The Energon Pub

Thu Sep 17, 2020 11:34 am

That's the name of the mission on the Decepticon side: a solo 10-11 mission where the lone Decepticon is pitted against up to 20 0-4 Autobots. Burn asked me to post my thoughts on it, just to open a dialogue and such, as I'd posted about it in the Darkmount general Decepticon thread.

My feeling: not worth running for the Decepticons to run, and depending on the Autobot levels, a crapshoot (with certain exceptions) on whether it'll be worth it.

Granted, this hasn't really seemed to catch on just yet, so maybe that will change. But right now, it's 4,400xp / 2,200 energon as base payout for the lone Decepticon if they win, plus the XP/energon from taking out whoever they take out. So far, the most I've seen is 4 Autobots in, if I recall rightly, three separate missions: I won two of them, and lost one. In all three instances, there were at least one or two massively twinked-out level 4s -- and by massively twinked out, I mean they're sitting on tens of millions of unspent XP to run something in the way of STR 10/END 10/RNK 10/Bite OR Ram 10.

The handful of those missions I've run was all it took to convince me to ignore them as much as possible. When my characters, who can get six-figure XP payouts in 1-11s and 6-11s consistently, finish somewhere in the low five-digit XP range and all the Autobots have higher XP than I do... like I said, not worth running for a Decepticon; especially so when high-level Autobot players are revamping a character or two from their team specifically for this mission to crop up.

Mind, I know some of that is people testing what can be done within the system and all, so I understand that. And the one loss I had was definitely an outlier -- mostly because Autobots were hitting their tactics left and right, and RNG screwed my character hard and didn't allow a single Ram at any point. Maybe if I did Avoid/Ram instead of Ram/Repair or Strafe/Repair, that might make some difference.

But, at least for me, I won't be running those missions. I don't know what exactly the experience is for the Autobot side of the fence on this particular mission type, but like I said -- virtually all of them, I've had at least two, if not three, of the Autobot characters come away with far more XP than I'm making from it.

Thoughts?

News Credits: 7 · Thu Sep 17, 2020 1:24 pm

On the whole, they're good.

It's a bit of fun from both sides of the table. The low levels benefit most sure becuase of the XP payout from a few hits and being able to level up faster. For the high levels it's mostly for bragging rights IF they face enough opponents. So far 4 is the most I've faced which isn't really enough to brag about.

Sure it'd be nice if the base payout was higher to make it worthwhile playing but I'm not too bothered. I guess the XP payout could be left as is and the energon payout could be raised to 10k, 25k or something along those lines. That'd be the benefit for playing as a high level, most usefuln when saving up for the level 10 armours. Low levels get the XP boost, high levels the energon.

Thu Sep 17, 2020 3:49 pm

https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwa ... _id=363735

5 Bots taking advantage of the format (& Luna's soft targets) here.

Already spoke my piece here so not gonna copypasta it all.

tl;dr version: They aren't for everyone & thats ok but there's probably some room for improvement as long as you don't try to make it what its not.

Thu Sep 17, 2020 7:15 pm

I think it's a matter of the character type you put in, which can make or break you. By type, I mean your altmode/choice of tactics. With my entire team geared towards Ram/Repair or Repair/Strafe, they're not exactly the best options to be placing in those missions to begin with.

That said, I'm considering an experiment: remake two of my characters into something that might be better capable of competing in those missions and possibly make it worth the time and effort to do it. I haven't decided for certain on it yet, but I am seriously considering it.

Thu Sep 17, 2020 7:18 pm

I've found Avoid/Bite to be rather effective for the level 11 side... too effective really, so I don't put Bx2 into those missions anymore as I want the low level Cons to get SOMETHING out of these things.

Thu Sep 17, 2020 9:34 pm

Bun-Bun wrote:https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwar/view_mission.php?mission_id=363735

5 Bots taking advantage of the format (& Luna's soft targets) here.

Already spoke my piece here so not gonna copypasta it all.

https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwa ... _id=363879
what will happen?
nothing

Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:31 am

Sadly there don't seem to be many low level Cons playing currently.

Another reason to have decent payouts for cross level missions.
These poor punks could deploy for months and never see an opponent of the same level, especially 0's.

Its amazing we have any new players when they first have to get through hundreds of unopposed, crap payout, missions before they even see the rest of the community..

**edit**

For those that may say "We've already got Hell missions where low levels can make good XP gains, just use those!"

Here's an example pulled from my recent mission logs:

ZomboDroid 18092020082142.jpg

As you can see there are many of the same players but check those scores. Even though Gankmo's character got SL'd in the first couple seconds he still got a decent (for low level) payout because the others actually had a chance & managed to pull the win.
In the Hell mission there was no way the low levels could defeat a level 10 & a level 8 and their payouts were significantly lowered as well.

News Credits: 42 · Fri Sep 18, 2020 8:20 am

We have to change how we think about the game.

We used to have hundreds of players. Now we have significantly less, so the lower levels who used to have plenty of other cannon-fodder to war against are stranded and unable to get anywhere and the gap between top and bottom has never been bigger.

We were all lower level once and all remember what a slog it was. These cross-level missions help to balance that a bit.

Yes, the payoff for the level 11s is shite, but we're already at level 11, the top of the game. If we want more people to battle at these higher levels we have to suck it up and take that hit to ensure we have some decent opposition to kill later.

Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:05 am

I know a few of us bots have lowered some of our characters in the past to help lower level cons. I had bots at level various levels under level 5. Most of the time they are punching bags without armor. Sometimes they are brawlers, depends on my mood. I don't plan on keeping my down leveled bots in these missions, so the other players can get the xp. Just wanted to check them out from the lower level perspective.

If you have a swarm of level 4 rammers in these missions you're not going to last long at level 11. The point of these are to help the lower guys out.

News Credits: 1 · Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:20 am

I've done several, and complained on FB because I don't like that they take so much longer than the normal mission. I get why though. I've done 6 now, only had opposition in 1.

The theory is good. I might suggest turning the number down from 20 to 10 or less and maybe changing the level from 1-4 to 1-3, or even 0-3.

As for the complaint about over powered lower level players. That's always been a problem in HMW. I wish people would level up when they can, rather than being a big fish in a small pond and pounding the weaker people into submission, but sadly we can't force people to level up.

Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:24 am

Not sure why limiting it to 10 instead of 20 will matter right now since I don't think I've seen one with more than 8 participants...

And the current range for the low end is 0-4. 0-3 /might/ be a necessary change but I think once the fb crew is done leveling down to check them out its not gonna be a problem anymore. I'm just waiting for my 2 to be done in CR and I'm leveling them back up.

Fri Sep 18, 2020 11:27 am

I enjoy the mission. My level 4 does decent in them (and hes not overamped, he legit sucks and has my lowest total xp) even without backup. My level 11 does good in them (strafe/repair). Hes only lost 2 out of 5 (both to the bots Bx2 was using to test the mission. My 10's (ram/repair) are not doing as well. Other than when I blasted a level 2 with my Gamma Ray Blaster at 0:13, the Autobots against me all seem to be netting anywhere between 5 and 150k per run. They also do this without having to worry about Alldarker stealing any xp they might have gotten.

However, it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea. Which is why I suggested lowering the spawn frequency. My top six include a level 11, 2 level 10's, 2 level 9's and a level 8. I never see anyone else online during my first deploy. Typically, the missions spawned are this one, a variety of 6-11, 7-11, a 1-11 and either a level 8 or level 9, or hell in a cells. I have spawned 3 I. Am. Inevitable.'s in one session.

News Credits: 42 · Sat Sep 19, 2020 6:14 am

I think this is a great example of why these missions work so well.

https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwa ... _id=364257

I may have only got 10k xp out of it, but (apart from Bun lol) everyone else made some serious bank for their level. That's a months XP in one mission for Psychomud there.

Sat Sep 19, 2020 8:14 am

My problem is, I'm stuck, so I pretty much have to be fodder for the masses when I do these missions; by "stuck", I mean that my lowest characters are pushing on the 81M XP mark or just past it -- Sunshot is my only level 9, and that's just because I've been incredibly lazy about leveling him up into the 10 range. Electra is at 128M and saving up for COU 10 (and level 11), and Incognito is closing in on the 181M mark, almost to the XP needed for INT 9 and then it's save for INT 10 and he's effectively done with leveling up. I feel like I would be the big fish in a small pond, if I took even one of my lower-level characters and dropped them back to level 4.

Sad thing is, 6 months ago I would have been loving the prospect of these missions: when I started playing again back in mid-March, Incognito was my top character with only 2M XP, and the rest were barely past the 1M XP mark, and I thought I'd never make the climb up. But I've also run my characters a lot (and I confess, I "cheat" by pulling out my smartphone while at work and tagging six of my team to run missions over the space of a minute or so). That, and some exceedingly fortunate payouts from the missions I've run over those 6 months, is why I'm now where I'm at.

It's a shame that we couldn't extend the teams to 14 like Burn attempted some time back, because then I'd at least have two characters in that grind.

Bun-Bun: If Bite works the same way Ram does, I'm not surprised at how potent Avoid/Bite OR Ram could be in this mission type. The stun effect from Ram has always been highly overpowered, at least so long as your STR+Bite OR Ram is better than the opponent's STR+END. I confess, I've considered trying to rebuild a couple of my characters strictly for this mission type -- one being Avoid/Bite OR Ram, the other being Avoid/Strafe. I think the former will be much better than the latter, but even with the latter, I think with some Avoids kicking in will make the energon payout better, at least. I might try that as an experiment, because my team as currently configured is one-dimensional Ram or Strafe (because Repair might as well be useless).

Sat Sep 19, 2020 10:02 am

I think Wingz would take exception to your calling Repair useless :lol:

There have been various fixes brought up about the current End Game Stagnation we have going on... sadly all of it involves a programmer with a decent knowledge of how the game work in practice & copious amounts of time & dedication to thread it into the already patchwork code that exists... So that's not happening >:oP

I ran the numbers once upon a time (which are probably still accurate despite the minor changes to alt classes over the years) and the cheapest level 11 build is only a little over 107 Mil... Currently the top 183 characters are over that threshold. With 913 characters currently active that's 20% effectively maxed out.
If you remove the active characters with less than 9K (the cheapest threshold for level 1) we're left with 776 Active players & 24.5% maxed.
Practically a quarter of the characters have little to nothing to look forward to.

If we count level 10's and use the cheapest possible build XP ( 43 Mil ) that's 276 potentially in Endgame territory or 30% of the total & 35.5% of those above the level 1 threshold.

Being that we have zero prospects of adding anything substantial to the game perhaps we should be making it harder to level up instead of easier... but in reality we've all been through it & know that languishing in low mid levels isn't really fun and sure to drive people away.

At least once they're old jaded high level players like the rest of us they'll have some connection and will stubbornly continue playing out of habit despite having nothing to look forward to :lol:

Sat Sep 19, 2020 11:56 am

Bun-Bun wrote:I think Wingz would take exception to your calling Repair useless

Repair is one of the best tactics in the game (if not THE best, and it's got competition with Ram solely for Ram's stunlock capability)... in any other mission type. There's a reason that, to this point over the last six months that I've played again, that my entire team has Repair capability -- and it's also the reason my XP gains overall have been so ludicrous that I have two characters in the top 200 (Incognito is 134, Electra is 169 currently), and the rest are currently in a line from 236-245 in the High Scores. You and I have discussed that before via PMs that folks were sitting up and taking notice at just how fast my team was climbing once I started playing again. In the four months that I've been keeping track of my team's overall XP gains, my team has more than quintupled their overall XP (Incognito specifically has nearly sextupled his XP, and will officially do so this coming week).

In a mission type such as this, however, where you're the lone Autobot/Decepticon facing up to 20 opponents and Repair is one of your altmode tactics? It's absolutely useless, unless you're able to repair yourself, and the code isn't configured to do so (and probably just as well that it isn't, because it will most likely only prolong the inevitable, and artificially inflate the XP gains further for both sides).

If I had Incognito in a match against 8 Autobots, for instance? Given what I've experienced (that being having several Autobot players who have dropped characters down to level 4 and gone one-dimensional with their builds to try and max out their own XP gains), Incognito will most likely fall, because at that point he's nothing more than a STR-based Rammer wielding a Fusion Cannon. If he could Repair himself, though? Things get tricky -- more than likely, he'd still lose, but his XP gains would be through the roof, just by the law of averages. Likewise, the Autobots facing him in that mission will have inflated XP gains as well, because then he lasts longer, and so they get to deal more damage to him. Hence, a good thing Repair doesn't target self.

========

In the interests of testing things, though, I'm going to reconfigure two members of my team. I've already got two separate builds in mind, specifically for this mission type, and I might see just how interesting I can make them and still be competitive.

Edit: Remedy is gone, and Barricade has returned: STR 10, INT 4, SPD 10, END 10, RNK 10, COU 10, FRP 7, SKL 8, Avoid 10, Ram 10 and wielding a Dual-Bladed Lightsaber.

Likewise, Eclipse is no longer a Crow Opportunistic Animal, but instead a G1-Cyclonus Fighter: STR 10, INT 4, SPD 10, END 10, RNK 10, COU 9, FRP 10, SKL 4, Avoid 10, Strafe 10 with a Gatling Gun.

Both will be up and ready to test the waters come tomorrow.

Sat Sep 19, 2020 1:36 pm

This mission is not about "winning", it's about high levels giving back by helping others level. Even if you "won" against 20 opponents, you still wouldn't get anything for it. They simply don't pay out enough at that level. Killing 20 level 3's would net you approximately 100k. Not a good return. Rather than reset guys in an attempt to beat the Kobayashi Maru, you'd be better served by spawning another mission and moving along.

Sat Sep 19, 2020 2:27 pm

KAMJIIN wrote:This mission is not about "winning", it's about high levels giving back by helping others level. Even if you "won" against 20 opponents, you still wouldn't get anything for it. They simply don't pay out enough at that level. Killing 20 level 3's would net you approximately 100k. Not a good return. Rather than reset guys in an attempt to beat the Kobayashi Maru, you'd be better served by spawning another mission and moving along.

I get that. But part of me, at the same time, sees it as a challenge to see what odds I can have stacked against me, and still possibly walk away; I'm viewing it as a one-shot Iron Man challenge like you and others did a few months back.

Plus, this is only two characters I'm revamping to play around with -- which is actually something I've been considering doing for a while now. Repair/Ram and Repair/Strafe are, in my mind, the best dual-tactic pairings in the game, but after a while it does get rather boring. This is my way of mixing it up a little, playing around with different configurations, and testing to see if Avoid really is a crappy tactic like I believe it is (outside of Bun-Bun's experience with this mission type), or whether it can truly be viable even at high level play.

Although... I am tempted to make it a bit of a challenge, geared at us high-level types: see who can take being outnumbered so heavily, and see how many you can take down before you're finally stasis-locked. That might be interesting to see play out.

Sat Sep 19, 2020 2:33 pm

This one mission type is really a corner case where Avoid is actually useful to a high level character.

Because you're facing off against low level characters that still rely on weapon damage as their main mode of attack you can Avoid to further minimize the non-tactic damage you take.
Paired with the stun effect of Ram/Bite you can effectively lock down multiple opponents and take them out without taking too much damage.

In any other mission the xp dumped into Avoid typically wouldnt be worth it.

News Credits: 42 · Sat Sep 19, 2020 4:48 pm

I don't blame Darksabrz for wanting to win, he is a deception after all, we just gotta accept that when we do win the payout will be crap because its building better opponents for us.

I'm happy to let the lower levels leech off my L11, but I'm not going to make it easy for them. :twisted:

Sun Sep 20, 2020 6:31 am

KAMJIIN wrote:This mission is not about "winning", it's about high levels giving back by helping others level. Even if you "won" against 20 opponents, you still wouldn't get anything for it. They simply don't pay out enough at that level. Killing 20 level 3's would net you approximately 100k. Not a good return. Rather than reset guys in an attempt to beat the Kobayashi Maru, you'd be better served by spawning another mission and moving along.

mmmm hmmmm
return......meh
https://www.seibertron.com/heavymetalwa ... _id=365341

News Credits: 1 · Thu Oct 01, 2020 4:04 pm

Just want to say, I have yet to lose an Arisen 1v20 match, so I dunno what problems you were having as a con. I haven't switched from medics really either. I've even put in avoid/repair and no armor guys in.

Sat Oct 03, 2020 1:56 pm

So far as I can recall, I've only lost one mission, and that was against four level 4s specifically built for Ram/Bite tactic with high STR to back it up; one of them, I think, was one that Bun-Bun put together with STR 10/END 10/RNK 10/Bite 10 or something along those lines.

Otherwise, I'm consistently "winning" these fights myself. My record is five Autobots, but three of the five were level 3 and under, with only a pair of level 4s. Yes, the XP rewards are garbage -- I've found, however, that the energon gains from those wins are pretty decent. I thought Avoid/Strafe might be workable, and Eclipse does okay in these missions, but Barricade with his Avoid/Ram combo is just scary good.

News Credits: 1 · Mon Oct 05, 2020 2:41 pm

Or maybe the lower level bots are just superior to the lower level cons.

I wouldn't say the energon is good. I can make more from the two missions I could deploy in the time it takes for one of these to finish.