Too Many Ambushes

[PsychicKitty]

Ok so I used to play this game a lot.

So i recalled a crazy bug during a couple syndicate missions in Preatoria that i bugged the original developers about and they eventually fixed it.

 

I see that bug is in this version.

 

The bug is, in a few of the syndicate missions you get ambushes if you do not meet a timer or you simply just get them if you do certain things(like get to the enemy target), and these ambushes will hunt you down which sounds fine, but in this case there is an upper limit that is set for lots of players in these missions and the ambushes do not have a delay thus the effect is you will get not a group of 3 or 6 or 9 or even 12 but a group of 39 followed by another group of 39 pretty much all at once.

 

This will happen on 2 missions if you do not do them super fast.

The ambushes will be all sword users and no matter how much defense or resistance you have you will see that does not matter as they will hit you eventually and swords decrease defense and resistance.

 

Just like in the original game i had to exploit exiting and coming back in with inspiration...rinse and repeat.

 

That's kind of silly to see that back again.

 

But it made my day...=^_^=

 

I also noticed stealth does not help with this....heck i noticed stealth is pretty bad in this version of this game.

I bet most people use a single accuracy during PVP and stomp on people trying to use it.

 

And since the damage on blasters got lowered a lot for no reason...I am guessing PVP is mostly just scrappers and Tanks pretty sad you reverted it to that form.

 

 

[Astralock]

Welcome back to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles!  There's a few things to break down:

 

• Praetorian/gold side content has largely remained unchanged since live.  Some changes were made to Arachnos a year ago to make them more gender inclusive, which accidentally made some female Arachnos agents in the Neutropolis story arcs sometimes spawn as male.  Some of those missions have been fixed, some have not.  That's about the only change made to Praetorian/gold side content other than a couple of bug fixes since the Issue 24 beta ten years ago.
• I'm not so sure what you're describing is actually a bug.  The lead content developer in Paragon Studios at the time Praetorian/gold side content was added loved, and heavily relied on, ambushes like that.
• Ambushes in Praetorian/gold side content have always seen through stealth.  See the above bullet.  There was a lot of complaining during the Going Rogue beta that the Praetorian/gold side content made Masterminds and Stalkers in-effective as the ambush mechanics introduced unfairly penalized Masterminds and Stalkers compared to the other ATs, but those complaints were ignored.
• The only change to stealth on Homecoming since live was the nerfing of Super Speed's stealth.  You can no longer stack Super Speed's stealth with other stealth powers.  I strongly disagree with that change, but it is what it is.  There have been no other changes to stealth since live.
• Blaster damage has been unchanged since the Issue 24 beta ten years ago.  Heck, compared to Issue 23, Blasters do more damage thanks to crashless nukes introduced in the Issue 24 beta.

[Arc-Mage]

That’s awesome. Not in a good way tho.

[lemming]

2 hours ago, Astralock said:

Ambushes in Praetorian/gold side content have always seen through stealth.  See the above bullet.  There was a lot of complaining during the Going Rogue beta that the Praetorian/gold side content made Masterminds and Stalkers in-effective as the ambush mechanics introduced unfairly penalized Masterminds and Stalkers compared to the other ATs, but those complaints were ignored.

Project to work on: figure out which arcs the ambushes see thru stealth.

I noticed in Praetoria especially, that a lot of the ambushes will run up to my stalker and just hang out.   There's another ambush style that goes to a location.

iirc, the particular mission that is being talked about, that one might be the ambush that can see thru stealth.

[srmalloy]

6 hours ago, lemming said:

Project to work on: figure out which arcs the ambushes see thru stealth.

As part of this, I would recommend looking at a change to the ambush logic in general, so that the ambush spawn is targeted to go to the location where the player/team was when the ambush was triggered, particularly if the player/team is stealthed, rather than the way it seems to work now, where triggering an ambush almost always puts a homing beacon on the character triggering the ambush, and the ambush spawn follows the beacon, regardless of how far and fast the character moves.

 

An example of the latter is the "Rescue the missing homeless people" mission in Kings Row that I recently completed, where the sewer map had one of those 'one path separates into three that all join up again' structures; I had gotten the hostages back -- with a Celerity:+Stealth IO active, moving in fits and starts to keep them following (hostages seem to be a little better about seeing through stealth, but I don't have hard numbers on it) -- to around the curve of one of the side paths in time to see two spawns of ambushers run in, turn right to run along the right path... then stop, turn around, and come straight for me, running through a spawn standing near the intersection that didn't react at all, even when I ran past them after defeating the two spawns that had turned around to come after me.

[Norl]

Just curious, how does it penalize Masterminds?  They have to buy stealth from a pool like most other classes.

 

We just had some wonderful ambushes yesterday in those curiously large and apparently useless tunnels connecting between underground trains, with endless streams of a dozen or more of those guys who throw a Pris(sy) fit when they die.  Great fun.

Edited December 25, 2022 by Norl

[lemming]

12 minutes ago, Norl said:

Just curious, how does it penalize Masterminds?  They have to buy stealth from a pool like most other classes.

 

We just had some wonderful ambushes yesterday in those curiously large and apparently useless tunnels connecting between underground trains, with endless streams of a dozen or more of those guys who throw a Pris(sy) fit when they die.  Great fun.

Normally it's because the ambushes go straight for the MM ignoring the pets.   Bodyguard mode can help with that a little

[CaptainLupis]

On 12/25/2022 at 6:13 PM, Norl said:

Just curious, how does it penalize Masterminds?  They have to buy stealth from a pool like most other classes.

 

We just had some wonderful ambushes yesterday in those curiously large and apparently useless tunnels connecting between underground trains, with endless streams of a dozen or more of those guys who throw a Pris(sy) fit when they die.  Great fun.

It wasn't so much the stealth aspect that hurt MMs. Back during the period they are talking about you couldn't take pets into missions with you, you had to summon them inside then upgrade them. They also had MUCH longer recharge times and endurance costs then. So the ambush comes, overwhelms you and you die, you go to hospital and reenter the mission but they immediately target the MM again and head straight for them at the entrance, the chances are they kill you before you have finished summoning and upgarding. Next attempt (after waiting up to 2 minutes for pets to recharge) you enter and they are already waiting for you at the entrance and you have no time to summon pets before being killed again... and so on. Other ATs were at least back up at full strength going back into the missions, where MMs were at their weakest, which is why people said ambushes like that penalized MMs the most.

[Wavicle]

Can I confirm, are we or are we not gone to the Americans?

[Wavicle]

On 12/19/2022 at 3:21 PM, srmalloy said:

As part of this, I would recommend looking at a change to the ambush logic in general, so that the ambush spawn is targeted to go to the location where the player/team was when the ambush was triggered, particularly if the player/team is stealthed, rather than the way it seems to work now, where triggering an ambush almost always puts a homing beacon on the character triggering the ambush, and the ambush spawn follows the beacon, regardless of how far and fast the character moves.

 

An example of the latter is the "Rescue the missing homeless people" mission in Kings Row that I recently completed, where the sewer map had one of those 'one path separates into three that all join up again' structures; I had gotten the hostages back -- with a Celerity:+Stealth IO active, moving in fits and starts to keep them following (hostages seem to be a little better about seeing through stealth, but I don't have hard numbers on it) -- to around the curve of one of the side paths in time to see two spawns of ambushers run in, turn right to run along the right path... then stop, turn around, and come straight for me, running through a spawn standing near the intersection that didn't react at all, even when I ran past them after defeating the two spawns that had turned around to come after me.

 

This varies by ambush. Some know where you are and some don't.