Thoughts on resurrecting enemies being untargetable

* Agreed, my Plant/Emp joined a team and ran the Dreck mission last night (tankless and with only 2 deaths, one being lil me who let a Tank get too close towards the start. Go team!) and it was hardly noticeable in any meaningful way, didn't slow us down at all.


Didn't notice any untargetable rezzers firing off attacks either.

I've seen motorists not realize an emergency vehicle is approaching and they continue merrily on their way, oblivious to their surroundings. Doesn't mean the ambulance wasn't there.

The current setup affects some more than others from a technical standpoint. Generally an attempt is made at avoiding mechanics like that.

Ideally they would have just left it alone, but they have identified an issue that needed resolution: self rezzing enemies going splat before having a chance to interact with the players resulting in extra rewards disproportionate to the time/risk invested.

I'm well aware that "unaffected" isn't a fun mechanic for many people, but it is the only one I can think of that will equally impact all player powers while still resolving the issue stated above.

So much irony in one post. I'm going to have to watch my ironic intake... d;D

I'm not entirely sure this is the issue they were trying to resolve. Someone brought up AFK PVPIO farming, and that seems slightly more likely, although this change really doesn't do much to curb that either...

It's a puzzle, to be sure. A solution that doesn't really match any of the problems I can think of.

I was of the opinion we were discussing resurrecting enemies being untargetable...

The only reason for this change I can think of is to deter its use in exploitative farming. However, as explained before the change does little to deter farmers.

The idea that this change was made to give resurrected NPC, PC targets a greater chance to survive is..well, absurd.

Not survive, you are looking at it in the wrong way. Look at it from a dev standpoint.

It has been postulated by others that one of the main reasons for this change was because you could earn double rewards from self rezzing enemies with out double the effort. Some of things you could do with regard to AE farming highlighted this.

Basically if you looked at something like the jellybean farms the enemies (other than the gm) all had a self rez. Those ones in particular only rez to about 3/4ths health, but that isn't the case for all rezzes. Anyway, they would usually be killed before they had fully stood up resulting in nearly 100% risk free rewards. Double rewards for minimal effort/time.

It has also been happening with freaks for years, though not as obvious as those mobs I'm talking about had a 100% rez rate. But the devs did notice the issue with freaks awhile ago and lowered their xp. I don't have the quote handy but the dev (castle or posi) specifically talked about the propensity to earn double rewards off of them.

We know how the devs feel about earning extra rewards without extra time invested.

I've also said that while this was targeted at reducing this issue/exploit/problem (w/e you want to call it) the mechanic they have utilized is not equally affecting all PC powers.

*Of course allowing them to attack while untargetable is certianly promoting the idea of the npcs getting their licks in before being defeated again... hopefully that isn't deliberate though as that isn't the issue, or rather it swings part of the issue in the opposite direction. The issue is earning double reward without extra time investment.

Now this change may have gone through to minimally impact the pvp IO farming. Or it may have gone through to address earning double rewards with nearly no extra investment and just happen to minimally impact pvp IO farming. Then again most (all?) player rezzes already have an immunity period already and I don't see them going through all that effort to singularly prevent auto targeting a player with a single attack when afk farms make use of other factors that allow them to happen far more than that factor. (ie using the oro tf settings to weaken one of them, pets, and non-target damage powers).

I can't say with absolute certainty, but I think an attack on afk pvp IO farming would have come in a far more obvious format.

There are at least a couple that don't. Willpower's doesn't.

I'm all for keeping risk and reward balanced, but I don't think the last patch was the best way to do it, either. I like the idea LISAR suggested.

As it stands now, some player rez powers grant "Untouchable" status when used and others do not. I do not see why this should not be the case for NPC's as well, like it was before the patch. However, all player rezzes give a period of immunity to XP debt. Those were added to counter the opposite problem to this one, i.e. "rezzing players going splat before having a chance to interact with the enemies resulting in extra risk disproportionate to the reward involved." Why not have that same period apply to NPC's as well, in the form of not giving rewards during that period?

This would solve the problem, while still allowing players to defend themselves against such an enemy. And if that enemy does stay up long enough for the period to end, then it will have taken enough effort to defeat it again for the players to be rewarded for it again.

If I were to look at the Devs farming "fixes" from a Devs standpoint; I would first have to ask someone to smash a brick over my head repeatedly until I had suffered enough brain damage...

I rather look at the fixes from a farmers perspective.

Depending on how long the "no xp" period lasted you run the very real risk of fully reversing the initial problem. Now you have people spending time defeating things and getting no reward whatsoever (in the case where aoe splash damage isn't vaporizing them)

I can't say it with absolute certainty, but that would also defeat the purpose of the original design intent behind enemies self resurrecting, which is namely to add another layer of difficulty to the encounter. You'd still have the same issue of players using aoes to defeat the target before it had an opportunity to serve the purpose of being resurrected.

While it seems fairly clear to me that the devs were spurred to make these changes due to rewards being earned with minimal effort/time I'm sure a tangential goal was to ensure resurrecting enemies are allowed to fulfill their purpose from an encounter difficulty standpoint.

A "no xp" period, would pass the criteria of preventing the earning of extra rewards, though run the risk of actually punishing players. But it would fail at preserving the encounter purpose of rezzing enemies.

The current method of "no target" sometimes passes and sometimes fails the extra rewards criteria as pets and non-target damage powers are not affected. And it sometimes preserves the purpose of adding depth to the encounter and it sometimes fails for the same reason as the reward portion

Applying a 2 second "unaffected period" would pass the criteria of disproportionate reward rates and ensure enemies survive long enough to return to the fight.

All three methods have "anti fun" factors compared to how it used to be, but in my mind it is best and most fair to go with the one that affects everyone equally in all circumstances while also best succeeding to achieve the secondary goal of resurrected enemies increasing spawn difficulty.

If I had a choice I'd probably return it to how it was before. I actually like curb stomping them before they can even get up. I find it fun and funny.

Fair enough, but the devs are devs and they tend to look at things from their perspective. If you want to understand changes that aren't glaringly apparent then it is helpful to look at it from their viewpoint.

I could full-well be mistaken, lord knows I've spend far more time butting my head against them than anything else.

I'm trying to look at the issue from both sets of shoes having farmed a whole bunch myself. This change indeed barely affects my farm setups, but manages to be pretty annoying on my more conventional toons. I'm not a fan of it the mechanic, but I do like equality. From a farming perspective a 2ish second unaffected period would hit me a lot harder, while currently hitting my normal toons about the same as the current system.

I'm fairly sure they gave self rezzes to npcs for a reason. A short unaffected period would promote that reason better than the current no-target system imo.

It's not fun, I wouldn't claim it to be. The current system isn't much fun either. As to which is less fun I say flip a coin, but unaffected period accomplishes the task with more equality and to a more complete extent. I guess I'm an equal opportunity no-fun kind of guy.

It doesn't

--Rad

They are intelligent enough to find it but, not intelligent enough to realize it will be fixed at some point? Whining about it after the fact losses them all the +intelligence they had.

--Rad

They aren't the ones "whining" about it since as has been stated repeatedly, it doesn't really affect them

True ... this time (but only since it does not affect them). Though, as you can see from the post I quoted above they are already ramping up for when it does.

--Rad

Did Sister Psyche Thursday. As you note, I barely noticed.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

I noticed this doing one of Unai Kemen's missions last night on the 'Freakshow in flooded Boomtown' mission; when a Freakshow rezzed, it was always able to start an attack before I was able to target it... at which point, because of the mechanics of CoH, it becomes impossible to stop the attack either by mezzing or defeating the mob.