Soloing and destined to fail missions

[Ukase]

4 hours ago, biostem said:

I'm confused - you are running at a difficulty geared toward 4-8 players, then are upset when you run into issues doing it solo?  There is an option for soloist - run it at x1.  Even if you were able to handle the bulk of the mission without issue, you enter it with the understanding that it is geared toward more players...

While I can appreciate what you're saying on its surface, I don't think you're really getting what the OP is disappointed in. It's not the difficulty, it's the idea of a game mechanic altering a character useless for what seems like an eternity - allowing the NPC to be clobbered. I suspect without the suspension field, the OP or any other soloist would have had at least a chance to taunt, toss a fireball or some other aggro collecting attack to get the ambush off the NPC hostage. 

In case it needs to be said - although I'm not sure it does, I'll state it here: 
CoH has a lot of different types of players. None are playing in a "better" fashion than anyone else. It's just a different way. 

Until you have solo'd a lot of difficult content, it may be difficult to understand what the OP is having an issue with. 

[laudwic]

1 hour ago, Without_Pause said:

There is a difference between being hard and being auto fail.

Absolutely, but there is also a big difference between fighting mobs that are standing around doing nothing until you launch your attack versus mobs running in to attack you.  I would bet that ambush your talking about, if it was like the rest of the mobs in the mission waiting for you to do something before acting, you could have handled it.  There is a big change when the mobs aren't giving you the equivalent of a DnD surprise round. 

 

Frankly, I don't see this as auto fail I see it as working as designed.  If you are going to take on higher difficulties, you should have a higher chance at failure.  If there is not a chance at failure then what is the point?  You said I'll do something that the developers have set in their guidelines that is of a reasonable difficulty for a group of 4 at a level higher than you take a character into, you took an added challenge for higher rewards (more xp and inf than running the mission as +0/1).  It seems that the concern is when the challenge isn't just damage x mobs to defeat when you get to dictate when the fight starts and get first shot but rather when it requires keeping the NPC safe by healing, keeping aggro off, or keeping the AoEs falling in an area the NPC isn't.  On a don't let NPC escape, if you guess the wrong corridor and the NPC escapes by going the way you didn't or couldn't cover due to group size, or when there is a lot of enemies, again due to the mission being set up for a larger number of players, and the NPC can slip out among the masses, then failure is absolutely valid.  

 

The vast majority of my play is Solo.  I have 10 lvl 50s and all but one has all the incarnate levels unlocked.  I run them at difficulties I'm comfortable with that fit my play style.  Now that I've played more and want to level up faster, I run double xp until late 40s as the amount of Inf I get playing my 50s funds other characters and to speed up leveling.  I also rotate between alts to take advantage of patrol xp.  I have a ton of characters between 20 and 50 to rotate between.

 

The possibility to fail a mission is a feature not a flaw.  An increase in that possibility when you take on mission sizes designed for larger groups is similarly a feature.  

[laudwic]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

While I can appreciate what you're saying on its surface, I don't think you're really getting what the OP is disappointed in. It's not the difficulty, it's the idea of a game mechanic altering a character useless for what seems like an eternity - allowing the NPC to be clobbered. I suspect without the suspension field, the OP or any other soloist would have had at least a chance to taunt, toss a fireball or some other aggro collecting attack to get the ambush off the NPC hostage. 

In case it needs to be said - although I'm not sure it does, I'll state it here: 
CoH has a lot of different types of players. None are playing in a "better" fashion than anyone else. It's just a different way. 

Until you have solo'd a lot of difficult content, it may be difficult to understand what the OP is having an issue with. 

 

Been there, soloed a lot of characters to 50 by playing through content.  Had many times in which an ambush would come and attack my solo character even when my character was invisible. 

 

OP is suggesting a change to the mechanic/mission design of the game, one that would damage what I enjoy for the game.  As OP is suggesting a change, OP has the burden of supporting that change especially since he is trying to force his style of playing on to mine by trying to get the game changed.  This isn't I farm/I play content, this is make changes to how certain missions work to accommodate how I prefer to play.

 

OP's character is not being made useless, OP is having to adapt to encountering enemies that are coming at him ready to attack rather than being able to dictate the battle field for when OP is recharged and ready to go and getting the first shot in.  OP is complaining that it is harder to protect a fragile NPC when there are a larger number of enemies because he set the mission to have a larger number of enemies.  Part of the challenge is to protect the NPC, that isn't only being able to take down a group of enemies, it is doing so in a way that keeps the NPC safe.  It should be harder to do that when you set your mission difficulty for a higher level then your character and for a larger party size.  Some times you pop inspirations when you get the idea an ambush is coming, they are about as good as end mission bosses about keeping their mouths shut.  Maybe you even run off from the NPC you are protecting so you keep the incoming mobs away from them.  There are ways to do it, and it is harder when you increase the level of the enemies and the number of them.  As it should be.  If you increase the challenge level, gasp, you increase the challenge.

 

There should be a chance of failure, the chance of failure should increase as the difficulty increases.  Protecting an NPC should be harder on a solo character versus a group, especially at higher difficulty levels.  Catching a single fleeing mob should be harder for a single character than a group.  This is a feature not a flaw.

[Luminara]

40 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

There is a difference between being hard and being auto fail.

 

And that's a critical observation in this context.  Failure can move a plot forward, failure can change the direction of a story, failure can provide incentive.  If we had an extra mission to rescue Lady Grey from the renegade Vanguard after she's captured in the bait mission, or failing the "Prevent 30 Firbolg from escaping" mission ultimately led to Eochai spawning in the final Croatoa mission, or the PPD hostages in safeguards dying meant EBs/AVs spawned in the jail cells, those would be examples of proper storytelling and its use in mission failure.  Even if we assume that the intent was for us to fail these missions, they're poorly done because they lack consequences.  When we fail these missions, nothing happens.  We move on to the same mission we play if we succeed.

 

A mission being difficult can be positive, too, from the storytelling perspective.  Succeeding against the odds is a key element in many hero/villain narratives.  When players win the day despite having the deck stacked against them, they feel empowered, capable, exhilarated.  Clumsy spawn placement and bad mission design aren't substitutes for good storytelling, though, because they don't engender the appropriate feeling of success.  When spawns drop right on top of a hostage the instant we free it, give us no time to prepare and no opportunity to succeed, that's not a difficult situation, it's a deliberate attempt to ruin the player's day, to take a big, steaming dump on the player.  Going back to the possibility that the intent was for the player to fail, there are already ways to create the situation in which that spawn appears right on top of that hostage, such as Teleportation, but instead, the designer chose, chose to immediately spawn the enemies in place, thereby denying the player even the briefest moment of respite in which he/she could turn the situation around.  And, as noted above, failing doesn't alter the outcome in any way, we move right along to the same mission that would otherwise follow.

 

People don't dislike these missions because they're "harder", they dislike them because they deliberately impose conditions which lead to failure without making use of any of the established methods of increasing difficulty (tougher foes, like EBs/AVs; higher level foes; ambushes; spawns Teleporting to the location), and they do so with no narrative purpose.  That 30 Firbolg mission doesn't suck ball sweat because it's hard, but because it's a massive outdoor map with dozens of spawn locations and two enormous corridors to the escape point.  It's bad because it takes half an hour to complete even at -1/x1 and actively wiping out every spawn rather than waiting at the escape point.  That Lady Grey mission isn't irritating because it's hard, but because it was intentionally designed to be failed unless the player drops to minimum difficulty, and the way it was designed is only one step short of automatically killing Lady Grey when she's freed from her captors, without any corresponding change to the story arc as a result of either success or failure.  Having hostages die from combat damage, despite being in a non-combat state, before you're finished defeating the spawn holding them doesn't make a mission hard, it makes a mission an annoyance that we'd prefer not to deal with.

 

The Faultline arcs have several EB/AV encounters, including the final mission with three EBs/AVs.  Those are hard, but they were also designed properly and enjoyable.  The missions which essentially fail themselves, the ones we're discussing in this thread, aren't hard, or harder, because they were designed to be hard, they're just ineptly crafted or willful attempts to screw the player, and the failure itself serves no narrative purpose, it's just a kick in the groin.  "Oh, you wanted to play our game?  Well, fuck you very much."

[Without_Pause]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

While I can appreciate what you're saying on its surface, I don't think you're really getting what the OP is disappointed in. It's not the difficulty, it's the idea of a game mechanic altering a character useless for what seems like an eternity - allowing the NPC to be clobbered. I suspect without the suspension field, the OP or any other soloist would have had at least a chance to taunt, toss a fireball or some other aggro collecting attack to get the ambush off the NPC hostage. 

In case it needs to be said - although I'm not sure it does, I'll state it here: 
CoH has a lot of different types of players. None are playing in a "better" fashion than anyone else. It's just a different way. 

Until you have solo'd a lot of difficult content, it may be difficult to understand what the OP is having an issue with. 

FTR, I was playing an Ice/stone Brute so I have Ice Patch. Granted, there's tons of ranged involved, but yeah. I'm okay with difficult content. Mr. G's red side arc was frustrating, nerve racking, and fun. The Cim part of the DA arc was also great as the mobs full of Bosses was fun to deal with. Straight up you do nothing and sit there while taking the L is not. The Rad based Longbow Boss would have sucked as well as you basically kiss your recharge goodbye. Eventually I will have decent enough resistance against that. There's a decent number of different Longbow Bosses so there is no real way to know what to expect.

[biostem]

6 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

There is a difference between being hard and being auto fail.

If you were playing on the default difficulty, +0/x1, no bosses solo, would the situation have been the same?

Edited March 25, 2022 by biostem

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

If you were playing on the default difficulty, +0/x1, no bosses solo, would the situation have been the same?

 

The critter who put him/her in a time-out still has that power when spawned as a lieutenant.  That's how Notoriety works.  The rank is reduced, so HP, damage and things like control effect durations are lower, but the critter is still, from the perspective of powers available, a boss, despite conning as a lieutenant.  Detention Field also reduces the target's Threat, which means the NPC would be taking the full aggro.  Additionally, reducing Notoriety would also affect the NPC, reducing its HP correspondingly, which would make it easier for the critters to defeat.  And, lastly, the critter most likely to be responsible for this festival of shit was probably an Ascendant, so it would have -Res attached to several of its attacks.

 

Even if we're just looking at that one downscaled boss accompanied by a single minion, with the player out of action for ~15s, at -400% Threat and the NPC subject to -Res while hindered by reduced HP due to the lower Notoriety setting, it's unlikely that running at minimum difficulty would make any difference.

[biostem]

14 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Even if we're just looking at that one downscaled boss accompanied by a single minion, with the player out of action for ~15s, at -400% Threat and the NPC subject to -Res while hindered by reduced HP due to the lower Notoriety setting, it's unlikely that running at minimum difficulty would make any difference.

So then the issue is really addressing detention field and other such "phase" powers that don't have a response, (short of pre-emptively holding/mezzing the boss or stacking enough defense to avoid the power).  Either way, the mission is not truly "destined to fail" in the literal sense...

Edited March 25, 2022 by biostem

[Luminara]

3 minutes ago, biostem said:

So then the issue is really addressing detention field and other such "phase" powers that don't have a response, (short of pre-emptively holding/mezzing the boss or stacking enough defense to avoid the power)...

 

That would fix that mission, but it doesn't deal with the other missions with poor design, oversights or deliberate cactus-up-the-ass situations which create arbitrary failures independent of player action.

[Crasical]

On 3/23/2022 at 5:58 PM, Without_Pause said:

Yes, I know, I don't "have to solo" on +1/x4 while leveling. This issue only gets worse when you do end game content at x8 diff setting.

 

But.

 

Rescue Black Widow. I cake walk the mission and free her. Instant mass ambush and I don't mean a single mob. The beauty of it? A boss instantly puts me in Detention Field. I can literally do nothing while Black Widow gets slaughtered. I barely get free, do all of like two attacks, and see the load screen

That's not a boss, that's a Ballista. EB.

I know the mission you're talking about, and same thing happens to me: You rescue, the Ballista appears, you get detention fielded. The thing is, I haven't ever seen Ghost Widow go down during that sequence, so I don't know what you're doing differently. She's got some big controls and a self-heal, she normally can take care of herself.