Giant Monster Difficulty

[PZephregames]

I would like to see the Giant Monsters difficulty raised so it takes at least 4 players to take it down. When players can solo them at 50, it takes away the fun for others. The Giant Monsters do not spawn quickly enough if this happens. There are too many times when I or others are putting a team together just to have a 50 jump in and ruin it. Also I encounter 50's racing to find the GM just to solo. Just recently I broadcasted in zone. while watching a 50 fight the GM and never got a team invite. I realize the game is not just for me, but that applies to others as well.

 

Another possible solution may be to have GMs spawn more frequently. Like every 2 hours.

 

Please address this. Thanks for keeping game alive.

[Apparition]

FWIW, the Council Goliath War Walker in Boomtown can't be soloed, and as far as I'm aware of no one has soloed the Seed of Hamidon.  They can both be duoed with the right power sets and builds, however.  Also, Ghost of Scrapyard can be spawned again within a couple of minutes of defeat, if you'd like.

 

Also FWIW, this issue only occurs on Excelsior and possibly Everlasting.  I know on Excelsior (at least a year ago anyhoo), it's an absolute race to find and defeat a GM as soon as it is announced, before someone else does.  On Torchbearer, GMs are largely left alone for days.  I've logged off next to Babbage in Boomtown, logged back on that character two days later and Babbage was still right there.  I imagine the same applies for Indomitable and Reunion.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Apparition

[TheZag]

Its obviously not required but i would encourage those that solo the monsters to invite others if they arrive.  The merits are insignificant so people are usually there for the badge.  Many of the giant monsters are available in AE for everyones soloing pleasure.

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, PZephregames said:

I would like to see the Giant Monsters difficulty raised so it takes at least 4 players to take it down. When players can solo them at 50, it takes away the fun for others.

 

*Some* people/builds can solo them. You're seeing it more often now just from the age/experience level of the playerbase and rather stagnant content (which is not a complaint to or about the devs. Small volunteer staff, etc.) If it were "almost any build can do it solo" and people were doing it on SOs/common IOs without worry, then maybe.

 

(And yes, Lusca was first soloed by an Illusion controller back in the day on live on SOs. It wasn't a quick five minute thing....)

[PeregrineFalcon]

Yeah, because someone who's in the middle of a fight with a giant monster has the time to just stop and invite you to the team.

 

Geez. Do you people ever think of anyone other than yourselves?

[Apparition]

7 minutes ago, Greycat said:

(And yes, Lusca was first soloed by an Illusion controller back in the day on live on SOs. It wasn't a quick five minute thing....)

 

 

Still isn't.  Soloed Lusca a couple of months ago... took me a hour and nine minutes on a Thugs/Time Mastermind.

[TheZag]

The forced spawns redside arent hard to put a group together and go do it.  I can understand the i spawned it, i own it, im gonna kill it.

 

The random spawns blueside arent quite in the same situation.  It will probably be hours before they spawn again.  I guess you can go with i was here first, i own it, im gonna kill it but dont be suprised that people who wanted to join might not be thrilled about that.  And if im soloing a giant monster i absolutely have enough time to right click someones name in chat and left click invite to team all in less than a single animation time even assuming the monster is a threat to my survivability to begin with.

 

But,  play it how you want.  I prefer to invite those who show up while others prefer to have them watch.

[Apparition]

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

Oh, people show up more often than not. You know how many months I spent just trying to get a crack at Deathsurge? And if I go out of my way to summon Caleb, then I am going to fight Caleb on sight. 

 

 

1. You can still invite people to your team so they get credit, and just ask them to stand back and not do anything if you're testing a build.  I've done that a couple of times.

 

2. Why would you wait months for Deathsurge?  You can spawn him by defeating 100 gremlins in Cap au Diable.  Takes me about 35 minutes solo.

[TheZag]

The server divide is at play here as well.  Go to a low population server and spawn it.  You will probably have 6 hours with it to yourself.

[Apparition]

15 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Because there is a message that summons the swarms...

 

 

That definitely sounds like an Excelsior issue.  I remember having that issue once before I left Excelsior... spent 35 minutes summoning Deathsurge, spent a few minutes looking for him only to find someone else already engaged and wouldn't invite me.  It was quite annoying.  But I just came back later that night, did it again, and found Deathsurge before anyone else did.  A couple of people showed up during the fight and I invited them because I know how annoying it is not to be.

[TheZag]

[Luminara]

4 hours ago, PZephregames said:

Just recently I broadcasted in zone. while watching a 50 fight the GM and never got a team invite.

 

Giant Monsters are level-less.  That means you could have participated, dealt reasonable damage due to the level scaling code, and walked away with the badge (if there was one) and merits.  Solo.  If anything, you'd be guaranteed the rewards in that situation, since it was only you and the other player, and even if the other player had the most perfect build possible, he/she still wouldn't have been capable of dealing 91% of the damage and locking you out of the rewards.  And you wouldn't have done enough damage to deprive the other player of the rewards, either.

 

Pro-tip:  Attack.  Don't wait for an invitation.  Don't ask for permission.  Attack.  You lose nothing, you take nothing away from anyone else.

 

Regarding making GMs harder, I could solo GMs in I5.  With no Damage enhancements.   Unless they're ramped up to the point that they're impossible to defeat at all, nothing's going to stop people from soloing them.  And GMs being impossible to defeat at all is GMs being rendered moot.  They no longer have a purpose, they're just part of the scenery.

 

How would you propose making GMs "harder", anyway?  Double their HP?  That's not harder, it's just tedious.  Double their damage?  Attacks which miss are still going to deal 0 damage, and it's very, very easy to make attacks miss even if you don't chase the Defense soft cap, if you know what you're doing.  Damage debuffs also exist, and can, when used properly, neuter the hardest-hitting enemies in the game.  Make their attacks auto-hit?  That works to discourage teaming, not encourage it, because no-one needs a defender/corruptor/controller/mastermind to buff/debuff if the entity completely ignores the buffs/debuffs.  So how do you envision GMs being "harder" without being even more boring, or obviating a third of the archetypes, or the change being imperceptible because it was poorly targeted and easily sidestepped?

[biostem]

I would rather see the spawn rate increased, or implement some system of summoning the giant monsters, (perhaps with some diminishing returns implemented on a per-player basis, so people don't just farm the same one over and over back to back).

[Rudra]

Goliath War Walker, Ghost of Scrapyard, Deathsurge, and Caleb can be summoned. By defeating 100 of their affiliated mobs. (At night for Caleb.) Which is only really tedious for Deathsurge.

 

Babbage I think was set up to be summonable for a while by clearing announced trigger spawns of Clockwork. It was bad. Even the people that knew how to summon him and where the trigger spawn points were had difficulty spawning him because sometimes the spawn trigger Clockwork were not accessible. Aside from that, Babbage is still auto-summoned by doing the TF and also spawns randomly in Boomtown.

 

Kronos Titan is also auto-summoned, this time by story arc, is also available as a set foe in a TF, and I think there is another way to face it.

 

Clockwork Paladin is a GM you don't want spawned because he is worthless when spawned. I'm guilty of solo clearing the Monster Construction as a test of my characters, but I do pause to invite others when I notice them. The problem with increasing the Monster Construction spawn rate is I have often found 3 Paladins stomping around King's Row. I don't know if there is a limit to the number of allowed Paladins that might prevent new construction spawns.

 

I can't remember any time I have gone to First Ward and not seen the Seed of Hamidon flying around.

 

That only leaves Hydra in Perez Park that I don't think has a summons, Lusca in Independence Port that is quite often spawned, Jurassik in Crey's Folly, and the Croatoa twins.

 

Having Sally spawn more frequently would be appreciated since she is gone after any single hit and seems to be exceedingly rare. Likely because she is gone after a single hit.

[Greycat]

5 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Clockwork Paladin is a GM you don't want spawned because he is worthless when spawned. I'm guilty of solo clearing the Monster Construction as a test of my characters, but I do pause to invite others when I notice them. The problem with increasing the Monster Construction spawn rate is I have often found 3 Paladins stomping around King's Row. I don't know if there is a limit to the number of allowed Paladins that might prevent new construction spawns.

 

Still get 6 merits, so I wouldn't say worthless. Or if three are stomping around, 18. And yeah, 3's the limit. I've never seen more than that from live to now (and I'm ... oh, 85% sure that stops a construction spawn from happening.)

[Rudra]

I don't think the Paladin gives any merits. At least, I've never gotten any merits from defeating the actual Paladin.

 

Edit: And to clarify, I wasn't the only one. My teammate also got 0 merits for defeating Paladin. And we fought him on three different occasions. Once was immediately after his completion because we were racing to try and get the Monster Construction in time.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Rudra

[Doomguide2005]

     According to the wiki you must inflict 10% or more of the total damage needed to defeat.  And that's not 10% of its health but 10% of the damage to defeat the GM.

     A lvl 50 will do damage as if the same as the GM's 'secret' level.  A character of a lvl less than the GM will do damage as a character one lvl less.

     At least on Live it was possible to not get credit for Jack or Eochai, for example, because they beat on each other so long prior to discovery you couldn't do 10% of the damage needed (because their foe had done 91+% of the damage which had regenerated prior to your arrival)

     It says the page was last edited on 7 June 2021 but that may or may not mean it's all correct and up to date.

[Burk]

The 10% is for the badge. I can guarantee that it is possible to not do enough to get the badge, but still get the merits anyway.

[Rudra]

Isn't it 100 at night and he descends to Thorn Isle at day break?

[The Larker]

I think there should be an event or GM for every zone, this also gives the opportunity to make some Incarnate class GMs.

I had high hopes for the flying spaghetti  hami GM but its just a flying poop balloon. 

[The Larker]

38 minutes ago, Krimson said:

I've previously suggested adding more, such as the Jade Spider wandering along the coast of some corner of Mercy Island or St Martial. I've also suggested turning Arch Villains or Heroes into GMs, kind of like how Nemesis works in invasions, and have them on the loose somewhere similar to how GMs spawn. 

 

Avid Monster hunters know that sometimes after a GM fight, Kronos will appear. This has happened to me in Boomtown after Babbage, and another after Giant War Walker (two separate days), Perez after Kraken. And of course sometimes a small army of up to 10 will invade Talos. Heck just stand around Talos, and Kronos will appear at some point.

 

So what if there were other potential GMs or AVs/Heros as GMs who could spawn after a GM fight as a bonus? Or... what if I signature Hero/Villain showed up and started fighting the GM. Like for instance, you are in a group farming Ghost of Scrapyard, and in one of the fights Mako shows up to "finish the job and end the protest once and for all". Or you finish Eochai, and Jack in Irons appears out of nowhere to join the fun. Or you want to fight Goliath War Walker, and Babbage shows up to fight him. Or you could even have something like an unexpecting hero tagging Sally, and one of Lusca's tentacles shows up to defend her.

 

All in all, I think beefing up Open World Content would give players another layer of activity. 

Who's Jade Spider?

[The Larker]

2 minutes ago, Krimson said:

LINK

So Kalinda the contact go turned into? Fuck that sucks.

[Rudra]

6 hours ago, The Larker said:

I think there should be an event or GM for every zone, this also gives the opportunity to make some Incarnate class GMs.

I had high hopes for the flying spaghetti  hami GM but its just a flying poop balloon. 

I've said this already on different threads, and I'll keep saying it each time this comes up. Please, please, please, please, for the love of all that is holy please, NO GMs and events in every zone. Especially not the starter zones. Most of the events in game are ignored as is. And having a GM in every zone, is a nuisance scenario, not an interesting one. Hells, for that matter, there are GMs like Scrapyard that just wander around and players keep running/flying/jumping around his spawn. No calls for team to take him. Just 'Meh. He's back. Again.' Take a stroll through King's Row. See how many Paladins are just standing around because no one bothers with the Monster Construction, let alone Paladin itself. At least Hamidon sees constant use, but that is because of the rewards he gives.

 

So please no. Hells no. No GMs and events in every zone.

[The Larker]

4 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I've said this already on different threads, and I'll keep saying it each time this comes up. Please, please, please, please, for the love of all that is holy please, NO GMs and events in every zone. Especially not the starter zones. Most of the events in game are ignored as is. And having a GM in every zone, is a nuisance scenario, not an interesting one. Hells, for that matter, there are GMs like Scrapyard that just wander around and players keep running/flying/jumping around his spawn. No calls for team to take him. Just 'Meh. He's back. Again.' Take a stroll through King's Row. See how many Paladins are just standing around because no one bothers with the Monster Construction, let alone Paladin itself. At least Hamidon sees constant use, but that is because of the rewards he gives.

 

So please no. Hells no. No GMs and events in every zone.

Well if I knew this I would try to flatten them, hell that's easy merits. Maybe someone should start a monster killer club or channel. 

[Rudra]

Just for the Jade Spider being in Mercy Island, a GM that is available whenever anyone wants through Mender Silos already, you still have Kalinda standing there by the trainer. That would be a bit awkward having two Kalindas in the same zone, don't you think? At least the duplicate Ms. Liberty is in a different zone.

 

As for Kraken being the only GM you can run into by mistake? I told you on your Jade Spider thread I have literally rounded corners in Sharkhead and was only saved by being stealthed and able to dash back around the Corner after effectively face-planting into Scrapyard. Deathsurge is a bit easier to avoid, but I still find myself backpedaling away depending on where he spawned in Cap.

 

So your argument that the GMs are easy to avoid fails because at least one person playing the game tends to routinely face-plant into them.

 

14 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Just because the game has events that fail to draw players doesn't mean that other things can't exist. 

Something we can agree on. So lets find things to exist in the game that don't follow the example of things we already have that are routinely ignored.