Yeah I usually play Advanced, wiped like a dozen times, had 3 critical injuries before I bailed. I found it a bit of a challenge on Normal even (5 minutes to kill the bosses).. all for a Pattern Enhancer? What does that do anyway

Then I did some dailies on normal and thought, boy that is much easier than Advanced, and the loot sucks as always, so I have to agree, the loot system needs improvement. I'm also pretty disappointed there's been no new types of weapons for space since hitting VA. I'd like to see some more variations within each type of weapon.. trade-offs (more punch, shoots slower, same type of energy though), or combo weapons maybe, whatever, something different.

Last thing to say in this rant.. I do love that haunted space station, it has it all. Mail, Auction, the Bank, and 3 bars!

I agree to this.

I don't see a problem giving NPC enemies some more health points and more abilities they use to push the difficulty. That leads to longer battles and i think this is good.

To me it seems the two main issues with elite ground are:

1. The enourmous DMG some enemies do ( have in mind ground combat is very action oriented, not that much time to counter special attacks )
2. The rewards, especially loot, doesn't fit the time and effort .. and that applies even to space combat.

Have all of the bugged insta-kill ground mobs been removed yet? If that is more of what is being put in, then I say that is a bad thing. Elite ground combat has been very badly balanced, mostly thanks to these bugged mobs (sorry I refuse to even consider them to be working as intended). Everything is fine and then you encounter a bugged mob and the whole squad is down in 2 seconds flat.

Considering how dumb the BOs are on the ground, I don't think that ramping up the difficulty a whole lot is a good idea. The only counter that really works is to have multiple healers which is kind of a lame way to play. A group of five players can counter some very difficult mobs, by using such things as weapons overload to shut down an insane damage dealer, but the BOs are just too dumb.

How about giving us a separate slider for space and ground if that is going to be the case?

i play normal simply because i dont want every space fight to last to long .... its challenging enough .... although tbh ive never had to much hull damage ....

Tossing in my two cents.. in another thread you made a comment about expecting "5-10 wipes at the (Devidian) boss encounter". I really hope you're not designing these encounters while thinking something along the lines of "the players should be able to whittle their way through this encounter in roughly 5-10 wipes". That is basically "zerging", and while that may be ok with people who play on normal mode, I feel fairly confident suggesting that's not the type of encounter most people who play on the hardest difficulty level are looking for.

I play on elite because, for me, the other modes are easy to the point of being boring. Using most of my abilities is optional on advanced mode - that's boring. Heck, on normal mode my entire participation in the fight is optional if I'm willing to just sit back and watch my bridge officers clean house - boring as well. But what's also boring is having to run back and forth from the spawn point to the fight just to wear down an opponent (i.e. zerging) on elite mode.

Elite mode, to me, means a group won't wipe as long as the players do everything right. A battle plan should never have to include throwing yourself at the enemy group repeatedly to wear it down. I would rather the entire enemy group respawn completely intact on a wipe as long as its reasonably possible to beat them without wiping in the first place, because then it becomes very clear when I'm tackling an encounter correctly or not.

As far as damage output goes, a critter should be able to kill a player when the player fails to react quickly enough, but not because its attack is set to do more damage than the player can possibly have in health. That's unreasonable. The highest difficulty setting should be about requiring skilled play, not challenging the unfair.

Finally, people who have the equipment and skill to play on elite should be able to win with a well rounded group - we want to have fun with that aspect of the game too. Bringing a team of medics or having some gimmick setup (i.e. an all turret group) shouldn't be a requirement.

Glad to hear that you are trying to do more than just up the damage. More damage just makes the fight take longer, it most certainly does not make it more fun or challenging.

However, one thing I noticed was the "Visitor" level Devidians were able to take me out with one shot, from full health to nothing. They did NOT do that in the first episode, I could take a shot or two and that was without the tribble buff even. I had my triolic tribble buff and to my knowledge would only draw one or two of them away from the group. The bigger guys (whatever is above visitor) and the boss seem to only one-shot kill if you are within a certain proximity to them. It really was the "Visitors" I had the hardest time with on Elite.

I only wiped a few times on the Boss and that was due to dying while trying to get my BOs in a good position, after deciding to take the fight to the far end of the hallway, it went as I'd have expected it to. Pretty much like the first weeks fight.

I find challenging boss fights to be fun when their is some interesting twist involved, either a specific time when they are vulnerable, or having to destroy certain environmental objects or just something other than whittling down a huge amount of HP while avoiding one-shot kills. I'd even think it cool if you could only damage a boss by doing flanking damage, little things like that to separate a "boss" from a normal enemy.

With the damage glitches in this game, it's the "normal" enemies on Elite that can be the most frustrating due to having very few tactical ways of dealing with them beyond trying to lure them into a position where you can run around rezing one-shot BOs while my other BOs whittle them down.

Well put Combadge. I now see the full irony in this. There were so many cries to stop "zerging" and implement some sort of penalty for dying. Unfortunately we ended up with a situation where a lot of enemies can one shot players on Advanced and Elite. The higher difficulties actually create zerging.

When difficulties came out, I played almost exclusively on Elite. Many people talked about these one shot mobs, but I never had a problem... until one day. After that, I have run in to them very frequently. Now, it has been several months since I ran anything on Elite.

I am looking forward to ground combat revamps. Difficulties should be more related to tactics and aspects of the mission, not damage values. I think that most players who want an increased challenge are looking for a more tactical experience. When you are killed almost before combat even starts, there is not much you can do for tactics.

I don't have a problem with an enemy having a one shot kill ... as long as I can get one of my BO's to revive me before he does it again.

The problem is that those mobs who can one shot kill you can do it once every two seconds and just go on a bloody spree.

The biggest problem I'm having lately is the "Breh" or at least something close to that. They dual weild pistols and thier commanders can wipe out an entire away team in one shot, and do so often.

OMG it seems like every ground mission in B'Tran lately I get stuck trying to tackle these guys. I thought I was making progress at one point untill I realised they respawn every time I get wiped.

Now I don't mind an elite mob pwning me now and then, in fact I expect that to happen sometimes.
What I don't expect is for mobs to be so overpowered that there is nothing you can do except zerg until you eventually get lucky and he just doesn't use that attack, or misses, or whatever.
There is no tactics, there is no approach, there is only you standing full HP/full shield then *bang* you on the floor calling for help, only to watch your team go down one at a time beside you.

The Breh (If I have that right) are a constant pain for me, the devidians in the weekly I can get over.
It did suck at the time, I actually went into the mission without even thinking about my difficulty being set to elite, but I eventually killed them all. It probably would have helped if I had realized that I could go into the room and actiuvate the consoles, instead I kept pulling them to the hallway and never entered the room till it was over a dozen injuries later. None the less their ability to one hit kill was very frustrating. Once I shot at one they would do thier life drain thing right away and kill me in one go, all I could do was watch. It's to bad that triolic tribble buff has no noticable effect whatsoever.

Seriously ... what good is a resistance vs when it's still a one hit kill?

I have to agree. I hate it when I die and have to respawn. Sometimes it happens. Unfortunately, I'd say it happens too often thanks to BOs being so stupid (won't back away from melee mobs even when they are overwhelmed and you try to give them a command to move to a new location). But whenever I wipe I consider that to be something of a failure. I like to get through a mission without fully wiping once. As long as one person stays up and can revive then so be it, but wiping sucks. If wiping is an expected part of a mission then I find that to just be a serious disappointment.

Another problem is if you are wiping on Elite then you are racking up injuries at a fast pace. Even if you bring enough regenerators (which I'm pretty sure most elite players do) you're wasting a lot of money using them. If you happen to go down and then get revived and go down again before using a regenerator then you're nursing a critical which you likely can't get rid of due to lack of drops.

How about giving us the option to buy Critical Regenerators? For that matter why not allow us to replicate the regenerators on the ground for some reason. It's just kind of a pain to have to carry around stacks of regenerators. It's not hard to do, but we have to keep going out of our way to buy them, and we have less inventory space since they are taking up slots.