Mob's AC's Doubled?

[___________Misophist]

My 47 MA, under normal circumstances, hits a green, no matter which kind of NPC, soldier or enforcer, something like this: 99, 90, 80, 100, 183 (Blessed with Thunder), 150, 200, 200, 190, 200-560 (brawl), 183 (BwT), 100, mob is dead. In fact, it's probably too dead, that's more like a fight with a yellow monster before 13.0. I might have finished at half HP or lower, but it didn't take forever. Greens took seconds to kill.

Now, against a green OR gray high AC mob with crazy damage shield: 47, 47, 183 (BwT), 47, 47, 47, 47, 120 (brawl) 47, 47, 183, 120, 47. And it takes a while to whittle those suckers down.

Ugh! I might sneak in a sub-par brawl every now and then (i.e. below 500), but that's not too often except with gray mobs or low AC mobs.

Anybody know how to guarantee missions without human NPCs? Are there any slider settings that affect this? I did a mission with all manteze and it went beautifully.

Something's screwy about that, too.

FYI, on another thread, somebody mentioned that they spoke to an ARK and found out this was a bug. Hope that's true.

[Lazz]

Maybe the explanation can be found here...


Let me post a quote from the Dev chat that Stratics held not so long ago:

gaute

We have changed the focus on how people level Mission running, while not being an exploit or anything, was extremely boring People levelled too quick and the game seemed stale and repetitive doing that 5 levels per day The problem is a multilayered one. Basically, though, it means high-level mobs are taken down to quickly. We will look into it, but it is a type of play-behaviour that at least is social. The risk is not necessarily balanced ag. 5 lvls pr day is too fast, by the way. Make no doubt about it! (repost!) The risk is not necessarily balanced against the reward though Ill observe what they do, and evaluate it. When? Depends on the size of the problem I was not aware that the problem was huge Now it is though Sensei: MA's have been having bug problems with using weapons since the game hit the shelves (can't zone with one equipped without severe issues, etc) New MA weapons is nifty and all (if you can even find one), but any chance of the bugs being worked out soon? Yes. Hm. I'll try to get them into 13.2/13.4

For those who don't know who Gaute is, he's the one pretty much in charge when it comes to game blance as I've understood. Read what I have put in bold, put the pieces together yourselves.

[___________Misophist]

The problem is a multilayered one. Basically, though, it means high-level mobs are taken down to quickly.

Level 50ish mobs are high level? I don't think so. I don't do hard missions. I should not have to be fighting tooth and nail to get through a 50% difficulty mission because I'm hitting min against greens (which is absurd) and oranges who shouldn't even be there.

Since levelling isn't a big deal to me, I wouldn't care if they lowered experience again for killing green mobs and implemented the 50% mission = all green mobs. According to a previous statement, 50% missions should produce mobs below your level (green), not above, and there should be no grays, so you'd have a 100% change of getting a token if you killed all the mobs.

Following this logic, turning up the slider would produce yellow-greens, yellows, yellow-oranges, oranges, blah blah.

I get the distinct feeling that this all-green thing isn't an easy thing to accomplish because I haven't heard anything about it from the Dev folks for a while.

5 levels a day is too much. You can reach level 200 in a little more than a month that way.

But a lot of people like to solo. Making the mobs harder because high level people were taking down high level mobs too quickly IN GROUPS just isn't right.

Right now, I can gain 1 level per 3-4 missions. Now if the mobs being more difficult is intentional so I don't level so fast, I guess that makes sense. But it doesn't work, because I tough out those missions (being a masochist) and manage to level anyway.

But it takes forever with these uber-mobs who I hit for min-damage. I would like to get more than 3 missions finished in the course of 3 hours.

[__________Spacegipsy]

I'm experiencing the same problems as well.
My Level 30 Doc, who uses MA/Brawl to fight, did only minimum damage yesterday against mobs that were anything from light-green to yellow (so about equal or lower than her). I can understand doing only minimum damage and having a hard time against an orange mob, but not against one who is supposed to be equal to me.
Is someone looking into it?

[______________Telorn]

I was in a group last night with a bunch of friends, and they were all complianing about how weak they were all hitting. If not for the crit buff lines from the MA, we'd have a hard time handling one orange. That doesn't seem right to me, for a team of six (Agent, Adv, Engineer, MA, sold, and doc) to not be able to handle a yellow 'easily'. A solo should 'almost' be able to handle an orange with proper strategy. But with a team, they should be a walk in the park.

I was with this game since the beginning. There were a lot of bugs back then, that's for sure. But I'd much rather live with all those bugs we had than with the gameplay we have now. The game is just getting boring. It it becoming too tedious to do anything now. The only thing teams can handle now at a high lvl seem to be Medusa's. Everything else is too strong. We hit for too little. THey hit for too much. Make the dmg a little more randomized, please, rather than almost always minimum on our part. Make the mobs dmg random too. It is boring to know that this particular mob will always hit me for 150 dmg or 300 dmg if a crit. Let them sometimes hit for minimum (30 or whatever, as if they 'scratched' us) and at other times hit for more, like 250. Make sure they usually hit less, though


Telorn
101 Doc Rk-1

[________________nikh]

Originally posted by Misophist

I wouldn't care if they lowered experience again for killing green mobs

Yes a very good point.

FC has said several time that they wanted people to level more slowly - Which I agree

Yet in 12.8 (+- 0.1) they increased the XP given by monsters (yes forgotten?). Now -of course- people level more, even more now that they have fixed the mission distance bug.

So does increasing the difficulty of the mobs fix the issue? certainly not!
1) As far as we can tell, its for some mobs only (some NPC, not even all)
2) It makes solo missions just frustrating
3) you still earn the same amount of XP per mission (at the end of the day when the mob is finally dead, you get the same XP) - so you still lvl every X missions - but it takes you twice more time and money, ten times more zoning in and out , ie. its way more frustrating.

Basically: MOB's AC is not the right angle to limit levelling.
If this even is what was intended.

Just consider moving down again the XP per monster, and make green monsters easier to kill = more fun, less leveling. FYI, currently, I level once every 1-2 missions!

[______________Taelyn]

Two problems with the uber AC thingy.

1) It is balanced because only NPCs and not monsters have the uber AC, therefore everyone kills only monsters. It makes the game more annoying without any real effect.

2) Too long. It simply takes way too dang long to fight now. I don't want to spend an hour hammering on some pathetic yellow mob. No way. Combat should be exciting, not a test of patience.

This needs to be fixed. Furthermore, I'd like to see MOBs doing damage ranges, not doing a ridiculously high minimum damage every time. It would be far more exciting if the MOB did 10-50 than it doing 30 every hit. Adds an element of uncertainty, which is good.

[________________Ming]

Those pink sheild carrying NPC's are out of hand! They make missions unfun. Sure in a group they aren;t so bad, but they reset thier own attack timers everytime they cast on me, which kicks my ass. (double hits) Funcom released a serious stinker with 13. There's more BS going on than even I can complain about.

[Cavanagh]

Bump. Been trying all kinds of missions to try to avoid NPC mobs. Even greys take forever to kill. Since 13.0 missions have become tedious, the only good thing being you don't have to run for half an hour or 45 minutes to the mission only to find you can't hit any of the mobs. If this was intentional it was completely fubared. I solo most of the time and now I can hardly find a mission I can do in a hour or two. I simply don't have time to spend 30 minutes killing a lite yellow mob. (or a green one for that matter). The other big problem i've seen lately is getting a mission full of grey mobs in a medium diff mission...I mean ALL grey! I tremble at what the next patch will bring.

Had FC commented on any of this?

[________________cman]

grouped tonight with a lvl 120+ soldier who hit for less than 100 consistently with his ql 180+ novaflow (im not sure on ql, but positive it was over 187), im sorry but expecting players to only do damage if they crit is wrong!

[hexxia]

I *believe* that there is something wrong with certain armour types rather than particular NPCs as a whole.

Whenever I encounter an enemy wearing some "low tech" armour, I'm in for a rough ride.

eg sometimes "agent" class mobs wear this, when they do, it's time for trouble. when they're wearing leather or nano or some other armour type, I'm fine.

I think this may be why it seems the "adventurer" types are too strong, as they seem to have this armour type more... ?

and, well, if I am right, its gotta be a bug, low-tech armour is by definition, poor :-)

[________foolishchild]

I was lucky enough to score some crits yesterday against some different mobs. I am a 63 soldier and was using a 93 Novaflow at the time.
Against a Red 'Crat I critted for 715. Against a green soldier I got 515. Does this mean the soldier has 2000 EXTRA AC? I was under the impression that only AC affected the amount of damage done. It's a bit scary if the MoBs have not only 3-5000 hps at this level but also 4-5000 AC!

[___________Misophist]

I took some numbers and names down in one of my missions last night.

Against a:
- Gray rookie clan lookout -- 57 points of damage, over and over.
- Gray rookie techhunter -- 50-60 points of damage.
- Yellow rookie adventurer -- 57
- Sharpshooters, soldier types, any color. Min damage.
- Green-yellow lookout -- same amount of damage that I did on the gray.
- Light orange enforcer -- 47 damage, yet highest mob in mission. Nearly died.
- yellow/orange rookie clan spies/assassins -- 60 min

Brawls against these mobs averaged from very low (90) to 120-250, but when I landed a crit-brawl, I rarely saw anything above 450. I also had Blessed with Thunder DoT going, which hits for mostly 183-199.

Against non-human NPCs:

- orange Breiflabb Swimmer: 101, 201, 560 brawl, 99, 101, etc. This was one of those odd missions with human and non-human NPCs.

Details: I'm a 47 MA. q90 implants.
This was an average mission. Took 3 to 4-Holes and spent an hour for each. 4 if you count the time I died when zoning outside to heal only to meet a master clan assassin. I puttered about in trade for a while, shopping for my trader, because the prospect of meeting more of these mobs didn't really interest me. When I went back, I took these notes.

I'm going to send this same info. to Funcom via email.

[Cosmik]

Originally posted by Sinclare
I only got to test the new patch for an hour or so last night but here is my major gripe.

Post v13 I could solo yellow/oranges and do an average dmg of 60-150 dmg per hit (I am a lv 47 adv dual wielding ql 66 OT swords).

After patch : Any yellow/orange mobs (and many green mobs) I NEVER hit for more than min dmg...which is around 35 dmg per hit.

Don't get me wrong I do think yellow's/orange's should be hard but min dmg on every hit? Not to mention the fact that they are hitting me for arond 1.5x to 2x what they used to. If it wasn't for my inate healing abilities I wouldn't be able to take on a singe green, not to mention a room full of 2-4 yellow/orange mobs in the first room of missions (and that's even missions). I believe this was taken to a bit of an extreme or is some kind of bug in the code (perhaps the pvp cap is somehow bugging the pvm play)

You know how long it takes to beat down a lv 55 mob at 35 dmg per hit? A Looooooooong time. I don't see how non-combat classes are doing it. I am just glad to be well balanced at the moment between combat and healing but this needs to be looked into.

I've read alot of posts on this and I wanted to get as much information as I could before I came went to the team and came back with some answers for you.

Firstly, there has been no stealth buffing. MOB AC has not been increased in 13.0. The only changes brought into 13.0 concerning MOB behaviour was a healing rate change (in a fight versus out of a fight).

That being said, the programmers are aware of this issue decreased damage issue (believe me, I've let it be known. I got my Trader tush handed to me on the end of a green grid hacker foot the other day ) and it'll be sorted out. Obviously, as I get more information on this, I'll let you guys know. In the meantime, any more information you guys can give is certainly not going to waste. Thanks for your patience in letting me get back to you.

[Cosmik]

That's it Misophist! Awesome. Thanks for that. Please do send it in.

/me gives Misophist a voucher for 10 free Bronto Burgers with leet fries at the nearest Bronto Burger shop.

[________________cman]

woohoo that great news cosmik, many of us had wondered if this was actually an intended change, good to know its not

looks like you get cookies again!

[Holinor]

This was a really good thread, and an important one. The MoB AC has been one of the most talked about problems in all forums, and I have not seen many taking it positive. I just want to thank everyone for taking it up in a good thread, and with good info instead of just slamming. Second... Great Cozmik that you tried it out yerself, and that you care about this. As so many people say, it has turned misions into something tedious, instead of exciting, and that is a pity. I do not think its the challenge people are complaining about, but the really long, tedious time it takes to kill even an inferior opponent.

I would not mind lesser XP for a kill, if the problem is people levelling too fast. But as said, I do mind spending half an hour trying to kill something that is grey, and will give me nothing in a mission.

Great thread, and the fact that we got an official answer seems to point in the right direction! Lets get the missions fun again!

[_____________ZenBeck]

Im just glad to see Cosmik on it. I seem to get my panties in a bunch when I dont see any posts from him or Sav about a big issue like this.

Im better now. Thanks for the tug Cos ...heh

[___________Misophist]

Originally posted by Cosmik
That's it Misophist! Awesome. Thanks for that. Please do send it in.

/me gives Misophist a voucher for 10 free Bronto Burgers with leet fries at the nearest Bronto Burger shop.

No problem, Cosmik. I want this problem fixed as much as everybody else. I sent it to general feedback and hope it goes to the appropriate individual for review. Also, I think this thread: http://aoforums.funcom.com/showthread.php?threadid=1326 has some good info, too, and could perhaps be forwarded to the folks in charge when you mention this to them.

As for the bronto burgers and leet fries, I'm a vegetarian (leets are too cute!), but ah, how about a voucher for a free something that starts with a 'Y' and ends with an 'A' and is really fast and costs about 4.7 million credits?!

Naw, didn't think so.

[_______________Neryn]

I am fairly new to the game, not to mmorpg’s, but I have noticed this problem with my lvl 26 agent.

While not an uber character, I think he represents the "average Joe" type of player character, with a few skill specific implants, nano buffs running, and wearing the token board giving him the extra 21 hps. This coupled with a few life implants gives him about 50-60 hps above his natural stats. His AR is in the 400's, which I had to buff to equip some of it, so I expect that is average or slightly above so for his level. I also have equipped a ql 31 grippo, which I did buff to equip at lvl 20, but should be able to naturally equip it at this level. In other words, I feel this should be the average character for this level.

Now, today I had an extra hour to spare before heading into work so thought I would fire off a quick mission. I select something close as I did not have 30 minutes to spend running there, and left the difficulty slider at default (50%), full money, and everything else default too. I get there and am right away greeted by three green mobs in the first main room. Well, needless to say, I managed to get one dead before having to zone out and re-heal. This after performing two first aids during the fight, and getting in a critical hit. I heal up and go back inside and manage to take down another one. I have to zone again cause I was left with so little hp's I would not have been able to fight the remaining green. I heal up and go back in and finish off the last green, which wasn't too hard by himself. I then explore the mission area and find a few more greens, and occasional yellow, which pose no problem with first aids.

Then I suddenly run into an orange NPC. Even with sneaking, he manages to detect me, so my aimed shot is out of the question, and he starts in. He is one of the types that wear that damage shield that reflects some damage back onto you when you hit them (not sure the name, enforcer??). Well, I managed to get a 250 or so crit in during the first few shots, so I am thinking, this wont be so bad. But after about a minute and two first aids, I notice I am consistently doing 10 pts of damage to him, while he is routinely hitting me for 30-40 pts. This in itself wasn't so bad, as I was getting in 2-3 hits per his one, but what was killing me was the fact that in addition to his gun damage, I was getting 8 pts of damage every time I hit him. So I am hitting him for 10 pts, which cause 8 pts of injury to myself, and he also is getting in 30-40 pts hits on top of it. Even with my benefit of being able to use a first aids every now and again, he is clearly winning the battle. Well, I am about ready to head for the door and give up, when miraculously I get in another crit. He is now down to just under 1/2 life, so I decide to try a bit longer. Well, that’s when I really got mad, because as I was hitting him with my peashooter for 10 pts damage and absorbing 8 back, I saw his healthbar go up and past the 1/2 mark. He is now back to 60% health, even with the 2 crits, and I am running on empty, so decide to run for it, but end up dying anyway before I can reach the door.

I guess I realize oranges should be tough, but why (as others have mentioned) are they in a 50% mission? I can see yellows and greens, but oranges? Also, they can be tough, but do they have to be impossible to beat, unless your one of those players who have implants, armor, and weapons, some 30-50 levels above their character? I thought that’s what reds were for, to be impossible, but orange you would at least have some sort of chance taking one on one. Clearly with the current system, oranges might as well be reds to a solo player.

Well, all this cost me my hour, no exp, no money, no item, no tokens, plus the used up treatment kits, ammo, and first-aids, for what should have been a relatively simple 50% mission.

On a similar note to one of the other posts I read here, one of the things that attracted me to this game was that it promised not to be like the others where you wasted hour after mindless hour trying to improve your character. Instead it was to be more about having fun, and enjoying your experience as you naturally leveled and advanced within the game. Well, with today’s events, and the similar postings I am reading here, that is one promise that has seemed to be left by the wayside. Myself, I only aspire to be Joe average, and want to play the game, not power level, or become the most famous pker in the land. I don’t feel I need to be twinked to the highest level possible, at all times, just to be able to handle mobs even, or slightly higher than myself. Maybe, you do have players that play this way, and they complain everything is too easy, but for me and I am sure, most other “Joe averages”, who probably make up a great percentage of the game’s population, you have went over-board. I kinda like the one poster who ended his post with the “Not-so-Funcom”, kinda how I feel right now. A game should be fun, not a test to see who’s the most uber, or has the most patience, or endurance to level up and be able to say “look at me I did it”. I don’t much care for that type of play style, and those players will be the first to leave no matter what you do to make the game tougher, because that is their play-style and that’s how they have fun. Nothing wrong with that, but I guess my simple point is you cannot possibly please all types of play-styles in one game.

Well, maybe I am way off base here, and my play-style is the one that is incompatible with your plans, but I thought I would share the experience and thoughts of one of your newest players.