Remove the perma ambush aggro from Defend the Midnight Mansion

[Onemantankwall]

you do know this arc can be run at 50 right if you dont simply run it at all you can auto complete the  mish or just simply dont run the arc. It is def 1 of the hardest arcs in the entire game i'd imagine +3-4 is damn near impossible unless you have the best settup imaginable. The people having trouble arent even running it -1 x1 but they want it nerfed. i've watched teams with 50s struggle at +1 its not a arc to take lightly and f%$@ timestops they absolutely destroy healer recharges lol. If its just the ambush mechanic, its ambush AI period not this mish anything that ambushs will lock onto whatever they are going after even public zone ambushs will chase you half way across the map.

[MTeague]

6 hours ago, Puma said:

Im sure that's next to impossible, but thought maybe I'd throw it out.  Otherwise, I think we need to go in and space these ambushes out a little bit more, OR make sure those ambushes that come out this fast or this difficult automatically don't include bosses, etc? 

I'd want an option to keep it right like it is. However, as long as I can play at my preferred settings, I'm fine and dandy with people having an option to turn it down some,

[SurfD]

I have done the Ward arc on 3 different toons (BS/Shield Stalker, Bots/Time MM, Dark/Dark Brute) and never had an issue with the Midnight Mansion defense mission.   Take your time, kill EVERYTHING before moving on to the next thing when doing the tablets, and it is relatively easy.  Especially if you can keep the Midnighters alive until Ward turns on you.   Granted, I don't run at high + values for difficulty adjustment when doing Nightward content, since all of that stuff was tuned to be higher difficulty than normal to begin with, so there is that.

I could see it potentially being rough if you are soloing it as an AT with low Damage output, as the assault waves (they aren't really ambushes) might eventually overwhelm you, but I honestly can't see any Offensive oriented AT suffering there, as I never encountered a situation where I was unable to kill the waves fast enough.

Main trick to getting through the finale is to not fight Ward.  If you have as many Midnighters alive as possible when he turns on you, they serve as a distraction for his spawns.   You have to remember that the finale is a scripted event, and your objective should ALWAYS be to rush Clarity and escort her to the water ASAP, since Ward is effectively invincible and will just stomp you until you trigger the script that ends the encounter.

Edited August 2, 2020 by SurfD

[Takehai]

One of the things I noticed in this thread is that many of the people wanting this mission dumbed down, most of them seem to be running with x2, x3, or more mob spawns. Having played this several times, I can tell you that might be part of the problem. This mission spawns larger than usual ambush spawns. In most of the game, ambush spawns usually are 2-3 mobs. In this mission they actually spawn 4-6 mobs. Multiply that accordingly, and there is part of your problem. Not saying this is the whole problem, of course, that ambush AI problem is bad, and I agree it should be tweaked. But having played it solo with defaults on a dark/dark Dom and a Elec/Elec Tanker, my main problems on the Dom were more mobs than I could keep CC'd, and the tanker running out of End from having to fight so many mobs in succession.

 

Also, drag the mobs over to Master Midnight. He's there for a reason.

 

Just some thoughts to add to the mix.

[Heraclea]

This is one of the reasons why the supposed 'exploit' teleport to base is needed and ought to stay.  It can be used when you are dead.  I generally don't attempt missions like this without stocking up on incarnate purples.  Giving all the mobs stacking mez and debuffs was never a bad idea, and makes having a team on these kinds of missions a liability. 

[Galaxy Brain]

To all the people saying get gud:

 

My Claw/EA was able to wipe the floor with the entire mission until Ward turns on you, I got unlucky and died.... which I then went to the hospital.

 

I was spawn camped by tons of enemies that would kill me during my rez animation where I could not retaliate, and eventually had to cheese my way out of the hospital by mashing movement off the ledge as I spawned / got killed to where I could fall down and use a wakie without as much aggro.

 

That part is not challenging, it's just frustrating as you do not even get a chance to react / do anything other than repeatedly get wrecked by what Ward Summons mere feet away. If the hospital were moved some distance away it'd fix the mission honestly.

[Apparition]

11 hours ago, Heraclea said:

This is one of the reasons why the supposed 'exploit' teleport to base is needed and ought to stay.  It can be used when you are dead.  I generally don't attempt missions like this without stocking up on incarnate purples.  Giving all the mobs stacking mez and debuffs was never a bad idea, and makes having a team on these kinds of missions a liability. 

No thank you.  That exploit needed to go a year ago.  I was never a big teamer on live, and I team even less on Homecoming with the base teleport exploit being one of the major reasons why.  When everyone is in the mission up to several minutes ahead of you because they all use the base teleport exploit and you don’t, and you can possibly lose out on temporary powers or badges as a result, or even have the mission finished before you get there, it’s just no fun.

Edited August 3, 2020 by Apparition

[Puma]

42 minutes ago, Apparition said:

No thank you.  That exploit needed to go a year ago.  I was never a big teamer on live, and I team even less on Homecoming with the base teleport exploit being one of the major reasons why.  When everyone is in the mission up to several minutes ahead of you because they all use the base teleport exploit and you don’t, and you can possibly lose out on temporary powers or badges as a result, or even have the mission finished before you get there, it’s just no fun.

You do realize changing this from an "exploit" to "normal base tp" takes care of that entire problem, right? 


There is literally no reason why base TP should take as long as it does, recharge as slowly as it does, etc.   I dont know of ANYONE who thinks "running to the tram together" is somehow the fun part of teaming.  Especially since the Oro portal takes care of the base TP issue once you hit level 14 anyway. 

Besides, back in the days before "ninja run" this happened as well, when I was stuck with "hover" and people already had SJ or super speed.  

Edited August 3, 2020 by Puma

[ShardWarrior]

45 minutes ago, Apparition said:

No thank you.  That exploit needed to go a year ago.  I was never a big teamer on live, and I team even less on Homecoming with the base teleport exploit being one of the major reasons why.  When everyone is in the mission up to several minutes ahead of you because they all use the base teleport exploit and you don’t, and you can possibly lose out on temporary powers or badges as a result, or even have the mission finished before you get there, it’s just no fun.

Perhaps find a team that will wait for you? 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Just to make sure there was nothing buggy going on causing something I wasnt aware of I ran this arc last night on my stalker, and this morning on my name sake blaster. My mortal stalker on dif set to x4 +1 admittedly had some rough moments during the last fight, in part because I was rusty enough I totally forgot about the ward/clarity script event and tooka  good beating before I noticed I had to go get clarity. but once I did skilled use of caltrops, stun/smoke grenades etc allowed me enough breathing room to get clarity to the pond, after that it was pretty smooth. The EB at the end went down like nothing.

 

With my blaster, the hardest moment I actually had was the big group of EB at the end, They did manage to drop me once, as I took them all head on initially and only killed 4, not paying attention to the named boss and she ran off. Had to go track her down, but ironically she had isolated herself from her remaining cabal members and was easy prey.

 

Now I never died during the ward/clarity part which kind of sounds like the source of the main issue, and I can see that getting things really rough especially for a full team with max mob spawn sizes causing a hell of a lot of chaos. Still Id imagine a good team wouldnt fall there and suffer the issue, and a bad team doesnt deserve a win so thats that imo.

 

So to the OP again I say go from +1 to -1 as a start, and see if it still challenges your party.

[AerialAssault]

33 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Just to make sure there was nothing buggy going on causing something I wasnt aware of I ran this arc last night on my stalker, and this morning on my name sake blaster. My mortal stalker on dif set to x4 +1 admittedly had some rough moments during the last fight, in part because I was rusty enough I totally forgot about the ward/clarity script event and tooka  good beating before I noticed I had to go get clarity. but once I did skilled use of caltrops, stun/smoke grenades etc allowed me enough breathing room to get clarity to the pond, after that it was pretty smooth. The EB at the end went down like nothing.

 

With my blaster, the hardest moment I actually had was the big group of EB at the end, They did manage to drop me once, as I took them all head on initially and only killed 4, not paying attention to the named boss and she ran off. Had to go track her down, but ironically she had isolated herself from her remaining cabal members and was easy prey.

 

Now I never died during the ward/clarity part which kind of sounds like the source of the main issue, and I can see that getting things really rough especially for a full team with max mob spawn sizes causing a hell of a lot of chaos. Still Id imagine a good team wouldnt fall there and suffer the issue, and a bad team doesnt deserve a win so thats that imo.

 

So to the OP again I say go from +1 to -1 as a start, and see if it still challenges your party.

You need to re-adjust your glasses because the OP isn't complaining that the mission is too difficult, it's that they're being spawn camped at the hospital. i.e. they cannot fight back because the enemies are inside the hospital and are being attacked during their 'wake up' animation, in which they can't fight back, which is a major design flaw and cannot possibly be working as intended.

 

 

[MTeague]

6 minutes ago, AerialAssault said:

 and cannot possibly be working as intended.

You're assuming the NCSoft designers were not sadists .... 😉

 

Part of me likes it as it is, because, well, you're defending the mansion from an imminnet invasion.  If you're overwhelmed and crushed, the rest of the midnighters aren't going to manage to hold them off while you port to a hospital, get fixed up, catch your breath, have an orange juice and some crackers and have the nurse make sure you're okay before you leave the infirmary.  If your team wipes, the mansion is just LOST. 

 

If you wipe, I think it should just be Mission FAILED, and you should have to start over from the beginning. 

There's several missions I'd do that for, actually. 

 

Still.  I'll acknowledge, that on any mission that I personally think should be a "Mission FAILED", nothing stops me from exiting the mission, changing to another mission and changing back to reset it.  And I could still do that even if the Devs changed where you respawn at / prevented the enemies from chasing you.

 

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

You're assuming the NCSoft designers were not sadists .... 😉

 

Part of me likes it as it is, because, well, you're defending the mansion from an imminnet invasion.  If you're overwhelmed and crushed, the rest of the midnighters aren't going to manage to hold them off while you port to a hospital, get fixed up, catch your breath, have an orange juice and some crackers and have the nurse make sure you're okay before you leave the infirmary.  If your team wipes, the mansion is just LOST. 

 

If you wipe, I think it should just be Mission FAILED, and you should have to start over from the beginning. 

There's several missions I'd do that for, actually. 

 

Still.  I'll acknowledge, that on any mission that I personally think should be a "Mission FAILED", nothing stops me from exiting the mission, changing to another mission and changing back to reset it.  And I could still do that even if the Devs changed where you respawn at / prevented the enemies from chasing you.

 

Or you can just ignore the idiocy of that spawn camping and just mark the mission as autocomplete.  . . or . . . just go do literally anything else in game with your team/solo.

 

Life's too short to deal with that sort of bug in a past time we play for fun and relaxation.

 

Other folk's mileage may vary. But I've got plenty more important things to do than get frustrated repeatedly for one mission.

 

I'm too old for that s&#$ nowadays. Also "Get the $#%k off my lawn!" 😝

Edited August 3, 2020 by golstat2003

[Brutal Justice]

I was running a team in RWZ and we had a similar situation occur during a Serpent Drummer mission.  I think it was the “help with security conference” mission.    It was the mission that takes place inside the Vanguard base against nemesis.  

 

I was running the mission at lvl 38 with generic IOs, aside from a couple unique globals.   We were a team of 7 running at +1x8.  For some reason the team was split when the security computer was activated.  Chaos, death, and debt soon ensued with waves of nemesis pouring in.  

 

You rez in the hospital in the Vanguard base in which the mission takes place.  Soon the hospital was crawling with nemesis just waiting to pick us off as we tried to regain a foothold.  The lvl 50 fully IOd ice tank, who had just joined the team prior to this mission, quit almost immediately after things went south.  Leaving us with 6 mish mash lvls of toons fighting for our lives.  At some point, recalling my old Counter Strike days, I yelled out “SPAWN CAMPERS” in chat.  5-10 intense minutes later, many deaths, much debt, we were all standing on a pile of our enemies’ fallen bodies.  

 

Had our team been more patient and together when the ambushes began we probably would have been fine.  Similar to the city hall ambush in Posi 1.  If your team is not moving in coordination, or people don’t know what is going to occur, you end up in trouble in a hurry.  Those city hall ambushes will bird dog anybody in the mission and often end up at the zone in location.  

 

It’s the losses that make the victories so sweet.  

 

I haven’t experienced this particular mission but I would be hesitant to have any part of it changed.  There are so few moments in the game that can lead to actual failure, and not just a trip to the hospital or a simple “mission failed” mission completion.  I am sure it can be handled when the team knows what to expect.  It’s not like the toon has to be deleted.  Logging out and back in will place you outside the mission door to either coordinate your current effort or come back later with knowledge as your weapon.  

 

Much of the game is easy for vets simply because they know things like, “ you get close to that city hall door, your whole team better commit to what’s coming out of it, or you’re going to have trouble.”  Don’t fight Reichsman, run away.  Pop inspirations before you fight your team’s doppelgängers, etc.  

 

I vote leave the spawn campers and the few chances of failure.  

 

PS - we failed that Serpent Drummer mission after overcoming all the chaos because somebody rushed into the room with Lady Grey, without the team, and couldn’t handle it so Lady Grey died ☠️

[Vanden]

1 hour ago, Brutal Justice said:

I vote leave the spawn campers and the few chances of failure.

To be clear, you're voting in favor of leaving a specific, likely chance that a player will be completely unable to proceed, caught in a death loop that is literally impossible to escape without logging out or using an exploit command to leave the mission. That is what you want to keep in the game?

[Puma]

3 hours ago, Vanden said:

To be clear, you're voting in favor of leaving a specific, likely chance that a player will be completely unable to proceed, caught in a death loop that is literally impossible to escape without logging out or using an exploit command to leave the mission. That is what you want to keep in the game?

And doing so admitting that they haven't actually "experienced this mission".  

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

8 hours ago, AerialAssault said:

You need to re-adjust your glasses because the OP isn't complaining that the mission is too difficult, it's that they're being spawn camped at the hospital. i.e. they cannot fight back because the enemies are inside the hospital and are being attacked during their 'wake up' animation, in which they can't fight back, which is a major design flaw and cannot possibly be working as intended.

 

 

Uhm are you perhaps unfamiliar with the mission under discussion?

 

In it we are defending the midnight mansion in an open world type map cut from the night ward world area. When your defeated, you dont leave the map, but instead revive at a location near the mansion. The complaint seems to focus around having ones self overwhelmed because they had upped their dif beyond their capabilities, and had a team that wasnt composed entirely of at level or better characters, and was lacking tougher front line AT types, in a mish that is all about face tanking wave after wave of mobs.

 

It is true there is a point that one can, if they have allowed the mobs to build up, to near the rez location, cause a situation that is very tough to recover from. However as I just re played this content twice in the last 2 days, I can assure you there is no bugginess, just game design that creates a mission failure without a hard failure trigger like time running out. If your team does end up beaten down and overwhelmed, it can be a defacto game over. But after playing the content myself first hand I imagine it happening would only occur to those in over their head in the first place.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

6 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

Or you can just ignore the idiocy of that spawn camping and just mark the mission as autocomplete.  . . or . . . just go do literally anything else in game with your team/solo.

 

Life's too short to deal with that sort of bug in a past time we play for fun and relaxation.

 

Other folk's mileage may vary. But I've got plenty more important things to do than get frustrated repeatedly for one mission.

 

I'm too old for that s&#$ nowadays. Also "Get the $#%k off my lawn!" 😝

Its not like its some unique super hard fight. when ward goes untouchable, you head over to clarity and grab her and lead her to the pond, its just like leading the seer to her pedestal on the ITF. and its pretty easy because ward and his minions are leashed to the mansion area, so once you step off the cliff and drop down and head for clarity you lose a good chunk of mobs, especially if you did a good job keeping the midnighters alive so they can hold the aggro while you go get clarity.

 

For me the part that seems to be being called the hard part of the mish, is one of the easiest parts of it. Im trying to express why I find it so and what simple methods I am employing to do so. And as Ive said I soloed it set to the mob size the Op struggled with as a team. I honestly atm am feeling if a persons toon is struggling badly on this mish, it needs a respec.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

23 hours ago, Heraclea said:

This is one of the reasons why the supposed 'exploit' teleport to base is needed and ought to stay.  It can be used when you are dead.  I generally don't attempt missions like this without stocking up on incarnate purples.  Giving all the mobs stacking mez and debuffs was never a bad idea, and makes having a team on these kinds of missions a liability. 

my blaster who relies on a mixture of regen via drain psyche, and dmg res via force of nature to face tank, did so with the mobs on this mish, with no issue, set to x4+1 and only the final phase against the large group of EB pushed passed my toons face tank limits, and even then he thinned their group by 4 before they got him, and the named boss took off and foolishly isolated herself making the only kill that mattered at that point an easy one.

 

That was on a blaster using less regen then a regen scrapper, and a pseudo unstoppable for my DR. Yes I also nuke constantly, but I can say this much with no doubt, my scrapper, or PB would def out perform my blaster on such a face tanky mish.

 

Which mobs do you find especially punishing and why?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

8 hours ago, MTeague said:

You're assuming the NCSoft designers were not sadists .... 😉

 

Part of me likes it as it is, because, well, you're defending the mansion from an imminnet invasion.  If you're overwhelmed and crushed, the rest of the midnighters aren't going to manage to hold them off while you port to a hospital, get fixed up, catch your breath, have an orange juice and some crackers and have the nurse make sure you're okay before you leave the infirmary.  If your team wipes, the mansion is just LOST. 

 

If you wipe, I think it should just be Mission FAILED, and you should have to start over from the beginning. 

There's several missions I'd do that for, actually. 

 

Still.  I'll acknowledge, that on any mission that I personally think should be a "Mission FAILED", nothing stops me from exiting the mission, changing to another mission and changing back to reset it.  And I could still do that even if the Devs changed where you respawn at / prevented the enemies from chasing you.

 

thats not entirely accurate, there are a few mish, that once accepted start a timer, that if you ignore, will lead to mish failure even if you never step in the mish.

 

And lets not forget, back in the old days, and hell even now if they are being run by folks actually in need of the main reason, the freespec, that the TV trial can actually wreck and wipe such teams in the reactor room. Because its basically the same thing,a  defend against many waves sitch, and one that once a wipe happens, will pretty much mean mish over.

[Vanden]

17 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

my blaster who relies on a mixture of regen via drain psyche, and dmg res via force of nature to face tank, did so with the mobs on this mish, with no issue, set to x4+1

You sure wrote a lot of posts and words to miss the point. So you use Drain Psyche and Force of Nature to survive on your Blaster? Cool. Too bad you can't use Drain Psyche or Force of Nature while you're animation locked standing up. Because that's the actual issue with this mission. There's literally nothing you can do. The enemies kill you while your character is not under your control. The Michael Jordan of CoH would have no better chance of escaping the death loop than a can of soda that fell on your keyboard and is holding down a few random keys. The only way it could be more unfair is if it killed you on the character select screen.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

14 minutes ago, Vanden said:

You sure wrote a lot of posts and words to miss the point. So you use Drain Psyche and Force of Nature to survive on your Blaster? Cool. Too bad you can't use Drain Psyche or Force of Nature while you're animation locked standing up. Because that's the actual issue with this mission. There's literally nothing you can do. The enemies kill you while your character is not under your control. The Michael Jordan of CoH would have no better chance of escaping the death loop than a can of soda that fell on your keyboard and is holding down a few random keys. The only way it could be more unfair is if it killed you on the character select screen.

But the why they are having this issue in the first place is also very important. What facts Ive been given are that the OPs team consisted of no real front line ATs, and half the team was being side kicked up to the level of the content, so a team that is not even at the actual power level for the content. That then at one very specific phase of the content, they suffered a wipe, that they could not recover from. Because this wipe happened with mobs being all over the area people respawn in, it can make it very difficult to recover. I personally dont see an issue with this. Its an added bit of challenge and one that encourages not screwing up during the critical story moment when the players need to lead clarity to the pool.

 

I mean are we at the point that people are saying mish success must always be a certainty? Because I just ran this content 2 times on very different characters, at the party size and dif increase of the OP, solo, and did not suffer some systemic failure I could not recover from. Im not saying there isnt an extreme circumstance in which a failure spiral occurs from which only restarting the mish is an option. I am saying I am ok with that possibility being in game, do not  see it as some bug nor design flaw, and consider removing it to be dumbing down the game in a very bad way, and for a very bad reason.

[Puma]

37 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

But the why they are having this issue in the first place is also very important. What facts Ive been given are that the OPs team consisted of no real front line ATs, and half the team was being side kicked up to the level of the content, so a team that is not even at the actual power level for the content. That then at one very specific phase of the content, they suffered a wipe, that they could not recover from. Because this wipe happened with mobs being all over the area people respawn in, it can make it very difficult to recover. I personally dont see an issue with this. Its an added bit of challenge and one that encourages not screwing up during the critical story moment when the players need to lead clarity to the pool.

 

I mean are we at the point that people are saying mish success must always be a certainty? Because I just ran this content 2 times on very different characters, at the party size and dif increase of the OP, solo, and did not suffer some systemic failure I could not recover from. Im not saying there isnt an extreme circumstance in which a failure spiral occurs from which only restarting the mish is an option. I am saying I am ok with that possibility being in game, do not  see it as some bug nor design flaw, and consider removing it to be dumbing down the game in a very bad way, and for a very bad reason.

Do you believe the mission was designed with the intent that, in the event of a team wipe (for whatever reason) with a large spawn still present, you were supposed to become stuck in an endless loop of rez/kill/rez/kill with literally no other option but to actually quit the mission and log out to exit?


If the answer is yes...then we just disagree.

If the answer is no, then no matter HOW rare it is or HOW many times you run the mission and don't experience it personally, the fact that others do means the mission has a design flaw and that flaw probably should be fixed. 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Puma

[AerialAssault]

I mean, maybe it's just me, but I don't think waterboarding the players is fun or exciting gameplay.

[nihilii]

8 hours ago, Vanden said:

To be clear, you're voting in favor of leaving a specific, likely chance that a player will be completely unable to proceed, caught in a death loop that is literally impossible to escape without logging out or using an exploit command to leave the mission. That is what you want to keep in the game?

Personally, I'm sympathetic to removing the spawn camping, but this is a bit hyperbolic. I got spawn camped on solo +4/x8 and still managed to clear the mission, with many many deaths. The trick is to not wait before you hosp. You can die and hosp the next second and die again and hosp the next second and so on, and in doing that enemy attacks eventually end up on recharge, which leaves you time to throw one attack or two, maybe even move away. Dying/rezzing fast enough also breaks the animation root sometimes and lets you move. Sometimes I'd even get a break getting knockbacked off the roof. Then you've got Return to Battle and other self rezzes with immunity timers. It's weird and broken but it's by no mean "literally" impossible, provided you're willing to use the tools available to you, even before exploits.