"Settling Debts" (Blitz mission) could REALLY use some difficulty tweaks

[Teag]

Opening disclaimer: I haven't played through this on 2.0.3, if that fixed any issues. Either way, this mission is hard as balls, and the frustration that induced put a damper on a run that would've been otherwise quite good. The early fights through the vaults were fine, but it's the final showdown that hurt the most.

The biggest problems were:

1. There's no option to equip Blitz before the mission even though a significant portion of this run involves the Matrix, and the end battle relies almost entirely on timely Matrix combat to avoid defeat.

2. There's no 'refresh' moment for Blitz. This is critical. If you use your ESPs early in the run and they die, the final boss fight will be a 1v2 (for Blitz) or a 2v8 (for your main character). I ended up going at it 10 times (on Hard) in hope of ekeing out a win before giving up, turning to Easy mode, losing once again due to RNG, and then finally closing out the mission. Maybe my being a Mage made it unnecessarily difficult - I dunno.

3. The mission doesn't seem to respect storyline progress. I did the Bloodline run before this mission - but have not yet paid Alice her money - and Blitz was in the Matrix with 4AP and generally had a good time. For this mission, he's back to 3AP with his default loadout and suffers for it. All in all, I feel that the Matrix boss alone greatly outclasses Blitz in overall strength, even if Blitz has his ESPs available.

4. The turrets are inconsistent/useless as allies, but deadly as enemies. Enemy turrets were able to shoot across the room with uncanny accuracy, while allied turrets would usually sit in Overwatch (useless) or miss most of their shots, assuming they shot at all.

5. The starting turret formation is deadly. The southern turrets - towards where you stand when the fights begin - start out as enemies. The northern turrets, where the enemies walk in, start out as allies (but are quickly subverted by Plotz's ESPs in the Matrix fight). Combined with the above, your characters will eat half their health worth of flanking shots in every turn from the turrets alone. An opposite configuration makes MUCH more sense.

Finally, unrelated bugs:

1. If your meatspace ally lags behind (as allies seem to do more than usual in this playthrough) when you activate the final console, he'll be locked out of the room in the ensuing fight, necessitating a reload.

2. Enemy riggers seem to spawn at level 1 with 20/20 health, while their drones walk around with 65 health, making them nonthreatening.

[sanddorn]

I just played it last night on 'hard' with a mage focusing on AP, armor and hit %.
1. The boss wasn't so hard after I found a good strategy in the Matrix (second time, after the bug freezing it up)
2. Yep, big surprise. My attacker didn't even die and wasn't available … the exploder made my day.
3. Curiously, my Blitz had it quite easy after exploding the first enemy attacker.
4. Same for the turrets afterwards.
5. Well, 8 or 10 armor helps a lot. Plus med packs and healing spell. Basically, I kept us in the starting corner, hiding behind the counter with full cover all around.
I'm pretty sure the armor spells are overpowered.

[Kline]

I hid behind the counters near the starting spot will full cover. Buffed with armor and healed just trying to hold out. I had Blitz bum-rush Plotz and ignore his ESP after an unsuccessful go of trying to keep turrets up while fighting. With the AP Plotz burned for the ESP I was able to take him down just after his ESP turned all the turrets hostile, and then had the turrets all back to friendly within the next turn.

[GJGhost]

This mission was the first time I've seen the game over screen and it took four reloads to finally beat it. I pretty much did what Kline said, hide behind the desks, have Blitz focus on killing the decker first (he resummons his EP and it's only concerned with tagging turrets), and then mop up. The losses were mostly Blitz missing more often than the decker or dieing from erosion with his heal on cooldown. I agree with all of the OPs points, especially the turrets that are sniping me from the corners once hacked all just quietly pass their turns except for the top right turret.

[76561198130836299]

Hello everyone, and thanks for the feedback! I've read over your comments, and have forwarded them on to our lead designer.

[daveyd]

I was playing on Hard with a physical adept and I'm pretty sure I managed to complete this mission without dying once. I guess I could see having a hard time if you were playing with a less combat oriented build but for me the difficulty of the mission was nearly perfect.

[sanddorn]

I'm sure I'm not the first to note, but the armor spell is kinda broken: on hard with armor 3 i.e. +6 for 1 AP, taking cover is often kind of a courtesy.

[Tigris the FUN-gineer]

Aside from the bug where the door slams on Hassenkamp and the fact that none of the extra missions seem to respect AP-gains in the progression (and sometimes reset them back to two, as with Glory's mission, for the rest of the game... see my other thread for details) I thought the challenge was refreshing. Blitz is awful in the Matrix but with some timely running away and sniping (even without my ESPs) I got it handled, and if you kitted out right with grenades and utility items, the lobby fight isn't too bad in meatspace. I had to reload a bunch (in Hard) but not so many times I was frustrated. It was refreshing to get DIFFICULT Matrix fights against another Decker.

[Dewar]

Bum rushing Plotz worked the first time. For whatever reason, his accuracy seemed to be about the same regardless how far away I was, but Blitz's accuracy increased a ton once I got right in Plotz's face so I was able to out-damage him.

[С Г エ χ]

This mission will constantly bug up on me, during all the transitions to the matrix when you control blitz the screen will just change to the matrix and you won't be able to do anything. Finally beat it, after having to restart after being crit by both the turrets and another time being hit for 39 damage from a spirit.

Found this.

http://puu.sh/bUgoL/95ded596d6.png

[Ahbadah]

Trying again, still cant get these bugs... any other hints? Storywise it seems like Plotz is stalking Blitz in matrix all mission long, maybe he should come out of hiding and quickly take control over the northern two turrets instead of starting out with a really wonky configuration. After all, Blitz DID have control over ALL of the turrets before Plotz confronts Blitz. This should be reflected in the mission IMO. Plotz should enter and THEN take control over the northern two turrets with his first turn if he can. Either way, when I figured out how this mission was *supposed* to be played, it was pretty easy for me. Or maybe I just keep getting lucky.

[Died]

I agree with the comments about the turrets... honestly, I found this to be a problem on hard throughout the game - many encounters hinge on hit/miss ratios - my sniper for example only hits 99% shots about 70% of the time, and it scales down from there. Any shot below 50% may as well say 10%.

On the other side of the field, you've got teams of npcs that crit you through cover consistently and all have the arm of a major league pitcher, never missing a grenade throw. The % accuracy numbers are completely wrong, at least on hard.

[agris]

I'm at the stage where you're fighting the waves of enemies in the turret room, 2 turrets are on my side and two are attacking me. Hasenkamp is on my side.

I'm not getting any matrix action, I kill the first wave of 4 only to have a second wave of 4 come at me. On Hard, with a mage PC, this seems ridiculous. Is there supposed to be a matrix interlude or opportunity to turn the other two turrets to my side?

edit: I also get an objective to kill the enemy decker.. and no decker appears. I assume he's in the matrix level that isn't loading.

edit2: So I cheesed my through the encounter, killed both waves and both turrets and now the game is stuck in combat and won't proceed. No doors open, no items dropped and no matrix scene triggered. I'm going to delete the saves I've made on this mission and reply it.

For HBS, this is my saved game immediately before interacting with the turret panel, and a bugged save I was able to make when the game was stuck in combat. https://www.dropbox.com/s/7jn0wiogy80jktv/bugged%20saves.7z?dl=0

[Ahbadah]

Originally posted by agris:

I'm at the stage where you're fighting the waves of enemies in the turret room, 2 turrets are on my side and two are attacking me. Hasenkamp is on my side.

I'm not getting any matrix action, I kill the first wave of 4 only to have a second wave of 4 come at me. On Hard, with a mage PC, this seems ridiculous. Is there supposed to be a matrix interlude or opportunity to turn the other two turrets to my side?

edit: I also get an objective to kill the enemy decker.. and no decker appears. I assume he's in the matrix level that isn't loading.

edit2: So I cheesed my through the encounter, killed both waves and both turrets and now the game is stuck in combat and won't proceed. No doors open, no items dropped and no matrix scene triggered. I'm going to delete the saves I've made on this mission and reply it.

For HBS, this is my saved game immediately before interacting with the turret panel, and a bugged save I was able to make when the game was stuck in combat. https://www.dropbox.com/s/7jn0wiogy80jktv/bugged%20saves.7z?dl=0

Someone is finally experiencing the same bug that I was, proving it wasnt a fluke on my end. There IS supposed to be a matrix transition where blitz can help you turn turrets to your side. Usually this fails when I'm intentionally reloading to not miss optional objectives. Unfortunately it tends to bug some things.

I honestly have no idea what it has to do with except *maybe* killing a turret. I intentionally trapped two goons in the north gate checkpoint. No difference, but I've been more careful with no intentional diversions, keeping Hasenkamp happy by not being an obsequious twit, etc. The more easily you progress through the level, the less this seems to happen. Beating the level without a hitch doesn't seem to provoke this bug, something like save reloading or busting a turret too early I think.

[agris]

I'm replaying the mission, using advice in another thread to avoid the matrix transition bugs (which happened to me multiple times). That is, wait for all objectives that appear at the end of a conversation to finish displaying before hitting [...] to continue. I definitely save/loaded a lot on this level, and overrided old saves. I'm using fresh saves and trying to save less now. I'll follow up with how the final scene plays out.

[agris]

I only saved twice, both in clean saves and the last fight triggered the matrix scene with Plotz as it should. HBS, here's the working autosave https://www.dropbox.com/s/u5r5pm9z7529lmg/working%20autosave.7z?dl=0

I still got an incompletely loaded matrix scene after my first save, and restarting the game. This made the scene load correctly. Also, I deleted the old autosave so this one was fresh. I feel like a paranoid athlete wearing his lucky socks.. but after the frustration last night, I'm glad I finished it.