Buff Lady Jane NPC

So I'm thinking: since DP's out and such, would it be cool if we could buff Lady Jane in the "Meet with Lady Jane" mission of the blueside midnighter arc?

At the level she appears as an ally, the CoT have moved up from challenging to nasty with Spectral Daemons and Spectral Daemon Lords in their ranks, both of which occur with frequency. Oh, and Ruin mages some into the picture, and as you do the arc at higher levels, we face a "level fifty hellions" problem, only a bit worse.

Possible proposed powers:

Attacks-
Pistols
Dual wield
Empty Clips
Suppressive Fire
Executioner's shot
-Defenses
High Pain Tolerance
True Grit
Tough
Weave
Maneuvers
Practice Brawler

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

if you pull the group around her away from her then clear the mission before going back to get her she wont die. im not either way on this idea. /neutral

If you lead her towards the nearest group, the mission goes much quicker...

The toughness or annoyingness of this mission has nothing to do with how hard the CoT are at a given level, or how weak Lady Jane is. Has everything to do with the fact that at the level ranges people most commonly do this, there are tons of Spectrals, and when spectrals are near death, the AI is coded to make them invisible and fly off.

Problem is, NPC AI cheats when it comes to perception. That's how things can teleport around walls. So here's the approximate sequence of events:

Lady J fights a spectral
Spectral AI gets low on HP decides to run 100yds (or whatever)
Lady J AI "sees" that it's going to run (is given its destination coords) and decides to pursue.
Spectral flies off and fades from view.
Lady J runs off to that location.
Lady J aggros 3 other groups on her way and dies.
Groups come charging after you, and you die.
If you're lucky the mission fails before that last one.

I'm all in favor of making Lady J cooler. But it doesn't solve the fundamental problem.

Change the Spectral AI so it doesn't run OR
Change Lady J's AI so she doesn't pursue OR
Change the spawn rules so there are very few spectrals OR
Change the foe group entirely.

Do any of these things to make this mission non Fail-Bait* and any upgrade for Lady Jane's powers and abilities would be much better received.


* Yup I know there are tactical and/or teammate choices you can make to counter this. I'm just pointing out a definite flaw in the AI/Mission design that ought to be fixed so this doesn't have to be countered.

Not before they improve Ambassador Suicide and General Deathwish.

You all know the steaming turd I speak of (I refuse to acknowledge that as a mission when it is custom designed as a run of punishment) in the Rikti Warzone.
Let me get this straight;
You expect me, that is, one player...right? To get through a mission filled with Nemesis, that is, one of the nastiest mobs in game, right? With two allies that HAVE to survive? BOTH of whom are near suicidal and, even if they aren't, get hit by every one of the considerable ammount of AoE Death that Nemesis mobs chuck out...and they have pet level HP and the old mans only attacks are a pistol and BRAWL?!?

Ye GODS I hate that turd. I hate it so damn friggin' much...

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.

Quote:

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

Yeah, I admire their attempts to make some more interesting missions in those RWZ arcs, and they did do at least two debugging passes that I remember, but on the whole there are still some real stinkers in there, the one you mentioned being one of them. It's a shame because the storyline itself is great. The mechanics need hard looking at though.

It would be cool to see Lady Jane get some DP powers, but like the other posters above me posted before, we need to fix some of the game mechanics like ally AI for one before that mission and others like it (I know the mission Technobot is referring to and I think I succeeded at it ONLY cause the toon I did it with was an MM which meant more targets for the Nemi to go after as well as a LOT of damage dealing (her primary is thugs so they killed the nemi goons fast), but giving NPCs like that extra powers to combat the Fail AI mechanics of those types of missions will NOT address the problem. Sure they will be harder to kill, but until the AI and other Fail mechanics are fixed they will still die, it will just take longer for them to be killed.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Lady Jane was already buffed once (Pet to Boss), and fixed once (attempted fix on aggro issues), but didn't seem to work, haha.

As the head of the Dawn Patrol, she should probably be a stronger than average NPC. Maybe the easiest way to increase her survivability would be to just move her to Elite Boss status. It's only one mission, and not really an abusable mission at that (Lady Jane's attacks are based on Mastermind pistol skills, so they're somewhat weak and slow anyway).

I wouldn't mind too much if she was either given Dual Pistols powerset OR Malta Gunslinger powerset (except for teleport) as an upgrade to her powers though.

Meh. I purposely kill her.

General Irons and C'Khelkah are only as bad as they are because you're supposed to rescue them, but you CAN'T. If you could lead them to the exit and have them, you know, exit, that would solve that mission's problems in a heartbeat. Now, protecting the generators...

Lady Jane is very tough. She really doesn't need to get tougher. She needs to get more blind. Kill her extra perception so she loses target on enemies that go invisible (it should be possible) and that should solve the problem.

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.

Just change her to 'fight Defensive' from the AE, rather than 'Aggresive'. Also known as 'It's still on the map SHOOT IT!!!'
And yes to the 'let us lead them out, for pity sakes!!' suggestion.

This post was worthy of five exclamation marks. *nod*

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.

Quote:

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