Official Thread: Safeguard Missions
By
1tonweasel,
Posted on: 2006-11-14 21:05 in Developers' Corner
Most of you all have covered my points. Hrm. An empathy defender (solo, heroic, etc.) vs. nearly a dozen villains in the bank? Mobs disappearing off maps. Malta seeing across the map? An empathy defender vs. a Dark Ring Mistress?
These could be really fun...but they aren't, yet.
Oh yes, and plug for team credit--so you don't have to solo them all if you want any badge credit.
j
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I set aside today to work on Safeguard missions. So far I've been doing well. Birdy cleared the Talos Island map and all side missions with 15 minutes left over. There were Freakshow bank robbers with an electric brute villain, Tsoo raiders, and Arachnos street groups. The villain turned on his godmode power, Power Surge, which was a pain. But Birdy is a tanker, so I just waited him out.
Whee! I didn't expect to do so well with my level 5 TA/Archery defender (Gisellen) against Vahzilok bank robbers. There was a mortificator and three reapers in the lobby, which were actually two separate groups. I was able to take out the mortificator alone, followed by the group of reapers, then went on to beat the energy blaster villain (Comatorium) and reaper who were beating on the vault door. Yay jetpack! This was the Atlas Park mission, with Vahzilok raiders and Hellion street thugs. I didn't bother with the side missions this time around.
I strongly suggest pulling the bad guys in the bank lobby, since there's more than one group.
My level 28 Claws/Regen scrapper Midori Mink easily beat the Independence Port Safeguard mission, including all available side missions. Family robbers and raiders, an AR/Traps villain (Double Tap), and Council street groups. I don't see any of my characters having a problem with this one.
My only good experience with a SGM was the IP one (though the FF one wasn't bad)... But Family and Council mobs don't usually tend to be as threatening as others.
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15-20 Steel Canyon
20-25 Skyway City
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Are you sure these are correct? The first safeguard mission I did was with my 24 tank and I was sent to Steel Canyon. Contact was in Talos.
Anyway, my comments after doing an exhaustive two safeguard missions:
To start, why cannot the police scanner missions count for everyone in the group, regardless of who their police contact is? Villain newspaper missions used to do this, but are now also broken. So now, unless everyone on the team has the same police contact, only certain people get to work up to a safeguard mission. Not good.
As mentioned many other times in this thread, the new aggro range is the opposite of fun. I enter into the Steel Canyon safeguard mission and was almost immediately attacked by Tsoo, yet I had only move 10-20 yards from the entrance.
Critter perception is much to high. The second mission I ran I used a blaster who has Super Speed and Stealth. With both running I was being shot from a distance by Council (IP mission). I had thought the combination of those two powers made you near invisible unless you attacked. Not so in safeguard missions.
We actually didn't have much trouble with the bank robery itself. In the first one, we entered, fought the Family in the front of the bank, then found the robbers running down the hall and arrested them. Continuing in, we found the vault unopened and a bomb in front of it. (What were the robbers running away with anyway??) Finished off the last few Family and get mission complete.
Next mission, we go to the bank ASAP and enter just as the main boss is running in. (Rosethorn I think) Arrest her quickly, end of mission. Don't even need to go further in.
After the bank though, things get quite ill-defined. If you wait a bit, you are told that vandals are causing mayhem so you can go there. Otherwise you have no idea just what you are supposed to do or often even who to fight. First mission, go to where the vandalas are supposed to be and see both Arachnos and Tsoo. Ok, guess we have to fight both and see what happens. Ends up that Arachnos are the ones we had to beat. Follow a few more waypoints and someone notices that there are Family standing around. Oh, maybe they give the side missions. Get the fire bomb mission, which didn't have any bugs for us, and a prison break mission. Prison break was challenging, but we won. Actually we had more trouble outside after we stopped them. We were attacked by wave after wave of family. The next wave would arrive before we had finished the first one.
Second safeguard is in IP. Family and Council this time, so it's not really like the first one I did which had three groups. Both groups are blowing things up, and both groups are at the vandal waypoint. Guess we take them both out and see who does what. Oh, Family are the vandals. Ok, then which group of Council gives a side mission? Eventually defeat one group and get a stop prison break. Go to the PPD with 4 mins left (not a good sign) and find a group with two bosses in the very first room. There are two of us, set on Tenacious. Two bosses? That doesn't seem right. Let's just exit...
Basically though, my overall impression of safeguard missions is why? Why do them? What do we get? You do them the first time and can get a temp power and an exploration badge. I guess you do enough of them and get other badges. But unlike villains there is no new contact for doing them. You don't get an enhancement from your contact. In fact there seems to be almost no drops of any kind during the mission. I guess they can be used for additional xp, but in terms of story, they add nothing. I'll probably go through them with one or two characters who I want to have lots of badges, but the others will mostly ignore them.
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To start, why cannot the police scanner missions count for everyone in the group, regardless of who their police contact is? Villain newspaper missions used to do this, but are now also broken. So now, unless everyone on the team has the same police contact, only certain people get to work up to a safeguard mission. Not good.
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o.O
Huh? It is working though. I had been working through a Brickstown police contact, but did a SGmate's scanner mission from a FF police contact. I look in my contacts, I got credit on my FF police contact for completing that scanner mission.
Seems like it's working to me.
"A good Defender is the battle hardened Corpsman who will kill a Nazi with a tongue depressor while putting a splint on your leg, then hand you a fresh clip of ammo." ~Jock_Thompson
Repeat Offenders, TNT Profile, My little hero
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15-20 Steel Canyon
20-25 Skyway City
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Are you sure these are correct? The first safeguard mission I did was with my 24 tank and I was sent to Steel Canyon. Contact was in Talos.
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You're correct! I wrote them down backwards. My bad. That should be:
15-20 Skyway City
20-25 Steel Canyon
In two King's Row bank missions, I encountered a red version of the villain Martial Gloom robbing the bank. In two different teams of two (one person exemplared down) he was unkillable, even after eating a number of large inspirations we got from ToT. The first time he completely clobbered a ma/reg scrapper and dark/dark defender over and over again(mission at 10th) and we got him down to 1/3 health with the second team (illusion/kinetic controller and empathy/psionic defender - mission at 10th) after Multiple deaths before a minion got away. It seemed as an 11ish fellow, he was Immune to holds, immobolize etc. Both missions were heroic setting. Every other villain I have encountered so far has been a easy or fair fight (and always the same level as the mission giver), but this fellow seemed Way over the top and I admit, if I see him in another Kings Row robbery, I will be leaving before another character gets tons of debt .
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My only good experience with a SGM was the IP one (though the FF one wasn't bad)... But Family and Council mobs don't usually tend to be as threatening as others.
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Speaking of the FF one, I just finished that with my Ice/Ice blaster Yukihime. Arachnos robbers with the villain Burning Daemon, Council raiders and Crey street groups. Cleared the map and all side missions with more than 25 minutes to spare. Yukihime is a soloing machine! (Well, as long as there isn't an EB involved...)
While i agree with you about the perception on street mobs needign to be put back in line i just can't agree on the these are too difficult side. They're tough to be sure.
From my villian side experience with mayhems i have a few rules for the mayhems that i follow on the SGM. Set difficulty to heroic, and only solo them.
That said i haven't run the peregrine one yet and it does sound bad having malta and circus there.
It's a new beast as far as missions go and i honestly wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't ever run one on an 8 man team or on a difficulty above heroic.
To my mind it's sort of nice having a mission type where if i set it to invincible i'm going to have a damn good chance of failing.
Cheers
I have to disagree, here--while the scanner missions often count towards your SGM total, they don't always. It seems kind of random, to me.
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The villains at the bank? Sometimes, they don't stop running. No matter how many times you attack them, they just don't stop. At least half a dozen guys, two of them lieutenants--and one with all the powers of a standard hero/villain. And then they each run in a different direction. I can't see how that is supposed to work.
:/
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
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15-20 Steel Canyon
20-25 Skyway City
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Are you sure these are correct? The first safeguard mission I did was with my 24 tank and I was sent to Steel Canyon. Contact was in Talos.
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You're correct! I wrote them down backwards. My bad. That should be:
15-20 Skyway City
20-25 Steel Canyon
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Which, of course, is bass-ackwards of the way a character would actually go through these zones when leveling up.
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Since Atlas and Galaxy don't have Detectives, the Safeguard progression is off-by-one. Same for Mayhems, actually.
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As an afterthought, yes if your build doesn't give you enough oomf offense to fight a super powered Lt. which as far i can tell is what a solo heroic setting gives you than yeah it's hard, but if you can't take an lt. even with inspirations and such...
I understand people can build anyway they want and nothing is wrong with a build (though 6 slotting rest comes to mind) anyway yes there are probably builds that can't solo and can't solo these, but on the other hand you don't actually have to take them i believe the broker/cop offers for you to pass on them.
Anyway, to me with plenty of non super solo-ers in my stable of toons i love these and mayhems, they're fun, exciting different, challenging.
As for robbers getting away i've found they're all more than happy to aggro on me if i throw an aoe or hit each individually which is what i always do. They're much more excited about trying to kill me than getting away.
It's not everyone's cup of tea i'd imagine but not every mission will be and i'd hate to see these made so easy people can solo them on invincible with no iota of challenge.
Cheers
Did a third SGM today (the Atlas Park one) with a group, and I was actually a little surprised with how well we did. We went in with six people, and two dropped out right away, yet we had little difficulty completing the mission. We had no problem with random street mobs, either they didn't have that super perception crap they've been having or we just didn't notice; either way we just blew past them easily, Went into the bank, took out an eidolon, three reapers and another eidolon, took out Rosethorn or whatever her name is, and were done. We went outside, took out the first wave of vandals and a key-carrying swarm of Vahz, completed the arson mission and then took out another wave of vandals, and then realized there was no point in sticking around, so we left. All in all it was actually really short- shorter than the Police Band missions we did in order to get the Safeguard.
Two of us were convinced that we were going to have a hell of a time trying to survive in the mish, given the high difficulty imposed by entering a Mayhem mish with the same number of people, but it seemed almost a little too easy...
We actually found the mission to be a bit boring, but that's probably because everything was right there- the two vandal spawns were right next to the bank door, as was the arson mission and it's keyholders. We touched barely a fraction of that map to get everything done...
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I had some more SGM experiences over the weekend - all the Founders Fall SGM. The first 3 times were on teams, the 4th was solo. All of this was on my 42 (now 43) Katana/Regen Scrapper.
The three teamed SGM's were ok - we went to the bank, took down the robbers and got the mission complete fairly quickly [the second time I did the SGM this weekend I had a CoH crash right before clicking on the truck to enter the mission - by the time I logged back in the main boss was already defeated]. Things tended to devolve after the robbery was over; team mates would spread out all over the map and we never got side missions done [compared to the SGM I did on Test when before I8 was released live, where I managed at least one side mission on my Elec/Elec blaster]. The AV (barracuda) in one of the SGM's was tough but defeatable.
Side Note: During this period of teaming I also ran quite a few police band missions - my brokers contact bar in PI got 1/3 of the way full before I even talked to him to get my police scanner?! Plus it counted 3 of the police band missions I did with others as credit for my contact [I figure this because you need 5 to get an SGM at that level and I only had to do 2 more to get one]
The solo SGM I did was a failure from Hades. The enemy was a red conned Boss [the Daemonic guy mentioned above - I do like his dialogue though 'Yes, feel the hate...' 
]. Now for perspective this is a Katana/Regen scrapper - I can solo on Rugged fine, and even do well against +3 bosses and LT's. I have all of my regen powers slotted for effectiveness [I do not have MoG].
Anyway, I get to the bank quite quickly by flying high over anything and positioning myself on the front side of the bank before closing to the door [to make sure I can get in as quick as possible after the 'Bank is being robbed' message]. I run in the door and the robber is right there [I guess he just zoned in to the bank too ] - 10 seconds later he kills me through DP & IH(?!), I use my self rez and start beating him again. I got him down to 1/4 health but he killed me again - his hits were taking 1/4 to 3/4 of my life at a shot! While my attacks were barely scratching him [even with Build Up + Soaring Dragon]. 38k debt later [would have been more but I already had the Life Insurance temp power from a previous SGM] and I fail the mission. What powers does this Daemonic guy have? I know he has is a Fire/something [Why the heck does fire have to hit me so bloody hard?].
A little frustrating, but I like SGM's overall - I just guess I will have to lower to Heroic [spending the influence] each time I want to do one.
Oh - a crazier note. The boss was red conned but was even level? I got the SGM at level 42 and was 43 when I started it.. so theortically the enemies should have been even con/+1 right?
Not my best performance - but the 5th debt badge is closer than ever
Anyone have a list of the temp powers given out for this and wether or not they are zone specific?
"The only thing common about common sense is the common lack of it" ---Mark Twain, I think
I believe the temp powers are the same as the like level Mayhem Mission powers on villain side [there are some lists of them floating around somewhere]. I am not sure what you mean by 'zone specific'? do you mean are different powers tied to different SGM's? If so then yes [just like Mayhem Missions]. You can only get the Raptor Pack in the Atlas Park SGM, the Jump Pack in the Kings Row SGM, etc. If you are too high of a level to get that SGM you can get on a lower level team and exemplar down [or not] to run their SGM and get the power as long as you haven't gotten it before. The temporary powers have a minimum level you have to be to get them from that level SGM - lower than that level and you can't get the power, but there is no high level cap on them.
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i'd hate to see these made so easy people can solo them on invincible with no iota of challenge.
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I agree with you completely, I do. But my thing is this:
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but if you can't take an lt. even with inspirations and such
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I nearly soloed my empath to 50...so I'd like to think it's at least a half-competent build. And I raided my SG vault and filled my tray with tier-three inspirations. And I fired my Eye of the Magus. And i still died against an even-con lieutenant (yellow). Top that off with the fact that my AOE's don't seem to matter at all. The villains scatter, and each runs off to the getaway car in a different direction. It's not fun. And if I can't cut *that*...well, maybe I need to decrease my difficulty below heroic somehow.
*shrugs*
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
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I have to disagree, here--while the scanner missions often count towards your SGM total, they don't always. It seems kind of random, to me.
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i think i know why. The CoH shared mission completion only works if you both have the same mission and received it from the same contact. This also applies to normal missions.
There are 2 Police Band contacts in every zone, so you have a 50% chance of being able to use shared mission completion credit since the PB contact is randomly assigned. This means there is no guaranteed way to sync your PB contacts/missions even if you play with the same team constantly.
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In the side safeguard mission of rescuing the awakened PPD cops, After killing the carnies the Awakened PPD officer's just stand there cheering. Someone mentioned they are supposed to help.
Also in preventing the bombing. The team member with Pet's unleashed his fire imps only to have them disappear through the floor immediately after. On the same mission, When i was tanking and in the progress of killing carnies, they would suddenly disappear still having them targetted they would be somewhere off the map through the walls.
Safeguard's a great though very fun and high paced.
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The CoH shared mission completion only works if you both have the same mission and received it from the same contact. This also applies to normal missions.
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True, but I didn't actually *have* any scanner missions at the time. I ran four or so on a team, and half of them counted for one detective, half for the other.
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disappear through the floor
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I've had this happen with all sorts of things on the SGM maps. Often times it happens with the guys holding hostages in place--and then they won't help as they're still "held." Still, if that's not what is happening--I think we've enough evidence that things are sufficiently buggy anyways.
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
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I nearly soloed my empath to 50...so I'd like to think it's at least a half-competent build. And I raided my SG vault and filled my tray with tier-three inspirations. And I fired my Eye of the Magus. And i still died against an even-con lieutenant (yellow). Top that off with the fact that my AOE's don't seem to matter at all. The villains scatter, and each runs off to the getaway car in a different direction. It's not fun. And if I can't cut *that*...well, maybe I need to decrease my difficulty below heroic somehow.
*shrugs*
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Hmm, now i have to admit that really is strange to me.
I guess i can see that an Emp really doesn't have too much to help yourself against an enemy offensively in the primary, but wow. That's pretty harsh.
What zoned SGM ? I'll have to take a look.
I've never had a problem with the robbers not aggroing on me (and i don't even have a tank). I do have to repeatedly hit them as the aggro does fade over time.
That does sound bad though.
You do have to let them see you I think without any stealth on for a sec so they'll latch on to you.
That's the only problem i've ever had with them not joining me.
Though honestly their help after the jail is a very mixed blessing.
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And yet there is nothing I've been able to find to indicate which character levels are given which safeguards.
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Here you go:
5-10 Atlas Park
10-15 King's Row
15-20 Steel Canyon
20-25 Skyway City
25-30 Independence Port
30-35 Talos Island
35-40 Brickstown
40-45 Founders' Falls
45-50 Peregrine Island
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