The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme

Thread was at 13 pages when I read it so my post will be all over the place.
Please do not reply to my post without answering at least one question posted therein.


First, regarding the complaints about "on the rails" Trapdoor fight. Is this what you really want? That when the devs need to add a somewhat challenging EB, they should do so with no regard to what the intended tactics should be ?
Take EB, decide that the challenge should be in regen. Then drop into the map with no "rails"/scripts. Well, they have done it before. Widdershins. Do you really think that is better than the Trapdoor encounter we have now ?



Second, there have been complaints about the change to Trapdoor as opposed to the fight itself. Suppose the Protean fight was bugged on release such that his power siphon did not work (bugs happen). So Protean was a standard EB with exploding scenery, defeatable by the basic "stand still and hit him" tactic. And in a later patch, devs fixed the power siphon to make it work as they had always intended. Would you consider this "wrong" because a valid (baseline even) tactic was removed ? If no, do you consider this hypothetical scenario different from what happened to Trapdoor ?



Third, about alleged tanker uselessness in BM encounter. I have only done Apex on my corruptor so far. Most of the times (by far) when I have died in the last fight, it was from being shot by BMs crossbow. Damage from her minions takes second place. If a tank (not necessarily tanker) can keep BM and her minions from shooting any squishies then s/he is already contributing significantly more than any one damage dealer, even if the tank does 0 dps himself.
Yes, doing this may require the tank to run around taunting. And many find doing this less entertaining than beating up mobs. Well, most support types do not necessarily enjoy placing bubbles on everyone either. But they do it anyway. That is teamwork - doing things for the benefit of the team.



Fourth, regarding the incarnate system in general. I like it, but I think having level shifts is a mistake. Because they are like adding 10 more levels after 50, except worse:
- the devs have stated there are no plans for levels after 50, if they have changed their minds then they should have at least told us
- the "stuff" needed to get these levels is highly specific as opposed to "XP"
- this "stuff" will have to be gathered in a specific order. In order for content to be challenging to characters with, say, the first four slots it has to be impossible for characters with only the alpha slot.
- there are no new zones to go with new levels
- these new levels do not work with the existing (super)sidekick mechanism, severely splitting the playerbase
- every new incarnate alt will have to go through the "incarnate path" in order, unable to join existing incarnates on the most recent content right away
- "older" parts of the incarnate content will lose relevance, quickly. Characters playing catch up will have a hard time finding teams. Maxed incarnates will gain very little by helping others with lower tiered incarnate content.
- more subjective: I would like my characters to become more powerful by hitting harder/faster or being tougher. And I would like each improvement to be noticeable and different. Being more powerful because one generic number (level) is higher - not it.




And fifth, since the thread has taken a turn towards wishlists. Here are the changes I would make to the I19 TFs:

Drop level from 54 to 50, make difficulty settings work towards increasing the level. Give badge for doing at 54. Hell, add such badges to existing level 50 TFs too. "Tough guy/girl <task force name>" or something.
AVs and EBs can stay 54 if it is that much easier than dropping to 50 and rebalancing accordingly - but that will make difficulty settings less useful.

Apex

mission one
Pylons get pbaoe aura that seriously buffs tentacles (compensates for -4, perhaps some extra res on top) - first serious fight, after warming up on clockwork

War Walker orbital attack: give increased chance to hit (what with it being an area saturation strike) and make it cause stacking -heal/-regen (both, not either/or) effect so that even tanks have reason to dodge it, lest they become unhealable.
Result: War walkers are a serious threat, fight at station stays/becomes appropriately hectic, serves as precursor/training for Battle Maiden

mission two
change the floating swords from ambush to summon power used by BM. They no longer give rewards and do not run out. (assuming this is already not so, not sure to be honest) Turns them from ambush to an encounter mechanic, partly compensated by swords now being level 50.



Tin Mage II

mission one
War Walkers - see above
Malta spawns are now level 50 (like everything else), however they are set to allow up to 3-4 sappers per spawn. Credible, lore-fitting threat that requires precise targeting, hard controls or well timed nuke(s). You know, tactics.
Director 11, give proximity bombs a powerful KB/Repel effect on explosion. Unwary players can get thrown into MORE proximity mines, like some crazy pinball machine

mission two
Change the story here:
Praetorians have started to attack by hijacking portals, and have invaded Portal Corp and Grandville tower. The truce talks, while helpful, are a bait as Vanguard leave their own portal open.
As expected, huge number of War works invade the Vanguard base. Only to be met by their worst enemy, Task Force <name>! The invading army takes heavy casualties, allowing Primals to go on a counter offensive. Vanguard NPCs team up with Recluse and gang to clear Grandville tower while Task Force <name> secures Portal Corp.

mission three
When Bobcat reaches 75/50/25%, if Neuron is up he puts a 30sec (or 1 min?) phasing shield on her, once. Easy way is easy, but takes longer.
When both Bobcat and Neuron are down, if any Goliaths are up, they send an uber-priority alarm signal that aggroes every war work on the map. This of course does nothing if map has been cleared. Either destroy bots while handling an AV, clear the map first or take down the incoming mobs (why hello there Judgement slot!). Either way effort/tactics needed, of optional difficulty.

I ran the Apex TF with two different ATs and had two wildly different experiences.

The first time was with my WP/KM Tank. Although we failed at Battlemaiden and gave up after about 40 minutes (couldn't out-DPS her regen), I thought the fight was fun and very simple. I couldn't understand why my teammates were nearly foaming at the mouth in rage at the encounter. However the second time was with my Rad/Rad defender. Although we succeeded, I was nearly to point of pulling out my hair - it was stressful and aggravating. For the record, I've been playing this game for nearly six years, I don't qualify as "casual", and I learned how to "joust" before there was even a popular term to describe it.

Looking back, I think the difference is pretty simple. All my tank had to do was taunt, punch, and watch out for the blue patches. My defender, on the other hand, had to keep debuffs/buffs up, contribute the DPS, rez/heal teammates who are scattered everywhere and on the move and being attacked by added mobs, and keep myself alive. And all of this while avoiding blue patches.

On top of everything else, I found that it was pretty much impossible have any communication with my teammates (a PUG, btw) because everyone was so tied up with the AV, avoiding blue patches, and dealing with adds.

It's irritating to see people say "all you have to do is not queue-up a power when a blue patch is about to appear" because it's just not that simple, at least not for anyone who has to do more than fire off attacks. I found, playing my defender, that there was just too much happening at once, and a few times it just felt like my ability to process all information was about to shut down... ie., Lingering Radiation is ready to go again...but wait the Blaster is taking damage, I need to help him...but wait, a bunch of swords just started beating on me, now I need to use some powers to save myself...but wait, a blue patch just appeared on me....and so on. It just seemed inevitable that I would end up in a blue patch and die. Again and again.

I like the new approach and I'm glad to see the Devs trying to do something more interesting with their game engine than simply giving us increasingly more dense punching bags to beat. But I feel like the overall pace of the battle could be cut back a little to make it less frantic for some. Specifically, I think if they simply reduced the adds it would help out a lot. If people were given more room to focus on the "mini-game", and less on dealing with the adds, I think the encounter would be significantly less frustrating while still requiring a method other than tank & spank.

"There's villainy ... and then there's supervillainy. The difference is performance."
-Doc_Reverend

Not seeing how mez protection has anything to do with getting the merits for a vanguard heavy.

QR: Strange, my Controller who has feck and all defence/resists seems to do pretty well by themselves for the large part of it...

On the wishlist subject, how about finally filling that SF gap between levels 30-35? Heroes don't need new content just because you gave villains content, specially when they already have equivalent content to the new one for villains. Make it be Wretch's SF, and then give a new badge/accolade for doing Silver Mantis, Wretch, Ice Mistral, and Barracuda's SFs!

Some of my characters

What they said. My namesake has done the most raids of any of my characters. Granted, he can still fight a bit when mezzed, being a blaster, but death is rarely...who am I kidding; death is never a concern . Especially considering there's my team and usually 2 others. There's almost more green numbers floating up in the raids I've been on than there are Rikti, and my buff bar has more symbols than I have powers, it seems.

Just to throw another shrimp on the barbie, I started Ramiel's arc with my Peacebringer (build) and Trapdoor was an extremely tedious unfun fight for her. Even one bifurcation pretty much zeroed her damage, and by the time I could hunt down the buffbots he'd regen back to full. His Total Focus was a one-shot kill unless she was at full health, and then it became a two-shot kill since I couldn't break the hold and heal before another attack hit. I eventually caught a break and got him to the dialog stage after something like an hour of trying...if I counted correctly, I took out over 100 bifurcations by then.

I think you and I have had that discussion about information overload a few times. Well, it's more or less a one way discussion. Heheh.

We have, yes. That's the one I was talking about.

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.