Officially Unofficial Weekly Discussion #11: Knowing your enemy is half the battle (Factions Discussion)

[SeraphimKensai]

Welcome to another week on today's program our topic involves NPC Factions within the game.

 

What factions are your favorite to play against? What factions do you hate playing against? Which factions have the best lore? What about factions where the lore is lacking? What if any tweaks would you have for a faction group? What about interactions of faction groups with each other, ie. faction v. faction alignment? What do you think about various versions of the factions whether they are blue side, red, gold? Do you see a difference?

 

As usual thanks.

[UltraAlt]

30 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What factions are your favorite to play against?

 

I have to say that over the last couple of years the Red Caps, 5th Column, and Council have really scratched my itch for enemies to fight.

 

32 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What factions do you hate playing against?

 

None of them.

 

32 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Which factions have the best lore?

 

You got me on that one. I think it's a Nemesis plot.

 

33 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What about factions where the lore is lacking?

 

I think that is a Nemesis plot as well.

 

33 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What if any tweaks would you have for a faction group?

 

Revert higher level clockwork back to looking like clockwork and not praetorian clockwork/automations. 

I love how the Clockwork look!

 

I have to say that I think the "Girlfriend from Hell" was a great addition to Hellions. I'm not sure when they were added, but I remember I was shocked when I first ran into one.

 

41 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What about interactions of faction groups with each other, ie. faction v. faction alignment?

 

I love seeing when the groups are fighting with each other in large gang riot situations. (Council versus 5th Column in Atlas. Oh, the memories!)

I wish these were announce events so you could see that they are happening so you can go get involved if you want to do so. 

 

43 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What do you think about various versions of the factions whether they are blue side, red, gold?

 

Mechanically, they seem to operate the same to me. The same kind of tactics will work against them, and they have the same weakness/strengths regardless of side. 

 

NOTE: I have only been on the Praetorian side for a short time other than to go to the two Praetorian Co-op Zones: First Ward and Night Ward. I have made no Praetorian characters since my return. Also, I primarily only run newspaper missions with my Rogues on the Villain side in order to get Bank/environment destruction missions.

 

 

 

[Snarky]

I solo (stealth) and any enemies that see through stealth are a pain in the butt.  Rikti and Rularuu are obvious.  I was surprised that Nemesis have one guy that blabs to everyone that you are there.  A Lt or somesuch.  

 

I used to hate Carnies until I fixed my Brute building.  Not sure how I will feel about them on my solo Redside Corruptor yet.  Just hit 29.  

 

I love to kill Longbow.  Endless waves please.  Self righteous pricks.

[DougGraves]

I play mostly lvl 19 and below and almost entirely level 29 and below.  Unfortunately those tend to be the most boring enemy groups.

 

I like enemies that look and feel unique.  Devouring earth, carnival, Dark Ward villains, etc.

 

Gang members with shotguns distinguished by whether they are wearing black or red are not as interesting.

[Greycat]

5 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What factions are your favorite to play against? What factions do you hate playing against? Which factions have the best lore? What about factions where the lore is lacking? What if any tweaks would you have for a faction group? What about interactions of faction groups with each other, ie. faction v. faction alignment? What do you think about various versions of the factions whether they are blue side, red, gold? Do you see a difference?

 

A lot of times, "favorite" will depend on who I'm playing. I like playing against things that I have a personal-lore reason to (such as taking magic users through Croatoa and dealing with the threats there.)  I'll say that my Khelds will tend to *obviously* target Quantums and Voids. None of this "Put in a bind to ask my teammates to kill them" nonsense.

 

Hate to fight? Hmm. Times I cringe at dealing with a group are situational. For instance, I don't mind fighting Carnies, but I hate getting rescue missions against them, specifically for the MI pets... especially the Phantasm that spawns its *own* decoy, that does zero damage to you but you have to sit and read a book for a while until it goes away before the hostage is "freed" to follow you. That needs to just go away. It doesn't add challenge, just tedium.

 

Tweaks... probably to Arachnos and Rikti. Arachnos, so I'm not on a very-low-level character with *very* limited insp slots and slotting and facing Mu after Mu after Mu draining me. Rikti for something similar... spawns with one "real" mob and a ton of monkeys, or rooms full of drones. Limiting the number per spawn would be nice.

 

Lore... I know there are some groups (redside comes to mind) that show up for, oh, one contact, and never actually in game... to where I don't even recall them. One with spetznaz, I think? Which seemed to be a victim of the "Oh, let the new guys work on their own thing, ignore the plot hooks we put in and never did anything with" attitude of the live dev team for quite a while. Also... I'd go the other way around. Lore without a group in game. *YES I WANT THE BLOOD OF THE BLACK STREAM IN GAME.*

[Spaghetti Betty]

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What factions are your favorite to play against?

Lately it's been Longbow. Sure, they are a curbstomp in teams, but if you are fighting big groups solo then you're forced to think about your positioning constantly. Pretty fun.

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What factions do you hate playing against?

It's a tie between Cabal, Praetorian Clockwork, and Incarnate Banished Pantheon all for the same reason. It is impossible to make them come to you without breaking LoS, and most of the time you'll be fighting them in huge maps with very little cover. BP make this especially painful since they rain every debuff under sun down on you. On teams, I usually end up stubbornly running ahead to bunch up mobs so the fights are over 10x quicker.

 

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

Which factions have the best lore?

I'm giving this award to DE. Even pre-Going Rogue they had the most terrifying lore. Even moreso when you consider how many zones you can actually find them in (spoiler: way more than I'm comfortable with). GR just made it more visual.

 

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What about factions where the lore is lacking?

Warriors!

 

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What about interactions of faction groups with each other, ie. faction v. faction alignment

I wish we could see more. I think redside does this better mission-wise, but infighting is the name of the game over there. Seeing enemy factions scuffle outdoors is cool.

 

8 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What do you think about various versions of the factions whether they are blue side, red, gold? Do you see a difference?

Variations of the same factions between sides aren't different enough for me to notice, if there are any. Are there? I really don't know.

[PoptartsNinja]

What factions are your favorite to play against?

Freakshow, Council/5th, Nemesis, Rikti, and Praetorian Resistance because they shoot more blue lasers than Cobra.

 

 

What factions do you hate playing against?

Scrapyarders / Dockworkers because they're just guys upset about how hard it is to do an honest day's work in the Rogue Isles; Praetorian Clockwork because they're visually uninteresting on their own; and the Luddites because they're just so interminably boring. Legacy Chain may not have any staying power but at least they've got goofy hats, Luddites don't even have that.

 

Oh, and Prisonsers. The Zig is a concrete eyesore and leaks like a sieve. The whole thing should be reskinned as a gargantuan Blade Runner-esque corporate headquarters for Crey (with identical geometry). You can even keep calling in the Zig, just make it the Crey Ziggurat.

 

 

Which factions have the best lore?

I want to say Freakshow but I think their lore could use a little tweaking (the Freakshow as they currently exist are perfect for the Rogue Isles, but I think Paragon City's Freakshow are the OG and could use a little more development). Devouring Earth and Nemesis are good, the Rikti are well-developed, Malta are appropriately creepy.

 

 

What about factions where the lore is lacking?

Longbow. They're trying really hard to be GI Joe but instead they're usually just in places they have no business being. Longbow should be restricted to Nerva (since half of it is U.S. Soil) and replaced with the Hero Corps nearly everywhere else.

 

 

What if any tweaks would you have for a faction group?

Paragon City Freakshow and Rogue Island Freakshow should be differentiated, lore-wise. Rather than being weird drugged-out anarchists, the Paragon City Freakshow should be Rikti War vets the war never really ended for. Excelsior started as a military anti-rejection drug for cybernetics and so it would stand to reason that a whole bunch of poor guys might've gotten hooked on it during the worst of the fighting or to cyber up after an injury. It would explain their love of building fortifications and NOISE; and would explain why they're holed up in Crey's just outside the RWZ. They should really have war spawns with Rikti in Crey's Folly and probably shouldn't really care about the Warriors as rivals when they're more like convenient punching bags which, hey, given the way the spawns in Talos Island work that already seems to be the case.

 

Rogue Isles Freaks should be more like the current Freaks: young anarchists who maybe aren't thinking everything through but they're copying a "badass" aesthetic, smashing things with hammers, and bringin' the fight to the Spiders. They cyber-Anarchists should really hate Arachnos more, is what I'm getting at. It's a pity Mercy Island's such a low-level zone because it'd be a perfect recruiting ground for the Rogue Island Freakshow. Reskin the low-level Hellions and Skulls as Freakshow recruiters trying to convert the Contaminated and you've got a pretty strong low-level storyline.

 

 

What about interactions of faction groups with each other, ie. faction v. faction alignment?

As above, I really think the Rikti and Freakshow should be in-game rivals. Freak Tanks make so much more sense if they're trying to compete with Rikti plasma weapons. You don't need to turn yourself into a walking sledgehammer to fight a guy in a leather jacket with a battle axe. I'd also see the Freakshow being easy prey for Malta, because they're a bunch of battle junkies who have pre-soaked their brains in chemicals that make it easy to cram their gray matter into big blue battle robots.

 

 

What do you think about various versions of the factions whether they are blue side, red, gold? Do you see a difference?

I enjoy when there are lore differences between the same/similar factions in different places. Paragon City's family vs. Rouge Islands Mooks should really be the ideal, which is why the lack of any discernable difference between PC and RI Freakshow stands out so much. The only arc that implies there's any difference is Ms. Francine's.

[Clave Dark 5]

10 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I have to say that over the last couple of years the Red Caps, 5th Column, and Council have really scratched my itch for enemies to fight.

It's a time-honored comics staple that punching fascists is always a good time!

 

What's that, "what about the Red Caps" you ask?  Uh... those guys are probably Commies, yeah.

[UltraAlt]

40 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

It's a time-honored comics staple that punching fascists is always a good time!

 

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[KC4800]

13 hours ago, SeraphimKensai said:

What factions are your favorite to play against? What factions do you hate playing against? Which factions have the best lore? What about factions where the lore is lacking? What if any tweaks would you have for a faction group? What about interactions of faction groups with each other, ie. faction v. faction alignment? What do you think about various versions of the factions whether they are blue side, red, gold? Do you see a difference?

Malta-favorite with a tech or natural character. Carnies-favorite with a Controller or Dominator

Toughest Factions - Praetorian Family, Rogue Vanguard, Longbow

Need better lore. Rularuu

 

Something that hasn't been done yet, or I just haven't found yet in the AE. Praetorian Clockwork in the special Psy. Clockwork tower map, would be very challenging, depending on your power sets.

[bustacap]

+4 arachnos has been a pain lately. They are doing something I hadn't noticed before and something with a blind combined with -end and -def is wrecking my widow and controller.   

 

The widow was surprising as they have +perception built in, sits at incarnate AOE def and still got super blinded. Ate yellows still blind. 

 

There's also an old flashback mission (predates going rogue) for antimatter that is mobs and mobs of rad/rad defender robots. My not yet incarnated but built scrapper reset it to -1x1

Also no AVs since posi/antimater are essentially rad/rad defenders. Those toggles are no joke without ageless or barrier. 

 

 

[Xiddo]

On 1/10/2023 at 9:43 PM, SeraphimKensai said:

Welcome to another week on today's program our topic involves NPC Factions within the game.

 

What factions are your favorite to play against? What factions do you hate playing against? Which factions have the best lore? What about factions where the lore is lacking? What if any tweaks would you have for a faction group? What about interactions of faction groups with each other, ie. faction v. faction alignment? What do you think about various versions of the factions whether they are blue side, red, gold? Do you see a difference?

 

As usual thanks.

1. Love playing against DE, Wyvern, Longbow, Monsters of Ig, the shivans, any of the mobs in First or Night ward, PPD, Rogue PPD, Arachnoids.

2. The Vanguard missions in RWZ have really slowed down my completion of those arcs, uggggghhhh. Malta, obvs. 
3. Best lore... I really like the simplicity of Vahz, the circular story telling of having snakes at the start and the end, DE lore is grand, Arachnoid lore is 👌

4. The Rulu-Shin definitely need to be proliferated out more and get a little more story. Their costumes are great too. They could be used to help introduce the concept of the shadow shard much earlier on, say in the mid-30s.
Also the Luddites, I think there is much more than could be done with them. They're a group of - essentially - docile sheep that could be pushed towards more conspiratorial thinking. Say they rebuilt Boomtown with a big power plant, or a platform to the moon, have the luddites there protesting against it.
GIVE US MORE FREAKLOK.

5. For tweaks, I think the boss level nictus-infused council members should be able to form shift, I'd also like the council to do more in CoV in terms of experiments. The PPD Peacebringers have always interested me... You get the impression that the numbers are low, yet we have enough to fill out police stations, streets, offices and squads of cops. I've mentioned it a couple of times before in other posts, but would love an arc where you find out LB/Wyvern used old council tech and scientists - think Operation Paperclip - to make them.

Hard agree with @PoptartsNinjaon the CoHFreaks and CoVFreaks. They clearly tried to make it a thing by having the freak arc in sharkhead where they get to be a bit magic I think? And more Rikti? But I really think there should be a distinction when you're on a CoV freak mission. That you fight those freaks altered by the story you've previously seen. Or they have unique powers/costumes because of how they've salvaged kit, e.g. Freakshow Spider with robot legs on the back because there's more arach tech around.

[Spaghetti Betty]

17 hours ago, bustacap said:

+4 arachnos has been a pain lately. They are doing something I hadn't noticed before and something with a blind combined with -end and -def is wrecking my widow and controller.   

 

The widow was surprising as they have +perception built in, sits at incarnate AOE def and still got super blinded. Ate yellows still blind.

The Tarantula Mistresses and Queens have an autohit -Def and -Perception. Have fun!

[Lazarillo]

On 1/10/2023 at 3:43 PM, SeraphimKensai said:

What factions are your favorite to play against? What factions do you hate playing against?

Nemesis kinda count as both, for me.  I think the lore around them is neat and Nemesis himself is such a clever, outrageous villain.  Plus, when you get down to brass tacks (pun intended?) he and his followers are so downright vile that clobbering them feels so very cathartic (same reason everyone loves beating up Council/5th).  Unfortunately, they're utterly un-fun to actually fight, due to boring, repetitive power choices (15 "different" minions and 20 "different" LTs, in terms of names, but only 3 actual variations of the former and only 2 of the latter, and that's not even counting the also-identical automatons), and mechanics that provide lots of time-sink but little challenge (gotta love just sitting through that last worthless LT unable to do any meaningful harm, but being unable to hit it due to unpreventable Vengeance stacking).  So I love what they are from the story and lore side of things, and hate them for squandering all that on being completely terrible in terms of gameplay.