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I'm diamond and my friend is platinum.
Co-op missions are really fun and well-designed, except for one problem.
Hard is too easy, and Brutal is too hard. And by this I mean, we win Hard 100% of the time with no chance of failure, and we lose Brutal 100% of the time with no chance of success.
Probably we can have a chance at Brutal once we are both approaching or at Level 15, but that requires that we "grind" Hard for absolutely ages, which is no fun now we've completed all 5 levels 2 or 3 times each.
My suggestion is that more granular difficulties are introduced (maybe Casual, Normal, Hard, then Brutal T1-6 like in Diablo). It makes sense to have more levels of difficulty in co-op compared to the Campaign because it's not something most people would play just once or twice (like the Campaign), but to pick up on a regular basis with your friend.
For example in most missions, an "attack" comes after a couple of minutes. In hard, if the enemy is Protoss, 2 groups of 2 zealots come. In Brutal, it's 2 groups of 4 zealots and 2 stalkers each. There could easily be a middle ground where it's two groups of e.g. T1 = 3 zealots and T2 = 2 zealots + 1 stalker etc.
More actual co-op levels would also be helpful, but an "easy" buff to content would be more difficulty options for now to keep it interesting.
[edit - max level is 15, not 30]
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Some people say Brutal is too easy and beat it with like level 2-5 heroes and want it to be harder. I personally get crushed because I'm a terrible player, so stick to Normal mostly, though I will probably bump it to Hard at Hero levels 7-10 when I get more advantages.I hope they don't make Brutal tougher, but maybe give people some challenging maps that never end, constant onslaught that starts at Normal and ends up at Brutal x2-3+ difficulty by the 20 minute mark or something and gets harder and harder.
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The higher level your hero/commander is, Brutal gets easier and easier. It would be cool to see something like Insanity level for people who really find Brutal easy.
Maybe instead of making playing Hard a grind, would it help if there were a wider variety of missions so it doesn't feel as repetitive?
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most heroes gets "completly broken" around level 6-8, making brutal a lot more "doable". i personally find it easy once you're past the 6-7+ level mark, but before that it can be a challenge. Though, it also depends a lot on your partner and if he can actually do stuff t_t
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I wouldn't mind more difficulties. At max level brutal isn't challenging if both players know what they are doing.
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4713 Posts
Some commanders are really hard like Swann and Zagara, those I lose more often then I win with on Brutal. However with the rest I can win 75% of my games if my partners is good or 100% if I'm playing with a friend on skype. The difficulty of the co-op stuff is directly proportionate to your SC2 skill, if you're Plat/Dia or even Master then Brutal should be cakewalk.
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Does Hard/Brutal give more mission XP than Normal? I know they give more bonus xp, but I wonder if the mission xp is higher as well. Normal seems to cap out at about 32k, assuming random map and bonus objectives complete (the mission objective itself awards 20k).
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4713 Posts
Hard gives 50% more and Brutal 100% more then normal.
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So it is just the bonus that changes? When you complete a mission, you still only get 20k for the objective, but you get 50%/100% bonus instead of 20% like normal? Was just curious as to whether the main objective awarded more, but I guess not.
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brutal is too hard, because it's too hard.
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Russian Federation80 Posts
On November 14 2015 23:27 Haighstrom wrote:
I'm diamond and my friend is platinum.
Co-op missions are really fun and well-designed, except for one problem.
Hard is too easy, and Brutal is too hard. And by this I mean, we win Hard 100% of the time with no chance of failure, and we lose Brutal 100% of the time with no chance of success.
Probably we can have a chance at Brutal once we are both approaching or at Level 30, but that requires that we "grind" Hard for absolutely ages, which is no fun now we've completed all 5 levels 2 or 3 times each.
My suggestion is that more granular difficulties are introduced (maybe Casual, Normal, Hard, then Brutal T1-6 like in Diablo). It makes sense to have more levels of difficulty in co-op compared to the Campaign because it's not something most people would play just once or twice (like the Campaign), but to pick up on a regular basis with your friend.
For example in most missions, an "attack" comes after a couple of minutes. In hard, if the enemy is Protoss, 2 groups of 2 zealots come. In Brutal, it's 2 groups of 4 zealots and 2 stalkers each. There could easily be a middle ground where it's two groups of e.g. T1 = 3 zealots and T2 = 2 zealots + 1 stalker etc.
More actual co-op levels would also be helpful, but an "easy" buff to content would be more difficulty options for now to keep it interesting.
I don't know man, I played these coop missions with a buddy at levels 7 and 8 brutal and it didn't feel really difficult. Harder than hard(that is harder than stupidly easy), but nothing too hard. Beginning might be tricky at times, but some commander spells are rediculously strong.
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Russian Federation80 Posts
My only concern about them is that my fps sucks really much in coop missions unlike in 1v1 for example. Some campaign missions used to cause same fps drops for me too
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United Kingdom20278 Posts
On November 15 2015 04:01 wasilix wrote:
My only concern about them is that my fps sucks really much in coop missions unlike in 1v1 for example. Some campaign missions used to cause same fps drops for me too
They spend more time with a lot of units on the map. I've seen no notable performance change between co-op and 2v2 (or even 1v1) from the missions that i've played, but it's way easier to have 100-500 units on the map so it acts more like being maxed in 1v1 for long periods of time
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I really like co-op when my hero is lvl 1ish. I jumped right into brutal and I felt like the challenge was right where it should be. However after playing it a bit and shaking off some rust it got a bit too easy. Then my hero started leveling and I could beat it in my sleep T.T The rpg element is fun and the hero abilities are cool, but the mode should have higher difficulty levels. I'd like to keep playing it but leveling up makes me not want to because it gets too easy.
The mode has a lot of potential, especially for people that don't like laddering. It just doesn't have enough replayability right now. If they put more work into it in the future I could honestly see myself playing it all the time. It's also a good way for my friends who aren't as good/competitive to stay interested in SC2 after the campaign. It also is a good tool for lower level players to learn how to play since you have to macro and stay on top of your stuff without having to worry about cheese and other frustrating things that come into play when you play against real people.
TL;DR--> I really really hope they flesh this mode out. It could be really fun and is better than the campaign for teaching people how to actually play, while taking out the things that frustrate new players on the ladder.
Also, Vorazun....play her if you are having trouble 
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I do agree it would be cool if they generally fleshed the mode out with more difficulty levels on all sides. More spectrum between hard and brutal and more difficulty above brutal. I imagine they will of course in addition to adding more commanders and missions. Blizzard has usually been very good about post-launch support for their games
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I started with Hard and thought I accidentally picked casual. Then I tried Brutal and it was waaaaaaaay harder but still not hard. The missions in general are very boring and there aren't even many of them. I guess the goal is to get to the max level with the commanders but that is going to be so tedious.
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On November 14 2015 23:27 Haighstrom wrote:once we are both approaching or at Level 30
what is the max level? I can only see level up rewards up to level 15 so I had gotten the impression that 15 was the maximum.
if 15 isn't the maximum, are there any rewards for continuing play?
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I'd say, if you're diamond/plat and are losing to Brutal, then mad props to Blizzard, a job well done ;D
Brutal is not there to be completed by everyone. Now if you're complaining about the difficulty gap specifically, I don't see what's wrong either. Just get better little by little and do better every time in Brutal mode, even if you lose. Starcraft is a game for people who don't mind losing ;D.
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the gap between hard and brutal is indeed very hard ...
But imo not every commander can do every mission as easy (and it also depends on the race the enemy has, since T Z or P is also randomed) and not every commander is a good fit for another :-)
I did a brutal one on lvl 2 with a friend (both master level) but when i find a random ally we get crushed like hell on brutal (eventho my commander is lvl 11 as of writing).
On hard i can do nearly every mission alone, no matter what my ally commander does
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On November 15 2015 06:35 Roblin wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2015 23:27 Haighstrom wrote:once we are both approaching or at Level 30 what is the max level? I can only see level up rewards up to level 15 so I had gotten the impression that 15 was the maximum. if 15 isn't the maximum, are there any rewards for continuing play?
I think he means their combined level is 30. I'm at level 15 with Raynor, and it says I'm maxed out.
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Has anyone noticed any differences in the AI between difficulty settings? I remember in WoL campaign at least, the AI got a lot smarter on harder difficulties -- things like targeting your medics to prevent you from healing and such. But on Brutal, the AI still does weird stuff like running back and forth on your ramp if it's attacking into a wall-off, or insisting on killing empty bunkers while your army shoots at it.
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Ah, it's only the first attack that's difficult on Brutal (I'm Kerrigan so I was just droning and getting killed by +1/+1 units). I've beaten them all now - I just run a couple lings around to make the enemy waste time until she spawns and then the rest is easy. Also my friend is playing Zagara so he started making an early baneling nest which spawns free banelings, = gg first attack.
So I still stick by my point, though, which is more variety in difficulty would be good!
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
I steamrolled through Brutal several times, then got the OP combo Artanis/Vorazun on a map I consider easy (the train one). Halfway through the game I hear "Nuclear launch detected" three times in a row, check my army frantically for the red dot, the next moment we don't have our main bases anymore. =) Vorazun had her voidray fleet snipe the last train moments before our bases were overrun. Good job Blizzard I say =)
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Tried Hard for the first time, won one, lost horrible on the other. The shuttle mission wasn't as tough as the void guys since I could build 15+ turrets in each of the entrance and even if my army gets wrecked, so do the shuttles. Having to move out without static defense advantage though was tough. MMM did not fare too well against the unseen enemy that I only noticed as I was failing the mission: Lurkers. I set my spawn in a spot that had lurkers so as they arrived, they insta died and I would go back and just see no army and had no clue what was happening. The xp different between Normal and Hard is about 6k more, or 15k less if you lose. For someone having trouble with hard, seems that Normal is just far more efficient, especially on maps where you can rush the objectives and clear everything in under 20 minutes (vs 30 minute 'base defense' map).
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Funny, I was thinking brutal was too easy. Was playing friend a friend, Zag/Swann combo. We were basically AFKing every mission.
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I want to see some videos of people afking through brutal with leviathans, behemoth hybrids, ultras, broodlords carriers, ghosts, etc. coming to crush your souls. I would love to see it in action to learn from the compositions, builds, etc. how to afk my way to 150 wins. I must be real terrible to find Hard somewhat of challenge if people are soloing/afking through brutal. I want to get one of you as my partner to carry me through 150 games.
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Considering how huge the power gap is between a low level hero and a L15 hero, there really needs to be more gradations of Brutal.
Brutal 1 - Brutal 6 like Diablo 3 would be a good start.
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For those of you complaining that Brutal is to easy... Coop mode was not made for you. It was made to get casuals into the game.
That said, Blizz could do some tweaking to the difficulty levels. I liked the idea of Brutal ramping up in difficulty based on the level total of the two participants.
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On November 15 2015 14:19 ElMeanYo wrote:
For those of you complaining that Brutal is to easy... Coop mode was not made for you. It was made to get casuals into the game.
That said, Blizz could do some tweaking to the difficulty levels. I liked the idea of Brutal ramping up in difficulty based on the level total of the two participants.
this is how it should be on any difficulty level, otherwise the missions get objectively easier the more you play them, which is completely counterintuitive.
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On November 15 2015 14:32 -NegativeZero- wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2015 14:19 ElMeanYo wrote:
For those of you complaining that Brutal is to easy... Coop mode was not made for you. It was made to get casuals into the game.
That said, Blizz could do some tweaking to the difficulty levels. I liked the idea of Brutal ramping up in difficulty based on the level total of the two participants. this is how it should be on any difficulty level, otherwise the missions get objectively easier the more you play them, which is completely counterintuitive.
I would like to see them implement scaling in co-op and versus AI, but I can always see the complaints either way. If you make them scale, people would still complain that they don't feel rewarded for leveling up and that it's stupid how you can beat the hardest difficulty at level 1 (plenty of people complain about scaling in RPG's for example).
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brutal 1-6 sounds good, but comes with the usual match-making problem when you make a lot of options for auto-match play: you split up the brutal players into 6 different subsets, which will drastically increase queue times.
There may be ways around it, like matching a B3 with a B5 and let them play on B4, but not sure it is ideal to set players on a different difficulty than they asked for.
But yeah, it'd be nice otherwise.
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initially I thought I heard my friend say that the missions were randomly (procedurally) generated, which I thought was great and fun. was really excited hearing that. we started on brutal, on the defense map, got wrecked, switched down to hard after a few tries.
now that I find the maps play out in similar ways, I have to focus on how i'll get my friend to practice his builds and general gameplay stuff to get him into archon and eventually the solo multiplayer.
one thing I notice is that terran is more difficult than the rest, being that the ravens cast auto-turrets (which last forever) and they re-fortify with siege tanks. when I play the co-op missions btw, I almost always aim to grab the extra base on the map that you can opt to push to. it's just an extra objective I set for myself.
I don't think it's a bad game mode at all, it's pretty fun for someone who just like to build stuff, and doesn't get bored easily like me. however, there was a lot of potential here to make it a really fun extra mode to really get different types of gamers into this--the types that don't necessarily think they like playing sc2 themselves. as it is, it's a small way for me to get my friends into things, and even they notice that it'll get stale after a while. the main pull is that your hero gets more cool stuff as it levels up, and you get to play with your friend.
if maps were somehow randomly (within reason of course) generated prior to loading in, provided different bonuses for various challenges you can set, or depending on the difficulty you roll, and provided the little mini-game distraction that this mode was created to offer, I would love to have this game mode stay and I'm sure my friends would love to make it a new sort of hobby. another idea I had was that gaining levels or completing enough missions would contribute to your overall level which in turn would unlock cool building and unit skins for yourself. that was the hope I eventually had for an RTS like starcraft. it's something that's also fairly easy to play around, you'd just add an option to disable viewing skins. I also love that dota 2 has a feature where you can globally watch games and spectate with other people the same way. alas, that's not how it works and it's very difficult to have a feature like that.
we all realize it's a distant dream, and it's better to just enjoy it how it is now.
being disappointed in something like this only affects your overall drive to play the one true game mode that matters in sc2--the versus multiplayer.
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brutal is supposed to be a challenge. though with zagara I did beat many stages on low level. (i'm master too.) now level 10 I only lose on that map where you have to defend the temple, which zagara is not the best commander there.
once you have that birthing chamber upgrade for you baneling nest, you can use my BO to defend the first push with ease:
11 gas
12 pool
14 bane nest
overlord
2nd gas
bane speed upgrade
4 banes with speed will be ready before the first attack wave comes. If you use burrow, the AI will dodge your burrowed banes without having any detection. and since it takes time to unburrow, rather don't use it at all (at least in this first fight).
except for some reason you want to buy time, then burrow them in a line so the enemy won't go up the ramp. (worked for me on shuttle map and on temple map.)
don't build banes yourself, rather mass aberrations + queens to heal them
scourges are insanely good on the shuttle map
another mentionable combo is vorazun's vortex + zagara's baneling ability (or real banes)
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On November 15 2015 19:26 AsAr wrote:
brutal is supposed to be a challenge. though with zagara I did beat many stages on low level. (i'm master too.) now level 10 I only lose on that map where you have to defend the temple, which zagara is not the best commander there.
once you have that birthing chamber upgrade for you baneling nest, you can use my BO to defend the first push with ease:
11 gas
12 pool
14 bane nest
overlord
2nd gas
bane speed upgrade
4 banes with speed will be ready before the first attack wave comes. If you use burrow, the AI will dodge your burrowed banes without having any detection. and since it takes time to unburrow, rather don't use it at all (at least in this first fight).
except for some reason you want to buy time, then burrow them in a line so the enemy won't go up the ramp. (worked for me on shuttle map and on temple map.)
don't build banes yourself, rather mass aberrations + queens to heal them
scourges are insanely good on the shuttle map
another mentionable combo is vorazun's vortex + zagara's baneling ability (or real banes)
There's also artanis(guardian shell, shield overcharge) + zagara with fully upgraded lings. You will kill just about anything in the 5+s before lings get blown up, send the survivors into the next objective, and then remax depending on what you need. the shield overcharge is just gravy. 2 ways to make lings effectively unkillable, and in that window they kill EVERYTHING in seconds. 3/3 ultra? NP, dead in 2 secs. Hybrid? Dead in 5-6.
Getting all the essential upgrades before going brutal is pretty damn important though. Going in at level 2/3(According to the ranking system I'm bronze ;D), I lost my first couple, and now that I have level 10+ on 2 heroes, I can easily succeed, even if my ally may be bad.
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With the exception of the defend the temple mission, brutal is easy and can be easily beaten with level 7 heroes.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
On November 15 2015 20:27 paralleluniverse wrote:
With the exception of the defend the temple mission, brutal is easy and can be easily beaten with level 7 heroes.
Well, I just beat a brutal korhal mission randomly paired with a level 1 Vorazun.
On the other hand, as Artanis I struggle with the shuttle mission since goon/reaver doesn't work there.
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On November 15 2015 11:48 DrSeRRoD wrote:I want to see some videos of people afking through brutal with leviathans, behemoth hybrids, ultras, broodlords carriers, ghosts, etc. coming to crush your souls. I would love to see it in action to learn from the compositions, builds, etc. how to afk my way to 150 wins. I must be real terrible to find Hard somewhat of challenge if people are soloing/afking through brutal. I want to get one of you as my partner to carry me through 150 games.
You've clearly never used scourge if you think any air unit is a problem. Any heavy air comp is a joke to zagara.
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On November 15 2015 21:48 BluzMan wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2015 20:27 paralleluniverse wrote:
With the exception of the defend the temple mission, brutal is easy and can be easily beaten with level 7 heroes. Well, I just beat a brutal korhal mission randomly paired with a level 1 Vorazun. On the other hand, as Artanis I struggle with the shuttle mission since goon/reaver doesn't work there.
Mass Phoenix is pretty good on the shuttle map. You just need your ally to deal with ground forces (I was playing Swann and going mass tank with my friend Artanis) because you can't lift hybrids.
On November 15 2015 02:19 Destructicon wrote:
Some commanders are really hard like Swann and Zagara, those I lose more often then I win with on Brutal. However with the rest I can win 75% of my games if my partners is good or 100% if I'm playing with a friend on skype. The difficulty of the co-op stuff is directly proportionate to your SC2 skill, if you're Plat/Dia or even Master then Brutal should be cakewalk.
For Swann you need to reach critical mass with your mech army such that you aren't losing units every fight. Essentially you either have the mass to steamroll through everything or you're constantly losing units and never reaching critical mass. Also upgrade the laser drill asap; that thing is amazing.
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The heroes get so incredibly strong that I hope they add on more difficulties. The only thing that can act as a layer between the difficulties is doing/not doing the bonus objectives.
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On November 16 2015 01:58 ejozl wrote:
The heroes get so incredibly strong that I hope they add on more difficulties. The only thing that can act as a layer between the difficulties is doing/not doing the bonus objectives.
The bonus objective is only hard on the shuttle level. On all the others you can just do it whenever you aren't being attacked and it is a joke.
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Brutal is a joke if you have two decent players. It's a shame really, I can see this being fun with a ton higher difficulty. Right now it's even easy if you ignore the hero powers on most maps.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
On November 16 2015 01:24 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2015 21:48 BluzMan wrote:On November 15 2015 20:27 paralleluniverse wrote:
With the exception of the defend the temple mission, brutal is easy and can be easily beaten with level 7 heroes. Well, I just beat a brutal korhal mission randomly paired with a level 1 Vorazun. On the other hand, as Artanis I struggle with the shuttle mission since goon/reaver doesn't work there. Mass Phoenix is pretty good on the shuttle map. You just need your ally to deal with ground forces (I was playing Swann and going mass tank with my friend Artanis) because you can't lift hybrids. Show nested quote +On November 15 2015 02:19 Destructicon wrote:
Some commanders are really hard like Swann and Zagara, those I lose more often then I win with on Brutal. However with the rest I can win 75% of my games if my partners is good or 100% if I'm playing with a friend on skype. The difficulty of the co-op stuff is directly proportionate to your SC2 skill, if you're Plat/Dia or even Master then Brutal should be cakewalk. For Swann you need to reach critical mass with your mech army such that you aren't losing units every fight. Essentially you either have the mass to steamroll through everything or you're constantly losing units and never reaching critical mass. Also upgrade the laser drill asap; that thing is amazing.
I do mass phoenix there but with goon/reaver I can literally win 1v2 and straying away from that kinda makes me overly dependent on my teammate. Wouldn't be a problem with a friend, but I often play with random dudes.
Overall, the concept and hero evolution is very well-done, but the missions aren't.
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4713 Posts
I think the missions are fine given that they are Blizzard's first attempt, and its obviously impossible to nail every single aspect in the first go, including difficulty scaling. In the future they could/should implement more maps and difficulty scaling such that brutal maybe requires a max or near max level commander.
However there is a risk with this as well, the more difficult you make a map the more specialized your strategy must be to it and thus the more likely you can run into some balance problems if not all the commanders are well tuned.
Overall though, great job and tons of space to improve.
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On November 16 2015 07:35 Destructicon wrote:
I think the missions are fine given that they are Blizzard's first attempt, and its obviously impossible to nail every single aspect in the first go, including difficulty scaling. In the future they could/should implement more maps and difficulty scaling such that brutal maybe requires a max or near max level commander.
However there is a risk with this as well, the more difficult you make a map the more specialized your strategy must be to it and thus the more likely you can run into some balance problems if not all the commanders are well tuned.
Overall though, great job and tons of space to improve.
It's a good point with narrowing down viable strategies.
You may get levels where you have to exploit silly AI glitches to make it, like kite lings around your base for minutes while building up and that kind of things. Strategies that would never work on a human, that many players would feel a bit silly to resort to. So if you make maps that are just barely beatable for a top level player with "proper" play, you are very likely to have people find glitches that makes the same level easy even for lower level players if they know the glitches to exploit.
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For Hard/Brutal, are you guys doing the '2 workers per mineral patch' saturation or are you using the recommended numbers on the buildings, which is three? I wonder if I am making too few workers or spending time making too many to have the most efficient gameplay. I've switched from 3 to 2 now so I get an army a bit earlier, but I play vs Normal so it doesn't make much of a difference since the first attack doesn't come until your cooldowns are ready.
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4713 Posts
On November 17 2015 00:17 DrSeRRoD wrote:
For Hard/Brutal, are you guys doing the '2 workers per mineral patch' saturation or are you using the recommended numbers on the buildings, which is three? I wonder if I am making too few workers or spending time making too many to have the most efficient gameplay. I've switched from 3 to 2 now so I get an army a bit earlier, but I play vs Normal so it doesn't make much of a difference since the first attack doesn't come until your cooldowns are ready.
It depends on commander really. For Raynor I go with 2 per mineral patch because his mules are so good, and I also add more CCs later for the option to sac SCVs if I so chose. However for Swann I feel like you have to go 3 SCV/mineral patch, otherwise you just can't keep up with the high gas income. I also feel that most commanders apart from Raynor sort of have to go 3 workers on minerals if they have a Swann on their team due to the higher then usual gas income. Or you could just build more gas dump units like banelings or high templar.
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On November 15 2015 01:11 DrSeRRoD wrote:
Some people say Brutal is too easy and beat it with like level 2-5 heroes and want it to be harder. I personally get crushed because I'm a terrible player, so stick to Normal mostly, though I will probably bump it to Hard at Hero levels 7-10 when I get more advantages.I hope they don't make Brutal tougher, but maybe give people some challenging maps that never end, constant onslaught that starts at Normal and ends up at Brutal x2-3+ difficulty by the 20 minute mark or something and gets harder and harder.
I win any attack-based scenario on brutal quite easily, but lose the defense scenarios pretty hard, and I only just recently got my two Protoss heroes to level 5. The difficulty has its ups and downs, and it definitely changes depending on your heroes and the opposing race. Having Zerg as your ally kind of sucks, and Terrans are a brutal enemy to face.
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would love if they make gamespeed a mod option. But I so love that you can stack injects as Zerg. Micro ! inject in your free time. Just like Mules.
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Honestly. Brutal is too easy. 
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On November 17 2015 02:21 loft wrote:Honestly. Brutal is too easy.
Yea, for 2 decent players it may be. It wasn't meant to defeat good players, they find that already on ladder. It's more about fun with a friend or random partner and I'd guess that for the majority of us, it is pretty brutal. They should come out with two maps for people that find brutal too easy: 1) 'how long can you last' defense mission that never ends until you die and 2) 'how fast can you finish' build and attack missions that require you to complete an objective or wipe out all enemy structures to win. Give them leaderboards and let the strong players go crazy crushing those while the not-so-good players can push through the others.
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On November 17 2015 01:59 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2015 01:11 DrSeRRoD wrote:
Some people say Brutal is too easy and beat it with like level 2-5 heroes and want it to be harder. I personally get crushed because I'm a terrible player, so stick to Normal mostly, though I will probably bump it to Hard at Hero levels 7-10 when I get more advantages.I hope they don't make Brutal tougher, but maybe give people some challenging maps that never end, constant onslaught that starts at Normal and ends up at Brutal x2-3+ difficulty by the 20 minute mark or something and gets harder and harder. I win any attack-based scenario on brutal quite easily, but lose the defense scenarios pretty hard, and I only just recently got my two Protoss heroes to level 5. The difficulty has its ups and downs, and it definitely changes depending on your heroes and the opposing race. Having Zerg as your ally kind of sucks, and Terrans are a brutal enemy to face.
You just have to play through the temple mission a few times so you know what is coming. Knowing when to split and where your army needs to be for the units spawning inside your base makes the mission a lot easier. If your zerg ally is Kerrigan then set up some lurkers (8-10 lurkers can hold all the small raiding parties from the southwest spawn by themselves). Use the rest of the army to deal with the other spawns. I haven't played any Zagara so not sure on that one.
The shuttle mission becomes a lot easier if you control the chokepoints to the enemies base (this will prevent a lot of the two pronged attacks). You can kill the units as they spawn in and have vision to use hero abilities that do AoE if you're going to get overwhelmed. As protoss I like mass phoenix (artanis) or voidrays (z..?) on this mission. It also helps to play this mission a few times because there are points when you need to split armies (like the first shuttle spawn will also send an attack to the right player's natural expo). Knowing this and pre-splitting makes the mission a lot easier.
On November 17 2015 00:17 DrSeRRoD wrote:
For Hard/Brutal, are you guys doing the '2 workers per mineral patch' saturation or are you using the recommended numbers on the buildings, which is three? I wonder if I am making too few workers or spending time making too many to have the most efficient gameplay. I've switched from 3 to 2 now so I get an army a bit earlier, but I play vs Normal so it doesn't make much of a difference since the first attack doesn't come until your cooldowns are ready.
I always do 3 per mineral patch. If you're at 200/200 you melt everything anyway so you don't need the additional army supply.
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A couple things I'd like to see to increase difficulty on Brutal just a bit without radically changing everything:
-The enemies don't tend to use a whole lot of AoE spells, which is why strategies like mass Wraiths or mass Void Rays work. When they do use Psi Storm or Fungal, they seem to prioritize things like marines instead of big stacks of air units. With a bit smarter AI, players going for mass void ray or mass wraith would at least have to try to keep an eye out lest they lose their whole army to a big fungal or something.
-Amon has some pretty dumb AI sometimes. Some of this is probably unavoidable, like dancing in and out of a Dark Pylon's radius to make the enemy's troops stay in one place while you shoot them. But other parts, like how they like attacking enemy bunkers during battle or how they like charging straight to your CC or Hatchery or Nexus without killing stuff in between, could probably be adjusted.
-Even when the enemy has detection, they'll still run right onto spider mines. The only time I've seen them kill spider mines without taking massive damage is when there's a big air contingent with detection that flew in advance of the ground army. With something like Zerglings or Roaches, that makes sense, but with stalkers, hydras, and tanks, they really oughta be able to see that and attack it from out of range. I don't know if the radius on spider mines is too big, or if that scan radius fix never got applied to the AI or something, but this seems very fixable.
A lot of these more abusive strategies could probably be addressed, thus making it harder for really good players without much impacting the experience for less skilled players who probably weren't using those abusive strategies anyway.
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One mission which I would love to see added at a later point is a mission where your hero gradually weakens as you play. For instance, you loose one level per minute of playtime and the mission would be to survive for as long as possible. I see a lot of comments that heros get too strong when they level up, and this mechanic could provide a decent challenge, even for those that find regular brutal too easy.
LotV campaign spoiler:
+ Show Spoiler +The mechanic would be very similar to mission 19 "Salvation" in the campaign, where you start off with the Spear of Adun, but gradually loose your powers one by one during the mission.
Another option would be to measure success not only in win/loose, but somehow distinguish "great success" from "barely survived". Say you had a survival map and the waves grew progressively harder without end. One might do this by pitching hybrids that get +1 armour, +10 dmg and +100 health for each wave, and by surviving for X minutes, you get some reward or highscore reflecting your great success. This could also be a way of challenging people that find brutal too easy.
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I did burtal from lvl 1 with Artanis. Had to figure out the best BOs and how co-op worked but it was fun. Lost like maybe 3 maps total to level 15.
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I really like your idea.
The diablo torments made a lot of sense, just increase difficulty like that, Brutal torment 1 - 6 or more.
Brutal is tough imo, but once you start leveling the heros, not so much. Raynor is stupidly powerful even at level 10. I like how the heroes level, just make and add harder difficulties.
I think there should be a huge range of difficultly in games.
For example, in ninja gaiden black for xbox, there was a difficulty so high that only one person amongst the development team had beaten it. That's fucking difficult! I'm tired of too easy games for nubs!
Make the nub level, but ffs make the MASTER NINJA level as well!
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On November 16 2015 04:48 flipstar wrote:
Brutal is a joke if you have two decent players. It's a shame really, I can see this being fun with a ton higher difficulty. Right now it's even easy if you ignore the hero powers on most maps.
You don't even need a good ally :D
I just solo'ed a brutal map since my ally left in the first second .. And i even played the "support" artanis!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/B8DRBaL.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0s4pwRZ.jpg)
(exp is proof it was on brutal ..)
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United Kingdom20278 Posts
Hard is too easy, and Brutal is too hard. And by this I mean, we win Hard 100% of the time with no chance of failure, and we lose Brutal 100% of the time with no chance of success.
I think part of this issue is how black and white the difficulty is. I've only had two things happen with Brutal myself:
#1 - absolutely crushing defeat with no chance of coming back
#2 - winning fairly easily, losing few if any units and taking bonus objectives
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its pretty easy to solo on 15. The thing is, without open ended missions - you can actually optimise a certain build order for every map
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On December 01 2015 09:16 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +Hard is too easy, and Brutal is too hard. And by this I mean, we win Hard 100% of the time with no chance of failure, and we lose Brutal 100% of the time with no chance of success. I think part of this issue is how black and white the difficulty is. I've only had two things happen with Brutal myself: #1 - absolutely crushing defeat with no chance of coming back #2 - winning fairly easily, losing few if any units and taking bonus objectives
I won a game on the Temple map on brutal where the temple had 6 hp remaining, it was about as close as it gets, anything farts on the temple and we would have lost. I actually really enjoyed that game compared to the one sided games.
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Me and a buddy did brutal from lvl 1. Definately doable.
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It is still campaign style design. And you basically are restricted to using your abusive units and abilities. I am sure we soon will have the ability to set an handicap.
Right now though they are working on the Nova campaign, so I wouldn't expect many changes towards the free content of Sc2.
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If you have regular people playing with you, then no complaints one way or the other.
However, since the co-op missions take quite some time to load, every time I fire up up brutal and meet a random level 1, or when I'm already about to make units and my ally still hasn't made his first worker, I can't help but rage a little. Since I'm not Vorazun most of the time, I can't solo brutal.
So yes, adding more difficulty tiers would be enormously helpful.
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honestly i don't think brutal is that difficult, and i'm platinum / gold. at least, the difference between the two is reasonable. you just have to macro, make the correct units for the race of ai you are playing, and not lose your army. i only lose brutal when my teammate doesn't lift their share. also, it helps to not play a low-level character unless you're a macro / micro god lol. level your character up in hard, then move on to brutal. know how and when to use your character's abilities. lastly, splash damage for the win.
ezpz.
On December 01 2015 17:57 EngrishTeacher wrote:
However, since the co-op missions take quite some time to load...
that's odd, every time i want to play a co-op mission, no matter the difficulty, a game is ready within ten seconds. i play only random missions, so maybe that helps? or do you mean the map itself takes a long time to load? sometimes it can take a minute, but it usually loads pretty fast as well.
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Vorazun can solo brutal offense maps from lvl 3. With a below average ally, she can easily win any map on brutal.
Mass void rays, 1-2 oracle for detection and several corsairs just in case. Corsairs is not a must actually but makes your life easier.
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Brutal should be hard. Brutal, in fact.
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I have only played hard missions so far and they were fairly easy. I am kinda scared to load a brutal map since I don't wanna let my teammate down and im horrible at sc2 :D.
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United Kingdom20278 Posts
Vorazun can solo brutal offense maps from lvl 3. With a below average ally, she can easily win any map on brutal.
How would you play out the first ~30% of the temple defense mission when semi-soloing it at low level? I've beat it, but only with my high masters friend.
I'm not actually low level any more and my friend who is ~gold level has lvl 15 artanis, but i'm curious. More levels should just make it easier. At the moment i'm just opening something like pylon-gate-gas-gas-core-gas-gas, elite DT on the first wave but that opening only has two void rays to meet the second wave and dies horribly, IIRC
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On December 02 2015 03:30 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +Vorazun can solo brutal offense maps from lvl 3. With a below average ally, she can easily win any map on brutal. How would you play out the first ~30% of the temple defense mission when semi-soloing it at low level? I've beat it, but only with my high masters friend. I'm not actually low level any more and my friend who is ~gold level has lvl 15 artanis, but i'm curious. More levels should just make it easier. At the moment i'm just opening something like pylon-gate-gas-gas-core-gas-gas, elite DT on the first wave but that opening only has two void rays to meet the second wave and dies horribly, IIRC
If you want to solo the second wave, dts or dark archons are the way to go. Voidrays require critical mass, 2 voidrays won't kill things fast enough for the second wave. My build for Vorazun is gate -> gas x4, core -> forge -> nexus -> twilight -> dark shrine + 2nd gate, pylons when needed.
Different maps have different first wave timings, the train one comes especially late, so you may not want to drop the dts at exact 50 energy. Wait for the first wave red dot appears, you have plenty of time to kill the rock, possibly even your partners if they are close, then clear the first wave.
Make sure you have no delays at all on your tech buildings, cut probes if need be, you will be mineral starved in the beginning, skip the forge if you have trouble hitting the timing, but with the above build, you should be able to squeeze out 2 dts and 2 dark archons by wave two, Confuse causes enemies to attack themselves, dts go to work, use the blackhole ability if you must but save it if you can for wave 3. Dark archons provide lots of value over the course of the game if you research mind control, grab all the immortals/thors/carriers/battle crusiers/broodlords that you encounter .
I like to go dt/corsairs, zealots for mineral dump, you get bonus damage for invisible units (lvl15) and they respawn if I remember correctly. Fleet becon has the upgrade to permanently cloak corsairs so your whole army is invisible. With enough dts you will one shot everything on the ground and disruption web from corsairs disables entire enemy forces. Blackhole spell is also very OP on big waves.
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United Kingdom20278 Posts
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Brutal is fine. You just need your heroes higher lvl
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Some heroes are just too good. Vorazun is bonkers - played on brutal from level 2 with randoms - didn't lose once (optimize build to rush for dt ninja skill, after that is researched - everything stays permadead). Artanis is also good, initial orbital strike clears out first wave and after that you get plenty of options for anything (immortals on train map evaporate trains).
But now I'm playing Swann and losing 40% of my games. Kinda fun!
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On December 02 2015 17:29 DuckyTheDuck wrote:
Some heroes are just too good. Vorazun is bonkers - played on brutal from level 2 with randoms - didn't lose once (optimize build to rush for dt ninja skill, after that is researched - everything stays permadead). Artanis is also good, initial orbital strike clears out first wave and after that you get plenty of options for anything (immortals on train map evaporate trains).
But now I'm playing Swann and losing 40% of my games. Kinda fun!
Vorazun is bonkers indeed =)
for the rest i have different feelings ^^ I had to play artanis on hard for a while (i'm not used to protoss) before i could go brutal with him ...
But with swann i went brutal from lvl 3 i think and won 100% my games, at lvl 10+ i even solo'ed brutal with him a few times no matter what my ally did =) Then again, i'm used to playing mech terran ^^
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It's usually a pretty good idea to take the gasses of your teammates natural early on with vorazun. You can just kill them after killing a wave with your DTs or your mates hero skill.
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Russian Federation50 Posts
I haven't noticed that much difference really. I think the gap between terran and zerg enemy, and between attack and holdout maps is far greater.
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I dont really find the topic the case. My brother who only plays LoL, has 0% experience with SC2 or RTS's, was able to hang with me on Brutal missions after 3ish games of coaching (first 2 were just explaining how to control units/make stuff). Once he got production down, he got by with marines+medics and eventually branched out with experimenting with adding more units as support to a marine+medic core army and we were going through the brutal missions with really no problem. I was the protoss guy that has the passive that makes all units about to die go invincible for a bit fwiw.
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On December 02 2015 23:50 Toudeleski wrote:
I dont really find the topic the case. My brother who only plays LoL, has 0% experience with SC2 or RTS's, was able to hang with me on Brutal missions after 3ish games of coaching (first 2 were just explaining how to control units/make stuff). Once he got production down, he got by with marines+medics and eventually branched out with experimenting with adding more units as support to a marine+medic core army and we were going through the brutal missions with really no problem. I was the protoss guy that has the passive that makes all units about to die go invincible for a bit fwiw.
So basically u either played coop mission alone or ur brother learned how to macro properly "after 3ish games"? Did u guys have high Hero lvls? Brutal is definitly doable if u know what u are doing.
Not sure what to think about ur post.
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United Kingdom20278 Posts
Some heroes are just too good. Vorazun is bonkers - played on brutal from level 2 with randoms - didn't lose once (optimize build to rush for dt ninja skill, after that is researched - everything stays permadead)
Vorazun is very good in the first 20% of the mission and that's where pretty much everything is decided right now (just a matter of starting to snowball out of control)
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the biggest problem i have with the coop missions is the speed. i would like to play a little bit with my brother, but he would go crazy if i play on brutal with him. but i can´t play on a lower speed than the normal mulitiplayer speed. and also the hotkeys, wtf why can´t i use my hotkey setup i´am used when i play zerg <_<...
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Brutal is way too easy, it should be super difficult and only really doable by skilled people with high-level commanders. I've played them all on brutal starting lvl 1, never lost once and now have no inclination whatsoever to play Allied Commanders again because its not challenging
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I feel like its not the difficulty per se: it's the levels. Like, in brutal, the attack waves are so choreographed and easy to prepare for. If the enemy was constantly pushing into you on brutal with no warnings at all that would be great. Like, imagine if the enemy started to scatter outposts with tanks, cannons or lurkers all over the areas of the map you don't own.
But yeah, I think there should bev5 difficulties with the hardest being insanity: constant waves on enemies from all directions with no warning, and they would try to reclaim areas of the map you aren't occupying.
A cool idea for a level would be maybe:
+ Show Spoiler +escorting civilians to an evac ship
Something like the first level of into the void except from all direction with the enemy spawns and the void gas
The rak'shir
Some sort of level where there are 5 cannons/generators around your base and you have to protect them, and if one dies you have to escort some robot to it to repair it. It could be purifier based on endion
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Brutal is easy if you know "how to" beat it.
I played on brutal and won most of the times (lost 3 won 12) so Id say the difficulty is ok.
I usually play with marine/medic or tank turret (on maps where mobility is not a requirement) and I find it to be relatively easy.
I think the WoL campaign on brutal was harder in some cases than co-op missions.
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Been playing this for a while now. The missions are pretty okay despite their simplicity, but right now I'm sick of playing the same scenarios over and over. It should be a easy task to implement a couple more of these missions. Preferably some harder ones as well, and introduce some new hero levels. Right now there's absolutely no point in playing with a level 15 character even on brutal, it's too trivial to be fun in itself.
I'd like to see a level where you have to defend a point like Temple of the past, but a huge map with lots of bonus objects as well, so that you have to be smart about it.
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On December 06 2015 07:04 cheekymonkey wrote:
Been playing this for a while now. The missions are pretty okay despite their simplicity, but right now I'm sick of playing the same scenarios over and over. It should be a easy task to implement a couple more of these missions. Preferably some harder ones as well, and introduce some new hero levels. Right now there's absolutely no point in playing with a level 15 character even on brutal, it's too trivial to be fun in itself.
I'd like to see a level where you have to defend a point like Temple of the past, but a huge map with lots of bonus objects as well, so that you have to be smart about it.
They should have a chat with the diablo team and make endless dungeons. it's trivial to make that defensively, just have the enemy pour on more and more units until you die (randomised though!), then have a leader board or something. Attacking missions may be harder to make, but you can still randomise objectives you need to take, and then reset a countdown timer for each mission, giving you another X minutes to grab the next objective.
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Any reason why co-op missions are on fast and not faster? This really bothers me.
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On December 06 2015 12:23 SiaBBo wrote:
Any reason why co-op missions are on fast and not faster? This really bothers me.
I think brutal is on faster. So it's like the campaign speeds.
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IMO 15 should be a soft cap. Like make it 1,000,000 XP or something from 15 to 16, and then scale it up from there.
On December 06 2015 07:04 cheekymonkey wrote:
Been playing this for a while now. The missions are pretty okay despite their simplicity, but right now I'm sick of playing the same scenarios over and over. It should be a easy task to implement a couple more of these missions. Preferably some harder ones as well, and introduce some new hero levels. Right now there's absolutely no point in playing with a level 15 character even on brutal, it's too trivial to be fun in itself.
I'd like to see a level where you have to defend a point like Temple of the past, but a huge map with lots of bonus objects as well, so that you have to be smart about it.
I'd like some defense missions too!
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On December 06 2015 12:51 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:IMO 15 should be a soft cap. Like make it 1,000,000 XP or something from 15 to 16, and then scale it up from there. Show nested quote +On December 06 2015 07:04 cheekymonkey wrote:
Been playing this for a while now. The missions are pretty okay despite their simplicity, but right now I'm sick of playing the same scenarios over and over. It should be a easy task to implement a couple more of these missions. Preferably some harder ones as well, and introduce some new hero levels. Right now there's absolutely no point in playing with a level 15 character even on brutal, it's too trivial to be fun in itself.
I'd like to see a level where you have to defend a point like Temple of the past, but a huge map with lots of bonus objects as well, so that you have to be smart about it. I'd like some defense missions too!
I'm honestly surprised there isn't a "defend a moving target as it travels through the entire map" mission.
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EPT
