The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-12-21 17:42 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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As long as you don't need super-uber-mega DPS to win, you're fine. Any encounter where you do need melees to be putting out the top DPS possible in order to win are horribly broken to begin with. Battle Maiden is not such an encounter.|
Originally Posted by Venture
Know what happens if you "joust" with a melee character? You cut your DPS about in half as you spend more time running back to somewhere you can hit the target from as you spend actually hitting the target. The day the devs decided that some characters wouldn't be able to fight effectively at range and that characters can't move while attacking was the day they decided encounters based on mobility would be broken.
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Besides, I get the feeling that the Battle Maiden encounter is just a big middle finger from the devs to all the people who are happily married to their tank-and-spank safe zone and team wipe when forced out of it. Seriously people, what else do you expect them to do? Make the encounter "harder" to the point where only the most optimized teams can complete it? Or just make everyone more powerful so we can continue steamrolling +0 ITFs until the end of time?
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The point is not every power-set combination is not going to be successful at every encounter. The content isn't "easy", you just have the right tools to do it. Every the "don't stand and fight" advise isn't going to work if you can take a few shots before dying. If you can say every one of your characters can take Trapdoor easily, then good for you, but I suspect that isn't the case. I took him with my Dark/Dark Defender with plenty of blues and reds, but my tank had to find a team, even after fighting him in the lava. Tell ya what, I won't call it too hard if you don't call it easy.
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Originally Posted by Fiery-Enforcer
There's finally a resemblance of somewhat more challenging content and people are complaining it's too hard. I don't get why people are complaining about the new 'direction' when 99% of the game is soloable and appeals to casual gamers.
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"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
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Perhaps I'm just misremembering then.
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
They said that 'theoretical 60' waaay back before this was even the Incarnate system, so I wouldn't bank on that.
When I got to see the first five slots, they didn't have Level Shifts besides the Alpha so that is why I'm operating under that assumption until I see otherwise. . |
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Yeah, it's a shame so many of our powers are designed specifically to ROOT us in place. If you happen to be triggering an attack with a long animation cycle or even just fire one off immediately before he blows his nuke, too bad. Sorry, meleers.|
Originally Posted by Inazuma
This improved mentality isn't that new. I think the Protean fight brought this about earlier in the year. He's not an EB you can stand next to and just beat down. You have to stay on your toes and move around in order to fight him, else he just heals off you.
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I just craft the temp jetpack and stay out of range of Protean and plink away with the Vet Nemesis Staff and Blackwand. Boring, sure, but it makes an otherwise difficult encounter doable for some of my toons who wouldn't be able to defeat him in a stand-up fight. Hovering near the corner keeps you out of range and he doesn't attack quite as often because he's busy jumping from ledge to doorway to overhead pipe like an idiot. (Watch them disable jetpacks after reading this.)
Just about the only thing Champions Online got right was removing rooting. That alone made the game super fun. Gun-and-run, shoot-and-scoot, whatever someone prefers to call it, is a total blast and makes games feel incredibly dynamic. Remove rooting and the thrice-damned Suppression and players would fall all over themselves in ecstasy.
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You know how I know you never PvP'd?|
Originally Posted by Venture
If you activate an attack, you stop moving. Time spent moving is not time spent fighting.
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Statesmonkey Sez: Lighten up! It's a game, for Lincoln's sake!
Also: Six years of casual play begins to look an awful lot like one year of hardcore play.
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Maybe some people would like to also play the new end-game content the way they choose, too?|
Originally Posted by Fiery-Enforcer
There's finally a resemblance of somewhat more challenging content and people are complaining it's too hard. I don't get why people are complaining about the new 'direction' when 99% of the game is soloable and appeals to casual gamers.
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Why do you care if people solo Trapdoor? Does that come into your house and kick over your soda or something? Grow up and stop insulting people who have different preferences and different experiences from yours.
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You're missing the point. |
Originally Posted by Venture
Know what happens if you "joust" with a melee character? You cut your DPS about in half as you spend more time running back to somewhere you can hit the target from as you spend actually hitting the target. The day the devs decided that some characters wouldn't be able to fight effectively at range and that characters can't move while attacking was the day they decided encounters based on mobility would be broken.
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The metric "DPS" exists among players because of brainless spam-and-bash keys gameplay. Its because maneuver was next to meaningless in MMO's that the mere idea of continuous streams of damage became the norm.
The devs are adding reasons to maneuver- making it more than just 'dps downtime.' It now serves a purpose- and the better player won't be the one with the biggest DPS stream, but the one that masters balancing the art of maneuver with strategic attack.
well... in theory, at least. It's hard to tack such ideas onto a 6+ year engine without an NGE-level event arising. This is a relatively minor shift-- It isn't as dramatic as what they COULD add-- say, for example, a "buff" to your defense and damage output that decreases the longer you stand in one place, until it becomes a rather sizable debuff-- the buff reflects the advantages you gain by remaining unpredictable, and the debuff... what you encounter as your foe finds your static actions more and more predictable....
EDIT: ... and of course, objections DO bring up some good concerns-- if DPS suffers more for melee than for ranged attackers, but all else stays the same, then in encounters where maneuver is encouraged, melee will suffer disproportionately to ranged, and balance is lost. Don't know (yet) how substantial the difference is, but it IS worth getting metrics on, so the devs can address any incompatibility.
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Its really not humanly possible to make an MMO that doesn't frustrate you.
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Originally Posted by EvilRyu
But here is where you are wrong. There is nothing difficult about any of this new stuff. Its just extremely frustrating when it doesnt have to be. Many of us who work have 8 to 5 jobs and dont want to come home to another form of work. Essentially thats what the incarnate arc, and the 2 new tfs are. Thats what I am saying. They can do this without making it frustrating.
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The old Devs didn't want us jousting (mostly in PvP, but also in PvE, once the matter came to light), so they added power suppression.
The new Devs have put in an encounter that requires jousting.
Great. Just great. Thanks, guys.
EDIT, for Casual Player:
You're right, I don't PvP. The twitch reflexes required are actually the smallest part of it - it's more the personalities that tend to be involved - but that's not an insignificant part, to a gamer on the wrong side of 40.
Seeing PvP-like movement in new PvE content is thus a little discouraging for me. Is this what I have to look forward to in the new endgame? Stuff built for all the teen and twentysomething PvPers that ragequit a year ago?
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To quote some of the more.... rabble-rousing posts on this thread- "And so it begins". What begins ils that people ***** and moan about virtually everything released in this game but offering NOTHING to counter it with. I've run Apex just once.. on a melee toon (elec/elec/energy Brute). The Blue Zones killed me a few times till I figured out the "warningo" signs.. then all I did was keep Superspeed on and.. move. (shocking tactic I know) Same EXACT tactic I would do on an ITF to get out of LoS of Romy's Nictii buddies when they rez him. In other words.. I learned how to adapt to a tactic using an already established (BY THE GAME) action.
The thing that has me shaking my head is.. people have been screaming for endgame content (rightly so...). Now.. shouldn't endgame content be tougher then anything else in the game???? People complained that the Reichsman SF/TF (again, rightly so) was nothing mobre then beating on a HUGE bag.'o Hit Points for a long time. That shouldn't be under anyone's definit.ion of fun! So what does the Dev team do? Create a challenge within .the existing framework of the game tahat doesn't require just standing there and hitting it over and over and over. (OK, all MMO's requi re that.. but you get my point.)
Apex is challenging just enough. you need to change from the way you've playned the game, as (without sounding cheesy) this IS a whole new level. Wue have all heard the same old whining at every "high-end" TF- oh its not fun it's too hard. Then less then 2 months later there are speed runs. The same will happen here, only slower due to the special requirements needed for the TFs.
Oh.. something else about Apex. BECAUSE of the requirements of the TF.. is it any wonder that its barely getting run 2 weeks out compared to a LGTF that's been out for what.. 3 years now? The idea the the 'jury' is in on Apex and no one plays it because of that observation is a nonsensical conclusion and argument.
(one last thing.. I'm not a fanboi/apologist.. I do think Trapdoor was handled extremely poorly even if he is still VERY soloable. Personally I would have liked to see him able to be dragged out but divide his regen in half, so even out of LoS he would still benefit from the clones, just not as much)
"Well, there's going to be some light music and a short note of apology saying, 'The universe ended last week, we're really sorry, we don't know what you're doing here, didn't you get the message?'"- Steve Moffat
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I offered plenty of alternatives. Go look.|
Originally Posted by Benchpresser
What begins ils that people ***** and moan about virtually everything released in this game but offering NOTHING to counter it with.
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If you do even deeper mining of my posts from years ago, you'll see that I also proposed the mouse-over ability in our enhancements, punchvoke for Tanks and essentially the idea behind Fury for Brutes. Those all made it into the game. Maybe some of the more recent suggestions will, too. I'm particularly fond of "drop the cave on his head." That would be fun.
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Benchpresser:
So you figured out how to avoid the patches. Great. How much were you able to actually contribute to the TF after that? Or were you just a warm body, or even a "leech"?
Most of my characters slated to become incarnates are melee. I would like to bring more to the fight than taunts and my Nemesis staff.
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I can solve the Protean-type-attacks-are-unfair-against-meleers thing by changing one simple mechanic. Instead of his nuke firing where *he* is, make it fire where *you* are. That way both melee and ranged characters have to move when the warning goes out. Also, remove Suppression so we can actually *get* out of the way in a timely fashion. Bam, problem solved. Next!
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
EDIT: ... and of course, objections DO bring up some good concerns-- if DPS suffers more for melee than for ranged attackers, but all else stays the same, then in encounters where maneuver is encouraged, melee will suffer disproportionately to ranged, and balance is lost. Don't know (yet) how substantial the difference is, but it IS worth getting metrics on, so the devs can address any incompatibility. |
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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Not really. The AI is still stupid and predictable. There isn't really much "twitchiness" involved.|
Originally Posted by Megajoule
EDIT, for Casual Player:
You're right, I don't PvP. The twitch reflexes required are actually the smallest part of it - it's more the personalities that tend to be involved - but that's not an insignificant part, to a gamer on the wrong side of 40. Seeing PvP-like movement in new PvE content is thus a little discouraging for me. Is this what I have to look forward to in the new endgame? Stuff built for all the teen and twentysomething PvPers that ragequit a year ago? |
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Originally Posted by Ironik
I can solve the Protean-type-attacks-are-unfair-against-meleers thing by changing one simple mechanic. Instead of his nuke firing where *he* is, make it fire where *you* are. That way both melee and ranged characters have to move when the warning goes out. Also, remove Suppression so we can actually *get* out of the way in a timely fashion. Bam, problem solved. Next!
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Just the first three slots alone, given what I know about them, would be ludicrous to be handing out to the players without a commensurate increase in difficulty. Alpha itself is, with level shift, just barely within the realm of being not stupidly overpowered to use on standard content.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
I wonder how much you know about the last five slots and also wonder how different each of our definitions of "ludicrous amounts of power" are.
I ask because I'm working under two assumptions: -Level shifts only occur in highest tiers of the Alpha (and maybe the Omega) slot, but not the other 8. -The remaining five Incarnate slots are 'safe' and as much "inside the box" as the the first 5. If you think I'm wrong about either of these assumptions (granted the second is very subjective) then please say so. |
Seriously: I haven't even seen the specific details of its implementation yet, but I'm already worried about Judgment all by itself. There have to be incredible restraints on Judgment's usage just to make it remotely non-retarded, like "usable only when your birthday falls on a wednesday."
Even if individually someone tried to make a case that Alpha wasn't a big deal, or Lore, or Judgment, players are going to have all ten. Alpha with level shift is going to get everyone five percentage points closer to the soft cap. Its going to give them as much recharge as some of the most expensive invention builds, or significantly more damage. And those who've seen the peeks know what Lore and Judgment are going to be adding in combination with that. I can't imagine anyone thinking that's remotely appropriate for standard content. And that's just three out of ten.
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I would have changed Trapdoor by giving him a leash that prevented him from being pulled back into the hall, but limiting the range of the buff he gets from his clones, so he could still be moved out of range of some of them. This way there's no disadvantage to being on a low/medium AT whose forte is repositioning mobs. |
Originally Posted by Benchpresser
(one last thing.. I'm not a fanboi/apologist.. I do think Trapdoor was handled extremely poorly even if he is still VERY soloable. Personally I would have liked to see him able to be dragged out but divide his regen in half, so even out of LoS he would still benefit from the clones, just not as much)
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As far as I can tell, the clones now have infinite range. And he spawns them much too often, giving attackers who must defeat him by killing each as they spawn too little time to actually beat on the boss.
But I fear the LOL L2P U SUK crowd. They're a lot scarier than Battle Maiden, and I don't want them here.
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It's still unfair, as the Apex finale demonstrates. Like you suggest, there the area you have to move away from is targeted on you.|
Originally Posted by Ironik
I can solve the Protean-type-attacks-are-unfair-against-meleers thing by changing one simple mechanic. Instead of his nuke firing where *he* is, make it fire where *you* are. That way both melee and ranged characters have to move when the warning goes out. Also, remove Suppression so we can actually *get* out of the way in a timely fashion. Bam, problem solved. Next!
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If you're a Blaster, you merely step aside and can keep attacking. You lose maybe half a second of not attacking.
If you're melee, where is the patch coming down? Right on the enemy you're fighting. You have to step aside, stop attacking until the attack goes off or dissipates, which can take quite some time in the case of Battle Maiden, and then move back into melee range. Only THEN are you allowed to resume attacking with your decent attacks. That is much more downtime and more effort.
The fact of the matter is, any fight where positioning and movement is key is automatically and fundamentally biased against melee because they need to be in a specific position to attack while ranged ATs can attack from any position at any time. Also, melee ATs often have defensive/utility powers that hinge on being in melee range and on the whole I tend to see melee attacks as being longer animating and rooting.
I don't think either of these encounters, along with Lady Winter, are fun or fair to melee ATs. They're annoying, remove any kind of meaningful damage contribution melee can make to a team and punish melee ATs for not squeezing crappy ranged attacks into already tight builds that are crammed with a lot of piecemeal powers from our Defensive sets that we need.
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Or, that ranged characters would sometimes have an advantage over melee characters.|
Originally Posted by Venture
Why is it that apologists always dispense the most vapid and obvious advice as if revealing the tactical wisdom of Sun-Tzu?
Know what happens if you "joust" with a melee character? You cut your DPS about in half as you spend more time running back to somewhere you can hit the target from as you spend actually hitting the target. The day the devs decided that some characters wouldn't be able to fight effectively at range and that characters can't move while attacking was the day they decided encounters based on mobility would be broken. |
Admittedly, this might arguably be too severe of a case, but the blanket statement isn't automatically true.
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Wow.. can you be a little more condescending if you try? Once I had to start moving, I shifted to "protecting" the 2 Blasters from all BM's minions that were still running around. I could run in, beat on Maiden herself a bit before she focused on me and the Blue Death dropped. I knew that wasn't helping much (and my End Drains were doing nada, but that was to be expected) so I went into a protect role. Glamourous? Nope.. but it allowed the ranged toons to keep up blasting. The way agro was working in that mission, I was able to pull clumps of Mobs off the squishies and drag them way out of sight- then AoE them and go back for more.|
Originally Posted by Megajoule
Benchpresser:
So you figured out how to avoid the patches. Great. How much were you able to actually contribute to the TF after that? Or were you just a warm body, or even a "leech"? Most of my characters slated to become incarnates are melee. I would like to bring more to the fight than taunts and my Nemesis staff. |
The point is, if you are only focused on 1 thing or 1 role (lets say DPS on the AV for this mission)- it's going to be a lot harder.
"Well, there's going to be some light music and a short note of apology saying, 'The universe ended last week, we're really sorry, we don't know what you're doing here, didn't you get the message?'"- Steve Moffat
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The very first Apex TF I attended was six melee characters, a Defender and a Blaster. I was one of the melee characters.|
Originally Posted by Venture
Know what happens if you "joust" with a melee character? You cut your DPS about in half as you spend more time running back to somewhere you can hit the target from as you spend actually hitting the target. The day the devs decided that some characters wouldn't be able to fight effectively at range and that characters can't move while attacking was the day they decided encounters based on mobility would be broken.
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We got Master of the Apex Task force. We weren't trying to get it. We didn't use any Shivans, or nukes, or anything like that.
Does having to hang back away from such effects cut DPS? Of course it does. What matters is how severely that cut affects your performance relative to the difficulty of the encounter. It's a subjective observation, but Battle Maiden doesn't seem to regenerate HP very fast, and she does not come back from her retreat fully healed. She's not that hard to defeat.
The devs could over-use this. I don't think they have yet. What I consider the two serious "don't stand near me" encounters so far (Lady Winter and BM in the Apex TF) are, IMO, coupled with comparatively weak entities. Protean just didn't stand out to me as that dangerous or inconvenient at all.
And I'm sorry, if you're getting killed with any regularity due to animations, I do think you're doing something wrong. I've been caught in the warning for BM's nanite patches activating stinkers like Twilight Grasp, and I still got away in time except in cases where I queued a second power and didn't cancel it. And that's my fault. I've learned to start hitting the cancel key when I see the "incoming" warning while I'm animating something, and then I move right away after the root period.
I'd love our powers not to root us too, but I think the objections being raised here are being blown out of proportion. It's not impossible for my view of that to be changed by future encounters, but right now I'm not not that concerned.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Given that melee ATs have advantages in most other game content, which throws around stuns and holds far too liberally, I'm not terribly concerned that some encounters are harder for them. |
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
I don't think either of these encounters, along with Lady Winter, are fun or fair to melee ATs. They're annoying, remove any kind of meaningful damage contribution melee can make to a team and punish melee ATs for not squeezing crappy ranged attacks into already tight builds that are crammed with a lot of piecemeal powers from our Defensive sets that we need..
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On the other hand, just like every encounter meant to be soloed at all ought to be soloable within a reasonable time on a Defender of appropriate level not built for damage, every encounter ought to be soloable on a Tanker not built for damage, too. I'm not sure Trapdoor is, at present. But this has always been my understanding of the basic design philosophy of this game.
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This x1000. I love my melee characters to death, and the fact that they're essentially immune to mez is a huge part of that. But I don't just play melee characters, and it gives me some sense of pleasure to have encounters where the ranged characters get to shine in comparison.|
Originally Posted by Heraclea
Given that melee ATs have advantages in most other game content, which throws around stuns and holds far too liberally, I'm not terribly concerned that some encounters are harder for them.
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Does that mean I think ranged abilities should suddenly shift to a position of dominance over melee ones? Certainly not. Nor do I believe that's what's happened. I appreciate slippery slope concerns. Let's just not act like we've already suffered an avalanche.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Good idea with the leash.. hadn't considered that idea. I agree that the clones spawn way too fast now.. maybe lower their HPs to compensate? (use the 1 hp mobs that you get in Praetoria during this "infinite ambush" missions?)|
Originally Posted by Heraclea
I would have changed Trapdoor by giving him a leash that prevented him from being pulled back into the hall, but limiting the range of the buff he gets from his clones, so he could still be moved out of range of some of them. This way there's no disadvantage to being on a low/medium AT whose forte is repositioning mobs.
As far as I can tell, the clones now have infinite range. And he spawns them much too often, giving attackers who must defeat him by killing each as they spawn too little time to actually beat on the boss. But I fear the LOL L2P U SUK crowd. They're a lot scarier than Battle Maiden, and I don't want them here. |
I agree with fearing the L2P crowd, but they are as much a staple of MMOs as loot sadly. We got spoiled in this game as they haven't really shown up in PvE. With the Incarnate content they might be a bit more frequent, we'll just have to learn to ignore them more
"Well, there's going to be some light music and a short note of apology saying, 'The universe ended last week, we're really sorry, we don't know what you're doing here, didn't you get the message?'"- Steve Moffat
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Probably, since I wasn't really trying. I was just describing my own experience on my two attempts at Apex. The moment we loaded the second mission, my tank became dead weight.|
Originally Posted by Benchpresser
Wow.. can you be a little more condescending if you try?
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How's this, then?
"Maybe you enjoy spending a half hour running around the map with taunt on auto, watching the AV's health bar creep down, and occasionally dying because you dodged into someone else's patch that was off-screen a moment ago? Because I sure don't."
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