Poll: LEAST favorite mission type

[khadgar]

I'd say supply depot, but I like the concept too much! the execution is lacking. My least favorite is lava escape, because it's way too hard on the higher platforming difficulties, (i play on the highest).

Just a note, I think I'd need lightning rocket + greater teleport to even stand a chance, with the speed that lava rises at! Seriously, you have about 2 seconds from mission start to get moving before you are overtaken by lava, and you have to move at a rate faster than constant jumping to survive. lolwat

I play on the highest difficulty as well, my trick is to not bother with the heatsuit, just use teleport and jump enchants and run like hell, if you think you are going to lose quickly equip the heatsuit.

That's a good tip! The part about "if you think you're going to lose", I meant. I equip the heatsuit from second #1 because I think I am going to lose the moment I enter a lava escape mission. :3

[Ontogenesis]

The meteor one feels a bit weird too. Just random meteors landing on some stacked up boxes in the middle of no-where. There's never any meteors anywhere else either... Also, I have these problems with it:

> Too slow!
> Even if you do nothing, a lot of the boxes survive anyway
> The perfectionist in me demands I should be able to effectively defend the whole depot, but this isn't possible as the map is too big

To improve it, I'd would recommend:

> A focus on the monsters instead of the meteors
> Shrink the map right down, so fighting is more focused
> Reduce number of meteors

Or even a complete overhaul?:

> You have robots that shoot down meteors, you have to defend the robots and boxes from monsters. If they get destroyed, you have to deflect meteors yourself (probably need them sped up)

[khadgar]

> You have robots that shoot down meteors, you have to defend the robots and boxes from monsters. If they get destroyed, you have to deflect meteors yourself (probably need them sped up)

That sounds really cool, actually! I think it would be a better homage to missile command than the current YOU ARE THE MISSILE mode.

[CodexArcanum]

I have to agree that while some missions can be things I don't feel like doing at the time, I pretty much avoid Meteor Storm missions if I can, they just take too long.  So often I feel like I'm just standing on top of one stack of boxes, waiting for the rest of the damn rocks to fall.

Rather than focus on monsters or defending robot blasters, I think I'd almost rather see this whole mode re-imagined as a more pressure-based scenario.  I'm picturing instead of 100 small meteors, you just have to fend off like 1 to 5 huge ones.   In this scenario, you have to keep shooting the rock to whittle down it's monstrous HP, and to push it back up.  If you don't push it back, it crushes you and all your supplies.  Meanwhile, monsters keep coming in.   So now, it's a blend and the player has to make strategic choices.  Do I fight off monsters, or do I shoot the rock a few dozen times to push it back up and buy myself a little more time? 

The current form almost has this mode going on, but the rocks move so fast and hurt so much that they're always the top priority.  And there's just so damn many of them and it takes so long to finish.

[nanostrike]

Defend the Depot is crap.  It takes forever and it's a rookie's trap.

If you don't know that the meteors have ungodly-high HP and require knockback spells, you're gonna stand on top of a box, planning on blowing the meteor up...and get killed in 1 hit by it when your spell does almost nothing and it smashes you.



Anachronism missions are a close second.  At least telling you what type of creatures to ignore would be a good start on improving them.  But they're a mess.  God help you if you're in an Ice Age one where you have to keep those bouncing ice critters alive.  One missed spell and you can kill one and insta-fail.

[Reactorcore]

Fix anachronism or whatever.

It's bad enough to have to go from room to room killing random monsters as a mission type, it's even worse when you're not allowed to kill certain types.

This.
I did my first mission of this type and it was complete bullshit. It made me ragequit and almost shift-delete the AVWW installation.
I was forced into a corner by enemies that I cannot kill and they didn't let me pass through no matter what.

[CodexArcanum]

I'm amazed at the hate for Anachronism missions.  I really enjoy them!  As x4000 points out, they aren't memorization missions, they just require some deduction.  And a bit of skillful play.  There's usually only a few out of place enemies, so you have to figure out which ones are out of place compared to the majority.  You have avoid enemies and not get cornered.  And you have to switch up your arsenal.  Since the change that makes you just take reflected damage (instead of instant loss, a huge improvement!), I make sure to have a "killing spell" and a "testing spell" that does less damage.   Stealth enchantments help out a lot as well.

[Terraziel]

I make sure to have a "killing spell" and a "testing spell" that does less damage.   Stealth enchantments help out a lot as well.

I don't play them, but my initial reaction was that Fire Flare would make a good "testing spell" as it does entirely minimal damage, and having had a quick test it reflects about 0.8 damage.

[PatDay]

I voted for the Fix the Anachronism missions for two reasons. First of all, it's seems to be the only one that is legit hard for me (I've died once and had to make a hasty retreat at least once) because there's almost no healing during them and you get nailed for a ton of damage if you hit the wrong thing. Second, I have a really tough time figuring out what the anachronism is in the first place. None of the mobs seem to have much of a reason to me anyway, so trying to figure out the least logically ones can be tricky.

That said, I'm going to be kinda negative here and say the only missions I actually like are boss towers and the battlegrounds. All the other missions can be extremely tedious in my opinion (stealth assassination, I'm looking at you!), but at least they aren't extremely hard.

Let's assume that Arcen is working on the missions to make them all fun, but even then, I'm sure people will have their own preferences. Being able to reset missions would be great option in my opinion.

[dis astranagant]

I voted meteor swarm but JtP also makes me want to rip someone's head off and shit down their neck.  Half the time I'm dead before the game even gives me control combined with problems I've had with enemies clipping through walls or bats generally being a pain to see if it happens to be night.

[Misery]

I hate the anachronism missions. I always end up searching for the last one or two for what seems like forever, contorting myself to avoid all the attacks from the "legitimate" inhabitants. I tend to avoid these completely, so after a little while they're all that's left on my map . I kind of wish there was a "force refresh/recycle missions" guardian power.

I actually like the anacronism ones myself.

They're a bit different from the norm in that brute force wont help you, and they end up being about movement and dodging lots of projectiles as you search for the right monsters, which is interesting.    I find it's pretty easy to keep track of which monsters should and shouldnt be there, once you've been in a particular type of time-shard enough, you should have a good idea about it.


Also, I like the idea about the "force refresh missions" guardian power.   THAT sounds like it could be useful and very worth the resources it would use.   Not just for avoiding missions you dont want to do, but even just to get new ones that might have a certain reward you're looking for;  right now in my game I need buoys, badly, and the game just IS NOT GIVING THEM TO ME.   Such a power to force a refresh, and perhaps produce a mission that awards me some, would be a GREAT help.

What do some of the rest of you think of that idea?

[Oralordos]

Ugh I dislike the meteor shower ones myself. They just seem so long and those meteors do so much damage. I also occasionally get an enemy that doesn't collide properly with the crates and just stands there in the middle of the crates where I can't get to him.

Reading through this thread, a couple people want a force reset of missions. I thought that the mission timers followed game-time? That would mean that casting nightfall and sunrise a couple times would reset all of the missions.