The new ranged attacks
By
AgentMountaineer,
Posted on: 2009-05-06 16:28 in The Global Training Room Test Server
I love to write. I used to make my own comics, once upon a time, and the MA gave me a chance to let that out. It's rather limited, but when I was able to work within the limits, I had some decent stories to tell.
Now, I don't use it. The whole reason is that I can't make missions that are accessible to every class and every level. Even when I try to make minions of low capability, they are capable of doing so much damage that the missions have become unplayable.
For example, I created a mission that included an elite boss. This boss was a tough cookie, with claws and dark armour, both on extreme. I also included patrols of allied minions. These minions were on standard with Assault Rifle and Regeneration. A pair of these minions came upon the elite boss and defeated him in about three seconds. Boy was I astonished.
Consider that the enemy minions were built the exact same way, and that my Defender was trying to take on groups of two and three of them. It made the missions unplayable.
It is unfortunate that they have done this to the MA, it's a system with so much potential. The cure for farming has indeed done far more damage than the farming itself ever did.
I'm sure the Devs are datamining and trying to figure out what to do, like always.
Hopefully, it's just a matter of scaling down the damage or recharge of these attacks. Hopefully, there is a happy medium where minion attacks are strong enough to challenge kiting Blasters without overwhelming them.
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, too, hope they adjust these ranged attacks. They're hopelessly overpowered.
Custom mobs are already disproportionately overpowered. I enjoy a challenge, but currently, they're just not fun. And I can't even filter out missions with custom mobs...
MA, with the new ticket nerf and broken ranged attacks, is well on its way to being the latest and greatest shadow shard. I've pretty much abandoned it now unless someone from my SG wants to run one of their mishes. The "reward vs. risk" just doesn't match anymore.
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." - George Orwell
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Going Rogue just blew MA out of the water afaic.
lol MA.
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Definition :
Rogue: a deceitful and unreliable scoundrel.
Question :
Are we supposed to act this way or are the game designers going to allow it?
Statement :
MA showed the developers what rogue Players can do, when given the chance, and at least one, didn't like it.
:shrugs:
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I'm sure the Devs are datamining and trying to figure out what to do, like always.
Hopefully, it's just a matter of scaling down the damage or recharge of these attacks. Hopefully, there is a happy medium where minion attacks are strong enough to challenge kiting Blasters without overwhelming them.
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I guess the question from most people goes back to the "why not just use the same type of attack that Battle Maidens minions use", why use an "obviously overpowered attack"?
To "me" the reason is simple and goes to the initial tone of the first letter from Positron, he was "mad" when he made the change. We are all human and we know what happens sometimes when we get mad, we lose it...perspective that is. Positron needs to pass this issue on. 
Castle who has a better relationship with the playerbase and who's past powers changes caused a lot LESS uproar would be the man for the job, IMHO. I trust his view of the game and balance better than Positron, who has "repeatedly" displayed a less than steallar ability to properly interface with the playerbase and who's changes always appear punitive in base and nature.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
I think it was a case of insufficient testing due to the fact that the changes were rushed to curtail abuse as soon as possible.
As it was, the Devs were criticized for taking over a week to address the issue after it went Live.
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!
OK whens the last time any of us open'd that nice little book that came with our boxed "city of heroes/villians" games. Blasters were meant to hit melee toons from a range and be "safe" or hit and run tactics, now with these ranged attacks u hit a single target or aoe the group and u have 5-8 ranged attacks flying back @ u. were u thought u were safe. ur a blaster for godsake u should be able to pick off from afar not get picked off
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OK whens the last time any of us open'd that nice little book that came with our boxed "city of heroes/villians" games. Blasters were meant to hit melee toons from a range and be "safe" or hit and run tactics, now with these ranged attacks u hit a single target or aoe the group and u have 5-8 ranged attacks flying back @ u. were u thought u were safe. ur a blaster for godsake u should be able to pick off from afar not get picked off
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Ur is a city in Mesopotamia.
That said, ALL enemies in the game -- thorns, council, hellions, freakshow, doesn't matter -- all of them have a ranged attack of some kind. Their AI may only use it when they have no options left, but generally there's always something. You can never stay at range and be totally out of harm's reach.
However, staying at range LIMITS the enemy's ability to fight you unless they too are ranged specialists. That's the safety the manual was really talking about. Many enemies in the game do their worst damage up close and personal; the attacks from afar can hurt you, can kill you, but are safer.
The main problem here isn't the custom enemies being able to shoot at you with knives and shurikens and such, it's that the damage they're dealing per shot is excessive. Yes, they only get one shot at you, but especially in the case of shurikens that one shot is actually their best attack! That's crazy.
I really hope the damage gets ramped down. I get WHY these enemies are now given a token ranged attack, but it needs to be a TOKEN ranged attack, not the finger of God.
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!
Yes what i meant by "safe" is not getting hit 2 to 3 times and being taken out completely. I have a few lvl 50 blasters, and love being able to hit from range, not being to concernd than coming in for the personell stuff. But the damage from new ranged attacks isnt very nice 
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I think it was a case of insufficient testing due to the fact that the changes were rushed to curtail abuse as soon as possible.
As it was, the Devs were criticized for taking over a week to address the issue after it went Live.
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That would make some sense if it were the very first time they have dealt with this exact same issue. It is not as a matter of fact the Wolves come to mind back in issue1 where they added the ranged boulder attack because they were all melee and being farmed. Many other melee critter in the game have reasonable ranged attacks.
No, its more like what I stated before, he was mad and lost it, then went punitive with it. Where's Castle when ya need him.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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That said, ALL enemies in the game -- thorns, council, hellions, freakshow, doesn't matter -- all of them have a ranged attack of some kind.
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Specifically, all units who are "melee oriented" have at least one ranged attack but its damage scale is always minor or moderate. Trolls pull out pistols, Freaks throw saws. They don't pull out weapons that do more damage than tier 9s and are capable of killing squishies in just a couple hits. They aren't HELPLESS from range, but they're limited mostly to minor-moderate damage.
It's entirely possible that the devs looked at our options and thought about how normal groups tend to have both ranged and melee units and realized that we could make groups that are ALL melee, thus making easier enemies than usual, even if they have a mandatory ranged attack. And for that reason made them do really high damage. But that's really the wrong approach. There are all-melee gangs like Trolls and Warriors that don't have to do outrageous damage from range to remain a challenge.
It's a problem when the custom units' mandatory ranged attacks do high-extreme damage.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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One additional issue that I don't think anyone's mentioned yet is that the new ranged attacks tend to throw off the AI of mixed ranged/melee enemies. For example, yesterday, I did an arc featuring enemies called Gun Bunnies. As the name implies, all them, minions, lieutenants, and bosses, uses Assault Rifles, but each of them had a melee powerset, too, which varied from unit to unit. For instance, the minions were Assault Rifle/Martial Arts. By their behavior, I could tell that some were set to prefer ranged and others to prefer melee. The problem was that the Martial Arts minions appeared set to prefer range and stood back throwing shuriken instead of shooting with their Assault Rifles. Thus, effectively, the new ranged attack was frustrating the author's intent to make a balanced and story-appropriate enemy. It doesn't make much sense when something called a Gun Bunny doesn't want to use its gun because its AI is telling it to use that more powerful throwing star thing all the time.
"Bombarding the CoH/V fora with verbosity since January, 2006"
Djinniman, level 50 inv/fire tanker, on Victory
-and 40 others on various servers
A CoH Comic: Kid Eros in "One Light"
so... when is this going to be addressed by the powers that be?
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
"Soon".
No seriously, they already said that there would be new custom critter power choice options in I15: I hope by then the datamining supports lowering the damage of these attacks.
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 don't know that it is going to be addressed. The fact that they used this death knife model instead of the PvE melee critters ranged attack is a bad omen, IMHO.
Changing it now would basically amount to someone admiting it was a overzelaous punitive overreaction and we all know the ego involved won't allow that to happen.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
<QR>
I agree that the new ranged attacks are annoying and doesn't stop 'farming' from what I've seen/heard. It does however hurt regular missions.
I was doing an arc with sg-mates/friends and got to the last mission and the custom mobs were all Mace powerset (with invuln for armor? don't remember) but their throwing knives were doing about 400-500 damage to me as a lvl 50 Defender. 400 or so damage on the initial damage but then a few ticks of 40 I think. Yeah that hurts....
Please reduce the damage and make it 'normal' devs.
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
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The new ranged attacks for custom melee sets seem more than a bit overpowered. I'd expect to see them in line with normal ranged attacks on primarily-melee mobs, but these seem to be considerably more vicious.
I was testing one of my missions, which is designed for "soloable by a defender", which means all minions standard/standard. I was more than a little surprised to find that opening with Fire Cages meant that I was almost instantly brought down to red health. This was on Tenacious, all white-con minions (four or five of them, I think).
That seems a bit much -- I have not yet tested on my other toons, but I suspect my defenders will be pwnzed.
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I would like to solo in the AE, but custom mobs are so difficult now that I end up either going solo+heroic to live or in a team of 8 because I can't do it any other way. The custom mobs are much to difficult after the changes. Just my opinion. And... Ugh... I don't want to make a tank or brute just to get enjoy it. I'd like to solo peoples' story arcs, but I can't unless I bring another person. And they might not enjoy the arc so they will want to speed through it as I'd like to take my time. I guess it's just me though... They would have fixed it up if more people disliked it.
I've lost most of my interest in custom mobs 90% of the time and when someone asks me to try their arc and tell me custom mobs, I tell them I'll try to find some time to play it, but I never play it. I avoid them.
I fought a standard 5th Column Wolf-pack robot. It was doing 350 each hit. To me this seem a bit higher than it was. The change may have effected more that just custome mobs.
<QR> just PL with a tank
Infinity and Victory mostly
dUmb, etc.
lolz PvP anymore, Market PvP for fun and profit
Which has nothing to do with the topic of the thread nor the discussion of ranged attacks being overpowered contained herein.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
qr
From what I hear there are some seriously bruised knees over at Paragon Studios due to swiftly meeting a hard object in reaction to this issue.
This addition has to be reverted, first and foremost!
It makes every fight in one of my missions very anticlimactic. There's a Pain domination enemy in almost every mob (there for story's sake) and the tact is to defeat the healer first. Everything throw's something now, whether ranged or melee, so it makes using tact ... less than efficient. What do I? Do I take the healy party out? Or just make everything ranged now so that they don't use those forced killer ranged powers??
I gave and Fiery Melee and Fiery Aura to my final boss in an earlier arc to replicate a Hellion uprising situation for lowbies. Problem is, I really did not want him to have both Melee and Ranged fire attacks while having the kind of Healy/Resisty/Untouchable Rezzy abilities that come with Fiery Aura. If I did intend that, I'd have just given him Fiery Assault instead of Fiery Melee.
I've long since unpublished the arc, since after this change... I got a whole ton of offline comments about my arc boss being waaay too hard, instead of the intended, kinda hard.
At current, when facing custom critters, the only sure way of living through the custom critters is to stock up on Lucks before engaging or mez, mez, mez, repeat. "Good Luck" if you're entering a Custom Critter-only mission.
Now, people have already found easy work-arounds for this lil issue, and have unceasingly gotten back to farming in Architect. I wont say what it is here, but with that in mind... I repeat.
This change has to be reverted, first and foremost! Because now, in order for our custom critter arcs to be doable... you have to have all kinds of resistance or defense, and you have to be able to heal yourself quite frequently. I know this was not an intended side effect, which is why I repeat again [u]"This change has to be reverted, first and foremost!"[u]
I hate to say it, but Developers should not listen to every first thing someone says about their product, like the person who first posted the topic of custom melee critters seriously needing ranged attacks. They were fine the way they were.
I am not hating on the Developers for listening to the community. I hear most games do not do that. Infact, our game is better than other games because our Developers listen to our community. However, 1 person usually is not the voice of a community. Now a poll would have come in handy for such a change like this... as well as other Game changing decisions that are in the works, IMHO.
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Then we have Shurikens. Clocking in at 25% more damage than the "normal" 8 second recharge attacks, but sharing Throwing Knives' fast animation.
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This might be deliberate. Martial Arts is widely regarded as a relatively weak set: maybe it was given a stronger ranged attack to bring it up to speed?
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Maybe, but I know Martial Arts to very mezy/controlly. It is one of the only melee power sets with Immobilize, stun, and high critical rates riddled throughout the set...
I don't think the damage boost to Martial Arts' Shuriken is very necessary when at melee, those powers have a much higher chance of landing... and stunning... and immobilizing... and criting... and knocking down... (Crane Kick > Shuriken attack strings FRIGGEN SUCK!)
If it was deliberate, the definitely: All things were not considered...
Edit: I've read through every post in this thread, and have talked to alot of people on JFA and others who like the Idea of MA.
I strongly strongly believe 2 things should be done. All changes to MA's Custom Critters and Reward System (as it is of current) should be reversed. Go back to square one.
Next, simply impliment an XP cap on MA content! There you go! None of the nasty lil changes remain. Farmers cannot farm the living guts out of MA and will go back to Grandville or Peregrine Island to farm. Our missions go back to the glorious fun they once were. We can give our critters range if we like, and if someone makes it too easy for the sake of progressing the story, that should be their call. We can have our Custom minions be as weak or as powerful as we like. Everyone, will still win. Farmers won't complain. Thrill seeking Architect patrons won't complain. This is what I would do if I read what everyone was saying about my video game.
Take it back, not too far, to when everyone was enjoying everything, and fix the problem with another approach. There wouldn't be too much harm in it. Not more than what was already occurred, that's is for darn sure!
We could always just rate them and tell them in a comment that their story was too easy and offered no challenge if that is the case. That's what comments are supposed to be for: Constructive Criticism.
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You can keep repeating it, but it doesn't make it true.
MA has been a fantastic success, and one that's provided a shot in the arm to a game that's going to face some stiff competition.
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I have to kinda agree with this, although only because the argument is so drastically polarized it needs some middle ground. MA is cool, and for the most part a success. What isn't a success is how things are being handled to correct issues not foreseen, like farming. I mean really, its to the point that the cure is worse than the disease it is for.
Farming was honestly favorable to what has been done to stop it, which is ironically mostly crippling the players interested in creating CC's and story driven arcs in MA more than doing anything to farmers. Really, it was a whole better scene when people were forming groups to farm in AE; rewards were good, the game was fun, and groups were abundant. Overall enthusiasm for the game and entertainment were high. The Devs really should consider that imo, instead of the "this is our game to be played only how we intend" philosophy. At the very least, even failing that, they should seriously reconsider the knee jerk, heavy handed, breaking-the-game-worse-than-what-needed-fixed, reactive nerfing, which is making people wish the MA never had happened at all. My 2 cents.
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I wish that the powers that be would see this.
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.