Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

[harperfan7]

Has anyone here being able to do the Epione Lab mission for the Free Drones by sneaking through?

You mean without killing anybody?

[Sykar]

Has anyone here being able to do the Epione Lab mission for the Free Drones by sneaking through?

You mean without killing anybody?

No, just without alerting anyone. Stealth kills are part of stealth after all and an artform in itself. Sadly on autistic difficulty there seem to be more guards at the entrance so it seems like brute force is the only method here. I had no major problems with it on hard but this one annoys me as do other parts which are now almost impossible to stealth through.

[harperfan7]

Has anyone here being able to do the Epione Lab mission for the Free Drones by sneaking through?

You mean without killing anybody?

No, just without alerting anyone.

Well, I don't think the guards on the first floor ever trigger an alarm, and I did the second level with no alarm.  I've done it with a sledge juggernaut (using stealth gear in a few places) and a sneaky crossbow traps-user.  Neither of those characters has loud attacks except for the juggernaut's grenades, which I probably didn't use.

[Sykar]

Not an option for my PSI Sniper. While Thought Control is excellent at killing silently sniper rifles are quite the opposite.

[harperfan7]

Not an option for my PSI Sniper. While Thought Control is excellent at killing silently sniper rifles are quite the opposite.

But you are a sniper, so that means you have good stealth, right?  Could you, with your best stealth gear + cave hopper steak + cloaking device, make your way past the guards on the first level without fighting?  The guy with the riot armor next to the stairs probably does need to go, but he's through the double doors before the stairs, you should be able to close them and kill him quietly.  On the 2nd level you can kill people 1 or 2 at a time, at least until you can get to all the pillars.  Shoot or emp grenade the cameras and have a fall back hidey hole.

[Dieusama]

HURRRR DURRRR

[Dieusama]

This is just too fucking ridiculous

How. The. Fuck. Are. You. Supposed. To. Get. The. Fucking. Stupid. Service. Manuel. WITHOUT BEING DETECTED ?

WHY LOOSING THE EYE OF TCHORT DOESN'T FUCKING DISPOSE OF THOSE CRIITERS ANYMORE ?

WHAT THE FUCK ?

[Tygrende]

How. The. Fuck. Are. You. Supposed. To. Get. The. Fucking. Stupid. Service. Manuel. WITHOUT BEING DETECTED ?

Same way you would on any other difficulty. Get Echoing Soliloquy, wait in the closest safe location until Eye of Tchort is gone, make sure all tchortlings reach their holes, get back to the safe location, unstealth and run as fast as possible, enter stealth if Eye of Tchort kicks in. You just have less time, but it's entirely doable.

WHY LOOSING THE EYE OF TCHORT DOESN'T FUCKING DISPOSE OF THOSE CRIITERS ANYMORE ?

It does, but there's so many on them on DOMINATING that you need to wait  longer for all of them to reach the holes. I was getting significant lags when they all moved at the same time, so much that sometimes my PC was unable to move himself. Same was happening on the 2nd floor of Emporion when all lunatics were moving to investigate some noise.

[Dieusama]

Forget it, i'm a moron, it didn't need the Service Manual after all, my South Gater have enouth mechanics to figure out how to install the parts himself. But I REALLY pity those who will have to get it. The 20 something Tchortling spawn is ridiculous.

But fuck, is DC even possible in DOMINATING without a significant amount of stealth ? I have, gear boosting wise, like 110 + but it's barely enouth.

And Echoing Sillothing doesn't do much . . .

Almost finish then, I will very soon give my enlighted and fair judgement on DOMINATING! . . .

[MirddinEmris]

The. Fucking. Stupid. Service. Manuel.

Why r u so racist, bro?


Hola

[Dieusama]

xD

Manuel is also manual in French :d

Anyway, Tchort bite the dust.

My fair and enlighted judgement : That was SHIT. I was expecting a new difficulty for us who knows "everything" about the game and it's gaemplay, but that garbage HP bloated ennemies spam ? Never. 100 % amateurish retarded pseudo-difficulty. 0 out of 10.

[harperfan7]

It's definitely the best handling of different difficulties that I've ever seen.  The increased size and variety of enemy groups especially.

[Dieusama]

Out of curiosity, what would it take for you to consider it a good difficulty? If not buffed enemies, more nerfs on the player's side then? Completely new AI for every single enemy type?

More active skill for humanoids (why no psy user but the South Gater can have LoC for instance ?), better skills (done right I'd say) better gears for humanoid, new ennemy types for non humanoid (that was done pretty right yes), and the most important : NEW BETTER IMPROVED IA.

There is no fun or point in throwing 20 something HP-bloated ennemies if the can still fall for a dumb chessy shit tactic like minefield of bear traps, or my fav' Wall of Force + 10-iq ennemies hording + Thermo Desta + Alpha Strike.

If one the most used """""""""""""""""""tactic"""""""""""""""""""" in DOMINATING (it seems) is to set a minefield of bear traps and throwing molotov on stuck ennemies, then you should realised that your new "difficulty" is just wrongly done.

And if you can't code a better IA because it's too difficult, then just stick to what I said : more active skills/better gear/better skills/more ennemy types, but let the excessive spam and HP bloat where they belong : in the bottom of a septic tank.

It's definitely the best handling of different difficulties that I've ever seen.

Styg's cum's definitely the best that I've ever swallowed

Couldn't help myself, sorry.

[TheAverageGortsby]

is DC even possible in DOMINATING without a significant amount of stealth

Yup. Had very little trouble with 0 stealth psi, and 0 stealth heavy sledge.  Not sure why you couldn't handle it.  Maybe you weren't built properly to handle fights when stealth broke, but didn't devote enough stats and skills and gear to stealth?  The fights in DC are wearying, but rarely difficult or dangerous.

And of course SubterminalOptimization's dominating challenge runs showed that you could get through everything with only level 8 values of stealth.  I guess you just didn't roll a good character for handling DC.

[Fenix]

Things would be more interesting if they instead wore a selection of kevlar, blast and aluminized coats without any visual difference between them.

Agree.

Not with all AIs though. Dumb animals, mutants and such should stay stupid while human soldiers, robots and other intelligent enemies should behave more intelligently. Different AIs should feel different - crawlers are exemplary.

Agree.

- Adding a simple anti-aoe rule to human soldier AI to prevent them from congregating in blocked chokepoints would do a lot to improve this.

Agree.

- I'm not sure what to think about lame "tactics" like spamming ridiculous numbers of bear traps. They're not fun. They're a crutch, some players will resort to that kind of stuff when they can't manage otherwise. But the thing is, such lame tactics certainly aren't necessary, not even on DOMINATING. Maybe Styg should do everything in his power to prevent taking things like that to extreme (and unfun) levels, but I don't like the idea of limiting player freedom with unnecessary nerfs. If there's something that's wrong, it's whatever is guiding players to such dumb tricks.

Agree, traps feels like a crutch, and grenades too, at least molotovs. I'm trying not to use them at all.