Concerns About Nightmare Mode

[AureusVulpes]

I'm concerned with what has occurred to nightmare mode lately. Rather than throwing insults around, I'm going to go at this a little more reasonably than many threads have.

 

One: Nightmare Mode was intended to be for challenge seekers.

 

Nightmare mode wasn't intended for people to run in with not maxed equips and level them while they farm rare mods. That's what normal content defense maps are for. Nightmare mode is for you to throw all your cards on the table and tell the game to come at you. The levels of the enemies in Nightmare mode even scale from planet to planet so that if your mods aren't all "lolmaxed", you can still partake in a more challenging environment without having to get the best of everything first, and still gain access to those dual stat mods that are now the cat's meow. Equality in rewards while offering diversity in challenge levels.

 

Two: Consumables

 

I think a lot of people have forgotten that consumables exist. They're there to use. Not ignored and shunned as a crutch. You're given 8 slots for mission use. If you're too can't be bothered to loadout 8 consumables which auto-replenish between missions if you have extra stock (4 of which can be TEAM HEALS, totaling 400 emergency HP per player, maxing at 1600 party-wide on-demand healing, and that's only 4/8 slots), then perhaps you should stick to normal content since you aren't seeking a challenge (which nightmare mode was intended to be), WHICH IS TOTALLY FINE. I too, enjoy cruising through content annihilating enemies which have 0 chance against me, but I also enjoy a challenging game mode, of which it is difficult to find. Consumables are a built-in mechanic of the game, meant to be used in challenging situations or emergencies, not ignored and written off as a waste of time or resources.

 

Three: The recent nerf on Vampire mode not being able to kill you.

 

I highly doubt that you could burn through 400 health over your max on a long elevator or running to extraction unless you're using Thrak Rhinos crouch-walking the whole mission. I reference the previous paragraph regarding consumables. There's been no outcry for excessive difficulty over timer mode despite being un-circumventable by clever tactics such as team heals, Trinity Blessing, or revive rotating, so why is vampire mode such a insurmountable problem?

 

Four: Stealth in Vampire mode

 

This is the only reason I can see for the recent nerf (in point 3), but that doesn't justify nerfing the mechanic as a whole. If vampire for stealth was a problem, change it so that as long as the alarm has not sounded, that vampire can not kill you. Otherwise, there should be no reason that overt combat vampire should not kill you. This would keep stealth vampire managable, as well as keep the difficulty factor for overt combat at a challenging level.

 

Five: Mercury not offering Nightmare mode.

 

This hurts people who don't have really good mods more than a long elevator in vampire mode. These were the only nightmare missions that offered enemies under level 30. While I understand that higher-capability players were abusing this to farm mods, it crippled lesser-geared players' ability to enjoy the same challenge at what might be their level of capability.

 

I am hoping that people will read this and understand that I am not attacking players who are having a hard time in Nightmare mode, and rather pointing out reasons why the nerf was unneccesary and things players could do to survive the mode pre-nerf, and why those things are not unreasonable tactics.

 

[LazyKnight]

I'm concerned with what has occurred to nightmare mode lately. Rather than throwing insults around, I'm going to go at this a little more reasonably than many threads have.

things players could do to survive the mode pre-nerf, and why those things are not unreasonable tactics.

I do not want to end up playing final fantasy again were you have to use consumables for basically everything.  That is not skill its just deep wallets circumventing play hazarded, same effect from just soloing with trinity and using rage mod(impossible to die easy mode with vampire drain.) I have 3.5million credits left should I be able to buy my way to easy mode?

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty

Edited July 20, 2013 by LazyKnight

[AureusVulpes]

I do not want to end up playing final fantasy again were you have to use consumables for basically everything.  That is not skill its just deep wallets circumventing play hazarded, same effect from just soloing with trinity and using rage mod(impossible to die easy mode with vampire drain.) I have 3.5million credits left should I be able to buy my way to easy mode?

 

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty

 

By this logic, consumables should be removed from the game entirely to preserve an element of challenge. We should be saying: "DE, in the interest of challenge, please remove consumables from the game because it's fake difficulty and only benefits rich players."

 

Until they get removed however, it's a viable and available game mechanic and is intended to be used during play.

 

EDIT: Your link states nothing about the use of items or in-game monetary to be fake difficulty. It only refers to random drops. In which case, we should have unlimited ammo because relying on the random ammo drop algorithm is fake difficulty.

Edited July 20, 2013 by AureusVulpes

[Rottae]

Preparing with consumables is always good, I've stacked up on mostly all ammo boses and usually bring some healthpacks too. 

They aren't expensive at all and is the only credit dump we have outside of fusion and they only provide a small buff. 100 health might last you a while in nightmare mode, long enough to survive that elevator or W/E. If you can't pay the 1000 creds these consumables cost, I think someone needs to stash up a little before going into nightmare. As OP said, Nightmare is for players who want to bring their best things into combat and still be challanged. It's not for farming EXP anymore, it's not for the mats, it's just for pure challange. They've also capped out consumables to 8 per mission and you don't have to bring em, because the mechanic is fairly easy, kill stuff, gain health, kill stuff, gain time, being smart and bringing health packs to a vampire mission is skill, because you need to equip em and buy em and since virtually ANY player can play 1 of any mission to get them. I don't really see a problem.

[LazyKnight]

By this logic, consumables should be removed from the game entirely to preserve an element of challenge. We should be saying: "DE, in the interest of challenge, please remove consumables from the game because it's fake difficulty and only benefits rich players."

 

Until they get removed however, it's a viable and available game mechanic and is intended to be used during play.

I would be fine with them being removed 100% would give some challenge and make ammo economy have a use. Include in the topic get rid of ammo boxes too because its too easy.