New Critter Auto-exemp feature somewhat bugged
By
alienuterus,
Posted on: 2009-06-30 10:30 in Mission Architect
This is interesting. I'd also be curious to see what happens if you use a group (for example, snakes) that has a gap in the middle of its level range. I may need to test that myself at some point.
If anything is within range then it will only use those enemies and it will negate the scaling feature.
Yea I'm guessing it's not intended this way (why would it be?).
But I'm also guessing there won't be a big outcry to fix it and it will be put low on the list of things to fix. 
I can only hope that a dev might see this and say "oh hey, that's easy to fix" and my Robot Madness can begin next patch 
But I know nothing of how easy or difficult this may be to fix.
I'm pretty sure its WAI.
Critters are not all designed for all level ranges. The auto-exempting comes with a warning about scaling down after all. I think that it only scales down when it has to, but if it doesn't have to (i.e. something valid can spawn) it will spawn that instead of trying to hack something in.
you could be right. But it seems like a pointless limitation to me. Forcing you to either go all too high or all within range.
Seems to me like the solution would be to allow adjustments of the individual enemies levels, to a certain extent. Personally I want level 50 Succubus and Crey Agents but I can't have them.
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Seems to me like the solution would be to allow adjustments of the individual enemies levels, to a certain extent. Personally I want level 50 Succubus and Crey Agents but I can't have them.
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Nor can you have lvl 50 Hellions, and for the same reason. They'd be too easy.
What shall claim a Sky Kings' Ransom?
PPD & Resistance Epic Archetypes
Yea setting individual levels isn't the solution. The solution would be simply to have ALL the enemy's picked exemp down. This is actually how I interpreted it was going to be, and I still hold hope that it may be how the devs intend it to be.
but they do have high lvl hellions...in the shard.
They do? Where?
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
Shard Reflections, I'd imagine. It's been too long since I looked at a pack of them to see if there's a thug with a baseball bat though.
Hm, that manually setting level range works goofy worries me. I might need to check my lowbie-focused arc again and make sure that it's still spawning 1-15 proper-like (when I was using a coralax to levelset one door with trolls and LB to 15 instead of 20)
I'm pretty sure that the reflecions only come in Crey, Circle, Council and Rikti flavour. High-level mobs, anyway.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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If anything is within range then it will only use those enemies and it will negate the scaling feature.
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This stinks and should be changed. I can't imagine a scenario in which anyone would actually want it to work this way.
You want it to work this way when you have the real enemy groups selected and they have 10 different versions of the same critter at 5 level intervals. You don't want to have a level 1 mission against council putting the players up against scaled down level 50 council!
It really does suck when you want to have a partially custom and partially standard group, though -- the auto-exemp just doesn't happen since custom critters are 1-54 and can't be set otherwise.
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You want it to work this way when you have the real enemy groups selected and they have 10 different versions of the same critter at 5 level intervals.
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Curse you and your valid point!!
I want my robot army!!
I do have a sort of workaround planned by splitting it into 2 groups, one with all the in range and one with all the above range. One half will just allways be on patrol or ambushing or something. It won't be quite the same but heck I allready wrote the arc. 
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Seems to me like the solution would be to allow adjustments of the individual enemies levels, to a certain extent. Personally I want level 50 Succubus and Crey Agents but I can't have them.
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Nor can you have lvl 50 Hellions, and for the same reason. They'd be too easy.
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Succubus aren't exactly easy, nor are spectral demons, nerva spectral demons, vahzalok, yet they all fall off the radar at some point before 50. They're certainly harder than some of the laughable pretorean factions. The Crazed are basically glorified hellions.
this is what got me exited about I15.i was waiting for it to go live to do my new TF.
and then i find out it's working wrong. :-(
only the critters showing up are the same lv as the mission. and i set a mission to lv45,50 and use Bat'zul's they where all at lv21 insted of being lvup to 45/50.
I'm realy disapointed. i want my tf!
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Succubus aren't exactly easy, nor are spectral demons, nerva spectral demons, vahzalok, yet they all fall off the radar at some point before 50. They're certainly harder than some of the laughable pretorean factions. The Crazed are basically glorified hellions.
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Good point, I believe the 45-50 neuron robots have the exact same powers as the 1-18 electric clocks.
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i set a mission to lv45,50 and use Bat'zul's they where all at lv21 insted of being lvup to 45/50.
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That sucks but they did tell us ahead of time that lower level critters wouldn't sk up. Maybe tweak the tf to be geared to level 21's?
Anyways my arc is done! Check my sig!
The main group in it consists of close to every robot in CoH.
I ended up setting the arc for level 33. I originally wanted a range of 25-35 but really had to set it to one level so that critters wouldn't be dropped if players were all lower. No biggie thanks to player auto sidekick.
The group actually split fairly evenly into critters in range and critters above 33. I made the above range robots the main group in missions and had the in-range robots come in the form of patrols. Through some testing the missions all have a pretty even split. I did notice that for every patrol I put in a regular spawn seemed to be removed (this new?).
My Vanguard group from the original post I just dumped spiders for banes, and set to 33 put Vanguard over.
Although I wish it worked as I originally thought it would, forcing me to get creative actually improved my arc in some ways. I couldn't be more pleased with it! My one big outdoor mission has npc patrol skirmishes now, as well as battles!
So play my arc!!
Fighting robots is fun!!
It's really meant to be no more difficult than any regular arc, and a great way to level up and have fun!!
The arc I've been planning for I15 involves several custom groups made out of standard characters. The feature I was waiting for was the auto exemp feature for standard groups. Basically I wanted standard enemies that you previously couldn't have together in a mission.
Have a nice day
One of these groups was a Vanguard Powersuit group where Vanguard has different powersuits on loan. this group consisted of:
Crab Spider Slicer - 30-54
Crey Voltaic Tank - 46-54
PPD Shell - 36-40
Vanguard Soldier - 35-54
Scorpinoid trooper - 40-54
The arc is meant for levels 25-35 so i set the parameters accordingly
In the mission there were only level 35 Spiders and Vanguard soldiers(the ones within level range)
To test the problem some more I made a test custom group. This group at first had Axis Americans (40-54), Bobcat Followers (45-54), and Black Swan Shadows(45-54). I set the parameted for 25-35 and went in and found a nice mix of all 3 groups all level 35. I exited and added Nemesis to this custom group(30-54). I went in and it was all Nemesis.
So adding any standard character that is within set parameters seems to negate the auto-exemp that would have occured otherwise.
I certainly hope this is a bug and that I will one day be able to see my epic Vanguard Powersuits vs Rogue-Bots battle!!!
----> the guy who reads but never posts