Time to put the Old Blue Caves to Rest

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Yep, any opponent who sets up a base in an area where the topology forces his enemies into a neatly constrained kill zone (if their approach is to charge en masse ino the chokepoint) is...well, just not friendly.

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Weeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllll, in caves I'm often in the back [usually behind 3 MM's-worth of pets, whether I like it or not], actually AROUND THE CORNER from the fight. I'm not contributing back there, and the MMs almost never have the courtesy to move their pets to allow others to get by.


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Oh, I agree, most players have no idea how to deal with terrain tactically. But that isn't, I must submit, the terrain's problem.

I don't fight it, I just leave team after that mission, if the team insists on running mission after mission on these maps.

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So in a sense small-bore caves can actually discourage teaming.

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The typical bad tactics or players who minimize other players' roles because their cookie cutter tactics demand approach X (pets in front, tank pull to HERE, etc.) do indeed militate against teaming.

But I must disagree with the implicit suggestion (I may indeed be inferring it, in which case I apologize) that it is therefore better to make tactics even less relevant and terrain even more accomodating to players.

Brute force can carry so many situations in CoX that the only use for terrain a lot of players can conceive of is to stand on it (leaving aside flyers). Soloists, certainly, have to take it into account more often, and in that sense some maps may suit them more than they do a pug.

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My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.

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Sigium:
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*glances at location*

BROTHER!

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IantheM1:
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Hey, I'm in Jersey too.


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jersey ftw

rogue isles might be a city of villains
but jerseys a whole state of em

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Dirty JERZEEEEE in da house! I work in Jersey City, St Paul's ave FTW.


I, like many, hate blue caves. When i am running papers/radios with a team, a lot of team leaders avoid enemy groups that spawn caves. When running in the many Superteam events i have been involved in this is always the case. "No Caves/No Rescues" is said in team chat often. They are hard to navigate with travel powers on, and they give you no room to function. Blue caves are not the only culprit of this though. Council caves and Orenbega maps are guilty of this too. I try to avoid these maps when i can, but with so many of them in the game i have come to accept them.

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I crashed a cadillac through the gates of hell and returned with a fistfull of dollars.

I think my only real issue is the 5 layer room, and my only real issue with that room is the multitude of holes in the floors. If they patched all the holes in the floors, I'd be a lot happier.

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My issue with the blue cave isn't that it's hard to navigate or anything like that.

It's just ugly. Ugly and unrealistic. We have these caves (blue, shiny almost glowing rock) that look rough and mostly natural with strange rock formations everywhere. Then suddenly, in the most unexpected places, we get wooden doors, wooden support beams and mine cart tracks as if this was in fact an old mine? It just doesn't make sense. Especially the tracks.

Fortunately when issue 14 goes live I will be able to level from 1-50 without ever having to enter a blue cave again. I spent a few weeks on Test and when I got back to live and entered a blue cave for the first time I realized that NOBODY had used that tileset in any of the missions I had tested during all that time. This is a trend which I have no doubt will continue forever, or until someone makes a mission with the blue cave just to spite me.

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Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522

This suggestion would have been relevant pre-issue 14.

Now not so much.

Now you can totally AVOID them 100% of the time--well at least when issue 14 launches.

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Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!

I like the caves, hate the cake cave room.

Why I hate the cake room, you ask?

Well for one it is very defective with regards to boundaries, with mobs often getting stuck in walls when knock back is employed; often mobs fly all over the place in a 3D dispersion method, and more often than not some will endup phased inside a wall. Of course we don't see that happen, and of course it has to be a kill in this room by hook or crook. So when the group thinks we cleared the darn place, we get no mission completion. So then all of us ae trying to figure what gives, looking for the one mob who is actually hiding and has aggroe range of zero, or the worst the mob is inside a wall and maybe a toe is sticking out. Spending time as such, is extremely boring and annoying, and it should not be. This is mostly why I am against kill all missions in the first place! or the sucker kill all in the mega room mission which has a very similar flavor as kill all and has all the player susceptible to defects as the kill all.

So from my perspective either get rid of kill all missions (be entire map or room) or get rid of all the rooms where these defects are known to happen, like the cake room. I guess another option is to fix these rooms, but 13 improvements later, they are still defective...

Hugs

Stormy

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"No Caves/No Rescues" is said in team chat often.
<whining about it>

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Brave heroes indeed.

I do agree with Fredrik though, like I think I said in a post about putting more variety into the tilesets, that in no matter what cave they have to make up their mind whether its supposed to have lava pits or dripping water and mushrooms, and especially whether it has them mining tracks and constructions.
Either it does or it doesnt. A wild mindboggling potpourri of a bit of all of them really looks ridiculous and doesnt make the cave as such more interesting either.

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Jeez, I hate that blue cave with the semi hidden passageway. I think I hate that one more than the cake room. I tend to avoid cave missions when possible.

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If you're careful and watch where you're walking and know the ways back up (moving counter clockwise near the walls will reveal the ramps and stone stairs) that room is no problem at all. I love that room personally. Of course, this could be because I have taken the time to memorize it, every nook and cranny.


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Problem is not the layout as much as the number of spawn points in the room.
Instead of "Defeat Boss and Minions" meaning boss spawn and 2-5 other spawns in the room, it's like 5-10 other spawns in the room. So the same conceptual mission goal becomes several times longer/larger just due to which map it's on.

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