Difficulty in CoH: Community Discussion

[gameboy1234]

2 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

The content in Praetoria gets around this without needing to resort to as harsh of gimmicks thanks to having enemies alter how the players approach combat (on top of slightly altered stats / attacks). Clockwork have very different AI where they opt not to move much, instead of just dog piling you like every other mob in the game.

These are excellent suggestions and I approve of these ideas.  Yes, by all means let's avoid clown suits and maple syrup.  That's just lazy design.  Mucking about with the AI sounds like a much better way to add difficulty than cat herding battles.

 

Also, yes phasing mobs are bad, so get rid of that (unless maybe you can hit them somehow and they have a power that works while they're phased?).  And I agree that people just prefer to steamroll groups like Sky Raiders and Nemesis so those need a bit of work too.

 

Edited May 1, 2020 by gameboy1234

[MunkiLord]

7 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Honestly this seems like a step in the wrong direction to me. If there’s players who really want the power-creep level of difficulty, then revert to an SO build and continue playing the content in the existing system, because that is all this method of adjustment is doing.

I keep seeing suggestions like this and I don't understand why. Surely people realize this simply isn't what most people want to do. I mean people can keep suggesting it, but progression and end game content in the overwhelming majority of games demonstrates it's not a viable solution. Outside of perhaps hardcore survival games perhaps. And if that is really what someone wants, they'll play one of those game. 

[Galaxy Brain]

30 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

These are excellent suggestions and I approve of these ideas.  Yes, by all means let's avoid clown suits and maple syrup.  That's just lazy design.  Mucking about with the AI sounds like a much better way to add difficult than cat herding battles.

We have the mobs variety to mess with, its just a matter of allowing them to actually do their thing as player potency even on SO's can far surpass them, even when teamed

30 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

 

Also, yes phasing mobs are bad, so get rid of that (unless maybe you can hit them somehow and they have a power that works while they're phased?). 

It'd be cool if certain powers could negate them (Dimension shift, cages?) so its at least interactive.

 

30 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

 

And I agree that people just prefer to steamroll groups like Sky Raiders and Nemesis so those need a bit of work too.

 

Not so much that they prefer to as much as they simply *can* steamroll them. Unlike the phasing it is all to easy to negate what they want to do.

[gameboy1234]

Got another one for some decent "hard" content: Ghosts from Circle of Thorns.  The spectral demon lords have a huge Dark debuff that will render melee ineffective.  My first villain however was Bots/FF and I never had a problem with them.  The kockback keeps them out of melee range and the energy damage makes short work of spectral types in general.  Boy did my Blood Widow hate those things though.  Suddenly I understood why everyone complained about them.

Edited May 1, 2020 by gameboy1234

[Coyotedancer]

See also: Heading out to the Shard and running someone like Hammond's missions on +4/x8 solo. Sure, the missions themselves are nothing to write home about, but those Rularuu goons? Not trivial in large numbers. Even a really well-built character has to pay attention with those guys... Especially if you end up with more than one group at a time, which is likely on some of those cavern maps with a lot of captives.

[Wavicle]

More and harder Incarnate content, that's what it comes down to.

[Sir Myshkin]

4 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

I keep seeing suggestions like this and I don't understand why. Surely people realize this simply isn't what most people want to do. I mean people can keep suggesting it, but progression and end game content in the overwhelming majority of games demonstrates it's not a viable solution. Outside of perhaps hardcore survival games perhaps. And if that is really what someone wants, they'll play one of those game. 

Look at what I was quoting against in context to that specific sentence, it's referring to G.B.'s concept of creating another shift in ToHit/Defense/Buff scaling for that false illusion of "harder" content. It is senseless to keep shifting the goal post in the attempt to "make it harder" when the reality comes down to that what that claim is based on creating the dynamic shift that comes from SO to +4 content, but wanting to keep it on an IO build (because eating cake). Incarnate content created that next figurative goal post by amping the enemy ToHit factor and beginning the diversification of old enemy groups into wider dynamic ranges of abilities/mob types. To continue saying "do it again, shift the goal post further!" is most definitively going in the wrong direction. People are asking to mystically create some concept of difficult when the reality of it is already present, in a much simpler format.

 

As I said before, the truth of this game's "future" isn't in what people want, it's in what they need.

 

If people want to experience that "tough" +4 world, revert back to basic building blocks, or start looking at designing AE content around more dynamic enemy groups. I've played a few solidly built missions that were definitely challenging for an IO team without being bonkers nuts or broken, and that is the content the game needs.