Skyway Mayhem MAYHEM!

[Sorien]

I tried to do a mayhem mission today, around 5 AM Central from Cap Au Diable. The mission was the Skyway Mayhem.  I had 3 teammates, one of whom was sidekicked up from L4. I was L19. We went in, and the mobs were insane. Almost too many enemies for them to moe around in the interior maps! I've never seen so many cops, Longbow, SWAT and Private Security in ANY mission, ever. We never even made it to the vault. Each of us died at least twice, I know I died 5 times. I know they're supposed to be tough, but NOT impossible. THIS, was impossible. We took down at least (no exaggeration) 100 police and 100 longbow, and they were still coming when time ran out. I'm not mad. Not even upset- hell, I'm proud we survived as long as we did, but geez, it has to be winnable if it's to be fun. And this wasn't remotely winnable.

 

My character was Mistral Chimera, L19 Lightning/Storm Corruptor. The others were Bhemoth, Artaethe and our lowbie was Zack Deacon, a Mastermind.  This happened on Everlasting, Homecoming servers.

[darkgob]

Level 19 might be too low for it to happen, but I know later Mayhems have what is colloquially known as the Longbow Eagle Death Squad stationed high up in the air above the bank.  Flying up too close to them en route to the bank can aggro them and they will follow you into the bank and they will ruin your day if you're not prepared for them.  But like I said, I'm not sure they spawn in those lower-level Mayhems, and they're just Longbow Eagles, none of the other mobs you mentioned.

 

My other thought is that you were moving too fast for the periodic regular Longbow ambushes to catch up with you until you got inside the bank.  If you did certain side missions first (arson, prison break, smash & grab) those can also have SWAT/PPD ambushes after they're complete.  Once you got inside the bank you naturally slowed down to fight the mobs there, giving the ambushes ample time to catch up.

 

Another possibility: your difficulty level was cranked up beyond x4 (the normal difficulty for a 4-person team) and you didn't realize it.  If the problem of too many enemies was global to the entire mission (too many outside, too many inside, too many per ambush) then this is almost certainly what happened, possibly with moving faster than the ambushes being an exacerbating factor.  If your difficulty isn't cranked up, but the mission belonged to one of your two non-lowbie teammates and they had their difficulty cranked up, that might also explain it (I forget if it scales to the mission owner difficulty or the team leader difficulty -- assuming that was you).

[Kyksie]

The scaling on Mayhem Missions has always been a bit janky. Doing one with a large party is harder than doing it alone.