different badge requirements.

Yes, you have to be a villain/rogue and either own the mission or possibly do it via flashback. As I said above, it is NOT true on the hero side.

I'm trying to understand the systems involved so that I can at least try to give some constructive ways to fix things. I don't think the developers are stupid. Far from it. However I think their scripting environment is.

Except that is how you came across to me earlier when you said "All doable, but possibly not consistent with the design intent. The devs know its harder to ratchet upward than downward, so they might want to see if there is a way to preserve intent before blanket-weakening them."

Fine, got any resources that I can look into to get myself up to speed on how MMOs work?

Actually I got the highlighted ones already.

If the developers give us something that can be obtained by strategy and preparation, I'll go back to focusing on badge bugs and my crusade against RPers that seem to want to annoy me.

I'll see your Standard Code Rant, and raise you a Bug Needing Fixing.

Let me put it in a clear fashion:

Is there a limit on the number of mines dropped? Yes or No?
Is there a unlimited count on how many objects the server sends the client? Yes or No?
Does having an unlimited amount of mines on the map cost a reasonable amount of CPU cycles? Yes or No?
Is the developer intention to have the entire room covered with mines, to the point that players can't see them or the warnings? Yes or No?
Is it the developer intention for players to not get the badge in question? Yes or No?
Is it the developer intention for the mine layers to walk through things like Force Bubbles (given that they are intangible and cannot be debuffed, it is likely they are ignoring repulsion powers)? Yes or No?

Given how I'm having to answer this list, I simply cannot see any way to even think this is "working as intended", unless the intent is to kill off the players as often as possible. Even Apex limits the sword strikes to a maximum of 3 out at a time. It doesn't seem to be unreasonable to think the same process could be applied to the Director 11 fight.

Given that Standard Code Rants < Bug Fixes, the situation should be fixed.

And in any well designed programming environment, what I am suggesting would actually work.

I'm trying to at least come up with solutions that could be put into place that falls within the observable scope of the game's abilities. I may not know the exact mechanics, but it shouldn't be as difficult as you are making it out to be.

In my mind it wouldn't be a PBAoE debuff, more of a zone-wide "Slow Mine Layers" power that makes them use the power less. Why the heck isn't the mine laying power "not a click"?

The way it has been explained in this thread is that Director 11 summons the 3 minelayers, then the minelayers summon the proximity bombs. Is this an accurate description of what is happening in your view? If it is, then the AI controlling the minelayer's summoning is currently in overdrive and unchecked. In other words, broken. Even a Master Illusionist summons on a controlled cycle. The minelayer's AI looks like it only has one power: "summon mines". So every attack it gets, another mine is planted.

There should be the possibility that a zone-wide counter (debuff that only affects minelayers or some other mechanism) is increased with every mine dropped and decreased with every mine that is destroyed. The minelayer's AI could then check that counter to determine if they can drop a new mine. A slow to a minelayer would accomplish the same thing. The only time a check would occur would be when the minelayer goes to drop a bomb. If you are saying that the AI is dropping mines every few seconds, then that is a problem in an of itself.

And are you going to seriously tell me that the minelayers dropping 100+ mines or the mines being dropped far from the AV is intentional? Because that is what is happening. Something has to be done. Not only is it wrong from a balance point of view, but it is also breaking critical warnings to players. On a Tin Mage run Wednesday night, I didn't get several warnings that mines were about to go off due to the excessive amount entities in the area.

I actually suspect that I might not be able to SEE all the bombs planted. I know for a fact (Hami Raids before Issue 9), that critters disappear if there is too many for the game to render. From my understanding this is a means to protect CPU cycles.

As to the notion that this would be a one-shot code would also be a mistake. There are a number of "infinite" spawning mechanisms that seriously need to be looked at that this could be applied to.

Ah, I think you might have the wrong person.

So the lists have given up the ghost?

The mines could spawn like ambushes, or be a power directly under Director 11's control: plant bombs. This power would tell the mine layers to plant bombs. Or they could do what I suggest below.

Actually I thought of one more way and it should be feasible inside the existing powers structure. Even better, it would preserve the intent of having SOME bombs (not a warehouse full of them) while not being an overwhelming reaction to the players "winning" against a "pet" creation.

Give each proximity bomb an AoE -Recharge to all mine layers in the warehouse while the mine is "alive". Seeing that the mine layers only plant mines, -Recharge shouldn't have any other effect on them.

This should fit the game as -Recharge is a standard debuff. In addition, debuffs can be targeted to specific entities.

Yes, it requires 1 "new" power, but it doesn't require code beyond that power. It doesn't eat up (much) more game cycles.

If the actual intent of the encounter is to have the director throw out some mines for the players to dodge, then this AoE Recharge debuff preventing mine layers from literally carpeting all the surface of the warehouse should be put into place as soon as possible. Otherwise, it is like Zombie Man has said: "This smacks of those Dungeon Masters who, when they find their players discovered a clever way to get past the dragon, make up on the spot a new dragon to force the encounter to go they way they planned."

Okay, let me repeat myself: I did NOT get either warning last night several times during the fight with the Director, yet still got hit with mine damage.

They've already ratcheted the design up from the beta test. They did it with this patch. The fact that players used other means to target critters that were invisible and not able to be targeted directly by players shows a clear misunderstanding between what is actually reasonable to expect players can do with the game system.

The INTENT of having invisible bombers on crack was wrong to begin with.

I've ran with teams on Issue 19 beta that didn't get all the glowies. Ouch.

Actually it is only 40, not 100. It might seem like that though.

Unless for some reason you are the only player of the team of 8 that didn't get the badge. I didn't last night, yet I was in mission the whole time. The incident is currently under review...

This, more than anything, sums up the problems of this encounter for me. And it is one that players have been saying since the beginning of the Issue 19 Beta.