Should Mobs have (minor) cheats?

[bluedreamer]

This topic, and the areas related to it have come up before and I am sure my own opinion will "rattle some cages".

I remember when the game had no cheating bosses; then, they introduced Briskbreez Tower. When they did this first introduction to cheating bosses, a lot of the fun "innocence" was lost as suddenly the developers seemed determined to add as many cheats as possible to satiate the mainstream/"professional"/hardcore gamers while turning their back on the original player base of "regular" people who just wanted to enjoy the journey and adventure within the story. Soon, within a short time we started to see less and less of a fun and enjoyable story where we were participating characters turn into a grunt and grind just to get past a quest.

Now, all these years later it seems all the bosses have cheats or major advantages that force people to focus on survival more than the story that should be driving the game.

With all this being said, I honestly think there is already way to much cheating "over kill" as it is, and to even think of the mobs being able to cheat would, in effect, kill the game and drive the common player away.

If people want cheating and monstrously difficult bosses and battles, how about we just keep them to the Skeleton Key realm or optional side quests and out of the regular quests...let the game be fun for the majority of players who want to enjoy the story as well as the game and still have opportunity for the hardcore players to vent themselves with cheating enemies.

So no, I would be very strongly against it.

Sorry, no hugs in this matter,

V

I agree wholeheartedly, my introduction to cheating bosses was in wintertusk, Which was already enormously challenging. I must admit I hate cheating bosses with a passion. While this game is a multiplayer one, many players like myself prefer to play solo or with one friend and more and more content is not friendly to those players. It would be nice if they could scale the cheats down, not add more.

I read they are planning on making ultra hard content in the future but us regular players, Need to have access to very good gear as well. I would say probably more than the "elite" who breeze through each world and tough side bosses/end of world bosses

[Willowdreamer]

I agree with those who say mobs should just stay mobs. Giving them "cheats" would cause such "cheats" to become normal game mechanics, and then the actual "cheats" would need to become more complicated, etc. Granted, we can't have growth without some change, but these higher worlds already seem to be sacrificing story for gameplay difficulty to appease the frontrunners looking for challenge and more powerful stats.

Now that you've posted this, I can see the writing on the wall...

[Jonathan Greenflame]

NO!!!

It's bad enough fighting the mobs to collect six of this or five of that and having to do it multiple times to continue the quest. Having the cheating bosses are quite enough. Need more challenge? Lay off the AOE spells and fight the mobs using the one or two pip spells we learned when we first started.

[Dylan Windwalker]

I'm glad there's such powerful opinions about this and I expected it to turn this way. After all, we're all casual players and already have to deal with hardcore content more than we should be (since we have to farm those bosses to get good gear) and a lot of us comeback to help others, which isn't easy.

Do you think there's a need to fix the "AoE Narrative" (4pip first turn or blade first turn and 7-pip AoE) that has been the strategy for a lot of the mob fights? If not cheats, how do you think they should go about it?

Sure weaknesses and higher resist and higher health can make it so it's more difficult to employ the strategy, but they can't keep doing that forever and it's not a long term solution since our wizards are going to get stronger as the story progresses (or can they? argue below haha). Killing both enemies at the same time will always be the way to go as long as we're allowed to do it even if we have to cast an extra blade/aura. And well, if Ki wants players to get creative in their fights, that might not align with what they want to see.

[Pegasus Unbound]

Technically Briskbreeze wasn't the Spiral's introduction to cheating bosses, as if memory serves they were introduced before then with old arc 1 bosses gaining cheats, such as Sergeant Skullsplitter, Jade Oni, The Coven and Malistaire Drake. They were removed due to fan backlash & some time shortly afterwards Briskbeeze opened, followed by The Warehouse (which itself was made optional after it was released to Live due to the community deeming it too hard to beat just to get into Celestia).

Yes, you are technically correct; but my observations still remains and if anything you have highlighted what I said. My post had gotten long enough as is, so I tried to keep it simple and to the point.

The others were indeed there first, then removed due to player outcry; BUT then Briskbreez was added despite the outcries from the previous attempts to add cheating bosses and it stayed making it, in my opinion, the first permanent cheat.

The fact remains that at first they did initially listen to their primary customers; yet they caved in to the hard-core gamers and went and created Briskbreez and it just got worse and worse from there. This is the same attitude that prevailed with PVP, it started out as something basic and was quickly poluted, again in my opinon, with hard-core gamers and the toxic over top combatters who scared others away...and now we have seen how many revisions/eras in their attempt to "fix" PVP.

To put it simply, they seem to have forgotten the main/general public in favor of the hard-core gamers by cramming cheating bosses down our throats...sad, very sad.
@Sparck, I think this thread is touching on some very important issues that you need to review, follow and pass along to the "powers that be". In an effort to appease the hard-core gammers, KI is slowly destroying one of the major elements that made W101 so popular in the first place...anyone, even young kids, could easily learn and play the game.


- - - Updated - - -

I'm glad there's such powerful opinions about this and I expected it to turn this way. After all, we're all casual players and already have to deal with hardcore content more than we should be (since we have to farm those bosses to get good gear) and a lot of us comeback to help others, which isn't easy.

Do you think there's a need to fix the "AoE Narrative" (4pip first turn or blade first turn and 7-pip AoE) that has been the strategy for a lot of the mob fights? If not cheats, how do you think they should go about it?

Sure weaknesses and higher resist and higher health can make it so it's more difficult to employ the strategy, but they can't keep doing that forever and it's not a long term solution since our wizards are going to get stronger as the story progresses (or can they? argue below haha). Killing both enemies at the same time will always be the way to go as long as we're allowed to do it even if we have to cast an extra blade/aura. And well, if Ki wants players to get creative in their fights, that might not align with what they want to see.

Agreed. Yes, there is a need for minor cheating to help promote more challenge and growth of the wizards; but the key word is MINOR. The growth of over the top cheating has become a growing cancer killing the game for the vast, VAST ocean of casual players who may be, like I was, looking for an introduction to online gaming and relaxation. They are literally currently alienating and chasing off the biggest customer base possible to pander to the smaller hard-core base which means a loss of massive revenues.

[Willowdreamer]

I'm glad there's such powerful opinions about this and I expected it to turn this way. After all, we're all casual players and already have to deal with hardcore content more than we should be (since we have to farm those bosses to get good gear) and a lot of us comeback to help others, which isn't easy.

Do you think there's a need to fix the "AoE Narrative" (4pip first turn or blade first turn and 7-pip AoE) that has been the strategy for a lot of the mob fights? If not cheats, how do you think they should go about it?

Sure weaknesses and higher resist and higher health can make it so it's more difficult to employ the strategy, but they can't keep doing that forever and it's not a long term solution since our wizards are going to get stronger as the story progresses (or can they? argue below haha). Killing both enemies at the same time will always be the way to go as long as we're allowed to do it even if we have to cast an extra blade/aura. And well, if Ki wants players to get creative in their fights, that might not align with what they want to see.

Do you think players want to get creative in mob fights? I don't think anyone wants mob fights to be more difficult to move through. After all, as has been said, we usually are fighting them to collect something so why would anyone want that to take longer than it needs.

[Flash33]

Yes, you are technically correct; but my observations still remains and if anything you have highlighted what I said. My post had gotten long enough as is, so I tried to keep it simple and to the point.

The others were indeed there first, then removed due to player outcry; BUT then Briskbreez was added despite the outcries from the previous attempts to add cheating bosses and it stayed making it, in my opinion, the first permanent cheat.

The fact remains that at first they did initially listen to their primary customers; yet they caved in to the hard-core gamers and went and created Briskbreez and it just got worse and worse from there. This is the same attitude that prevailed with PVP, it started out as something basic and was quickly poluted, again in my opinon, with hard-core gamers and the toxic over top combatters who scared others away...and now we have seen how many revisions/eras in their attempt to "fix" PVP.

To put it simply, they seem to have forgotten the main/general public in favor of the hard-core gamers by cramming cheating bosses down our throats...sad, very sad.
@Sparck, I think this thread is touching on some very important issues that you need to review, follow and pass along to the "powers that be". In an effort to appease the hard-core gammers, KI is slowly destroying one of the major elements that made W101 so popular in the first place...anyone, even young kids, could easily learn and play the game.

Agreed. Yes, there is a need for minor cheating to help promote more challenge and growth of the wizards; but the key word is MINOR. The growth of over the top cheating has become a growing cancer killing the game for the vast, VAST ocean of casual players who may be, like I was, looking for an introduction to online gaming and relaxation. They are literally currently alienating and chasing off the biggest customer base possible to pander to the smaller hard-core basewhich means a loss of massive revenues.

The difference with Briskbreeze is that it's always been optional, and even though the lv.50 rings Orrick Nightglider drops are good for their level you can progress just fine without them. Heck, even when House of Scales was added years later the dialogue only gives a brief mention of it as it's not required to do HoS.

With the first-gen cheats this was KI going back to old bosses & making them harder, which the community deemed too hard for normal story progression & that's why they got reverted.

Just wanted to clear this part up.

As for challenging players, I think part of the reason KI keeps making more challenging fights is because of the simple fact that players have gotten better at the game. While I will agree KI has gone overboard at times with some of the cheats, I do see why they want to make sure players don't have too easy of a time in the later levels as that can also drive players away from the game. It's a difficult balance for sure either way.

[Jonathan Greenflame]

I'm glad there's such powerful opinions about this and I expected it to turn this way. After all, we're all casual players and already have to deal with hardcore content more than we should be (since we have to farm those bosses to get good gear) and a lot of us comeback to help others, which isn't easy.

Do you think there's a need to fix the "AoE Narrative" (4pip first turn or blade first turn and 7-pip AoE) that has been the strategy for a lot of the mob fights? If not cheats, how do you think they should go about it?

Sure weaknesses and higher resist and higher health can make it so it's more difficult to employ the strategy, but they can't keep doing that forever and it's not a long term solution since our wizards are going to get stronger as the story progresses (or can they? argue below haha). Killing both enemies at the same time will always be the way to go as long as we're allowed to do it even if we have to cast an extra blade/aura. And well, if Ki wants players to get creative in their fights, that might not align with what they want to see.

Again, NO!!

Mob fights are always part of the story line quests. There is no need to impair these fights with making them difficult to accomplish. There is nothing wrong with using a 4 or 7 pip spell to dispel the mob and continue on with the quest. For those of us that enjoy the story and the questing, doing something like what you suggest would just make everything more difficult. I for one enjoy the new worlds, I listen to all the dialogue and have fun doing the quests. What is pure torture and monotony for me is fighting the bosses to farm gear. While some may find it fun, I find it frustrating. What you suggest would just bring on the frustration factor to questing.

[Torpzun26]

Do you think there's a need to fix the "AoE Narrative" (4pip first turn or blade first turn and 7-pip AoE) that has been the strategy for a lot of the mob fights? If not cheats, how do you think they should go about it?

While I am a big fan of fixing the "AoE narrative" when it comes to boss battles that have a local minion around that doesn't contribute beyond casting a few spells (just take out the minion, let us fight the boss by itself, buff its stats to make up for it, and give us multiple workable strategies to taking down the boss than just to buff up and oneshot), I do not think that regular mob fights need this at all.

It's fine that the mob fights are easy. You need easy(ier) encounters to make the difficult ones stand out. This is why we have regular bosses with only minor cheats (or none at all!) instead of all of them being major cheaters.

If mobs need anything, it's to become less annoying, at the very least during mob battles. Maybe make it so that they are actually a hazard or detriment in boss battles, but in regular mob battles they don't really do much. The mobs in Novus aren't difficult, not even close, but they aren't fun to fight because of all of the first-turn Storm Lords, Virulent Plagues, etc. that serve only to get into my way. This isn't difficulty.

[bluedreamer]

I'm glad there's such powerful opinions about this and I expected it to turn this way. After all, we're all casual players and already have to deal with hardcore content more than we should be (since we have to farm those bosses to get good gear) and a lot of us comeback to help others, which isn't easy.

Do you think there's a need to fix the "AoE Narrative" (4pip first turn or blade first turn and 7-pip AoE) that has been the strategy for a lot of the mob fights? If not cheats, how do you think they should go about it?

Sure weaknesses and higher resist and higher health can make it so it's more difficult to employ the strategy, but they can't keep doing that forever and it's not a long term solution since our wizards are going to get stronger as the story progresses (or can they? argue below haha). Killing both enemies at the same time will always be the way to go as long as we're allowed to do it even if we have to cast an extra blade/aura. And well, if Ki wants players to get creative in their fights, that might not align with what they want to see.

I have no issue with mobs getting higher health. I'm pretty sure when Khrysalis came out the mobs had more health than they do now, or at least at the start of Novus. If I recall correctly somewhere in Mirage when it came out there were ice mobs with 8000 health pre nerf. Having said that, as I mentioned in a previous comment, mobs using combinations of weakness, dispels, stealing pips etc has already raised the difficulty of something you just want to get over with and is more of an annoyance.

You should also remember that making a change like that is only really going to affect us the so-called casual players, I'm not a fan of that term as it implies you don't play the game much, whereas the so-called hard-core PVP style players, in their well-organised teams and perfect deck setup are simply just going to spam 4 pip AOE On the first turn, negating any kind of cheat.

Personally I'd rather have a fun new world, I just don't see it happening with the current developers. I saw a top rated PVP player to a video and describes the current Roshambo system as no better than playing rock, paper, scissors. That really tickled my sense of humour.