Endgame PvE balance

Cubey

Because I refuse to call it bashing and you can't make me.

I know this isn't the devs' priority right now but are we going to do something about balancing endgame pve? This isn't about classes which are mostly fine in this aspect. It's about areas. A significant number of them are simply not worth the trouble because they're more difficult or annoying to hunt in without offering any incentive to do so. Let's go through them one by one:

Deisk Underground - out of the way (need to take a ship to the middle of nowhere with no voidgates nearby), multiple aggro mobs per room when fighting more than 2 is suicide, only 1 quest which requires you to kill all mobs including the packs of 3+ per room

Jelle - best example of what I'm talking about. Sure it's got a lot of quests. It also has multiple aggro mobs per room, moving mobs so you never know if someone won't join the fight you're already in and fuck you up, ridiculously overtuned channeled attacks that will always one-shot you unless interrupted.

Before I continue I wanna say: that last one is especially bullshit. Mobs in Arrizuri don't do it, mobs in Ixsei, Prugita and instanced hacking areas don't do it. Only Jelle and Thait has one-shot channeled attacks which makes me suspect something was made too strong on accident since those attacks were added later. And if this is intended behavior: rethink what you're doing with your game because this isn't fun and just makes players avoid these two places. And don't you dare change mobs in those other areas to one-shot with their channeled attacks as the vines do.

Prugita - mostly fine but lack of working quests really hurts it. Also with changes to EM damage hunting bots is suboptimal because EM attacks are almost always weaker than normal hunting rotations. Whether you use EM attacks or not, you lose out on kill time. Bots also have the same multihit attack that felled many a newbie unwise enough to attack malfunctioning drones, but at level 70+ it's slightly less deadly.

Tranquility Deepness - we've been over this. A giant deathtrap nobody gets into unless they want to read the room descriptions. Mobs here are almost unkillable not because they are so strong (though they still have a very damaging no-windup attack which is bullshit) but because you will almost always get thrown into a new room before your fight ends, usually summoning a fresh hostile mob in the process. Rinse and repeat until you're dead.

There are more urgent things to work on right now and the game isn't unplayable just because these areas are the way they are right now. But if you're wondering why (almost) no one uses them and sticks to Ixsei or hacking instances for their PvE needs - well, now you know.

Jerom

One small correction, there is one instanced hacking area that does have the one-shot channeled attack. The one where you fight clouds of nanites. Fuck those nanites. Went there with my health at 100%, missed my interrupt and I died.

Cubey

Yeah I never got that one. Throw it to the "who thought that's a good idea" bin then.

Kovac

I am not a fan of the channeled attacks in PvE. PvP, I think they're wonderful and add an extra dimension to combat. 

Here are my reasons why:

• When fighting a single mob, set a trigger and never worry about it again. IMO this doesn't add anything extra to combat other than an extra tick box.
• When fighting multiple mobs, you can get screwed. You have to target the mob doing the attack (Which maybe GMCP has a way of telling which that is but I have to take a guess) or do a room wide interrupt which can cause even more problems as now you're aggro-ing everything in the room.
• You will almost always die the first time you encounter a new mob with a charge attack as it really doesn't give you much of a window to deal with it manually. 4 seconds from when the mob starts the attack.

Cubey

The problem with channeled attacks is how unforgiving they are. If I attack at the same time as a mob and the mob decides it's time for a channeled attack? I won't be able to interrupt it on time. Okay, on some classes I can because their attacks have shorter balance times than others. But there are classes that have base balance that goes up to 4.5 seconds (BEAST). These classes need to actively wait every time to see what the mob decides to attack with before reacting, which is not fun and more importantly - slows down your killtime so much that it's better to go somewhere where there are mobs without channeled attacks, or at least ones who don't hit you for 100% HP if you screw up interrupting.

BTW recent change that shows which mob is attacking or channeling? That's good. It's a step in the right direction.

Matlkael

I like channeled attacks because when interrupted, they do 0 health damage. Essentially, it's an opportunity for your wetwiring to regen your health without issue.

Tallulah

Hey guys, I want to say - thank you for this thread. It's a good sounding board for us as well. We'll be looking into some of these things in the super near future, so keep your eyes peeled.

Also, don't feel like these things aren't important too. We have code work to last a lifetime, but we storytellers often need smaller side projects to work on as well, and improving the game so -you- have more fun things is definitely a priority to us.

Lhundrup

You know, It was largely because of charge up mobs that I decided to turn pacifist. I had already decided to stop doing pvp because of my inability to script... I just couldn't keep up. Then I started dying to charge up attacks... So I said "flakk it, i'll be pacifist".

Jerom

Lhundrup said:

You know, It was largely because of charge up mobs that I decided to turn pacifist. I had already decided to stop doing pvp because of my inability to script... I just couldn't keep up. Then I started dying to charge up attacks... So I said "flakk it, i'll be pacifist".

Just want to say that you can still be an ok fighter even with an inability to script. I have the same inability but I like to think I manage just fine in combat. Sure, I'll never be top-tier but that doesn't interest me anyway, I am quite happy being mid-tier at best.

kamyr

Can group bashing be a thing? You can throw in tweak for powerleveling but geez there were as many people in bashing trains early as there are now total online.

Still need boss mobs, as well.

And it's weird how mobs here have less complicated attack setups than other places. I remember 'something something engine issue' but really, the 'difficulty' of SM bashing is 1 - learn windups then 2 - manage aggro count/wanderers.

The EM change was blah.

+1 to the ih change.

I think that covers my general PvE opinions.

Matlkael

I would like group bashing (or even just pair bashing) be actually viable.

kamyr

I'd get rid of the damage% xp split, change it to any aggro flags for the split, and add a multiplier for the max size of the aggro group including a mob. Scale the reward down to something like if underleveled by 10 then  xp = xp * player lever/mob level.

You can make trash mob group grinding then via packs of aggro mobs (cough TD), and their durability sets a suggested group size (eg a squishy pack of 20 L75 rockhoppers would be good for 2-3 folks, then 4-5 L75 cyborg mecha ninja warriors could have enough hp/sys durability for larger groups to all get credit, and megabosses can be faction-wide).

I considered having it just be anyone in crew gets flagged, but the combination of minimal 'support' skills in the game and the usefulness of it to manage group sizes won out.

Eukelade

Thanks for this feedback, everyone! Implemented some suggested changes today and will keep working at things as I can. We appreciate hearing this stuff!