The good thing about Praetoria's ambushes

Yes, as soon as I remembered about running bosses, Biff and Crimson came to mind. They both suck, and I will accept no argument to the contrary.

Biff is an Arachnoid elite boss. Arachnoids in general have resistances, very high regeneration and really nasty attacks. Biff has higher regeneration because he has more hit points, and hits harder, to boot. The one other thing Arachnoids are known for is their fast running speed, similar to that of War Wolves or Crey Tanks. So when Biff takes off running, he is very, very hard to stop, and if you do manage to stop him, he is very, very, very hard to actually kill.

Crimson is worse. When he takes off running, he activates Elude, which boosts his running speed significantly and makes him very hard to even hit. He is a scaled-down AV, which makes him all but immune to status effects, and having Quickness, he's very resistant to slows, if not immune to them outright. Crimson sucks. And why the hell is he a Longbow agent, anyway? When was that ever even implied in his arc?

My beef is with running bosses in general, however. I play almost exclusively melee character, which means fighting a running boss consists of running-running-running to catch up, throwing one attack during which time the boss gets a hefty lead, then running-running-running again to catch up. I've complained about it before, and people have helpfully advised me to use slows, status effects and knockback. When I point out I'm playing, say, a Fire/Fire Brute, things start to get complicated.

But again - if I've ever complained about ambushes, I hate running bosses ten times more, to the point where I'm capable of LIKING ambushes when I remember that I'm fighting this INSTEAD of running bosses. Yeah, bring on the ambush spam. Bring on the ganking, broken, unfair ambush waves. I'll fight them, I'll die like a champ and come back to finish the job. So long as my bosses don't take off running, I'll take it!

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.

I've not had as much trouble with Biff as others in this thread, but that's largely because after the first time with my main Mastermind none of my Villains have lowered themselves to working with Terrance Dobbs. Forty levels of Villainy, all to be Dale Gribble's sidekick? Yeah, no.

I actually like the ambushes in Praetoria. Sure it is tough on squishies and stalkers but it often makes the stories seem epic which I believe is what they were driving for.

That Crimson mission was really annoying. I just did it for the first time recently and it sucked. The guy never stops running no matter how many times you hit him and if you fail it costs you merits.

I've never been bothered by either ambushes or running bosses. A liberal application of slows, immobs and holds will generally get the desired result when soloing. In a team it's a non-issue - and there's always ninja/beast run now to ensure you can either keep up or get away.

The Running Boss is slightly more frustrating cuz they can get away but that generally means you just move on to the next mission more quickly.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I'd like to make 2 points regarding the use of objectives in missions.

First, IMO a running boss can be okay. It's a standard in serial fiction like superhero comics that the boss can escape in one episode to return in another. In my AE arcs I generally prefer to have bosses attempt to escape if it looks like they're losing control of the situation, because that's what I think most would do. Few would fight to the bitter end.

In AE you can place a boss as an optional objective, so that if he runs away the player doesn't fail the mission. If the player tries to catch and defeat the boss, it's just a loss of xp for the boss kill, not the reward for mission completion.

If players understand that failing to catch a running boss is not the end of the world but an optional challenge, it's less bothersome.

Second, it seems to me that CoH is excessively tardy in developing different objectives and complications for its missions. There should be more triggers and more possible responses to triggers.

The reason you see ambushes used so frequently is that they're one of the very few complications a designer can currently add to a mission.

Why have complications in a mission at all? To me, that's how the story is told through gameplay, as opposed to storytelling through text. While it's fine to use contact, clue, and dialog text to tell a story, what people really experience - and remember - is the factions they're fighting, the powers of the bosses, the map, the way the objectives are chained (if they are), and then other complications like ambushes, patrol spawns, etc., that happen as a consequence of player actions. In essence, players remember the difficulties they faced more than they remember the textual story.

Furthermore, while using customized mechanics like protect the henge / reactor core / etc. may seem somewhat spiffy to some game designers, as a storyteller I much prefer having a good supply of standard events and triggers that I can use in different ways to make a story develop in a mission as a consequence of player-made decisions.

Other games - like NWN - have had a well-developed base of triggers and results and used them for eons. I have no idea why CoH hasn't followed this well-paved path. There's no reason why they can't be used in a MMO.