Far too many spawns with bosses

Look, I don't cry foul lightly. When I see a problem, I try to either work around it, ignore it or just find some way to deal. And initially, when I saw all the reports of too many bosses showing up in missions, I thought they were exaggerated. Bosses started showing up in mission spawns at some point, and some few, rare missions could spawn mostly a boss and a minion. But this wasn't frequent, and when it happened, most of one mission would be bosses, but you'd see almost no bosses in the rest.

Well, since I16 launched, I've been getting ever more slightly irritated at these incessant boss spawns, and more and more convinced that it was never like this even in the worst cases I remember. Before, bosses almost never showed up outside of the named ones required by mission objectives, and missions where they did show up were rare. In the last few days, probably half of the spawns I've fought have been bosses.

Right now, I'm fighting the Carnival of Shadows. Have been for some time. I HATE Master Illusionists because they're so annoying, and Ring Mistresses are dangerous for the character I'm on right now, so you better believe I remember each time I see them. But you know what? I've fought more MASTER Illusionists today than I have Illusionists, and I've fought almost as many Ring Mistresses as I've fought Seneschal. This is officially crossing any sort of reasonable boundaries and going into the twilight zone. Spawn rules have gone completely bonkers.

And it's not like I'm pushing the envelope, either. I'm playing against enemies my level, considering myself equal to two "regular" heroes, fighting bosses but not fighting AVs (or +0x0, +boss, -AV), so you can't say I'm throttling the difficulty and manufacturing my own problems. I'm trying to get as close to the old Tenacious/Malicious as I can, and while that DID spawn bosses, they were incredibly rare. Now I'm as likely to see a Master Illusionist punching her fist as I am to see a Fencer or a Strong Man. This is just far, far too much.

I don't mind fighting bosses. Heck, I was even glad when I learned they were actually spawning. But fighting THIS MANY bosses is just absurd. I'm busting my butt just trying to survive ON A SCRAPPER, and here I am planning to play a Blaster next. How is THAT going to happen when I see a Master Illusionist every other spawn and a Dark Ring Mistress every third? Bosses, especially bosses post 40, ARE NOT EASY. They are certainly a lot harder than 5-6 minions, which is what you can get if you don't face a boss, so you'd think fighting them would be more rare, but when it's rare to NOT fight a boss, something is wrong.

I know the new spawn rules don't correspond to any of the old ones and aren't intended to, but please - let's reign in the bosses some. This is just no fun.

*edit*
Just to emphasise, the universe high-fived me by giving me another boss as soon as I rounded the corner after making this post. So, yeah!

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 enjoy getting more bosses, but yeah, with the carnies it can be overkill. They are pretty brutal and on many of my characters require pulling out a lot of stops, including a click accolade or two when solo. Running into 8 or 9 bosses on one solo map when set at even level, 1 or 2 hero difficulty with bosses on is a bit much.

Sam,

there were two changes involved here:

Firstly there was the fix to the spawn rules that went in. I tried manually scouring the pacth notes for this change, but can't see where it went in.

Secondly and after the above, the new difficulty settings came in.

Set for two heroes, even con with bosses and no AV, is exactly the same solo as the old tenacious. What you are seeing is an effect of the first chnage rather than the second.

Remember how the Lost and Rikti especially used to give bosses on teancious solo, sometimes a whole mission floor would be solo bosses ?
That is less common (in my experience for those groups) now, but solo bosses are more common due to the first change for certain other groups.

I basically refuse to fight Carnies in combination with the new difficulty settings. Their bosses are just too time consuming without just the right combination of powersets.

I do think this isn't a case of whining, and seriously is something that isn't WAI. I had this problem when I was testing out one of my arcs. Bosses were spawning an awful lot. Like, every spawn would be a pair of bosses. Or a boss and two minions or something.

And as Sam said, this is on x2 spawning. Having Bosses spawn at all is nice; From Time to Time. ALL the time, and it just gets to be a drag.
I love the new diff settings. But I do notice sometimes it gets itself in a knot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Really strange. I sympathize, Sam, because Carnies bosses are just horrid. Your post particularly resonated with me because I happened to encounter the flip side of this problem a few days ago: I had Council missions cranked up to a virtual team size of 8 and had bosses enabled yet no spawns had a boss in them at all. Ever.

They need to take that "spawn bosses like crazy" flag off of Carnies and put it on Council!

I have noticed this with Carnies lately, but I guess I don't mind. I play Brutes all the time and most of them can handle it just fine. I do feel your pain though and you shouldn't have to change to the no boss option, but you do have that option for any mission since changing difficulty doesn't cost inf anymore.

It'd be nice to get a new option to either have old-style boss spawns or the new one. Some of my characters enjoy the new system... some could be running x8 if it weren't for the bosses, but have trouble taking out some bosses alone.

In my experience, Carnies (and Vahz, and Clockwork, and Lost, and Rikti) are heavier on bosses naturally, and Council are lighter. I was seeing this behavior back in I15, mostly for custom groups put in the MA. Enemy groups seem to have their own boss-vs-other balance even before difficulty settings are taken into account.

I've been noticing some odd things with the new difficulty settings too.
I've been running my Warshade on -1x3 (no bosses, no AVs) for the last few days. Last night when fighting some Council I had a Lt. turn into a Warwolf when defeated. Not unusual right? Except for one small problem: he turned into a Warwolf boss. And I was solo, set to "no bosses when solo".

Also the spawn sizes themselves seem whacky. I keep getting these enormous spawns and thinking to myself "is 16 mobs really a 3 person spawn?" I mean, how do we go from 2-3 mobs for a solo player equals 15 or 16 for three people?

Hmm. I recently set the difficulty for my DB/Regen Scrapper for a team of two, but I haven't done much of anything with her since then. I'll have to see how often the (downgraded) bosses show up for me.

I agree that getting too many boss fights can really drag things down. You can turn them all into lieutenants (like I do), but you probably enjoy fighting a boss in a mission now and then, just not every couple spawns.

It is rather annoying, I like fighting a boss at the end of a mission but lately I've had to run with Bosses Off because I was getting sick of running into one every ten feet or so. Especially when playing a squishy who is not fully slotted out yet or a Dominator against mezz-resistant foes and Domination is still recharging.