Oh good grief....

We used to have to fight Sappers uphill in the snow, for three miles!

Malta, the only group where a Minion will inspire more fear than a five-story robot.

People still think Sappers are scary?

<QR>

I squishy-tested the original version of my Malta arc "Blowback" with a level 32 EnB/Dark Corruptor. Of course she was autolevelled to 41 but still.

If you can't handle Malta you need to lrn2ply n00b.

Oddly enough, I ran Malta news paper missions today, and never once noticed any of those things on my DB/SR scrapper.

Ran in, targeted the sapper (if there was one), took him out, then finished the group.

QR

So I guess this means you DON'T want me to try and convince the team to buff Sappers at the next meet and greet I go to then?

Yes, I was seriously going to bring that up(and still intend to).

They usually don't fly in missions, true, but the Indigo Flying Sapper ambush I had above Crey's Folly...oh yes, they've always been able to fly.

<QR>

Sappers are interesting because they are always - always - the primary target whenever you encounter them, regardless of archetype.

Them coming in an ambush can make things a lot harder too. It is one of the few mobs in-game that require you to make a quick tactical choice to target them over other mobs. (Healers are another mob type that you target first, but generally there you can take your time. You can't with Sappers, especially solo.)

[ QUOTE ]
<QR>

Sappers are interesting because they are always - always - the primary target whenever you encounter them, regardless of archetype.

Them coming in an ambush can make things a lot harder too. It is one of the few mobs in-game that require you to make a quick tactical choice to target them over other mobs. (Healers are another mob type that you target first, but generally there you can take your time. You can't with Sappers, especially solo.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Either I'm horribly lucky or terribly unlucky....

Even on large teams (6 or more players) I only rarely come into contact with Sappers. I take down TONS of Tactical Operatives and Gunslingers.... But almost never Sappers... Titans: Ohhhhhhh Yeah. All the darn time! >_< But not many Sappers.....

Sucks to be me.
-Rachel-

[ QUOTE ]
<QR>

Sappers are interesting because they are always - always - the primary target whenever you encounter them, regardless of archetype.

Them coming in an ambush can make things a lot harder too. It is one of the few mobs in-game that require you to make a quick tactical choice to target them over other mobs. (Healers are another mob type that you target first, but generally there you can take your time. You can't with Sappers, especially solo.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, unless you're a Spines/DA (Ooo...possibly SPines/Fire...I'll let you know)...who just runs in, AOES everything and never really see's the Sapper.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
<QR>

Sappers are interesting because they are always - always - the primary target whenever you encounter them, regardless of archetype.

Them coming in an ambush can make things a lot harder too. It is one of the few mobs in-game that require you to make a quick tactical choice to target them over other mobs. (Healers are another mob type that you target first, but generally there you can take your time. You can't with Sappers, especially solo.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Either I'm horribly lucky or terribly unlucky....

Even on large teams (6 or more players) I only rarely come into contact with Sappers. I take down TONS of Tactical Operatives and Gunslingers.... But almost never Sappers... Titans: Ohhhhhhh Yeah. All the darn time! >_< But not many Sappers.....

Sucks to be me.
-Rachel-

[/ QUOTE ]

I, too, rarely encounter Sappers--maybe one or two per mission.

I asked about this recently and someone said that their spawn rate had been changed a long time ago.

Frankly, without a Sapper in every spawn, I don't find Malta that tough. That could be, though, because the only characters I've fought them with recently are my EM/WP Brute and my Ice/NRG Blaster who are both extremely well-equiped for dealing with them.

[ QUOTE ]
QR

So I guess this means you DON'T want me to try and convince the team to buff Sappers at the next meet and greet I go to then?

Yes, I was seriously going to bring that up(and still intend to).

[/ QUOTE ]

*shrug* Not my problem.

<QR>

Am I the only one that leaves Sappers alone because they're not an issue and about as dangerous as a gnat? I'm more annoyed with the stupid gun drones.

Why yes, I do have an Electric Armor Brute, why do you ask?

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

My reflexes are trained from the days of "A sapper in every group". I love the titans, the gunslingers, the gun drones, the tactical operatives, but watching my character's endurance drop to zero... eat a blue... drain to zero again... ouch.

It's not that I don't know how to fight them, it's that it's not fun. I kill them first. Forget soloing a defender against Malta. I could do it, I won't. The damage output isn't fast enough to take out a Sapper before he zeroes the Defender's end and *squip*. It would be a perpetual inspiration refill just to attempt it. I never do Malta arcs solo on my Defenders.

Everything else about Malta is fun except for Sappers, IMO.

The worst thing about the Malta change is that it makes them even LESS interesting to fight. They have lots of holds and lots of damage. Ooh! Smart! Or rather, not smart, but cheating. Smart is what they were before, and smart is what someone without much protection needed to be to fight them. Here's how it went:

Gunslingers would not use their ice hold and their fire bullet, and boss Gunslingers would not use their sleep dart, if they were closer than about 40 feet. However, at 40 feet or less, Tactical Operatives would use their stun grenades, which they wouldn't do if you were around 50 feet or more away from them, at which point they would resort to just firing their rifles for fairly low damage. Titans had stupid-powerful attacks, but wouldn't really resort to using them unless you tried to run away, making Titan battles especially in open space such that once you engaged, you HAD to finish it or you would die running away.

They are no longer interesting to fight. They just fire all their powers all the time. It's no longer possible for a relatively weak but smart player to outsmart them and beat them at their own game. Now fighting them requires the same bull-rush approach as fighting every other faction. Kill the Sapper, hold the Tac Ops, cross your fingers. Boring. Every fight in this game always comes down to this. All that ever really matters at all is who to kill first. They call it "tactics," but the only tactical thing about it is an order of attack. Malta used to require ACTUAL tactics, requiring people to think where they were and decide what they would rather be exposed to and what they could trick the Malta units into not using. Now it's full broadside and hope for the best.

It's an immense disservice to this game that all tough enemies need to be defeated by out-toughing them. The Cimeroran Traitors are sort of a step in the right direction, as killing their healers (again, "kill first" pseudo-tactics) and separating them would work to your advantage, but even they are only marginally so. The Vahzilok are a good example, though. Hugely powerful, larger-than-normal spawns of zombies reduce even the strongest of characters to pulp, but that's because they're not made to be fought head on. In fact, they're meant to KILL people who fight them head on. Instead, the proper way to fight them is to abuse the zombies' stupidity once they are robbed of their Reapers and pick them off one-by-one. Getting a Reaper out of a spawn of Zombies, then, becomes interesting, and a friend of mine suggested aggroing them and running far away, as Reapers would run ahead of the zombies because they're faster, thus allowing you to kill them before the rest of the undead caught up. The rest of them would be easy to pick off. Being that they give greater than normal experience, this slowdown was compensated for.

Scripted enemies with learnable behaviour which can be used to the player's advantage is the PROPER way to make the AI "smarter." Smarter doesn't mean better able to kill us, it means plain more interesting to fight. Your typical arcade boss is a thousand times smarter than your typical CoH boss. They'll try a variety of attacks, each of which has to be defended against in a different way, occasionally become vulnerable, and even start using more powers as they lose health. But just requiring something more than standing face-to-face with the boss and trading punches, or semi-permanently incapacitating the boss and beating on him is "smarter."

There's a difference between smart AI and cheap AI. The original Diablo had very cheap AI. Rangers of all sorts would back away from you in a diametrically opposite direction each time you approached, run as fast as you did, and stop to fire at you the second you stopped chasing them. That's smart as a direct translation of the term, but it's also horribly cheap, as the only way to catch them was to cause them to jam themselves in a corner. Each and every one, one by one, while melee enemies beat on you.

I don't want the AI to be better at killing me. I want the AI to be more interesting to kill.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

[ QUOTE ]


I don't want the AI to be better at killing me. I want the AI to be more interesting to kill.

[/ QUOTE ]
this is a nice summary, Sam.
I agree.

[ QUOTE ]
<QR>

Am I the only one that leaves Sappers alone because they're not an issue and about as dangerous as a gnat? I'm more annoyed with the stupid gun drones.

Why yes, I do have an Electric Armor Brute, why do you ask?

[/ QUOTE ]

Funny, I was about to say the same thing.

In fact, my SOP with that brute while fighting Malta was to kill everything else in the spawn and then brawl the sapper to death.

We had similar posts like this when they fixed the Gunslingers a few years ago. Suddenly Gunslingers were overpowered because now they did more than shoot their single attack and teleport around.

I'm a little curious about how other villains behave now. Malta's new behavior is likely the result of tweaks to AI to fix problems observed in AE. What other enemies out there use their powers better, now? This surely can't be something solely restricted to Malta fights. How about Outcasts? They would seem like a type of group that would get stuck in "brawl mode" prior to this change.

[ QUOTE ]
They usually don't fly in missions, true, but the Indigo Flying Sapper ambush I had above Crey's Folly...oh yes, they've always been able to fly.

[/ QUOTE ]

Been flying in the RSF for a long time too

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

[ QUOTE ]
I think the Titans always had those powers, they just didn't work properly before.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ding!

The tinkering with AI that we've been doing has caused some powers that previously NEVER got used to start showing up in the attack rotations.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think the Titans always had those powers, they just didn't work properly before.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ding!

The tinkering with AI that we've been doing has caused some powers that previously NEVER got used to start showing up in the attack rotations.

[/ QUOTE ]
Any hopes we'll figure out why 100% of all custom critters that take more than 5 seconds to kill will spend the entire battle fleeing from my widow? I think it's from the recharge debuffs. No matter how many ranged attacks they have, they'll just up and flee and not fight back. Makes a lot of them easier than they should be, but also way more annoying.

It's not just the normal AI that makes some baddies run. I'm telling you it's absolutely 100% of any boss or higher rank custom critter, no matter what their powers are. They run every time, for the whole fight. They will only stay if someone has taunt powers. If I'm solo, every single boss runs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

*Deceives Sapper*

*carries on*

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]


I don't want the AI to be better at killing me. I want the AI to be more interesting to kill.

[/ QUOTE ]
this is a nice summary, Sam.
I agree.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is the thing: The AI has to be better for the devs to do more interesting critters to fight.
Here is the bad thing: There are a lot of critters that were overpowered to compensate for horrible AI.

Mix the improved AI with the overpowered critters and you get issues like these. I think it's one of the reasons they avoided tweaking AI for so long, fear of retroactive buffs to these overcompensated critters. I am not sure how willing Castle will be to go back and fix the outlier cases. IF allowed, I can only foresee him doing so for extreme outliers that people bring up and not as an active pursue where he would be forced to decide what is overpowered.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think the Titans always had those powers, they just didn't work properly before.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ding!

The tinkering with AI that we've been doing has caused some powers that previously NEVER got used to start showing up in the attack rotations.

[/ QUOTE ]

See, there's nothing wrong with tinkering

[ QUOTE ]

Here is the thing: The AI has to be better for the devs to do more interesting critters to fight.
Here is the bad thing: There are a lot of critters that were overpowered to compensate for horrible AI.

Mix the improved AI with the overpowered critters and you get issues like these. I think it's one of the reasons they avoided tweaking AI for so long, fear of retroactive buffs to these overcompensated critters. I am not sure how willing Castle will be to go back and fix the outlier cases. IF allowed, I can only foresee him doing so for extreme outliers that people bring up and not as an active pursue where he would be forced to decide what is overpowered.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, like I said variety is the spice of life.
I don't mind some enemies being buffed to the gills as long as most retain their current level of adorable incompetence.

And as several previous posts note even the most obnoxious faction is no trouble for some characters- the old rock/paper/scissors deal.