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

Don't know if this was mentioned but another idea to improve challenges in missions:

Get rid of or increase the aggro cap...

I like some of the ideas here. I'm all for using the existing powersets on critters in new and interesting ways, and against scripted gimmicks such as are found in incarnate trials, specifically patches of doom, untargetable things, etc. I prefer for there to be a hard way and one or more easier ways than to feel railroaded. A good general example is the end of the ITF, where you can separate the healing nictus from the AV or just try to overpower the healing effects with more damage.

What I'd like to see is smarter mobs in a few ways:

1. Individual mob AI
   Specifically, support mobs. Tsoo sorcerers are one of my favorite mobs, because they really do make the whole group harder to deal with, but their targeting seems a bit random. Often I'll see them frantically trying to heal a doomed minion. Maybe they could prefer bosses and lieutenants.
   
2. Group composition
   For critters that work well as a team, have the presence of one increase the chance of spawning the other. Also, more variance from spawn to spawn. For instance, Malta are a harder group, but generally there will be one, maybe two sappers. Add a mob group type, then have each villain group have a few single-purpose options.
   Malta could have a sapping squad, CoT could have a squad of Earth Thorns with their slow powers mixed with heavy ranged damage, etc. A spawn group could then have one big squad, a mix of smaller ones, just one smaller one, none at all and just random critters. This way, groups aren't all the same difficulty, and fights are more interesting because you have to look at what you're facing.
   
3. Group AI
   Right now, mostly groups stand around until they detect enemies, then fight the enemies. They're pretty much unaware of any other groups, and there's just the one option: charge in and fight the players. Instead, they could flee towards another group, possibly a patrol, so that players will have to fight two groups. Or, sort of like an ambush, they could call for backup, and a patrol group, if there is one, or all patrol groups, start heading for the location the original group was in when the distress call went out. Or, they could head for a bit of useful terrain, like a bunch of pop-up turrets or the blue and green crystals in CoT maps. If there was a chance for each of these things, there'd be a lot more to think about while beating down groups of mobs. They'd also seem more intelligent, which I think would add a lot to the atmosphere of the game.
   
4. Maps
   I'd like to see a new kind of map that more closely matches real world buildings, and also is, in the case of headquarters, designed to be defensible. It's hard to have the groups act more intelligently when the maps are really convoluted and seemingly random, but a counterexample would be the Council map with the room of death in it, where it's hard not to engage the entire room at once, and you get shot at from all over. That would be a good place for fleeing groups to retreat to, for instance. Or, the high level hero tip mission where you rescue people from Arachnos has a map with a really long corridor and some things you need to fight in the corridor. There's always a spawn at the back, but that would be a great place to put some Nemesis-style long-range snipers that will start shooting when you're engaging other spawns. Add some short-range protectors for them that *don't* charge the players unless they get close, and then players have to take the snipers out at extreme range, ninja in and disable them unnoticed, or just take the extra fire until they can get there as a team. I think that would be doable with what we have now, and would be a way to add challenge with multiple roads to success.

There is no "fix-all" solution until the narratives of team vs. solo play are addressed. Just adjusting the level-slider to make bosses harder, or dropping more of them into missions is basically what we have. We play, "Wade through the minions and dog-pile on the end-boss, rinse-and-repeat". The problem now is that Incarnates are making that scenario less challenging, so now unless you are planning on dropping giant monsters into missions, Boss-EB-AV fights need to be smarter.

i think a way to add challenge would be allow us to increase the difficulty further by giving the baddies level shifts

our current diff settings only allow up to +4 baddies, but why couldnt we also say do +4 levels to our own and then +0-3 level shifts (+4 baddies with +3 lvl shifts whould be equivalent to our current +4 setting)

i personally really enjoyed the fight with tub ci in dream doctors arc cause he gains lvl shifts over the fight, he starts off at 54+0 (if at +4 diff), but at 75% hp he gains a lvl shift thus becoming 54+1, then 50% hp he gains another lvl shift being 54+2 and then 25% hp he gains another shift going to 54+3 (the last lvl shift is usually the most difficult for the team if they are not prepared for it)

One of my favorite missions was the old version of the Malta Actionfigure. where you would get tons of spawns of malta one after the other. It was mad, it was chaotic, and it was brilliantly fun
Same way the old version of hero respec trial was mad fun. Fighting millions of skyraiders/freaks/rikti at once was chaotic and fun. Waiting ages between waves... not so much, and not very hard either.

I'd love to see more chaos and mayhem in missions. Instead of fighting one group, then another group. It would be nice to have more groups come rushing in to help. AoEs are limited in number of targets, so they wouldn't hit everyone.

I think one part of making it challenging is to keep the pressure on the players. Relentless attacks to wither away at the players endurance and attention.


I'd also like to see bigger spawns, x8 is max atm... why not x25 or x50. Granted lag might be horrible but it would be so chaotic it'd be brilliant if it could be done.

I'd also like to see more fights with multiple AVs and EBs, like the last battle in Faultline with 3 AVs at once, very fun.

Edit:
I'd also like to see diffrent villains groups together. Like one group of malta, one group of council, one group of knives of artemis. Would also add challenge. Not one fighting 3 groups at once, but 3 diffrent groups with diffrent abilities to account for.

Something I've advocated in the past is giving the boss an equivalent to an inspiration tray--a set of powers that work just like inspirations, on an extremely long recharge, that are triggered by events in the fight. Low health is an obvious trigger for popping a green, for example, but the boss might trigger a red or purple on aggro, a Break Free when immobilized, or even an Awaken when killed. You can tweak the contents of the "tray" for different bosses if you like, but a standard load-out should be sufficient for most cases. Then, if you want to adjust the challenge, you adjust the scripted triggers for the pseudo-inspirations. Ideally, you could make the triggers dependent on team size, so a solo player wouldn't see any triggers, a small team might face a boss who starts with a couple of buffs, and a large team gets a boss who empties the tray. Even if that's not an option, you could at least use it to tweak the challenge in response to beta feedback.

If that takes too much work on powers (or the scripting tool), there's an alternate approach: caches. The boss has caches of resources in the map--essentially inspiration bins. The caches are stationary critters that look like objects, and each has one or more very short-range buff/heal powers, again on a very long recharge. They will activate those powers on any friendly target within range whenever they're charged. Then you give the boss a run-away script with a path that leads to the cache spawn points. When he gets within melee range of a cache, it triggers a heal or buff on him, then becomes inactive for the rest of the fight (due to the long recharge). The number of caches that spawn would rely on the regular spawning rules, so the boss would get more of them when facing a larger team.

There could be other types of object-critters, too--fortifications to hole up behind that have an aura that buffs the boss's defense, for example, or even things that are already in-game, like CoT healing crystals, Vahz barrels, or DE emanators. (How about a DE boss that flees into a room full of cairns and trees when it gets low on health?)

Just in case this needs to be reinforced: the giant sack of hit points/massive regen approach needs to be not merely off the table, but sealed in lead and stuffed under a mountain somewhere. We've been there, it stinks.

I think it would be cool if a pool of "gimmicks" could be created, and the named Boss of generic missions like radio/papers would be assigned one when the mission begins, so you would never know quite what to expect.

Small teams/solo would just get the regular Boss, obviously. And it could be argued that some Bosses like Master Illusionists already have enough gimmicks.

If the Battalion are a race of Incarnates, then the entire group should have EBs as their minion level

I think a better option than trying to retrofit old content with "more options" is to just try to strive for something different in a new arc that you haven't tried before in previous content. Much like New Dark Astoria content is geared toward a certain type of gameplay, whatever comes down the road next should be different from DA, as well as from other content in some meaningful way. I would rather see the time and effort spent on trying to make the game challenging spent on brand new content, rather than trying to rehash old stuff and shoehorn some kind of gimmick into missions that weren't designed for them.

Finding things that suit difficulty needs would be A) easier on those that have to produce said content, and B) more interesting, if content were compartmentalized. Instead of everything having all the options, what's wrong with some content being geared for solo play, some other content being geared toward teams, and other stuff being geared toward Incarnate/uber build play? I appreciate that folks want to be able to experience as much of the game as possible while confining themselves to their own style of play, but perhaps there are challenges already within the game ready to be had if more people stepped out and did some things they don't normally do more often.

I think the Devs are on the right track already, and should focus their energies to produce new content in the same vein as I22. Make each Issue focus on a particular game style over the others in some way, and go all out to make that content great, then focus in another area for the next one. Trying to spread love out to everything every time waters down the product for everyone, since time and resources only go so far.

What about environmental challenges something like an enemy surrounded by high damage arias or deep pits with walkways and ledges around it and a knock back power. And a travel power blocker. The bigger the team the harder it would be to properly coordinate the team. Leaving those that are stupid falling down and having to run back up. For smaller teams some of the pits could be covered.

You could also use saws, pounding pistons, and death lasers on tracks in the ceiling crossing the room. For big teams everything's active and it's a nightmare mission. And for smaller teams most of the traps could be off.

You could also set some kind of general all against all pvp aria. Making large teams especially dangerous. And have a doppelganger as the opponent that will randomly transform into a team member and tp next to the person it's mimicking.

As a matter of fact I'd like to see a doppelganger as a relatively common mission. The story being that some of the cloning teck wasn't lost. You could also have warped, deformed, simplified or imperfect clones of you're well known hero's and villains. Giving hero's a chance to fight hero's and villeins a chance to fight villains.
Also include one's with random costume peaces and colors. Shouldn't be that hard to attach numbers to the costume peaces and use a random number generator to make there individual appearance.
Having a divers clone faction not real alined with or against anyone but fighting against all for various resins from rights to simple instinct/genetic memory of there old self.
You could even have conglomerate's of various hero's and villeins.
Lordman and State's recluse. Posi-hammy. Rd. Mayham or Mother Aeon