Discussion: EB's, AV's, and Challenge in Missions

All I can stress here is more "options" none of this auto scaling to EB/AV nonsense because of the numbers on the team etc.. it should be TOTALLY optional.

As I see it with EB's at around 5k in hp and AV's like 28k? there should be something optional in between.

All I'm going to say is please, please, PLEASE keep in mind... whatever you do... that not every character out there is a soft-capped UberToon who can solo AVs.

It's fine to add *options* for the twinked-out power players who think +4/x8 is Easy Mode, but remember that they aren't the whole of the game, and if you start building missions to cater to their level of play you're going to end up building things that the rest of us simply won't be able to do. Particularly those of us who spend most of our time solo or with duo/trio-sized small teams.

While there's nothing wrong with adding interesting mechanics or making missions that are harder than the average Council cakewalk, I'd hate to see you turn everything new into... to use an analogy from my "other MMO"... soloing the Tursen Garrison with a Sorcerer. (ie: Something that damned near can't be done in normal play, because every single enemy in the place is so ridiculously over-powered compared to even a plus-level player character that it'll eat your face faster than you can say "Was I seriously just killed by a -4 MINION?!")

I don't mind that "hard stuff" exists. I even enjoy it on my own more min/maxed toons... But I am very, very wary of that level of challenge becoming any kind of standard. What's fun on my over-engineered, purpled-out, full Incarnate Stalker might well be absolute hell on my blaster-build bi-form Peacebringer, and I don't want to have to shelve Sola or be forced to play with seven other people just to see new content on her simply because you decided to build for monsters like Kestrel.

After playing around in the mission architect for quite some time, I came to this conclusion: powers>stats in bosses.

Let me explain. I wanted a tough boss...I used a standard-ish power setup, as an elite boss. the fight was difficult, but not in an interesting way. The boss enemy character started with a standard setup of some a fast attack, a medium attack, a ranged attack, and an AoE. It had some basic armor, then got ratched up to elite boss modifiers on all the powers. All of a sudden with the full blown stats, the character was almost one-shotting my squishies and shacking off the damage of less offense-based characters. It wasn't a fun fight because you were basically pounding down a wall before it could fall on you.

Then I downgraded the 'Elite boss' to a standard boss, but with some meaner powers. Buildup, some interesting aura powers, and a heal. Rather than pounding on a wall, the fight got more interesting. The boss hit buildup...I pulled back a few seconds for the damage to wear off before it could melee me. With the lower HP/resistance, I did more damage...but the heal would undo that, if I let it hit me. So I tried to either time my damage bursts to after the heal, or use tactics to stay out of heal range. The fight was far more interesting.

The same went for archvillains...an elite boss with nasty tricks beat a vanilla archvillain any day.

This isn't to say that there's no place for big stats...on full teams, a simple boss with tricks would die so fast you wouldn't notice them. An elite boss might be a bit more of a trick, but not for long. But that said, hitpoints, one shots, and immunities that come with higher ranks do not make for an interesting or memorable encounter. I'd love it if before upping an enemy's rank, the question was instead "what player power ability could we put in to mix this up?" The game has a truckload of different powers that players get to use, or are used around the players. they get familiar with these powers. Giving them to a boss means the player can have some idea how to react and what's going on, and spawns strategy as they must react to the effects.

As to allies, they do change things up as well. Rather than having an enemy have 10,000 extra hp, have a healing ally show up that heals back x amount if the team is larger. Or have a sniper show up across the room that starts taking potshots, so you have to divert for a bit to take them down.

That said, there should be balance to this. powers should interact to give variance to a fight, but not in a way that frustrates progress. You can't give a huge heal to a huge resistance foe, or a foe that flattens player damage, as that just means the players feel helpless as the enemy that takes forever to wear down recoups it all. Or give huge regen to a character you have to leave, only to come back and find all your progress has worn away.

Challenge, to me, means a situation arises that requires extra consideration and thinking, using what is experienced in the game in new/interesting situations. I LOVED the ice mistral task force final boss, surrounded by exploding crystals. Exploding items are in the game, but here was an encounter where you could be careful and eliminate foes/danger by taking out the hazard items as you face a boss, or you could bull rush and face the prospect of the crystals exploding on you, making the situation that much more dangerous. What I get perturbed by is when the game tries new tricks that use new rules, and/or cannot be avoided by playing smarter. It's one thing if you do not take down some empowering mages, the archvillain's attacks become autohit and unresistable. It's another if the archvillain's attacks are autohit and unresistable, no matter what you do.

Well, now.

It seems to me that the answer to this conundrum is not to invent new game mechanics or more scaling. The proper answer is to invent multiple battle groups and tailor them to the size and/or composition of the player team (which is conceptually what scaling is doing, just by dynamically modifying some fixed set of enemy assets).

How do we do that? By employing that nifty new phasing tech that lets you see Atlas Park on fire at one moment in time and serenely at peace and Arachnos-free the next time you stop by.

I would even go so far as to say that small groups should end up with a slightly different (or even majorly different) story than a large group gets. In effect, the small group gets a small group tailored mission and the large group gets a mission tailored to their greater firepower, perhaps even with variations in the mission goals. A solo player might have stealth options that a full team would not.

The only new game engine code is a function that runs during mission initialization that looks at the team size and drops an appropriate phase marker onto the team leader.

I'd say the first thing to do is have the presence of Lt.s, Bosses, EBs, and AVs mean something more than an extra power or two, and more resists, defense, hps.

At best, they become the alpha strike targets for the team, up until AVs that is, and at worst, a boss might be a left over from clearing the mob.

Giving each mob rank above minion a team-buff aura that stacks with other mobs of the same group, and increases in effectiveness along with additional buffs with each rank would make large scale mobs more difficult without hindering small solo mobs much.

As an example:
Lt. Leadership aura: + 2% damage scales with difficulty to +5%
Boss: aura +3% damage, +2% to-hit, + 1% defense scales: +8 damage, +5% to-hit, +4% defense
EB: aura +5% damage, +3% to-hit, +2% defense scales: +10 damage, +8 to-hit, +6 defense
AV: aura +6% damage, +4% to-hit, +3% defense, +2% resist scales: +12% damage, +10 to-hit, +8% defense, +5% resist

Then, have EB encounters scale with team size and difficulty settings so that they always have a mob spawn with them.

Solo, +0 / +0 setting no bosses would look like this:

EB
(1) lt.
(2) minions

total damage to the mob would be +7% damage, +3% to-hit, +2% defense

Of course, these numbers are just an example but its a way of adding difficulty to encounters that scales appropriately with a team size and difficulty settings.

Now a team of 8 on max difficulty with an AV encounter would need to seriously evaluate what targets it goes after in order to eliminate the threat of multiple "leaders" of the mob encounter.

An interesting note. I consider the Battle Maiden fight in the Apex to be probably the best fight in the game. Battle Maiden herself is not an especially tough AV. She's fairly middle of the road. But by making us move around, take stock of our environment, we get some neat stuff.

In fact, I consider her a LOT more interesting than the much more complicated Trial boss fights.

Tanking is still important in her fights, because it keeps Battle Maiden from sniping the support and pulls her out of her burn patches and keeps her focused on the tanker. Support is still important because it keeps us alive and her weak. Control is still important because it keeps the mobs off our back. Damage is, duh, damage.

Same time, the final fight in the Sutter, while exciting, can be annoying. The difference? The heat seeking strafe patches that are tough to dodge, hit underground, and the guy teleports everywhere. Nobody likes teleporters, and nobody likes being randomly blasted out of the sky.

It's a fine balance.

Thank you Dr. Aeon for asking. I tend to speak my mind on the boards, for good or ill. So here goes. You have nailed difficulty scaling in City of Heroes/Villains. There are a couple exceptions. Praetoria mobs are a little rough, and not sure why that was specifically marketed to new players in the game. Also, soloing tip missions on my Blasters, and getting A-merits on them is just too much work. That is more a failing at me at Blasting, and Blasters problems as a whole (read Archtypes and Powers thread Blasters in Modern CoH with entries by Arcanaville) then it is a problem with mission difficulty scaling. But by and large the difficulty of the the missions for soloing and teaming is very very well handled.

I think you should pursue something entirely different, literally. Maybe set up a completely alternate difficulty slider for missions. Where you can have greater freedom to customize the mob makeup you will face. Like changing the percentage of what you face. Want more Bosses, click. Want more Elite Bosses, click. Want more AVs, click. It would certainly have me out on my 50s more often when a friend says "Hey, running the ITF with everything set to Bosses and EBs and double AVs"

Edit: This system is definitely in addition to the current very good system. In fact, you should default to regular style play unless specifically set up parameters for a mission. And of course, if you choose the harder runs, you get nothing "extra" from a TF, other than more Experience for non-50s from the extra bosses, and better treasure that bosses might drop.

Drop in some environmental assistance for EBs facing teams, such as giving them one of Anti-Matter's regeneration platforms, A couple of Pink Patches of DOOM or a couple of Recluse's power towers. An EB facing a lone hero would get 0 help, a small team would get one item, those against a full team might get 2 or 3...nothing that would put them on the level of AM or Recluse but enough help to make the team work harder to take them down.

Considering the approach from the low side again, the DA EBs' (except for Blue Steel) immunity to hard or soft controls and hard hitting range attacks makes for quite the challenge for (non-purpled) mezzers, kiters, or sets with location powers that mobs don't want to stand in.

I created a thread in suggestions called more EBs please in which I suggest a system where named bosses can be upgraded to EB others had their own ideas I suggest taking a look http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=285622

To go with the idea of "Staged" fights, I think that kills two birds with one stone and make some encounters less steamrollable for teams and more interesting solo.

Lets take for example the climax of the Terra arc.

"Terra has been turned into a monster and is rampaging through town".

That's what the mission text says, but the reality is she's standing motionless in an intersection, not really moving or harming anything. At BEST, you walk up to her, execute your attack cycle until her HP is gone. The end. Some climax.

What I would do for this encouter:

Make Terra an EB but with a visible rank of "Monster", and give her a map-wide power that scales her resistance based on how many players are on the map. Her regeneration is effectively zero.

I'd have it like a mayhem mission and have there actually be objects and citizens she attacks. If she wrecks too much/injures too many, you lose out on badge.

At various stages of her HP, she flees the battle, either jumping away or "tunneling" into the ground. When this happens, she summons an ambush of DE to her spot that you can either battle or run from. IE, their target is Terra's last location, not the player, so you can just get out of sight if you're not up to fighting an ambush.

After a set amount of time, or after the ambush is defeated, whichever comes first, Terra pops up in another area of the map and begins to rampage again. You repeat this until done.


The advantages of this design:

-It breaks up the fight. Even if you have a team that can carve her up, the fight is drawn out by breaking it up and having the "chase" element.

-Even if you're on a toon that EBs are tough for, you can keep "chipping" at her and playing hit and run without her regenerating back all her HP and losing all your progress, even if you faceplant.

-It's more interesting than simply standing there trading blows with her for a minute until she falls over.

-As least to my limited knowledge, it's fully doable with the game's current tech.



.

Argh....

Darth_Khasei,

Some of us actually enjoy said gimmicks and find them as a welcome relief to the standard asinine "tank and spank" mindset of the majority of the playerbase. I actually want to have the game force me to think, strategize, and get me out of the rut I get in after playing standard content.


In response to J_B,

That idea is perfect for Terra Conspiracy and other similar ending story arcs.

Different encounters along these lines would go a long way for making interesting, interactive, and potentially challenging missions. More J_B ideas, please!