Ambushes - FFS

I'm doing the 'Meet with the syndicate' mission frokm Doctor Steffard ATM, and right now i'm stood outside the mission door AGAIN. Which imbecilic writer wrote this appalling piece of hackwork? I got to the contact, everything's quite exciting, fancy escort-to-conversation mechanic, and then 9 even con ghouls run up to me ignoring my Hide and kill me. I hosp, run back, as soon as i'm in the door they make a beeline for me. It's totally crap gameplay. I have to go in, wait, do two or three of them, then leave, and repeat. And there's more of the effing things spawning all the time too. RUBBISH. You suck, whoever you are.

Eco.

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Sounds like ambushes are playing havoc with stalkers, best bet is to load up on inspirations and save them for the right time.

It's a bit difficult to rely on inspirations in the low levels. You don't get very good drops, and your tray isn't very big.

I've been complaining about ambushes targeted on the character for years. It's not fair for stalkers. (Same with PToD EBs versus dominators.) The devs went a little overboard with the all the ambushes in the new content.

*hides the defend TPN mish*

I find ambushes in general to have odd behaviour. I've never fully understood why a ambush that floored me and wandered WELL away (Several rooms actually) Suddenly know when i've used a wakie?

It would make more sense and be easier that, if and when someone is defeated by an ambush, just then have them mill about like an ordinary mob, provided they don't see you get back up. I mean, if the Praetorian Police had such great precognitive abilities, why did they even have the Seers?

I've wondered if the ambushes are a bit overpowered (and not just coz I was on a stalker at the time - this happened with other ATs)...

I was doing the last mission of Seer 1381's arc (where you fight Seer 001), and an ambush gets triggered...

... of TWENTY-SIX PPD AND SEERS.

On a +0/+0 character.

Kid you not... I was so astounded I was killed before I'd realized what happened, then went back, turned on Hide, and took screenshots.



I knew I was a threat to Cole's regime, but DAMN, guys!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I'll throw my hat in on this one as well. I seem to have a particularly difficult time with Syndicate members. You'll come up on a spawn that is two or three +1/+2 LTs, and with heavy inspiration use, you can succeed by the skin of your teeth.

You attempt to rest before tackling the next spawn when you get ganked from behind by three more Syndicate who just happened to spawn and knows exactly where you are in relation to the building. If you survive that fight, brace yourself, because another spawn is en route.

It is frustrating to say the least, but thankfully we do have the option to skip a mission every 3 days. But when you're soloing them to experience the storyline, you miss out on the clues and dialogue through 'automagic' completion.

I've gotta agree here. Was doing the "Lure [insert name here] out" mission last night (can't remember her name but she had a red afro and hit like a truck) and it was one of those "get to the end of the map and click a glowie" style missions.

Oh. My. Gawd. The carnage. I've never seen so many ambushes. I got late to the party and was hiding in a corner when 2 Syndicate guys spotted me. Followed by the rest of their spawn. Followed by another ambush spawn. Followed by another ambush spawn of Resistance. As I lay on the ground I counted another Resistance Spawn Ambush heading off to massacre my team-mates.

I like a challenge and all but this was horrific.

There's also a lot of "ambush pops into existance around you" moments which brought me right back to my Doom 1 days. Rather silly.

Ambushes are so over-used in Praetoria that on the rare occasion I don't get one I think the mission is bugged. I was helping a friend with a mission the other night. We had a PPD ambush come at us that we started fighting. Then we suddenly had the entire Seer Network spawn behind us. At least it felt like it was all the Seers, it might not have been. There could have been a couple taking a coffee break I suppose. Two simultaneous ambushes? Really?

I have to say it was quite effective though. They put an end to our little Resistance plot right then and there.

All I'm going to say on the subject is: I told you so. You know who you are.

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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.

Are we sure it's only Praetoria? I have ran two MA's that on the first encounter, wiped me out, and spawned 20 or so more mobs that proceeded to wipe me out again when I log back into the mission. They were literally duplicating before my eyes, thus the wipes. That, and they were all custom mobs using elec. That sure as heck did not help.

Both MA's received 1 star and I refrained from sending a nasty gram.

I haven't run into -too- much trouble with my scrapper, but I'll admit there have been more close calls concerning ambushes than I've been used to. On the plus side, it leads to some fun screen shots.

Some of the tip missions are pretty bad on ambushes as well, though nowhere near the level of some of the Praetorian missions. For the Tip missions, it's just frequency of ambushes. Basically, once you defeat an ambush, within two to five seconds, another comes up. Then after that, two to five seconds later, another one. And another one. And another one.




As for one really bad Praetorian mission in terms of ambushes, well this mission was basically full of Praetorian Clockwork. You had Crow and two of his buddies to help you.

Problem?

Every time you kill a group, there's like 4 Praetorian clockwork to ambush you... if solo. That's not so bad. If you are in a duo? 6-8 Praetorian Clockwork. Trio? 8-12. Four of you? 12-16. Eight of you? 20-32. Don't forget that there are bosses that will tear you apart.

Now I don't know the real numbers, but the scaling of the mission was just plain ridiculous. The main problem was that they would basically be 4 of them, +0. Then 8 of them, +0 or +1. Then 12 of them, +1 or +2. And so on. At a full group, it would basically be a big fat mob of them, +2. Don't think there were any +3.

Unfortunately, I don't know the exact mission. I am sure it's in the Crusader Storyline, but it was someone else's mission, not mine.

I find this shocking. Surely some of this is a bug. I've had a few ambushes so far, but other than the Kill 100 Destroyers mission (Where admittedly the mobs die in 2-3 hits tops, and you can run around, etc), I've not been mobbed anything like that. I've had a few situations where 1 mob would come, I'd finish it off, then another mob would come, but I've literally not been overwhelmed yet with 3 chars. I'm still rolling new chars, however.

(btw, I frequently carry lucks, and am always working to keep my tray modestly filled with them, and I thing that's been a key to my survivability, so I advise this tactic for others)

Just to nod here as well on the ambushes problem. I got stuck on a mission that apparently had unlimited ambushes that tore my poor level 11. They didn't come in big groups, but it was hard to move forward in the mission against the normal spawns when a new ambush was sure to come up.

Packing purples only lasted 2 fights or so, one of which was clearing the ambush that had previously killed me. . .

There was a mish, I forget the name, where Clockwork ambushes just spawned one after another after another after another... endlessly. How do they expect you to fight your way through the standard mobs when you have a new ambush coming after you 10 seconds after you beat the last one? I died so many times, I auto-completed the mish out of sheer frustration. By then there had been nine or ten ambushes. It was just stupid.

This expansion is supposed to draw more new people into the game. Guess what? If I would have been a new player going through Prae as my introduction of the game, I would have already quit out of frustration. The ambushes in Prae AND some of the tip missions are getting way out of hand. I had to auto-complete a Crusader mission last night after 4 complete team wipes because of the ambushes. This is NOT the way to keep new customers. Unless this is fixed, I probably will never set foot in Prae again.

I am a casual but dedicated player; I play to unwind, relax after work, and relieve some stress. Facing 6 or 7 back to back ambushes of Malta sappers and engineers in a tip mission set to +0/+0 on my solo blaster, where they spawn 30 feet away even before the first spawn is cleaned up, that is just stupid.

I am on the fence so far about this expansion and issue right now. If they tone down the ambushes and the difficulty a little bit, I'd say that GR and I18 would be a success, but I think it will be too little, too late. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, and quite frankly if I would have been a new customer, I would have already walked.

The Seer 0001 thing definitely sounds like a bug. I fought Seer 0001 last night, and it went something like this:

3/4 health - phase, ambush (1 seer)
1/2 health - phase, ambush (1 seer)
1/4 health - phase, ambush (1 seer)

Then when she came back she summoned a TEST lt. That was pretty much it. I'm assuming this is more like what was intended, vs two-to-three dozen mobs. It was easier than the mission after that (free the Seers), which had a couple of lt/minion/minion ambushes consecutively. Challenging (no time to rest), but not impossible.

I've had some crazy Malta ambushes in tip missions though. Come back from the hosp to find 30 of them all in a bunch.

The Seer 0001 mission was fixed and fixed twice in the last patch.

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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.

Oh yeaaaaahhhh, thanks Sam, the patch notes DO say that, don't they.

Well, I can confirm the fixes are working then.