Make Giant Monster adds spawn without fixed levels

[ThatGuyCDude]

Babbage likes to drop Sprockets.  These Sprockets are identical to the kind that spawn everywhere else Clockwork are seen.

There's a problem with this: they have a bad tendency to jump up to the level of a taunter while the Babbage is being engaged.  Suddenly there's no hope of a low-level character or team joining the fight against the giant monster, because the Sprockets are now spawned at level 50 instead of a scaled state relative to the player fighting them.

Other entities in the game spawn adds relative to their level at the time they're spawned.  That's fine.  But Giant Monsters are different, because they're not instanced content and they're intended to be faced by leagues.  Entities they spawn should be a separate variant of the basic enemies, set level-less so they can be fought as blue or white threat minions/lieutenants/et al. regardless of if the player is Level 1 or Level 50.

Yes, this is a response to Torchbearer's Saturday Night Synapse (Babbagefest).  Yes, I imagine the Sprockets spawning without a level is a technical limitation because of their leveled presence elsewhere.  The solution?  Make a copy of the Sprocket enemy that is specific and exclusive to Babbage and Paladin and always spawns unleveled.

Giant Monsters with spawns that would need to be inspected:
Jurassik (Rubbles on death)
Paladin (Sprockets - can share enemy data with Babbage)
Babbage (Sprockets - can share enemy data with Paladin)
Jack in Irons (Red Caps, though I think he's fixed already)
and possibly the Arachnos Flyer (though given its zone's average threat level this is probably unnecessary)

[mechahamham]

Being that we already have code in place to adjust the entire of the Paladin Construction event to 'Giant Monster Scaling', it seems like this would be fairly slam-dunkable.

 

I haven't been KO'd by a level 50 sprocket whilst on a Synapse team in a while, but it HAS happened to me in the past, so I sure wouldn't say no to a change like this. (In fact, it left SUCH an impression on me that I don't often advertise for help with Babbage unless my team just can't budge his hp bar otherwise.)

[Forager]

9 hours ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

Suddenly there's no hope of a low-level character or team joining the fight against the giant monster, because the Sprockets are now spawned at level 50

 

What happens if you try to avoid the Sprockets?

[Chris24601]

6 minutes ago, Forager said:

 

What happens if you try to avoid the Sprockets?

It’s been awhile but if I recall they aggro on anyone who attacks their respective giant monster. So once a 50 starts in, the guys actually doing the TF get nuked by sprockets hitting them harder than the monster can.

[tidge]

Hard NO.

 

9 hours ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

Yes, this is a response to Torchbearer's Saturday Night Synapse (Babbagefest).  Yes, I imagine the Sprockets spawning without a level is a technical limitation because of their leveled presence elsewhere.  The solution?  Make a copy of the Sprocket enemy that is specific and exclusive to Babbage and Paladin and always spawns unleveled.

 

So... the suggestion stems from a player-based hack to flood a zone with giant monsters, which is already a merit-fest with rewards that far outpace the effort (aside from the league teams actually completing the TF I suppose). This is an ask for a very specific problem for a subset of players during a very peculiar effort.

 

The code for the extra summons is already a little dicey, with respect to them being level-less (or not)... in particular, the wandering Croatoan additionals don't always spawn without levels but still need to be cleared to reset the spawn chance. 

[RadiantPhoenix]

A workaround exists, but I think this change would probably be an improvement because of the convenience.

The workaround is to form a league with 50s leading each team, bringing everyone else up to 49 or better.

[Techwright]

3 hours ago, RadiantPhoenix said:

The workaround is to form a league with 50s leading each team, bringing everyone else up to 49 or better.

This is assuming a high level is available.  That is not always the case.

[ThatGuyCDude]

10 hours ago, tidge said:

Hard NO.

 

 

So... the suggestion stems from a player-based hack to flood a zone with giant monsters, which is already a merit-fest with rewards that far outpace the effort (aside from the league teams actually completing the TF I suppose). This is an ask for a very specific problem for a subset of players during a very peculiar effort.

 

The code for the extra summons is already a little dicey, with respect to them being level-less (or not)... in particular, the wandering Croatoan additionals don't always spawn without levels but still need to be cleared to reset the spawn chance. 

Saturday Night Synapse is relevant insofar as it generated enough simultaneous encounters with Babbage to make the problem apparent.  Other similar activities in the game are deliberately level-less (the Giant Monster scaling method), such as the Brickstown Jailbreak or the St. Martial Robbery.  This is content that is intended to be attempted by players of all levels, even those who are not teamed together.

The fact that certain Giant Monsters can be a source of griefing--albeit unintentionally--because somebody spots a big thing on the horizon and runs in to help and score some merits is what needs to be addressed.  Not everyone playing the game will understand or even be aware that the entity in question has minions that will not behave as expected.  When it does, the offending player can't even join the team to sidekick their victims up to level, as they are in TaskForce mode.  It's a pointy edge that could use some sanding, and I believe the best way to do so is to set up separate entities with the same power profile and locked giant monster leveling, so that the situations both you and I have described never have an opportunity to happen.

As for SNS and its rewards outpacing the effort, I have to disagree.  The yield for the amount of time and effort arranging, coordinating, and completing the event is comparable to any other weekly strike target, or a round of zone-to-zone monster hunting.  A correction like this also would not benefit the max-level players participating, as all spawned entities would be conning blue to them instead of gray until they've intervened.  The people who would benefit are those actually running the task forces (locked in at a low level as they are) as well as those running Synapse on other nights who happen to catch the attention of a high level player as they try to claim their own Giant Monster ambush (not to mention random players who might be victimized by stray level 50 minions in Skyway before the reset cleans them up).

[Rudra]

On the one hand, I think leveled GM spawns should retain their level because it fits them. For instance, Scrapyard's constant stream of Scrapyarder followers are level 23. Doesn't matter if you're a level 1 trying to attack him or a level 50+3. That makes sense because the Scrapyarders are coming from elsewhere and rallying around Scrapyard. On the other hand, I have to question what is the intent behind any added spawns. If the intent with Babbage is for the spawned Clockwork to be a threat to the players regardless of their level because the Clockwork are spawning at character level, then it makes sense for them to go levelless like with the Giant Monster Construction's Clockwork spawns. If that isn't the intent? Then leave them alone.

 

Other than that? I don't really care. I've done plenty of ducking, dodging, and running around to evade Scrapyarders to fight the Ghost of Scrapyard at only level 20 or so to know there is a way to deal with higher level adds when fighting GMs as long as you pay attention. This may mean using Fly/Hover to shoot Babbage from above so the Sprockets don't notice you to attack or moving to a different position away from the main group so you are less likely to draw Sprocket attention to running through/by level 50's (especially ones with pets) to either get their auras or direct attacks to deal with the Sprockets for you.