High level enemy group revamps

[Eiko-chan]

4 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

full EXP rewards

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There isn't a single value for EXP rewards. Different enemy groups have always given different EXP values, and Council was the lowest because they sucked.

(I haven't actually tracked to see if they're still giving lower EXP than other groups.)

[biostem]

6 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There isn't a single value for EXP rewards. Different enemy groups have always given different EXP values, and Council was the lowest because they sucked.

(I haven't actually tracked to see if they're still giving lower EXP than other groups.)

When you create your own enemies in AE, you need to give them a minimum number of ranged and other attacks to get full rewards.  Yes, some enemy groups or tiers received more or less than the baseline, but there is still that initial reward amount...

[Sakura Tenshi]

@biostem

Thank you for clarifying my point. I’ll say in the defense of the live devs though I think part of the old council being farmably easy was a side effect of them not grasping how strong players/teams could be on SOs alone, much like how several TF missions required teams of 8 to confront: A BOSS LEVEL ENEMY!

[biostem]

4 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

I’ll say in the defense of the live devs though I think part of the old council being farmably easy was a side effect of them not grasping how strong players/teams could be on SOs alone

Other than adding in the Galaxy troops when HEATs were introduced, did the Council ever get a revamp when Incarnates were added?  The only other update I vaguely recall is them getting some sonic troops when that powerset was added...

[Sakura Tenshi]

I don’t think so and I don’t even know if the the Archons were added after Sonic powers. I think they might have existed before but they only appeared in limited content if I recall.

[Rudra]

7 minutes ago, biostem said:

Other than adding in the Galaxy troops when HEATs were introduced, did the Council ever get a revamp when Incarnates were added?  The only other update I vaguely recall is them getting some sonic troops when that powerset was added...

No, it was the 5th Column that got an incarnate update, not the Council.

 

1 minute ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

I don’t think so and I don’t even know if the the Archons were added after Sonic powers. I think they might have existed before but they only appeared in limited content if I recall.

Archons already existed in the game before the Council got sonic attacks.

[Sakura Tenshi]

@Rudra

i meant ascendants or whatever the dudes in the metal plate tights are called.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

@Rudra

i meant ascendants or whatever the dudes in the metal plate tights are called.

Oh. Yeah, the Ascendants got added later. About the same time as the sonic soldiers if I recall correctly.

[Shin Magmus]

16 hours ago, golstat2003 said:

 

There is no leveling or time or effort on the beta server. There are insta levels (even to a specific level if needed), IOs (all IOs available), etc on test.

 

And there are settings where you can insta kills mobs or insta complete missions as part of testing there.

     Thank you.  The amount of comments on this thread that are *just* OP making incorrect assumptions about beta testers, and people correcting them, are too high.  Listen... OP... Eiko, if you really have such a huge issue with Council and CoT now: this is like 4 months too late to bring it up.  Everyone had the same opportunity to spend a little bit of their time testing things on Beta and providing feedback about it.

 

     Sometimes, the feedback does result in positive changes that make it into the game before stuff goes live.  Other times, you get Beanbagged.  That's not important though, what's important is the effort itself.  I respect the concept of putting forth effort.  If the game changed in a way that bothers you this much: put forth more effort next time to get involved in beta testing and at least try to voice your concerns when changes are still likely.  For all the futility of the struggle, I did see a couple positive changes made to Arse Control between Open Beta Ver1 and what we have now on live: so it's not hopeless.

[Doc_Scorpion]

15 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

To put into perspective why the Council needed a buff, let’s put this into perspective: if you tried to recreate one of their level 50 minions in AE, you wouldn’t get full EXP rewards if you fought them at level 1. They had a single attack and brawl. Somehow live devs felt that warranted full EXP rewards. Combined with increased spawning rates and largely being smashing and lethal damage group, they were fought in radios explicitly to farm rewards, even groups going so far as to avoid any other enemy group in radio missions.

Though you put it a bit confusingly...  Yeah, spot on.  Prior to the I27P7 revamp, high level gameplay was being distorted because people were basically farming Council radios and avoiding other high level enemy groups.  The Dev team has an established track record of trying to correct such distortions.

[Eiko-chan]

5 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

this is like 4 months too late to bring it up

This is not an answer or acceptable. Do you intend to say that people that have been in the hospital for 6 months aren't allowed to comment on changes? Are you intending to say that people deployed overseas, or any of a plethora of reasons why someone might be away from the game for long periods are incapable of commenting on changes?

[PeregrineFalcon]

20 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is not an answer or acceptable.

I agree, and I apologize if my earlier posts sounded like I was saying that you're not allowed to comment about this, or any other, subject. I should have worded my posts better.

[Glacier Peak]

43 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is not an answer or acceptable. Do you intend to say that people that have been in the hospital for 6 months aren't allowed to comment on changes? Are you intending to say that people deployed overseas, or any of a plethora of reasons why someone might be away from the game for long periods are incapable of commenting on changes?

This is literally the place on the Homecoming forums to bring it up - and there is no time limit on player feedback. We can discuss our agreements or disagreements on a particular suggestion or feedback, but unless a GM or member of the Homecoming team says otherwise, players can post those suggestions and feedback here regardless of when a change was made.

 

 

Edit: I will add though, based on my anecdotal experience, that feedback provided during closed and open beta is more likely to result in changes. If a player wishes to invest their own time for the benefit of this community, that would be where they would see the biggest impact (short of becoming a developer themselves).

Edited May 15 by Glacier Peak

[SeraphimKensai]

I fully recommend joining the Gold Standard Testers group, and test stuff the devs are actively working on. Then you can help test proposed changes and actually have discourse with the Dev team.

 

If there's a proposed change that you don't agree with you can voice that feedback, but I recommend having some detailed explanation why the proposed change is bad.

 

At the end of the day the HC team are players that are passionate about the game just as everyone else is.

[Bionic_Flea]

5 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is not an answer or acceptable. Do you intend to say that people that have been in the hospital for 6 months aren't allowed to comment on changes? Are you intending to say that people deployed overseas, or any of a plethora of reasons why someone might be away from the game for long periods are incapable of commenting on changes?

 

There is absolutely no issue with you raising problems in the forums at any time.  Even if the Devs do not make changes to nuCouncil (I like that name), they might take note of your concerns when making future changes.

 

I have also done beta testing over the years both here and even live.  I have had some of my concerns directly addressed leading to modifications and sometimes my concerns are noted but they move on with their announced plan anyway.   While you can complain anytime about anything, the further out you are from implementation, the less likely you are to influence change.  And that makes sense.  It takes dozens if not hundreds of hours to learn this game's code and then dozens if not hundreds of hours to add changes.  And even more time to calibrate and fix any bugs.  So you might understand if by the time it gets to the live servers the dev or devs that created that new content think of it as their newborn baby.  But even at that, they sometimes do make changes after going live.  It doesn't happen often, nor is it easy.  But it does happen if you provide evidence of a problem.

 

I can also attest that beta testers play a variety of characters at multiple levels.  I will make something new, play it from 1 to 10 or so, and then play a mission and bump up a level or two so that it doesn't take forever.  I can also attest that America's Angel, who posted on the last page of this thread, specifically posted feedback on the difficultly of the new Council and CoT on MMs in particular during beta testing.  I don't recall if any changes were made based on that feedback.  But it was given.

 

Finally, I renew my suggestion made upthread that may have been buried in the comments:  I think you may want to consider team inspirations, specifically defense and break frees, to help you take out those Nazis!

Edited May 15 by Bionic_Flea

[Eiko-chan]

12 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

I think you may want to consider team inspirations, specifically defense and break frees, to help you take out those Nazis!

I did actually enable team inspirations after your post. Thank you. 🙂

[Shin Magmus]

3 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is not an answer or acceptable.

     K.  Well just so you know, the frequency of changes based on player feedback during open Beta periods and leading up to patch releases, is about 100x greater than the frequency of changes based on player feedback at any other time.  I'm sorry that you personally were very late to the party, but I'm just letting you know to temper your expectations and expect literally nothing to be done to the Council in the future.  I'd be shocked if they rolled back or nerfed any of the stuff they did to Council or CoT after sitting on the changes for this long.

Edited May 15 by Shin Magmus

[Doc_Scorpion]

37 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

  I can also attest that America's Angel, who posted on the last page of this thread, specifically posted feedback on the difficultly of the new Council and CoT on MMs in particular during beta testing.  I don't recall if any changes were made based on that feedback.

I think I was on several of her runs against the nuCouncil, sidekicked up on at least one to better simulate a typical PI PUG.  Yes, changes were made (IIRC notably toning down the AOE when a nuCouncil bites it).  Not as far as we wanted, but so it goes.

[Bionic_Flea]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I think I was on several of her runs against the nuCouncil, sidekicked up on at least one to better simulate a typical PI PUG.  Yes, changes were made (IIRC notably toning down the AOE when a nuCouncil bites it).  Not as far as we wanted, but so it goes.

 

Now that you mention it, I think FREEEM KB was also toned down based on feedback from her and others.

[lemming]

10 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Now that you mention it, I think FREEEM KB was also toned down based on feedback from her and others.

It was.  I forget what the mag was prior, but I want to say it was unresistable.

[Eiko-chan]

Anecdotally, my (now) level 41 Strong/Pretty War Mace/Energy Aura Brute is having no problem with nuCouncil, despite me not having gotten the slots into Power Shield to shore up her Dark Energy defence hole. So these changes don't really seem to be having a huge effect on high-defence builds at all.

[golstat2003]

12 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

     Thank you.  The amount of comments on this thread that are *just* OP making incorrect assumptions about beta testers, and people correcting them, are too high.  Listen... OP... Eiko, if you really have such a huge issue with Council and CoT now: this is like 4 months too late to bring it up.  Everyone had the same opportunity to spend a little bit of their time testing things on Beta and providing feedback about it.

 

     Sometimes, the feedback does result in positive changes that make it into the game before stuff goes live.  Other times, you get Beanbagged.  That's not important though, what's important is the effort itself.  I respect the concept of putting forth effort.  If the game changed in a way that bothers you this much: put forth more effort next time to get involved in beta testing and at least try to voice your concerns when changes are still likely.  For all the futility of the struggle, I did see a couple positive changes made to Arse Control between Open Beta Ver1 and what we have now on live: so it's not hopeless.

 

Yep, I should also point out that there were some updates to Council that never saw the light of day out of beta because some players pointed them out.

 

EDIT: Amazingly I posted the above before reading any of the stuff others posted earlier lol Glad other folks have a better memory from

beta testing than me. 😁

Edited May 16 by golstat2003

[Shin Magmus]

5 hours ago, lemming said:

It was.  I forget what the mag was prior, but I want to say it was unresistable.

     I homestly don't even know why someone on the dev team thought that a common enemy group being unique to have RANDOM unresistable KB would be fun for anyone.  Here's a list of unresistable KB off the top of my head: special AV attacks on a few Trials/TFs (Admiral Sutter etc.), the defeat explosion of The Crimson Prototype, and ???Every Single NuCouncil Boss???  That was a genuinely baffling idea. 

[tidge]

FREEM! knockback can be protected against, IIRC it is magnitude 20.

 

My melee types have been targeting 14 points of KB protection via build/power choices, a +10 point KB protection from a SG base buff (90 minutes duration) seems to nullify FREEM!

 

I'm ok with the FREEM! addition, as magnitude 12+ KB is a rather rare type of enemy control, typical seen only on unique individual critters.

 

If we need a head-canon reason for it, let's just pretend that it is where all the knockback from slotted KB->KD enhancements go.

[KaizenSoze]

6 hours ago, tidge said:

FREEM! knockback can be protected against, IIRC it is magnitude 20.

 

My melee types have been targeting 14 points of KB protection via build/power choices, a +10 point KB protection from a SG base buff (90 minutes duration) seems to nullify FREEM!

 

I'm ok with the FREEM! addition, as magnitude 12+ KB is a rather rare type of enemy control, typical seen only on unique individual critters.

 

If we need a head-canon reason for it, let's just pretend that it is where all the knockback from slotted KB->KD enhancements go.

FREEM! checks against KB resistance first I believe, which only some armor sets provide. Then it checks KB mag protection.

 

Which is why my Widows never get FREEM! even though they only have mag 10 KB protection.

 

None of the KB protection IOs provide any resistance as far as I know.

Edited May 16 by KaizenSoze