Halloween Elite Bosses.

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Just because you can do something with your characters doesn't mean everyone can.

A great point to make in a suggestion thread from someone who wants to change the game for everyone just to fit their unwilling adaptation of playstyle that everyone else uses. Luckily those types of sweeping changes aren't made very often by the Homecoming Team, so this thread and the other Halloween Elite Boss suggestion threads can return to their grave (again) until next year when the same posters make the same zombie suggestions (again).

[ScarySai]

Insane to me how people still complain about these things.

 

If a petless mm can handle it better than you, there's a skill issue in a game where that bar is incredibly low.

Edited October 5 by ScarySai

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

The converse is also true:

 

1 hour ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Just because you can't do something with your characters doesn't mean no one can.

 

We have a wide range of players with a wide range of knowledge, abilities and, sometimes, disabilities that may prevent them from being able to do certain things.

 

It's OK to have a disagreement over whether something is too easy, too hard, or just right.  But in fact, that same Mummy is too easy, too hard, or just right depending on the player, the level, the build, and how many friends are there to help.  The devs know this and try to design content, as a whole, that can appeal to everyone while acknowledging that not everything they make will be just right to everyone.  They also try to provide the players with tools to regulate the difficulty.

[Glacier Peak]

17 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

The converse is also true:

 

We have a wide range of players with a wide range of knowledge, abilities and, sometimes, disabilities that may prevent them from being able to do certain things.

 

It's OK to have a disagreement over whether something is too easy, too hard, or just right.  But in fact, that same Mummy is too easy, too hard, or just right depending on the player, the level, the build, and how many friends are there to help.  The devs know this and try to design content, as a whole, that can appeal to everyone while acknowledging that not everything they make will be just right to everyone.  They also try to provide the players with tools to regulate the difficulty.

It seems that this and the other Halloween Elite Boss suggestion threads had the effect they desired; Open Beta patch notes now indicate Halloween Elite Bosses now have some of their powers Level gated to Level 30 and Level 40. This is at the expense of team and league engagement, which is the trade off made to give solo players an even easier time defeating the Halloween Elite Bosses. 

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

17 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Open Beta patch notes

 

True!  

 

Quote

Halloween 2022 - Trick-or-Treat Elite Bosses

• Power availability on the Arisen Mummy and Hollow Reaper enemies has been adjusted to be better balanced when they spawn at lower levels, gaining powers at Levels 30+ and 40+ to reach their current strength, rather than having full access to all powers at all levels.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/54189-open-beta-patch-notes-for-october-5th-2024/

 

Edited October 5 by GM_GooglyMoogly

[lemming]

13 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

It seems that this and the other Halloween Elite Boss suggestion threads had the effect they desired; Open Beta patch notes now indicate Halloween Elite Bosses now have some of their powers Level gated to Level 30 and Level 40. This is at the expense of team and league engagement, which is the trade off made to give solo players an even easier time defeating the Halloween Elite Bosses. 

Sounds like the right way to address it.     It won't make any difference to the level 50 leagues while making it easier for a lower level casual player.

[Glacier Peak]

55 minutes ago, lemming said:

Sounds like the right way to address it. It won't make any difference to the level 50 leagues while making it easier for a lower level casual player.

Indeed, the Halloween Elite Bosses were already too easy for teams and leagues, so this change doesn't really impact that experience.

 

Edit: I'll further add that it is wonderful to have an enemy that can be soloed easily that also grants x5 XP and Inf. I sure would be disappointed if this proposed change impacted the risk to reward experience though!

Edited October 5 by Glacier Peak

[Indystruck]

now how am I supposed to prove that they're fine by soloing them on a petless demon/empathy

[Shin Magmus]

It's like Goldilocks and the three EBs!  Just right!

[Ukase]

So, I just responded in another thread where someone was asking about a re-visit to the "balance" of EB powers. So, I'm sure you're not alone in feeling under-powered. 

The thing is, I don't see it. They do not hit that hard. They barely hit much at all. They are in fact, super easy. The only issue I've run into was getting held, so I used a break free. Now, I'm not saying every character I've gotten my 10 prismatics on has just 2-shotted them and I never had any difficulty. Some of my characters had a little harder times than others, but overall, they are just big bags of HP. If your defense is 30%, they probably won't ever even hit you, unless you just sit there in front of it for reasons unclear to me. 

I've clobbered these EBs enough to earn 500 prismatics in total, with every AT. They are easy. They are not hard. They might take your dominator or controller a little more time, depending on how your characters are built. But for me, at least anecdotally, they were no problems at all. 

[Ultimo]

9 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

A great point to make in a suggestion thread from someone who wants to change the game for everyone just to fit their unwilling adaptation of playstyle that everyone else uses. Luckily those types of sweeping changes aren't made very often by the Homecoming Team, so this thread and the other Halloween Elite Boss suggestion threads can return to their grave (again) until next year when the same posters make the same zombie suggestions (again).

 

Perhaps I should reiterate one of my earlier points, that if adjusting the EBs is not preferred, or is deemed inappropriate, then they should not appear to solo players unless they've specifically allowed for it.

 

When there's a Rikti or Zombie invasion, the Power Suits and Nightmares don't spawn for solo players, only for groups.  This is how it should be for the door knocking EBs.  If this code exists for THESE EBs, surely it can be used for the Halloween ones?

[lemming]

3 hours ago, Ultimo said:

Perhaps I should reiterate one of my earlier points, that if adjusting the EBs is not preferred, or is deemed inappropriate, then they should not appear to solo players unless they've specifically allowed for it.

 

When there's a Rikti or Zombie invasion, the Power Suits and Nightmares don't spawn for solo players, only for groups.  This is how it should be for the door knocking EBs.  If this code exists for THESE EBs, surely it can be used for the Halloween ones?

Some of us like taking them on solo.

If they tie the notoriety setting to the door knocking, great.   And if you check the patch in Open beta, you'll see the adjustment made to a couple of the EBs

[Rudra]

3 hours ago, Ultimo said:

When there's a Rikti or Zombie invasion, the Power Suits and Nightmares don't spawn for solo players, only for groups.  This is how it should be for the door knocking EBs.  If this code exists for THESE EBs, surely it can be used for the Halloween ones?

When there is an invasion, the event spawns enemies near you unless you are under some cover or inside something regardless of whether you want to fight invasion mobs or not. Because the event is constantly spawning enemies on your position, it spawns sufficient enemies to threaten the players in the area. So for a sufficient league, you can get the EBs to spawn. (Edit again: You can't even get bosses to spawn on your position to fight in an invasion unless there are sufficient players there to trigger it.) When ToT'ing, no enemies will ever spawn to attack your character unless you specifically click on a door that does not take you to your mission. So there are more differences between how the invasions and trick or treating work than just what gets you the EBs. And should that prove necessary to implement this last request, taking away the door-to-door trick or treating to simply spawn enemies for the sake of using invasion EB rules takes away the feel of the event being a Halloween event. Especially since the Halloween event also already includes its own invasion.

 

Further, as others have stated in this thread multiple times, there are players that want to fight the EBs and don't want a team making it easier for them to do so. So your proposal will take that away from those players. Meanwhile, you can currently run away from the EBs. If the EBs are attacking you before they finish exiting the building? You are dealing with lag. Either go to a part of the zone farther away from the ToT league so you stop getting hit with the lag or go to another zone like Kallisti Wharf where to the best of my knowledge, there is no ToT league, and ToT there so the enemies give you their normal inactive time to see what they are and run away. Or pack some Breakfrees in case you get held before you can run. Or ToT near someone else that is willing to lend you a hand should an EB appear. Or ToT near some drones, trainers, or TF contacts. (The drones will insta-kill the EBs and the NPCs will fight them if they are normally combat NPCs outside of their contact role.) You have several options for dealing with the EBs without taking away the ability of other players to get to fight them.

 

Edit: And now I'm curious. What do you do when you encounter EBs in your solo missions? Even turning off EBs, you can still encounter them as downgraded AVs. (AVs never downgrade to bosses, even if you have bosses, EBs, and AVs all turned off. Just like how EBs never downgrade to lieutenants.) So when you are solo and run into an EB in your mission, what do you do?

 

Edited October 6 by Rudra

[lemming]

13 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Kallisti Wharf where to the best of my knowledge, there is no ToT league and ToT there

Depends on the server and time, but Grandville, PI, and Kallisti all get leagues.   However, since KW is huge, there are several places that work decent

[Ultimo]

42 minutes ago, Rudra said:

When there is an invasion, the event spawns enemies near you unless you are under some cover or inside something regardless of whether you want to fight invasion mobs or not. Because the event is constantly spawning enemies on your position, it spawns sufficient enemies to threaten the players in the area. So for a sufficient league, you can get the EBs to spawn. (Edit again: You can't even get bosses to spawn on your position to fight in an invasion unless there are sufficient players there to trigger it.) When ToT'ing, no enemies will ever spawn to attack your character unless you specifically click on a door that does not take you to your mission. So there are more differences between how the invasions and trick or treating work than just what gets you the EBs. And should that prove necessary to implement this last request, taking away the door-to-door trick or treating to simply spawn enemies for the sake of using invasion EB rules takes away the feel of the event being a Halloween event. Especially since the Halloween event also already includes its own invasion.

 

Further, as others have stated in this thread multiple times, there are players that want to fight the EBs and don't want a team making it easier for them to do so. So your proposal will take that away from those players. Meanwhile, you can currently run away from the EBs. If the EBs are attacking you before they finish exiting the building? You are dealing with lag. Either go to a part of the zone farther away from the ToT league so you stop getting hit with the lag or go to another zone like Kallisti Wharf where to the best of my knowledge, there is no ToT league, and ToT there so the enemies give you their normal inactive time to see what they are and run away. Or pack some Breakfrees in case you get held before you can run. Or ToT near someone else that is willing to lend you a hand should an EB appear. Or ToT near some drones, trainers, or TF contacts. (The drones will insta-kill the EBs and the NPCs will fight them if they are normally combat NPCs outside of their contact role.) You have several options for dealing with the EBs without taking away the ability of other players to get to fight them.

 

Edit: And now I'm curious. What do you do when you encounter EBs in your solo missions? Even turning off EBs, you can still encounter them as downgraded AVs. (AVs never downgrade to bosses, even if you have bosses, EBs, and AVs all turned off. Just like how EBs never downgrade to lieutenants.) So when you are solo and run into an EB in your mission, what do you do?

 

 

My point is that during invasions, EBs don't spawn on solo players.  If this is possible for the invasions, I don't see why it shouldn't be possible for the door knocking.  I'm not suggesting taking away door knocking, just that the same rules should be applied to THOSE spawns as are applied to the invasions.  I don't know if it's possible, but that's why I'm only suggesting it.

 

As I said before, I think the best thing would be to tie all the spawns to one's notoriety.  That way, everyone can have it how they like it.  If I don't want Bosses, I can turn them off without preventing anyone else from getting them.

 

As for your question, I don't believe I've had any EBs in any missions I didn't create myself in the AE, but most of my characters are in their 20s.  I have one at 40, he's my highest level character (Bots/FF Mastermind, and he's a JUGGERNAUT, comparatively speaking).  My AE enemies are created with my particular design philosophy in mind, that the bosses should he hard to kill, but shouldn't be obliterating people immediately.  It's a tough balancing act, let me tell you.

[Rudra]

49 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

As I said before, I think the best thing would be to tie all the spawns to one's notoriety.  That way, everyone can have it how they like it.  If I don't want Bosses, I can turn them off without preventing anyone else from getting them.

A player's notoriety is applied to the map. The entire map. That works just fine when it is their mission, but how is that supposed to be applied to a zone? Whose notoriety will be used to set what can and cannot appear on the zone map? If I'm wrong and the devs can do this? Great. However, I'm more than willing to bet this can't be done. So the notoriety option is out. And the invasion option will prevent players from being able to fight the EBs alone. There are players that choose to face AVs and GMs alone, and you are asking to take away their option to fight what they want so that you won't have to use the already ample available options to deal with the EBs. You have yet to give a reason why you can't ToT near drones or Hero/AV contacts that will deal with the EBs for you if you get anywhere near them. You have yet to give a reason why you are unable to use a Breakfree and escape. If an EB mezzes you? It still has to attack you to kill you, and the game code prevents it from doing so in 1 hit unless your character is already injured. So the EB mezzes you, you pop the Breakfree and possibly eat a hit, and then you run like mad and get away. Why is that not an option for you? Breakfrees are a whopping 50 inf' from the nurses at the hospital or most vendors. You have yet to give a reason why you are unable to ToT near someone else that can fight those EBs for you. You have yet to explain why any of the available options of dealing with the EBs are not viable for you. Instead, you insist on an option that I'm pretty sure can't be implemented or on taking away the option other players utilize to fight the EBs alone. Why is your difficulty at dealing with the EBs more important than their freedom to fight those EBs, especially in light of the options already available to you for when the EBs show up?

 

57 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

As for your question, I don't believe I've had any EBs in any missions I didn't create myself in the AE, but most of my characters are in their 20s.  I have one at 40, he's my highest level character (Bots/FF Mastermind, and he's a JUGGERNAUT, comparatively speaking).  My AE enemies are created with my particular design philosophy in mind, that the bosses should he hard to kill, but shouldn't be obliterating people immediately.  It's a tough balancing act, let me tell you.

So that's it then. That explains it.

[Ultimo]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

A player's notoriety is applied to the map. The entire map. That works just fine when it is their mission, but how is that supposed to be applied to a zone? Whose notoriety will be used to set what can and cannot appear on the zone map? If I'm wrong and the devs can do this? Great. However, I'm more than willing to bet this can't be done. So the notoriety option is out. And the invasion option will prevent players from being able to fight the EBs alone. There are players that choose to face AVs and GMs alone, and you are asking to take away their option to fight what they want so that you won't have to use the already ample available options to deal with the EBs. You have yet to give a reason why you can't ToT near drones or Hero/AV contacts that will deal with the EBs for you if you get anywhere near them. You have yet to give a reason why you are unable to use a Breakfree and escape. If an EB mezzes you? It still has to attack you to kill you, and the game code prevents it from doing so in 1 hit unless your character is already injured. So the EB mezzes you, you pop the Breakfree and possibly eat a hit, and then you run like mad and get away. Why is that not an option for you? Breakfrees are a whopping 50 inf' from the nurses at the hospital or most vendors. You have yet to give a reason why you are unable to ToT near someone else that can fight those EBs for you. You have yet to explain why any of the available options of dealing with the EBs are not viable for you. Instead, you insist on an option that I'm pretty sure can't be implemented or on taking away the option other players utilize to fight the EBs alone. Why is your difficulty at dealing with the EBs more important than their freedom to fight those EBs, especially in light of the options already available to you for when the EBs show up?

 

So that's it then. That explains it.

I understand it's applied to the map.  That doesn't mean the system can't be modified or adapted for other purposes.  The enemies coming from the doors are not a normal zone spawn, they're spawning specifically for the character interacting with the door.  I don't see why the game can't simply check the character's notoriety settings at that point and adjust the spawn appropriately.  As I said, I'm no coder, so I don't know if it's even possible, but there's no harm in making the suggestion.  If it IS possible, maybe they can make it work.

 

As for the rest, I don't need to give reasons or explanations for any of that, it's not pertinent to the suggestion, and I'm not drifting off topic again.

[weemanjoe]

Feel like there’s a lot of over the top and unhelpful hostility from posters on this forum who have forgotten that this mmo was never just about making the best build and being able to fight the toughest bosses. The Halloween event certainly never was. It’s a mmo, all sorts of people play in all sorts of ways and I think it’s fair for more casual players to be frustrated that fun seasonal events just aren’t for them anymore. Stuff was always going to get harder with a smaller player base but if the general response to that is “get good” it’s just gonna get smaller and frankly, very unpleasant, faster.

[Glacier Peak]

10 minutes ago, weemanjoe said:

Feel like there’s a lot of over the top and unhelpful hostility from posters on this forum who have forgotten that this mmo was never just about making the best build and being able to fight the toughest bosses. The Halloween event certainly never was. It’s a mmo, all sorts of people play in all sorts of ways and I think it’s fair for more casual players to be frustrated that fun seasonal events just aren’t for them anymore. Stuff was always going to get harder with a smaller player base but if the general response to that is “get good” it’s just gonna get smaller and frankly, very unpleasant, faster.

The Halloween Elite Bosses were designed by the Homecoming Team in 2022 to provide engagement to teams and leagues during Trick or Treat. Period. Go to the beta patch notes if you don't believe me.

 

I don't care that it will be even easier than before for a team or league to defeat the two proposed changed Halloween Elite Bosses - it was already easy enough to put an attack on auto and walk away to defeat them. Now teams and leagues can just go afk even longer without worrying about the Halloween Elite Bosses and still get 5 times the XP and Inf as normal Elite Bosses. 

[weemanjoe]

8 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

The Halloween Elite Bosses were designed by the Homecoming Team in 2022 to provide engagement to teams and leagues during Trick or Treat. Period. Go to the beta patch notes if you don't believe me.

 

I don't care that it will be even easier than before for a team or league to defeat the two proposed changed Halloween Elite Bosses - it was already easy enough to put an attack on auto and walk away to defeat them. Now teams and leagues can just go afk even longer without worrying about the Halloween Elite Bosses and still get 5 times the XP and Inf as normal Elite Bosses. 

 

I haven’t questioned any devs intentions and honestly I don’t care enough to have any real feelings on this issue. I care enough about this game though to think that some of these responses are needlessly hostile and incredibly off putting. You can disagree respectfully.

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, weemanjoe said:

I haven’t questioned any devs intentions and honestly I don’t care enough to have any real feelings on this issue. I care enough about this game though to think that some of these responses are needlessly hostile and incredibly off putting. You can disagree respectfully.

If you're intent is to imply my responses in this thread were not respectful, please file a support ticket with a GM. This thread is about Halloween Elite Bosses. As such, I've made clear respectfully that I'm not supportive of this suggestion. The Homecoming Team has decided it's a change worth addressing and now it's on the beta shard for testing, so I don't have any more concerns to express and I believe the original poster has achieved their intent with this thread so there's nothing more to discuss. 

[Luminara]

Fact check:

None of Ancient Vampire's melee attacks have a DoT.  The only DoTs available to this enemy are Gloom and Chill of the Night.  Gloom caps at ~64 damage per tic at level 54, and does not deal front-loaded damage.  Chill of the Night is a PBAoE with a 15' radius and deals ~84 damage every 2s at level 38, and does not deal front-loaded damage.

 

The only attack this EB has which is capable of reducing a level 38 defender's HP (885 base) to roughly 1/3  in a single hit is Smite, which deals ~553 at that level and has a 5' range.

 

For reference, Hurricane has a 25' radius, 10' wider than Chill of the Night and 20' beyond Smite's range.  And Ancient Vampire has no Repel or Knockback protection.

 

Conclusion:  In order for this enemy to reduce a Storm defender's HP to 1/3 and inflict numerous tics of damage from Chill of the Night while the character has Hurricane active and affecting the enemy, the player would have to use Hurricane's Repel/KB to force the enemy into a corner, close to within 5' of the enemy, and remain there.

[Uun]

I took my lvl 50 Electric/Dark controller over to Kallisti and did some solo ToTing. Electric/Dark is clearly not a high damage combo. I unslotted my Alpha because I wanted to eliminate the level shift and you apparently can't get ToT foes over lvl 50 if you're not on a team, regardless of your notoriety settings. I encountered all the EBs multiple times. They were all trivially easy and went down quickly (I didn't time it, but 30-40 seconds). All the EBs can all be held, knocked down and end drained. My health never budged, nor did the Gremlins. Other than refreshing Fade when it recharged, I wasn't using any buffs or inspirations. The only debuffs I used were Tar Patch and Darkest Night.

[Shin Magmus]

3 hours ago, weemanjoe said:

Feel like there’s a lot of over the top and unhelpful hostility from posters on this forum who have forgotten that this mmo was never just about making the best build and being able to fight the toughest bosses. The Halloween event certainly never was. It’s a mmo, all sorts of people play in all sorts of ways and I think it’s fair for more casual players to be frustrated that fun seasonal events just aren’t for them anymore. Stuff was always going to get harder with a smaller player base but if the general response to that is “get good” it’s just gonna get smaller and frankly, very unpleasant, faster.

     I agree with MAN-JOE, we should be providing comments that contain helpful hostility instead of unhelpful hostility.  Oh, we did offer build advice, tactical advice, strategic advice, and factual data about the EB powers and AI... well that seems pretty helpful.  Luminara's breakdowns of the EB attack patterns are bulletproof; all the advice is there for our friend Ultimo to solo defeat the Halloween EBs.

Edited October 6 by Shin Magmus

[Uun]

42 minutes ago, Uun said:

I took my lvl 50 Electric/Dark controller over to Kallisti and did some solo ToTing. Electric/Dark is clearly not a high damage combo. I unslotted my Alpha because I wanted to eliminate the level shift and you apparently can't get ToT foes over lvl 50 if you're not on a team, regardless of your notoriety settings. I encountered all the EBs multiple times. They were all trivially easy and went down quickly (I didn't time it, but 30-40 seconds). All the EBs can all be held, knocked down and end drained. My health never budged, nor did the Gremlins. Other than refreshing Fade when it recharged, I wasn't using any buffs or inspirations. The only debuffs I used were Tar Patch and Darkest Night.

Same exercise with my lvl 50 Storm/Storm corruptor with similar results. While I got the Ancient Vampire, Hollow Reaper and Crone Matriarch multiple times, I never got the Arisen Mummy or Spectral Werewolf. I have no mezz or end drain in this build, but I was still able to keep them flopping like a fish with Tornado and Lightning Storm.  No buffs or inspirations. The only debuffs were Freezing Rain, Storm Cell and Snow Storm to ground the fliers (Hurricane not needed).