High level enemy group revamps

[Lunar Ronin]

17 minutes ago, biostem said:

I highly doubt that most games were made harder for "pro-gaming".  More likely, you have particular likes or dislikes that either differ from how things have shifted over time, (totally valid, IMHO), or you simply prefer older game design philosophies, (again, not necessarily a bad thing).  Similarly, I am extremely doubtful that *anyone* plays "most games" to begin with.

 

There is some truth to the statement.  Blizzard has gone really hard into esports (bleh), including with World of Warcraft.  Considering most MMORPGs released from 2005 onwards have copied World of Warcraft in some fashion or other, and with the advent of Dark Souls-type video games, yeah, I see it.  There are other reasons too of course, but the esports influence and live stream influence are there.

[biostem]

4 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

the esports influence and live stream influence are there.

There number of games that are appealing and/or fitting for eSports is vanishingly small, and they generally need to be fairly big or well known beforehand.  Blizzard was already a giant in the video game industry before eSports even caught on, so it's kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario.  Does the question of "is this game going to be streamed a lot" really enter into a developer's mind when they're deciding what (type of) game to create?  IMHO, it's more like "is this a FPS, a 3rdPS, an RPG, an RTS or Diablo-clone?"  With regards to "Dark Souls" type games, I see it more as a response to requests by gaming media or other such folks for "journalist modes" where the game basically plays itself, so they can report on the game without having to put in the time to learn it or be good at it in general...

[Eiko-chan]

2 minutes ago, biostem said:

or be good at it in general...

This is the sort of attitude I'm talking about. While there has always been some skill aspect to gaming, the idea that someone's lack of enjoyment of a game is a "skill issue" is largely a newer idea. The idea that someone needs to "get good" to enjoy a game has not been the prevailing view of humanity, nor has it been the prevailing view for the entire history of video gaming.
Most gamers are casual gamers. Most people that play video games are seeking to overcome obstacles, but are not necessarily seeking to establish "leet skills" or high degrees of intricate system mastery. Most of us just want to have fun, and bashing our heads against a wall isn't fun for most people.

[Neiska]

A few thoughts...

 

1. Not all ATs/Builds can solo +4/8 difficulty. I consider this a good thing. I try to see as +2/8 as "end difficulty" that's fair to most setups, and anything beyond that as "extra."

2. Not all can solo AVs/GMs. I consider this a good thing as well. I only wish they would mix it up a little bit, and not make "every" big baddie require -regen. Maybe make some require -damage, or -res, shake it up a little bit so not all AV/GM killers are the same handful of builds.

3. Turning down the difficulty "is" an option. And so far, every build I have slapped together and put actual thought and effort into can handle +2/8, which leads me to believe every build can handle that. Some builds can even go AFK on max difficulty.

4. Hardmodes are a relatively new thing and seem to focus on debuff protection. I do sort of wish the different hardmodes posed different obstacles or challenges too, just to shake things up a bit and make people think about new things. And perhaps not leave some ATs so undesired for such content.

 

If someone is expecting every build able to do everything at max difficulty, I think most will agree this isn't the game for that. Some builds can do incredible things, but it takes practice, time and money investment, and game knowledge. But not all powersets/ATs will be able to do those things, regardless of time/money/practice.

 

And let us not forget, this is also a team game as well. Soloing is fine of course, but also keep group dynamics in mind when critiquing. As an example, if they made an enemy that was truly a threat for a full team, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the same enemy will pose a threat for solo as well. And if they make things "too" easy, well, we get situations where some ATs who focus on things like Control or Debuffs feel unimportant. (which is ironic, as debuffs are often king at the endgame, despite not often being needed on speedy teams.)

 

Just my musings on the whole enemy difficulty vs player thing. I think its a bit more complicated than it first appears.

[biostem]

5 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

This is the sort of attitude I'm talking about. While there has always been some skill aspect to gaming, the idea that someone's lack of enjoyment of a game is a "skill issue" is largely a newer idea. The idea that someone needs to "get good" to enjoy a game has not been the prevailing view of humanity, nor has it been the prevailing view for the entire history of video gaming.
Most gamers are casual gamers. Most people that play video games are seeking to overcome obstacles, but are not necessarily seeking to establish "leet skills" or high degrees of intricate system mastery. Most of us just want to have fun, and bashing our heads against a wall isn't fun for most people.

If you lack the necessary hand-eye coordination or the ability to remember what keys to press for what actions, then that is something, (short of a disability), that you can absolutely work on.  You aren't going to be good at ice skating or mountain climbing right off the bat, either.  Many games have difficulty settings that you can select as well, so if you can't/won't/don't have the time or inclination to develop the skills necessary, then you have options.  If you *do* want to play on those harder difficulty settings, but don't want to improve yourself, then that's on you.  As for it not being part of videogames in the past, then you may not be familiar with the term "Nintendo hard'.

Edited May 9 by biostem

[Eiko-chan]

6 minutes ago, biostem said:

you may not be familiar with the term "Nintendo hard'.

Sweetie, I beat the original 1989 Prince of Persia. In 1989. You should probably assume people playing this game are very, very old, not very young.

As for my failing hand-eye coordination and memory? No, those are not things I can work on, because their degeneration is related to age. Any exercise of those faculties is maintenance at this point, not growth. 
But none of those are the reason I'm running into problems with Council enemies and I think you actually know that. 

Edited May 9 by Eiko-chan

[biostem]

Just now, Eiko-chan said:

Sweetie, I beat the original 1989 Prince of Persia. In 1989. You should probably assume people playing this game are very, very old, not very young.

As for my failing hand-eye coordination and memory? No, those are not things I can work on, because their degeneration is related to age. Any exercise of those faculties is maintenance at this point, not growth. 
But none of those are the reason I'm running into problem with Council enemies and I think you actually know that. 

Oh my sweet summer child, you poor thing.  You seem to be confused;  Learning a game's mechanics and systems is not the same as fast-twitch reaction time, and I'm confident you know that.  Maybe try -1/x1 next time.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

One thing you might think about is turning off your XP at a level below the cap.

 

1 hour ago, biostem said:

Oh my sweet summer child, you poor thing.  You seem to be confused;  Learning a game's mechanics and systems is not the same as fast-twitch reaction time, and I'm confident you know that.  Maybe try -1/x1 next time.

I mean, you can say that all you like, but this isn't a turn-based game, it still requires a certain level of reaction time and clicking precision which fails with age.

Also most of those "Nintendo hard" games you mentioned before were hard because of terrible game design, bad balancing, crappy controls, or poor performance.  *Especially* the ports of arcade games.  Arcade games were deliberately unfair to suck your quarters.

Compare Metroid or Super Metroid to Hollow Knight.  Hollow Knight is in a completely different world of difficulty.  Imagine if someone played Metroid and loved it, and then someone came along and decided to release a non-optional patch that made it Hollow Knight.  Isn't that person entitled to be miffed?  That's the situation we're talking about here.  Dude liked CoH as it was when he played it (which I remember, it was a lot easier, and I was a *moron* back then with very shallow understanding of the game's systems), and now it's different and a lot harder.

[kelika2]

wont be long before cimerorians learn buildup, shield charge and grant cover

[Sanguinesun]

8 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

Where am I supposed to discuss this topic? Why the hell is the Council hard now? Who's fucking idea was this and why is it just allowed to happen!? 

 

Whose idea?  A segment of the devs that have been actively for years now trying to slowly make the game harder and "more challenging".   Personally, I think having multiple Archons in a PI paper mish kill off many players when they rez at the same really makes me think someone on the team has a council fetish....

 

Make no mistake. This was intentional.   Make no mistake, they're going to continue to make it harder as has been seen before, supporters of it marginalizing the naysayers such as yourself as you've seen in the thread so far, and more.  They may think its improvements but its just feature creep.

[golstat2003]

12 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

Where am I supposed to discuss this topic? Why the hell is the Council hard now? Who's fucking idea was this and why is it just allowed to happen!? 

 

The PUGs I get on still steam roll them. /shrug

 

Edit: With that said I wold not be opposed to new game modes that made the game easier or harder.

 

Also I find it funny we are discussing skill in a game like this. Getting to max level in this game never had anything to do with skill. It just meant you played the game for more hours.

Edited May 9 by golstat2003

[GM Impervium]

Just popping in to remind everyone to keep things respectful. Antagonizing other players over thier playstyle preferences is quite frowned upon.

 

That said, the Council were simply brought "up to par" so to speak. Before, just about anyone could solo them at +4/x8. This has been remedied in order to encourage team play at the higher difficulties that are meant to be team content. There's "feeling super", and then there's gaining reward for no risk, which is bad game design.

 

Also, per the question posed by the title of the OP, you can leave feedback in the Suggestions & Feedback forum. In order to comment on changes that are being added to the game before they go Live, keep an eye out for Open Beta, and comment on changes there.

Edited May 9 by GM Impervium
Added link

[Frostbiter]

Personally, I like the new Council. They aren't chumps anymore. I think Malta needs the next revamp. They've become the chumps at 50 now.

[Seed22]

11 hours ago, biostem said:

Oh my sweet summer child, you poor thing.  You seem to be confused;  Learning a game's mechanics and systems is not the same as fast-twitch reaction time, and I'm confident you know that.  Maybe try -1/x1 next time.

You sound dismissive of their argument. And you talk of learning a games mechanics…in city of fucking heroes, the game with a floor so low it makes the center of the earth look like mount everest.  
 

How many difficult games do you actually play, I wonder? 

[Seed22]

9 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

and now it's different and a lot harder.

I wouldn’t say it’s harder personally, it’s still the same ish CoH to me. If anything Council got kind of a lateral adjustment. Nothing really new to learn with the group, it’s just tedium incarnate for solo players in the faux pass of difficulty. 
 

I view HM as the same. It’s only difficult in the vein of learning the new enemies in say a first run. And even then, if you stack the team in a certain way, that assessment doesn’t hold true either. 
 

I do get where OP is coming from. I was miffed council were going from my get stoned and bash some heads group to ugggh you mean I have to slog through a group of bullet sponge self rezzers?!? 
 

But claiming this group had a learning curve added to it(not by you, but others) makes me wonder if whoever says it has ever played other games with actual difficulty and real learning curves. 

[PhotriusPyrelus]

19 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

I wouldn’t say it’s harder personally, it’s still the same ish CoH to me. If anything Council got kind of a lateral adjustment. Nothing really new to learn with the group, it’s just tedium incarnate for solo players in the faux pass of difficulty.

I don't really know about the council specifically, all I know is I rolled the same character as I had on live which I remember basically face-rolling content with dummy-me back in 2004 or 2005 (most of my play was before CoV).  I'm not even saying it was something HC did, it was probably balancing done by Cryptic or Paragon.  ::shrug::

[Eiko-chan]

1 hour ago, GM Impervium said:

That said, the Council were simply brought "up to par" so to speak.

This is factually incorrect. I solo /x8 with almost all my characters, because that is what I build for. The character I am currently working on has not had the problems with Arachnos, IDF, UPA, or any other enemy group that I am having with the Council. They are not on par with anyone. They have been tuned into the stratosphere for absolutely no goddammed reason. They now have more toughness, more control, and more knockback than any other enemy group I'm running against. Even the new Circle hasn't bene tuned this hard. Whatever was done to the Council was a gross overcorrection.

[Eiko-chan]

1 minute ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

I don't really know about the council specifically, all I know is I rolled the same character as I had on live which I remember basically face-rolling content with dummy-me back in 2004 or 2005 (most of my play was before CoV).  I'm not even saying it was something HC did, it was probably balancing done by Cryptic or Paragon.  ::shrug::

If you were playing pre-CoV, then you were probably used to the game before Enhancement Diversification, which does mean that yes, there were substantial balance changes made by both Cryptic and Paragon in the intervening years. 
In my case, however, I was playing the game up to shortly before the shut-down, so this is definitely something HC did.

[Eiko-chan]

The high-level revamps are not a good thing.

 

The changes to bring the Council "on par" with other enemy groups went too far. The high-level Council is not "on par' with any other enemy group; they are far above everyone now, having more toughness, control, knockback, and damage than any other enemy group. Compared with groups like the UPA, the IDF, Arachnos - the groups that were "hard-hitters", heavy control and so on, the Council exceeds them in every capacity. This correction was a huge overcorrection and needs to be dialled back. 
 

I'd also really like to see you un-"fix" the Rikti. The reason Communication Officers were worth Lieutenant XP was because their summons are not worth XP and do not die with them. It is not frivolous to eliminate every Communication Officer in a spawn (or multiple spawns) before they can open a portal, and the small boost of XP and Inf they granted was the balance for the added spawns they could produce. 

 

(And has the issue with their battle portals spawning endlessly and spawning bosses been fixed yet? That's also a bad change.)

[KaizenSoze]

12 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

The high-level revamps are not a good thing.

 

The changes to bring the Council "on par" with other enemy groups went too far. The high-level Council is not "on par' with any other enemy group; they are far above everyone now, having more toughness, control, knockback, and damage than any other enemy group. Compared with groups like the UPA, the IDF, Arachnos - the groups that were "hard-hitters", heavy control and so on, the Council exceeds them in every capacity. This correction was a huge overcorrection and needs to be dialled back. 
 

I'd also really like to see you un-"fix" the Rikti. The reason Communication Officers were worth Lieutenant XP was because their summons are not worth XP and do not die with them. It is not frivolous to eliminate every Communication Officer in a spawn (or multiple spawns) before they can open a portal, and the small boost of XP and Inf they granted was the balance for the added spawns they could produce. 

 

(And has the issue with their battle portals spawning endlessly and spawning bosses been fixed yet? That's also a bad change.)

Politely disagree. The updated Circle of Thorns and Arachnos are still much nastier than Council. Council are just not the punching bags they used to be.

 

The game is too easy at the high end. Old Council were a joke. Now, at least they are a bit more dangerous. PI radio teams are still ripping through them, just have to use more powers now.

 

Controls are now a bit more useful. They at least speed up the clear time due to holding mobs that can transform or stopping them from using some of their nasty powers like those AOE galaxy powers.

[tidge]

I don't think the original post deserves a thumbs-down for the feels, but I disagree with everything in the OP.

 

The Council was the preferred punching bag because they had mediocre controls, generally sub-standard resistances, and aside from from a couple of types that prefer to stand in place there was nothing about the AI behavior that made them especially annoying to face... they wouldn't teleport, phase, etc.

 

The revamp has given the Council more than what most other factions have, but what they got is 100% in line with what I would expect 35+ level enemies to have... especially given the sort of Lore elements they are supposed to have access to.

 

The only time I was annoyed (but ultimately pleasantly surprised) by the new Council was on soloing a Warshade. There was a final arc boss that became what I felt might have been a little too powerful for a solo Kheldian, but ultimately I treated it like a strategic challenge and dealt with it. I've noticed no real changes on PUGs with Moonfire or Hess.

 

If players are looking for level 50 punching bags from radio/newspaper missions, there are still a couple of other factions that haven't been improved and can be pretty easy to mow down. Yes you might have to face *gasp*  Malta Sappers or *double gasp* Illusionists, but my experience is that those groups fall quickly to certain damage types.

[Eiko-chan]

Do we even play the same game? Malta and Carnival have never been the most annoying groups, at least not since Going Rogue. The groups added in Praetoria were the gold standard for toughness, and the new Council outstrips even them.

[tidge]

6 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

Do we even play the same game? Malta and Carnival have never been the most annoying groups, at least not since Going Rogue. The groups added in Praetoria were the gold standard for toughness, and the new Council outstrips even them.

 

I don't consider the IDF to be particularly tough; the most problematic thing about them is that so many of them don't move into melee combat. The IDF isn't a common enemy faction in radio missions, and IIRC they only appear as secondary spawns in level 40+ tip missions.

 

At the end of Live, I would probably put Rularuu at or near the top as one of the most annoying groups to face at +4x8.

 

EDIT: Upon reflection, I suppose the new Council remind me a little bit of the Animus Arcana, which can be quite annoying. I think it is possible for players to play the game without ever encountering those however. I liked that the Black Knights would regularly use Taunts, something that was added (or improved) for Crey.

Edited May 9 by tidge

[Eiko-chan]

Okay, we don't play the same game, because I don't even DO radio missions. I do contact missions, and many of the new story arcs (both PS Freedom stuff and HC stuff) feature the Praetorian-era enemy groups. 

[tidge]

The radios/newspapers are the way to get Safeguard/Mayhem missions (modulo specific badge unlocks), and the Tip missions are a nice change of pace. They are not gutter content.