Trapdoor is getting harder.

Because the Devs don't want you to be able to circumvent the primary encounter mechanic?

You know, it took me less than 5 minutes to defeat that encounter. Anyone who had to do a pull would probably take considerably longer without the pull, if they could even do it.

So WHY is it a problem if those people circumvent the primary encounter mechanic? It just turns the game from "5 minutes of fun" to "25 minutes of suck" for a large number of people. Why is this good for the game? Unless there was some kind of metric to scale the encounter based on AT and Powerset to ensure a level playing field, it's still going to be stupid-easy for some people and stupid-hard for others. All this change will do is frustrate people.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

It shouldn't be stupid hard for ANYONE.

Anyone finding this encounter stupid hard is DOING IT WRONG.


Why even DESIGN fights with new mechanics if people are just going to cheat their way around it?

Yet, there's a bunch of people saying it's hard for them. So... either it is hard for them, or they're lying.

Anyways, I don't really care. I think it's a stupid mission in a stupid arc and is stupid easy and this change won't fix any of that. What happened to the good writing we started to see come out of Paragon Studios over the past year? This whole arc is just sad, sad, sad.

Originally Posted by eltonio This is over the top mental slavery.

Which is really bad, because (at least at the time) Eiko was a 16-year old Japanese school girl.

Silver Mantis...everything you find creepy she enjoys...I'ld imagine at least one super has beaten her badly enough that when she recovered she found where they lived and showed up while they were sleeping to do it over again. I leave it up to you to imagine how she woke them up.

You're secretly Silver Mantis, aren't you?

And that has anything to do with anything I said how, exactly?

My statement stands, and has nothing to do with letting what's an exploit be defined by the players. You offered a definition of "exploit" which is "players doing anything to complete a goal that the developers did not explicitly intend". That's an idiotic definition, which gives the developers the shield of "oh, it was an exploit" for any change which herds players down only dev-approved paths to completing a goal.

What in there has to do with changes made by the devs being the correction of exploits?

This is a change that limits player tactical choice. As far as I can see, it only does so because someone disagreed that a particular tactical choice should be valid, not because that choice was exploitative. My response was to your defense of this as the correction of an exploit, and you have not rebutted that point whatsoever.

Whatever you want to call it, Traps was never intended to be separated from his clones. May or may not be an exploit, personally I'd say it's too minor an issue to rise to the level of Exploit in typical MMO terms. By the dictionary definition, yeah, you're exploiting a bug by pulling him from the room. But not Exploiting. But the "someone" who disagrees with the pulling approach just happens to be the people that designed the encounter. I'd wager that they don't care if you kite him all over the map, so long as his clones continue to do their +regen. I'm guessing that leashing him to the room is the quickest easiest way to ensure that.
Maybe they could have coded it such that he could spawn them wherever he was on the map, but from what I've seen in doing the mission, they have static spawn locations...probably due to time limitations on the coders.

You and others are making this all about LRN2PLAY.

*I* can defeat Trapdoor toe-to-toe on any level 50 toon using nothing but inspirations. I don't even need the lava.

I know how to play.

I object not because "he's too difficult" but because what they did here in removing a typical tactic is being done too often. Not only famously in other ways like disallowing Warburg Missiles in the CoP, but I've seen this pop over and over again in Beta, often Closed Beta, where non-exploitive ingenuity on the part of the players is rewarded in mechanical 'fixes' (and some of them were horribly ugly kludges they should be ashamed of) to remove the player-invented tactic so as to force the encounter to be played in only one mechanical way.

You all do know that MMO's and CRPGs usually get very high praise when they set up their encounters so as to allow multiple solutions and tactics, right? That's the gold standard of 'good computer gaming.'

What's been happening in the past 6 months is all a giant step backward. This makes for 'bad computer gaming' since it's so restrictively scripted.

While the storyline opens up to branching trees and multiple options, the gaming mechanics gets straitjacketed.

Trust me, this is just the tip of the iceberg and such 'fixes' are happening fast and furious making this game, IMO, worse.

Doooooom.

Trapdoor's such a jerk. Doesn't he know this is a multiplayer game!?

You are terribly mistaken, my friend. The gold standard is 'make it fun,' and sometimes that comes in the form of multiple solutions to the same problem and sometimes not.

I mean really, just look at Trapdoor: his signature move is bifurcating to regenerate health. You think maybe, just maybe, it was intended to be a part of the battle? The fact that people figured out ways to nullify the effects of the bifurcations was an oversight by the devs, and one they are correcting in the next update.

Is that taking away an option? No, not by definition. It's correcting an oversight. If the changes taking place in the next patch were already in place with I19, nobody would be complaining about their introduction.

So are they going to be making him immune to holds next? Because that does the exact same thing - remove the bifurcations from the equation - thus also "circumventing the primary encounter mechanic."

Same question to you. Should they then make him immune to holds? Is the fact my Controllers, Doms and several Blasters can hold him (think I can lump some Defenders in there, too) an "oversight" that needs correcting, as it also nullifies his "signature effect?"


If not, why not? Pulling away from the bifurcations accomplishes the same thing in a different way.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I assure you, there is a trend to make it not 'sometimes not,' but 'almost always not.'

If this case existed in isolation, I wouldn't be complaining.

Tip of the iceberg.

Maybe it could pull the clones close enough together to wipe them all out in a single, blastastic penultimate maneuver?

No.
As to the why not, because those are inherent aspects of chosen powers.
That's actually a great point as to why this change is not about taking away options... It's just about making the options be based on the quasi-reality of the virtual in-game world.
Do you have powers that could realistically circumvent his bifurcation regeneration? Go for it!!!
You're leading him out of our inadequately coded AI and spawn system? Hrm, we're changing that!!

I don't find it offensive, nor a problem.

Just my opinion though.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

Arctic zone in I20?

Want space! No ice! Rawr.

Also still no response from Ironik...

As is fighting at range and forcing an enemy to charge after you, picking your own spot to fight.

If I'm running around in - say - the Wolf's Throat, with the various machine-gun turrets in the walls, I'm pulling enemies away from there so I'm not getting pelted from there. If I'm fighting COT, I'm pulling them away from crystals. Or, if you want to look at *powers,* if I'm fighting Longbow, I'm moving away from the sonic grenades. If I'm fighting DE, I'm pulling them away from the quartz/cairn/fungi they drop so they're not buffed.

AFAIC, Trapdoor's Bifurcations are just a fancy Tree of Life. And if I can pull him out of that effect, I damn well should be able to.

See above.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I think space is cold enough for ice

As I put above, it's as far as the devs are concerned that matters. They don't want him to be away from his clones. I suspect that the actual coding of this isn't their ideal solution, but they went with this for whatever reason (prolly it was quickest...usual realities getting in the way). The clones are Trapdoors defining ability. They want him to pop them up when he's in trouble, but they went with static spawn spots (again likely a quick and dirty fix). I'd wager that if they could they'd unleash him from that room and have him spawn clones wherever he needed...again net effect, pulling would be a moot tactic.

edit - One possible reason they've restricted the clones to that room...no way for a clone to get lost in the rest of the map, or be spawned inside something or any of the myriad ways mobs find to make clearing a map a PITA

Why not both? Space station built into a captured Oort body.

As someone who does and has done a large amount of solo Blasting, I fully understand, appreciate and know about pulling and ranged tactics. Really, I do.
The thing is, the clones are not a tree.
It is not the same as pulling someone out of the effect of a "fancy" Tree Of Life.
The key to this is that all of the elements you included for the uses of pulling to another location are stationary objects. The clones have been programmed to be, but shouldn't be.

If you have an issue with them making this change as opposed to changing it the other way around... I understand. However, I see no evils of this decision on their part and I figure that the coding required made this a better choice for them. And since 6 or half a dozen are the same thing (either Trapdoor is leashed or the clones follow him... you can't simply pull Trapdoor away from his power, either way) it makes no difference.
And this makes zero difference because there are no other enemies in there with him that you need to pull him out of or anything like that.

I do not see this as some fundamentally incorrect manner of the developers telling us how to play.
It is them correcting the intended scenario.
You can still bypass the clones. Just not by simply pulling him out of the one and only room where they spawn.
That was apparently a design error.
And this fixes that.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music