Crazy idiotic ambushes of doom...

Okay, I don't come around and start a thread specifically to complain about something very often, but on occasion something crawls into and bites my nether-regions. Such a situation has presented itself to me, and has caused me to forcefully remove my hair on several occasions.

Overwhelming Ambushes of Doooooooommmmm!: Let me start by saying that I don't necessarily have a problem with them; fending off a dozen waves of baddies at once can be fun, and I've had myself quite a good time doing so on several occasions. However, if there are any devs reading this, please don't have such ambushes spawn on top of you when you have to escort a killable, and therefore stupidly courageous, NPC to the door. And if you do, because you want it to be tough, please, for the love of all that is holy, please let the mission fail when the NPC dies.

The perfect example of this is the "Beethoven's 5th Symphony" alignment mission, hero side. I free the Longbow captive, and am immediately jumped by hundreds of Arachnos. This is awesome, and lots of fun, but 15 minutes later, when the smoke clears, the Longbow agent is nowhere to be found, and I check the logs and sure enough, she died somewhere early in the fight, but now there's nothing I can do about the mission other than reset it and try again. Why couldn't it just fail like most of the other missions that have a hostage that dies?

Anyone else bothered by this, or am I just crazy?

That's lame, that mission should complete as soon as the hostage dies and you should still get credit for trying. You set the dude free, and tried to help him to the door.

I don't wanna see the ambushes lessened in anyway but I wish there was a system in place, that would allow me to set my missions to spawn for certain amount of virtual teammates yet have ambushes spawn for a smaller group.

I can handle a 4 man spawn solo, they're just standing there. But a 4 man spawn ambush, that getting difficult. There's a Rogue tip where you find a glowie at the end and then you get 3 ambushes in quick succession. Longbow, then Chain and now its the PPD. That's a little ruff.

The other Rogue tip I have a hard time with, I have to take down Mangle, he's up to some evil plot involving the Wailers. When you attack Mangle he has a Wailer King and Greater Devourer ambush you. That's three bosses at once and one of them is a rezzer. At least on that tip, once you kill Mangle you can exit mission.

I don't mind ambushes per se, but it does really tick me off when the dummy I'm supposed to rescue gets killed in the ensuing fracas and I'm stuck dropping or re-running the mission.

There is another hero tip mission with the Knives that does that. Rescue NPC, NPC fights and thereby is killable, NPC dies every time in ambushes before you can get her out the door. Mission doesn't fail, doesn't complete ... nothing.

Very frustrating.

Yep... "Your Life Story" does that, just like the Arachnos mission. I've just been bugging it every time that happens. It may be WAI instead of being a bug per se, but it's still annoying. >_>

Pretty much everything that came with Going Rogue features waves and waves of ambushes in one fashion or another. I call it creative bankruptcy, as it feels like the mission designers were completely out of ideas and decided that just throwing ambushes at the player was the one-size-fits-all solution to every problem in the game.

Now add what I think is a bug that causes ambushes to overlap and spawn on top of you, and you get instances like the Gunslinger Toy mission which can spawn around 50-60 Malta agents on top of your head in the span of 10 seconds.

Other people may not want to see the ambushes lessened. I, on the other hand, feel that ENOUGH WITH THE AMBUSHES!!!

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.

The only ambush mechanic I absolutely, positively, irrevocably can NOT stand is the one that has the ambushers able to track you regardless of anything you do.

I'm sorry, but my Stalker is INVISIBLE. At the very least they should run to the place where he WAS and start looking around for him. Not chase him unerringly through the entire map as though someone had crammed a tracking beacon up his nether-regions the moment the ambush spawned.

I'm PRETTY sure he would have noticed that...

Yeah, and then there's that. Player-targeted ambushes always, always suck. Either have them converge on the player's last-known location, or have them follow the player but at least not AGGRO on him, if that were even possible.

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.

Hey! I resent this! I ain't ambushin' nobody.


It is true, though. If I were, y'all'd be worked.

I'm starting to wonder if that Goldside mission yesterday where I was being continuously jumped by over two dozen blue-conning mobs from the very beginning and straight through to "Find the mission exit!" all at once was a bug...

Edit: Still killed everything though, just so they'd leave me alone!

The ambushes themselves are awesome. I love the Maltra actionfigure mission for example.

But the escortees/hostages dying is annoying. There so many instances they die before you can even do anything. They're too fragile, they should be able to die so you fail the mission, but they should be a bit sturdier at least. I recall one mission where i was sposed to rescue Frostfire and Miss Thystle from nemesis, and their aoe attacks killed both before they even got "rescued", so mission never completed. It's annoying :|

I certainly hope people are bugging the missions that won't complete. The devs aren't going to know something's wrong if you don't.

I did Beethoven's 5th Symphony with a friend last night. Not only were the ambushes coming very fast, but they were enormous. At one point my friend commented they were the largest ambushes he had ever seen. Kind of odd when you consider we were on a team of two. We didn't even have the difficulty cranked up. Thankfully we were on two very strong characters, or it would have been rather ugly.

I did another tip on a lower level character yesterday (sorry the name escapes me) in which you are ambushed by one wave each of Longbow, PPD, and Legacy Chain. Well I assume it is supposed to be 3 waves, but they all spawned within a few seconds or so of each other and I had 12 minions on me at once.

Tip and Praetorian ambushes definitely feel buggy. Here's to hoping people are reporting them as such.

Malta Action Figure is an auto-dismiss from me these days. It's not worth having to change the difficulty setting just to deal with one insane mission.

Huh I've never had anything but the normal ambushes in tip mishes (IE: 3 minions or 1-2 minions/1 lt on normal difficulty, with possibly one or, in a few hoary cases, two bosses)

There are a couple of praetorian missins that has some pretty crazy ones (mainly in the Power Arc) although at least some ofthose are, IIRC; weakend versions and not full-strength minions thinking of the "SYNDICATE HORDES APPROACHING!" mission...)

Malta Action Figure is the mission that makes me pause from my -1/x0 tips speed runs and crank that baby up to x8 on my Tanker. Even if I go down (about 75/25 in my favor), it's still great fun while it lasts.

On my tanker. The rest of my characters sigh deeply when they see it.