I want a challenge

It starts with a level 100(Maybe as low as level 70) permanently-enraged Dire Lupine. The reasoning behind this is I noticed with things like the Kunoichi in the Daimyo box, they'd get one person in interlock on the NPC, then a healer. The person in interlock could get in several hits, all the while the NPC is trying to roll out so it does no attacks to the person in interlock with. So, it rolls out, and tries to attack the healer. If the interlocker is fast enough they can usually interlock it again and they and the healer quickly go back up to full health, repeat the process. But, if the NPC is enraged, it wants to interlock anyone within interlock range PLUS it will stay in interlock with it's opponent and actually attack them until it's opponent either rolls out or dies. The reason why I'd want a Dire Lupine (Or a normal Lupine) is because they seem to want to use special moves much more frequently than most NPCs.

Next, what really makes the boss a pain to beat: A spawn aura. For those of you who don't really know what that means, it's similar to what Corruptors and Runtime programs have. If you're within a certain range, every 30 seconds or so you get an NPC spawned on you to attack you. So, this boss would have a spawn aura of 30-40 meters that spawn a single permanently enraged Dual-SMG variant of a Lupine (The ones you fight from a data mining spawn for an XP amp) of the same level as the player, 3 chevrons. That way the group has to tangle with other NPCs while trying to fight the boss. This is where the group would have to actually think of a way to keep the spawns at bay and still take down the boss.

I was discussing with a few people on what the best way to set up this NPC boss fight, be it a boss in a construct, mission, or wandering around somewhere in Megacity, and the seemingly best answer was to make it a mission ticket bought for a large amount of $info (Anywhere from $i100-500 million), but repeatable like an Org Construct Key. You'd have your team teleport to either 1) For the sake of speeding up development of this, a copy of a white room but with a phone to teleport back into the outside world with (Like the ones in the bottom of hideouts) or 2) A dungeon-ish looking environment, maybe looking more cave-like like the hideout in Lucero Point, Rawlins corner. It'd be basically the same thing, an open room with no furniture/corners to exploit the NPCs off of, but more fanciful.

Now of course this boss would have to have a great reward in order to be that challenging, as players would have to have a very good reason to try to put up with a big headache such as this. That's where I'm running into the most problems with for an idea. What came out of conversations with a few other people was an item like this:

(don't have a name with a nice ring to it yet) Launcher
+10-25% IS Regen rate
+5-10% Melee damage bonus
+5-10% Ballistic damage bonus
+5-10% Thrown damage bonus
+5-10% Viral damage bonus

Plus, it'd give a neat little handz iz glow effect like quicksilvers, but of a CR 1 awakened ability (name evades me) that gives you a blue lightning effect on your hands and feet.

Now, to really make people want to have it, it'd go in the tool slot instead of the glasses slot, similar to the Vector Launcher. It'd be helpful to all load outs, but I don't think it would be that overpowered.

I know this post is really, really long, and there's no pretty pictures to break it up, but I'd like something that's an actual challenge and not just tedious to beat like the Daimyo box.

I'd love for everyone's input on this subject. What's too challenging? What can you think of that would be a challenging but not tedious NPC fight? Do you have any suggestions on the idea here? Any feedback at all would be great.

I think this is a great idea and if the devs consider this... it would be great.

((Energized attacks I think are the blue hands))

Great Idea

So we have solo-able content, we have team-based content. All of them are a time consuming process to get for the most part, and require some form of grinding. What I'd like is an NPC boss, so to speak, that you only have to beat once. But, it will be a difficult battle that will require some actual planning and creative thought to win.

It starts with a level 100(Maybe as low as level 70) permanently-enraged Dire Lupine. The reasoning behind this is I noticed with things like the Kunoichi in the Daimyo box, they'd get one person in interlock on the NPC, then a healer. The person in interlock could get in several hits, all the while the NPC is trying to roll out so it does no attacks to the person in interlock with. So, it rolls out, and tries to attack the healer. If the interlocker is fast enough they can usually interlock it again and they and the healer quickly go back up to full health, repeat the process. But, if the NPC is enraged, it wants to interlock anyone within interlock range PLUS it will stay in interlock with it's opponent and actually attack them until it's opponent either rolls out or dies. The reason why I'd want a Dire Lupine (Or a normal Lupine) is because they seem to want to use special moves much more frequently than most NPCs.

Next, what really makes the boss a pain to beat: A spawn aura. For those of you who don't really know what that means, it's similar to what Corruptors and Runtime programs have. If you're within a certain range, every 30 seconds or so you get an NPC spawned on you to attack you. So, this boss would have a spawn aura of 30-40 meters that spawn a single permanently enraged Dual-SMG variant of a Lupine (The ones you fight from a data mining spawn for an XP amp) of the same level as the player, 3 chevrons. That way the group has to tangle with other NPCs while trying to fight the boss. This is where the group would have to actually think of a way to keep the spawns at bay and still take down the boss.

I was discussing with a few people on what the best way to set up this NPC boss fight, be it a boss in a construct, mission, or wandering around somewhere in Megacity, and the seemingly best answer was to make it a mission ticket bought for a large amount of $info (Anywhere from $i100-500 million), but repeatable like an Org Construct Key. You'd have your team teleport to either 1) For the sake of speeding up development of this, a copy of a white room but with a phone to teleport back into the outside world with (Like the ones in the bottom of hideouts) or 2) A dungeon-ish looking environment, maybe looking more cave-like like the hideout in Lucero Point, Rawlins corner. It'd be basically the same thing, an open room with no furniture/corners to exploit the NPCs off of, but more fanciful.

Now of course this boss would have to have a great reward in order to be that challenging, as players would have to have a very good reason to try to put up with a big headache such as this. That's where I'm running into the most problems with for an idea. What came out of conversations with a few other people was an item like this:

(don't have a name with a nice ring to it yet) Launcher
+10-25% IS Regen rate
+5-10% Melee damage bonus
+5-10% Ballistic damage bonus
+5-10% Thrown damage bonus
+5-10% Viral damage bonus

Plus, it'd give a neat little handz iz glow effect like quicksilvers, but of a CR 1 awakened ability (name evades me) that gives you a blue lightning effect on your hands and feet.

Now, to really make people want to have it, it'd go in the tool slot instead of the glasses slot, similar to the Vector Launcher. It'd be helpful to all load outs, but I don't think it would be that overpowered.

I know this post is really, really long, and there's no pretty pictures to break it up, but I'd like something that's an actual challenge and not just tedious to beat like the Daimyo box.

I'd love for everyone's input on this subject. What's too challenging? What can you think of that would be a challenging but not tedious NPC fight? Do you have any suggestions on the idea here? Any feedback at all would be great.

 I feel we also need something that takes a lot of strategy to be able to beat, since most of what we have now takes a long time to do but isn't really that difficult. 

Mathalos wrote:

I feel we also need something that takes a lot of strategy to be able to beat, since most of what we have now takes a long time to do but isn't really that difficult.

See i think thats the key to the problems with most of the new content... they're normally easy, with a large grind/farm time. This is ultimately boring. A short, but difficult task like this provides a great opportunity for more re-playable content. But that being said... the more i think about this the more i realise one thing... Doesn't all of this sound a little like the archives? (a non-instanced, boss with minions, special drop, not specially hard to solo) slightly different, like an archive with tweaks :/ not to put it down i suppose this is more user friendly being instanced and a little more difficult. Either way i don't see why not, i wouldn't complain if it was implemented thats for sure ^^

/signed anyway :p

Danger_Frog1471 wrote:

Mathalos wrote:

I feel we also need something that takes a lot of strategy to be able to beat, since most of what we have now takes a long time to do but isn't really that difficult.

See i think thats the key to the problems with most of the new content... they're normally easy, with a large grind/farm time. This is ultimately boring. A short, but difficult task like this provides a great opportunity for more re-playable content. But that being said... the more i think about this the more i realise one thing... Doesn't all of this sound a little like the archives? (a non-instanced, boss with minions, special drop, not specially hard to solo) slightly different, like an archive with tweaks :/ not to put it down i suppose this is more user friendly being instanced and a little more difficult. Either way i don't see why not, i wouldn't complain if it was implemented thats for sure ^^

/signed anyway :p

Well, the idea behind the enraged, lvl 100 dire lupine is that it wouldn't be soloable, especially with the regularly spawning minions.  So, while it might be like Raeder/Taskmaster/Gargoyle in that it is a boss with minions that drops a powerful item, the difficulty would be ramped up quite a bit to make it an actual challenge.

This would leave this kind of mission open to other species of bosses as well, maybe the mission ticket could have a certain percentage chance to take you to different constructs with different bosses that drop other decently-powered items. If not then maybe come out with a small series of mission tickets that would take you to these different smaller constructs.

This is definately one of the strongest ideas put forward that i have seen.

You have put a lot of thought into this... good job.

To quote the Special One..."DO IT... BE CHAMPIONS!"

1) Immediately you limit the challange to a maximum 6 person group.

3) Boss that won't roll out + spawn adds, I'll bring my AoE hacker, thanks. That will also help with having the hackers take turns with various powerless moves on a special spamming lupine.

4) Eh, who you been talking to? that item wouldn't be worth the time at all.

1) The ticket is just to call the area.  It's entirely possible to bring more than six people into that area. 

3) Thinking of a possible solution doesn't constitute a point against the suggestion. 

4) An item in the tool slot that provides IS and damage is going to give you a significant edge against someone who doesn't have said item.  But even then, it's just an idea and it may well be people can suggest better. 

This sounds like a good idea but the item reward is a really bad choice.Why would i go all this trouble(and let's face it,this quest looks hard enough) just to have a reward that i can get easier?Overdrive Bandana gives me the exact same buffs(without the IS regen) and it's easier to get!!
Anyway,well done.

I'm going to start off with the negatives,

While the intention of the idea is ok, the idea itself, is not.

Mission Ticket:
Immediately you limit the challange to a maximum 6 person group. Due to many limitations in the game mechanic, they can only make a 6 team mission so hard, a real challange is something that needs more than 6 people imo.

Enrage the boss:
Eh? Just because it's enraged, doesn't mean it will keep attacking, it will still attempt to roll out if it tries to attack the healer (for example), enraged just means it can't. The idea would be to keep it attacking the target it's interlocked with? You just made the fight easier!

Spawn adds:
boss that won't roll out + spawn adds, I'll bring my AoE hacker, thanks. That will also help with having the hackers take turns with various powerless moves on a special spamming lupine.

Item suggestion:
Eh, who you been talking to? that item wouldn't be worth the time at all.

The idea is good, but it's not great and that's not your fault, its the limits the game has for such content.


What can be a challange based on the current system?
Honestly, hard to really think of something thats challanging beyond getting yourself a good few numbers of players to help. I have loads of ideas that would be great, but I always try to think of what the game limits, and I always hit a brick wall on that. One idea that might be possible, is making a 4 boss attack, all that can ONLY be damaged by 1 type of attack each, so you are forced to take all attacks, and when I say 4 bosses, all spawn at the same time, so you would need to consider the team make up. But I also can think of many flaws in that.

If we have to consider something with your idea, it would really make things interesting if the NPC's had a AoE hacker boss.

A new item?
I'd like to see an item that gives a high % sweep clear (like the pandora clothes currently do) and have it so it gives a special ability to use with it equipped (kinda like halloween attacks you got).

I'm not going to concentrate on the specifics because, quite frankly, I have limited experience with the most "challenging" tasks MxO already has to offer.

I do, however, think it's important to note that a task of this nature needs to always remain difficult.  However it would be designed, it would need to be done in such a way that you couldn't simply learn the right trick/loadout(s)/team make up/etc. and be able to roll it easily.  That is one of the failings of the current "challenges."  From what I gather, many of them seemed hard at first but once you learn the trick they may take time but are ultimately not that tough.

As Aquatium has stated, the intention is good but the suggested method might be flawed.

If a challenge is sought, why rely on the help of others anyway? If a single item is the suggested reward, then it should recognize the achievement of a single operative (non-tradeable item).

Were the mission to be set within a Whitehalls construct, it would guarantee that there would be no uninvited interuptions from others. The Boss could be housed in an unfurnished and locked room; a small extention which could be added to each orgs Whitehalls construct map and accessed via a corridor of sufficient length that no AoE abilities could reach the room. The other end of the corridor would have another locked and unpickable door. The key/access card for the inner and outer doors would be on the Boss. The player would be teleported directly to the room (via the archivist?) on having the appropriate item in their Tool slot (the item could only be equipped when not on a team?).

I would then suggest a single Boss with equally challenging damage/resistance/defence in all styles of attack, which holds a varying method of attack. Essentially, you should stand a reasonable chance of defeating the boss... if you bring your "A" game... on the best/luckiest day of your life! (I'll leave it to the Devs to judge the right level).

Yes, I realise that what I suggest is simply a slight alteration on the Training Simulations which already exist within the org constructs. Personally, I think that there are already a good variety of challenges out there, it's simply that players have found techniques to make them less challenging. I suggest that moves should be made to remove the exploits in the content which already exisits, before starting from scratch every time.

Shinryu wrote:

I'm not going to concentrate on the specifics because, quite frankly, I have limited experience with the most "challenging" tasks MxO already has to offer.

I do, however, think it's important to note that a task of this nature needs to always remain difficult.  However it would be designed, it would need to be done in such a way that you couldn't simply learn the right trick/loadout(s)/team make up/etc. and be able to roll it easily.  That is one of the failings of the current "challenges."  From what I gather, many of them seemed hard at first but once you learn the trick they may take time but are ultimately not that tough.

I've uh, got the right mindset to think up how to exploit NPCs. I know what they can do and why they do it, simply put.

I like your thinking about the challenge.

If thats what the system needs (Enraged NPCS) to stop rolling out. Then hey it works on paper.

Months (if not years) ago i asked about Raiding in MXO

I believe you are onto something, if anything along the lines of what the MxO Devs *could* do-

Like an extension of the Hell Archives, having an eranged Lupine or anything of that stature. Hell the Machines could create an Oligarchy Demo Platform for operatives to encounter the Halborn or Carlyne repeatively and study the effects of overrides or whatever (ive been away for a bit to know the fullest about that story)

Extreme Challenges. There was once a time when SoE announced a high end area to Everquest. They publically announced "This place is not meant for the anything less than the best. To enter is at your own discrection. We will NOT assist you in this zone.

This is what players need. Some kind of content that is possible but makes them scratch their head saying "How do you do that?"

Let's keep this thread up and running.

Kudos Eval.

RP wise I'd suggest modification of the top boss to the one exile "monster" type that doesn't have a leader that we know of.

The Lupines have Ookami, the Blooddrinkers have Malphas, the Succubi have Persephone, but no one leader for the Nightmares.  I've wondered about this.  The Nightmares look cool but there is nothing behind them RP wise.  Imagine a rogue Lieutenant, defying the Merovingian (so all three orgs would have justification to take him on), holed up in a construct somewhere, the Ultimate Nightmare, the Night Terror.

My 2 cents.

Bump to the thread because of a new idea!

I've come to realize slowly that not everyone in MxO is on the same level. If the Level 100 enraged Dire lupine were to be released, I really doubt most people would be able to take it on legitametly.

The problem is unless a player to MxO plays another MMO or even RPGs, the simple concepts in other MMOs aren't used by them so they won't know how to use it when the time arrises. So, I suggest something like the following to both be a slight challenge and to help introduce some to new strategies that could be used in later content to spice it up.

Just for the sake of example, say a new box is released. Similar to the Sati boxes, waves would spawn that progress in difficulty. The end wave would be a boss NPC that isn't all that different than on of the level 60 bosses that spawn in the Stage 3 Sleepwalker boxes. But to prevent what would normally happen with the Kunoichi boxes to where a player would interlock the NPC, hit it a few rounds so the NPC could do no damage and just roll out and lightly dink the healer to only get interlocked again a few seconds later (Thus the NPC does little damage and spends the majority of it's time trying, and failing, to roll out). So first off the boss would have a buff on itself like the Blue Shift that would give it as high a bonus as possible to it's Contested Withdraw points. When the NPC gets aggro'd on the healer (Or for those groups that just go in without a healer, whoever's dealing the highest damage), it will most likely roll out very quickly and begin assaulting the person with the greatest aggro. The weak spawns before the boss would drop one type of item that the player would have to turn in for items while the boss would drop something plus multiple of the items the weak spawns drop.

So to keep this NPC from rolling out and spanking their friend, whoever's in interlock would have to use the Taunt ability to keep this NPC hitting them and not their squishy friend.

But that's still not enough, most people could still easily overcome this NPC with no problem! So to further add injury to injury, the Boss sends out an ability like static field that always hits everyone around it within a 40m radius but does insignificant damage of say 5 damage every 3 seconds. But why give it such an ability? Because as an instant ability it can do in or out of interlock, it puts a debuff on it's current target that reduces it's Concentration by a very significant amount for 30 seconds (Say, 200 pts) to make sure that any damage it takes will interrupt any abilities they're using like oh, area heals or hacks. If, coupled with the withdraw bonus and a high damage out-of-interlock-only ability like the Kunoichi Shurikens, this would be absolutley devastating to a group. So if the tank slips up and doesn't keep the NPC on themselves and off their friends then the group is probably going to wipe out.

This type of encounter could be spiced up further with some henchmen-type NPCs (Like the Threadbare Sleepwalkers were to the Blue Sky Security Guards) assisting the boss and even give them abilities that allow them to do things like put an ability similar to Emergency Repairs (But it'd probably have to be turned into a buff so that the underlings would actually use the ability to heal each other and the boss if none of them were at half health or below) on a friendly target. If this ability is put on one of the henchmen it wouldn't be that big a deal because the heal wouldn't be for much, and they're easy to take down. But if it were put on the boss while the team is trying to kill the boss this would obviously make it much harder to kill the boss. So the team has to take down the henchmen all while keeping the boss busy. It's basically a step up from the concepts above.

Long winded post I know and there's a bunch of jargon in there, but thoughts on this?

Although Im not overly sold on the specifics regarding ballance of the encounter I entirely get what your going for. Quite honestly this game would benifit from its content including dynamic AI patterns and a more varied use of abilities.

Thing is though I really dont feel that from a fiscal standpoint tailoring the majority of content to these type of encounters would be a sound move I will say that you are on the right track for what high end encounters against people such as Wright should be based around. If these characters are going to be rarer to interactive with than making the AI based interaction with them even with combat based encounters being scaled to require more skill and team work would be a rewarding move for not only the storyline ballance and immersion but just to include something new.

It is what it is though as someone who has done alot of high end pve fast and frankly in a group of very talented individuals who put me to shame skillwise and reaction wise I can tell you I lack the faith in MxOs AI to really develop anything of the calibur your thinking about. It's either a development issue right now or an AI one but frankly the mobs in this game are just stupid. Almost every single patch thats come out with these type of quests results in some major AI based bug that makes them a virtual joke. I hope Im wrong though.

Villemar_MxO wrote:

RP wise I'd suggest modification of the top boss to the one exile "monster" type that doesn't have a leader that we know of.

The Lupines have Ookami, the Blooddrinkers have Malphas, the Succubi have Persephone, but no one leader for the Nightmares. I've wondered about this. The Nightmares look cool but there is nothing behind them RP wise. Imagine a rogue Lieutenant, defying the Merovingian (so all three orgs would have justification to take him on), holed up in a construct somewhere, the Ultimate Nightmare, the Night Terror.

My 2 cents.

WGAnubis's creation Marrith the Reaper, and by extraction his daughter, Morraeon, my Exilic alt, was pretty close to being a boss Nightmare, except that Nightmares tend to have the IQ of a brick (operating words being "tend to", since there was that Nightmare who spoke in alliteration in one of the Merv 1.3 missions) and Marrith's intellect, by all accounts, was off the grid.

MatrixRefugee wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

RP wise I'd suggest modification of the top boss to the one exile "monster" type that doesn't have a leader that we know of.

The Lupines have Ookami, the Blooddrinkers have Malphas, the Succubi have Persephone, but no one leader for the Nightmares. I've wondered about this. The Nightmares look cool but there is nothing behind them RP wise. Imagine a rogue Lieutenant, defying the Merovingian (so all three orgs would have justification to take him on), holed up in a construct somewhere, the Ultimate Nightmare, the Night Terror.

My 2 cents.

WGAnubis's creation Marrith the Reaper, and by extraction his daughter, Morraeon, my Exilic alt, was pretty close to being a boss Nightmare, except that Nightmares tend to have the IQ of a brick (operating words being "tend to", since there was that Nightmare who spoke in alliteration in one of the Merv 1.3 missions) and Marrith's intellect, by all accounts, was off the grid.

Cool story bro. Except SOE and the MxO team can't make any use of "well I made my character a Nightmare and he was the smart."

GodTier wrote:

MatrixRefugee wrote:

Villemar_MxO wrote:

RP wise I'd suggest modification of the top boss to the one exile "monster" type that doesn't have a leader that we know of.

The Lupines have Ookami, the Blooddrinkers have Malphas, the Succubi have Persephone, but no one leader for the Nightmares. I've wondered about this. The Nightmares look cool but there is nothing behind them RP wise. Imagine a rogue Lieutenant, defying the Merovingian (so all three orgs would have justification to take him on), holed up in a construct somewhere, the Ultimate Nightmare, the Night Terror.

My 2 cents.

WGAnubis's creation Marrith the Reaper, and by extraction his daughter, Morraeon, my Exilic alt, was pretty close to being a boss Nightmare, except that Nightmares tend to have the IQ of a brick (operating words being "tend to", since there was that Nightmare who spoke in alliteration in one of the Merv 1.3 missions) and Marrith's intellect, by all accounts, was off the grid.

Cool story bro. Except SOE and the MxO team can't make any use of "well I made my character a Nightmare and he was the smart."

Heh... just thought of something: maybe the Nightmare who spoke in alliteration *was* the boss Nightmare... O.O

Heres an idea we still have 1 building in datamine to populate according to rarebit at fan faire how about this building has a few basement levels and becomes a dungeon with a boss.  The boss could be along the lines of what eval has explained but in order to get down to the boss area you would require a team which would be more in fashion to the raiding in normal mmo's except not instanced. 

At the moment the highest level dungeon is creston and to be honest with a team of 3 you can clear the dungeon quite quickly and easily. (thats means killing everything not just sneaking past).  I think an extension to the dugeon theme is needed as we have seen alot of new content over the past months that have developed on previous game mechanics what with new constructs, new inner city spawns, and new mission based spawns, but an addition to the dungeon runs is lacking and i beleieve this would be a good addition to the game and also provide the chalange that eval is looking for.

Also i was thinking the other day along teh lines of the topic above but how to instance something similar.  i came up with the following idea.

A dungeon that is accessed by buying a key from the archivist that is then used to run a mission like the org construct keys.  We all know that the constructs are stacked on top of each other and provide everyone with a separate instance of the org construct why cant this method be used to take us to our own instance of a dungeon there by preventing people from ganking or kill stealing. just an idea.

Top notch idea.