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

Its tantamount to what you said. The problem is that while those that need an orderly universe believe that proper game design strictly limits what all players can do under all circumstances to a narrow window of performance, this game is not that game. It makes life easier on the devs if the system forced them to do that, but there's no reason a reasonable game cannot have significant performance variations among player characters and commensurate optional ways to scale difficulty to those levels.

I am not someone who believes proper game balance requires, as an axiom, performance homogeneity. It can have that axiom, or lack it, without automatically suffering from it.

It makes life more tricky when you lack it, but it makes life more boring when you have it.

Yes, and because I am effectively invincible on that setting, I turn it up. Generally, I leave my difficulty at a point where I can fight a group like the Council or Rikti in my sleep...because sometimes I have 20 minutes to play and I just want to kill something. A group like Longbow, I expect to have some difficulty with. I can't kill them in my sleep so I don't fight them when I have 20 minutes to play and just want to kill something. I will have to use inspirations, and some strategy besides "head for the nearest clump of bad guys and start stabbing." I might die; in fact it's quite likely that I will die at some point over the course of a mission. A group like DE....I will die. Not might, will. Very quickly and repeatedly. Because my secondary is useless.

You don't learn anything if you die ten times before you hit level 5, decide the game is too hard, and quit. A player who coasts through a bunch of forgiving Hellion missions, with a few Vahz or Clockwork here and there to keep them from getting too complacent and get them used to the idea that not everything will be so easy, will get used to the game, will get attached to their character, will meet people and make friends and build a solid foundation of basic skills to improve upon when they're faced with more difficult content later.


Nemesis and their stacking vengeance is easier to get around than DE and their cheating. If you're smart, Nemesis don't start cheating until the fight is almost over, and you've already won. DE open with a cheat.

Define "some" risk. Is "some" risk getting defeated five times in the same mission simply because the ambushes keep coming? Because that's what happened to my Praetorian Defender.

I remember the day Liquid and I found out that Invuln/ could have 100% S/L resist at level 26 (or maybe it was 23, something ridiculously low like that) without having it ever mentioned anywhere during the beta or to that point in release (this was pre-I1). I think my jaw was literally hanging open at the realization that nobody had thought some sort of cap on damage resistance would be a good thing, or that nobody had tested for it during the beta (and/or hadn't reported it if they had).

Haaaaaaattttteeeeee!!!

Nemesis I cannot stand. Not only do they kick out an insane ammount of AoE (Flamethrower and Full Auto? On Minions? Really?), have some of the most evil snipers in the game and only two bosses that are also high up in the league of evil, but they seem to spam LTs, all of which are just as bad for turning mobs into unkillable armies.

I appreciate Nems are end-game mobs. That said, they start off at least being a bit more balanced. They have AoE units, ST units, surgeon units, and Jaegers all thrown into the mix.
By the end? Dragoons with heavy gatling-flamers, LTs by the metric crapton, and Fake Nems. Because they really needed more stacked defences.


The thing that bugs me about end-game mobs is the lack of creativity. Crey mid levels; suited agents, riot guards, power armour, heavy power armour and Protectors. High levels? Power armour. And Protectors. And thats IT. Its boring, dull and leaves no room for anything tactical. Nems are the same, only they actually trade out variety for a massive 'I Win' Button.

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.

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

Seems to me that Praetorian ambushes may be broken. I haven't seen that behavior myself, but judging by other replies here they don't work like 'normal' ambushes. So yes, in that context I would say you shouldn't be dying that much, but not because the difficulty is too high - because the ambushes aren't 'working' correctly.

I can very easily believe that to be true.

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.

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

I never complain about something being hard for me personally. Nothing is likely to be a serious impediment to me, and honestly, if I just don't *like* a tip mission, then ironically at 0x8 I earn so many tips that I can just drop the ones I don't like and as long as I have at least one I do like I'll earn more in the act of running that one. I don't even really have to *drop* tips I don't like.

If I say something is unbalanced, its because I believe its objectively unbalanced for the average player unless I say otherwise. If I find something that is "too hard" my instinct is to go beat on it until I pound it into the ground.

I was on an ITF where the team gave up and quit on the last mission and I tried for two days to figure out a way to solo complete it. On an energy blaster.** If you think I'm complaining about personal difficulty ever, you're misunderstanding. I would continue to play this game at difficulty levels that would make EvilGeko wince.


** You can range snipe the Nictus without drawing aggro from them or Romulus, and with enough damage you can kill them from range. Having them all gone would help someone solo Romulus, although my energy blaster isn't one of those things that can do that in any reasonable amount of time. Apparently.

I think this just comes down to preference honestly. I prefer the work around to DE cheating(and often enjoy just jumping in anyways) compared to dealing with Nemesis and leaving Lts for last.

I don't think either mob is a good way to make content harder, so if they were adjusted it wouldn't bother me much(or at all in the case of Nemesis). But I do happen to enjoy fighting DE.

I get what you're saying, and I agree. I know you weren't complaining about difficulty. I've played your Scrapper challenges. Well I did shortly after AE was released(those challenges still around?).

DE and Nemesis have issues with their design. I happen to enjoy DE, but I'm probably in the minority here, so I wouldn't throw a fit if they were fixed.

I tend to find Nemesis easier to deal with simply because their Vengeance isn't a real 'screw you' until it's stacked 3 or 4 times, at least. One single quartz emanator will totally negate any defense you have. But yeah, I guess it does come down to preference.

It's interesting, because while I can appreciate why so many people dislike them, I honestly shrug at Nemesis, and I play L50s on nothing less than +2/x5, which gets you 3-4 LTs per spawn. I think that my personal ability to accept them has to do with the fact that, other than the bubbles from Fakes, I have some say in how fast they get to stack their +defense. Most of my characters can largely ignore one Vengeance on a +2 foe, and two is mostly manageable, and I can usually time what I'm doing to keep more than two from being laid out at once.

If they just unloaded a Veng casting completely outside my ability to influence the timing, I'm sure I would have a much greater dislike of them.

You know what's wierd? I am pretty sure they were changed to be uniform Tanks in the level 45+ game. Maybe I am misremembering, but I believe that they used to have Agents, Scientists and that whole range of mobs all the way up to 50.

I like to open up with Build Up and AoE all I can, so that gets me destroyed pretty quickly when I fight Nemesis. I don't mind herding mobs at all when solo, so that helps with DE.

edit: I should note my statements reflect nothing more than opinion and how I play the game. Which is typically at level 50 with several billion invested in my build. So I do not expect my experience to be the norm.

Ah, see, my 'main' is MA/Inv, so I basically have no choice but to kick their butts one at a time. I can see how if you're just leaping in and AOEing (which is awesome for 95% of stuff) then catching multiple Vengeances stacking would be an issue.

If they weren't scaling up well I can see why...but why not replace them with Armoured Science Units, Rapid Response Guard forces and Elite Cyborg Agents that are pretty much like Arnie-eque Terminators wearing fake skin? Add some variety to the mobs at least, not make them bland and as boring as all hell...

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.

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

The need for new art assets, I would assume? I agree though, Crey is boring to fight at high levels, variety would be nice.

Although I'm glad that Circle ghosts stop showing up after a while. Hate them.

My problem with Nems is...I'm a Bots MM. I literally get no choice except AoE falvoured death. And I like to fight on x8 because, well...I have the build, I have the Alpha slot, it's really the only thing thats above a boardwalk for me on Alpha now.

I don't honestly mind Nems and such so much, other than the fact I find them mind-numbingly dull from a design perspective. As someone who takes a great interest in that side of game-making an design as a whole, I honestly do think I could do a better job of it, too

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.

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

I know I don't have to do it that way, but I kinda enjoy it. I'm weird though. I enjoy debt and was saddened when it was made trivial.

But I'm much more careful with Nemesis if I'm playing MunkiLord(dm/sr). But lately I'm playing a lot more AoE centric characters than ST.

If they did that, I'd add them to the DE in my list of Enemies to Avoid Because they Cheat Way Too Much.

They used to cap out at 45, period. Then the devs decided to add more Crey content with i7, and came up with that stupid all-tank garbage. They are on my list of Enemies to Avoid Because They are Tedious and/or Annoying but Not Actually Hard.

Oh god, CoT ghosts and Ruin mages. I utterly despise the 12-24 ish range on CoT, simply because, for what you are using at the time, they have so much cheatyHax to throw about that it's unreal.

I guess it would require new art asssets, yeah. However, given the recent trend for what seems like combining existing parts with other NPC parts (Look at Leonard the contact redside. He has Dr Aeon's gloves, an Arachnos shoulder chest plate and other, non-unique parts made into one mesh.) I wouldn't have thought it would require that much effort....I may well be wrong, though. Otherwise we'd have seen mobs get a much needed graphical update by now...right?
/tangent

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.

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

Taking out the Quartz ASAP, and pulling them away from them helps a ton.

However, one of those Quartz provides enough +Def to almost negate your entire 1.5 billion inf build (since bulk of it is +Def) and anything Invincibility can offer, and put them at the tohit cap. If you soloed a x8 DE Tip mission with only one death, it was because you have over 70% S/L resistance due to stacking Tough on Invuln, and DE are, with the exception of Devoured spit and mushroom holds, entirely S/L. It's not the inf and time that you spent. Sorry, Atomic.

Ever since I soloed the Manticore TF, I can't bring myself to fight Crey when solo. Paragon Protectors make me want to punch my computer monitor. They aren't difficult, just extremely annoying.

And I remember Havok insisting that I was wrong, and saying that the game engine was rounding down to get 0 for the display, on attacks that did more than 100 damage.

And it was level 22-- as soon as I got SOs.

They are, and I keep meaning to update them because I have better ideas, and because the AE now allows more ambushes and other elements to make it more interesting.


The important thing about that challenge mission, by the way, was that its easy to make a mission that *no one* can do. Its not easy to make a mission that *only the highest performance can do*. Its the ultra high end example of how tricky it is to make content that is properly scaled to the intended target. My estimate is that about one in eight attempts by people who took a serious swing at it with a viably strong build succeeded back in I14 and I15 based on feedback. What I got out of it was some good practice designing custom critters and a much more precise understanding of what the best of the best can do in theory.


The original version of it, by the way, would make Tin Mage look like tin foil. The original beta version, or rather the Ultra2 version of it, is here being attempted by pohsyb on a dev controller that has all of the controller powersets combined. Although that setting was explicitly intended to kill anyone that thought they couldn't be killed. That mission had three possible settings which you could choose to run by clicking on computers in the mission: Medium, High, and Ultra(2). The current scrapper challenge mission on live is roughly between Medium and High on that scale.

The RWZ challenge wouldn't make Medium on that scale.

My screen name wasn't always EvilGeko. I'll just be upfront. I thought the original powers dev, Geko was an idiot. There were posts he made that literally had my jaw dropping at the amount of stupid.

The fact that he didn't accept PMs from the beginning and seemed impervious to common sense did not endear him to me. It was a wonderful day for this game when Castle took over.