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

Ah, that makes sense. I can see how I would misremember it as I have.

Anything for badges!

Because I do see the forest for the trees and realize its part of a problematic pattern.

Single point problems don't bother me as much as systematic ones. I know that the DE tohit thing is simultaneously one more thing for defense sets to handle, any one of which I would think was not just tolerable but actually desirable but in combination excessive, and also a sign the devs have forgotten the I7 lesson and are using tohit bufffs to balance things accuracy was meant to balance.

You hand out kryptonite to selected foes intended to provide heightened risk. You don't hand it out to everything everywhere. Giving every single DE in those tip missions +14% tohit is no different a bad design decision than giving every single Malta in tip missions sapper guns.

If the guardians had heightened tohit, they'd be defensive kryptonite in DE missions. Everything has kryptonite and one thing buffs everyone into having quadruple kryptonite. If Cairns made all DE damage unresistable, the devs would be forced to change that. Its no different. The fact that they apparently - or anyone else for that matter - thinks its different is solely due to a lack of understanding of how defense, or the very game, works.

When the devs start making whole enemy groups that debuff regen to zero and also have an ally buff that disables click heals while its up, I'll start thinking of this as just the devs trying to escalate difficulty across the board. When its apparently targeted at one type of thing because of a pattern of design errors, I don't accept the content should be difficult arguement.


Incidentally, math is just a language that allows for precision. Since I speak it, I use it. However, I never complain about the math of a situation without testing it, even though at this point my numerical judgment is pretty close to observational judgment. I could just say the DE sucks because they are too hard, but that's subject to complaints about anecdotal ambiguity. Numbers are the only way to eliminate that ambiguity. Anyone can *see* what the DE do to defense sets. The numbers just quantify what everyone can see. Its not like there's people out there with any observational fidelity that disagrees DE shred defense like its not there. No one argues with the conclusions my numbers make in terms of what happens. The only question is whether it *should* happen.

Also, we don't actually know if defense sets are penalized enough to affect people's perceptions and play percentages. We *do* know that when the SR scaling resistances went in, *something* was datamined to be wrong with SR. Jack told me that directly. Is that still true now? Maybe not. But is that because SR has no problem, or because people learn, by the time they get to 40, to avoid the problems? That's unclear to me.

Would you then suggest that the Quartz emanaters should provide a +100% (or possibly +200%, to more accurately reflect what +100% to hit does without defence) accuracy bonus?

Quartz really just never got looked at after the global defense reduction, I'm sure. It served a purpose once; Quartz made the Crystal Titan room slightly more challenging to herd.

But two Quartz means that you essentially need to be at the defense hard cap in order avoid damage. And yes, separate spawns do come that close together now and then.

I havent' been following this thread totally:

I thought the buffed to-Hit was only in Raids.
This is happening in soloable content too?

Where?

All the Devouring Earth in tip missions have base 64% to hit, rather than 50%.

That might explain why they decimate me more than other content... Good to know...

Is this a prelude to a full game roll out?

I've read that the mobs in the new Incarnate Trials also have higher base tohit than 50% (that's second-hand information though, I can't vouch for it), and if so one may wonder if it's a move toward balancing with IO sets in mind...

Given that the rest of the game is balanced around SOs, I would be VERY adverse to seeing that take a hold. Because if it effects everything, that will simply make the low levels of defence sets an utter, utter 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.

um...It's the Incarnate Trials. They're going to be harder than the standard game, remember?

If I just wanted DE to hit more often, I would make them grant +100% accuracy. They will then hit everyone twice as often, up to the tohit ceiling, including soft-capped characters. Twice as often is like buffing their damage by 100%: its not a trifle.

If I wanted DE to be specifically targeted at defense sets for some reason, but still obey the limits of standard content, I would give them a +5% tohit buff and something between +50% and +150% accuracy depending on how much trouble I wanted them to make.

Something to keep in mind. Some people look at +100% accuracy and say that a soft-capped character is only going to be hit 10% of the time. That's trivial, they say, and completely worthless to making content more challenging. However, an SR scrapper with nothing but an SO build is not considered an especially strong defensive character, and it only gets hit 19.5% of the time. In effect, when a critter has +100% accuracy, the *floor* becomes 10%: that's the best you can do. The best that you can do against such a critter with more defense is only about twice as good as an SR scrapper gets with straight SOs and no power pools or invention bonuses.

Twice as good as only so-so is a huge limitation.

I doubt it, but then again I can't explain why they are even in the tip missions. If its for datamining purposes, I could have trivially predicted what that would do.

Lol where's that rule from?

Now you're just making **** up...

So is everybody else except the people talking about math, Geko, and how placate works/is supposed to work. This thread has all along been people stating their opinions regarding difficulty. What's your point?

In the old days, some tank who didn't know any better would say "I'll herd them up" in a DE mission, and before I could say "stop" there they were: forty or fifty of them all in one spot.

Buffed to the tohit cap, the resistance cap, and the regen cap.

In the days before aggro caps and eminator suppression (at the moment, only one of each type can spawn within a single spawn grouping) "I'll herd the DE" was the closest CoH came to a Leroy moment. In those days, cairns buffed each other which meant just two spawned in the same place not only made the entire spawn go unstoppable, they couldn't be easily destroyed either. Let five or six drop in the same place, and the entire spawn stays at the res cap until you manage to cut down all but one. While the entire spawn has instant healing and is essentially autohitting you on every shot.

There was usually no way to deal with this except to either try to pull the group apart, or more likely wait till aggro dissipated and they dispersed on their own.

Ah, well if it's just opinion then alright, cool.

I'll just say I don't agree, primarily because many characters are just built with holes.

An AR blast/corr might rip through Carnival at +1/x4 even bosses because their lethal blasts do lots of damage but toss the same character at Longbow and you might have to turn down your difficulty.

Or that Electric Armor Brute might be completely invincible vs Rikti but get turned inside out by Arachnos.

You can't say you should be able to play all content at x difficulty on the exact premise on *why* you altered your difficulty in the first place. If mission b was too easy for you and you upped the difficulty from y to z so it wasn't as boring, you should expect mission c to transpose that difficulty if it was only mildly challenging back at difficulty y.

I didn't realize they still don't. This is good news!

Yes, you can, all it takes is an end to the killer GM attitude.

Longbow is an example of a group that's within an acceptable margin of baseline difficulty. It's harder but not so much so that you'll need to change settings.

N.B. that the bulk of the original complaint is less about factions than it is about mission design. "You can lower your difficulty" is no excuse for throwing (e.g.) ten-wave ambushes at people, particularly under level 20. That's got nothing to do with what factions or powersets are in play. That's just a mission writer being a horse's patootie. I called people on that kind of bad design when I wrote MA reviews and I'm not giving the devs a pass on it either.

Of course not. They are not balanced at all.

I don't care what they intended. What they did was create a game where base difficulty is, indeed, easy mode. I do not have a single character above level 22 that plays on base difficulty. Not one. Only the squishiest fail to turn up difficulty well before that. In the post-SO game base difficulty is suitable for exactly no one.

I agree that base difficulty shouldn't be easy mode, but then I argue that we shouldn't be talking about "base difficulty" at all because there shouldn't be any other kind. The game should be balanced and all characters should be playing in the same ball park. The developers chose not to do that; they chose to allow wild variations in character power and to allow players to tailor the environment to their tastes, trusting that they would chose appropriate difficulty settings. The result of that design decision was MA farms.

Then we can't have characters with purple sets and Incarnate powers, or even regular sets. We can't have characters that are ten or twenty times more powerful than others (at least; the difference between a build that has to play on standard and one that can handle +4x8 has to be measured in orders of magnitude). SOs were already too much, ED and all. And we both know there is no way to get there from here. The player base won't stand it.

Given what the developers have already built it is utterly unreasonable to expect any player with a competent mature build to run around playing at base difficulty. The resultant play experience would be mind-numbingly boring. Implicit in the design of the game we actually have is the assertion that a player will be able to pick an appropriate baseline difficulty for the particular character he is playing. Allowing mission writers to toss out any standard of difficulty contradicts that assertion and is just plain shoddy craftsmanship. If that's the way it's going to be, if mission difficulty is so volatile that players can't rely on being able to play on the setting of their choice, then the ability to change difficulty setting needs to be at the players' fingertips, not in the hands of an NPC that might be on the other side of the zone, or in a different zone altogether.

Yes, there is, new players need to win a lot so they have a foundation of successes to build some confidence on. New players forced into Praetoria are likely getting pissed off and quitting if they're not getting advice and support from older players. They're also probably wondering why the game turns into a cakewalk after they leave the starting area.

I have few characters that I would solo above base difficulty, and have had many characters (mostly Defenders and Controllers) that have trouble with base difficulty. Even those that I would turn it up for, I'm more likely to increase the number of enemies than the level. With a few (Tankers in particular) I'm liable to increase the number of enemies and lower the level.

The Simple Solution: If they are going to be the squishiest Melee AT, they should be the most damaging Melee AT, not just on average going by AS, but every hit. Blow for blow they should be doing more damage than Scrappers and Brutes.

IMO it should be like this:

Tanks = Most Durable (4) - Least Damaging (1)
Brutes = Little less Durable (3) - A bit more damaging (2)
Scrappers = Even less Durable (2) - Good damage (3)
Stalkers = Least Durable (1) - Most Damage (4)

Since Stalkers suck defensively, then their new motto should be "The best Defense is a good Offense." They should be made to do blaster Level Damage, or even a little more since they seem to be nearly as squishy.

I think you sorely underestimate the tenacity of new players.

I know *I* didn't get discouraged when I died over and over in the Hollows way back when...and in my perspective, the Hollows was *mandatory* then too.

Completely and utterly incorrect. Stalkers are NO WHERE as squishy as blasters. I'm talking SO builds. The game's supposed standards.

The Hollows was a cakewalk compared so waves of idiotic ambushes that some missions get. No way near the same thing.

And you could do other people's missions to avoid the Hollows back then.

I did plenty of times before King's Row and newspaper missions came into play.

With completely new players they CANNOT avoid Pratoria first time time through. NOT AT ALL the same thing in anyway shape or form.

Thats also a horrible example. The Hollows mobs in the Gulch were invariably purple and heavily Boss laden. If nothing else, they taught you how the hell to stay away out of aggro range.

This is getting spanked about by +0/x1 mobs in a basic instance. There is a whole world of difference there.

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.