View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0008558 | Valley 1 | Balance Issue | Jun 15, 2012 5:48 am | Jun 26, 2012 6:41 pm | |
| Reporter | Misery | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | assigned | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 1.101 ( Post-Launch Series 1) | ||||
| Summary | 0008558: The Deep, Rescue survivor from building missions are impossible to complete | ||||
| Description | This being because of the insane number of bats (usually Miasma bats, even worse) that the game spawns. Aside from being *really* tedious just to clear out the initial bats (due to the extreme numbers), once you grab the survivor, they start spawning at a seriously absurd rate; even the best spells on a character with really high attack power wont even come close to clearing them out fast enough to prevent the survivor from getting wrecked. Part of the problem is that bats are literally the ONLY enemy type that ever spawns in any building in The Deep right now. I have yet to see anything else appear in those buildings. Including a screenshot of just how overpopulated with bats this can get. This is after grabbing the survivor, maybe 10-12 seconds after, and the entire area is utterly choked with bats. It's also just one section; there are more huge blobs of bats basically everywhere in the corridor. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Major Problem | ||||
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Although I would like to see a greater variety of monsters in The Deep, this mission as it stands is far from impossible. I'd say it's not even as hard as some other zones (Lava Flats, I'm looking at you). Are you sure you cleared out all the bats before talking to the survivor? I've never seen monsters spawn from monster spawners within 12 seconds of talking to the survivor. What spells are you using against the bats? Energy Slice or Luminance Arc makes short work of even a large horde of miasma bats. If you don't have those, then other piercing spells will also work. You have Douse Monster Nest on your bar. If you place a bunch of those while you make your way towards the survivor, it will greatly reduce the number of monsters you have to fight on the way out. If all else fails, lower the difficulty, or stay out of The Deep; it's supposed to be difficult. |
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Oh I dont mind difficulty; mostly it's the SHEER NUMBER of bats that's the problem. Even if I slice through 20 of them, there's 50 more just down the hall; and with the way they move and the fact that ALL of them are using Miasma Whip (with high damage and knockback), they can simply overwhelm and immediately kill the survivor without me being able to do anything. And I actually was using Douse during this (simply because it's The Deep, I figured it was gonna be necessary, heh), but.... that didnt solve it. I'm also playing on Master Hero, so these bats have plenty of health (and Energy Slice simply doesnt do enough damage, and since I have to use a controller, Luminance Arc doesnt work in most situations when using the game's targeting system). There's also the survivor themselves to consider; the AI has excellent pathfinding, but is rather stupid about most other things; even with me doing my best to smash bats, and using the command flare, they STILL find ways to crash into or simply draw the attention of yet more bats (be nice if I could tell them to STOP FIRING at the monsters). And yeah, I killed *everything* before getting the survivor (always do, with these, it's pretty hard to miss any with the linear layout); that's one of the reasons I thought this might be for Mantis, because the spawn rate was insane, when monster spawners in pretty much any other situation, normal area OR mission, simply dont come anywhere near that speed; even JtP missions with 2x monsters per spawner unlocked doesnt come anywhere near this. There were way, way too many bats so soon after grabbing the survivor for it to seem at all normal, even for the Deep. |
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Then may i suggest the shadow cloak enchant. It gives you stealth, as well as seeing where monsters are - same as in the stealth assassination mission. With it, you can see where all those pesky little bats are when they come near, and can attack them JUST before they can reach you. The game isn't just run-and-gun. Tough area is tough unless you're prepared with options for your playstyle. Do you want to go with mass area attack around you? Do you prefer piercing/penetrating attacks, taking out things in a line? Do you like quickly accruing damage from multiple attacks? Or do you prefer to take on a single target without fighting a group? There are plenty of options, and depending on how you prepare yourself, the deep can be "easy" even on tough combat settings. As soon as I opened the deep, by windstorm, my first time in, I used a seek survivor to get 4 Deep npcs. All four of them were certainly easy enough. The ??? head thing was a pain to kill, and was my first encounter with one, but i basically just stayed back and moved slow, killing everything as best i could without it reaching me. Survivors shot a few times, but couldn't hit anything as it was all dying first (i'd even share targets with the survivor, quickly changing to save it and let me take a little damage. |
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I tried Shadow Cloak; usually, it's what I use for these missions, particularly the cave versions, since it keeps enemies at bay at least until I get close... in this case though, it didnt work. Since there were so many enemies, there wasnt ROOM for them to be kept at bay, half of my health was just gone after one heap of bats crashed into me, so I switched to a defensive enchant after that (in order to not die). Not to mention.... I've done these in the Deep before (on this difficulty level), and gotten out just fine. But other versions of this mission have had enemies besides just bats (like the heads), and without them spawning so fast that it seems like a glitch. And heck, even with the bats spawning so many in buildings in the Deep, well, sure that can be tough, particularly the Miasma ones, but the spawn numbers in normal buildings, high as they are, were nothing compared to this. First time I'd seen the game do something like this; it persisted, though, subsequent attempts at this kept giving me the "holy crap that's alot of bats" thing again, which is why I submitted it (if it had happened ONLY once, I'd have taken it as the RNG spazzing out a bit). Since I get the impression that the game isnt supposed to be spawning them that fast, in that kind of numbers. |
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If they're spawning that quickly, it sounds like a bug. I'd be worried about that kind of spawn rate for performance reasons if not for game balance. |
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That SS only shows about 10, and far closer than i ever let them get with the cloak. Perhaps for an imbalance reason, it could be taken attention to, but I feel that's just part of the challenge of the deep - plenty of miasma bats. I personally use a combination of ball lightning/energy bolt? and fireball to handle my bat problems. Easy to switch them back and forth, and just sweep across their paths until they're cleared out without seeing me. If it is changed, I guess I wouldn't mind, but I still personally feel its just part of the challenge. What's a dark, creepy bellfry without a swarm of dark, creepy bats? |
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The screenshot only shows 10 or so mostly because that was a moment when I happened to think of taking a screenshot. Had taken out some from the other side moments earlier; and notice, the survivor is nowhere to be seen; this is because I had to dash to the left to avoid a bat-blob that had gotten way too close (while I was attacking a bat-blob on the other side). I felt the screenshot still did the situation justice, because normally you dont see even those numbers of foes (particularly not all that close to each other) until you start to near the very end of the hall with the survivor. But this was close to where I'd picked the guy up. To give perhaps a better idea of how many bats the game was producing: even the initial spawns, the enemies that are in there when you enter the room, were REALLY high. I've had plenty of Battlefield missions (usually the longest mission type, at least for me) that didnt take nearly as long as it did for me to chop through THAT MANY bats to reach the survivor. I mean, seriously, it took ages to get through there. At the same time I still agree with Kio here that the bats' presence in the Deep is part of the feel of the area; and I dont feel the bats are unbalanced in and of themselves (even the often-mentioned fire/flame bats). The Deep is difficult by default, but it's a proper sort of difficult, and a good bit more fun than the similarly-challenging Lava Flats (this being because I hate the Raptors). I just think the spawn numbers, in this mission type specifically (I havent seen it in any other mission; I *also* havent seen it in the cave version of this mission, at least not yet) need to be looked at to make sure they arent bugging out. It just seems like there arent NEARLY enough spawners to produce that many that fast, particularly with me using Douse often, which I've taken to doing in that mission type. |
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Have a go again with luminance arc or so, using it to quickly take out all the spawners you see. Luminance Arc does a good bit of dmg to them quickly, taking out a couple at a time. Perhaps just my tactic at it makes it feel manageably easy, and then deal with mobs in steps, so that the group-ups aren't often, and you don't have to worry about running back and forth between clearing the way and protecting the survivor. Douse is okay, but I just don't feel its as reliable as destroying a nest altogether. |
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I've done it on Master Hero without stealth or dousing nests... so I feel it's not impossible. Hard yes, but that's the point right? I enjoy the number of enemies, even if it's a bug. Not being able to use Luminance Arc well probably hurts a lot, I took that spell specifically for The Deep. |
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I think you're over-reacting. I found these missions pretty easy and have never found it as hard as you describe them. |
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If you HAVE to have a specific spell to do a mission (like Luminance Arc), then there's something wrong with the mission. As a rule, the game has so far been really darn good about NOT causing that situation (where there's something you cant beat because you didnt happen to choose one very specific spell to upgrade). I dont take Luminance Arc because it doesnt work very well with the targeting system, which is the only way I can aim. .....that, and honestly, I *really* doubt bats are supposed to be spawning in enormous blobs like that. It just doesnt happen with any other spawners in any other situation, and that includes other JtP missions. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 15, 2012 5:48 am | Misery | New Issue | |
| Jun 15, 2012 5:48 am | Misery | File Added: Screenshot_2012_06_15_04_41_51.png | |
| Jun 15, 2012 7:16 am | lavacamorada | Note Added: 0025851 | |
| Jun 15, 2012 8:16 am | Misery | Note Added: 0025852 | |
| Jun 15, 2012 8:18 am | Misery | Note Edited: 0025852 | |
| Jun 15, 2012 6:37 pm | Kio | Note Added: 0025859 | |
| Jun 15, 2012 6:42 pm | Kio | Note Edited: 0025859 | |
| Jun 15, 2012 6:55 pm | Misery | Note Added: 0025863 | |
| Jun 15, 2012 8:40 pm | lavacamorada | Note Added: 0025868 | |
| Jun 15, 2012 9:00 pm | Kio | Note Added: 0025871 | |
| Jun 16, 2012 1:06 am | Misery | Note Added: 0025880 | |
| Jun 18, 2012 11:54 am | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Major Problem |
| Jun 18, 2012 11:54 am | tigersfan | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Jun 18, 2012 11:54 am | tigersfan | Status | new => assigned |
| Jun 20, 2012 4:43 pm | Kio | Note Added: 0025994 | |
| Jun 24, 2012 12:39 pm | darkchair | Note Added: 0026051 | |
| Jun 26, 2012 12:02 pm | LayZboy | Note Added: 0026070 | |
| Jun 26, 2012 6:41 pm | Misery | Note Added: 0026075 | |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:29 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Gameplay - Balance Issue => Balance Issue |
