How many times must I die to ambushes before I can re-complain?

This is becoming ever so slightly absurd, to the point where I'm seriously considering never touching Praetoria ever again. I'm sitting in the sewers now, dead to the tenth stacking ambush of Ghouls in the tenth mission in a row. In just this mission alone, I counted nine ambushes, none of them with the decency to at least wait for the previous ambush to be done.

This is after a mission where I rescued a guy from the Ghouls, at which point I was beset by ten waves of ambushes. This is after a mission where I helped Dr. Helix infiltrate a base where I was beset by 10 ten waves of Clockwork ambushes. This is after a mission where I helped Crow defeat Virgil Duray, when I was beset by five ambushes of Clockwor and five by IDF 2nd Division. This is after a mission where I helped Fortunata Scarlet do I forget what, whereupon we were beset by wave after wave of Clockwork robots, which is after a mission where me and Fortunata Scarlet fought back waves and waves of PPD, which is after a mission where me and Crow fought back waves and waves of PPD, which was after a mission where me and Crow fought back waves and waves of ghouls.

This is everything I've seen of Neutropolis from a Crusader's viewpoint so far, and that's after running a morality mission in Imperial City which consisted of fighting through waves and waves of TEST ambushes after missions where I fought through waves and waves of Ghouls, PPD, Syndicate, TEST, Seers and there may have been a mission about waves of Destroyers, too. The ambushes start to blend together after a point.

Who designed this? Who thought it was a good idea to make every god damn mission consist of two thirds fighting off upwards of 10 ambushes that end up stacking with each other, all of whom aggro on you before they even spawn, will never lose aggro and will ignore stealth? Did anyone consider that I might choose to play a Stalker in Praetoria? Remember Stalkers? You know, those characters whose performance centres around surprise attacks, first strike capability and STEALTH? They still exist. People haven't stopped making them since CoV went Live.

Before doing this mission, I literally played through an ENTIRE arc which ended in ambushes with the "Find Mission Exit" objective at the end. Five or six missions of that, in addition to the ones where you get beset by ambushes before you do anything, or the ones where you get hit with ambushes but can just click "Exit." And I'm starting to get a little sick of it, especially since it's completely and utterly ruining what is otherwise a pretty well-written story. I know for a fact - FOR A FACT - that I am never going to touch the Crusader storyline with a ten foot pole ever again. It's a good story, but it's like sitting down to read a good book while a small child kicks you in the shins the entire time - it tends to mar the experience.

Dear developers, if you are reading this, would you kindly STOP ADDING AMBUSHES TO EVERYTHING? Trust me, you've already added enough to saturate three games. You've added enough that if you never added a single one, we'd still have far too many frikkin' ambushes. Please, find a different way to make missions "interesting."

*edit*
And just to top it off, my mission ended abruptly mid-ambush. I don't know what happened. I guess I killed something I was supposed to kill which was in one of the ambushes, but with a dozen Ghouls around me and my trying to lead them around the map and hide around corners so I don't get bumrushed and killed, I have no idea who or what it was that I killed. I had to wait for the in-progress souvenir to tell me what it was that I had just done, because for all I knew, I'd just died to three stacked ambushes with a Manslayer or two.

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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.

I'd read about these issues, but figured they'd been fixed by the time I went through the arcs. I didn't find many places that had more than three ambushes, unless they were also location-triggered (cross point x, get another few ambushes, etc). Definitely sounds like a serious flaw out there.

Sam, you've got to have some of the worst bug-triggering luck in the game (and coming from me, that's a helluva thing to say). I am never EVER gonna risk teaming with you :P

At least a couple of these ambushes are rather clearly tagged as "Don't fight, RUN!"

Oh, great, and now my mission is bugged. I was supposed to give the cure to the "Ghoul King" and defend him from Manslayers with the help of Headshot and Griefer. Neither of the two showed up, I died to three Manslayers and went back inside. The King was up and about, I spoke with him... And my objective never changed from "Talk to the Ghoul King." Resetting the mission does not help.

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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.

Yes, they are hard... when I did them at even con.

Now that Praetoria had a difficulty adjuster, anyone who finds such things too hard should go to -1.

Is it too hard for you at -1?

I think the Dr. Stefford on with the seer ambushes (yeah, thse were nasty) arne't endless: They're triggered at particular points but all you have to do is wait for them and kill them as they come (and I went through that arc as a stalker too, it was annoying, especially since I didn't have KB protection)

I think it's bad form for more than a couple of ambushes to be designed to stack on you sub-level 20, and at those levels, I don't think even just a couple at a time should be sent after you all that often. At those levels, I believe most characters lack the damage-per-endurance efficiency and endurance recovery combination to run in continuous combat. Inherent Fitness is a major improvement, but a character at those levels still lacks the available enhancement slots, available inspiration slots and the enhancement strength to sustain combat without recovery buffs. And that's completely ignoring their health.

I love large, continuous ambushes on my 50s, and don't even mind them on my Stalkers, but I consider them kind of sadistic when on something that's under level 20.

If ambushes trigger several ta the same time you're either doing somthing wrong (eg. moving around while the first ambush is still moving towards you) or there's a bug somewhere.

The exception are I think, three missions (and gnerally those are distinguished by a big yellow "HORDE APPROACHING!" and those are weakened versions and not egular spawns)

Going by the I20 sneak peek, ambushes are a Praetorian way of life

Oh, good. It's not just me then.

Joy! Ambushes that not only know exactly where I am when they trigger, but are unannounced exept for their trigger text, unending waves, and they track you like a rabid bloodhound on speed!

Ye GODS man, whoever thought that ambushes was the way to go insted of actually legitimately fun tech like 80% of the new missions actually USE should be taken out and shot.
Not to mention it utterly, utterly gutting Stalkers. I echo Sam's pledge of never ever EVER taking a Stalker through Praetoria.

Let's have a quick run-down shall we?

1) Praetorian mobs hit much harder than their 1-20 Primal Counterparts. They also seem to have better accuracy

2) Spawn positions either mean that one spawn can be spread over one huge room, making killing the 'Boss Mob' really damn annoying, or they have about three mobs stuffed into one big clump, making it nigh impossible to NOT aggro the others. This is particularly noticeable, and deadly, with Ghouls

3) Certain ATs and sets seem to get utterly, utterly gutted habitually. I get that not every AT should be invincible, and I frankly love fighting Rogue Vanguard and Romans (Except for the Curse of Weariness, but thats a different thread)
HOWEVER; that is at higher levels. THIS is at freaking level 1-20, where defences suck anyway. Picking a defence set, regen or, god forbid, anything Stalker based, should NOT be penalised at this level, to this extent. It's just rediculous.

And at +0/x0. Thats the basic level. Sure, stuff like certain defenders and other ATs might need to make use of that. But when a Scrapper feels like they have to set stuff to -1? Thats taking the mick.

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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.

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

Based on a lot of elements of GR design, I kind of get the impression that Praetoria started life as a high-level environment and got kludged into a low-level environment.

It just seems like a lot of elements make more sense when targeted at higher-level characters. Extensive maps, high-intensity ambush waves, tougher critters and so forth.

Personally I'm a fan of the ambushes and would prefer they remain as is.