In my opinion, this mission modifier is not addng any fun or interesting challenge to the game.
As someone who thoroughly enjoys either just hitting auric quickplay, or jumping into any old Maelstrom mission, this is the modifier I find just has people leaving, myself included.
Its oppressive, entirely one-sided, and the player has no valid tools to counter it other than ‘stand around and potentially fight more hordes or mini-bosses while you wait’.
I know some of these complaints have been voiced in the past, but I just want to say that from my perspective at least, its still a problem. And again, to reiterate, I happily play on any other modifier.
Pox Gas modifier is:
Oppressive and unignorable
Entirely one sided unlike other enviromental modifiers.
Has no clear counterplay other that ‘wait’
A hindrance to vision, and nullifies tags while inside
Punishes builds further than normal, that lack easy toughness regen or boost
Thats pretty much all I can think of for now for my case against this modifier. You suck Pox Gas!
Oh, not including the Pox Grenade guy in this, just to be clear.
Since it only deals toughness damage, you can tank it effectively, just keep it up
Worse than one-sided, it buffs the enemies!
Tank it with toughness
Maybe I misunderstand, but I’d say it makes tags essential to help you find the baddies in it
True
Overall I’ve been appreciating what you dislike – standing around and potentially fighting more stuff. I think it rewards positional play, staying alert for when the gas comes and goes, and meaningfully alters the pace of a mission. Making you alter your playstyle for a map is the point of a modifier, and it at least succeeds there.
The stop-start gameplay is different and, at least for me, novel. Plenty of opportunities for things to hit the fan, break up the team, force your back against a wall, or simply be the Ogryn you’ve always known you are and charge through the green mist to save your toughness-regen-challenged squaddies!
Another problem is the abundance is health stimms. There are wayyyyyyyyyyy too many. It completely negates the corruption part of the difficulty and in fact completely nullifies things like beacon of purity.
When I read the original dev post about it, I expected it to be sort of like a rising and falling lava mechanic where maybe two thirds of the terrain would periodically become damage pools for a short time, leaving a very narrow and poorly defensible “safe” path that winds in between all of the unsafe areas, so as to limit where players could bunker down during crescendos and hordes, and sometimes add an extra layer of challenge to where players could move around.
I thought the gas would have short durations and shorter cooldowns. Players could tank sprinting through the gas if they absolutely had to in order to go from one safe spot to another, but it would almost constantly be pushing players out of the best positions with cover like corners and choke points.
And it’s just kind of boring and dumb. Whole stretches of rooms and corridors with no safe places to run to makes sitting around waiting for the gas to go away the more attractive option, which is boring and frustrating.
I can potentially see a use for pox gas, it’s just badly implemented. It’s one of the few mechanics that has the potential to push players around the map in situations where simply holding and waiting for the aggro to come to you is otherwise the easiest option. Periodically taking safe spots away from players could add some much needed gameplay to certain events.
It’s just not really doing that at the moment. That, and it completely negates itself because of the hilarious amount of health stimms. It’s almost as if the devs were afraid of their own modifier.
I agree on this… However, there should still be several of them. But actually, it is too much.
I like pox gas, however it must feel a little more oppressive. Actually it is just a joke, especially with corruption resist (I did not wait for this condition to put it on my curios).
