Character Lockout

Meander

Obviously everyone had trouble with the PX/Teen Jean/Cyke node in HoD, but it got me thinking. Flavor wise, the character lockouts that occurred in that match make NO sense. I would have loved to use Phoenix/PX like I had been most nodes, but was unable to because demons were impersonating them? Riiiiight. Same goes for any Skrull nodes in other stories. Couldn't the original person fight the clone? Now, obviously everyone wants to be rid of lockouts due to OML issues, but the question now stands, do they even make sense in their convoluted Story? Couldn't they declare your copies as Skrulls or clones or alternate universe members and be rid of lockouts due to the CPU having the character?

roderic1

Generally, it seems pretty stupid to lock out characters that people work so hard to get (and in some cases, spend money on). Why would you hobble your player base? That's a big reason why many of us avoid the Heroic PVE's, especially when it doesn't appear that the characters chosen have been chosen to show us fun synergies as much as to just make the game harder and less fun.

Meander

roderic1 wrote:

Generally, it seems pretty stupid to lock out characters that people work so hard to get (and in some cases, spend money on). Why would you hobble your player base? That's a big reason why many of us avoid the Heroic PVE's, especially when it doesn't appear that the characters chosen have been chosen to show us fun synergies as much as to just make the game harder and less fun.

Heroics are a completely separate topic, I'm more discussing the nodes where you can't use Daken because he's on the opposing team (just as an example). I dont mind Heroics as a challenge, plus the reduced point requirements for max prog are nice. That being said, they're still frustrating at times.

SnowcaTT

I've been thinking about lockouts a bunch as well - and I wonder why they still exist. With so many characters, why limit folks?

But then...heroics still exist, and those are even worse than lockouts.

Anyone should be able to pick any of their characters at any time....or nodes should be scaled much lower.

Another thing I've been wondering about is if anyone remembers/cares about the story anymore. The new events are added so rarely and then run so often that they've all blurred for me.

simonsez

Lockouts don't bother me as much as forcing us to use **** underleveled essentials without scaling taking that into account.

Calnexin

Lockouts make a kind of sense from a gameplay perspective, given D3's desire for people to have diverse rosters. OML (or other overpowered characters du jour from the past) can be a crutch. Forcing your players to not use them in certain situations forces them to build a more diverse roster.

I agree, though, that in this story it makes no sense. These days I skip past the story frames unless it's a brand-new event, so I forgot it was a "demon impersonation" thing. No reason the real deal shouldn't be allowed to take down their dopplegangers.

JVReal

I agree. If you are calling them "Story" events, and you are telling the story for the players to follow, then the lineup should match the story.

If they aren't the real character, and instead are impersonators (demons, skrulls, body snatchers, clones, etc) then you should be able to put them up against the real ones in your roster. You know they can since we have nodes in Gauntlet that violate the 'rules' of characters that can't be on the same team.

As a side note, I think that it would be interesting to play a series of Story Modes where the roles are reversed, and we play the AI's team and we are against the most commonly used teams for those story modes by the players.

I'd love to finally play as some of these goons, get free AP and just choose which ability to use this turn.

The Herald

Story has a lot of problems.

I personally find it frustrating that characters actually featured in the story are never featured again after the first play though.

I would also posit that the biggest problem with story, is that the devs currently have no interest in adding content to the game. (I don't count flooding with characters new content, not at the exclusion of actual events to play, I see them more as content walls since they make other characters harder to get).