Official Thread for Mayhem Missions
By
13th_Stranger,
Posted on: 2006-05-01 24:55 in Developers' Corner
My temp power reward is 2 in-game days of debt protection. 
Most of my comments reflect things others have already said.
* I was playing Brass Goblin, a 18 sonics/ice corrupter. The mission was a bank job in SC.
* The bonuses look random, even if they aren't. I just started blasting as much stuff as possible, but couldn't make out a pattern. It seems as though you get credit for NPC villains, but I can't be certain. A better explanation would be helpful.
* Having "fog of war" in the bank/PPD is reasonable, but it is frustrating not having the entrance/exit door marked.
* I defeated an awful lot of enemies, and received few Inspirations. Given how tough (and long) the battles are, it might make sense to increase the distribution rate.
* Breaking out of jail only to face down guards while your End is wiped out from breaking the door isn't fun. Especially the third time you have to do it in a single mission.
* Bowling citizens with Shockwave is too cool for words. Smacking a bunch of them into a storefront and showering them with change from the parking meters is even better.
* Overall the mayhem mission was brilliant. I cannot wait to run another.
@Glass Goblin - Writer, brainstormer, storyteller, hero
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day
Ok, I ran my first Mayhem Mission using Rayefire, my level 30 Fire/EA brute.
Totally missed all the sidequests, had a named Hero boss (not a vindicator). He beat me up the first time, I had to go back to get him. I don't think I'd like these as much if I had to fight EBs.
Biggest complaints:
1. Flashbang grenades. I have 2 Acc SO's in every attack. I hit 4 insights. I missed 4 times in a row. Hit once. Missed 4 times in a row.
2. I was also glued to the ground with SS on.
Result: Not fun fighting those guys... I wanted to run around causing mayhem, but I was stuck in one place unable to hit anything because they were at range.... or because my accuracy was floored. (As a side note, I thought EA had protection against enemy debuff? If I did, it wasn't working.)
The Hero that shows up to stop you is just too hard. Seriously, devs, rethink this... right now my only options are to drop the difficulty before every mayhem mission, and to solo only and not bring along teammates. I can't understand posts that read "Sure, I got pounded 10 times and reached my debt cap, but WHEE FUN!". Fun starts to drop off when you feel like you're hitting an insurpassable brick wall of frustration and futility.
The neverending waves of heavy ambushes loaded with a dozen debuffs are also too much. Why chuck 10 emp grenades when 1-2 are enough to completely drain me and take out my toggles? Why hammer me with so many glue arrows that I can't move faster than a snail? There's got to be a bug at play here... I hope.
Let's see, what else... I'm going to assume pets and villain helpers ignoring the enemy in favor of pounding on civvies is a bug and will be dealt with... and that the timer starting at less than 20 and bonus time being inconsistent is a bug... those things are minor. It's the overall difficulty that MUST be addressed before this goes live. It doesn't have to be insanely easy, but it should be doable by the casual gamers you're trying to reach out to.
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They are super cool. And very hectic in a fun way.
I am disappointed that the bonus time, and other assorted messages dont show up in the rewards tab. They flew by so fast I could not read them and then there was no way for me to check them out.
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Yeah I agree, just get rid of the buff to AVs/Heroes and these will be somewhat ok. Its currently easier and much more fun for me to solo these missions than it is with a team of 4. The people that like teams of 4 to 6 are going to suffer the most because you are going to spawn a Hero and its now impossible to beat on a small timeframe. So basically, if you want to team in a Mayhem Mission, you need 8 people.
Discovered pets don't help break down the bank door - I'm a plant/thorn dom - created an sg base and plugge din 4 Monuments of Fury, Iron, blah blah - added in five of each IOP's - and with my domination bar full and activated - took me seven minutes to take down the FIRST door - only to be snipered by the PPD waiting on the other side.
Used invis to sneak out next time.
Took the side mission to blow up one of the building. Set all the bombs, immediately setting fire to the place. Immediately started to take burn damage. Ran outside as fast as I could. Exited the building - and dropped dead. Checked combat log - not a SINGLE hit. Just dropped dead. I suppose it was from the building "exploding" - a combat log report of this would be nice.
Wasn't worth putting nine minutes into setting the bombs while fighting the ambushes to get a 4 minute bonus time.
Takes more than :30 to evade the police - 1:00 would be nice. :30 bonus should be for blowing up mailboxes and fire hydrants.
Would like to see civilians take damage - right now none of my plant/thorn dom powers have ANY effect on civilians. They're COMPLETELY elusive to them.
Had fun - failed the mission. Now I have to do five more newspaper missions before attempting one again.
Suprisingly NOBODY wanted to team up with me for this mayhem mission. Bizzarre.
Wow, owch. Well I hate to be the naysayer here but I didnt have a lot of fun in my first mayhem experience.
First off, I play a corruptor.
Sure blowing stuff up was fun and shiney but that part ended pretty much the second I entered the bank. Instantly im stuck between the banks security, and 3 waves of Longbow ambushes. Died, came back, took 2-3 minutes to break out of the jail due to not being able to use my most powerful snipe attack because of some unseen constant interrupt. Got out of the cell, had to deal with sticky crisis trying to get out of the jail, get back to the bank get the loot.
Thats when the fun really ended. I envy people who just got some LT in a different costume.
I got Valkyrie.
And she was an Elite Boss.
A melee/long distance elite boss, that kept having swat team members come in and back her up.
In the end, I failed the mayhem mission without a chance of possibly succeeding, got a bar of debt, and aside from that, I guess because I failed I didnt get to get any new contacts.
Thats a major level of bad in my book. I really dont want to have to depend on other people just so I can get my contacts and thus beable to do story missions and such.
If It was just difficult that woulda been one thing, but I threw everything I had at val, got her to about 60% health, died, and by the time I got back she was at 95%. No chance >.<
I just had a chance to complete my 1st mayhem.
First I went straight to the jail, where to my surprise, a spines villain scrapper (she never stealthed, so I assumed she's a fallen scrapper) joined me before I broke any cell door.
Then, to the bank when I was defeated in the first room (the NPC villain was following from too far, and assaulting random guys outside)
I came back to the bank, went stealthed direct to the vault, robbed it and was killed again by the Hero (another Spine scrapper 
) and his ambush.
Came back and finished them.
My thought:
LOT of FUN.
but ambush and enemy spawn maybe too big (at least for a one man team)
but LOT of FUN, I cleared my double defeat death after the mission completion by assaulting detectives outside.
(I was level 14 NRG/Ninjitsu Stalker)
Ok, had a lot of fun, took Terradraconis my DM/Stone brute into do mayham. Found the police and broke a rad/rad corruptor out. She followed me around and helped the rest of the mission. Though obviously she didn't subscribe to the healbot school of corrupting. Burned down the building, smashed alot of things, had my time up over 25 minutes at one point. Oh your told you have 20 minutes, when I got into the mission I had 13 minutes...
On the way out of the bank I ran into Valkyrie, the rad/rad I had with me helped a whole lot. 
the group teleport power for 24 hours is interesting but I would have preferred if it had been 5 uses or something like that. I'm more likely to get 5 uses that way than use it in the next 24 hours. ::shrug::
getting stuck to the floor is annoying and thats about all to say.
But it's MY sadistic mechanical monster and I'm here to make sure it knows it. - Girl Genius
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Overall, the difficulty needs to be dialed down. That's the main issue I have with Mayhem missions - the concept is brilliant ( I want to try it with an AoE-attack corruptor, *drool* ... smashing stuff by the DOZENS ... *drool* ...), but the difficulty is turned up just a BIT too much, for my tastes.
I can see where it would be fun once the bugs and difficulty are worked out.
Time wasnt a problem until I went to jail, which is to be expected. I was ambushed...IN MY CELL! The door was not open yet and guards phased thru just when i summoned my pets. Some of my pets left through the walls to battle who knows what. After destroying the door, more cops came. It was a constant string of swat with glue attacks. Luckily I pased the cell with the villain to team up with, who just walked out of the cell from somewhere.
Finally I left the building. I wish I could say the same for my pets. I used recall friend, which didnt work of course since they were in the police station. Time ran out as I tried to get my pets out. They seamed to focus on civilians anyway to not be bothered with my attack orders.
I didnt even make it to the bank so I cant comment on that difficulty. Like I said, I can see where it would be fun. But if you are a mastermind, I'd stay away.
I did my first Mayhem Mission solo today with my new MM (can you guess which kind) - i have loved this entire game since day one - but i think that was the single MOST FUN THING i have ever done in this game - and on top of that i got a awsome Jet Pack temp power - which is a fantastic bonus for a lvl 8 character - i knew you devs were brilliant but you have far exceeded my expectations - cant wait to see what the hero version is like when its released.
Does anyone know how many diffrent temp powers are currently associated with the Mayhem Missions - and is one awarded ever mission?
As a side note i would also like to compliment you guys on the new info for the temp powers showing exactly how much time or how many charges you have left - I dont know about anyone else but one of the things i hated about the Bean Bag gun was i could never keep track of how many i had used to figure out how many i had left.
As always thank you devs for all your hard work - it is appreciated by many of us!
This might just be the defining issue that sets CoV apart from CoH. Overall I just finished my first Mayhem Mission. My character was a Sonic/Dark Corruptor. I heard about the problems so I switched my difficulty down to the lowest setting for the mission and had a absolute blast. Took me a hour to do a timed 20 minute mission
On my way to rob the bank in Steel Canyon. I broke into a warehouse, stole some weapons and grenades (temp power) after roughing up some family for the location of those items of course. Funny that the family and the Tsoo were working together :shakes head: anyways. After that I found another group of family and got the key to rob a jewelry store. Set off the motion detectors and then had to fight a combination of around 15 police and Longbow. (The glue grenades are a little overdone...)
All in all I think I trashed every mailbox, fire hydrant, garbage can and dumpster, bus stop, box, crate, storage container, and policeman in the zone. THEN I went and hit the bank....
The hero I drew was Valkyre, and she was tough as nails. She spawned as a Elite boss, which was totally cool. Mind you this is on the lowest setting. Having /dark as my secondary with Darkest Night made the fight very doable. I used 2 lucks, 2 damage reductions, a acc, and a damage as soon as I saw her (Out of fear..Yep, it's good to fear the heroes) And then went to work on her.
Oh! And yes, I did make a stop to the Paragon Police Station to bust out the villain to help me. But she sorta did her own thing and didnt follow that well. All in all I give mayhem missions a A.
Things that could be improved.
My character was 24, and I didnt see 1 of the ED 209 cops or any of the psionic crime fighters, so maybe I was too low. But a little bit of variation would do on the ambushes. Mix the Longbow and Paragon Police with maybe a random lesser hero (Think Ms Shock from the villain cape trial).
Less Glue! Those glue traps were annoying. I worked out if I stayed airborn and used knockdown and then my sonic sleep attack I could get the upper hand and sometimes keep from getting it used on me. But when I robbed the jewelry store I had about 6 of the glues stacked on me. And waiting 1 minute for any attack to recharge so you can fight is irksome.
Paragon City Information terminals! There were a couple of them outside of the blue forcefield that I couldnt get at. But MAN I want those things as a destroyable item. Cant really put my finger on why, I just always wanted to bash those things, even when playing CoH.
As far as I see that's it. Now I've heard that if you mission difficulty is set higher then the lowest setting you'll get a AV or even a Hero to fight at the end, even solo. And that it's unwinnable. If that's true then it should be either changed to where you get a bonus for avoiding the hero, or that nothing beyond a Elite boss will spawn solo. You want it tough, but not impossible. 
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Went in as a level 25 (somewhat gimp) stalker on villainous....not a good time. Between waves of ambushes that can see through hide, the hide suppression now associated with clicking glowies, and Valkyrie as an elite boss (!!!), it was painful, painful, painful. I used to be able to complete heists with a little difficulty, but this just felt impossible.
Mayhem Missions first impressions...
GOOD TIMES! VERY COOL! ABSOLUTELY LOVE THEM!!!
Okay, now that that is out of my system....
Ran two Mayhem missions today, the first with a level 8 Rad/rad Corruptor, the second with a 35th lvl bots/FF Mastermind.
1) As others have noted, did not get the promised 20-minutes for the mission. If the 20 minutes is supposed to start right when you get the mission then timer needs to pop up before you zone in to the mission like other timed missions and the doors need to be closer to the contact.
2) Kudos to the devs for reducing the recharge time on the 2nd pet upgrade for masterminds. That one change helps so much in these missions
3) Liking the "lvls" on the inanimate objects. A low level badguy shouldn't expect to be one shotting cars and the like. The lvl 8 corruptor saw cars conning as red and trucks and metal shipping containers as purple and taking more time to kill than the time reward given. This is as it should be, he's only 8th lvl. The lvl 35 MM had everything conning grey save for security doors and vault doors. Again as it should be. By lvl 35 you should be bada**
4)Love the unlockable side missions. Took me a moment in the jewely store on Talos to realize there were Multiple wall safes to plunder AND the vault. Very nice.
5)Using any power that does knockback on citizens is just too much fun!!! Revenge is soooo sweet! 'Nuff said.
6)Time rewards for objects seems to be a bit sporadic. You get rewarded for the first object of a type you kill, but then you don't get another such reward for the same type of object until several other objects of that type have been killed. (Will pay closer attention on the next Mission to see if it is a consistant number.)
7)Pets take way too long to follow through doors on these missions...From 6 to 30 seconds...A long time if you're a lone MM.
8) The Hero at the end of the bank mission, with their attendant entourage, is more than sufficient. If I need a tougher opponent I will up my difficulty slider.
9) Overall an 8 out of ten stars. Well done with just a couple sticking points noticed. The eye candy is fantastic even without the AegisX card, scattered coins, car debris, shattered doors, spent shell casings...etc....
Cyberdoom, Master of Technology, Overlord of Powers Ascendant
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i also tried one with my 37 bot/ff, didnt really notice defense scaling or not, since i died a few times (fighting lvl 40's)
got in jail after first death, noticed the door had 2k hp...so i summoned bots and twiddled my thumbs for 2-3 minutes while they killed it. then i promptly got killed by all the guards outside the door
went to jail again (with lots of debt), summoned bots, they started attacking...then my protector bots pushed/shoved their way through the door and started getting hurt pretty bad by the guards out there. I tried healing them and couldnt (aid other), and of course their heal is broken now
then the guards out there killed my prot bots and got aggrod on me, and they started clipping parts of their bodies through the door and attacked me repeatedly. I was able to attack them back, and they killed me (while door was only half dead)
so more debt, click hospital again to go to jail. the clipping thing happened again and i just alt-tabbed until mish failed (was down to 1 minute)
so I didnt get to see much
[/ QUOTE ]
I find going to the jail first and clearing it simplifies getting out of it if necissary later. and there is a time reward for breaking into the Cell level. Kill the cell doors before you need to. 
Cyberdoom, Master of Technology, Overlord of Powers Ascendant
i had 2 VERY different mayhem mish experiences
1) 40 fire/fire brute...holy canole... my blazing aura raelly helped p'wn the boxes lol. most fun ever! kidnapped someone and busted the villain out of jail...
the police station is so sexy!!!
then i had to leave so i couldnt finsih...stupid cello lol...
2) 14 dominater....it took so long to kill anything! there wasnt anyone to break out of jail, the low level cops are boring, and i took the hero (rosethorn?) down in like a minute. still fun but not nearly as much
what do u have to do to be able to see the coins/casings on the ground?
It kindof makes me smile that we've had complaints that the Hero was a Lt, and the Hero was too difficult
So far I've only fought Lts and Bosses, so can't really comment.
Just a thought by the way, but if you're complaining about difficulty it might help the Devs if you tell them what you have it set at?
Okay... I did, and failed, my first mayhem mission earlier. Two level 14 characters set on Villainous: my rad/rad corrupter, my sweetie's ninja stalker (his mission).
The failure came from the bank. We got in, and there was somewhere between 20 and 25 enemies in the first room alone -- a mixture of longbow and police. While they were mostly white (except an Orange police captain), the sheer number overwhelmed us. It was insane. After being 'arrested' and spending several minutes breaking down the door (definitely too tough for a short-timer mission, btw), we went back and tried to power through to the vault itself. I died again, and we ran out of time.
Everything up til that point had been fine. The groups we spawned outside generally had 4-6 whites or mixed white/yellows, which is about where I'd expect it for a two-person team.
As others have mentioned, we had a different time on the clock when we came in than it said we'd have. It was supposed to be 20 minutes, but it was something like 16 and change.
The key missions are a neat addition, especially with the potential for temporary power rewards (I got an energy-torrent-like cone attack from a glowie). However, it would be really nice to have the sub-missions tell you their goals! In the first one, we just went through smacking down gang members and saw the glowie; touching it got the temp power and a nice bonus to time (6 minutes for a mission that took about 3 to do). The second one turned out to be a rescue mission, though, and it took a while to figure that out.
We'll give my version of the mission a try and see if the bank is still super-crowded with insane numbers of enemies, or if that was a fluke.
Now, the best side: I love blowing things up! It is a little unclear what you get bonuses for (but, people not sure on the cars: it appears to be after n number of them, where 'n' is 'I have no time to keep track, but I'd guess somewhere around a dozen'), but since the objects spawned grey to us overall, it was fairly easy to just go around and blow everything in our path up.
I really like the dynamic feel of the mission. I could choose to just run for the bank and see what happens, or I can run around blowing up everything in sight and taking down police and hitting up key missions, or some combo thereof, depending on my mood.
One drawback of the internet is how it has trained so many people to think that one day is a long time.
I'm very confused about what conditions give you what level of a "Hero".
As I posted above, my lvl 37 dominator on Relentless got a boss, and my lvl 18 MM on Villainous got a lieut.
However, Cosmic Mango got a Vindicator as an Elite Boss when he was level 25 set on Villainous.
Either the hero spawns at random levels, which makes very little sense, or the difficulty of the hero increases as you spend more time in the mission.
If so, everyone should just go straight to the bank and clear that, fighting a normal boss (or lieut on Villainous), and then spend time clearing the side missions.
I'm going to get my dominator to a full contact bar on Live, then copy her over 8 times and try different combinations of Mission slider level and varying how late in the mission I run the bank heist to try to figure this out.
now that I've had time to think about the experiences I had with the missions, here's my feedback:
I will agree with what others are saying that the prison doors are a little too strong. even the ones I had in my level 7 plant/thorn dom's mission (which conned yellow to me) took longer to destroy than it would have taken me to eliminate a normal yellow con foe... I do appreciate that they are not automatically purple as the doors in Council and CoT jails always seem to be, though
if I could suggest a change to the 'breakout the villain' side mission... instead of having players break down the door to their cell, why not add a key to one of the cops in the station that will unlock that door (and only that door, so that if a player gets arrested, they still have to break out)... maybe make the 'warden' a tougher than average mob, so that it's not easy to get the key... players would still have the option to break down the door if they choose, as well, if they opt not to challenge the warden for the key to the villain's cell...
I didn't have too much of a problem with the waves of longbow, but I could see them being a problem at higher levels, especially as they start getting more powerful... maybe as the power of the opposition increases, the frequency of the waves could decrease...
The side missions were very cool, I liked that a lot... I can see spending a lot of time exploring each mayhem zone just seeing what side missions I can find... the fact you could do those things wasn't immediately obvious, which added a lot to the atmosphere of the mission in my opinion, as it aided the sense that you were playing a villain out to cause as much trouble as he could...
oh, and the hero I encountered, as a low level on villainous, was just a LT, which was no problem... I think perhaps for higher levels, where even villainous missions could spawn an elite boss, some sort of indication from the broker that you could face that sort of strong opposition would be helpful... the player could then choose to form a team beforehand if they want.
all in all, though, it was a lot of fun, and I look forward to running these a lot when it goes live...
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In the end, I failed the mayhem mission without a chance of possibly succeeding, got a bar of debt, and aside from that, I guess because I failed I didnt get to get any new contacts.
Thats a major level of bad in my book. I really dont want to have to depend on other people just so I can get my contacts and thus beable to do story missions and such.
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I failed when I tried a mayhem mission, and did get a contact. Maybe there just weren't any more contacts at that level in that zone to give you?
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FRIGGIN AWESOME!!!!
That's how I felt about my first mayhem mission.
Easily the highlight was when I hit a civilian with a haymaker and got a nice knockback on them. Wish I had taken a screenshot, but I knocked em off an overpass!!!!
I think that was the highlight of my CoX life....
But as others have noted, there are some annoying bugs here. Once those are taken care of, this is gonna make CoV kick some serious [censored].
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