City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

How could AV's and GM's be more... challenging?

Alvan

By Alvan,
Posted on: 2008-08-14 10:11 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

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Got my suggestion (for GM's) right here:
http://uk.boards.cityofheroes.com/sh...Number=1182615
It includes a way to make them both easier and at the same time more challenging.

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Yeah but that didn't make an awful lot of sense compared to current game mechanics and would require a lot of programming to put new systems in place.

I'd rather add challenge by having more random events, which could easily be done with the systems the game already has in place.

You could have ambushes that come to aid the GM/AV, perhaps made up wholly of EBs, so that off-tanking becomes useful to have. Instead of purple triangles you could have trade-offs between different up-triangle/down-triangle states so GMs resist different damage types or status effects in the different states - and make these states more visual, such as the GM changing appearance (as those little purple triangles can be so hard to see).

You could also have AVs/GMs being granted weaknesses/strengths or special abilities by the environment around them, e.g. maybe Jurassik moving/healing/attacking faster on land, but moving/healing/attacking slower in water. Or have Adamastor able to heal himself by absorbing the life force of any BP shaman nearby and have ambushes of those rush towards him periodically, so you'd have to kill them before they got near him to prevent him healing.

Put them all together and you might get something like this:

Babbage spawns at one end of Boomtown and ponderously moves towards the other side of it, where he is going to attack a team of surveyors trying to assess the damage to some of the buildings near the Steel Canyon gate. Heroes have to stop him. As well as the badge for defeating him, there is also a badge for stopping him before he harms any surveyor teams with their Longbow bodyguards.

Phase 1: Babbage would begin a fight:
- resistant to psi/fire/lethal (can’t do much against his armoured shell)
- protected against holds/stuns/fears/confuses (ditto)
- resistant to repel/kb/-spd/-rchg (weighs so much he is hard to affect)
- with good accuracy/ToHit (full power, unconcerned for his safety)
- with good regen
But also:
- weak to energy (overloads circuits), cold (freezes joints) & smash (dents armour plates)
- attacks slowly for lower damage (ponderously heavy)
- slow moving (because of his bulk)
- resistant to Taunting (he tries to keep moving towards his objective)
- weak to being Phased (just because… & a way to slow his progress if you needed to regroup)

As soon as he gets damaged Babbage would start moving towards the nearest junk pile in the direction of his objective (these could be destroyable objects, placed all over Boomtown) to scavenge pieces of armour from it and thus rapidly increase his own health. You could stop this by destroying the junk pile before he reaches it (it could be EB level with decent resists, but still easier to harm than Babbage himself).

Phase 2: at half health, Babbage’s resists/protections flip and visually his outer armour falls away to reveal the workings inside, then he becomes:
- weak to psi/fire/lethal (you can now attack his psychic control net and circuits/wires)
- weak to holds/stuns/fears/confuses (can get at his inner workings more easily)
- weak to repel/kb/-spd/-rchg (doesn’t weigh as much now)
- with poor accuracy/ToHit (targeting optics damaged when armour fell away)
- with poor regen (the damage you do to his internals is harder for him to self-repair)
But also:
- resistant to energy (his unshielded capacitors absorb it)
- resistant to cold (chilling his components directly makes him more efficient)
- resistant to smash (doesn’t do much to his wiring, compared with lethal)
- attacks faster for higher damage (less bulky now, but is frenzied as he feels threatened)
- moves faster (because he weighs less now)
- can be Taunted normally and stops trying to reach his objective

That way he becomes easier to control but harder-hitting as the fight goes on. Also during this phase Babbage can no longer use junk piles to restore his health, but ambushes of Psychic Clockwork rush out to repair him instead and have to be stopped before they reach him. Each Psychic Clockwork that reaches Babbage merges with him to form part of his restored armour (and thus increases his health, which if it increases past 50% would put him back in his phase 1 state).

Most of the phase states can be done via the purple triangles system we have now and the visual change at 50% health would be just like Jade Spider’s appearance change in the CoH-side Silos TF - I think only the AI changes would need major programming work. Oh and make Babbage much bigger - at least 3 times the height

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Bringing this thread back on track i find the above suggestions pretty damn interesting and would make the fight a lot more interesting and it should be doable like when he goes to phase two you would just have a similar bit of code like when a Herc titan turns into a Zeus after receiving half damage. Just little additions like these would make them far more interesting.

 

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Make all AVs and possibly GMs... immune to Taunt.

Pure chaos! It would be so awesome!

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You really hate Blasters, don't you? GMs would just be a death sentence for them if you do this.

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What if the Tankers taunted but only received the lions share but not all the aggro?

That way the Gm would still be mitigated by the Tanker but would be a threat to everyone on the team attacking.

I also think that if you are defeated you shouldnt be allowed back into the fight for a penalty period of maybe 2 or 3 minutes.

Dying really isnt much of a big deal at the mo but it should be laid out that 2 or 3 deaths can cause problems for the remaining team..

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Lol... so damage classes will be able to hti the GM once or twice between each tanker taunt just to not overaggro?
Secondly, a tanker can lose aggro as it is now if i go all out.

Then die and not being able to fight in 3 mins? you do know that a GM often doesn't last that long. Specially if more then one group is attacking it.

Specially condsidering their insane regen rates.

 

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What if the Tankers taunted but only received the lions share but not all the aggro?

That way the Gm would still be mitigated by the Tanker but would be a threat to everyone on the team attacking.

I also think that if you are defeated you shouldnt be allowed back into the fight for a penalty period of maybe 2 or 3 minutes.

Dying really isnt much of a big deal at the mo but it should be laid out that 2 or 3 deaths can cause problems for the remaining team..

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Lol... so damage classes will be able to hti the GM once or twice between each tanker taunt just to not overaggro?
Secondly, a tanker can lose aggro as it is now if i go all out.

Then die and not being able to fight in 3 mins? you do know that a GM often doesn't last that long. Specially if more then one group is attacking it.

Specially condsidering their insane regen rates.

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errmmmm er ok.

Firstly, my earlier post makes mention of a GM being able to hit harder and faster, making it a longer fight.

Secondly, you are totally correct, if there is but one tanker fighting the GM. If there is more than that in this huge ensomble then your damage dealer has permission to hit more than once or twice because the Tankers combined taunts means no one else will get a look in aggro wise.

And thirdly, simple basic logic does suggest that if a few people are dead and cant get back into the fight straight away, that means that those fighting wil find the going tougher... and the risk of being defeated will be much greater. Those remaining will not hit quite so hard and ... the fight, provided the monster hasnt won, lasts longer.

But its nice that my post brought a smile to your face.

Don't get into a flap. It's only my opinion and I'm thick

Arc 56763 Lord Anarchys heaven

2 mission arc. Bring friends cause Lord Anarchy means business...

 

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As for that Sally.....


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