UberGuy

Absolutely. Now consider the transition playing someone through those arcs as they level up and then going into DA. Yes, the supporting cast of minions, LTs and bosses often are more challenging, but the "named boss" foes are not. Now, if you played Tina, Unai and Maria solo, you probably got the Praetorian leaders as EBs, and the difference in that and the EBs in DA probably isn't too extreme. The "classic" EBs would have all had PToDs, where the DA ones do not, which isn't an inconsiderable difference, but it's not as big as the difference in an AV and an EB. But if you did those classic arcs with a team, you probably saw all the Praetorian leaders as AVs, and that won't happen in DA, in general.

I get that they explicitly decided to make it that way. They "weighed" the content towards teams of people small enough that they wouldn't have triggered the AV upgrade in the classic Praetorian arcs. I'm looking for something more than that and less than iTrials.

The problem isn't that "it" is too easy. (Where "it" is the EBs we meet as key opponents along the way.) The problem is that "it" cannot be made harder in a way that scales appropriately to teams. Extremely potent soloists are an interesting subset of folks looking for tougher foes, but the more practical complaint is that the EBs are fodder for teams, and there isn't even an option to make them harder than EBs.

So it's fine that the EBs are "easy". The complaint is that "easy" is the only mode the EBs have.

I agree with this in broad terms, because the non-AV/EB critters are, like many recent critters, comparatively rich in "exotic" damage types, debuffs and exotic mezzes.

I am definitely trying to keep the perspective of someone going into all this with no shifts. And some of these critter factions are fabulously dangerous on high level / team size settings, because of stacking debuffs. It's actually from this perspective that I find the EBs so anticlimactic - when you're fighting for your life against the standard spawns (possibly because you have unwisely turned them up), and then the named opponent at the end is an EB no matter what your settings, it can be a bit of a let down.

Ehh. I am playing that Mind/Rad through Tina Macintyre's arcs, and I'm not so sure of that. Maybe it's not so concentrated for all the other content - the rate of EB/mish isn't quite so high (discounting the small army in Cimerora since it blows the curve hugely), but they are there aplenty in my estimation.

That follows, but I think it still must require a very different viewpoint than my own. To me, that DA has foes that are easier at their worst isn't really a clear case of "as good as it gets" because there are so many counter examples. It's "as good as it gets" in a very limited context. That's why I mentioned earlier that if the devs produce more and more content designed in this way, that perception of mine will fade, because DA would cease to be this island of easier foes in a sea of more difficult ones. I would not like that outcome, but it would make more sense to me.

Ah. You had said... I took that to mean you don't bother with it.

That's just really odd. I am playing a Mind/Rad Controller and I am definitely mezzing EBs. In fact, in playing through the 40s arcs that contain lots of AV/EBs who I have set to appear as EBs, I mez them every time their PToDs go down, and my single-target hold is slotted for damage, not duration.

EBs are harder to mez than bosses (or AVs with their PToDs down), but they are definitely mezzable. What can be an issue is if the EBs have any extra mez protection (above what they get for being EBs) or mez resistance, the added base mez can make them much harder than, say, a boss, to successfully stack enough magnitude on them to overcome the protections. An EB version of a Fortunata Mistress is extremely hard to mez, for example. However, a Dominator seems to me like one of the best equipped ATs to pull off mezzing such critters, because of the extra stacking that Domination offers.

Just FYI in case it affects your suggestion, PToDs are actually up 2/3 of the time, not 1/2. They are up 50s out of every 75.

What I was saying was irrational was that solo players might feel they are facing "watered down" content, presumably if they got "downgraded" foes. My pointing out that I think that such a position is irrational was not done in defense of changing anything. It was pointed out to explain why it confuses me to see that observation used as explanation of why the devs created DA the way they have.

It confuses me because I don't understand how that particular concern has been addressed. How is fighting content that's "watered down" by design going to avoid that feeling by players? Do we really think that players don't recognize that the content is easier by design? It seems to me from most approving responses that they do realize it. I think most of them who like it are very much not worried about "watered down" content, whether it's by design or via some switch they could (or didn't) switch.

My point was not "that's irrational so they shouldn't have done that'". My point was I don't understand how that reasoning for doing it follows.

This conclusion confuses me immensely. Perhaps that's because it is an inherently irrational position by those players you refer to, but it confuses me on two counts.

(1) Anyone who plays on difficulty settings of, say, +1/x1 is already playing under those watered down conditions. They happen to be the default. (I think having the manageable settings be default is important - having to turn your difficulty down below the default strikes me as likely more distasteful than just not increasing it.)

(2) Anyone who has played the non-DA game has to know that they are experiencing content that actually is watered down compared to a lot of 40-50 content, even on default difficulty. Many of these DA EBs are comparable to things modern but non-Incarnate content stopped throwing at us around level 30. (Unless you started in Praetorea. Wouldn't it be amusing if DA were easier than 1-20 in Praetorea...) If future content, especially non-Incarnate content continues this trend, then that sense would go away. Based on fairly recent content though, it definitely feels watered down to me.

Ditto.

Please believe that I have absolutely no objection to the option existing for you to experience DA the way you did, even if it were the default option. After all, that's how I view the rest of the game's content and settings working - the default is (by my standards) easy for a level 50, and if I want more, I need to crank it up.

As noted (not least of all by a dev), DA probably is what it is and won't change, but I definitely hope they provide a better difficulty spectrum in future content.

Nope, I'm on a PC.

I had the interface sell or list the wrong item three times, every one after I got a confirmation prompt. I started studiously canceling bids with prompts and I never had it happen again.

If he has them, it is new or they do not function. He has been mezzed the whole fight on any Manticore I have run with characters capable of mezzing him. I find it inconceivable that we have attacked him when they are down every time, and have always killed him before they come back. Seriously, they can't be doing anything.

I am a bit perplexed that you would ignore your Domination. Domination actually helps you mez them exactly because it adds mez stacking. They're harder to mez than a boss, but they are mezzable, and Domination makes that a lot easier. (This is in regards to when the PToDs are down, or for EBs that don't have them.)

However, in terms of AV -> EB scaling, I completely agree. Things we can do to an AV, like put them to sleep or immobilize them, work very differently when they are downgraded to an EB. I don't mind EBs with no PToDs being harder to mez, but downgraded AVs (usually) get both the PToD and higher base mez protection than an AV. That's more than a bit frustrating playing a mez-centric AT.

But where were those attempts when people were complaining about the nature of the iTrials? I'm going to be straight here - you personally were one of the players who repeatedly responded to people complaining about the unusual rules we find in the iTrials (mag 1000 mezzes, pervasive irresistible damage, level 54+foes, NPCs who ignore all mezz, etc.) with the position that the "end game" was like that because it specifically represented a break from the rest of the game. An explanation that now makes no sense for DA.

You could not be more mistaken. The problem is that the approach to designing the "end game" difficulty is now inconsistent. I don't care so much what the exact implementation is, though I will always make suggestions seeking to make it like what I personally want. What I care about most in this discussion that it has something like at least general consistency. I care that when it was iTrials only, everything about the why the iTrials are so gimmicky and mechanically hard was defended on the basis that the "end game" should be expected to be harder than the standard game. I accepted that even when I wasn't crazy about the specifics, and even defended it to other players: it's harder because the Devs decided it should be. But now that explanation has been undercut, because we have another part of the "end game" that is in important ways mechanically easier than standard, non "end-game" content.

It's actually easier to defeat some of these EBs than it is to defeat Trapdoor. That just seems completely bass ackwards to me.

I just don't think such a place should have been created in an Incarnate context. Such a thing has, to our knowledge, never even been created for standard content. I question what it's doing in something like the "end game".

Moot at this point, but there it is.

I already did, in this thread. Johnny Sonata's Soul.

Not previously mentioned, Hopkins at the end of Manicore's TF. (Notably, Hopkins is absolutely pathetic, possibly one of the most anticlimactic AVs anywhere, especially given that the TF he appears in requires 7 characters to start.)

Is there any practicality to applying the scaling attributes used in iTrial AVs to lesser entities in standard content? A lot of ideas here are around making tougher EBs, but one of the problems with many implementations is that the toughness is static - a solo player gets the same EB that a team of 8 does. It would be nice if at least truly significant entities in story arcs and TFs could scale a bit more with team size, so that even "just" and EB ended up with a touch more staying power against a full team. I know that the iTrial AVs do this already, and am wondering if it has value in standard content.

Edit: If this actually obeyed the "I'm equivalent to X heroes/villains", that could make for some extremely harrowing fights for "uber" characters, even just with EBs, and maybe even some bosses.

Well, not only that, but we actually did have trials already, and they aren't really like the iTrials in difficulty except in having overall time limits. Even granting that some have special team-focused division-of-labor tasks, like the Sewer Trial, they still aren't equipped with things like foes hardcoded to be level 54 (before level shifts).

I mean, for goodness' sake, the hero respecs are trials.

Not only that, but people like playing them!

Trust me, a live human steward can do things with a game like that that computer games can't even touch. The players can take the plot completely off the rails, and a good GM can adapt on the fly.

On the BBC website today there was an article about the Warhammer 40k table-top strategy game. Not really an RPG (though there is a WH40K PnP RPG), but it has the same "in person" thing going on where people play around a table together. Their profits are actually 40% over the last 6 months.