Not once, not twice, but three times...
By
008Zulu,
Posted on: 2006-01-10 16:26 in Developers' Corner
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In the Dev's defense, stealth-suppression while clicking "glowies" isn't very popular, it at least makes sense.
Even if you're trying to be sneaky, it could be hard to not be notices removing books from a shelf, operating a computer, or things of that nature.
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Someone brought up that it is an exploit, because you can bump up the mission difficulty and get a larger Mission completion xp gain with no real added "risk" in "get the blinkie" missions. I can't argue with that one, and is the only argument in this case that I've seen that justifies a change in Stealth to me. Since they lose xp by not fighting anyway, it seemed like a choice to do it or not do it... but I suppose someone could pay to up their reputation on those to get that bonus without more risk...
But what if the Dev's continued their trend of "carrot over stick" and allowed Stealth to work the way it currently does for Heroic until Rugged (I think that's when there's the first mission xp boost for raising difficulty) but becomes supressed on Rugged and up (thereby justifying more risk for the bigger mission xp reward). Or at least on just Heroic... again, that's giving us choice in how much difficulty we want to face...
It will also continue making the difficulty slider mean more than just what level of enemy, like the AV/EB change...
Heh... I'm liking that choice thing...
"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
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And I know I can still get the AV's if I want to, Uberguy. My concern is that we'll have even more people rushing through content and then whining about not having anymore contacts until they reach a certain level. A lot of people I know that play solo all the time are already having this problem in CoV. Big team=more enemies=more XP, so if you team more you'll end up leveling without being as likely to run out of missions.
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I want you to really think about what you're saying here. You're saying that the only thing standing between people and "racing" to 50 is content that forces teaming.
Now, does that really prevent anything except for people who can't or don't want to form a team? I say it doesn't.
You're trying to make AVs be the thing that makes the whole game harder. They don't. They are just something big and hard to kill that often spends time one-shotting people. That's not hard. It's somewhere between boring and annoying.
I don't ever spend time in perma debt, either. I never have. I play smart, I build well, and I play on the highest difficulty I can as soon as I can. All my CoV toons were on the middle difficulty by level 6 or 8.
But given that slider I don't think the game is too easy. A +2 boss is a hard fight for most all my characters, of course depending on the boss. A +3 boss almost always requires liberal inpsiration use. An 8-man team can get really hairy - especially on those higher settings.
I don't want or expect every single fight to have a good chance to kill me. That level or mortality would annoy me. Maybe you prefer it. But if so you need to know that not everyone would.
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AV's are the only type of forced teaming that I have any kind of approval of. Double and triple clicking glowies is tedious and I hate hate hate hate hate those missions. An AV that you can try to kill yourself and then have to call in the troops to help out? I think that's a good time.
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Almost no one these days can lay out the damage needed to overcome their HP and regen rates. If you are an AT/powerset that can do this, beware. The Nerfs are coming. In any case, the vast majority of players know they need a team to take on an AV, even if it's one of those AVs that doesn't do that much damage.
And again, needing a team != hard.
Soloing an EB without running to the inspiration store 3 times is hard. But it's possible. And that makes it fun. Soling an AV at all is basically impossible. And that, to me, is annoying to find in my missions more than a few times in a characters career.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
How is seeing an Archvillain with a full team *better* content than seeing the same character as an Elite Boss when you're solo or in a small, low difficulty group? I expect the difficulty of facing an Elite Boss solo is comparable to facing an Archvillain with the average team, especially the average team which is planning on facing an Archvillain.
I think some people are confused, with the idea that they won't see the character at all, but some other Elite Boss. I'm certain that that isn't the case.
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How is seeing an Archvillain with a full team *better* content than seeing the same character as an Elite Boss when you're solo or in a small, low difficulty group? I expect the difficulty of facing an Elite Boss solo is comparable to facing an Archvillain with the average team, especially the average team which is planning on facing an Archvillain.
I think some people are confused, with the idea that they won't see the character at all, but some other Elite Boss. I'm certain that that isn't the case.
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Agreed. This means that, solo on Heroic, you will meet Anti-Matter the Elite Boss.
And badge people, killing LT-grade Fake Nemesis in Heroic missions counts towards the badge, doesn't it?
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Or simply, when a mission is completed, then the mission is marked as completed.
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But since this is the way it actually does work, there is no exploit there. 
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I thought the idea was:
Person A has glowie mission, set to Invincible
Person B joins team, both enter
Person A quits
Person B stealths mission, gets mega XP
Person A's mission isn't marked as 'completed' because they weren't there - it was finished by someone who wasn't on the team.
(so in that case, you could potentially fix this by denying mission completion bonus if the owner wasn't present when the mission was completed.)
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Or simply, when a mission is completed, then the mission is marked as completed.
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But since this is the way it actually does work, there is no exploit there.
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I thought the idea was:
Person A has glowie mission, set to Invincible
Person B joins team, both enter
Person A quits
Person B stealths mission, gets mega XP
Person A's mission isn't marked as 'completed' because they weren't there - it was finished by someone who wasn't on the team.
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I cant say for sure, LS, but I have received "Mission Completed" for missions I was no longer in the team for as far back as Issue 2. I don't know if it's consistent, because I've only done things that can lead to it a couple of times (I let other people run one of my missions while I did something else in game), but it did work that way those couple of times.
I've actually used it to switch to another character to complete one of my own missions.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Or simply, when a mission is completed, then the mission is marked as completed.
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But since this is the way it actually does work, there is no exploit there.
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I thought the idea was:
Person A has glowie mission, set to Invincible
Person B joins team, both enter
Person A quits
Person B stealths mission, gets mega XP
Person A's mission isn't marked as 'completed' because they weren't there - it was finished by someone who wasn't on the team.
(so in that case, you could potentially fix this by denying mission completion bonus if the owner wasn't present when the mission was completed.)
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If it works that way, then when Person B finishes the mission, Person A should get a mission completed notice (similar to what happens if a GM completes a mission for you when you're not in it, or similar to what happens if you have a "defeat 30 Rikti" mission and you're in a door mission taking out Rikti).
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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This is bait and switch how?
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Its a bait and switch because most people didnt see this as a problem to begin with and as such needed no solution. Now instead of just leaving it alone, we are happy it just not being nerfed like it was planned.
They can say they listen to the playerbase because it was suggested by a few that suppression be used instead of no clicky, but most people said just leave it alone.
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Just because most people didn't see it as a problem, doesn't mean that there isn't/wasn't one.
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You asked how its a bait and switch and I just explained it.
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I wasn't the one who asked the question. I was only responding to your comment that "most people said leave it alone." That's it.
Just a thank you, Statesman. You have given me back some measure of faith.
Regards, Riot Girl and the my crew of cranky middle aged gamers.
Since the 10th was my birthday, and you announced it then..... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! Awesome present. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!
Seriously, this is one of the best announcements I've seen. The AV/Hero missions on the COV side in the earlier levels are very frustrating. This is a HUGE improvement and allows for every type of play style. The stealth thing never appeared 'broken' to me in the first place and everyone loves new clothes! You're 3 for 3 with this one! 
States, might this change mean that some of the lower-level Elite Bosses, like Frostfire or Heracles, could become Archvillains for big-enough teams? That might be fun; there are relatively few AVs in the lower end of CoH as it is now, especially compared to CoV.
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As for the stealth thing, trying to argue that no exploit even exists is a failing strategy. There's not a lot of glowie rich missions in either game, but you don't need a lot - just one per level. Glowie farming was the main exploit, with the higher-than-intended XP rate of stealthy people a fringe issue.
[/ QUOTE ]That's another good point. I would imagine with my soloution, there would be no xp associated with grabbing the blinkies on the difficulties where you could "stealth" them... only the "lesser" mission completed award, ending the mission, and thus eliminating the farmable exploit for them.
"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
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One thing I always wanted to see in an AV mission are two AV's in the same room not fighting each other but working together to fight your team. I think the added difficulty would be very nice to help spice up some AV battles. Most of the time they are over really fast with the right team on your side.
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Heh, I was in a mission where this happened; I don't remember the story arc, but it was one of the 45-50 ones with (IIRC) Neuron and somebody else. Our usual team of tanker/rad defender (me)/Emp defender/sked controller/warshade had been blowing through most of the AVs we'd encountered so far, so charged in on this one in a large room. Fighting, fighting, then people start going red. Surprise, another AV jumped in from the side, with his entourage in tow! We actually had a couple of people drop in that one and had to combat rez them, first time in awhile for that team, it was quite exciting. 
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How is seeing an Archvillain with a full team *better* content than seeing the same character as an Elite Boss when you're solo or in a small, low difficulty group? I expect the difficulty of facing an Elite Boss solo is comparable to facing an Archvillain with the average team, especially the average team which is planning on facing an Archvillain.
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It's not about difficulty as much as it's about being able to play the game as it was designed on the level if difficulty it was designed for.
I want to beat Archvillians. It's one of the only reasons I bother levelling up characters.
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I think some people are confused, with the idea that they won't see the character at all, but some other Elite Boss. I'm certain that that isn't the case.
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No confusion here.
What I don't want is to get to the end of a mission, meet an Elite Boss, realize that I need to recruit a team and reset the mission to face that Elite Boss as an AV, the way I was originally meant to face it, which now means I earn nearly double the XP for that mission. That's a serious problem if I'm already outleveling my contacts.
So, I'm left with the choice of continuing and taking the "easy way out" or I'll have to keep redoing my missions.
Again, all of this will be solved by adding explicit text to the mission briefing before I accept the mission. Cryptic has a mixed record of doing this on mission text for AVs, simultaneous clickies etc. so I want to start asking for it NOW.
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Excellent choice, miss.
And for dessert?
Perhaps you'd like to try the creme brulee.
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Would you like a mint?
It's wafer thin.
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reset the mission to face that Elite Boss as an AV, the way I was originally meant to face it,
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Out of curiosity, why is the original intent relevant?
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This is bait and switch how?
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Its a bait and switch because most people didnt see this as a problem to begin with and as such needed no solution. Now instead of just leaving it alone, we are happy it just not being nerfed like it was planned.
They can say they listen to the playerbase because it was suggested by a few that suppression be used instead of no clicky, but most people said just leave it alone.
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Just because most people didn't see it as a problem, doesn't mean that there isn't/wasn't one.
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You asked how its a bait and switch and I just explained it.
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I wasn't the one who asked the question. I was only responding to your comment that "most people said leave it alone." That's it.
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Then I apologize for the first part of my statement then. I do believe that the Devs sometimes need to take the attitude that if its not broke dont fix it. Improve Yes!
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Out of curiosity, why is the original intent relevant?
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As a game designer myself I want the implementation of a game to match it's design.
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I wasn't the one who asked the question. I was only responding to your comment that "most people said leave it alone." That's it.
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Then I apologize for the first part of my statement then. I do believe that the Devs sometimes need to take the attitude that if its not broke dont fix it. Improve Yes!
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Meh, no apologies needed. Forums sometimes R teh confuzzling.
Anyways, in retrospect, it is no surprise that this will get looked at. As mentioned somewhere else in this thread, all it takes is one Glowy mission per level and someone could farm that mission for the level.
Combine that with the well-displayed tendancy of Cryptic Devs to come down hard on anything resembling low(no) risk/High Reward and it becomes evident.
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Then I apologize for the first part of my statement then. I do believe that the Devs sometimes need to take the attitude that if its not broke dont fix it.
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The fact remains they define what is broken, not the playerbase. I'm sure there are MANY things they consider "not broken" and don't fix in every patch. The playerbase might disagree with them on it not being broken but it's the developers' call to make.
After all, if they fixed everything that wasn't broken they'd have to fix everything.
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Improve Yes!
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Again they define improve. Not us. Which is good because we can't agree. ED, to me, improves the game. To many others it does not.
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Out of curiosity, why is the original intent relevant?
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As a game designer myself I want the implementation of a game to match it's design.
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Good. Then I shall fight the spawn next to the AV with stealth and SS running and be unseeable by the AV until I'm ready, with my Instant Healing Toggle running, or perma-MOG ready to take him on.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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As a game designer myself I want the implementation of a game to match it's design.
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But design isn't something that's set in stone from day one. It evolves as the game proceeds (which is why playtesting is so crucial). In any case, when you face Antimatter, you're still facing Antimatter, just the Elite Boss version rather than the AV version.
I don't see why you'd want to face the version that requires a team rather than the version that doesn't. AVs weren't designed for solo players, so citing original intended design seems a bit odd to me.
Explicit text seems reasonable enough. Especially as it is now, so that you dont' get to the end of the mission and find an Archvillain, then realize you needed a team to beat it. I know I kind of feel cheated when I get invited to a team to beat the AV in the last room.
Unless, of course, it was their original intent to be vague about it. It makes sense in a few situation, such as the Shadowhunter mission. It's 1 hour, timed, defeat all in an instanced outdoors, full of wolves. All you know ahead of time is there were tracking devices on some of the wolves, and they've stopped transmiting, or something like that. Then, part way through the mission, you encounter Shadowhunter, who says that he's culled those tracked wolves from his herd. And now you're down to a half hour with an AV to fight, and probably more wolves to beat. I admit it doesn't seem fair, but that might've been the "original intent".
I don't think it's such a bad thing to decide that whatever you were originally doing, or were going to do, isn't as good of an idea as this new thing you're going to do.
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But design isn't something that's set in stone from day one. It evolves as the game proceeds (which is why playtesting is so crucial). In any case, when you face Antimatter, you're still facing Antimatter, just the Elite Boss version rather than the AV version.
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That's not the same to me. If I want to run a marathon I'm not going to run a half-marathon and claim I've run a marathon.
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As a game designer myself I want the implementation of a game to match it's design.
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I don't see why you'd want to face the version that requires a team rather than the version that doesn't. AVs weren't designed for solo players, so citing original intended design seems a bit odd to me.
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And AV missions were not designed to be soloed. That's the design I'm referrring to. They are meant to be teamed. I will now have a harder time getting teams but I'll just resign myself to that. I /like/ getting the call "Need help with [insert AV here] rest of mission is cleared please come help" and I expect I will never get one of those tells.
If designing AV missions to be grouped was a poor design choice then the devs are now abandoning their core game design due to complaints from the player base. I have never seen that end well.
There are people out there who can both design and implement good games. If Cryptic can't do that they have no business running an MMOG.
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This is bait and switch how?
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Its a bait and switch because most people didnt see this as a problem to begin with and as such needed no solution. Now instead of just leaving it alone, we are happy it just not being nerfed like it was planned.
They can say they listen to the playerbase because it was suggested by a few that suppression be used instead of no clicky, but most people said just leave it alone.
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Just because most people didn't see it as a problem, doesn't mean that there isn't/wasn't one.
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You asked how its a bait and switch and I just explained it. It being a problem in the playerbases eyes, I would beg to say that from reading these forums its was not. The Devs might have thought it was a problem and I didnt dispute that, but I will debate that this affected very few people during their gameplay and was benfit to only those that chose to do it and in no way hurt anyone.
If someone wants to stealth all thier glowie missions and not fight through, I say more power to you. You found a different way to sovle the same problem and in the process got less experience, but you enjoyed yourself and hurt no one else.
I just dont see why this needs to be done in any fashion. You couldnt do all your missions in this manner and you couldn't level all that quickly using this tatic, it just shaved time off of certain mission and TF and SF.