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.