For those who want more challenge
By
Alvan,
Posted on: 2009-01-29 07:02 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the upcoming Architect. After all, if you want challenging missions, surely the best way to do that is to create your own?
I think playing other people's storylines is going to play a big part in the future of CoX, and add hugely to its longevity. It should also quiet the challenge driven crowd as they strive to create missions which test their resolve.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not sure how much control we are getting. But I won't be able to place the mobs myself. Which for me is a shame because you can make life harder when you place them smartly.
Remember the Mercy island mission with all the snakes and their eggs? That one is easy when you know how to do it but rush in and you will faceplant. You can make missions more challenging with smart mob placements where players have to figure out a tactic to make things work.
[ QUOTE ]
But one good way to give yourself a decent challenge is to form a PuG made up with people 2 or 3 levels lower than yourself, of tricky mob types and see how you do then.
[/ QUOTE ]
That is a good way to make a higher difficulty setting then what we currently have.
[ QUOTE ]
I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the upcoming Architect. After all, if you want challenging missions, surely the best way to do that is to create your own?
I think playing other people's storylines is going to play a big part in the future of CoX, and add hugely to its longevity. It should also quiet the challenge driven crowd as they strive to create missions which test their resolve.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is a good point but there's no point in me making a challenging mission for me, because I know the story, I know what's in it, I know where the spawns are etc etc
Sure, I'd enjoy looking at other players missions. I am looking forward to this because having seen some of the stuff that gets put in the creative section, I am firmly of the opinion that the stories we'll get will be as good if not superior to any story arcs that the devs have given us yet.
Almost certainly it'll raise the stakes for the Devs, and they'll have to make sure their stories are top notch in further issues.
But, I'm at present unclear how well we'll be identify "Architect-built Mission Difficulty."
Anyone got any clues?
Thelonious Monk
Scary thing for me is i've never used mids and only ever slot the standard IO's, none of this new-fangled enhanced IO malarcky where you things add a percentage to 3 different attributes on one IO... 
Am I challenged, or is it A challenge. Before others answer for me I'd say the latter occasionally but even then, it's fine 
I'd only look to slot the enhanced IO's if i wanted to seriously play the game to it's max potential, which i don't. I enjoy the way i play and hope others find me enjoyable to play with
Well, after ploughing through te thread I fully expected to see anything that make the game harder.
...I didn't..
More time consuming, more boring, pointless etc... but not harder.
I still concider it silly that a single brute with regular SOs can clear a four man-spawned relentless mission.
To be honest I don't mind lvl 50 missions 8 man team play being rediculously easy at all, but a few SG mates popped back in to the game recently and we did RSF in about 1h 30 minutes and they left the game again in disgust because even after a few months it was a sad routine with no thinking required and hardly any skill. That was with bugged hostage, no tp etc.
Personally I still think it wasn't the "no challenge" part that drove them all off, more the OMG-nothing-new part. No mission creator will fix that sadly, because the maps will be the same old, same old and every single foe except the bosses we can "create" will act just the way they've always acted.
The main problem is, we hate the lack of news, but when something changes we hate that too. pvp, baddies following through elevators, other powerchanges and baddie changes (flame thrower FTW!!!). We love and hate the familiarity.
So, they could put in a new diff mode with 16 bosses in every mob, or even EBs. It would still be the same old, we'd still know what to do and inf/xp would be game-breaking rediculous.
Yes... I did another friday d000000m post!
I have MIDs I fire it up, look at it, decide it's going to waste playing time then shut it down 
Hence all my alts are far from maxed out. I also pick powers I think are cool whether they are any good or not 
I'm another who doesn't transfer inf between Alts. I never have. I believe in "hard love" for my Alts They all have to make their own way.
Happy to be on Defiant.
Global name @mereman
Member of P.E.R.C. Representing Defiant
Alts http://cit.cohtitan.com/profile/4488
CoH faces http://faces.cohtitan.com/profile/mereman
Solo posi without travel powers and while being debuffed and enemies buffed.
Or try making a mastermind but don't take any henchmen. Just attacks and powers from your secondary (don't take the pet in Dark Miasma). That and up rep to relentless. Now THERE'S a challenge.
I got to about 25 with a Pistols only MM, that was hilarious
In-game and now on Twitter @Tsumiju Zero "The Nightmare of Dra'Gon"
"The flow of battle can only be influenced, not by realtime tactics, but by strategy."
Proud resident of the Union EU Server.
B.A.F. Trial Guide
[ QUOTE ]
I got to about 25 with a Pistols only MM, that was hilarious
[/ QUOTE ]
What was your secondary?
[ QUOTE ]
I got to about 25 with a Pistols only MM, that was hilarious
[/ QUOTE ]
My Pistol/Traps is about the same as well - EBs can be a real pain to solo but still possible just as long as they aren't Ballistas - their KB kills. At least the lack of end isn't so bad now. I'm also now clearing more mishes without dieing than not. Before lvl 20 debt was to be expected.
Actually does anyone do this other than Pistol/*
Mind of Gaia lvl 50 Defiant's first Mind/Storm 'troller.
Deadly Doc 50 Dark/Dark Corr
and lots more on Pinnacle,Union and Defiant
People already make the game more of a challenge for themselves. Some make more of a problem for themselves or others than there needs to be. Largely its done with a Charge of the Light Brigade Maneuver except there is a team wipe.
Usually it's the person who starts the fights fault, they choose to fight a group in the middle of other surrounding groups and then some poor soul just doing their job is just waiting for a perception check on them.
By not offering safe areas for others to play from, some Tanks get to be the last one standing quite often. Sometimes these people are up the Tanks butt so he couldn't move them if he tried and sometimes they're already in the other group cos someone is assuming the team can be halved or that they or other players are totally leet (not likely in a PuG). It's maybe okay to get things wrong the first time, its just repeating every mistake expecting things to go differently when there is a clear an obvious alternative to anyone with half a brain that makes me wonder.
I guess after a time, the unemployable that play this, will eventually have full IO builds and base their skill on them still standing. God forbid one of them evolving to a state of mind that there are other people who have limits and there is some team dynamic no matter what the team make up your in to discover so that things can move along where everyone is pretty excruciatingly safe in PvE with SO builds. Obviously though we don't want too safe a practice but we shouldn't, when playing heroes, compromise others who are on your side, to the extent that they're dead as that's not even close to being of heroic intent the western way.
When it comes to villains, anything goes and I will agree it's hard for that to be challenging when your kitting out teams with special abilities.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
I wonder...
Start a new character.
As soon as is possible, shift the difficulty to the highest level.
Play through alone and see how far you get before it becomes too much. Given that enemy levels and numbers increase significantly, that'd be quite a challenge, I think. Unless you all play on that difficulty by default?
Depends on AT. Brutes usually go strieght up to highest difficulty.
I really should do something about this signature.
the game is getting boring, but that's more the XP rate....
Still haven't seen anything in this thread that makes the game actually harder, just more boring, and annoying by making yourself crappier. That's not making the game harder, it's making yourself more useless. There's a difference.
Personally I don't mind the easiness anymore, I like total mayhem, fast inf and good drops. It's the total lack of content and me knowing every little quirk in the game not ever getting surprised and not even bothering about 20 team whipes because it doesn't matter the slightest (No, I would never have 20 team whipes actually, but you get the point...)
With the current nem staff bug, targetting bug etc (and a bad case of hang over today) I find it hard to motivate myself to level characters. I still get a laugh from occational ITFs and I'm even beginning to enjoy PUG ITFs because they do provide some small elements of surprises, but I sure hope there's some biiig, huuge surprises in I15.
Yes, it's a d0000m post. We're all gonna diiiiieee if there's no real content in I15. Period!
[ QUOTE ]
Still haven't seen anything in this thread that makes the game actually harder, just more boring, and annoying by making yourself crappier. That's not making the game harder, it's making yourself more useless. There's a difference.
[/ QUOTE ]
then why don't you suggest something that would work for you, instead of griping at everyone else's suggestions?
Thelonious Monk
Many people have been playing this game for freaking years. It's going to get pale, boring and staid for you.
Yes, it sucks to leave behind something familiar that you've gotten a lot of enjoyment from, but the devs just can't make some magical change that you won't eat up and spit out in five seconds that revolutionises the core gameplay and makes the world of CoX shine again. It's not going to happen. Blizzard are doing that, big expansion pack, same basic game, veterans go at it like a group of hyenas on downed prey and in no time at all are baying for more with bloodied snouts.
Anyone truly that bored with the game, I implore you, for your own good, leave. You've had enough. The well is dry. You've explored the whole island. Hang around and you'll just be loitering in a bus station for a bus that's never going to come. Ok, enough of the analogies. Just find something else, before you get so damn annoyed that you can't find the joy you used to have with the game, it completely ruins all the joy you used to have with the game!
It's not some 'please shut up' request, it is, surprisingly, me trying to get you (whoever you are) to do the best for yourself. It's all about having fun after all, and if that's not happening because you've seen and done it all....you need to go find something else to play with. I'm not saying the game shouldn't continue to develop and added to, but damn, some of you just sound like you're done with this game. Stop making it painful for yourself, you're spending close enough to ten quid a month to be annoyed.
Chairman of the Charity of Pain; accepting donations of blood and guts.
Prophet of the Creamy Truth; "If it's empty, fill it with cream."
[ QUOTE ]
Many people have been playing this game for freaking years. It's going to get pale, boring and staid for you.
Yes, it sucks to leave behind something familiar that you've gotten a lot of enjoyment from, but the devs just can't make some magical change that you won't eat up and spit out in five seconds that revolutionises the core gameplay and makes the world of CoX shine again. It's not going to happen. Blizzard are doing that, big expansion pack, same basic game, veterans go at it like a group of hyenas on downed prey and in no time at all are baying for more with bloodied snouts.
Anyone truly that bored with the game, I implore you, for your own good, leave. You've had enough. The well is dry. You've explored the whole island. Hang around and you'll just be loitering in a bus station for a bus that's never going to come. Ok, enough of the analogies. Just find something else, before you get so damn annoyed that you can't find the joy you used to have with the game, it completely ruins all the joy you used to have with the game!
It's not some 'please shut up' request, it is, surprisingly, me trying to get you (whoever you are) to do the best for yourself. It's all about having fun after all, and if that's not happening because you've seen and done it all....you need to go find something else to play with. I'm not saying the game shouldn't continue to develop and added to, but damn, some of you just sound like you're done with this game. Stop making it painful for yourself, you're spending close enough to ten quid a month to be annoyed.
[/ QUOTE ]
^ This.
Well said Khorak, well said. I think you hit the nail on the head here.
If those posts where a stab at me, I guess you didn't actually read my post....
....sigh, what a surprise! ,)
[ QUOTE ]
Many people have been playing this game for freaking years. It's going to get pale, boring and staid for you.
Yes, it sucks to leave behind something familiar that you've gotten a lot of enjoyment from, but the devs just can't make some magical change that you won't eat up and spit out in five seconds that revolutionises the core gameplay and makes the world of CoX shine again. It's not going to happen. Blizzard are doing that, big expansion pack, same basic game, veterans go at it like a group of hyenas on downed prey and in no time at all are baying for more with bloodied snouts.
Anyone truly that bored with the game, I implore you, for your own good, leave. You've had enough. The well is dry. You've explored the whole island. Hang around and you'll just be loitering in a bus station for a bus that's never going to come. Ok, enough of the analogies. Just find something else, before you get so damn annoyed that you can't find the joy you used to have with the game, it completely ruins all the joy you used to have with the game!
It's not some 'please shut up' request, it is, surprisingly, me trying to get you (whoever you are) to do the best for yourself. It's all about having fun after all, and if that's not happening because you've seen and done it all....you need to go find something else to play with. I'm not saying the game shouldn't continue to develop and added to, but damn, some of you just sound like you're done with this game. Stop making it painful for yourself, you're spending close enough to ten quid a month to be annoyed.
[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree, and I'll try to explain why.
I think that when I joined the game there was a certain level of difficulty. Since then two things have happened:
I have learned how to play the game a lot better.
the game has been "dumbed down" in a number of areas - meanign it's a lot easier for even a novice player to take part.
Nobody can do much about the former, nor do I want, or expect them to. Hell if I didn't improve at the game the amount I play there's eitehr something badly wrong with me, with the game, or both
But there have been a number of significant steps to making the game a lot easier, I don't think many can deny that. This has taken place over a number of areas - from "smoothing the XP curve" to Temp powers, to virtual elimination of debt - to name a few.
To me, none of those measures have improved the game in any way, and in the case of debt, has actually proven to be detrimental to gameplay because it essentially removes any requirement to think about the game.
That doesn't mean I'm bored with the game at all. It means that I miss the times when we had to think about what we needed to do, in order to succeed, which is becoming increasingly rare.
Thelonious Monk
I've never been bothered by debt, by the lack of debt does bother me. I'm glad not to hear PUGs whine about it, but not caring about dying is bad for the game. In any 8 man team there's usually one or more rez'ers, some people have the ability to rez themselves (long lasting mayhem temp included) and dying just becomes a 3 second slowdown.
Sure, grinding for a year to get to lvl 30 was rather boring when I first started playing (I really read all the story arcs etc) and in many ways I have no problem with the speed levelling because I immensely enjoy playing my lvl 50s.
Once lvl 50 though, there's not much to do and there's absolutely no penalty for dying. having lower level alts usually now means there's a lot of patrol xp to shew off, so no worries there either and when it's gone, in-mission debt is hardly noticed. It's actually hard to get the debt badges now.
With the addition of new powersets and the ability to buy new character slots it does make sense and I guess it's a reward for sticking to the game, but there's another downside:
Sure, we don't get many new players, but the ones we get hardly have time to get to know the game before they're high lvl. I've meet several 50s that basically don't know anything about the game and seen some really wonky builds. So... it's a good laugh, but I also notice people treating them very badly because they lack "skill" (knowledge about the game, that is, because skill has very little to do with it).
To go back to the original subject: No matter how you twist and turn it, being able to solo a relentless mission, spawned for four people with simple SOs, not eating any insps - and we're not talking skills in any sort of way here - is a problem imho.
I have no great solution for it really. Giving us yet more diff levels with more bosses/liuts isn't really a fix, it just bumps up the grind attraction, and that would just increase market prices even more.
The same goes for the ghosting problem. Any alt with a travel power can usually run to the mission objective and finish it without bothering about the rest of the map, except the horrible defeat-all ones.
For that, there IS a fix: Diversify the missions, adventure-style (not sure I'd like myself to be honest): get key for door x, click computer y, then defeat mr z etc. That's already in the game and we're still expecting the multiple choise missions (very quiet about them lately???).
For those that do want a challenge:
Efficiency Expert Pither, villain-side...
Bump the diff up, treat all mishs as kill-alls...
No running indoors, kids!
...yes.... That was a joke!
It would be great if they would diversify the missions. If they could give us something worthwhile doing at level 50. If they could change the AI. those things would be great.
However, I doubt that we will see that any time soon.
That leaves us the choice to either find other ways to amuse ourselves with this game or to start playing another game. If you reached the level that you are bored killing AV's solo without having to need uber IO's , then perhaps it is time to move on.
The thing is that, especially on PuGs, people don't WANT more of a challenge. For example I was defaulted to team leader last night (urrgh) on a PuG and picked a PI Arachnos paper mish (I like fighting Arachnos, they've a cool variety of enemies), which turned out to be quite a challenge, not least because on the team I'd inherited the 2 Tanks were SKed up from the mid-20s (but did fairly well and weren't afraid to get their hands dirty).
When we finished the mission itself people didn't want to clear because it was "Urrgh, Arachnos". The one who voiced the "urrgh, Arachnos" was the FOTM controller (you know the ones). They weren't the best either. I was gasping for Endurance for most of the mish thanks to all the Mu (a bit of a counter to the Skill vs Sets debate too. I'd have much preferred any other sort of Controller played with a bit more skill in that situation providing some more lockdown).
But one good way to give yourself a decent challenge is to form a PuG made up with people 2 or 3 levels lower than yourself, of tricky mob types and see how you do then.