Eternal Limbo.

[Argotto]

That's false. I cleared easy~insane, broke into NM, and cleared every campaign map up until CD without ever buying a single item from a shop, as did my friends (not always playing together). Yes, I did some survival runs, but I didn't spam them for days/weeks on end, and I don't feel that what I did was "unreasonable."

You don't have to have supremes and ultimates (the loot most affected by GoNegative, and requiring the most grinding) to win, except possibly NMHC CD.

Copters do need a bit more tweaking, I'll agree there. I think the amount of damage needed to drop the ogres needs to be dropped (if you can drop the ogres, they lose most of their HP and are no prob to deal with) and/or the copter's hp be reduced, and reduce their attack range a bit so they have to get closer (meaning less flying too high to reach). Addressing that would make it so copters are only truly dangerous if totally overlooked and ignored.

Considering what you said is the exact opposite of what my cousins, brother and I had to go through (and we did TRY), I have a hard time believe it didn't take an unreasonably long amount of time, or done after copters were implemented.

We don't want to be decked in sups/ults.. I don't understand why you and the devs keep bringing that up as a frickin argument; we just want to be able to progress at a steady rate. Steady doesn't have to mean being able to clear CD on NMHC within a month either. Honestly, we couldn't give a flying crap about CD NM, because we probably don't have what it takes to learn it anyway.

Your argument would have more grounds here if campaign loot was actually worth anything at all. Even king's game campaign on NMHC doesn't drop very good things, and that still has better drops than sky city/aquanos (in terms of campaign drops, not survival). I run that constantly and very rarely see something worth picking up even to sell.

[Demonseye]

Considering that on Sky City/Aquanos, the copter dropzone is very, very far from the defenses, on aqua it's near the mid-up crystal, and on Sky City it's almost everywhere, on the pathway from mid to south where there is a chest, on the pathway with a fan on southwest, on the enemy spawn midwest before the 4 fans for North... and also just a little above the middle crystal , behind the walls.

Those copters will at 99% chance drop their ogre safely,and by no means can be killed by defenses/dropped by heroes (with a barbarian...lol? only safe way to get the normal ogres)

Copters should have a loading time before shooting, like sharkens. would be way more balanced. also, their range should be reduced to like 50% of its actual value, so that they wouldn't spam rockets from above like on King's game on the bottom crystal.

Reflects are useless once they are ABOVE the defenses. (which is very easy from them to go, because they drop big-asses flares with 60Mhp... Minions target ogres first, then copters, so they are like super ninja nuclear bombers)

[eagle45302]

Here is what I don't understand, they said they can't fix the RNG. That it is too deep into the coding of the game or some bs. I won't even begin to act like I know anything about coding. However, it seems that there was a quick patch when King's game came out because it was dropping good gear. How come they can't easily reverse this to allow some to drop again. As stated, they aren't going to actively support the game beyond the end of this year. Why not tweak the rewards for all maps like they did for King's game when they debuffed them? I switched over from PS3 just under two months ago. I have crashed head long into a ceiling that I can't pass anymore. I spend 4-6 hours a night playing survival on Aqua and Misty and MAYBE, find one piece or armor I can use every 4 - 5 days.

[CrzyRndm]

However, it seems that there was a quick patch when King's game came out because it was dropping good gear.

Thats the map quality factors, which are just numbers. All the shards maps can already cap those, and it's nothing to do with the RNG complaints.

Mostly the complaints are about:
-Rollovers
-High chances of Negatives

[Alhanalem]

Considering that on Sky City/Aquanos, the copter dropzone is very, very far from the defenses, on aqua it's near the mid-up crystal, and on Sky City it's almost everywhere, on the pathway from mid to south where there is a chest, on the pathway with a fan on southwest, on the enemy spawn midwest before the 4 fans for North... and also just a little above the middle crystal , behind the walls.

Those copters will at 99% chance drop their ogre safely,and by no means can be killed by defenses/dropped by heroes (with a barbarian...lol? only safe way to get the normal ogres)

Changing some drop locations would actually go a long way on specific maps. On aquanos in particular, I would agree that the west copter spawn in particular is hard to stop, even if you have someone there waiting to shoot the copters. This is actually counter to what copters were originally described to do, which is drop enemies behind your defenses. The copters from that spot in Aquanos don't go anywhere near your defenses before dropping the ogre. This is also part of why I proposed dropping copter HP as well as the threshold for dropping. If you're paying attention to them, you should be able to stop them. They should only threaten players who are not aware of or trying to stop them. I'd liken this to the ghost in starcraft. You gotta kill him before the nuke blows up your base. That's essentially what copters are doing, dropping nukes. But the difference is, a ghost in starcraft is a squishy unit that is easily stopped. Copters are actually pretty beefy, so they don't really have a hard time getting away with their "nuclear launch." I feel that if the copter is going to drop such a dangerous thing (That part is fine with me) then it needs to be easily stoppable.

Another interesting side note: In the DDDK, there exist copters that drop most of the different enemies in the game. Super goblins and DEMs and such wouldn't have been a bad idea, so I don't know why we only got ogres.

Ugh, wow. Sorry for the wall of text!

edit: one thing

Reflects are useless once they are ABOVE the defenses.

I've never had copters move so directly above my defenses that reflect beams were useless. Not saying it can't happen, but it hasn't happened to me.

[Carlh267]

Posting a cleaner version of my latest post now, my apologies to whichever mod felt my post was too inappropriate to leave on the forums.

Yes, it was advertised as both. Not as one, not as the other. Saying either one doesn't mean 100% of the game is playable one way or the other.

Actually, it kinda does. If the game says it has solo gameplay, and the co-op campaign is the same as the original levels, with only a few tweaks in regards to balancing it to be more difficult to compensate for more players, then I as a consumer should reasonably expect to be able to complete all of the said game's content with or without other people.

Its false advertising otherwise- If Trendy didn't say that the DLC was completable without other players, its their responsibility for making DLC that falsely advertised content, and it is their obligation to fix it.

Multiplayer players are just as entitled as single player players, but for some reason every solo player feels more entitled and thinks the game should cater to them over everyone else.

We really don't want special treatment. We just want to be able to complete the DLC the same way we beat the rest of the game- and Trendy never told us we had to pair up. I really don't understand how equal treatment=entitlement.

We bought the game as it was advertised as being solo. Granted, not all of us bought it for solo play, and some of us even bought it exclusively for multiplayer, but some people bought it because there was an option for solo play. We just want the same opportunities that everybody else has gotten. We all bought the game, didn't we? Just because we don't want to play with others doesn't mean we should have a harder time because of it.

We solo players don't want to be treated better than people who play multiplayer, we just want an equal playing field.

[Alhanalem]

Its false advertising otherwise

It's not false advertising. The game has single player gameplay in it. Nowhere does the phrase "single player" imply that 100% of all bits of the game content are completable in single player. In fact, this is rarely the case in games unless they are ONLY single player. Of course, I can redact this statement if you can show me that all the other games on steam that list both single player and multi-player have every single piece of game content playable solo.

The "single player" label on the Steam product page is not quantitative statement of the amount of single player play available.

I'm sorry that we're in disagreement here, but neither you or I is likely to convince the other of anything at this point. I'd appreciate it at this point if you'd stick to the current discussion at hand (See rest of posts on this page).

[Carlh267]

Here is what I don't understand, they said they can't fix the RNG. That it is too deep into the coding of the game or some bs. I won't even begin to act like I know anything about coding. However, it seems that there was a quick patch when King's game came out because it was dropping good gear. How come they can't easily reverse this to allow some to drop again. As stated, they aren't going to actively support the game beyond the end of this year. Why not tweak the rewards for all maps like they did for King's game when they debuffed them? I switched over from PS3 just under two months ago. I have crashed head long into a ceiling that I can't pass anymore. I spend 4-6 hours a night playing survival on Aqua and Misty and MAYBE, find one piece or armor I can use every 4 - 5 days.

The quality of gear for the King's game map never went under any serious alterations, according to the patch notes. What the King's Game map changed was the enemy difficulty, because the scaling was apparently bugged- allowing people to complete the map rather easily. As far as I'm aware the loot hasn't undergone any specific changes (except for a slight buff in the gear to compensate for the patch that increased the level's difficulty).

It's not false advertising. The game has single player gameplay in it. Nowhere does the phrase "single player" imply that 100% of all bits of the game content are completable in single player. In fact, this is rarely the case in games unless they are ONLY single player. Of course, I can redact this statement if you can show me that all the other games on steam that list both single player and multi-player have every single piece of game content playable solo.

The "single player" label on the Steam product page is not quantitative statement of the amount of single player play available.

I'm sorry that we're in disagreement here, but neither you or I is likely to convince the other of anything at this point. I'd appreciate it at this point if you'd stick to the current discussion at hand (See rest of posts on this page).

Of course this isn't the case for most games, but in a game that allows you to play on such maps without other people, one would have to imagine that such maps wouldn't have been added if Trendy's intention was to only make them beatable with other people, or why they would bother to change hp values for enemies in solo play in the first place on Nightmare. Either way, if it was practically a requirement for people to play multiplayer to beat this DLC there should have made mention to it at least in the DLC section of the steam page. Plus, like I said before, the only changes to these maps from single to multiplayer are differences in enemy HP values and spawn numbers, so one can reasonably argue that these maps should be beatable without the help of other people.

And I don't think this discussion is necessarily off-topic, seeing as it was brought up as recently as the second out of the 3 pages in this thread. The whole thread is about the apparent lack of updates for the game as of late, and people have been filling it with complaints concerning balance and the like. My post is related to balance, so why is it really off topic?

Just because we're unlikely to convince each other of our viewpoints doesn't mean that logical, meaningful conversation can't be carried out.

[Halagren]

Here is what I don't understand, they said they can't fix the RNG. That it is too deep into the coding of the game or some bs. I won't even begin to act like I know anything about coding. However, it seems that there was a quick patch when King's game came out because it was dropping good gear. How come they can't easily reverse this to allow some to drop again. As stated, they aren't going to actively support the game beyond the end of this year. Why not tweak the rewards for all maps like they did for King's game when they debuffed them? I switched over from PS3 just under two months ago. I have crashed head long into a ceiling that I can't pass anymore. I spend 4-6 hours a night playing survival on Aqua and Misty and MAYBE, find one piece or armor I can use every 4 - 5 days.

i must agree. the broken RNG needs fixed if they never fix anything else. im sick of running 60-70 hours of NMHCMM sky city all the way to wave 30 and seeing ONE ultimate armor piece, and THEN that one piece is utter trash junk **** that isnt even better than mythicals roflmfao.

unless the RNG rollover issue is addressed in SOME WAY, i wont be playing anymore until they make a DD2. there's no point in farming, it's literally impossible to obtain loot legitametely. ive run roughly 4-500 hours of shards survival maps to maximum waves and ive looted 4 pieces of supreme or ultimate armor that were actually better than trans counterparts rofl. so after all that time farming suvival my 5 builders and 2 dps heros are still 24/28 armor pieces transcendant. i dont expect the game to be easy but 4-500 hours of farming the HIGHEST survival loot maps to get 4 pieces of upgrade armor is beyond absurd. getting a full set is quite frankly impossible hehe. those 4 pieces are all different types btw so those 4 pieces are mixed with 3 trans each.

that many hours is not "bad luck", it's proof that there is a problem, and it's proof that anybody with full sets of ult gear either hack or got it from a hacker xD and i dont mean full sets of ult gear that are worse than mythical, i mean those guys that seem to have found ult armor with 3-4 max stats. that stuff dont exist w/o hacks sorry to burst yer bubble. whether you paid for it or traded high value items like cubes, it is hacked gear.

[Winterbraid]

Changing some drop locations would actually go a long way on specific maps. On aquanos in particular, I would agree that the west copter spawn in particular is hard to stop, even if you have someone there waiting to shoot the copters. This is actually counter to what copters were originally described to do, which is drop enemies behind your defenses. The copters from that spot in Aquanos don't go anywhere near your defenses before dropping the ogre. This is also part of why I proposed dropping copter HP as well as the threshold for dropping. If you're paying attention to them, you should be able to stop them. They should only threaten players who are not aware of or trying to stop them. I'd liken this to the ghost in starcraft. You gotta kill him before the nuke blows up your base. That's essentially what copters are doing, dropping nukes. But the difference is, a ghost in starcraft is a squishy unit that is easily stopped. Copters are actually pretty beefy, so they don't really have a hard time getting away with their "nuclear launch." I feel that if the copter is going to drop such a dangerous thing (That part is fine with me) then it needs to be easily stoppable.

I have found out that copters are very manageable for ranged DPS characters in Mistymire Forest. They come only from two directions, they are predictable; and most importantly, they can be shot down more or less comfortably from within the safety of the defenses and forced to drop their ogres into the abyss, allowing a single dedicated hero to eliminate their threat completely, given enough attention. Like it was supposedly intended to be.

Aquanos is indeed an entirely different story. The ogres are dropped around the corner from two of the crystals, where defenses are hardly likely to cover, shooting them all down is implausible, and shooting them down at a point where the ogres would drop to their death seems nigh impossible as it would require the (squishy) ranged hero to venture into an area that is already swarming with enemy units. King's Game is a similar case; the ogres are dropped behind the large chess piece on the upper layer, where the copters are concealed from the defenses and the heroes.

Now Sky City at least gives you a clear shot at the incoming copters, although given the size, structure and difficulty of the map, actually keeping all of them at bay doesn't seem possible unless you can afford to have three dedicated ranged heroes to perform only that task. And from my experience, most of the time the players are too busy dealing with the regular and already dropped ogres to think about the incoming ones.

To be honest, considering the long history of pathing problems in DD, I doubt all the issues of copter missile range, ogre landing zones, and the hero manageability of either could ever be plausibly ironed out. I think I understand what Trendy wanted to achieve with copters and I appreciate the intent, but like you have pointed out, it simply doesn't seem to be working out in the majority of the maps; there is just too many of them, they come from too many or inconvenient directions, and most of the time you are too busy attending other threats to devote your attention to copters. So I think alternative solutions will be necessary.

Another interesting side note: In the DDDK, there exist copters that drop most of the different enemies in the game. Super goblins and DEMs and such wouldn't have been a bad idea, so I don't know why we only got ogres.

I also think that would be interesting. A friend of mine has suggested a similar thing in another thread, copters randomly dropping ogres, DEW squads, spider swarms etc. instead of only ogres. If copters dropped an ogre only occasionally as opposed to spamming them for the entire duration of the wave, I'd be fine with those copter ogres being buffed even further.

edit: one thing I've never had copters move so directly above my defenses that reflect beams were useless. Not saying it can't happen, but it hasn't happened to me.

Happens to me all the time in KG. When my character is standing on the lower level, the copters from the higher level keep shooting me from above, requiring me to place additional reflection beams and yet sometimes managing to bypass even those extra beams.