Official Thread for Mayhem Missions
By
13th_Stranger,
Posted on: 2006-05-01 24:55 in Developers' Corner
I'm really hoping a Dev gets a chance to read this, I might send a PM or something, but I had an issue with the Hero at the end.
We did a Grandville Mayhem on Viscious with 3 people (all 3 were lvl 40) and got Back Alley Brawler as an Elite Boss at the end. We had me (MC/Psy), a SS/Invul Brute and an Ice/Kin corr. Needless to say he got owned, but I noticed an interesting problem with my holds on him.
I unfortunately got his aggro first, and did the only thing I could: Held him. It took 3 holds, which is to be expected for an EB, and then I hit Domination AND hasten came up at the same time (
) So I continued to stack holds on him. Now, I've tested this. Dominate, as I have it slotted, with Domination and Hasten up, can be stacked 6 times on a PLAYER. But after about 10, 15 seconds of me stacking holds on him, BAB started walking around again. At first I thought a Disorient from the Brute had overridden the hold somehow but then he turned and took a swing at the Brute. This CAN'T be right, I had him held and then started stacking MORE holds on him than before and he broke through them. He was an EB and had no visible "Arrows of Dominator Rapingness"... anyone else have any experiences like this with the ending Hero?
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Twice though, I jumped right to the bank, ignored everyone and everything as only a stalker can, sliced open the vault, took the money...and got a lieutenant after me.
Please note all the above were on Villainous, all solo. This leads me to think that your mission difficulty setting means *nothing* when it comes to the level of the 'hero' after you, it's how much property damage, resisting arrest, and such that you do.
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I tested this and your analysis seems to be true. The more damage you do, the higher the level of the hero. A few other bugs I noticed were (on the Founders Falls map):
1: The broker says I have 20 minutes to complete the mission but when I hit the map I have less than 15. It took me less than a minute to fly from the broker to the mission entrance so it should have been just under 19 minutes. I believe the timer should not start until you enter the mission. I also think that we should get 30 minutes instead of 20 to start.
2: Still not getting the extra time for destroying objects. The only thing I got was 30 seconds for resisting arrest, nothing at all for anything else.
3: After I raided the bank I went to the jail to bust out the villian there. Unfortunantly she wouldn't follow me out, denying me the time bonus for busting her out of jail.
4: Leaving the jail I fell through the map. I was able to fly up and get out via the /stuck command but this needs to be fixed ASAP.
5: Mastermind pets are taking too long to go through doors. I had to fly high and wait for 30 seconds for my pets to come out. This is unacceptable as my pets are my offence and defence.
'Lo, there do I see my father.
'Lo, there do I see my mother, and my sisters, and my brothers.
'Lo, there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning.
'Lo, they do call to me.
They bid me take my place among them.
In the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.
I was doing a solo mayhem mission and destroyed enough objects to get almost 30 minutes to rob the bank. Even though I have my missions set on relentless I was still surprised to see the hero Valkyrie come after me with 3 psi cops and 2 longbow. Needless to say I got my clock cleaned after landing just 1 punch.
After that, I broke out of my prison cell and the villain Silent Blade ran through her reinforced door so I didn't have to break down that door but when I attempted to leave the prison, I spawned below the ground and fell about 650 yards into nothingness.
Attempts to fix myself with /stuck would just make me fall the 650+yards again.
Up until then, I had great fun smashing up the neighborhood! 
Ran another Mayhem mission, this time in Founders Falls. I was still on Vicious (since I forgot to drop down to Villainous, as I had planned).
This time, I went STRAIGHT for the bank. Had two longbow attempt to arrest me, so I had ONE 30-second "resisting arrest" time boost, but otherwise I only fought inside the bank (Longbow inside the bank, btw, not security guards).
The foe at the end? A red-con regular Boss named Holo-Man (Illusion Controller)... wasn't cake, but wasn't impossible, either.
I begin to wonder if the time you spend outside doing side missions and SMASH-ing in general ~does~ determine the difficulty of the foe you face inside.
After finishing the bank portion, the mission completed, but I could still go outside and SMASH stuff... unfortunately I got no time boost, so very quickly my time ran out and I had to leave the mission instance.
This is very disappointing, if true. Having only two choices sucks----
* play around SMASHing, doing side missions and so on, and face an unbeatable foe at the end
or
* head immediately to the bank and face a beat-able foe, and then have a very tiny amount of time left to 'play' with side missions and SMASHing.
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A bug I noticed is that there are some lighting issues when entering a bank (Character got EXTREMELY bright). Also, when I accepted my Mayhem Mission, it said I would be given 20 minutes to complete it, but I only got 15.
My mission was in Talos, and when I got into jail, there are a few problems. First of all, the exploding door nearly wiped my robots out, but left me unable to prepare for the boss ahead (Whom I hardly beat). I can't use heal other, aid self, or rest because something in the jail kept on interrupting me.
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Prisons have dampening fields around hem to prevent certain powers from working.
A few things about the mayhem missions I was on last night.
1. Targetable citizens means distracted pets. My plant would stand around trying to immobilize a citizen just inside the door to the jail instead of help me fight the dangerous targets inside. Making citizens targetable is one thing but when a cowering citizen keeps all of my pet's aggro that just isn't fun.
2. Was running a friend's mayhem mission with him and ran in to a red con EB named Statesman. He almost one shot me but I survived only to get 2 shotted by him a few short seconds after I was back at full health. I couldn't hold him despite Domination being active. I've held every AV in the game, at least temporarily when the triangles allow it, only to be shown I can't hold an EB despite stacking multiple holds on him with their magnitude doubled from Domination.
3. Love the temp powers given out at the end of the mission. I got Life Insurance for my first one.
4. Side objectives are fun. I got a 4 minute bonus for setting a building on fire. Aside from rescuing a villain, that is all I was able to find last night.
Good effort on this one, I truly felt like a villain on these missions.
Mr Slowburn - 50 fire/kin troller
Cosmic - 50 grav/storm troller
Cyberprowl - 50 ma/dark scrapper
Mi-graine - 50 emp/psi defender
Alberta Beef - 50 fire/ice tank
Mythtery - 41 ill/rad troller
Gargantua - 39 ws
Kotor - 38 db/wp scrapper
Fungal - 50 plant/psi dom
Snarky - 38 thug/dark MM
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1. Targetable citizens means distracted pets. My plant would stand around trying to immobilize a citizen just inside the door to the jail instead of help me fight the dangerous targets inside. Making citizens targetable is one thing but when a cowering citizen keeps all of my pet's aggro that just isn't fun.
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2nd that, good lord thats annoying. Either make it so i can waste them or dont make them targets. Why are they targets now anyway?
i could use aid other, self, and rest in the jail, as it SHOULD be...
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i could use aid other, self, and rest in the jail, as it SHOULD be...
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The fields aren't aligned properly. It's still in test. Once it's fixed all the cells will be dampened much like a Council prison.
Anyway... as it SHOULD be is the dampening field blocks ALL power usage (think Arena Gladiator Match).
What the heck good is blocking your ability to rest when you can launch a forklift through the door? If they were serious they'd nix all powers except brawl and make you punch your way out!
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1. Targetable citizens means distracted pets. My plant would stand around trying to immobilize a citizen just inside the door to the jail instead of help me fight the dangerous targets inside. Making citizens targetable is one thing but when a cowering citizen keeps all of my pet's aggro that just isn't fun.
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2nd that, good lord thats annoying. Either make it so i can waste them or dont make them targets. Why are they targets now anyway?
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I'm in agreement as well, though I do really like knocking them arond. Possibly make it so they can't be targetted but make area effect effects work on them? Or have a priority systems so that civilians/objects are at the lowest priority so that pets won't attack them unless there are no more hostiles remaining.
I haven't actually had a chance to check yet, but is there one of the custom targetting commands that can make it so that you can alter the tab key to ignore civilians/objects? That would be extremely useful to counteract this, at least for non-pets.
A few things I'd like to see:
Be able to hit citizens
Be able to knock out building windows and start fires
Be able to completely destroy the police department . I mean, I want to blow up the file cabinets, the radio equipment, the desks, the phones, the windows, the lockers, and the computers.
I want to be able to break into their weapons locker and steal their guns! Maybe make it so I have a 1 minute temp power pistol/shotgun.
Also, I want there to be DONUTS laying around the police department that I can eat!!! What kind of police department doesn't have donuts?! I think you should be able to click on them and get a little extra time, or health, or maybe a temp -slow (they are, afterall, unhealthy for you), or better yet - a little Prestige because you had the guts to eat them and really tick off the coppers. I don't care, I WANT TO EAT THEIR DONUTS ! ok...I'm ok now...honest...
Well, here's my take on the awesome/aweful Mayhem mission.
Tried one out last night. Had great fun smashing stuff up on the way to the bank... fought 2 mobs, 4 cars, some parking meters, and a bus stop.
Entered the bank. cleared it out. pretty normal, except for the initial civilian bugout. took out the vault door, got the loot, and WHAMMO! Back Alley brawler faceplants me. Now as an upper crust dark/fire brute, I can solo Ghost of scrapyarder...so being oneshotted by a yellow con elite boss just SUCKED!
Busted outa jail just fine. While fighting the guards, the nice electric lady jumped through her cell, and pitched in. even followed me all the way out of the jail, never touching her door. I think she must have the new brute lightning strike/teleport power :-)
Gave Back Alley brawler a second go. Munched 4 orange, 4 purple, 2 yellow, and 2 reds. I ALMOST survived long enough to get him to 1/2. As soon as my first inspiration started to blink, I was faceplanted from full. The electric lady kept fighting for another min or two, but eventually she bit it big too.
Back to jail, and break out yet again.... nicer this time, cause al the guards/main reinforced door are already taken out.. only the cell door to worry bout.
Proceded to stay outside, and whomp up on everything that'd break.
As far as the "bonus times" go, there were various groups of villains around. mostly freakshow. all their actions counted toward MY time credits. they still qualified as enemy mobs though, so i killed them, as i came across them, just like the police. BTW. There was a parking lot with over a dozen cars, and even more boxes and parking meters... LOADS of bonus time there, and AOE took them out quick(lvl 30+ vs lvl 10-).
even picked up a shiny badge for, I presume, staying in the mision long enough (seemed to be around an hour).
I "failed" the mission, on account of the server resetting. :-( I think, with a group member or two added after singlespawning the mission, that it could have been VERY sucessful... If things go live the way they are.. I will have to deal with them, as i do for AV storyarc mission. Recruit a gang, single spawn, then invite the crew for the mayhem.
On the "easiest" setting, the bank ambush always spawned an elite boss. I just can't solo elite bosses pre-40, on my villains. At least not since they've "toughened" all the EB and ups, in the I7 test patch.
My "solution" would be, either give us a longer timer, to get a group together for the raid(and it IS a raid, no matter what the mission text says) or make the ambush EB's spawn as named bosses for solo, on the easiest diff setting. Then, i could actually DO the mission, and get my next contact.
Between the flashgrenades flooring my acc(double green++ so's) , the web/glue grenades slowing me to a crawl, and the PSI damage from the new police, the miinions are finally at a challenging level. that's GREAT. I like the challenge. But for a brute, at full SMASH! to not even have a chance against the end-boss, solo, just ain't right. Even when i tried it with my Mastermind, all his pets, and the jailed villain, STILL couldn't make but a scratch in the Elite Boss. ;-(
I'll try again tonight, to run straight to the bank mission, and try to spawn the "hero" ASAP, with little to no collaterol damage. if he spawns lt or boss, then I say leave it as it is, but give us a warning when the diff starts bumping up from collatoral damage. after the bank is down, then we can have our heyday in the field, smashing and looting, with only longbow and PPD to worry about.
For those under lvl 20 or so, avoid blowing up cars. their damage is minimal to a lvl 30+, but at lower levels, definately harsh. For breaking out of jail with pets, if they are ranged pets(bots especially) set them to aggressive, and stay here, at the back of the cell. they're out of explosion range, if you place them right.
My 2 Inf
Heck no I love the Mayhem mish. I have a dark/nrg Brute. Just find a big group of boxes. You will see what I mean. The dark powers gata love all them targets to suck the life out of. and power up..
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Be able to knock out building windows and start fires
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You can.. sort of.. I did a mish in the mayhem.. Arson plant bombs and next thing ya know the building was on fire.. Not just the inside but the outside of it too.. btw.. NICE WORK DEVS!
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the Doors were basically indestructable for me
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My plant/thorn dominator had a lot of trouble with the jail doors, too. On one of my tries on the Mayhem missions, I went to the jail -- without attacking the cop outside or whatever it takes to trigger the side mission there. I decided to head down to the jail cells and clear all the doors just in case 
I died in the bank robbery.
For one, my Flytrap would not help me take down the doors, so I was doing it all by myself. The doors conned orange to me, I believe, and even with Domination it took about 3 minutes a door -- I know this, because Domination was up again by the time I was ready for the next door. They apparently have at least 30% Lethal resistance -- which makes sense, being a door and all, but knocking 30% off my piddly damage was painful.
I don't know if dominator pets will attack the door if you have died and summon them from inside the jail cell.
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I don't know if dominator pets will attack the door if you have died and summon them from inside the jail cell.
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Mine didn't help at all, it just stood there collecting flies. I had a brute friend with me on my mission and it helped to have him open the doors for me.
Mr Slowburn - 50 fire/kin troller
Cosmic - 50 grav/storm troller
Cyberprowl - 50 ma/dark scrapper
Mi-graine - 50 emp/psi defender
Alberta Beef - 50 fire/ice tank
Mythtery - 41 ill/rad troller
Gargantua - 39 ws
Kotor - 38 db/wp scrapper
Fungal - 50 plant/psi dom
Snarky - 38 thug/dark MM
holy crap this thread is huge... I dont have time to read it all right now, so I don't know if this has come up yet, but I'd really like to beg to get the glue bombs toned down a bit- theyre positively sadistic, especially indoors.
They have a massive autohit AOE, something like a 60 second duration, and EVERY OTHER GUY has one.
That really sucked the fun out of the mission for me.
The other minor complaint I had was cardboard boxes- why am I be rewarded for blowing up Paragon City's trash? why are the cops coming after me- you think theyd be happy someone's finally cleaning the place up!
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Just did one in a group of 4 players, two brutes a dominator and my corrupter, all 40. We got the rob brickstown bank.
All went well until..... Malise showed up. He was same level as us, 40, and unkillable.
We beat on him for maybe 5 or 6 minutes, his health barely moved and when it did move he'd hit one of the brutes with transfusion. >.<
Needless to say, we all went to jail. Then we came out and trashed some more stuff but ultimately ended up failing it since we couldn't take down the hero.
All in all it was fun, but an unkillable hero takes a lot of the fun out of it.
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Hmm, I think I was one of the brutes in said mission. But I agree, I've had lots of fun in missions of varying difficulties and team sizes, but Malaise was the only "unkillable" hero I've come across so far. It was just simply impossible to dent his health bar. Added to that were all the infrequently-resisted attacks like psi-damage, fear, and confuse. Just a frustrating fight, not really fun at all. Plus, it's kind of embarassing when you decide to see if you can change things by popping a bunch of reds on top of your full fury bar... and get confused and watch your Shadow Maul just obliterate your fellow teammate. Not to mention, my health bar had been barely dropping most of the fight, and suddenly I get hit by a 1000+ Spectral Wound and KO'd. Where did _that_ come from?
So yes, mayhem missions-- lots of fun, total blast, love them. Unkillable AV-level Heroes, with the new changes, in a timed mission-- no fun, and definitely took the joy out of the mission. If things were just toned down a bit, or individual heroes looked at for combinations of powers that lead to long drawn-out fights, I think we would all appreciate it.
Just some of my 50s on Pinnacle... wave if you see:
Doctor Geist: Grav/FF Controller | Fighting Spirit: MA/Inv Scrapper (1250+ badges) | Bird of Paradise: Sonic/NRG Blaster | Pretense: Ill/Rad Controller
Gothic Horror: Dark/Stone Brute | Technophobe: Bot/Dk MM | Snow Leopard: Ice/Ice Dom
Gothic Horror: Dark/Stone Brute | Technophobe: Bot/Dk MM | Snow Leopard: Ice/Ice Dom
Great work devs!!! My only real beef is that a trap MM can't lay down any traps in the cell. I understand not using recall friend, but all of my laydown traps (acid mortar, poison bomb, tripmine) were being interrupted. I might be understanding about tripmine, but acid mortar and poison trap are supposed to be uninterruptable, so I was in a world of hurt when the cops came to keep me in my cell.
Everything else looks great (although a bit laggy). Get the lag fixed and I will be back in to test some more...
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The other minor complaint I had was cardboard boxes- why am I be rewarded for blowing up Paragon City's trash? why are the cops coming after me- you think theyd be happy someone's finally cleaning the place up!
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All those cardboard boxes are filled to the brim with packing peanuts. Those are a pain to clean up. And they had JUST finished boxing them up (from the last villain to pass through) when you showed up. That's why they're pissed. 
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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.
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Villainous - There are no Bosses. Ever. They all become LTs.
Malicious and up - Bosses.
Level 20 and up - Elite Bosses.
Okay. I've only managed to do two Mayhem Missions so far, with two different characters. I'll try to keep it to the highlights.
1) SWAT is really powerful. Like scarily. They make Longbow look like pansies. And Longbow are not pansies, in my book. I'm thinking they need tweaking, personally.
2) There seems to, at times, be a delay with Bonus Time awards. I'll be three blocks over, heading toward a goal or angling for attack on some SWAT when I suddenly get a Time Bonus for Boxes. Or Resisting Arrest. Or something.
3) I seem to have some of the Ambushes stacking and loading in two or three at once.
i) Now, this becomes a serious issue when SWAT is involved, because A) I've rarely seen SWAT members speak, so I often have no warning of the impending doom and B) SWAT's propensity for glue grenades and flash bombs leaves me so thoroughly Debuffed that I die an agonizing, impotent death. Dying isn't the issue, it's the inability to flee or go down fighting [meaningfully] that I have some problems with.
4) I have mixed feelings about Citizens right now. Their immunity is kind of annoying, though I understand why it's there. It does render them somewhat dull if you lack Knockback/down or some other flashy secondary; frex Acc Debuff is pretty meaningless to a Citizen. Still, it's nice to finally be able to accost Paragon's natives.
5) I'm loving the vast percentage of things. Destroying objects, the fast and furious timed aspect, having side missions... All very cool stuff. I do wish there were more interactables/destructibles inside buildings, but ... it's hardly fair to expect those everywhere. I'm content with where they are now.
6) The Arson side mission could use a brief countdown or time delay to flee the building. You're setting demolition devices, after all. It'd be nice to not set them off with you inside.
There was a night and day difference between using a Mastermind and using a Brute. The MM's lengthy re-set-up times and handling constraints were somewhat problematic. Thankfully, I wasn't soloing that particular Mayhem Mish. My Brute, on the other hand, was mowing through things like it was going out of style. Of course, we all know that SMASH!!! is never out of style.
The Skyway City mayhem zone bad guy mobs are Hellions. This creates three minor problems.
First of all, what the heck? Since when are there Hellions in Skyway City? Since the indoor villains (rob a villain lair side quest) are Lost, and you already used Clockwork in King's Row, I'm thinking the outdoor villain mobs in Skyway City should be Trolls, right?
Secondly, again, what the heck? Skyway City's mayhem mission starts at level 16. In the CoH mission where the Outcasts are auctioning off magical items, it's made completely and unambiguously clear that there simply are no Hellions above threat level 14. You get that mission at level 19, everything else in that warehouse is level 19 or 20 -- except for the Hellions, who are still 14. So yeah, again, another reason to replace the Hellions with Trolls.
Finally, it set me up for a particularly amusing badge: I got one of the Steel Canyon zone event "firefighter" badges for defeating Hellions. I think the software thinks that since the only high level Hellions on a street map are in Steel Canyon, and only in the zone event, that it doesn't need to bother to check what map you're on when you're fighting sufficiently high level Hellions outdoors.
Did the Atlas park mayhem mission with my level 7 Thug MM last night. Summoned the thugs and set them attacking the door. They promptly jumped through the CEILING and started attacking the door from the outside.
Then when i got downstairs and started them attacking the reinforced door to get out, one of my thugs ran all the way around to the other side of the door to attack it.
Infinity
Co-Leader, Paragon City Defense Fleet
Co-Leader, Scions of Arachnos
Captain Cure, Emp/Rad Def
Captain Corruption, Robot/Traps MM
and many many more alts
Altoholics Anon.
A bug I noticed is that there are some lighting issues when entering a bank (Character got EXTREMELY bright). Also, when I accepted my Mayhem Mission, it said I would be given 20 minutes to complete it, but I only got 15.
My mission was in Talos, and when I got into jail, there are a few problems. First of all, the exploding door nearly wiped my robots out, but left me unable to prepare for the boss ahead (Whom I hardly beat). I can't use heal other, aid self, or rest because something in the jail kept on interrupting me.