[Velgeder]

I just had the worst mentor match on In Shock. Im level 115 and played as Mikah. Lvl 1 Lycus and Alicia were my partners along with a lvl 9 Harec.  There had to be roughly 25 or more enemies including the snipers. 

Now I'm not the greatest player but I am competent. I could barely move before being killed or close to. It didn't help that the Beholder barely gave any time out in the open. It felt like maybe 2 or 3 seconds before it unleashed its unforgiving skin peel. 

Within the first 5 minutes we collectively burned through 10 lives. Spent most of the game pinned down or watching my teamates be gunned down with one or two shots.

I actually became frustrated, long story short.  We failed the mission. So i tried the level once more. This time with a lvl 1 lycus, a level 59 constatine, and a lvl 28 hive.

The snipers were not as pronounced and i exaggerated when i said 25 enemies, more like 12 to 13. The beholder granted 3 to 4 seconds time before incineration, i counted despite evading the beloved sniper range. 

I also noticed Kuzmann fought more aggressively, you'd think Shae was his woman. But i did notice you had to hold down the levers this time instead of a quick flip to save our beloved Shelia. Kuzmanno didn't allow for either myself or teammates to pull the lever before ko with his force lightening.
 Is it suppose to be this difficult?

Lastly, on both play throughs i observed glitchedv soldiers in the background of the mountains to the right of the start point. I'm not sure it affected gameplay though.

[B30]

Why these changes in „In Shock“ - this is terrible, with all the mentor matches and quitters these days! Are you trying to force people to play the new missions more, by ruining the beloved old ones!? I would rather ask myself, why do players tend to avoid the new missions (maybe because they are a bit of a long drawn-out chaotic mess, in particular mind over matter), but instead of fixing these missions, you prefer to ruin the missions that are fun to play.   

[Level9Drow]

You should put this in bug report section of forums as well. I'm just going to wait until they fix the level and avoid it for now.

EDIT: I said "but" report. I meant bug, sorry.

[LordDraco3]

The patch notes in the forums have been updated to mention the levers. That was an intentional change.  I agree that it's an unrealistic spike in difficulty considering the walking 1-shot electric chair camps them.

The switches were already nearly suicidal to pull as they were with an uncoordinated team, but fairly simple to solo. The question now is, will it even be possible to pull them on a hard solo mode?

[Level9Drow]

Why on Earth would they do this for the switch if Kuzman kills you if you are there too long?

[Hiero_Glyph]

Why on Earth would they do this for the switch if Kuzman kills you if you are there too long?

The popular response among online communities when something like this happens is because the devs don't play their own game.

What's sad is that in my 30+ years of gaming experience this answer is usually not too far from the truth.

[B30]

Are you serious, MSE!? I tried the mission three times today. Two low level mentor matches (each with a quitter) and one high level player game, it made no difference. Of course, the increased level of difficulty and the new lever mechanism has ensured that we lose.
MSE, you should really consider playtesting your game before releasing a patch, you can't be serious about that!?
Play your game and you will realize that THIS IS NOT FUN!

Why are you constantly trying to scare away your players, I don't get it. But maybe I missed something, enlighten me.

[LordDraco3]

I'm going to assume this is because it caught on that In Shock was the fastest mission in the game, well below the 9 minutes or so that the game rewards as maximum completion time. So they made it harder.... which, sure, is fine. But this single mechanical change makes a MASSIVE difference on if the mission is even do-able, based on the camping behavior of Kuzmann, and how lethal it is to even flip them instantly, much less standing around while he walks over to nuke you., or shoots everyone with arc lightning. 

[Deathprize]

Surely at higher difficulty this will actually be impossible. The amount of damage kuzmann does when the difficulty is above 55% kills you in less time than the switch takes to pull. This is only amplified if any other 5th Counsil are left as they can down / kill you in less than 3-4 seconds. Plus the timer get shorter the higher the difficulty.

Why was this change needed? Ok some players can grind it really quickly, but is that actually an issue that requires the game to be changed so everyone suffers?

Every update a few things get better and some get worse. The things that get worse didn't need changing to begin with. Meanwhile things like instant stunlocked tolchok and instant killing the protector still remain despite everyone complaining.

I understand you can't make every change people ask for, but things like the tolchok issue take one encounter against someone to realise how broke it is. I don't understand the reluctance to change stuff like this, it really doesn't make any sense.

Sorry rant over.

[LordDraco3]

^Good post is good.

Back when I was still fairly new, it definitely felt like any update that made something harder, was an update based on data received from the elite best-of-best players. They made hard missions even harder because some squads that only play 4-man every single day were able to beat 100% difficulty.

This is not a good method of figuring out what needs to be changed.

I would bet money that no one has reached 100% since Hades. Nemo on these forums is the highest MMR player I have yet to see, but that's 1 person and even he never claimed to hit 100%

Anyways I will attempt this on solo insane when i get home. Very Hard used to be pretty simple for In Shock, as soloing the levers was easy to lead Kuzmann around where you didn't get killed. But we'll see if it's even possible with the new levers.

[Deathprize]

Yeah it's the whole statistics can be read in a multitude of ways. Like in the UK crime is technically down overall, however you are now more likely to be a victim of violent crime if it does happen. So are you safer or not in that scenario?

You need the statistics and to look at things first hand to get a better picture of what things are truly like.

Just remember people stay away from water, everyone that has ever touched the stuff has died, statistically speaking 😉

[Velgeder]

So i played the level a third time as a mentor once again. This time we had an antagonist Harec. The level was practically unplayable.  We couldnt even move beyond the starting point.  I love a good antag, as I've learned much from them but the beatdown was brutal. One of the only times in ever proposed a surrender.

I generally never had a problem with the levels people usually complain about, in fact i like levels that keep you on your toes.

This level definitely needs a reajustment. I'm sure it can be beaten, but I'm no masochist huhuhu.

[Nemo]

^Good post is good.

Back when I was still fairly new, it definitely felt like any update that made something harder, was an update based on data received from the elite best-of-best players. They made hard missions even harder because some squads that only play 4-man every single day were able to beat 100% difficulty.

This is not a good method of figuring out what needs to be changed.

I would bet money that no one has reached 100% since Hades. Nemo on these forums is the highest MMR player I have yet to see, but that's 1 person and even he never claimed to hit 100%

Anyways I will attempt this on solo insane when i get home. Very Hard used to be pretty simple for In Shock, as soloing the levers was easy to lead Kuzmann around where you didn't get killed. But we'll see if it's even possible with the new levers.

We got to around 80-85% difficulty during the early days of Hades Betrayal. But once we started noticing how overpowered the AI were when low MMR Antagonists invaded, most of my friends dropped their MMR down. Granted, the rewards you got for beating high difficulty have never really been worth it, so they probably would have lowered it anyway.

I remember during Wardog Fury, we got to 90-100% difficulty farming Short Fused over and over again for Rock and Roll. Then the developers increased the difficulty threshold, so that the new 50% difficulty was about the same as 75% difficulty previously. Even so, we got back to a little over 90% during the end of Wardog Fury.

We've beaten maps around the 65-70% difficulty range in the Spacelords update, but most of my friends seem to not play as much, and the difficulty still seems higher than usual when in a Squad, so I'm mostly just on my own at the moment.

As to the topic, I don't really like the timer they've added to the lever pulling. Usually, at higher difficulty, you get about 25 seconds or so to pull the levers, so having to waste about 2 seconds to pull each one adds a bit more to the time pressure, and could be almost impossible if there are riflemen standing around. Some good crowd clearing character, like a Loaht or Whip Valeria, would be handy to get rid of any extra enemies during such segments. A Barrier Mikah or a Konstantin could probably draw Kuzmann's attention whilst others go for the levers.

I've beaten In Shock on Insane, and it's still possible to pull all the levers by yourself. Usually, I just start with the central one, then the left, and the right one for last. You have about 70 seconds to do it, although a Hades or 5th Council character would be good in case he starts zapping you.

Of course, if you have a high DPS character you could just kill him well before the timer is an issue.

[LordDraco3]

I just posted a thread using multiple characters in Insane. The timer is not 70 seconds, it's about 30. I didn't think about Barrier because I haven't built it, but I beat it with Mikah anyways thanks to her Decoy, so it would have been redundant to win again using the same character with a different weapon. The levers indeed used to be really easy to pull all alone, but I am not seeing it possible with a majority of the cast now that they take time to pull, giving Kuzmann enough time to catch up to you.

[Nemo]

That's strange, I just ran through In Shock on Insane now, and the timer was still 70 seconds. Even your own videos showed a 70 second timer.

Anyway, it's pretty easy to solo that mission with Lycus.