PSA : Gather forces still makes Faceoff much harder than intended

[darklink3]

It's been almost 2 years since Erebos release now, so I figured I may repost this to the forum to make sure devs ( @alewx @Faye ) still know about it.

Completing the mission "Gather forces" on Erebos makes the final mission "Faceoff" almost impossible.
The issue is simple, the additional helper mobs spawned by gather forces are supposed to come help in the queen arena instead wander around ailmessly and die. Since the mission fails when they die, and they die in just a few minutes without outside cover, this makes Faceoff much harder with "help" than without it.
Sure, It's technically possible to slowly lure them towards he middle of the map by letting them take aggro on mobs in the right direction and killing them off, but it's an extremely tedious process and is obviously not intended that way.

This wasn't so much of an issue when Erebos first came out (actually it was more of a relief, Gather forces is a difficult SM), but now that the few people there have completed all missions for their achievements/for fun, it has become increasingly hard to find Faceoff groups.

If fixing the pathfinding issues (I assume they are supposed to go to the queen arena upon spawning) is off the charts, please at least make the guys unkillable, or remove the fail check (why does completing an optional "help" mission add a fail check to the final encounter anyways?)...

Thanks you

 

[alewx]

these units that are spawning as assistance are meant as a distraction , and after they cleared out their enemies shall fly to the center with the queen. The mission is made as a squad mission not as a solo mission, hinting that one of the players should help these assistance units and once all their enemies are done, they are no longer mission critical.

 

[KingSub]

It's been almost 2 years since Erebos release now, so I figured I may repost this to the forum to make sure devs ( @alewx @Faye ) still know about it.

Completing the mission "Gather forces" on Erebos makes the final mission "Faceoff" almost impossible.
The issue is simple, the additional helper mobs spawned by gather forces are supposed to come help in the queen arena instead wander around ailmessly and die. Since the mission fails when they die, and they die in just a few minutes without outside cover, this makes Faceoff much harder with "help" than without it.
Sure, It's technically possible to slowly lure them towards he middle of the map by letting them take aggro on mobs in the right direction and killing them off, but it's an extremely tedious process and is obviously not intended that way.

This wasn't so much of an issue when Erebos first came out (actually it was more of a relief, Gather forces is a difficult SM), but now that the few people there have completed all missions for their achievements/for fun, it has become increasingly hard to find Faceoff groups.

If fixing the pathfinding issues (I assume they are supposed to go to the queen arena upon spawning) is off the charts, please at least make the guys unkillable, or remove the fail check (why does completing an optional "help" mission add a fail check to the final encounter anyways?)...

Thanks you

Just like @alewx says. The story enemies must be eliminated, then the Ancient units can die without the mission failing over and over again. External help on erebos story is quite exhausting, everything is shot at, then the death squadron is lured or the sentry is attacked (maybe an x ship drops). I'm pretty happy that we managed the story of erebos with 4 players without any external help.

@alewx But another thing, what if e.g. 3 players have completed all story on erebos and 2 players only need the story "gather forces".

Same for what if 3 players needs "gathers forces" but have all other story and 2 players did completed all stories. Which event of the mission is taken over in the last big fight?

Would be interesting to know if this "what if" thing was considered when developing such story missions.

 

[alewx]

It checks the whole squad, so if someone has not completed a mission, that counts.

 

[darklink3]

Well thanks for the reply! Somehow we glanced over the few mobs that needed to be killed every time we did this mission, and the help ended up never moving.
It's imo still an annoyance to deal with them, but at least we can work around completing gather forces now that we know this.

 

[Malevos]

Definitely makes the mission more long winded to complete even with a good squad, it's gonna take forvever and so much stamina to do that mission 250 times for the achievement. It's hard enough as it is getting people for missions let alone outside cover to make it comfortable.

 

[Vesperion]

Definitely makes the mission more long winded to complete even with a good squad, it's gonna take forvever and so much stamina to do that mission 250 times for the achievement. It's hard enough as it is getting people for missions let alone outside cover to make it comfortable.

Well the tedious "Do a certain story mission X times for an achieve" is not the 1st. Iirc it started with the last mission from Sol where it was at least "decent" with only 10x(?) but then Split got crazy and already with drac umped it up to 50 queen kills or was it already 100? But i kinda ignored those achieves the moment i have seen the number of times to complete them just for the achieve without having the combo to help any players who might actually need to finish these missions in particular

 

[Malevos]

Well the tedious "Do a certain story mission X times for an achieve" is not the 1st. Iirc it started with the last mission from Sol where it was at least "decent" with only 10x(?) but then Split got crazy and already with drac umped it up to 50 queen kills or was it already 100? But i kinda ignored those achieves the moment i have seen the number of times to complete them just for the achieve without having the combo to help any players who might actually need to finish these missions in particular

It's even worse than that, the earth one is 50 times, the drac one is 150 times and now we have this new one for oort that just takes the insanity to a whole new level.

 

[Vesperion]

It's even worse than that, the earth one is 50 times, the drac one is 150 times and now we have this new one for oort that just takes the insanity to a whole new level.

Well like said it would not be as painfull if it would give an influx of new players who need to mission to progress but another reason is also we don´t get any payment for helping or redoing completed story mission and i suggested to this point several times to reward maybe at least 50% of the story while simple missions like fly from system a to system b reward of course 0% and some of the simpler stories only give 25% or so.

Sure we can collect cryo from units but sometimes a mission does no offer the luxury to collect stuff due of being timed or you have stay within a certain area and/or even stay alive to prevent the failing condition that was brought to a new extreme with TCs mission and mainly started at EiU where nearly every mission has the "you pod = fail" condtion.