Increased Difficulty without needing tons of +Acc

[OdinTGE]

I would really like it if there were ways to make missions more difficult that didn't make +accuracy the king of all stats. Currently, if I gather up a team to run radio missions I have two options:

 

• Every mob dies in a few seconds and things get boring fast.
• Set the mission to +4 and everybody whiffs half their attacks, the mobs live longer, but missing is incredibly un-fun.

 

Over the past 2 weeks I've run many many hours of radio missions ranging from level 5 to 49 and these seem to be the only 2 outcomes. I don't even have any level 50s or crazy set-enhanced characters. I've tried running 3 or 4 person groups at +3/x8, specifically filling the group with no 50s or set-enhanced people, and it mitigates the issue somewhat, but ultimately the real thing keeping the mobs alive longer than 5 seconds is missing because if the mission is +3 to me, it's +4 to most of the people in the group and, again, missing isn't fun.

 

What I'd like to see, in addition to the level slider for notoriety, is health and damage multipliers for the enemies. I just want to actually play the game. My goal is not to rush to 50, or farm tons of influence to pimp out a 50. My goal is to just have fun playing, and for that to happen the enemies have to be alive long enough to actually play; and keeping them alive by forcing us to miss 50% of attacks is very frustrating.

 

In addition to the mobs dying too fast, I am shocked at how easy it is to tank right now. I leveled a tank to 49 in radio missions and by about level 25 I was at the point where even on a +4 all I needed was minimal healing maybe once or twice a pack, often needing none at all. Sure, I could not enhance my toggles, or turn them off, but forcing my character to be worse is the same thing as making accuracy all that matters. Making our characters better is a key component of any game like this, so instead, the mobs need to be better. They need to hit harder, and probably more often. So that the difference between a scrapper and a tank focused on mitigation is a meaningful difference. And so having good support in the group actually makes a difference.

 

TL;DR: Can we get a notoriety setting that makes mobs have more HP, hit harder, and (maybe) be more accurate--without us needing 328942% boost to accuracy?

[Doomguide2005]

Color me puzzled.  The foe having more health, hitting harder and even being more accurate won't have any effect on your ability to hit them.  If I follow you I'd guess the answer is they're real unlikely to boost your base (scaling by relative level) to hit since that affects you and not the mobs.  And PS: You want to hit bonuses more than accuracy bonuses to successfully strike foes of higher relative level (though both help).   I'm thinking you might have a better shot at accomplishing your goal by creating an SG with a requirement of non-IO builds only or something along those lines and teaming just within the SG.

[SurfD]

A good chunk of the issue probably has to do with the fact that sidekicking people automatically applies a +1 difficulty modifier to everyone who gets sidekicked as they are effectively always 1 level lower than you, which makes things like Radio/Paper missions tricky, as finding full groups of people who are same level or willing to exemp down to your level isn't easy.  Which means that if you are running at +1, all your sidekick buddies are basically fighting against +2.

[OdinTGE]

1 hour ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Color me puzzled.  The foe having more health, hitting harder and even being more accurate won't have any effect on your ability to hit them. 

 

Perhaps I wasn't clear. Currently to increase difficulty we only have one option: increase the level of the enemies. This makes them hit harder, and gives them more health. Much more importantly it makes them harder to hit. I want to be able to increase their damage output and their health, without making them harder to hit. Missing isn't fun. It is, in fact, anti-fun. But I want the mobs to be alive long enough to actually use our cool powers, and I want them to be dangerous enough that a tank feels useful.

 

As to your other point, about forming a SG, I will re-iterate that nerfing ourselves is not fun. A foundational component of any game like this is improving your character. I do not want to gimp myself. I enjoy things like theorycrafting, and working toward improving my character. Currently, if you do that at all you're left in the situation I described. Mobs you toss aside like paper, or 50%+ misses.

 

To be clear, I'm not suggesting blanket changes to the game. I'm well aware many people are happy with how things are. I'm suggesting additional options to the notoriety settings so we can choose changes like this or not.

  

43 minutes ago, SurfD said:

A good chunk of the issue probably has to do with the fact that sidekicking people automatically applies a +1 difficulty modifier to everyone who gets sidekicked as they are effectively always 1 level lower than you, which makes things like Radio/Paper missions tricky, as finding full groups of people who are same level or willing to exemp down to your level isn't easy.  Which means that if you are running at +1, all your sidekick buddies are basically fighting against +2.

Yes, I mentioned a bit of that in my post. When I run radio teams 95% of the people I get are lower level than me, so +3 is +4 for them which means a lot of missing...un-fun.

Edited May 13, 2020 by OdinTGE

[SurfD]

3 hours ago, OdinTGE said:

I want to be able to increase their damage output and their health, without making them harder to hit. Missing isn't fun. It is, in fact, anti-fun. But I want the mobs to be alive long enough to actually use our cool powers, and I want them to be dangerous enough that a tank feels useful.

Feels useful to who though?  For any "real" tank aggro is never going to be an issue .  Aanything other than an AV is never going to live long enough for someone to possibly pull aggro off a tank once they have grabbed it's attention, even if you did buff their health significantly.  And in the world of IO, even a moderately geared tank is barely going to break a sweat soaking up damage, and that's not even factoring in things like proper Sets.  It's far too easy to hit really good defenses on a "tanky" type Archetype once you move into any kind of IO.   In order to make tanks feel properly challenged, you would be threading a VERY fine line of making stuff way too dangerous if the tank doesn't pick it all up.  

[Murcielago]

I like what the live devs did with the Resistance at higher levels by adding a lot more +Acc to them in order to combat IO'd heroes. Maybe add the option to increase +Acc or +To Hit of enemies?

[Psyonico]

If you're having trouble hitting enemies that are +3/+4 and you refuse to use the IO system to get Accuracy bonuses then you have the following choices

 

1. Slot 2 accuracy SOs instead of 1
2. carry lots of yellow inspirations
3. Pick up and slot Tactics

The last one will not only benefit you, but also your SKs.  If you're still having trouble, or refuse to implement these suggestions, I'd suggest that maybe the problem isn't with the system.

[Doomguide2005]

I'm hearing what appears to be a bit of a disconnect between I don't want to gimp myself and not wanting to need more to hit/accuracy to deal with 'whiffing'

 

Sounds like what you want is +0 foes with +4 (or greater) health, dps, resists etc.  Or you want +4's with +6 (or greater) health, etc.. 

 

But the 'whiffing' factor is tied to 'gimping' yourself not the foes.  You can build to not whiff like mad vs +4's.  Doing so while not using IO's  is difficult, but choosing to do so without IO's is essentially gimping yourself given the current game.  Making them survive longer is, I think, your actual issue (regardless of level differences or manner of build) so you have a chance to use more of your powers on any given foe(s).  And that's more a fundamental design issue than a 'simple' notoriety problem.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Doomguide2005

[Snowdaze]

Where part of me agrees with the OP part of my also disagrees. I agree missing is no fun, however it doesn't take much enhancing to mitigate this. I disagree partly on the enemies should have more health as in the fact we are superheroes, we go into a room an clean house as such. But in the form of asking for a difficulty modifier from the notoriety settings I find this an acceptable ask. A place to start looking on this would be how ouroboros sets it's "buffed enemies" challenge setting. If this is a feasible implementation I dunno, but since you arent asking to change the 'core' gameplay, it might be worth investigating.

[OdinTGE]

3 hours ago, Psyonico said:

If you're having trouble hitting enemies that are +3/+4 and you refuse to use the IO system to get Accuracy bonuses then you have the following choices

 

1. Slot 2 accuracy SOs instead of 1
2. carry lots of yellow inspirations
3. Pick up and slot Tactics

The last one will not only benefit you, but also your SKs.  If you're still having trouble, or refuse to implement these suggestions, I'd suggest that maybe the problem isn't with the system.

I never once suggested I refused to use the IO system. I do slot 2 accuracy SOs. Depending on Inspirations is not a real solution. I do take tactics on nearly every character. Again, I never suggested I refuse to improve my character. I specifically said the opposite. If you still refuse to read my posts, I'd suggest that maybe the problem isn't with my post.

  

2 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

But the 'whiffing' factor is tied to 'gimping' yourself not the foes.  You can build to not whiff like mad vs +4's.  Doing so while not using IO's  is difficult, but choosing to do so without IO's is essentially gimping yourself given the current game. 

 

Again, I never suggested not using IOs. Another poster did that, and I specifically pointed out that was never part of my intent, nor  did I ever say anything close to it.

Edited May 13, 2020 by OdinTGE

[SwitchFade]

Radios are the simplest, blandest content in the game, wherein you will find less diversity in enemy faction, challenge and mission dynamics.

 

You put the lvl shift to +4, all mentored individuals are fighting +5-6... Purple patch just owned you.

 

At lvl 54 chances are 1-3 people on your team will have tactics.

 

Acc, dam, rech, ho etc...  Are all functions of the same basic fact, time to defeat a MOB.

 

If I understand it, you prefer being weak to missing. Basically, I want to bit more, but the baddies should have much more HP. In essence your damage is less. Why not just globally nerf damage? Or buff hp? Or buff resistance?

 

Perhaps "difficulty" of not hitting much is challenging you to build a team vs 8 ransoms? I mean, should the game be so simple for 8 ransoms to run MAX difficulty? Should something like tactics and strategy be part for course at max diff?

 

If your preference is to hit more and do less damage, I respect your opinion.

 

But sorry, no vote.

[OdinTGE]

2 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Sounds like what you want is +0 foes with +4 (or greater) health, dps, resists etc.  Or you want +4's with +6 (or greater) health, etc.. 

 

Making them survive longer is, I think, your actual issue (regardless of level differences or manner of build) so you have a chance to use more of your powers on any given foe(s).  And that's more a fundamental design issue than a 'simple' notoriety problem.

I never said I want +0s. I have no issue with slotting for accuracy. I said that even at +3 mobs get deleted in second, even in a team of 10-30s when all sidekicked up to 30-40whatever to join a team. The only way, currently, to make the mobs last longer / be more of a challenge is go to +4. At that point the entire team just misses a lot. Are you suggesting that every character have ~240% accuracy by around level 10 so they can hit the +5s they'll encounter on somebody else's +4 mission? That's more reasonable than an increase mob health?

Edited May 13, 2020 by OdinTGE

[OdinTGE]

10 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

Radios are the simplest, blandest content in the game, wherein you will find less diversity in enemy faction, challenge and mission dynamics.

You put the lvl shift to +4, all mentored individuals are fighting +5-6... Purple patch just owned you.

To be clear, the purple patch did not own anybody. It just took ages to kill the bosses in the pack because the team is hitting roughly 50% of the time.

 

10 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

At lvl 54 chances are 1-3 people on your team will have tactics.

 

Acc, dam, rech, ho etc...  Are all functions of the same basic fact, time to defeat a MOB.

 

If I understand it, you prefer being weak to missing. Basically, I want to bit more, but the baddies should have much more HP. In essence your damage is less. Why not just globally nerf damage? Or buff hp? Or buff resistance?

 

Perhaps "difficulty" of not hitting much is challenging you to build a team vs 8 ransoms? I mean, should the game be so simple for 8 ransoms to run MAX difficulty? Should something like tactics and strategy be part for course at max diff?

 

If your preference is to hit more and do less damage, I respect your opinion.

 

But sorry, no vote.

In what appears to be a shock to people here, level 50+ is not the only place people play the game. And no, you did not understand it-I do not prefer being weak. I've repeatedly said improving our characters is a key factor of the game. I also specifically said I'm not advocating for global changes to the game. I'm advocating for an addition to the notoriety system to give people more options for their missions. So you're voting no on something you don't want, even if it would have no impact on you. Lovely.

Edited May 13, 2020 by OdinTGE

[SwitchFade]

Just now, OdinTGE said:

To be clear, the purple patch did not own anybody. It just took ages to kill the bosses in teh pack because the team is hitting roughly 50% of the time.

 

In what appears to be a shock to people here, level 50+ is not the only place people play the game. And no, you did not understand it-I do not prefer being weak. I've repeatedly said improving our characters is a key factor of the game. I also specifically said I'm not advocating for global changes to the game. I'm advocating for an addition to the notoriety system to give people more options for their missions. So you're voting no on something you don't want, even if it would have no impact on you. Lovely.

To be clear, when you +4, your sk's +5. And anything +5 and up killing your acc and damage is the purple patch owning us all. Including you.

 

And yes, I do understand it. You want things to be "harder" with suggestions that make time to arrest lengthen. And I replied acc, dam, rech, res are all the same thing, you just prefer not missing.

 

So, you don't like missing and the only diff increase involves missing and you proposed a setting with... Baddies have more HP and hit harder. Time to arrest is the same, you just think missing is in fun. Ok, I respect that. The challenge is then: build a better team to take on +4.

 

You're asking for two half full glasses of beer versus the 1 full glass we have. 🤔

 

No vote on time investment of enabling these options.

[Snowdaze]

SwitchFade might very well have a different response if we had a full blown dev team like back in the days of live.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Snowdaze

[OdinTGE]

8 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

To be clear, when you +4, your sk's +5. And anything +5 and up killing your acc and damage is the purple patch owning us all. Including you.

 

And yes, I do understand it. You want things to be "harder" with suggestions that make time to arrest lengthen. And I replied acc, dam, rech, res are all the same thing, you just prefer not missing.

 

So, you don't like missing and the only diff increase involves missing and you proposed a setting with... Baddies have more HP and hit harder. Time to arrest is the same, you just think missing is in fun. Ok, I respect that. The challenge is then: build a better team to take on +4.

 

You're asking for two half full glasses of beer versus the 1 full glass we have. 🤔

 

No vote on time investment of enabling these options.

Your suggestion to build a better team is not viable. I'm not talking about level 50+ content where everybody has immaculate builds. I'm talking about leveling characters with the thousands of people who just like to play casually and level characters, many of whom have never heard of MIDs, let alone used it.

 

Just to re-iterate, those +4/+5s were never a threat. All the minions died in the first wave of Aoe, the LTs. a few seconds later. Then the bosses lasted another minute+. 

  

6 hours ago, SurfD said:

   In order to make tanks feel properly challenged, you would be threading a VERY fine line of making stuff way too dangerous if the tank doesn't pick it all up.  

 

Things should be very dangerous if the tank doesn't pick it all up. That's the point of tanks. The damage characters should be happy to encounter a good tank that is good at collecting everything, and should think twice about wandering into another pack without paying attention or going hard on mobs the tank is still herding.

Edited May 13, 2020 by OdinTGE

[OdinTGE]

5 minutes ago, Snowdaze said:

SwitchFade might very well have a different response if we had a full blown dev team like back in the days of live.

I'm aware the team is small and voluntary. They put up a forum for suggestions, so I made one. I would like to remind everybody that even in a niche community/game like CoH is at this point there is still a disconnect between people who frequent the forums and the bulk of players. It seems clear that the people posting here have the mindset that anything pre-50 simply doesn't exist; everything must be in the context of level shifted 50s with fully tweaked builds. That is not the entire game, and for very many people, isn't the game at all.

[Replacement]

Ok, I can't stick around threads like this for long.  It's full of people being intentionally obtuse and it'll give me hypertension.  This is why I spend more and more time communicating in my Rikti form, these days.

 

@OdinTGE this seems like something to bring up in whatever active conglomerated +difficulty threads happen to exist around at the moment.  Here's the last one I know about: 

 

What I would imagine would be, separate from our current +difficulty settings, adding some additional qualifiers such as "Increased enemy beef (+Resist and HP buffs to all enemies)", "Increased threat (+ToHit and Damage)", etc etc.  I think it's pretty obvious from your OP that you would want something like this, and that it wouldn't remove options from anyone.

[Snowdaze]

48 minutes ago, OdinTGE said:

I'm aware the team is small and voluntary. They put up a forum for suggestions, so I made one. I would like to remind everybody that even in a niche community/game like CoH is at this point there is still a disconnect between people who frequent the forums and the bulk of players. It seems clear that the people posting here have the mindset that anything pre-50 simply doesn't exist; everything must be in the context of level shifted 50s with fully tweaked builds. That is not the entire game, and for very many people, isn't the game at all.

This is entirely why I suggested the Ouro/trial "buffed enemies" challenge setting, possibly be looked at extending to normal content through the Notoriety system. Many of these suggestion threads are either vague in intention or code modifying intensive, situations where people who have been around a long time are going to be automatically defensive. And people need to look at ways to "tweak" the current game with their suggestions instead of outright adding a whole new system. Approach is the number one way to effect change.

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, OdinTGE said:

I never said I want +0s. I have no issue with slotting for accuracy. I said that even at +3 mobs get deleted in second, even in a team of 10-30s when all sidekicked up to 30-40whatever to join a team. The only way, currently, to make the mobs last longer / be more of a challenge is go to +4. At that point the entire team just misses a lot. Are you suggesting that every character have ~240% accuracy by around level 10 so they can hit the +5s they'll encounter on somebody else's +4 mission? That's more reasonable than an increase mob health?

 

So... don't play with level 10s at +4 when you're level 50?

 

level 10s won't be mowing through mobs as suggested, not even at +0 (which is +1 to them) they're going to be (at best) slotted with TOs and only have 7 powers.

 

even level 30s at +2 (+3 to them) won't mow through mobs, they don't have either T9 yet, no incarnate abilities and (most) won't have any IO sets slotted.

[Naraka]

Defense Debuffs are a thing too.

 

I suppose, since they aren't meta, they are wholly overlooked in the grand scheme of things over something like +ToHit when they are actually the same overall value (foe resistances withstanding).

 

It's one of the fun aspects of my FF/rad defender, making it so foes are super easy to hit while making my allies harder to hit.  Irradiate does a hefty -25% or so defense without slotting for 20sec (same as its rech).

 

My earth/earth dom didn't slot for accuracy until nearly level 30 since Quicksand is -25% def and is auto-hit as well as Earthquake being -10% def.

 

Ever consider how much -def are in Peacebringer attacks?  1 volley of a few attacks is putting around -30% def on foes in an AoE.  Even smaller amounts of -def stacked can add up when a team is throwing around a few -def powers as well.

 

So I'd say, it's not that the settings need to cater to specific meta-building strategies, it's just you need to think outside of the box if you're going the non-meta route.  You've got +ToHit, extra accuracy slotting or defense debuffing as your options...or just lower the difficulty.  I feel that's fair.  Making it so foes just don't require those effects just invalidates the need for those effects which I don't think is fair.

 

EDIT: I just looked it up, but Irradiate says it is -37.5% def on Defender?  Is that right?  On Blasters it's -21%def so 1 slot of -def in it pushes it to -28% or so and -50% def on Defender.  And that's just attacks, they have a slew of other powers that can floor def.  Blasters also have Atomic Manipulation or Plant Manipulation.  Thorn Burst also does -21%def.  Stack that with Irradiate and you're at -42%def.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Naraka

[OdinTGE]

48 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

 

So... don't play with level 10s at +4 when you're level 50?

 

I don't even have a level 50 character. Again, people here need to realize that for many people the game has nothing to do with level shifted 50 content. Also, your claims about various levels "not mowing through" things are just objectively false.

[Psyonico]

7 minutes ago, OdinTGE said:

Also, your claims about various levels "not mowing through" things are just objectively false.

proof?  I play with a lot of really good players (Repeat Offenders, who are known for plowing through content) and I can safely say that if you have a single high level character and a bunch of lower level characters SK'd you won't be mowing anything down.

[OdinTGE]

18 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

proof?  I play with a lot of really good players (Repeat Offenders, who are known for plowing through content) and I can safely say that if you have a single high level character and a bunch of lower level characters SK'd you won't be mowing anything down.

My past 2 weeks of doing many hours of radio teams with no selection process for people joining. Just whoever I get including level 1s at times. Running at +2 or +3, from levels 5-49.

 

That's it for me here. I've made my suggestion and repeatedly had to point out things I already said, or point out things I didn't say. I am aware that opportunity cost is a thing, and that it takes time to implement a change. What I'm seeing here, however, is just people wildly unaware that their niche of how they play does not encompass how many other people play and pretending that adding options for others is inherently a negative.

[Doomguide2005]

Well I mistook your comment about filling the team with non-50 non-set as you didn't use them.  That's my bad.  And I agree missing constantly is in fact no fun especially half the time.  That's why Beginner's Luck was implemented.  Snowdaze suggested the Ouro-type buff is that even close to what you're looking for?