The amount of Elites & Leapers in Infested maps is a bad approach on increasing difficulty

[Enfo]

Really, it is. Elites feel more common than regular monsters and you get more leapers than anything. The Infested maps turned from average farming into boring and non-satesfying maps.

As i see it the amount of elites is just beyond a normal standpoint, especially the amount of Toxic Ancients.

A better approach in my eyes would be returning the Runners, and add other types of monsters to the map that challenges you on other areas than being pulled, jumped, or punchedA and perhaps more swarming of Chargers and Runners.

Another thing would be an option to add higher difficulty to the maps where monsters get more health and/or damage but rewards more drops in return.

There's also the good old "more people, more difficulty", whereas you could add 10-25% health/damage to the monsters for each player in the game.

I get people want challenge, but it just feels so wrong playing the maps now. All you do is equip a HEK and go lawnmower style on everything because with other weapons it just takes ages to beat.

Just a few general ideas of mine, any other feedback is welcome as well.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Enfo

[Kratier]

I think right now there is a cry of people saying "its not challenging enough" so they just ramped up the difficulty by throwing more enemies with more hp at them. But that doesn't really solve the problem.

A good way to make the game more challenging is by adding more types of enemies like the riot shield guys. Stuff that makes the player think before attacking them, or makes them use melee instead. The gameplay needs to be interactive, dynamic, and changed up once in a while.

[Ced23Ric]

They got rid of the annoying stunlocking Runners, which were only slowing stuff down, added more of the beautiful Leapers and gave us more big bad dudes. Hell's yes. If you cannot find ways to deal with Ancients, really, I cannot help you. They aren't hard.

[Enfo]

They got rid of the annoying stunlocking Runners, which were only slowing stuff down, added more of the beautiful Leapers and gave us more big bad dudes. Hell's yes. If you cannot find ways to deal with Ancients, really, I cannot help you. They aren't hard.

As i did say in the OP, if you even read that, i find it extremely boring that all you do now is run through the map with a shotgun instead of really finding good areas to use melee weapons, when everything just dies faster when being blown up, unlike before everything wasn't elite monsters or leapers which are just ruining the point of melee.

And as i also stated in another thread:

It kinda ruins the whole aspect of being able to level your melee weapon effectively when the monster either kills you with poison when you're close so that you are forced to shoot it, or that you have to shoot the monster to low HP in order to not spend ages on hacking it with your low level melee weapon, and then shooting all the small monsters which runs in front of it at the same time.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Enfo

[Ced23Ric]

So your main point of complaint is that an entire faction stopped being a farming ground for specific XP because they were a threat so low, you could faceroll them. Understood.

[Dr3dd]

The more big bad ones the better !

[Wiawyr]

Noticing a lot more CC elements affecting me during infested missions, being stunned and knocked down constantly while solo is boring and not fun.

[Rusalki]

I still miss the Runners, but I guess these guys are okay. I wish there were a Runner Ancient that had regenerative explosive boils on it, so it could explode consistently.

[Vahnkiljoy]

For one I'm glad they lowered the runner count, you ever reach a room and all of a sudden the game decides to spawn 3+ runners BEHIND you? Yeah nothing more annoying then when you are gunning down the runners/chargers IN FRONT of you at a distance and all of a sudden you get a 'surprise' from a room/hallway you just cleared.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Vahnkiljoy

[Ced23Ric]

It also seems Runners now "charge up" longer and have smaller AoE on their staggering. It's beautiful. I am currently uploading a melee run against Infested with the Scindo Axe, and while I got swarmed and bogged down, it wasn't nearly as annoying as before. And the Elites helped a great deal o break up the endless mindless slashing. Good job, DE.

[oGsShadow]

Are you guys having these problems solo/duo or in groups of 3 and 4? I stream and play with viewers/several other streamers. Neither I nor those I watch are having the issues you are talking about and we regularly farm Infested maps for the sheer volume of enemies in them for more mods. We have moments where we get "overrun" and sure you get knocked around for a moment but its then back to blasting these helpless fatties running into firing arcs. The only real threats are the charging poison clouds.

Edited January 15, 2013 by oGsShadow

[Arcalane]

I haven't noticed any real changes to the spawn rates of various infested types since the 5.4 patch. If anything, I'm seeing less Ancients (can you say "eight Ancient Healers in a row"? I think you can).

Given there's nothing about Infested changes in the Fixes or Changes part of the changelog, this is either something they forgot to include, or the RNG being the RNG and sending more big guys at you instead of lots of mooks.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Arcalane

[Kirbuncle]

For one I'm glad they lowered the runner count, you ever reach a room and all of a sudden the game decides to spawn 3+ runners BEHIND you? Yeah nothing more annoying then when you are gunning down the runners/chargers IN FRONT of you at a distance and all of a sudden you get a 'surprise' from a room/hallway you just cleared.

That's a result of a different problem, and one that I've brought up before and been ignored over. The game currently has very questionable enemy spawning mechanics. I get that with a full squad ploughing through a level, a fairly consistent stream of opposition is required to keep them on their toes, but when enemies are spawning in the room directly behind you that you cleared literally less than 30 seconds ago, you have a problem, and one that can be infuriating when you're trying to solo a mission.

[Feindfeuer]

I play through Infestation mainly to level my melee weapons, cause they are the easiest to harvest xp with blades from. With all the complains about the increase in leapers and ancients i was not sure if it was still viable. But yes, i can still melee through those levels, only the poison ancients need a good dose of slash&dash or a few rounds from my trusty Lex into... where ever i think the head may be.

I don't realy think it got harder for solo players at all. The leapers are easy to avoid, as they only jump to the location you were like 3 seconds ago, which is something that just does not happen when i melee hack through the hordes... the explody guys don't explode when you melee them so it's not like i realy take note if there are more or less of them and ancients can be slash/dashed or just meleed if they're not poison-based.

The only real anoying thing are those crawlers, not because they are hard to kill or dangerous, but because they are so hard to spot between all the dead bodies.

Edit: saying: If they changed anything, i don't realy see it increasing the difficulty of the missions.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Feindfeuer

[herflik]

Noticing a lot more CC elements affecting me during infested missions, being stunned and knocked down constantly while solo is boring and not fun.

Yeah, there should be CC diminishing effect when everything that hit you stun you for a few seconds. Dont mistake it with stagger, since stagger should last a fraction of second.

Games in these times never heard of CC diminishing effect I guess, thats why its easy to abuse CC in them to the extent that you can either be fracerolled on or faceroll yourself with it. CC diminishing should be simple in game like this, once you are hit wtih CC you are immune for next one for next 3-5seconds.

Also the current amount of CC in infested map totally remove possiblity of actualy using melee weapons on elite mobs, you should be able to kill anything with any weapon you want as long as you have the skill. But if enemy hit me with his back or while I tumble then there is no place for skill.

Another diablo3 game where difficulty = stat wall, you either have the stats and/or run in corner with ranged weapons and snipe from there, or you perish in few seconds.

[historyboi]

i feel that the infecton needs to learn more from the corpus. maby add a tenticle to the roof that will smack the player around if they get too close. or even bind the player and slowly do damage to them if their are 2 or more players. or have 1 just bind the player for untill he shoots it off his foot. they would blend in with the infected growth making it hard to tell if one is their.

on a side note, i enjoy running infected maps. i run through only using my gorgon on the anchent disruptors (witch i hate and if i could, i would hunt them down)and my pistol on anything that has a poison effect or is just crawling. (because swords have trouble hitting crawlers)

Edited January 15, 2013 by historyboi

[Toadling]

Well I just ran through a level 10-15 infestation. The amount of Ancient Disruptors was staggering. I lost count in the number I had to kill. There was a time when I was fighting 4 at once. At one point I had opened an elevator to have three of them rush at me, it came to a point where I was just angry at the game. I did have one chuckle however when it stated there was heavy infection ahead only to face 2 Disruptors; I had just faced 4 of them at once and the two was a nice break.

Fix this please.

P.S I was playing solo and had to use two rifle ammo kits. Also had over 250 kills for that map.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Toadling

[Havenbrook]

Really, it is. Elites feel more common than regular monsters and you get more leapers than anything. The Infested maps turned from average farming into boring and non-satesfying maps.

As i see it the amount of elites is just beyond a normal standpoint, especially the amount of Toxic Ancients.

They got rid of the annoying stunlocking Runners, which were only slowing stuff down, added more of the beautiful Leapers and gave us more big bad dudes. Hell's yes. If you cannot find ways to deal with Ancients, really, I cannot help you. They aren't hard.

They removed the Runners because people were complaining about dying on the missions due to stun lock. So in turn they gave you more elites with toxic auras that you cant simply melee down. Missions are not supposed to be a breeze. I agree with Ced23Ric, I have no trouble burning Ancients down in a few seconds by my self. It is ment to be a challenge not a farm, other wise it would be boring and non-satisfying.

[Enfo]

So your main point of complaint is that an entire faction stopped being a farming ground for specific XP because they were a threat so low, you could faceroll them. Understood.

You just don't listen, do you? I feel the way the difficulty got increased was a bad approach. I don't want the old stuff back to where it was, where in the OP do you see me saying that?

You really need to stop reading inbetween the lines and understand what i want to lay out with my post. The way the map just got stuffed with more elites and annoying &#! leapers is a bad way to increase the difficulty. Could've been done in many other ways that didn't make it so boring to play infested maps, cause they really are boring to play now.

[Joos]

Shotguns do nothing but deal with this issue. It feels like nothing has changed.

[Enfo]

Shotguns do nothing but deal with this issue. It feels like nothing has changed.

Exactly, that's what i mean. Instead of increasing the difficulty it just promotes pulling up a shotgun and mowing through.

That's mostly why i think this was a bad approach overall. They killed the point of using melee and instead just promoted use of shotguns.

[Joos]

Exactly, that's what i mean. Instead of increasing the difficulty it just promotes pulling up a shotgun and mowing through.

That's mostly why i think this was a bad approach overall. They killed the point of using melee and instead just promoted use of shotguns.

Well it is still beta so till they add more types of mobs this is prolly the only thing they have atm. They could add something akin to turrets that shoot needles at you from long range

[Wiawyr]

Well it is still beta so till they add more types of mobs this is prolly the only thing they have atm. They could add something akin to turrets that shoot needles at you from long range

I wonder who could be behind this post...

[Joos]

I wonder who could be behind this post...

you confuse me......