Remove the perma ambush aggro from Defend the Midnight Mansion

[AerialAssault]

Funnily enough, many (but not all) of the post-GR escorts & allies use a similar style of AI wherein they see through their rescuer's stealth, and some don't even lose track of the players, ever, following them through the fire and flames and over mountains and valleys unerringly.

 

[Sakura Tenshi]

4 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

You have the benefit of hindsight here in knowing what to expect from the mission.  Many others will not and again, poor map design exacerbates getting spawn camped. 

As I mentioned, ultimately my friends had an idea of what to expect, the real issue, at it's core is that once failure happens, the chance for recovery is effectively impossible.

 

So my challenge for any of you is: Do this mission and die. Then try to get back into the fight with the ambushes always waiting for you. You'll either need to die a lot, use the base exploit, or log out.

 

Again, this would actually be honestly better if you did just fail the mission and get booted out. But it's frustrating to constantly lock us into a cycle from which it becomes impossible to escape without exploits.

[Coyotedancer]

24 minutes ago, AerialAssault said:

Funnily enough, many (but not all) of the post-GR escorts & allies use a similar style of AI wherein they see through their rescuer's stealth, and some don't even lose track of the players, ever, following them through the fire and flames and over mountains and valleys unerringly.

 

Almost all of the escorts that are tagged as combat pets can follow you to the ends of the earth, Hide or not. That does seem to have been extended to a few non-combat types near the end. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

3 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

It does not matter the before, I want you to experience what I did on my /Energy Aura scrapper and happen to take an L at that part. It really doesn't matter what lead to it, but it seems you have not experienced it.

 

Experience what we're talking about, then get back to us.

Sure, and you go run it at the lowest possible dif and tell us about it. Because remember my contention is that for a solo player on solo dif, its easy, and that if a full team wipe occurs for a max mob spawn mish, that the team has failed so bad they dont deserve to get a completion. Not that this failure cascade cant happen, that when it does, having to reset the mish should be the only option left after having failed even if the mish doesnt say you have.

 

What I am saying is this situation is so rare, and basically requires a team to be in over their head so badly they should not even be there. My point is that if we dumb it down even a little bit, because there is no AV or GM, that if players can easily go out and re insp up and toggle up that the mish becomes just another that we can always brute force rather than have to accept a defeat and need to redo it with a new approach, even if that approach is to solo it at -1.

 

Can you not honestly see that if they change this, this mission becomes a trivial thing with no real challenge and no way to fail it? We would need to add a timer countdown to force a certain level of dps clear speed, or make clarity very fragile and much longer walk to her objective to add some new real chance at failure to keep the actual challenge while giving you what you want. Or do you genuinely think there should be no chance at a real fail?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

13 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

Almost all of the escorts that are tagged as combat pets can follow you to the ends of the earth, Hide or not. That does seem to have been extended to a few non-combat types near the end. 

except all the ones in Faultline, yep you can easily lose Jimmy and Nette, as well as Doc D and Penny if you stealth or just move to fast. Same with the sisters on the lgtf and actually all the allies in the old rwz arcs, or the ones in actually a whole hell of a lot of content old and newer do not see through stealth and will not follow you if you get too far from them. IME very few allies follow you like a summoned pet. Hell even the ally you get in part 1 of pandoras box wont follow you if you dont run up to them when you step outside of the base map. First few times I ran it I didnt even think they actually came outside at all because I just stepped out flew up and never saw the npc ally to approach to get them to follow.

 

 

[Coyotedancer]

8 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

except all the ones in Faultline, yep you can easily lose Jimmy and Nette, as well as Doc D and Penny if you stealth or just move to fast. Same with the sisters on the lgtf and actually all the allies in the old rwz arcs, or the ones in actually a whole hell of a lot of content old and newer do not see through stealth and will not follow you if you get too far from them. IME very few allies follow you like a summoned pet. Hell even the ally you get in part 1 of pandoras box wont follow you if you dont run up to them when you step outside of the base map. First few times I ran it I didnt even think they actually came outside at all because I just stepped out flew up and never saw the npc ally to approach to get them to follow.

 

 

That's mostly because Jimmy is slower than Christmas, and Fusionette has the attention span of a goldfish. She gets distracted and jets off out of leash range. XD

 

Our moving faster than the NPCs is the at the root of that issue for most of them, honestly. It's easy to outpace a lot of them if you have any kind of movement bonuses at all, including basic Sprint. If they don't run into mobs in the meantime, some will try to catch up. Others just give up. 

 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Coyotedancer said:

I'll also gently remind that all of that pre-dated the changes to our Assassin's attacks that allowed "quick use", and before the ATO sets came along with that Hide proc that changed our sneaky little world. Those two changes have made stalking through the ambushes of Praetoria much less annoying than they were at the time.

Hm. There is that. I admit, if Assassin's Focus wasn't a thing, and if I did not have the ATO's, my stalker would be.... lots less fun.

I'd still play him, I'm very attached to the character concept from Guardian Server back in the Old Days. 

 

But it really is night and day.  The Stalkers who used to be bedraggled starving puppies with sad eyes sitting in the rain hoping for a group, grew up to become face-wrecking machines with the Assassin's Focus changes and the ATO's.

[Coyotedancer]

3 minutes ago, MTeague said:

Hm. There is that. I admit, if Assassin's Focus wasn't a thing, and if I did not have the ATO's, my stalker would be.... lots less fun.

I'd still play him, I'm very attached to the character concept from Guardian Server back in the Old Days. 

 

But it really is night and day.  The Stalkers who used to be bedraggled starving puppies with sad eyes sitting in the rain hoping for a group, grew up to become face-wrecking machines with the Assassin's Focus changes and the ATO's.

Stalkers could always be dangerous... It was just harder without the fancy toys. XD

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Can you not honestly see that if they change this, this mission becomes a trivial thing with no real challenge and no way to fail it?

This isn't the point.

 

Failing should not equal getting spawn camped forever.

 

Look, I understand that if you tweak it to run at absolutely the easiest setting possible you probably will not encounter this issue. But that does not excuse that the issue still exists in most anything but said setting. It does not make the mission any more challenging if a defeat essentially soft locks the game, it instead makes it more frustrating.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[Leo_G]

Ah, I actually parked my 35 Ice/nin stalker dead on that map and haven't picked her back up. 

 

Not that I don't like challenge, I just got frustrated, turned the game off, took a few days break and when I came back I had an idea for a different character. That was over 2 months ago lol

 

She was pretty cool tho, one of the characters in my series of magic androids/robots/cyborgs. I'll eventually go back and start the mission over. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

51 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

This isn't the point.

 

Failing should not equal getting spawn camped forever.

 

Look, I understand that if you tweak it to run at absolutely the easiest setting possible you probably will not encounter this issue. But that does not excuse that the issue still exists in most anything but said setting. It does not make the mission any more challenging if a defeat essentially soft locks the game, it instead makes it more frustrating.

So just for you I just ran it solo on a PB whose is built for teaming as such quite a few of his powers dont get to be used at all, and he is lacking any benefit from his inherent, something the other ATs dont.

 

Just for you when it came time to get clarity I let ward and his friends beat on me, and after abit when light form wore off they actually managed to. so as I had outlined in previous posts, because I kept all the npc allies alive until this moment, and didnt do anything stupid like drag mobs over to me by turning on a taunt aura like rise to the challenge, I was even witha  huge host of mobs over in front of the doors revive, stand up, click my tank mode clicky, and wade back into battle and after one build up nuke, all the trash was gone, and a few rapid attacks from my nearly spammable extreme damage melee attack as a follow up all the bosses were done. Because and here is a fun fact, the mobs that come to help ward, and his minions, are not part of the ambush mobs and their auto seek script, now the ones  that come when you get near clarity do. So you would have to both fuck up and not clear ward, and fuck up down with clarity and leave those ambush mobs alive, for a wipe around that point to trigger this cascade event that makes failure almost impossible to avoid.

 

IMO this is likely what must be happening to those having such an issue. They either fail to clear ward and the mobs around the rez point before engaging the final ambush with clarity, and not keeping the allied npcs alive to back them up, or are splitting up, and having both the ward group and ambush wave to contend with, because then yeah if even one person triggered that last ambush while the rest are engaged with ward, and then gets face planted, they are gonna home in on the rest of the team.

 

 

[ShardWarrior]

Yet again, you are going into the mission with the benefit of knowing what to do and when.

[Galaxy Brain]

7 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Yet again, you are going into the mission with the benefit of knowing what to do and when.

and apparently with a God mode he could whip out instantly.

 

What difficulty did you play on?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

8 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Yet again, you are going into the mission with the benefit of knowing what to do and when.

which is a non point if ever I heard one. In games there is this thing called content mastery. It means content inherently gets easier the more you play it. The game tells you waht to do, and when to do it. If your not paying attention, or just rushing through yeah its gonna bite you, and thats as it should be imo.

[ShardWarrior]

1 minute ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

which is a non point if ever I heard one. In games there is this thing called content mastery. It means content inherently gets easier the more you play it. The game tells you waht to do, and when to do it. If your not paying attention, or just rushing through yeah its gonna bite you, and thats as it should be imo.

What other missions in the game have mobs spawn camping the hospital?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

2 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

and apparently with a God mode he could whip out instantly.

 

What difficulty did you play on?

as before +1x4, and its called light form. you know the clicky tank mode PB can perma that will cap your dmg res across the board. and As I said I didnt even need to whip it out instantly because I died for ward, not for clarity's ambush mob which wont trigger till you get near her. Since I revved, then went and wiped wards group I guess maybe I didnt do as you ask. I guess I could of bypassed ward after reviving and go trigger the ambush then draw it back up to ward, but seriously anyone who does that does not deserve a win unless they can power through that epic frack up.

[Galaxy Brain]

Do that and see if you can skill your way out of it.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

2 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

What other missions in the game have mobs spawn camping the hospital?

What does that have to do with anything, missions are allowed to have unique challenges. That is part of this mishes design and fits thematically based on the story. I mean man your all over the place first its not fair to those running it the first time, now its not fair because it does something different then most mishes. What about the prisons in some maps, if your a low dps at those doors take so long to break through I have actually seen players rage quit from ending up in them. Should we take those out to or remove the cell doors or make the cell doors 1 hp?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

1 minute ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Do that and see if you can skill your way out of it.

why, my entire point has been its ok to have such a massive fuck up make it unwinnable. Not that in can be gotten out of easily. Ive proven that it takes a very specific set of circumstances to create this situation. You have to ignore ward, and wipe at the ambush for clarity without doing much damage to it to have such a cluster of mobs form up at the mansion including the player seeking ones that will lead the ward group to the spawn point.

 

I would have to at this point do so with a single player against a very large spawn, well beyond the capabilites of most builds in the pre incarnate power range to handle rapidly as evena  nuke can only kill so many targets at once.

 

My point has been since the get go, that this event requires a massive mistake on the players part. One that deserves to basically be told mish over. but at least one poster in this thread said their group went through this very thing, managed to power through it, and felt satisfied in the end, not unduly punished by the game.

 

But I can tell you of at least one power that would help even in that deep shit sitch that would help thin out the mobs eventually. rise of the phoenix. nuke self res even if cornered up there will eventually melt all the seeker mobs, spawn camping and give the team a chance to recover. And since its not a totally exclusive power its one that imo deserves at least one single bit of content to be king and shine in.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

 Frankly I am bored and sick of this mish arc after 4 runs in 4 days. Especially when none of you are really putting in any work beyond a single run, that you seem to think proves your point when failing against increased dif while solo is a perfectly valid outcome, and even those arguing with me admit that at baseline it does not have this issue. Just like we dont balance content for the absolute maxed builds, we can not dumb it down due to a very rare level of fuck uppery that should not result in a victory.

 

Since even some arguing to change it admit, that at baseline it is not an issue, as far as I see it, they even if they wont admit it, have conceded the only point needed to prove their position invalid. Backed up by their basically trolling and making demands on my play time and even how I play, wanting me to out right play badly to somehow meet some goal post shifting criteria.

 

Here is what I can say, anyone can solo this content at baseline. any decent team, working together, should be able to handle the increase mob spawns, anyone upping the dif further then that, for any reason, has no right to bitch about anything in the mish, and asking for it to be dumb downed is ironic when there is all this talk of lack of challenge in the game in general.

 

And if you dont play smart, rush, dont clear areas of potential adds, and or split the team in a crucial moment, your gonna have a  very bad day.

[Onemantankwall]

4 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

As I mentioned, ultimately my friends had an idea of what to expect, the real issue, at it's core is that once failure happens, the chance for recovery is effectively impossible.

 

So my challenge for any of you is: Do this mission and die. Then try to get back into the fight with the ambushes always waiting for you. You'll either need to die a lot, use the base exploit, or log out.

 

Again, this would actually be honestly better if you did just fail the mission and get booted out. But it's frustrating to constantly lock us into a cycle from which it becomes impossible to escape without exploits.

as I said I pug this arc all the time (1 of my fav due to challenge vs regular content) we sometimes die and end up fighting for our lives at spawn collecting those debt badges. the biggest trick is for everyone count down rez same time and focus assist off 1 member and cut em down as you respawn. As I mention my pure hatred for timestops and their ability to kill recharges i make sure we focus those down first and things get sooooo much easier. I mean, yea this wont work if you're in over your head with diff and team settup. Which if you are then you countdown rez and run straight for the cliff, once you're away from the majority of the mass you can slip out as a team for a reset. Last resort would be obviously log out and reset or just base and regrp.

 

I know people arent use to "hard" content being in coh anymore and you can usually steamroll things mindlessly without thought and  without target assisting general grouping and sticking together so of course this would stomp people who arent use to running in real tight teams/formations. Most of my pug teams starts the ambush sloppy then after the initial wipe id call for a full regrp for pbaoe buffs and with target calling and we'd slap em down together. As I have also said i go in expecting to die plenty of times running this pre50 but never not once have i not completed this arc/mish no matter how many times we hit the dirt.

 

P.S. Like i said above I like to fully explain and warn people joining what they are about to get into before we go leeroying into the arc and by doing so i havent had a team collapse or mish abandonment yet. Sometimes its hell but we get through it eventually which makes seeing that MISSION COMPLETE sooooo satisfying. 

Edited August 5, 2020 by Onemantankwall

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

 Frankly I am bored and sick of this mish arc after 4 runs in 4 days. Especially when none of you are really putting in any work beyond a single run, that you seem to think proves your point when failing against increased dif while solo is a perfectly valid outcome, and even those arguing with me admit that at baseline it does not have this issue. Just like we dont balance content for the absolute maxed builds, we can not dumb it down due to a very rare level of fuck uppery that should not result in a victory.

 

Since even some arguing to change it admit, that at baseline it is not an issue, as far as I see it, they even if they wont admit it, have conceded the only point needed to prove their position invalid. Backed up by their basically trolling and making demands on my play time and even how I play, wanting me to out right play badly to somehow meet some goal post shifting criteria.

 

Here is what I can say, anyone can solo this content at baseline. any decent team, working together, should be able to handle the increase mob spawns, anyone upping the dif further then that, for any reason, has no right to bitch about anything in the mish, and asking for it to be dumb downed is ironic when there is all this talk of lack of challenge in the game in general.

 

And if you dont play smart, rush, dont clear areas of potential adds, and or split the team in a crucial moment, your gonna have a  very bad day.

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

What other missions in the game have mobs spawn camping the hospital?

I want to say that can happen in bank missions, since you don't go to the hospital, you go to the police station - which is not protected against this. (Part of why I rarely pug bank missions.)

Edited August 6, 2020 by Greycat

[SurfD]

3 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

What other missions in the game have mobs spawn camping the hospital?

Almost every Mayhem Mission can do this if you screw up badly enough.

Mayhem Missions put you in a prison/jail when you are defeated in the mission.
The Jail is NOT protected by drones, and will often have hostile jailers sitting right outside the door of your cell, waiting for you to break out.

Mayhem Missions will also spawn heatseaker ambushes that will follow you ANYWHERE on the map if you constantly run around the map (they appear to be triggered by transitioning from one section of the map to another, and multiple spawns can easily be triggered if you run randomly around the map).  

It can be trivially easy, for example, to end up with a half dozen+ multi mob ambushes chasing you across the map if you are doing something like an exploration run for badges.  And what happens if they all catch you at a bad time?  You faceplant, and wake up in Jail.  And if you don't take the door out fast enough, EVERY SINGLE ONE of those ambushes will then follow you to the Jail and camp the shit out of you until you manage to kill them all.

Edited August 6, 2020 by SurfD

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

I want to say that can happen in bank missions, since you don't go to the hospital, you go to the police station - which is not protected against this. (Part of why I rarely pug bank missions.)

This is true, but, each time you're put into a fresh cell with a new cell door to beat down. That gives you time to put your toggles on, to re-summon your pets. etc.

Unless of course, you die so many times that you run out of cell doors. (so, 9 times?)