Kings Row Needs Adjustment

[EggKookoo]

The jump packs shut down after 30 sec.  They are great for supplementing travel, not super great for combat.  Good for get aways, but I sometimes end up landing in places I don’t want to due to the lack of flight and the engine cutting out.

 

Well, yeah, I'm not trying to take the position that KR doesn't need attention. But at the same time it's not bad to be sent into dangerous areas. SS has a pretty strong stealth component. I literally bump into purples, and if I move on quickly enough they don't seem to react. Did you know you can run up walls with Ninja Run? I've crossed the Hollows by running along the war walls. My reference to Jump Pack is to use it in conjunction with Teleport if you have concerns about falling, or just use Hover as your travel power -- which is what I did for my Stalker. It's slow but safe.

 

I get the issue with being sent to farm mobs at level 7 and the only ones in the zone you're sent to are 10+. That's certainly a problem.

[lunawisp]

I agree about the mobs levels being a bit high but... when it tells you to fight skulls in the north, you can actually take them down anywhere. Ignore the marker, just go back down south if you have to. I did that this morning.

[Erydanus]

However, street mobs over nearly the entire zone are now in the level 10-15 range, on par with Steel Canyon South and Skyway City North.

 

This I have not observed. The mobs around Blue Steel and to the south seem to be around level 5-7 as I would expect. Now, up north in the red area, especially near the Pwn Shop where the Shining Stars arc gives you a mission to sweep skulls, I have seen level 12-13 Skulls.  I thought that was deliberate because the new arcs kind of stretch the zone to be more 7-12 than 5-10.

 

It is still a bit annoying because a certain designer who tended to do a lot of zone tweaking (WW) tends to make smaller pockets of spawns. So while there are some level 10 skulls RIGHT where they're supposed to be, there's only enough for about 1 player and when they get swept they take a while to recover. Meanwhile, all around that area are a lot of +2s and +3s. 

 

But saying there are level 15s all over the zone - that doesn't seem accurate to me and I've been running new characters through that zone since the Homecoming relaunch.

[Judasace]

Apparently, the newer story content in Kings Row has caused some sweeping, zone-wide changes. One change seems to be that the whole zone is completely overrun by Skulls, and groups like The Lost are no longer appearing where they used to appear (now there are more Skulls in those places).

 

But I'm here to discuss the level range of the zone.

 

The zone menu at the tram station still indicates that KR is a level 5-10 zone.

 

However, street mobs over nearly the entire zone are now in the level 10-15 range, on par with Steel Canyon South and Skyway City North.

 

This becomes a problem because the various contacts in Atlas Park continue to introduce Kings Row contacts when the player character is around levels 5-7, and the Atlas Park contact, Aaron Thiery, becomes unavailable as soon as the player reaches level 8, making the second half of Matthew Habashy's story suddenly unavailable if the player hasn't already started it. [EDIT: These mechanics are clearly intended to push the player along to Kings Row and out of Atlas Park.] And then the "older" contacts in KR are still handing out missions based on the character and KR mobs being in the 5-10 range. This results in an issue where the first missions most of these contacts offer are "street-sweeping" missions. Missions to defeat mobs in KR that are now too high-level for the mission level. In other words, as soon as the player character is high-level enough to tackle the street mobs in KR, the KR contacts stop offering missions and instead start introducing contacts in Steel Canyon and Skyway City.

 

This includes the second tier of Shining Stars missions, which start in Kings Row when the player reaches level 10. One of the earliest missions here sends the player all the way to the north end of KR, to talk to Dillo, who tells the player to beat up 10 Skulls in that neighborhood (Skulls elsewhere in the zone don't count for this mission). Except that all of those Skulls are now level 14-15 and conning red or purple to the player.

 

In short, it seems that the new, previously-unreleased content for Kings Row was not finished at the time of Sundown. The new Superadine storyline is fine, but otherwise the rest of the zone has been rendered more or less obsolete by the combination of the overscaled mobs + regular contacts whose level range has not been adjusted to reflect the changes.

 

I was going to come in here and say "Don't touch KR, it's awesome!" but actually I've had this same experience, and it stems out from the original devs messing with original KR. So yeah, as much as it's my favorite zone in the game, I have to agree that the level ranges have gotten all wonky.

 

 

[RikOz]

I agree about the mobs levels being a bit high but... when it tells you to fight skulls in the north, you can actually take them down anywhere. Ignore the marker, just go back down south if you have to. I did that this morning.

I'll look at it again the next time I do that mission. I did try fighting Skulls elsewhere in the zone on a couple characters, and it seemed to me that they weren't counting for that mission. But I'll try again.

 

However, street mobs over nearly the entire zone are now in the level 10-15 range, on par with Steel Canyon South and Skyway City North.

 

But saying there are level 15s all over the zone - that doesn't seem accurate to me and I've been running new characters through that zone since the Homecoming relaunch.

That's why I said "nearly" the entire zone. Indeed, the Skulls behind the police station and in that general vicinity are lower. And they need to be, for the mission where Ms. Liberty sends you to talk to Blue Steel, because a player not using XP boosts is likely to be level 5-6 when they get that mission. But it's still inconsistent. On several occasions now I've found that area full of mobs conning orange and red (though no purples).

 

I'll grant that this was all more of a problem on my first few characters, because I was electing to not use stuff from the P2W vendor.  For more recent alts, though, I've said, "screw it" and I've been using the Prestige Enhancements for a damage boost and the 2x XP boosters to make sure my alts are now level 10 by the time they finish Atlas Park. That still leaves the problem, though, where once you're level 10, the contacts in KR just want to shuffle you on Steel/Skyway instead of offering missions, the only exception being the contacts for the new Skulls/superadine story arc. So I end up missing out on the old KR stories.

[Coyotedancer]

Just one thing, unrelated to King's Row but important to remember about instanced ("door") missions... No matter what you set your difficulty to, there's going to be some variation in the levels of the goons you run into. Even set to +0, you may see anything from -1  to +2 depending on the map and spawn locations. (Atta's map in the Hollows is a great example of that-)

 

That's not new behavior. It's pretty much always been the case, and it has nothing to do with the zone you're in... It's a property of the instanced maps themselves. Back when AE was new, there was a lot of discussion about the hows and whys of that. Some players liked the variation, some absolutely hated it, but the devs told us all that it was "working as intended".

[PaxArcana]

Yeah, that I know, Coyote.

 

But when you enter an instanced mission, set to +0/x1, and literally everything is yellow, with a sprinkling of oranges and one or two reds?  There's definitely a problem.

 

(Or, now that some of my lowbie alts have dialled back to -1/x1, when the mission is all White and Yellow, with perhaps one or two Oranges still ... yep, still a problem, albeit buffered a tiny bit.)

[Coyotedancer]

Yeah, that I know, Coyote.

 

But when you enter an instanced mission, set to +0/x1, and literally everything is yellow, with a sprinkling of oranges and one or two reds?  There's definitely a problem.

 

(Or, now that some of my lowbie alts have dialled back to -1/x1, when the mission is all White and Yellow, with perhaps one or two Oranges still ... yep, still a problem, albeit buffered a tiny bit.)

 

I know you want it to be a fixable bug, Pax, but it really isn't something that's broken or related to the zone changes in King's Row... Depending on the map, that's just not unheard-of, as annoying as it may be. Likewise walking into a map you supposedly have set at +2 and finding a bunch of even-levels instead.

 

I had it happen last night in one of my missions from Shadow Spider in Grandville. I backed that mission down to +1 because I knew I was going to have to punch Crimson in the nose, and *still* ended up with his entire room at +3. Ouch. And potentially a seriously rough fight if I'd been on anything but my KM/Bio Stalker. o_0

 

It just is what it is. It's not a bug... It's supposed to be a "feature". XD

[OEM61]

That still leaves the problem, though, where once you're level 10, the contacts in KR just want to shuffle you on Steel/Skyway instead of offering missions, the only exception being the contacts for the new Skulls/superadine story arc. So I end up missing out on the old KR stories.

 

That is a function of added mission content much more than having to deal with some higher-leveled enemies.

 

You can either miss some missions/contacts or you can turn of your XP gain so as to avoid outleveling the missions your contacts might otherwise offer.

 

This is a great problem to have.

 

 

[justicebeliever]

I know you want it to be a fixable bug, Pax, but it really isn't something that's broken or related to the zone changes in King's Row... Depending on the map, that's just not unheard-of, as annoying as it may be. Likewise walking into a map you supposedly have set at +2 and finding a bunch of even-levels instead.

 

I had it happen last night in one of my missions from Shadow Spider in Grandville. I backed that mission down to +1 because I knew I was going to have to punch Crimson in the nose, and *still* ended up with his entire room at +3. Ouch. And potentially a seriously rough fight if I'd been on anything but my KM/Bio Stalker. o_0

 

It just is what it is. It's not a bug... It's supposed to be a "feature". XD

 

The way it should be working, if IIRC, is that 0 Level, the enemies should vary from at level to no more than +1 level.  So that would mean, conning from white (at level minion) to orange (+1 lvl Lt.).

 

If you add "Solo Bosses", that might give you a few Red (+1 Boss).

 

So if you are seeing no white at all, that's a bug, but I would agree that you should still expect to see Yellow/Orange for 0 lvl diff.

 

If you go to -1, then everything goes down, so it should be mostly a sea of blue & white with the occasional yellow, and rare Orange (if you have set it to solo bosses)

[Coyotedancer]

I know you want it to be a fixable bug, Pax, but it really isn't something that's broken or related to the zone changes in King's Row... Depending on the map, that's just not unheard-of, as annoying as it may be. Likewise walking into a map you supposedly have set at +2 and finding a bunch of even-levels instead.

 

I had it happen last night in one of my missions from Shadow Spider in Grandville. I backed that mission down to +1 because I knew I was going to have to punch Crimson in the nose, and *still* ended up with his entire room at +3. Ouch. And potentially a seriously rough fight if I'd been on anything but my KM/Bio Stalker. o_0

 

It just is what it is. It's not a bug... It's supposed to be a "feature". XD

 

The way it should be working, if IIRC, is that 0 Level, the enemies should vary from at level to no more than +1 level.  So that would mean, conning from white (at level minion) to orange (+1 lvl Lt.).

 

If you add "Solo Bosses", that might give you a few Red (+1 Boss).

 

So if you are seeing no white at all, that's a bug, but I would agree that you should still expect to see Yellow/Orange for 0 lvl diff.

 

If you go to -1, then everything goes down, so it should be mostly a sea of blue & white with the occasional yellow, and rare Orange (if you have set it to solo bosses)

 

I routinely see a lot of variation, especially towards the upper end... But I do turn bosses on pretty much from the start, even when I keep the level at +0, so I don't doubt that accounts for some of it. Running primarily red side may also have something to do with it. The CoV content is often a little rougher a little earlier than the blue side's version (particularly the older hero arcs-).

[Leogunner]

Leogunner, two things.

 

First, my Corrupter has 1 or 2 story-arcs already going in KR.  So she's kind of stuck there.

 

Second, just because there's other places that aren't broken, doesn't mean we should not fix places that are.

 

Which is what I'm trying to point to.  When you say "broken" I think it's just an exaggeration considering it's not uncommon for certain undesired outcomes to occur: 1) you have to scour the streets to get a level up or two or 2) you out level the contact and they stop giving you missions part way through.

 

Perhaps broken isn't the proper term.

[_NOPE_]

+1 to the OP. Fix my favorite zone, King's Row.

[JusticeBowler]

I wasn't going to complain about this officially, because on my last couple of toons I by-passed KR, but it is crazy how mobs around the Tram and on the way to Blue Steel and the Detective are almost always spawning zone max.

 

And there does seem to be an odd lack of variety, especially low level Lost which is a problem for the Midnighter Unlock if you are doing it solo (Hollows seems to be under populated in Lost compared to my memory as well for specifically this mission).

 

I suspect it might be that high level characters are running through. I know sometimes on Steel in the old days that used to be a problem in certain places where higher level characters "passed by" and caused spawns to max level for the zone.

 

But in KR it is really bad. ESPECIALLY the rooftop crap if you don't have a flier. Yes, I know you can get a temp power, but necessitating it for a story arc mission so early is just bad design.

 

Killing CoT (and Skulz) in Perez Park seems jacked up as well... it's like all the low level zones are overspawning, but it is by far the worst in KR.

[Zombie Man]

/b Where can I find cercle of throwns in King's Row??

[_NOPE_]

/b Where can I find cercle of throwns in King's Row??

 

[thunderforce]

However, street mobs over nearly the entire zone are now in the level 10-15 range, on par with Steel Canyon South and Skyway City North.

 

I noticed this too; it's pretty bad, leaving little for the 5-10 range except the Hollows; shades of being sent to Perez as soon as it's in-level to kill 10 Circle of Thorns. I think something that breaks the progression through early levels for new players wants looked at pretty urgently.

[RikOz]

However, street mobs over nearly the entire zone are now in the level 10-15 range, on par with Steel Canyon South and Skyway City North.

 

I noticed this too; it's pretty bad, leaving little for the 5-10 range except the Hollows; shades of being sent to Perez as soon as it's in-level to kill 10 Circle of Thorns. I think something that breaks the progression through early levels for new players wants looked at pretty urgently.

And, as near as I can tell, you only get sent to The Hollows if you know to click the "Find Contact" button to get Officer Wincott. It took me a while to remember that one, because as near as I can tell after running a crapton of new alts through Atlas Park, and doing all of the stuff from the origin contacts downstairs on top of the Matt Habashy and Twinshot stuff, nobody in AP sends you in that direction.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Ill be honest a lot of the complaining in here comes off as hyperbole to this ol berk. Maybe its just dumb luck but just about every alt Ive made has gone through the arcs taking me through KR and not had one bit of trouble. Ive done it now with a PB, a scrapper, a blaster, a brute, a stalker, and Sent.

 

Now sure a few of those are pretty hardier like the regen brute and sent. However I ignore the defenses on PBs at low lvls and even as a glass cannon did fine there.

 

Ive always found the area with skulls your sent to to be in yellow range at worst for my characters. Now I tend to do abit of street sweeping  by habit as I wander between missions and am usually a lvl above them when I reach them or close to it. Always played that way, and kind of felt it was the expected approach the game was designed around.

 

Yes flying offers some modest advantage at these levels. Seems only fitting considering how slow it is in end game and pretty much anyone and everyone can get some form of fly. So maybe just maybe think of those who actually love flight and tend to feel slapped in the face for that preference in like 99% of the games content.

 

Now if you all want to offer up increasing fly speed in general maybe I could see its modest early game advantage not deserving. However as it stands flight needs these little moments where it shines as the best option.

[WanderingAries]

Yeah, KR has a nasty habit of giving you purples for those "Kill X" early missions.

[EggKookoo]

Yes flying offers some modest advantage at these levels. Seems only fitting considering how slow it is in end game and pretty much anyone and everyone can get some form of fly. So maybe just maybe think of those who actually love flight and tend to feel slapped in the face for that preference in like 99% of the games content.

 

Just want to point out here that with Afterburner, Fly is almost as fast as Superspeed. And in practice a lot faster since you don't have to fly around obstacles or jump over things.

[PaxArcana]

[...] PB, a scrapper, a blaster, a brute, a stalker, and Sent.

High damage, high damage, high damage and survivability, high damage, high damage and survivability.

 

Try it on a Defender, see if it's that easy for you.