What's Being Kept from Ambush/Invasion? (Updated July 4)

I am glad invasion bosses dont make it into the regular game. They break the lore and flow of the game.

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GreenGuy wrote:

I agree with this completely. The economy in ambush is horrible, there is less botting than there was in other leagues but people get too many and too good of drops from boxes with too little currency investment. It's bad for the economy.

Can you explain how this is bad? And what do you mean with orb investment? Are you talking about trading or crafting?

I really don't want to see guest monsters become part of the core game. In fact, this was my least favorite part of Invasion. I have died numerous times in Invasion and the grind back up is just tedious because of the guest monster types.

Every guest monster in the grind zones (Ledge, Felshrine, etc.) is a chore to fight. Colossal skeletons, Avian wretches, the dogs that cause bleeding are all in every Ledge instance. The amount of colossal skeletons is ridiculous. It slows down progression big time.

I hope if it is added to the game permanently the mob types will actually vary. It seems like you've just taken the approach of adding the most annoying monsters to areas where players usually actually like playing.

Legacy items suck.

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Mahesys wrote:

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Madcow1120 wrote:

Your experience is not my experience. They should leave the cartographer's boxes untouched.

Your experience is not mine either. Getting tons of +5 levels maps with little currency (and risk) investment is just totally silly and break the main map purpose: being a currency sink.

Everyone here have different experiences. For example in my experience invasion bosses are cool and adds challenge to the game, they should be kept in core game untouched. Yet they'll fuck them since 90% of players would not be able to deal with them and will start crying over and over on forums

Ye, life is sooo unfair

They're removing them because they realize it's not good for the pacing of the game. Having Invader uniques show up at random is effectively like having a monster of +5-10 level in your zone, which means you're either overpowered enough to deal with it and trivialize the rest of the content, or you are on par with the zone and skip the Invader. One challenge per instance isn't good.

What people don't understand is that Invasion is not bad because it is difficult, it's bad because of the way it upsets the difficulty curve. The game already lets you progress into content that's too hard for you, or fall back to easier content. It's an ARPG, that's just how it works. A zone should not be too hard for you because of a single monster in it, that's just an artificial speedbump.

And then there's the ongoing conundrum of how to fit in all the league mods. If they simply cake on both ladder leagues every four months, the game will be a mess in a few years. New players already have a lot more mechanics to get caught up on than I did when I started in closed beta. If every HC league has the mods of all HC leagues before it, you'd wind up with an unplayable turd by the time they're rolling out Act 5. GGG knows this. Some league mods will just be temporary.

Id like to leave my thoughts on invasion league(pulled from a reddit post) here in hopes that the voice of those who are having a great time in the league are heard. If I can convey the feeling the league brings, perhaps we can find a way to include it in future game play.

"For the record, I am enjoying this league and so are the people I play with. The challenge level went way beyond what we expected and how much we had to adapt really impressed us.

We have had to pull out all the stops to live and it feels great. No longer is the biggest threat to my life some lowly reflect damage mob receiving the glory of my presence. I enjoy the possibility of not being the biggest and baddest thing on the map. I have won fights in the double digits of my health bar and ran away with the same."

I believe this league is not about the throngs of map mobs and how to farm them most efficiently, this league is a hunt. A hunt is not one sided, it is a challenge between [peers]."

I would like to see all but maybe two of these bosses back in the game in the future. They brought new fights to the game with fresh fight mechanics

While I understand that most of the player base does not like invasion, I'm fairly certain it's not because they hate the immense boss variety and new content. Id wager heavily that it's because the chance of getting one shot by an off-screen mob is very high unless all you do is stack defense.

Invader mobs being buffed by map mods designed to make the peons interesting and a few select mob modifiers (looking at you farshot) are creating this fear. Tuning boss monsters to be a challenge and then adding a multiplier on top of that is walking a very fine line. Hardcore challenge league players like to be challenged but as you increase that challenge, multipliers bring you closer and closer to unachievable. Impossible is no fun and instagib is analogous to impossible to play. I think there are several interesting ways to solve this issue all revolving around making "boss" type monsters challenging without creating the "Why bother" feeling.

The most important is to have boss encounters telegraph themselves before the onset of death threat level damage. Most of the outrage threads came from things like Chaska raining on you before you even knew she was there, somebody dropping a totem at your feet because their totem range rivals most ICBM's, or a farshot mob dunking you from off screen because he saw you and didn't have the courtesy to say "Hey bro, I'm a boss mob. You should play according to my mechanics or I will kill you". Some of the best examples of fight telegraphing are audio cues and non damaging engagements. Hexfonts are a great example of a non damaging engagement. They support the upcoming fight, let the player know something is up, and have counter play after the fact. Meanwhile Atziri's soundbites played on phase change is a great example of audio ques letting players know that death is coming if they don't adapt. But telegraphing needn't even be this elegant, why not just have Invasion bosses do less damage off the bat and then scale into their full "lord of spikey damage and death" over some short time? In these ways players are again responsible for their own safety and the league is worth playing.

The other facet I see to mitigating the "Why bother" factor is further normalizing challenge within a given content level. White mobs are usually boring and stupid compared to their less common siblings and map mods like turbo and 75-100% added x damage can spice up the white fight by doubling the threat. The issue is that their more unique siblings are already challenging and doubling the threat on these turns most players off of the idea of running these mods at all. 98% extra cold modified skeleton mobs is cool and interesting. Nobody wants 98% extra cold damage on Chaska but plenty of people want to fight her normally because she is within their "fun challenge" level. By scaling the modifiers inversely to the rarity of the monster you can bring spice back into what is now considered "farming" and at the same time still modify boss fights tuned to be more dangerous inherently(invasion boss tuning, not story bosses).

If anyone is still reading by this point I would like to thank you for your time. I intentionally did not discuss boss rewards because I do not want to believe we all play purely for the skinner box effect. I hope I made a few people think about fun, challenge, and what it would take for them to enjoy seeing the return of these awesome invasion bosses.

Except Thornrunner, that is a troll mechanic combo.

All I can say is, please don't diminish the role of strongboxes. You hit a home-run there.

Solo players, and especially new players benefit HUGELY from these. The Economy will adjust to whatever you throw at it. But, these two subsets of players need to be able to quickly get into the game, and strongboxes do exactly that.

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GreenGuy wrote:

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Jihoko wrote:

There's no way that the current state of Cartographer's boxes are healthy long term. I play on Invasion, we don't have any Cartographer's boxes, and I can sustain 77-78 maps just fine. The issues with sustaining high-end maps are blown completely out of proportion. Sure, everyone will have streaks of bad luck but unless you're doing blue 77-78 maps or not chaosing good rolls, you'll have no problem sustaining high maps.

I mean, do you have any idea how much they've buffed the drop rates for maps since release? IMO, even without cartographer's boxes, it's a little *too* easy to sustain 77-78 maps. Maps are meant to be a currency sink. When maps are too plentiful, you get inflation which is bad for the game. In any case, there is *never* any need to farm lower maps if you don't wish to. People sell maps, and a big part of ARPG's is trading.

If you get a bad streak of RNG, instead of wasting your time doing lower maps, drop a few ex on some 77's and go to town. You cannot hit a brick wall mapping unless you build it yourself.

I agree with this completely. The economy in ambush is horrible, there is less botting than there was in other leagues but people get too many and too good of drops from boxes with too little currency investment. It's bad for the economy.

Unacceptable. We must ensure that botters have the proper incentives to bot. A tear is rolling down my cheek for the botters adversely affected by cartoboxes.

The economy in Ambush is in no way horrible. In Anarchy, EX:Chaos spiked to 1:60 whereas Ambush is at approximately 1:40 or so. Higher level maps are cheaper. The average player can access higher maps without having to trade with players running hyper speedfarming builds. How awful and gamebreaking.

Balancing the game around the top .1% of players is a recipe for failure.

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Chris wrote:

The concept of invading Unique monsters will not be integrated into the core game for now.

:(

Please reconsider this, Invaders are so much fun and straighten out the difficulty curve so good, i was really looking forward to seeing them in softcore leagues as well...