I really, really hate Voids

I know what you're thinking... No, no, no...

It's not that I can't kill them, or they keep killing my PB's - not at all. I learned
how to handle Voids way back in I3 / I4 when they actually *were* dangerous.
I haven't had a Kheld killed by a Void (or Quant for that matter) in years...

That's not a problem, or even a factor anymore...

I hate them because of the way the Devs implemented them - they show up
*everywhere*, disregarding common sense, faction loyaties, or canon story lore...

What prompts this latest rant? Simple. First Ward.

I ran it with one of my PB's (level capped @L28) over the weekend.

While I have some other issues with First Ward, I enjoyed the story arcs and new
mission types. Overall, I'd rate the zone favorably based on what I saw.

Unfortunately, with Khelds, Voids show up in *every* mission ... In Praetoria...
Where there are no Khelds ... or Council ...

Would a dev PLEASE explain to me how the average Praetorian, imprisoned in
First Ward even knows what a Kheld IS? Or what a Void IS? Or how to create one?
Or how to hire dozens of them to defend against Khelds?

Why would Apparitions work with them?
Why would Devouring Earth work with them?
Why would they be teamed with elite D.U.S.T squads?
Why would Ghouls tolerate their presence?

When all is said and done, *nothing* was more ruinous to the story of First
Ward than these Voids showing up all over the place.

The same is true in Paragon City as well, but it was extremely jarring in the new
content...


Devs, this is an AT you're SELLING to people now.


I like the *concept* of a kryptonite enemy, I honestly do.

However, NOT to the exclusion of logic and worse yet to the ruin of the stories.

I really think it is long past the point where the devs need to pick a handful
of factions where Voids make sense, and adjust the mechanic so that they
ONLY appear with those groups. Factions like Council, Malta, Family, Crey could
logically have access to them...

Voids are specially created, elite troops designed to kill Khelds. Surely, they're
expensive, and relatively rare. A Hellion might be able to buy a Quantum rifle, but
hire a Void? Doubtful imho. Close knit factions like Tsoo? Why would they allow
"outsiders"? Banished Pantheon? Ghosts, Really?

It's ridiculous.

There is zero reason for DE, Praetorians, Carnies, Apparitions, T'uatha and many
others to do so in the context of the lore, and when they appear in those cases it
actually ruins the story.

Nowhere is this more obvious than First Ward.

It is really a detrimental attribute for an AT you want people to purchase and
imho, some consideration should be given to tempering the concept to make
it interesting and augmentive rather than overbearing, irritating and outright
ludicrous.

Ok, I've said my piece. I really hope the devs will revisit that mechanic.


Regards,
4


PS> I don't recall seeing any Quants in First Ward, so that, at least, is a step
in the proper direction imho.

Totally with you on this. For me the worst thing is when I am doing tip missions on my Villain Warshade, I spawn a Policebringer map, and the Voids totally ignore all of those Kheldians and focus exclusively on attacking me- It's particularly frustrating since we know devs have the tech to make NPC enemy groups hostile toward one another.

The second biggest thing which goes back to one of your points is that according to lore, Kheldians don't exist in Praetoria. If they don't have Khelds, why do they have Voids?

I thought canonically Voids do not have an alignment. They are their own group that hunts Khelds and just shows up. I just assumed they were more or less invisible to the other enemies in the group.

The part I hate about them is that they show up as an extra enemy in a group, rather than as a replacement in a group. If, for any reason, you are having issues with a group, having an extra enemy that deals extra damage is going to give you major problems.

Hrm, I just always thought that the Voids were so resourceful, determined and adept at working their way anywhere and everywhere Khelds may be.
And, since you are a Kheld in Praetoria, I'd say that they can be there too.
Just my thoughts about it, but don't take my quick reply as though I'm completely dismissing anyone else's personal opinion about it.

I must agree that they show up in the oddest places... but My favorite 'odd' place is in a spawn of Winter Lords, they tend to bounce his butt like the Black Plague...

I know exactly what you mean, I remember taking my shade over to nova for some double patrol XP to skip through the tiny levels and there were voids everywhere...even though they wouldn't know how to fight a Kheld because in preatoria they don't exist.

As for the Policebringer mission, I can see a void as explainable in that situation because there is the concept of an enemy group hiring a void to kill a Kheld. If a void is part of a mercenary group then they wouldn't have a preference of which kheld to kill.

If not, just give policebringers a quantum weapon and call it a day. A regular enemy with a quantum gun and a void use the same attacks so there is no reason to avoid swapping out the enemies for back story purposes.

EDIT: It does make sense for a void to be a grey area enemy who only hunts khelds, which fits in when fighting devouring earth and things like that who don't have quantum enemies. But working with policebringers...c'mon.

Totally agree. And we still have those good ol' Cysts. These precious crystals that the Nictus use to travel and to sit in when they don't have a host so they won't die of premature old age - I've seen one of them on a Pererine Island streetcorner with Carnie Streetwalkers.

With the recent PB changes, I can solo at +8 now, so I encounter Cysts quite often while soloing these days, and it still blows my mind that this 'feature' still exists after all this time.

Of course, it is pretty cool that I can take out a Cysts solo these days while being in the middle of a +8 spawn

I think the whole CONCEPT of Kheldians was a result of a bad acid trip by someone in charge at the time. Its like the entire storyline was created to support the Peacebringer/Warshade AT, thrown into the mythos as "pluggable content" and then never revisited to smooth out the edges of either the AT or the storyline.

Just a guess, but I'm betting if there was a report generated on playtime by subscribers by AT, Kheldians would be at the bottom of the list.

At least the VEATS fit into the main storyline. So they did learn some of their lesson. But for me, Kheldians require a complete scrapping and do-over. As is, they just are a bunch of a gimmicks, strung together with a gimmicky storyline that shoves their adversaries into missions as annoyances rather than as meaningful parts of the mythos.

As mentioned earlier, Voids are created by the Council, unlike Quants who simply
have the fancy rifle.

The other point is Voids are Human. Sure, highly modified, and presumably highly
trained, but human nevertheless. They also have no appreciable stealth capability
and as also mentioned, they are attacked by other factions on occasion.

Now, I'm no Loremaster, so I simply took these descriptions from P-Wiki.

Quote:

Devouring Earth are monsters bent on destruction. Created by a Godlike super-being known as the Hamidon, the Devouring Earth are a series of creatures based upon plants and Earth-like formations that are completely focused upon the destruction of human kind on the bidding of their creator.

There is no valid story reason for DE to even tolerate a Void among them. It would be attacked on sight.

Quote:

These creatures now have a name, a simple, archaic, and descriptive name. They are no longer human. They are Ghouls. You can't reason with them, you can't frighten them, and killing one of them just makes the others angrier. Where they come from no longer matters to anyone, for what's on everyone's mind is where they are off to in search of their next meal.

Assuming we can get past the "Khelds in Praetoria" issue in the first place,
Ghouls wouldn't care, and they'd be far likelier to eat the Void rather than work
with him.

There's no real info on Apparitions on the wiki yet, but as you delve into the
missions, you learn some more about their origins - without dropping any spoilers,
I think it's fair to say that they're barely sentient, let alone rational. Once again,
I'd fully expect them to attack the Void just as they would any other intruder.

Obviously, there are countless more factions that based on their lore, would
either be outright hostile towards Voids, or at best, be ambivalent towards them.

So, I simply think the Devs should respect their own stories, and adjust the Void
mechanic appropriately. It's long overdue, imho.


Regards,
4


PS> A couple years back, Arcanaville did have a post out (based on dev released
numbers) that showed Khelds as the least played AT up to that point.

Where that stands today is anyone's guess. That said, it's fairly irrelevant. If they're
played at *all*, they should fit into the lore - which, imho, I think they do, apart
from this issue with Voids.

Cysts appearing at high diff settings or with large teams, was *always* a bug
(below L45+), which they've never bothered to fix.

Again, since they're *selling* the AT now, that too should be re-visited...

As Four said, Voids and Quantums are indeed part of the lore. And the lore makes sense, as much as any lore makes sense. I can also agree that, in many instances, the Quantum and Void spawns make no sense at all and should be removed.

If I were to decide such matters, I would limit Void spawns to certain Council/Kheldian related story arcs, and limit quantums similarly.

In regards to your post, Crysys, while I made that last post mainly for the lulz, it had merit. You can't really come to the kheldian forums and say, "Hey, I think the AT you guys like to play sucks and makes no sense," and expect others to agree with you. Your post was your opinion. You are entitled to it. As we are entitled to disagree, and subtly mock when you base your opinion on falsehoods. Incidentally, you may want to remember that a different dev team made the HEATs.

I don't expect anyone to agree with me. Its irrelevant whether you do or don't. The only thing that's relevant is that someone posted a topic "I really, really hate Voids" and I posted an opinion on it.

I played my PB and Warshades to 50 back when they were first introduced many years ago. I played a tri-form PB to mind 40's before deleting it recently. I've respecced my PB since the latest changes and still find it a seriously weak AT relative to just about anything else I can play in the game. That's just my opinion and hey....that's why I posted what I did.

Sorry to hurt your feelings. Its pretty apparent I have for you to think that having an opinion that the Kheldian AT was half-baked upon launch (it was) and remains pretty half-baked even today (it is, in my opinion) somehow diminishes your enjoyment of life.

That's sad but hey....that's my opinion of you. Nothing more, nothing less.

I remember playing that godawful mission in Croatoa with my Warshade once, the one where you have to stop a bunch of pumpkinheads from escaping through a vortex?

Yeah, it was really funny to see the occasional Voidhunter rushing for the portal with a bunch of his pumpkin buddies. It made me laugh my head off, too!

It didn't do much to immerse me into the lore though.

I've not read everything in here, but I'll just do this, from the OP's first:

Quote:

Unfortunately, with Khelds, Voids show up in *every* mission ... In Praetoria... Where there are no Khelds ... or Council ... Would a dev PLEASE explain to me how the average Praetorian, imprisoned in First Ward even knows what a Kheld IS? Or what a Void IS? Or how to create one? Or how to hire dozens of them to defend against Khelds?

First off, if there's not supposed to be Khelds there, why are you there?

Oh, you're just visiting? From some sort of dimensional portal? Really?

Don't you think that the Council and/or Voids could, oh, I dunno, use them too?

There. Now you know how it happened. Surprised you wall-o-texted and didn't say it outright...

/I can get your reasoning... but it's just too easy to explain, especially with the fact that YOUR Kheld made it there... And it's not gonna get followed... surrrre...

Crysys, here's some reasons why your opinion was not welcome here:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crysys I played my PB and Warshades to 50 back when they were first introduced many years ago. I played a tri-form PB to mind 40's before deleting it recently. I've respecced my PB since the latest changes and still find it a seriously weak AT relative to just about anything else I can play in the game. That's just my opinion and hey....that's why I posted what I did.

1. Just because your PB is lacking in playing ability doesn't mean the AT is "seriously weak." It means you're not playing it in the right environment or not using it effectively; any AT can be seriously strong in the right environment. For example; if i played my warshade at +0/x1 missions all the time he would be "seriously weak" but if i pumped it up to +0/x8 he would be nearly unstoppable. It's just a matter of what environment you're playing your AT in. Just because the AT isn't working for you, doesn't mean it's considerably weaker than most ATs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crysys Sorry to hurt your feelings. Its pretty apparent I have for you to think that having an opinion that the Kheldian AT was half-baked upon launch (it was) and remains pretty half-baked even today (it is, in my opinion) somehow diminishes your enjoyment of life. That's sad but hey....that's my opinion of you. Nothing more, nothing less.

2. You made a rather ignorant statement about the Kheld AT & it's lore, considering that you had no support at all. You simply waltzed in and said "this is my opinion and that's that" instead of "Khelds are a half-baked AT because..." If you had taken the second approach, maybe you would have been taken more seriously and not been mocked.

3. You implied that your opinion "diminishes our enjoyment of life." That was never said by any of us. You implied that because they poked holes in your "half-baked" opinion. If you think the Kheld's are Half baked, maybe you should put some more thought into the things you say before you post that "half-baked" opinion of yours.

4. You resorted to childish mocking. Maybe you should find a thread for little kids, where that is more appropriate

______________________________
Now that THAT business is out of the way:

I happened to notice the correlation between council and nictus abilities (galaxys) but i had no idea voids were a council product. You learn something new every day huh?

Anyways, I'm agreeing with sep here. It would be awesome if they would incorporate Khelds into the Battalion story lines.