[Level9Drow]

I watched some videos recently of antagonists in Council Apocalypse missions and I have to say that White Noise and Mind over Matter are virtually impossible for Raiders to succeed on at worst and at best the most horrible experience for them I've ever seen (and have been in myself). In some of the videos I watched I saw that the raiders just gave up, either surrendering or suicide after they realized what an unfair, long, drawn out and unrewarding situation they were in.

Two maps in particular are the worst to have an antagonists, White Noise and Mind over Matter. There is so many dangerous enemies, so much random damage floating through the air and on the ground that the raiders already have a monumental task dealing with the mission by itself, but to add an antagonists who can ignore all the chaos and walk freely through the sea of damage while the raiders have to walk on eggshells lest they die, is a huge disadvantage for them. Even The Mouse and Snake is bordering this line of frustration, but I will say Upside Down isn't as bad, but just long.

This is such a liability now that I don't even queue for these missions anymore. Luckily as a Tier 1 I can afford to be picky as they, as well as any other mission, have nothing of unique value I ever need. The antagonists can choose what missions they can queue for now, so in order to maximize time and value you have to ignore certain missions that will favor them, White Noise and Mind over Matter are chief among them to say the least. EDIT: I wouldn't even queue for White Noise or Mind over Matter normally, if there wasn't any antag. They're no fun at all and just annoying. The miners are the real cancer behind the PvE aspect, but that's another topic.

As a solution I was thinking that Raiders can get more lives then usual on these missions and/OR the enemies and random damage debris flying around be toned down to lower values. The numbers of enemies on Mind over Matter that need to be killed for the boss's counter would be lowered and maybe the heat growth on White Noise will be slightly quicker for less.

Now it can be argued that there are maps that favor the Raiders and maps that favor the Antagonists, that's always been true, but it was never this extreme. In this situation here what will happen over time is Raiders will just slowly wisen up and never queue for the Council Apocalypse maps. The only players who will be left that will foolishly queue for these maps will be new players. So you will have a situation where naive new players with no experience will be queuing for missions where experience Antagonists know is to their advantage, and...you know what will ensue from there.

If MSE doesn't want to adjust these maps for antag, that's fine, but I don't understand why you would bother to make a whole Campaign that Raiders never play because of antagonists.



OR!....you could just leave everything as it is now and make PvP optional.

[ArnoldCat]

OR!....you could just leave everything as it is now and make PvP optional.

I don't think they will do that.

I remember on the page "Patch Notes 10" they added a paragraph, i don't remember exactly the words but was something like: "antagonist is a key feature", "Without antagonist the game will lose its uniquenes", "We dont gonna take off the invasions"

Dont bother searching for it, the paragraph was deleted. Was betwen the Mikah image and the  "What's new:"

In that moment i feel so dissapointed that i forgot to take a screenshot, now i am trying on pages that show you how were the pages on the past so i can take a screenshot of the paragraph, but no succeed...

The question is: Why they delete that paragraph?

Maybe they are thinking on making the antagonist optional and are arguing internally.

Something like:

--"We need to make the antagonist optional, the people who like being invaded are so little that our game is dying"

--"No! the invasions will remain, the game needs to be unique, no matter if the game never succeeds, we will die in our uniqueness!"

Off topic: Its "uniqueness" a word or google translate is trolling me?

[Hiero_Glyph]

OR!....you could just leave everything as it is now and make PvP optional.

I don't think they will do that.

I remember on the page "Patch Notes 10" they added a paragraph, i don't remember exactly the words but was something like: "antagonist is a key feature", "Without antagonist the game will lose its uniquenes", "We dont gonna take off the invasions"

Dont bother searching for it, the paragraph was deleted. Was betwen the Mikah image and the  "What's new:"

In that moment i feel so dissapointed that i forgot to take a screenshot, now i am trying on pages that show you how were the pages on the past so i can take a screenshot of the paragraph, but no succeed...

The question is: Why they delete that paragraph?

Maybe they are thinking on making the antagonist optional and are arguing internally.

Something like:

--"We need to make the antagonist optional, the people who like being invaded are so little that our game is dying"

--"No! the invasions will remain, the game needs to be unique, no matter if the game never succeeds, we will die in our uniqueness!"

Off topic: Its "uniqueness" a word or google translate is trolling me?

All they need to do is look at how many mentor matches with an antagonist finish with the new player having the game still installed. Statistically it's not a difficult decision, but when you add in human ego things get more complicated.

As I noted, I enjoy playing against an antagonist but not when I have to use a new character to farm blueprints. That's problematic enough when my MMR is account wide.

[pululon]

They can make work better the antagonist mode, you need to give incentives to the players. Better rewards, and when I say better, I say more rewards losing against the antagonist than winning in PVE. A ranking, unique BP in those matches (for raiders and antagonists).
But make it optional, some players will play PVE and when they feel more confident, or be tempted by the rewards, will jump to PVP and play both, or migrate entirely.
But you are giving the chance, and that is always good.
Right now play against an antagonist gives you worst rewards than playing PVE, even winning, since the match can take long, you can die more, and that affects the final score.
The antag mode IS fun, but I think that isn't well implemented.

[Tekato]

There's so many problems with the antagonist systems tbh like matchmaking with a lv 400 antag while yout entire time is below lv 50. It also doesn't help when your mmr is high and the enemies become extremely difficult, more so than the actual antagonist to the point where they can just sit back laughing at you or just sneak up behind u. Even an easy mission can become an issue when the mmr is high.

[Onionsunleashes]

Maybe for those specific missions the devs can play test with the idea that enemies can hurt the antagonist as well to see if that can balance it out