Instagib Crews...is this normal?

We were playing a mission sequence in First Ward, and at one point you need to interact with a techno-doohickey. When we did, suddenly around 7-10 villains of orange, red, and one purple just *POP* into the room and destroy us...powerful psychic dudes - lots of holds and such...TPK...to the hospital...return...but now the group is in the room, and we can apply tactics and we wipe out the baddies with minimal trouble. (we're playing at 28th)

A couple of rooms later, and the same thing happens - vastly powerful villains appear RIGHT THERE giving you no time to do anything but take it, and at least one of our team was basically one-shotted. Bang! BACK to the hospital, we all run back...as in the last case they are still in the room we left them and can be attacked.

This happened about FOUR times in one mission.

I get that I am not the uber-elite master of City of Heroes, but I cannot imagine a lot of scenarios where this force teleporting right on top of you would not result in at least one or two instant hospital trips...that's why they color them purple..but to just pop them in....

So the question is: as someone who played five or more years ago and only just came back as VIP, is this kind of thing typical now? This kind of bizarre - BANG! Here's an overwhelming force to destroy you!..?

I LOVE playing my corrupter, and teamed with my friends we have a great balance and have learned to operate as a team, but having villains just magically appear in the middle of your crew at a level that makes single or two-shot kills possible eliminates any sort of tactics...UNTIL you run back from the hospital. So you CAN play smart, but only after the nice run back.

Is this sort of an artificial way for NCSoft to make a tiny amount of content take a whole lot of player time?

Frankly, the whole hospital thing is annoying to me because it is really just a way to get you to blow more time running about (wish you could just get up).

Note that I get that every MMO does stuff like this - missions that have you go all the way across town to talk to Bob, who then sends you BACK all the way across town to talk to Al...but I like the time suck to be a bit more cleverly veiled.

But back to my real issue - - is it typical now in CoH to have mobs just pop in, at levels far higher than your team?

I was already kind of burning out quickly (only been back on a couple months) from the grind, but this was just ridiculous. I'm paid up until June 1, and so I figured I'd keep playing until then, but if at 28th level the missions start having this kind of gimmick just to stretch the content (or to just annoy you), then I probably just want to leave the time unused.

In a word - no.

What you're speaking of is not found that often. First Ward is a fairly new zone, and what they've introduced is something to get your attention. The damage types are a bit more harsh than blue side stuff, so it requires more attention to tactics.

The sad part is, I've got to ask you a question -
The mission holder has a difficulty setting - find out what that is. If what you are telling us is that this ambush that spawned right on top of you was +2, while all the other mobs were the same level as you, I'd call it a glitch, and suggest you /bug it.

If it's the ambush itself that takes you by surprise - I'd ask if you were reading the info that the contact gives. Generally, there are signicant clues that would tell you that clicking on the object will trigger an ambush. They may not come out and say it, but they should allude to it.

It's been at least a couple months since I ran First Ward content. If you'll give me the contact name and mission name, I'll run it and take a peek.

On the bright side, there are ways to "get up right there". It's called "Return to battle", a vet award. Sadly, you'd either have to spend a lot of money, or be subscribed for probably longer than you are, but I'm fairly certain there are self-rez temp powers available in the paragon market.

As far as I know, that kind of ambush is pretty unique to First Ward. There are plenty of ambushes in this game, but First Ward and maybe one or two places in the Praetoria 1-20 zones are the only times I've heard of this kind of spawn-right-on-top-of-you ambush.

Ukaserex: It's hard to remember through the thick fog of annoyance that is currently clouding my mind....but I seem to recall that most of the mobs we were encountering were orange and some red, but the ambushes always had AT LEAST one purple. I don't recall the name - if I calm down and log back in sometime before 6/1 I'll try to post the name.

By the third time it happened, we knew full well there would be an ambush, but the nature of the spawning made that awareness of almost no use...I remember being struck in the head with red lightning that took 2/3 of my Health AND immobilized me the INSTANT the ambush group appeared.

I knew there would be an ambush, and I even tried to - - (actually DID) position myself so that none of the villains had line of sight to me...still got hit. Before anyone was even on the screen to be targeted I was getting killed. A teammate stacked all possible buffs, lucks, defenses, etc...POOF.

I appreciate folks taking the time to answer my questions. I hope you all continue to have a great time playing, but in all honesty this has kind of soured me on it.

As I noted, I was finding some of it a bit boring (we had a mission last week where we seriously had a network of caves with corridors - each ended in the same shaped room filled with the exact same mix of bad guys. SIX copies of this room in one 'dungeon'.

But then tonight we finally had an experience that wasn't boring, but sadly it was infuriating. Actually I take that back, because I really was getting bored of flying back from the hospital.

Sounds like they need to tweak FW, or they need to save it for the most diehard fans of the game.

As far as the instant revivals and such...I get their business model, and it makes sense to pay for what you get, but the idea that they might have actually deliberately put in instant-kill missions to drive incremental sales of items to avoid the hospital just kind of strikes me wrong. Maybe that's an issue with F2P - it drives the wrong behaviors by the company. I know that's not what you're saying, but I think the temptation is there.

A tray full of purple insps can make the mission trivial without buying a thing.... as long as you know it's coming and can prepare.

Another thing to that may exasperate the ambushes is if the ambush includes one or more Subjugators.

Subjugators have a nasty ability that summons 3 Subjugated Scryers. Not only does this give you more to fight but the Subjugator has another ability called Consume Scryer that does bad things.

Beware the doohickey!

I've noticed subtle changes in Praetorian missions over the months since issue 18 as well.

Like today for example, I was delivering the information on Eddy Polstra to Belladona Vetrano. After giving her the information, there is a PPD ambush that comes running in from the tunnel.
This time, they appeared, no port or anything, instantly right beside me and her. They did that every wave as soon as the last was down, with no time to rest between waves.

Luckily, I'm on a character with some of the most powerful tricks there are in the game, so I lived easily.
It's just really dumb how things are "stealth changed" and often for the worse, or all the stupid bad bugs we're having lately.

A lot depends on mission difficulty, team size, powersets, and players. Solo, it was no trouble for me. The ambushes were small, I could survive the alpha, and then I took them apart. It wasn't a big deal, possibly because a regen scrapper has no psi weakness. On a medium sized team, we were flattened by the first ambush, but I don't remember the rest being a problem. We knew what was coming. I don't remember how we handled it. We might even have waited in the hallway while a stalker triggered the doohickey. At any rate, we didn't have the same experience you did.

It's not uncommon for one mission to be devastatingly impossible to one team and a cakewalk to another team. Ambushes can be a fun challenge for one group, and a guaranteed team wipe for another. I don't think the devs are trying to force people to buy wakies, or anything else sinister. I think they're just trying to make a mission which is the perfect level of challenge for everyone in every circumstance, and they're failing, of course. But they try different things sometimes, and get different results. But always, some people like it and some people hate it. That's true of everything they do.

Thanks for all the great input, everyone. I'll be honest - when I posted this I worried that I was going to return to eleventy-eleven pages of vicious shouting - "This games is perfect ya N00b! Go play [insert name of game here] if you can't hang with the REAL playahs!!!"

Seems like a great community (the first time I played I didn't do much on the web in terms of forums (fora?) or similar...I'm assuming it's either always been this friendly, or you've weeded out D3ATHNINJAH69 and his annoying friends (my apologies if you actually use the name D3ATHNINJA##, it was meant in the general sense).

It sounds like my problem isn't new/unique, but might be limited to First Ward and related....someone should put some signs up by the entrance....

This appears to be a (relatively) new design decision on the part of the Devs,
as it also happens with the Atlas Park and new DA revamps.

Evidently, somewhere they lost sight of the fact that the game *intentionally*
did NOT used to do that.

In zones, it promotes Spawn Camping, and while it's not a big deal in AP, it's still
a bad precedent to set imho.

In missions, as you discovered, it can lead to an insta-gank, especially for squishies.

Frankly, I'd expect to see more of that (with our current Dev crew) as they seem
much more inclined to "borrow" gimmicks and mechanics from other MMO's - a trend
that I find rather uncreative, if not lame...

As far as dealing with them, the other posters have offered good advice and tactics,
but I completely see the point (and agree with it) of folks that said they don't play
that content - I too played it once, and haven't been back since.

Irritating mechanic is irritating. <shrug> YMMV.


Regards,
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