Get rid of ranged attacks on custom melee mobs
By
American_Angel,
Posted on: 2009-05-25 06:30 in Mission Architect
I'm not saying we shouldn't make story-arcs based solely on our own custom critters, I am saying though that the Devs would like Authors to realize there are considerations to that, one of which is story-arc size, and another would be the difficulty some player-characters may have facing such missions.
I believe that a Kheldian Gold Standard should be based on SO's, and for anything above that... there's Platinum!
Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati
Save Ms. Liberty (#5349) � Augmenting Peacebringers � The Umbra Illuminati
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I have not seen one person ask for the ranged attack to be removed, have you?
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Um, did you read the OP?
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
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It is my theory the reason custom critters have powerful ranged attacks now is to help balance the risk/reward ratio of AE missions to standard game content.
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As you hinted, there is a certain reality.
Within spawned mobs for set villan groups there is a theoretical seeding of the group with a given variety that forces mobs to have a mix of ranged, of melee, etc etc. A group should ahve some ranged hitters, some melee hitters, and some inbetween. That means that hovering and blasting doesn't work. Yes you might knock out that melee there but his ranged buddy is going to eat you for lunch while you do it.
But with custom groups it would be possible to toss that and create minion/ Lt's that are all over the map with powers, loading up on range (making melee harder and immobiliation nearly useless) or loading up on melee, making every ranged power + hover = god mode.
So they compromised and forced us to have some ranged on all critters.
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In my opinion, the only ranged attack that is really too strong is Shuriken. That thing is so strong it HAS to be a mistake. Take a look at it sometime, and compare the damage on Shuriken on a boss at level 50 to every other attack out there. It seriously outdamages nearly every non-nuke attack. It outdamages full auto, headsplitter, I think even KO Blow. The other ranged attacks don't come close to that ridiculous.
But here's the thing. At low levels, they don't even outdamage the tier 1 melee attacks. All of the melee set ranged attacks scale like this. I don't know if this was a mistake or intentionally designed to try and deter farmers, but the scaling on the ranged attacks for melee sets is truly wonky.
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I have not seen one person ask for the ranged attack to be removed, have you?
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Um, did you read the OP?
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Yeah, but in all truth I just felt he was saying that to place emphasis on the need for an adjustment, not literally, my bad. I don't think we can "seriously" expect them to remove the attack, but making it the same as the PvE critter ranged attack is reasonable IMHO of course. 
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
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The game doesn't force you to give mez protection to melee mobs. It's easy to keep an AoE immobilize power up permanently, because they last longer than the recharge time. Normal PvE enemies always have ranged attacks, and custom critters need them too. Maybe they need to be toned down, or the enemies should rely on them less, but they can't be removed without creating an absurd exploit.
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I dunno about "absurd" but "old" for sure. In some other RPGs, rooting and blasting stuff was considered smart gameplay... but then again the mobs could root and blast your [censored] too! I'd rather use "absurd" for things like killing mobs with renditions of the Dead Parrot sketch from Monty Python personally.
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In my opinion, the only ranged attack that is really too strong is Shuriken. That thing is so strong it HAS to be a mistake. Take a look at it sometime, and compare the damage on Shuriken on a boss at level 50 to every other attack out there. It seriously outdamages nearly every non-nuke attack. It outdamages full auto, headsplitter, I think even KO Blow. The other ranged attacks don't come close to that ridiculous.
But here's the thing. At low levels, they don't even outdamage the tier 1 melee attacks. All of the melee set ranged attacks scale like this. I don't know if this was a mistake or intentionally designed to try and deter farmers, but the scaling on the ranged attacks for melee sets is truly wonky.
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From what I've heard, Shuriken is the worst of the lot. Having what was originally a melee boss be able to just about one-shot a level 50 Blaster with Shuriken? Something isn't quite right with that.
I'm also slightly annoyed by the assumption that melee-only mobs were created solely for hover-sniping/farming. The way that the original I14 custom character creator worked, there was no way to create mixed attack sets in the same way that normal critters have, since the powers available were the player ones. I certainly didn't mean to create "broken" critters when I gave them powers like Dark Melee/Willpower and Elec Melee/Elec Armor, especially when one keeps them on Standard.
I wasn't in either beta for MA, nor did I really hang around the boards. Was the issue of melee powersets addressed before I14 when live?
Current Scrapper Projects: Elec/Invuln, Fire/SR and the eternal MA/DA adventure
Current Defender Projects: Emp/Psy and Storm/Arch
lol Stalker: Nin/Nrg
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Last night, entering an AE mission, I saw a tip. It said something along the lines of "Custom Critters take a lot of space in your Story Arcs, so try and use them sparingly".
I conclude therefore that giving ranged attacks to custom critters is all in-line with a policy the Devs have about custom critters being more for flavoring our stories rather than providing the bread and butter for them.
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That said, I was able to write a full story arc with a custom group that had more variety than most minor factions in the game (i.e. ones like the Red Caps or Knives of Artemis that have one minion, one LT, and one boss) and still stay well under the limit.
I've generally found that as long as you keep it to eight or fewer custom characters you shouldn't have too many problems with fitting your story in as well. At seven or fewer it's not even an issue even with the longest, most text-heavy arcs.