I'd say it depends on the type of story you want to tell. If you want an iconic lone npc to be the ultimate encounter in your mission, or arc, I think EB is a good way to go.
On the other hand, if you see the big final battle being against a super group (villains or heroes), I'd go with a group of bosses, maybe with some tinkering to their difficulty levels. The AV killers out there may want more of a challenge, but I think a group of carefully constructed bosses will likely make an interesting finale for the casual MA player. I intend to try this out in a mission I've been planning.
EBs already scale back to Bosses on difficulty 1.
If they're intended to be tough fights, people who run on difficulty 1 so as not to encounter bosses will find them to be tough fights anyway.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
How about adding an optional Ally rescue in the mission to allow other soloers to face the EBs...but with a little help.
I've been considering the glowy-triggers-an-optional-ally path, especially for the reality TV arc (where I can work it into the game show mechanic; it's a "lifeline"). But this isn't always an option, storywise or mapwise.
As for scaling based on difficulty, I'd agree, but I have gotten dinged for "unsoloable content" from people who either don't know or don't care about adjusting difficulty. I'm not sure if I should ignore that or drop the EBs to satisfy them.
Global @Twoflower / MA Creator & Pro Indie Game Developer.
Mission Architect Works: DIY Laser Moonbase (Dev Choice!), An Internship in the Fine Art of Revenge (2009 MA Award Winner!) and many more! Plus Brand New Arcs for Issue 21!
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I'm not sure if I should ignore that or drop the EBs to satisfy them.
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Its hard to judge the feedback you get, especially when you get three comments in ten minutes, one claiming the arc is too easy, one that says its too hard, and the third about how its perfectly balanced and so much better than what they have been seeing in the MA :/
I do wish you could tell the level and challenge level that the person played the arc at when you get the review, it would help a bit with perspective.
I have found that a boss set to Hard gets less negative comments than an EB set to Standard, but for all I know most people are encountering the Boss as an LT on heroic and not noticing how 'Hard' he is.
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As for scaling based on difficulty, I'd agree, but I have gotten dinged for "unsoloable content" from people who either don't know or don't care about adjusting difficulty. I'm not sure if I should ignore that or drop the EBs to satisfy them.
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Personally, I would ignore them. I play through everything on my BS/Inv Scrapper because while he's still fun and my first 50, he is far from over-powered. I figure if I can kill something with him, then things like my Illusion/Rad Controller or my Necro/Dark MM or my DB/Stone Brute are not going to have any problems at all.
My solution, only me, is to put in optional allies. If you want to get the ally, go free him if you don't just leave him there. They can even clear rest of mission then come back for ally if they want.
Only problem with this thinking is that if you are using the "bread crumb clues" method to tell stories the Ally's part of the story may be lost or out of sequence.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
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How about adding an optional Ally rescue in the mission to allow other soloers to face the EBs...but with a little help.
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Speaking as someone who has an ally in one of his arcs, I've nonetheless been getting REALLY tired lately of arcs that add allies so they can justify the eb/archvillain (or ebs/archvillains in many cases) at the end. If they're tough enough to be of any real help in the av fight, they're more often than not stealing my kills and if they're not strong enough to steal my kills then they usually die before the av appears. All too often I find myself stopping and going back to get ANOTHER ally who can't keep up. It gets really tedious. IMHO allies should be added for flavor ninety percent of the time. If you don't think a solo player can survive your boss fight without the addition of an ally, tone down the boss or warn them to get a team. Just my two cents.
Also, I'd be cautious of justifying the difficulty of an arc based solely on the playtesting experience of any lv 50 broadsword scrapper, IO'd or not. Regardless of how fast you might melt faces through your creation on your scrapper, someone without a melee toon might not fare as well.
Having said all that, however, I don't think there's anything wrong with placing EB's at the end of a mission that scale down on lower levels and difficulties. AV's will scale down to EB's, which almost any well-built scrapper at virtually any level can take down, with persistence alone. I've tested missions on a lowbie scrap and noticed that eb's - especially custom ones - will often scale down to lieutenants. Canon AV's are a stickier problem, in that they don't seem to scale down beyond EB's in my experience.
The Scrappers' Guide to Dark Melee | Kheldian Binds and Strategies
I think the important thing is to warn the player in the mission description and Contact text to the best extent that won't spoil the story as to the calibre of opposition they will have.
If the mission description says, "EB at end is tough for my Level 50 Invuln/Str with purple IOs", that info will attract some people who are after that sort of challenge, while warning away others that want to avoid that sort of thing.
Since some people probably skip or ignore mission descriptions, you also want the Contact to say at some point prior to the EB showing up, "This guy is tough! You might want to bring some friends, unless you're even tougher than I heard." or even "Only <author insert> has been able to battle this guy toe to toe, but he's super strong and can't be hurt" (that second example is annoying, but informative).
Everyone wins, because the arc doesn't get one-starred by people encountering content they don't like.
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
I have characters I know cannot handle EBs. I play them on Heroic. Then I have my MA/Regen Scrapper and my Necro/Dark Mastermind and giggle at EBs. I've yet to have real problems with the EBs I've made on my wimpy toons. Granted, I keep my EBs in sane power levels (no extremes from me), so that may help.
Kung Ru - 50++ MA/Regen Scrapper
Kalleesta - 50 Necro/Dark MM
Hidden Justice - 44 Kin/Psy Defender
Altaholic
A passive Empathy EB optional ally will help a lot and won't kill steal.
Speeding Through New DA Repeatables || Spreadsheet o' Enhancements || Zombie Skins: better skins for these forums || Guide to Guides
There are two problems with suggesting that people lower their difficulty when they run into EBs or Bosses.
First, difficulty varies wildly in this game. For some foes, you might need difficulty 4 or 5 for them to be a challenge. For others (like some custom EBs), you may have to be on 1 in order to have a shot at beating them.
The second problem is that switching difficulty when you find things too easy or too hard requires you to leave the mission, travel to the Hero Corps person/Fateweaver, pay inf (which, if you are frequently changing difficulty can get expensive), and then reset the mission, or whatever you ran into will be unaffected by your change in difficulty, because it has already been loaded. But you can't reset a mission while on a "TF". You have to quit and start all over, or log out for 5+ minutes. That's why nobody wants to do it.
Because of this, I've decided to minimize the difficulty as much as possible in my arcs, without totally crushing character concepts (I still have some work to do on Death for Dollars and Dr. Duplicate, but I've totally revamped Win the Past, Own the Future). I've never had "it was too easy" as feedback, but I've had several "it's too hard!" responses coupled with 1 star ratings, despite saying that it requires a team in the arc description, and orange "you might want to bring some friends" in the mission description.
So, if I want people to play my arcs, I've decided I should only use EBs and AVs when a character really, really should be powerful. Even then, I'm finding I can't use Extreme settings, because some powersets are crazy on that setting, and nobody likes to be two-shotted (or one-shotted if they're already missing 1 hitpoint) even if it is by one of the biggest bad-[censored] in the official game lore-- someone who unquestionably deserves to be an AV set to extreme.
Alas.
Please try my custom mission arcs!
Legacy of a Rogue (ID 459586, Entry for Dr. Aeon's Third Challenge)
Death for Dollars! (ID 1050)
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare (ID 1218)
Win the Past, Own the Future (ID 1429)
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Something I've been pondering lately.
My test character is admittedly a pretty powerful one -- a Mercs/Traps MM, kitted out with various pet aura procs, designed to provoke-tankermind murder an EB. A Boss dies in nothing flat with this character. So, when designing arcs, I've largely been using EBs for finale characters and other major milestone fights, figuring strong soloers like me and teams would enjoy that more than someone you pave over like a Freakshow tank.
But what about everyone else? Midtier soloers or folks who just want to enjoy the story? An EB is a roadblock for them, especially one which has an armor secondary.
So, what I've been pondering is knocking them down a peg. Take all the EBs in, as an example, my Best of the Rest of What's Left / Reality TV arc (there are three of them) and bonking them back to being Bosses, so that anyone can run the mission and have fun. Less fun for teams, but more fun for solos.
What do you think? Is it worth trading in a challenge for a lower challenge so more folks can enjoy the arc? Or should things be left as-is and have folks rely on adjusting mission difficulty to auto-lower them?
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You did what I did. I'd rather everyone have a shot at it and it be a little too easy for some, rather than have it not be fun at all for the "lesser" ATs, etc.
Or if your idea is to make a challenging arc, be sure to say so in the description and be ready for that level 20 def to not play your arc.
Dec out.
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EBs already scale back to Bosses on difficulty 1.
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Keep in mind this is only in "Boss Encounters". It doesn't seem to apply to EBs used in other types of encounters.
Dec out.
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I do wish you could tell the level and challenge level that the person played the arc at when you get the review, it would help a bit with perspective.
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I do agree, but currently? I ask them (and I've been including level, AT and difficulty setting in my own feedback to others).
Dec out.
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I think the important thing is to warn the player in the mission description and Contact text to the best extent that won't spoil the story as to the calibre of opposition they will have.
If the mission description says, "EB at end is tough for my Level 50 Invuln/Str with purple IOs", that info will attract some people who are after that sort of challenge, while warning away others that want to avoid that sort of thing.
Since some people probably skip or ignore mission descriptions, you also want the Contact to say at some point prior to the EB showing up, "This guy is tough! You might want to bring some friends, unless you're even tougher than I heard." or even "Only <author insert> has been able to battle this guy toe to toe, but he's super strong and can't be hurt" (that second example is annoying, but informative).
Everyone wins, because the arc doesn't get one-starred by people encountering content they don't like.
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Minor complaint on my part (aimed at "can you fix this with a future update"). I really want my mission descriptions to be more like a movie trailer or "back of the book blurb", something to peak interest. I find 300 characters to be too small if I also have to use it like a keyword sampler or difficulty disclaimer. I'd really like a separate section for that or an increase in the description size (preferably the former, as that would be more efficient.
Dec out.
I'm heavily biased towards "nothing above boss-rank unless absolutely necessary". As in "clear the decks for this one, season finale" type of enemy. Archvillains, meanwhile, are "call in every favour you have, this is The Big One, series finale" type of enemy.
I had a lot more things to say on the matter, but it'll seem like a huge rant anyway, so I'll just leave it at that.
Current main:
Schrodinger's Gun, Dual Pistols/Mental Blaster, Virtue
Avatar: Becky Miyamoto from Pani Poni Dash. Roulette roulette~
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EBs already scale back to Bosses on difficulty 1.
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Keep in mind this is only in "Boss Encounters". It doesn't seem to apply to EBs used in other types of encounters.
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Um, if you're forcing a patrol full of EBs to spawn on top of someone then I think you're beyond caring what the people on diff 1 are doing.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
Something I've been pondering lately.
My test character is admittedly a pretty powerful one -- a Mercs/Traps MM, kitted out with various pet aura procs, designed to provoke-tankermind murder an EB. A Boss dies in nothing flat with this character. So, when designing arcs, I've largely been using EBs for finale characters and other major milestone fights, figuring strong soloers like me and teams would enjoy that more than someone you pave over like a Freakshow tank.
But what about everyone else? Midtier soloers or folks who just want to enjoy the story? An EB is a roadblock for them, especially one which has an armor secondary.
So, what I've been pondering is knocking them down a peg. Take all the EBs in, as an example, my Best of the Rest of What's Left / Reality TV arc (there are three of them) and bonking them back to being Bosses, so that anyone can run the mission and have fun. Less fun for teams, but more fun for solos.
What do you think? Is it worth trading in a challenge for a lower challenge so more folks can enjoy the arc? Or should things be left as-is and have folks rely on adjusting mission difficulty to auto-lower them?
Global @Twoflower / MA Creator & Pro Indie Game Developer.
Mission Architect Works: DIY Laser Moonbase (Dev Choice!), An Internship in the Fine Art of Revenge (2009 MA Award Winner!) and many more! Plus Brand New Arcs for Issue 21!