Did something happen to spawn rules?

I apologise if this is has been addressed before (I suspect it has been) but I couldn't get any results out of Search, and I at least think I'm relatively up on current events.

But, really, did something change about spawn rules? When the new difficulty settings were announced, I generally wanted to keep things as they were, which the system promised to let me do. I usually played on Tenacious/Malicious. That is gone now, but, technically, all that difficulty setting was was even con, I'm as good as a team of two, I want to fight bosses, but I don't want to fight AVs. That's all it really was, even before the custom settings. So, naturally, I switched to that come I16 and expected to see afterwards what I'd seen before on Malicious/Tenacious.

This... Hasn't exactly happened. I had the spawns the old Level 2 difficulty generated almost memorised, but right now I'm seeing spawns I've never seen before. What's more, I keep seeing the same spawn over and over and over again - two lieutenants and two minions, arranged sort of in lieutenant/minion pairs. Now, typically, before I'd see either a lieutenant and four minions, or two lieutenants and ONE minion. What I'm seeing is neither. In fact, this SAME setup is what I see in +1 spawns, as well - two +1 lieutenants and two +1 minions. This is rather SIGNIFICANTLY more dangerous than what I was facing before. +1 spawns on Tenacious/Malicious never went above one +1 lieutenant and one +1 minion, and that was rare. Most often, they'd be just one +1 minion.

I AM seeing a lot of boss spawns, as well. More than I remember, but they are in exactly the setup I remember them being in - either even con boss plus even con minion, or +1 boss alone. But I just spent an entire missions fighting the Family, and all I ever saw was that same one spawn I'd never seen before over and over, sometimes even con, sometimes +1.

Mind you, it's not just that it's harder than I remember it that bugs me. It's just... Boring. Before, I had variety. Some spawns were big, some were small, some were high level, some lower, some had lieutenants, some did not. But a full mission of exactly the same setup of enemies in exactly the same arrangement grates REALLY fast.

I should note, by the way, that spawn sizes were bigger towards the end of I15, possible from the launch of I15 or even the launch of I14, I don't remember. Instead of a lieutenant and four minions, I'd see a lieutenant and FIVE minions, and instead of five minions alone, I'd see SIX minions in total. I can't remember if it was "instead of" or "in addition to," but I DO know I've not seen this particular spawn composition before I16.

This is CoV-side, by the way, and spawns have been really weird in CoV since its inception. I've posted a lot about the "two minions standing side by side, punching their fists" bug where THAT was what a mission would spawn all over the place, and I have not seen these since I16, so I suspect some kind of change has occurred to spawn generation in general. It doesn't seem to be acting quite right, though.

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.

I haven't noticed anything profoundly strange, but I've been playing heroes almost exclusively since the changes. And for the most part I'm either leaving the sliders at their default, or cranking them WAAAAAAAY up.

My AR/dev (+0 spawned for 3) has been getting a ton of Rikti monkeys & drones, but they tell me that happened before too.

My results so far.

Settings:

Level = +0
Number of players it thinks i am = 2
Bosses = Yes

Findings:

On certain missions in story arcs i have noticed that roughly half the maps mobs consist of 1 boss + 1 minion, which correct me if im wrong isnt WAI. Though it is a welcome change and i do personally like it like that.

However the above i have only noticed on story arcs, on radio missions/pvp instant missions the spawn size/rates are exactly how you describe them Sam. With them usually consisting of 2 lieuts + 1 minion [with my difficulty settings] thrown in with the occasional 4 minions + 1 lieut mob.

Details Wanted?:

I remember which missions/arcs the constant streams of bosses are so if wanted i can play them again via ouroboros and see if the results are constant.

I did a little inquiring yesterday when I noticed an overabundant amount of 2-boss spawns when set to x4, and apparently that has been happening before i16 - it was quite noticeable when you ran in pairs. I suppose that what you're seeing happened before i16 too, just never noticed until now

Not sure how related this is to your situation Sam, but last night me and my friends tried to run the Operative Renault SF but had to give it up due to very lame reasons.

Our leader was set to +0/x0, but for some reason the first mission we entered everything decided to be lvl 31 (+4, our highest lvl in the team was 27). We left to see if changing the difficulty to -1 would help, it changed the mobs to 29-30 and we managed to get through the mission, but we had to quit because the next mission had us kill 20 longbow in Nerva (at Agincourt) which were lvl 33 (+6 to us). We pulled a single minion but it felt like we were fighting an AV...

I don't run TFs/SFs that often so maybe I just still don't understand the mechanics behind them. Were they just balanced around being at the cap for them or something, or is it just something with this particular SF? Pissed off me and my friends a bit that we couldn't seem to do it that's for sure

That actually sounds like the mechanic behind the old TFs, which would always scale to the cap of their level range regardless of who was on the team. Then again, I would have expected that to SSK everyone up to the level of the mission, anyway. Understandably, hunt missions don't scale, but I can't imagine why the indoor mission would have spawned so high level.

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.

Hell, I feel hunting enemies in a specific ZONE is a mistake, but that at least is doable. But ever since the Hollows was introduced, this terrible, ***-backwards idea of hunting enemies in a specific area within a specific zone has cropped up from time to time, seemingly ALWAYS forcing you to hunt enemies where they're too high level for you. To my eyes, this is just bad design, because it serves almost no purpose, but rarely fails to be horribly irritating.

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.

Renault SF spawns at level 30, its falls under the signature TF/SF rules. Get four level 25s and it will still spawn 30s.


Also Agincourt does spawn longbow as low as level 31. Still above the TF Cap to be sure, but not quite as bad as 33s

I have been known to pull the smaller longbows up to Agincourt by kiting. They count if you kill them there even if they aren't spawned at Agincourt. It takes a lot of patience (and probably a few times when they de-aggro and run back) but it works.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

My own anecdotal evidence. I remember being able to play on teams fighting enemies below 7 having NO bosses spawn except end bosses, but now, even set at +0 x1 my two-person teams are spawning bosses every other group. Which is dangerous, especially low level where I'm currently playing a couple controllers and a new curroptor.

The new difficulty setting is nice - yay more customization!

But its really confusing for me. I've tried at least a dozen different settings and almost everything is too difficult unless I keep it at the default. I'm sure I'll learn over time but I had to give up the other night cause I couldn't find a balance and grew frustrated with it.


edit: It might be nice if it gave some option where you could ask the difficulty slider NPCs for 'recommendations' or something that would meet the criteria of the old settings, so you can use the old settings if someone wishes.

My wife and I noticed this before i16 came out.

We generally ran on Heroic. For the last month or so pre-i16, we've been noticing a lot of Boss spawns when running duo. Far more than we'd ever seen before. It seems to vary from mission to mission. Sometimes there are few or no Bosses, sometimes they are in almost every spawn on the map.

I'm pretty sure that boss spawning was tweaked upward at some point before I16. You'd get the occasional boss spawn running solo on Tenacious; I can't recall if they spawned on solo Heroic.