Official Thread for Mayhem Missions
By
13th_Stranger,
Posted on: 2006-05-01 24:55 in Developers' Corner
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This is one of the more extreme instances, but it's not the first time I've seen a team completely fall apart in one of these mishes. Is it just me, or were Mayhem Missions designed to turn fully-functioning, competent teams into a gaggle of blithering idiots?
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CoV/H players are not used to timed missions being so tightly timed. The /bug that caused you all not to get bonus time made it a lot more urgent... and thus, sloppy.
When we can do normal timed missions in one tenth the time given... we generally don't pay attention to the time. However, when it will take 3/4 of the given time to do the mission, and you bump up the difficulty such that multiple foes have the ability to kill you when you're not managing the fight well, then you can expect.... MAYHEM!
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I've done one Mayhem mission with my 40 Bots/Traps MM. It started out being a lot of fun. Got annoying when the time rewards seemed to be happening randomly. The police and drones were really no problem as long as I was paying attention.
Part of the problem was time, I was in Founders Falls and there were a lot of parts were there was nothing around to destroy. I managed to get to the bank/ But I kept having to resummon my bots when ever I went inside becuase they wouldn't follow me in anywheres. Had to do that like 5 or 6 times. THen I got the vault and Positron shows up, kills me almost instantly.
I end up in jail in the police station, takes 3 minutes just to burn through the cell door. Then I get out of cell and theres some sort of Enforcer Police Mech there, look slike Black Scorpion only bigger. Finally I defeat him and make my way to the exit, I enter the exit door. And fall off the damn map, I'm underneath the zone now, falling, falling, falling. Now sudden;y I'm down to 1 HP. So I fly up and try to find some way back into the city I'm stumbling around and sudden;y something starts hitting me and I'm dead. Now this all too almost 10 minutes just to get out of the police station. So back I go again luckily theres almost no spawn s and I come out correctly.
I wander around and finally find Positron and after a firce battle where he nearly kills me I finally get him with like 30 seconds left. I was set on the 3rd level of difficulty, but I thought AV's and Heroes were only supposed to spawn now soloing when you had it on the highest level, Relentless.
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oh yah, and none of the badges from the mayhem mish's seem to be tracking, defeat heroes, cops, cars/trucks, vault doors.
i see them in the list but none of them have the progress bar, not sure if that intentional
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They are tracking, you just haven't done enough. I think it was during my 6th mayhem mission that I got the first ones for destroying cars and trucks and for destroying random objects. And while I didn't keep count, I gather the one for bank vaults goes off at about 15 of them. After about 20 Mayhem Missions I still don't have the one for the cops, which somewhat surprises me in light of how low the first two were, but then I just got my Villain badge for defeating Longbow, too.
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how many do you have to take out before you get a bar? i have destroyed many cars with both of my toons i have been playing these with(about 6-7 each), a couple trucks, almost every cop i have run across, every vault door, etc... im not expecting to have the badge by now or anything but the progress bar to see how close i am like all the other badges that are defeat X mobs, take X hp, etc...
usualy stuff like it is take out 1 to get the listing for the badge in the list and then the next starts the progress bar, or so i thought...
I did bug the problem with the MM pets not taking aggro in-game, but figured i would mention it here as well, sence no one else has.
i still think 20 min is low enough, altho i haven't gotten to try one with a movement power, maybe after that 15 min will be enough. I got through 1 when i thought i should be getting 20 min, but all the timer boosts worked correctly.
The level of the 'boss' should be solely based on the mish level setting and # of people.
as opposed to the stuff you do, mainly for the pet classes and the rescue villian follower, i have to keep them destroying things on the way to the bank just to keep them following me. yah i know they are set on agressive, but with so many targetable things they go ape$#!+. and i think other pets are not that controlable, i know the follower(rescued dumas) is not.
that and certain classes do better one on one than others, let alone one on six.
oh well, server is down now so hopefully they are in prosess of fixing some of these bugs/issues...
...about to find out...
True Alt-o-holic, so... way too many to even think about listing =p
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also i notessed someone said the key that dose not spawn a point on the map is for the jail, i got this off of a clickwork in Kings Row and i assume would be a skull in atlas etc. i think if thats what its for it should be dropped off of a cop, most likely one at cleast close to the jail, maybe the one on the floor the cells are on.
but hey whatever, just a thought...
True Alt-o-holic, so... way too many to even think about listing =p
My AMV.org Page
What's left of my Youtube page
Think-Shirt Page 1 & Think-shirt Page 2
From the 5/10 patch:
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* Reduced the recharge rate on Paragon Police Ghost's Smoke Grenade power.
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Sweet. That should make them a lot easier to deal with. Now we just gotta get the glue grenades to have the same fix 
umm...if they recharge faster, wont they use them more?
I read it as reducing the rate of recharge... therefore increasing the time to recharge. If I'm wrong, feel free to pronounce DOOOOM!
Just got finished with the Founders Fall mayhem mission.
One major bug: We rescued Silent Blade. She proceeded to run to a Citizen and begin attacking him. I could not pull her off him no matter what I did, even recall friend.
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I read it as reducing the rate of recharge... therefore increasing the time to recharge. If I'm wrong, feel free to pronounce DOOOOM!
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DOOOOOM!
Reduce means decrease, take away. If you are REDUCING a 10 second recharge time you are taking away or decreasing the recharge time.
How you turned reducing the rate to increasing the rate I can't quite figure out. 
However... when they increase recharge times, they generally say they increase the time.
Maybe you're inadvertently right though and it's a typo in the patch notes and they meant increase. 
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I read it as reducing the rate of recharge... therefore increasing the time to recharge. If I'm wrong, feel free to pronounce DOOOOM!
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DOOOOOM!
Reduce means decrease, take away. If you are REDUCING a 10 second recharge time you are taking away or decreasing the recharge time.
How you turned reducing the rate to increasing the rate I can't quite figure out.
However... when they increase recharge times, they generally say they increase the time.
Maybe you're inadvertently right though and it's a typo in the patch notes and they meant increase.
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But if you reduce the RATE then you reduce the speed it recharges. I agree with dim that that would mean longer recharge TIME to recharge.
i.e. if my rate is .5 per minute, it takes two minutes to recharge.
Reduce my rate to .2 per minute and it takes 5 minutes to recharge.
Of course, if a redname calls me out as an "idjit" feel free to join in.
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how many do you have to take out before you get a bar? i have destroyed many cars with both of my toons i have been playing these with(about 6-7 each), a couple trucks, almost every cop i have run across, every vault door, etc... im not expecting to have the badge by now or anything but the progress bar to see how close i am like all the other badges that are defeat X mobs, take X hp, etc...
usualy stuff like it is take out 1 to get the listing for the badge in the list and then the next starts the progress bar, or so i thought...
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I never saw any bars for the 5 MM achieve badges, they just awarded out of the blue (sort of). Just keep up the destruction, they'll come eventually. I think the cars one is 100-150 and make sure you're the one doing the damage to to objects, not having them destroyed by the explosion of something else (i.e. parking meters).
Having tried a couple of Mayhem missions with my Thug, I decided to see how things were solo with my L28 FM/FA brute.
At first, things were going great - Blazing Aura was causing total mayhem, and I found a couple of side quests pretty fast. However, at one point, I was ambushed by 12 PDP Ghosts and Equalizers, all at the same time. I spent about 10 minutes just stretching them away from each other in order to fairly fight them. Up to 6 or 7 stacks of Flash Bangs, perma immobilized at one point. Both the glue gun and flash bang need toning down severely, both in duration and activation - I've had one PDP Ghost Flash Bang me three times within a 15 second period.
Ok, once they'd been dealt with, it was business as usual. Smash the stuff, beat up the two PDP guards every so often, rescue a villain from the jail - though not entirely sure why, since all he did was attack civillians endlessly and seemed to have no other motive.
So it came time to do the heist - flawlessly, till I looted the cash.
Oh dear. Aurora Borealis? I could not have been given a worse Hero to fight, seeing as I've absolutely no Psi resists or defences. Let's just say the fight lasted 10 minutes, I was killed 6 times, and the timer ran out as she was at a sliver of health. The experience up to the point the Elite Boss Hero (I was playing on Villainous, the lowest setting) jumped in was marvelous. Once the killjoy arrived, the experience downgraded significantly. Frustration isn't fun. EBs shouldn't be spawning at Villainous.
Are you nuts? I took down Valkyrie, no sweat! Of course, I was using my Thugs/Traps MM, and Gang War distracts ambushes (that's right, they make ambushes attack THEM!).
I think the threat of a random EB adds an element of excitement. Although, I've decided NOT to do nothing but Mayhem Missions on my Thugs/Traps. I'll do some real contacts from now on.
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...and Gang War distracts ambushes (that's right, they make ambushes attack THEM!).
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Really? Then I take it normal henchmen still don't distract ambushers? I've hated bank missions for more reasons than the unholy numbers of people running around, I'd really appreciate if our henchmen could now draw ambush aggro off of us. I've fallen to more RIPs that way...
TwilightSinger, to get that many PDP at once you probably triggered several alarms at a time in a Pawnshop robbery? For Masterminds it's almost impossible to miss them all, but go to whatever lengths you can not to let yourself or the thugs touch any of those cones of red light that are coming from the security monitors, and if you do, wait for the ambush (a double-spawn of PPD) and fight them before going on. That's how you keep from getting overwhelmed. If you just power through, boom.
As for Elite Bosses, somebody taught me the trick for that ages ago. As soon as the first police spawn shows up after grabbing the loot, I fire off the three Luck inspirations I was carrying for just that purpose. Only a very few EBs can hit through that, and it buys me time for my minions to grab and hold aggro while I fall back on assisting. And yeah, sometimes, on the rare occasions I can actually get them to aggro on the EB with that much Luck on my side, Gang War really helps if for no other reason that the time it takes the EB to one-shot the ten of them is 10 shots that they're not firing at me or the minions.
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Are you nuts? I took down Valkyrie, no sweat! Of course, I was using my Thugs/Traps MM, and Gang War distracts ambushes (that's right, they make ambushes attack THEM!).
I think the threat of a random EB adds an element of excitement. Although, I've decided NOT to do nothing but Mayhem Missions on my Thugs/Traps. I'll do some real contacts from now on.
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Nuts? No! Do you have any idea what a Psionic Elite Boss Hero does to a fire/fire Brute? 3 shots them in 6 seconds, that's what. When she first appeared, she also came with 2 Longbow and a PDP Ghost and SWAT Officer. I had to eliminate the Ghost first before he stacked Flash Bangs on me, so Aurora had more time to beat me like angry dough. I spammed almost every inspiration I had in the first encounter, got her down to 2/3rds and died waiting for an animation to finish so I could use my last heal insp. Then I died 5 times more attempting to whittle her down before the timer finally beat me - the Jail cell doors didn't even regenerate after the 4th death!
It was utterly ludicrous - I stood almost no chance whatsoever. I didn't even have the villain I broke out of the jail to help since he was a mental cripple and was terrorizing citizens somewhere else on the map.
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TwilightSinger, to get that many PDP at once you probably triggered several alarms at a time in a Pawnshop robbery? For Masterminds it's almost impossible to miss them all, but go to whatever lengths you can not to let yourself or the thugs touch any of those cones of red light that are coming from the security monitors, and if you do, wait for the ambush (a double-spawn of PPD) and fight them before going on. That's how you keep from getting overwhelmed. If you just power through, boom.
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Ahh, ok. I can see that's where I went wrong. There needs to be a broadcast shout from the incoming ambush in that case, as I was expecting something to happen when I touched the red light (did it on purpose to experiment) and when nothing obvious happened, I figured it was either bugged or not working yet. So I probably waltzed through every security cam in the pawn shop, heh. The ensuing fight was kinda cool though, if only because I had to outwit overwhelming odds.
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As for Elite Bosses, somebody taught me the trick for that ages ago. As soon as the first police spawn shows up after grabbing the loot, I fire off the three Luck inspirations I was carrying for just that purpose. Only a very few EBs can hit through that, and it buys me time for my minions to grab and hold aggro while I fall back on assisting. And yeah, sometimes, on the rare occasions I can actually get them to aggro on the EB with that much Luck on my side, Gang War really helps if for no other reason that the time it takes the EB to one-shot the ten of them is 10 shots that they're not firing at me or the minions.
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For starters, I was playing a Brute, so minions aren't much help to me :P
Secondly, I used 2 lucks, as that was what I had, and Aurora hit through them every time. The problem was not so much an EB, but an EB that was simply the total bane of my existance, and due to being random, I really had no way of preparing for her at all. Psionics at 'Hero' level damage tears a Fire brute apart. That she spawned with 4 minions made things even worse, as 3 of them were damage adds (though the 2 lucks worked better against them) and 1 was an accuracy debuffer.
I do maintain that on Villainous setting, signature heroes should not be appearing. It's ok when you know what you're getting, ala the AV>EB change, because you're told in advance by your contact and can prepare for what you're facing. In a totally random EB encounter in a Mayhem mission it's like being told 'you've had your fun, but now you don't get to complete this'.
The missions are enormous fun, but it was soured at the end by that factor.
Ran my first mayhem mission this morning.Solo LV40 Ice/Fire dom set to malicious. ST.Martial contact. Rob the bank in brickstown. What a blast. Ran my timer up to over 30 mins by destruction and side tasks. Kidnapped one guy and raided a warehouse.
Only issue I had was with Jack Frost. With no controls on him and all the civies as targets he pretty much lost his little icey mind. He was running rampant everywhere trying to hold and blast civilians while I was up to my neck in police and longbow.
Other than that issue it was a real blast. Still had about 25 mins on the timer when I finally went and completed the mission as I had to leave for work. Could have spent hrs in there! Also ended up with two temp powers. A health bonus and a psionic attack.
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also i notessed someone said the key that dose not spawn a point on the map is for the jail, i got this off of a clickwork in Kings Row and i assume would be a skull in atlas etc. i think if thats what its for it should be dropped off of a cop, most likely one at cleast close to the jail, maybe the one on the floor the cells are on.
but hey whatever, just a thought...
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I believe they're right and I think you should be right.
I redid the Atlas run, found a group of skulls (again, only one spawn) and this time the key led to a hellion hideout. When I went to the prison there was NO villain to free.
Also I did some tracking:
Pretty much anything small (booths, phones, newsstands etc) I got a bonus after the first kill (this is on the atlas map mind you) and NOTHING after that no matter how much I destroyed.
With cars I had to take out 5 of them before I got a bonus... destroyed 10 more and no more bonus.
I finally said to hell with it and invested the time into destroying some trucks to see if that's why bonuses stopped and nope. Managed to take out three before time ran out, no further bonuses from anything except avoiding arrest. Unless I had to destroy 5 trucks... but man when you're only level 8 they're pretty damned time consuming. We're talking about using rest TWICE while taking one out. :\
So... all that being said Positron, if you see this I'd like to see more detail about mayhem missions.
-Are the low levels different than the upper?
-Why does my Atlas stop giving time-bonuses where-as my Talos keeps giving bonuses no matter how much I destroy?
-Why aren't the objects in the mission balanced better? They're a joke for anyone 25+ and time-consuming to impossible for someone 10-.
-How come # of key-bearing spawns grows as you got to different maps?
-Shouldn't this be random to keep the Mayhem missions interesting? After all if EVERY TIME I go to Talos I'm going to run one of the 5 known side-missions... it'll get old fast.
-How can we tell when items (if this is working as intended) are going to stop giving time-bonuses? This will actually COST us time trying to destroy stuff that will no longer give a bonus... and quite honestly, if only the first hydrant is going to give me a bonus, and there's no other reason to destroy objects (aside from a possible sadistic need for destruction ["because I can doesn't cut it"]) then why should I keep destroying objects? (I'm assuming this is a bug that they stop giving a bonus.)
I've a few more but lets see what some future patch notes bring and if the red-names are checking these as thoroughly as Posi said hopefully he'll catch wind of this and be able/willing to explain some things in a little more detail.
A perfect example was all the time invested trying to figure out why the end-boss spawned the way it did when all along there was nothing to figure out, it was random. If we knew a little more about the whos/whats/whys of mayhem we could test it better.
Was in Grandville this morning when someone shouted they needed help with Sister Pyche to take her down. When I joined the team I found out we were awhole team of 5 brutes level 40. Sister was at the zone in point when we all entered. After we all ganged rushed her and after 30 seconds of our biggest attacks. She was still at Full health. I understand wanting these named Heroes to be tough but thats not even possible. That has to be some kind of bug after all of us died she remain at full health the whole time as if on God mode or something. I dont like the idea of running missions that it not even possible of winning. And I like even less the idea that these signature heroes are completely untouchable by the rest of us "minor villians" It doesnt role play very well to know that we are just the foder that they guys can kick around. Non Roleplay wise I like being able to solo these MM missions. No not at the hardest level where I can end up with AVs spawning on me but at least be possible to beat solo at a lower level. Overall I love the addition of MM to the game. I just think the level of difficulty needs to addressed.
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I read it as reducing the rate of recharge... therefore increasing the time to recharge. If I'm wrong, feel free to pronounce DOOOOM!
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DOOOOOM!
Reduce means decrease, take away. If you are REDUCING a 10 second recharge time you are taking away or decreasing the recharge time.
How you turned reducing the rate to increasing the rate I can't quite figure out.
However... when they increase recharge times, they generally say they increase the time.
Maybe you're inadvertently right though and it's a typo in the patch notes and they meant increase.
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But if you reduce the RATE then you reduce the speed it recharges. I agree with dim that that would mean longer recharge TIME to recharge.
i.e. if my rate is .5 per minute, it takes two minutes to recharge.
Reduce my rate to .2 per minute and it takes 5 minutes to recharge.
Of course, if a redname calls me out as an "idjit" feel free to join in.
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Grrr now I'm confused. It was so clear and simple earlier. You did point out one thing though... reduced recharge RATE... vs reduced recharge TIME...
Sheesh they couldn't just say increased recharge time?
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I read it as reducing the rate of recharge... therefore increasing the time to recharge. If I'm wrong, feel free to pronounce DOOOOM!
[/ QUOTE ]
DOOOOOM!
Reduce means decrease, take away. If you are REDUCING a 10 second recharge time you are taking away or decreasing the recharge time.
How you turned reducing the rate to increasing the rate I can't quite figure out.
However... when they increase recharge times, they generally say they increase the time.
Maybe you're inadvertently right though and it's a typo in the patch notes and they meant increase.
[/ QUOTE ]
But if you reduce the RATE then you reduce the speed it recharges. I agree with dim that that would mean longer recharge TIME to recharge.
i.e. if my rate is .5 per minute, it takes two minutes to recharge.
Reduce my rate to .2 per minute and it takes 5 minutes to recharge.
Of course, if a redname calls me out as an "idjit" feel free to join in.
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Grrr now I'm confused. It was so clear and simple earlier. You did point out one thing though... reduced recharge RATE... vs reduced recharge TIME...
Sheesh they couldn't just say increased recharge time?
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That would have been clearer, yes.
Has anyone checked to see how this affects things yet? I'm at work so I can't, and was in a SF last night so I couldn't investigate it then either.
I dont know if this was mentioned, but the Villain pet you break out of jail has horrible AI. I dont mind the NPC attacking object or enemies, but getting stuck for 15 minutes attacking citizens is just wrong. It makes the reason for getting these folks, worthless. The AI need to be reworked so the Villian pets wont attack citizens.
Incredible amounts of fun!
Did my first one just now and killed the Hero and mission didn't end immediately. Rapidly figured out that had to kill other mobs as well.
Blew up cars, mailboxes and even police drones!
Was fun killing drones, not used to those things being killable!
Great job, and wasn't buggy at all either.
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
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Is it just me, or were Mayhem Missions designed to turn fully-functioning, competent teams into a gaggle of blithering idiots?
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It's not just you. That ticking timer makes people crazy. A high level team can add all the smashing bonus time there is in the first minute or two. How long does it take to blow up 1 bus stop, 2 payphones, 1 newspaper box, 5 parking meters, 5 cars, 1 dumpster, 1 fire hydrant, and 1 truck? Once you've added that roughly 10 minutes or so, it's all cops and side missions if you want to add to the timer. And the PPD are no laughing stock any more; now they're tougher than Longbow. Which means that people who leveled up grinding Council newspaper missions are suddenly facing enemies much, much harder than they're used to, and that's where the rubber meets the road.
The double spawn outside the prison door makes rejoining your team after you click "Go to Hospital" problematic at best. The distance to the bank is long enough that, if people are going to follow their usual instincts to "meet at the mission" within the mission, each and every one of them will have triggered their own Longbow spawn. And Eris help the team that brings a Mastermind of any kind to a Pawn Shop robbery, because when those alarms start going off, I can all but guarantee from personal experience that people will run around like chickens with their heads cut off -- thereby triggering all the rest of the alarms at once, for something like a 10x normal size spawn of Longbow and cops.
For an individual, or a small team who are careful, or a big team with precision control, these things are better than sliced stupid people on toast. But you're right that there are many, many things in them that are designed to go wrong, and not just to go wrong, but to go wrong in ways that will make people instinctively jump the wrong way and do something stupid. And other than the massively overpowered stacking debuffs with the broken timers from the SWAT Enforcers, all of it perfectly fair.