In many games, there are "hidden" values that affect gameplay. Often, the average gamer, unless digging around in discussion forums, remains blissfully unaware of hidden mechanics that affect his or her character.
I've played a lot of games that have this sort of thing, and one thing I have come to feel is that it's lame.
[b]Hurtful[/b] hidden mechanics, even if necessary for the game to function or be balanced, merely piss me off when I learn that they were concealed but still affecting me. It makes me lose trust in the game designers. Being able to control, make decisions about, or at least influence what happens to, my character is integral to the game experience -- otherwise it's just watching TV.
[b]Helpful[/b] hidden mechanics are scarcely better. No player enjoys them, feels better about a character or power, or can base any decisions upon, a mechanic that player is unaware of.
Games that report everything to a chat spam channel at least allow me to look and see "Oh, there's that thing kicking in, cool." But in some of those, there's one or more effects or powers that never reports to the channel, and I find that players tend to hold those effects in lower esteem even when they are aware of them.
Back in COH, seeing CRITICAL above a damage number felt good. Seeing "DEFLECTED" was nice too. Seeing my percentages in Mids' character planner was great.
Add all the effects, mods, rules, numbers, bonuses, and penalties you want and need to make the game run right, by all means! But PLEASE allow us to SEE them in action, to have [i]evidence[/i] for them. That makes them seem more real.
I have no problem with making this evidence optional, permitting players to willingly hide it for their own immersion. That's great. I just want to be able to know it's there and see its effects reported somewhere if I want to. I'm so tired of discussions revealing tings like "there's a hidden factor of 1.15 when using this skill in instance x."
Same goes for enemy resistances. Maybe we shouldn't see [i]numbers[/i] for enemy stats, but if you make a foe 15% resistant to Fire, a significant portion of your playerbase will never know it unless it's documented somewhere or evident in-game.
In general: [i]telling[/i] the players what's going on permits them to understand and appreciate the game!
Captain of Phoenix Rising
It also lets them check your work for you, which is also a help since there are more of them than there are of you.
In addition to having ingame ways to see numbers and effects (speaking of that, I loved when they added the ability in CoH to just bracket a object or power name to make it an anchor for the info on the item), I hope they'll expose them in other ways folks can use. Like, when someone wants to make a build planner, they should be able to use a datafile (with a documented format) you provide that has all the info a planner would need. And, if MWM writes their own planner, it should use that same blob.
Likewise, people should be able to pull market data (for a longer term than what you would get ingame) via an api, so folks can check that for oddities.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
I don't think anyone on the dev team wants to go the old Jack Emmert route of thinking that keeping all mechanics hidden makes the game fun for everyone.
However, don't you think there are *some* things that shouldn't be revealed? Take e.g., the Threat Level mechanic of CoH. After the Devs lost how that worked and then recovered it (long story), they gave us players a general idea of how it worked, but never any specifics. Did you want to know exactly what your Threat Level is with each foe and how it compares to the rest of your team? Did you want Taunters to start yelling at you for attacking before they locked down a foe at a certain Threat Level number?
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
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One thing I hope we don't get is the kind of "You're only doing xxxx DPS, not teaming with you again" type stuff I've seen in other games. By all means report your own stuff accurately, but seeing exactly what everybody else is doing too is not IMO the sort of thing a CoH spiritual successor should go for.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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I [i]absolutely[/i] want to know it's working -- remember all the threads about times it broke in updates, or people worried that it had done so? I can even conceive where it would be good to know exact numbers (perhaps in a danger room, but disabled in the rest of the game experience?) so that I could see that Boost Alpha is only enhancing my hate by 1.5% or what have you.
However, the exact number on each foe would likely fall under my exemption for enemy stats, since it's effectively on an enemy. And that, I think, is my key distinction -- you can hide (preferably the essential minimum) of info about NPCs, but the less hidden about our own character and how the powers/skills/game effects work, the better.
Captain of Phoenix Rising
++good
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Yeah, I'm against having a Hall Monitor note down our DPS on raids.
Captain of Phoenix Rising
Long as you quantize my Mez and Debuffs (and buffs and heals) I'm all for it.
I don't care about my DPS or how much damage I take.. I just care about how much Mez I put out and how quickly.
I am all about documentation and showing your work.. Steath patching is so Cryptic. Who here has played Champions Online where every patch something new was broken (that was previously fixed) again and again posting the same bugs.. Please don't let this happen.
It was a running joke "Yay they fixed X.. Oh yeah.. Y is broken again". Whomever is in charge of patching the servers needs a meticulous attention to detail and a digital trail.
We want your game to be good, so let us help where we can. Sometimes it's as small as a decimal point being in the wrong place in your database (Us number cruncher types will ALWAYS find them for you)
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Open sourcing the performance metrics can be very helpful for QA testing, either in-house or by your Players.
To address Minotaur's point, perhaps a middle point could be reached where by default your combat spam channel only reports what your character does, but also make available a UI option to "broadcast" your combat spam to the rest of your team, and set it up as an Opt In (by default) model rather than as an Opt Out. You could even set it such that any broadcasting needs to be checkboxed anew after changing zones/entering an instance. That way, for people who really DO want this information it is available, but only On Command/Demand as opposed to being broadcast by default. That then makes DPS meters *possible* to do for people who actually want that information, but also places a hurdle in front of it happening all the time by default such that people who don't want to participate in such data mining don't face prejudices and judgement by default, necessarily.
You follow me?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
There was another thread where this point was raised and the opt-in variant was my preferred method. This is essentially how it works in SW:TOR, albeit only because obtaining such DPS numbers requires everyone to have third party software installed and then get that synced up once they're in a group. Which is a bit odd because, being modeled heavily on WoW, they do have operations (raids) with bosses that are DPS races. In such a case knowing everyone's DPS is up to par is important, as opposed CoH's "just show up and do your thing" approach.
I'll have to remember to call it performance metric or participation meter, or some such. Like JayBezz, I'd welcome it if such a tool were useful for more than merely measuring DPS. Bonus points if it allows the player to choose which metric to share, rather than all or nothing. (Believe it or not, In WoW there are people who get upset if the healer DPSes, even if nobody is dying.)
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I follow you, but expect some people to take a "turn it on or GTFO" attitude, so I'd rather it wasn't there.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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I'd amend that to be details on what your character does -and- what others do, insofar as it affects your character. That was the general standard CoH had used for its combat logs, iirc... if I was SBed, it would mention that (but in general terms? I forget). Using that grouping of info, but with more actual numbers involved, would be nice.
As for making it available to someone else beyond that, I'd be inclined to leave it up to the people who care to make that happen. As long as the details of the effects are in each person's logs, "very organized" supergroups (or folks who were actively testing stuff) who were really interested in that level of data, could have their folks save the combat chat logs and send them to someone who'd feed them to a script for munching (it could combine them into a unified log with all the details).
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
I follow you, but expect some people to take a "turn it on or GTFO" attitude, so I'd rather it wasn't there.[/quote]
I do understand that, however, I personally wouldn't want to run with ppl with that kind of attitude anyways- just me tho :D
"Its always a good day to DIE!!!"
To misquote Gangrel (slightly) ... people will be jerks no matter what you do ... [i]especially if you have PvP in your game[/i].
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Not being able to broadcast your stats is preferred here, for Minotaur's reasons. By all means make it possible on the test server.
[size=14]"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin[/size]
[size=14] "One piece of flair is all I need." - Sister Silicon[/size]
I play MMOs to have fun; if the design of the game leads me to acquire game-specific skills to play better -- i.e., learning how to position and line up radius and cone AoEs, use knockback to move mobs in desired directions, etc. -- then that's part of my enjoying the game. If the only way [b]you[/b] can imagine playing an MMO is by being so anally fixated on you and everyone on your team getting the absolutely maximized DPS that it is theoretically possible to achieve, and you [b]have[/b] to have micrometrically-precise second-to-second measurement of every aspect of play to ten decimal places in order to be able to determine whether everyone on your team is 'pulling their weight' [i]by your standards[/i], then you've turned it from a [i]game[/i] into [b]work[/b], and if the game itself requires that you engage in that degree of finicky optimization in order to be successful, then you're welcome to stay with your spreadsheets and gauges and projections, and I'll go off and play a game that's [i]fun[/i].
Spending an hour with Mid's to find a build that lets you maintain your attack rate without running out of End in 30 seconds is worthwhile, can be fun in itself -- finding mistakes you made that reduce your fun in play -- and let you get more enjoyment out of play, instead of standing there recovering End. Spending 20 hours analyzing the logs of dozens of fights so that you can work out a stopwatch-driven choreography that will increase your DPS output by .000083% as long as you hit your attacks at [i]precisely[/i] the right time puts me in mind of Ebeneezer Scrooge hunched over his accounts in the light of a flickering stub of a candle trying to account for a misplaced farthing while Bob Cratchit is out on the street laughing in a snowball fight with his children.
Some would say that both are equivalent. And I never really got the hang of building a character or using mids..
Best results achieved by spending a DAY or two optimizing a build and trying (and discarding) dozens of alternatives.
The thing is, eventually you reach the point of needing to follow the old dictum of "shoot the engineers and put it into production" (of fun).
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I think my problem was that there so many sets (and their bonuses) that it just overwhelmed me (do i go this way for that bonus, or that way for the same bonus, but i lose out elsewhere).
and defense I never really got into, so was resistance or defense better for a controller?
That is the thing, for some AT's one form of defense was better than the other, and vice versa.
Also, the overall lack of respecs meant that you had to get your build sorted pretty sharpish (or use your secondary/tertiary build) to fix mistakes. (You had to earn them/buy the recipe off the market) or spend real cash (err, I was broke at the time, so no option).
I tended to get my friends to come up with a build, and then I would try to slot it (I never succeeded.... always a few IO's short). They had the time to do it, and knew everything about the game (compared to me) when it came to builds.
Agreed. One of my goals in participating in the community early is to foster a community that will be more likely to kick the person saying something like that rather than the person that its said to.
I don't know if you remember, but way back last year on the Titan boards there was some guy who kept insisting that any replacement game needed to give players a public "kill rate" stat, specifically so that "real players" like himself could figure out who the "noobs" were, and avoid teaming with them. (That, and he wanted the tone of the game world to be on the lines of Arkham Asylum).
I think TonyV ended up kicking him, as he was getting rude.
[color=#ff0000]Composition Team[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Don't alienate gamers any more than you want to alienate role-players.
While this forum community is full of people here because they want the story of City of Titans and to be apart of the "welcoming community" the best games get the best press and scores because gamers love them.
If I wanted to play "digital dollhouse" I could go play Champions Online. I want a game that engages me with story as much as a good fight.. LOTS of good fights. And I want to be GOOD at those fights.
I know it scares people that some people like to "be the best".. but you cannot account for the loyalty of a gamer who finds the gameplay engaging. While story elements have been the focus of the kickstarter.. they are not enough for me.. and I am no power gamer. I'm playing this game to feel super powered.. not just to have powers that are pretty and do nothing.. but to have an effect.
I have no problem with L33ts nor casual players but you can't pretend that some players won't make the mental distinction. And I know by gaming experience that L33t players can shine light and fully test a game in ways that casual players do not. Casual players keep the virtual air full of fun stories to engage in (even when they don't involve a fight).
One Server. One World. All Titans
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I'm much more of a gamer than a roleplayer, although the two are by no means exclusive, and many CoHers were neither, merely casual players who enjoyed the game. CoH was not really a hardcore gamer's game. You could make it a challenge, but it wasn't a difficult game in essence.
I have no issue with people who want to be the best they can be, optimise to the nth degree etc, I did a fair bit of that myself. What I don't want to see is what I saw all too often in RIFT of "Your DPS sucks" - kick. I feel the overall community benefits from the 1337s being unable to tell exactly what's going on and to pick on the weaker or less experienced players.
I also saw that sort of level of 1337 rudeness driving people away from the game, where I play with a friend who is a more casual player and the group is saying that I'm fine but my friend sucks, this doesn't go well.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team and Forum Moderator[/color]
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There is no problem with the fact that people will make a distinction, or that there is a distinction. Problems, if there are any, arise due to [i]how[/i] the distinction is made or presented. This is where we get the divide between the people who are able and/or willing to be helpful (or at the least inclusive) versus those who are more interested in being hurtful and pretending to be superior.
This is the same subject that comes up with PvP. You will have a part of the community that is going to be toxic to some degree. In my view, the real answer is not to get hung up on those people. Doing so is much more likely to turn someone into a part of the problem than to yield any solutions.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
its worth noting that generally speaking people complaining about the DPS side of stuff either have an addon OR another external program to parse their logs to do this.
Easy solution: don't allow logs to capture damage nor addons in the game.
*edit* Across the MMO's that I have played, I have seen more people kicked from CoX for being "crap" (not pulling their weight or just plain old being AFK) than any other game where I have teamed up.
Even in WoW and Rift, according to this it somehow appears that I seem to have always ended up on groups where players were kicked for actually being disruptive rather than "not doing enough DPS".
Pure luck? Who knows...
I think the goal is to deal with a-holes. Not to be upset that people want engaging, challenging combat that appeals to them as a straight video game as well as a virtual action figure of a superhero.
The problem is not people wanting to team with people who play the way they do.
The problem is articulating that without being a dick
Crowd Control Enthusiast
"I'm much more of a gamer than a roleplayer, although the two are by no means exclusive, and many CoHers were neither, merely casual players who enjoyed the game. CoH was not really a hardcore gamer's game. You could make it a challenge, but it wasn't a difficult game in essence."
That basically sums up my experience. I would sometimes team with folks who wanted to duo/trio hard content. I sometimes teamed with folks who ran +4x8. Heck I soloed most everything one time or another on a tank (full AVs included) to see if I could. But that was a not required at any time and did not really comprise a very large section of ingame time.
I spent a lot more time +1x5 with a handful of casual players who kept me rolling in the aisles with color commentary.
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
Given the number of hours I devoted to CoX over the years just running missions, I think I racked up enough combat hours not to consider myself a casual player. I loved when we got more control over difficulty so that I could tailor the challenge to each character's abilities, because I hated when a mission felt like a cake walk.
Having said that, I never was interested in the numbers. The more numbers I saw, the less I could suspend my disbelief and get lost in the feel of being a superhero (or villain).
In 7 years of playing CoX, I'm pleased to say I never once heard the term DPS in conversation. I had to play other MMOs before I even knew what it meant. I was truly stymied the first time someone in SWTOR asked what my DPS was, and I still laugh when people refer to a class as "DPS", given that [I]all[/I] characters do DPS. I loved the fact that very few people in CoX seemed to care what anyone's DPS was, and I believe this is yet another instance (just like lack of loot drops and not tying appearance to ability) where the game mechanics contributed to the type of community we have.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Thats strange, because in MY experience, again with CoX being my 1st MMO, its where I learnt the terms DPS, Tankers, Healers, CC, debuffs, buffs.
It mostly depend on which server you played on too.I was palying in defiant for example and there was never any mention of DPS, HPS or similar things other than in idle chat of builds even than it is more of a single powers stats rather than whle toons.
Interesting...! I played mostly on Infinity and Virtue; wonder if that had something to do with it.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I played mostly on Infinity. There was very little discussion about DPS on that server. Virtue, was the main Roleplaying server, if I'm not mistaken. No surprise that there would be little DPS talk there. The team I usually played with cranked up the difficulty to make the missions more challenging. If one of the team members ever got the star, he cranked it to the max and found the most difficult faction to fight. I think he enjoyed team wipes.
I was on Victory for ~2 years, then Virtue for ~6. Wasn't until Virtue that I had heard the terms used by the players. It didn't really matter to most players.
Though I can't say I understand how knowing the numbers limited immersion. Totally immersed myself. What the numbers did was allow me to know what to build for, for what I wanted out of my builds.
I'm sure it will differ from player to player. For me, seeing the numbers took me out of believing in Paragon City because it reminded me that it was just a game. Actually, now that I think about it, it was worse than that: it took me out of the game by reminding me that this is all just a computer algorithm.
Spurn all ye kindle.
DPS wasn't a "thing" that people talked about on Virtue.
Scrapperlock ... [b]everybody[/b] knew what Scrapperlock was (and welcomed it)!
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
And everyone was jealous of it!
LIES AND SLANDER!
All were jealous of the Corrupter Tank.. for it was an unholy creation!
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
+1
could tank an ITF
[img]http://i.imgur.com/uBG8m9m.png[/img]
<_<
DB/WP Scrapper could solo it.
>_>
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/PAjsb.jpg[/IMG]
;)
Whats scrapperlock?
Deadly serious here, I have no idea what you are talking about, but i could surmise that it involves scrappers.
[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Scrapperlock]Scrapperlock[/url]
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
LOL Loved that last one!
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Funny thing is ... I always considered pulling off this particular stunt to be a total [b]BOO YA![/b] moment of sweet success, rather than a "you're doing it wrong!" thing to be ashamed of. Nothing quite like fighting the Robot Control Box of ITF Mission 3 solo because 7 of your friends faceplanted when you got to stage 3, and they're all watching you continue fighting [i]for MINUTES[/i] as you try to beatdown the Box while all the Robots are blasting away at you and your powers of [b]NO GET HITSU!![/b] mean that most of their shots are MISSing you ... but you're still taking a trickle of damage spikes through your Defenses and it's basically a race to see if they'll get you, or if you'll get the Control Box first ... as you keep pulling out Aid Self between sneaker kicks while your faceplanted SG watches you, and cheers you on, through your Epic Solo Battle Against Incredible Odds ...!
/em dramatic sigh
Yes, there have been many many many times when Redlynne was the only one who REFUSED to faceplant when the rest of the team wiped. Scrapperlock always gave me [i][url=http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=warm+fuzzies]Warm Fuzzies[/url][/i] ... while it lasted.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yeah... not sure why taking out the spawn that dropped the rest of your team would be a bad thing. Unless the argument is that you went off and aggroed a batch while your team was still hip-deep in the previous spawn or something.
Some of my fondest memories of my first/namesake DM/Regen scrapper were being the last guy standing and wiping out the entire spawn so I could start handing out wakies to the rest of the team.
*grins wickedly*
I am Lord Nightmare, god amongst men. Look on my build, ye mighty, and despair!
[IMG]http://i43.tinypic.com/1zml75l.png[/IMG]
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
I wasn't jealous. I participated. I can't help it if I got scrapperlocked while playing my Controller.
Dangit, my poor Tanker got Scrapperlocked all the time... Of course, I often played with a Scrapper.
We also played twin FF/Energy Offenders. Scrapperlock hyped-up on Pixie-Stix. Fun times.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Tank and Scrapper rolling over everything? That's not scrapperlock, that's a combined-arms blitzkrieg.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Yep, i loved my Scrapper/Brute as well. ;D
[img]http://img546.imageshack.us/img546/5228/339u.png[/img]
well colour me shocked... I thought that scrapperlock would have been an actual mechanic, considering that way that I heard people talk about it. I thought it was something similar to stun locking...
Izzy? We're going to need a "shocked colour" added to the color swatches you're making. Think you can add that to the UI you're working on? ^_~
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
It [i]is[/i] an actual mechanic; it just affects the [i]player[/i] and not the [i]character[/i]. It's basically the game Taunting the player. (More crunchies over here! Come get some!)
City of Heroes also had a way to Hold players:
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
Nah, it isn't in my eyes. But that is just me.
The funnest form of scrapperlock was when it occurred on a nonscrapper. No, I don't mean those 6th level noob blasters who kept rushing in and dying all the time (funny though that was), I mean when it happens and you're not running a scrapper. I personally experienced it on two different stalkers (before the first roll-out of stalker changes as a matter of fact) and a controller who wasn't the most powerful ever, but juuuust good enough to keep it going.
Priceless!
___
"What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous." - Joseph Conrad
“The universe is made up of stories, not of atoms” - Muriel Rukeyser
[color=#ff0000]Composition Team[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Which merely proves that even if City of Titans doesn't have an archetype called a Scrapper, you'll know that you're "doing it right" if Scrapperlock [i]continues to be a "thing"[/i] in City of Titans.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Your comment about the low-level blasters who rush in reminds me of this one mission I was on with my AR/EM Blaster early in the game (she was the first character I'd created back on May 8, 2004); I'd just gotten to 12 and picked up Snipe, and had joined a team that was doing a bunch of Vahzilok missions in Steel Canyon. We were in an office mission, and the floor was the one that lets you out of the elevator, then splits into two paths -- one left through the room with the long corridor and the exposed upper 'floor', the other path went straight, then turned left and had a split-and-rejoin around an 'island' of office, and then the two paths rejoined just before the next elevator.
We'd hit the spawn that was just inside the room to the left -- an eight man team, so a good-sized spawn of Abominations and the human minions; we got chewed up pretty badly. When our fallen got back from the hospital, we looked at the big spawn down at the end of the hall (I couldn't tell, because of the mass of milling zombies, but it didn't have any non-zombies in the spawn) and decided that rushing them wasn't the way; we needed to pull some of them away from the spawn.
I volunteered; I had this shiny new Snipe, and I could hit the Abominations from where I was standing. I picked one of the Abominations, fired up Snipe... *CRACK* The Abomination fell over.
We waited several seconds, but the rest of the spawn milling around at the corner seemed to be oblivious to what had just happened. "Let me try again." *CRACK* An Abomination falls over. For all the attention this gets, I might have been firing from the next [b]state[/b].
One of the other team members tells me to try again. *CRACK* A third Abomination hits the floor, the remaining members of the spawn utterly oblivious to the thinning of their ranks. Several of the team find this hilarious.
The team leader then decides that this is boring, and charges the Vahzilok, followed in by the other tank and two scrappers; I stay back and continue shooting from extreme range as all four of them wipe to the Vahzilok in short order; the rest of us bailing back down the elevator before the Vahzilok.we couldn't drop at range caught up to us.
I always wondered about this. I always expected to see 2 (or more) enemies closes to the just Attacked enemy to go into Investigate Mode... but never did. :/
I noticed that Vahz zombies were all Especially brain-dead, if there was no 'doctor' with them. One could usually pull them separately, even without a snipe.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Vahzilok zombies had some mechanic on them where they were generally oblivious to the other mobs around them. Not so for the humans, which would share aggro with the others.
They had another mechanic as well, where the Vahzilok Mortificators could "smell" a dead zombie for quite a long range, and would ditch their spawn group to run over and resurrect the zombie. Further, they, (including the zombie) would then go after whoever killed it. And there was something odd about this mechanic as well: When they were running to the zombie, every now and then they would stop and slowly walk back to their starting point, then a second later they'd start running to the dead zombie again. This could repeat for a while.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
The anecdote was more to illustrate the "rush in, die" mentality of some players (a failing not exclusive to Blasters) than how brain-dead the Vahzilok zombies could be. In the few Vahzilok missions I couldn't get around doing (all the Toxic damage flying around long before your characters got a resistance to it made for lots of trips to the hospital), I would always try to kill a Reaper or Mortificator in the spawn from the greatest range possible, bugging out to break aggro if necessary before coming back and sniping out the zombies one at a time.
Resistance to toxic damage was rare as it was, so long before you got a resistance to it is a long time. :p More so when you consider most ATs lacked resists period.
hehe.. thats why i liked to Exemp down with my Fiery Aura Scrappers/Brutes for Posi TFs... 1st Part. or was it second. And just SPAM Healing Flames like KaRazzzyy! ;D Stack those healing flames High even before jumping in. Ahhh fun times. :)