Make open-world ambushes spawn sooner?

[RikOz]

I have a small suggestion regarding the ambushes that occur in the open world while traveling to/from a mission:

 

Is there an easy way you could adjust them so that the spawn either more quickly, or closer to where the player character zones in?

 

The problem, from what I have observed, is that these ambushes all expect the player to be ground-bound, stationary, and/or moving in a certain direction.

 

This results in situations where I step off the tram in my destination zone, activate flight, and fly off toward the mission door, and the only clue I have that I've been ambushed has been a ranged attack catching up to me and hitting me when I'm a good 100 to 200 yards away from the tram station. I have spotted some ambushes as have been flying away, where they've zoned in 50 yards or more away from the tram station and are running in that direction as I fly over them in the opposite direction. In either of those scenarios, I have to circle back to find the ambushers and deal with them. But all of this leaves me wondering how many ambushes I have been completely unaware of due to the ambushers having no ranged attacks, or because I've simply managed to get out of range faster than they can fire off a shot, or I've flown away in the opposite direction from where they spawned. I simply haven't memorized which missions have these ambushes.

 

When I played WoW, I always maintained a policy of "if I aggro it, I kill it", because I hated it when other players stirred up mobs and kept going, and the mobs would turn and attack me, and I didn't want to do that to other players.  But in WoW, at least those mobs would be near my character's level, since quests in that game are usually confined to the same zone where I accepted the quest, and virtually every player in the zone was going to be at an appropriate level for the zone, so it was more annoyance than danger. That's not the case in CoX, where a level 30+ mission can send me to Kings Row, and I don't want to be the guy leaving a Malta ambush at the KR tram station for level 12 players to deal with.

 

This could be solved by simply having the ambushers spawn closer to the zone-in point, and make their presence know sooner.

[ArchVileTerror]

Some times the only way I know I triggered an ambush is because someone shouts in Broadcast "who left these Level 30 Freakshow by Kalinda?!"

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by ArchVileTerror
It's an hour before I meant to wake up this morning. Tired and typo'y.

[Grouchybeast]

It would be a nice start if the ambushes would despawn when the target leaves the zone.  It wouldn't be a perfect solution, but at least it would get rid of them in a lot of cases.

[Haijinx]

Training is a long honored MMO tradition.  To remove this aspect leaves us all poorer.

 

 

[Greycat]

It's rare that I see ambushes outside of (a) the costume missions (where I'm waiting for them) or (b) a task force where the leader has to go take "evidence" or whatever somewhere and the rest of the team is at the mission door waiting for the fedex to be done.

[SurfD]

I don't know.  Sometimes the ambushes spawn a little TOO fast.  I was doing World Wide Red on my Mastermind, didn't know that one of the missions near the end spawns a Kronos Titan GIANT MONSTER as an ambush when you zone out of the mission.   Thing must have spawned practically right on top of me, as it killed most of my summoned minions before I even finished loading the city zone, then proceeded to kill me as I desperately attempted to fly away.

 

Maybe what they need is some kind of Warning Message that could display to let you know an ambush is after you?

[Greycat]

2 minutes ago, SurfD said:

Maybe what they need is some kind of Warning Message that could display to let you know an ambush is after you?

Wouldn't argue with that.

[RikOz]

3 hours ago, Greycat said:

It's rare that I see ambushes outside of (a) the costume missions (where I'm waiting for them) or (b) a task force where the leader has to go take "evidence" or whatever somewhere and the rest of the team is at the mission door waiting for the fedex to be done.

Speaking of the costume missions ambushes, those can annoy me because, a) sometimes they wait to spawn until I'm already engaged with another spawn, or b) I exit Icon, and then wait, and wait, and wait ... and they never appear.

3 hours ago, SurfD said:

I don't know.  Sometimes the ambushes spawn a little TOO fast.  I was doing World Wide Red on my Mastermind, didn't know that one of the missions near the end spawns a Kronos Titan GIANT MONSTER as an ambush when you zone out of the mission.   Thing must have spawned practically right on top of me, as it killed most of my summoned minions before I even finished loading the city zone, then proceeded to kill me as I desperately attempted to fly away.

 

Maybe what they need is some kind of Warning Message that could display to let you know an ambush is after you?

LOL, that Kronos Titan was a nice surprise! It occurs to me that the difference in timing between that and "normal" ambushes is that the Titan ambush knows exactly where you're going to zone in: at the specific mission map exit. Ambushes that spawn upon zone-in while you're traveling to a mission have to wait and see where you appear, since there may be multiple ways to enter the zone - tram, tunnel from a neighboring zone, base teleport, Wentworth's teleport, etc. - all of which have different zone-in points. Though it does seem that, if the code can look and see where you're exiting a mission, it ought to be possible to have it look ahead to see what "route" you're taking to a new zone, and have the ambush waiting for you.

 

My main concern with the Titan Kronos ambush, when it happened to me, was that it was going to rampage through the zone.

[ShardWarrior]

11 hours ago, RikOz said:

When I played WoW

My condolences.

 

5 hours ago, SurfD said:

Maybe what they need is some kind of Warning Message that could display to let you know an ambush is after you?

I like this idea.

[RikOz]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

My condolences.

Heh. I didn't have much choice, as a Mac user. I dumped it soon after discovering CoH, but alas, that happened only a year before the shutdown. Dumped WoW again as soon as I heard about Homecoming 🙂

 

(Though I am on Windows 10 now, so I have more options, but haven't found any others that I liked.)

[DoctorDitko]

On 5/7/2020 at 1:58 PM, RikOz said:

Though I am on Windows 10 now...

MY condolences.

On 5/7/2020 at 7:27 AM, SurfD said:

Maybe what they need is some kind of Warning Message that could display to let you know an ambush is after you?

Cue Parrot Shop sketch:

Well if you know it's coming, its hardly an Ambush, is it?

 

But if you mean after you've zoned, and before you can run off and leave the hapless PCs in King's Row to deal with your 30+ attackers, some kind of notice to your team (and possible the zone at large) would be nice.