A couple of questions....

[Ultimo]

So, I'm making a mission with a hero to rescue.  I want it to be a random hero, selected from the Generic Heroes group, but I'd like it to show the name and bio of the actual hero (as opposed to a generic name, like "Beleaguered Hero").  Is this possible?

 

The second thing is more of a survey...

 

The idea is that each mission should become harder and harder, and I wanted to figure out what power sets are the most difficult to fight against.  It might depend on the class of the character, but in general terms, what are the four most difficult to fight power sets?

[Ankylosaur]

1. No.
2. Dunno, but I would think sonic and rad would be contenders because of the debuff. If there are assault sets, then a nice mix of melee and range. 
    

And will it be fun?

[Frozen Burn]

Yes, you can have a random Generic Hero pop up as a captive and they will of course have their own Bio if the player right clicks on them to read.  BUT you still have to give that hero a "name," unfortunately.  So, you will have to use "Beleaguered Hero" or "Captured Hero" or "Newbie Hero That Got In Over Their Head."  😄  

 

As for power sets that are tough, anything that debuffs can be a challenge.  Use a mix of damage types so that one will at least find a hole in whatever random player's build is.  Psi and Toxic are the least resisted.  But Neg, Fire, Ice are also good to have as well.  

 

And as Ankylosaur alluded - it needs to be fun.  Hard, difficult, and challenging is all good - if it has a purpose.  Being stupid hard for the sake of stupid hard only markets to niche players.  But if you there is a story reason for the increased difficulty, then that can appeal to a wider player base.  🙂  

[Ultimo]

Appreciate the input.

 

So far, it's pretty stupid hard, but just later on, and I've populated those missions with NPCs to help out.

It's still bare bones though, so I have work yet to do.

 

 

[Neopatch]

As a base global comment :

_ anything that can be done by someone in the level up phase will be trivial to anyone with a full fledge IO set build

_ anything that can be considered hard for a final build incarnate player ... will proved too much for anyone that is not.

 

When I reached 50 I created a mission I could not complete at -1*1 while at the same time, full build could run it at 54*8 without finding it hard.

[Ankylosaur]

This is not my area of expertise even slightly, but as a series based purely on scaling difficulty for teams, there is a lot of research/suggestions in here for balancing difficulty purely for the challenge of difficult fights. 

 

I believe this may be a bit of the gold standard for this kind of thing.

 

 

Edited March 11 by Ankylosaur

[Linea]

On 3/8/2024 at 12:14 AM, Ultimo said:

The idea is that each mission should become harder and harder, and I wanted to figure out what power sets are the most difficult to fight against.  It might depend on the class of the character, but in general terms, what are the four most difficult to fight power sets?

tldr: Primarily, just be careful and conservative in what you add until you find the balance you want.

• +4x8 MOSTLY, but not always, as each map has it's own definitions.  But MOSTLY, the maps will spawn ... 2-4 Bosses, 4-6 Lts, 8-12 Minions.
• MOSTLY, but not always, they spawn as: Random Starting Index, then Linear.  so make sure to use random placement, and account for that.
• Use a large enough pool of mobs that you don't get too much overlap, if any, in the debuffs.  If you make 4 mobs, and 1 is a debuffer, you'll end up with at least 4 debuffers in that +4x8 spawn, and frequently twice that, and if two or three spawns are close together, 6 or 10 times that ... it'll get out of control very very quickly. 
• Typically limit debuffs to only 1 mob, but preferably not a minion.  Even Lts trend toward dying to easily.  A mix of one Lt, one Boss often works well.   But that means you need at least 10 Lts and 10 Bosses in the pool to pick from, and only ONE in each pool that has debuffs.  You also want to make sure that in the end spawn list, that any debuffers are separated by several normal mobs on both sides of the list of them.   I used groups of up to 150 mobs, and a balance ratio of 1 in 4, but I was also aiming for maximum achievable challenge.  I'd recommend you run some 801s, up to about 801.5 or 801.6 difficulty before you decide to put more than 1 in 10 debuffs into a mission.
• Particularly avoid things like Sonic and FF ... it's very very easy to get wall to wall FF or Sonic bubbles in a +4x8 situation, and end up with something completely unplayable.  But if you keep it 1 in 10, it should work out more reasonable.
• That means if you wanted a /Rad Debuffer and a /FF Buffer, you'd want 20 mobs in the LT group, with 10 on each side of both, in the final spawnlist.  you can manipulate the spawn list by editing the mobs, external tools, or reloading them files alphabetically. 

[Jiro Ito]

In my experience, the worst powers to give AE enemies are the -speed debuffs; stuff out of cold, kin, etc.  Nothing will make your players angrier than sapping their movement and recharge speeds.

[Ultimo]

I've posted a first draft, called The Dire Plan, if anyone wants to try it out.  I welcome feedback.

 

I should say, I've tried it myself on a few characters ranging from L9 to L38, and they all did ok, but had trouble with the final mission.