YtTiger

I remember Kiyotee from the forums and CoH Beta. He was a cool guy and the times we played together were pretty fun. I think he was in a group with me and Statesman during beta when States was playing one of his beta characters. We didn't know it was him till it was almost server shutdown time and he answered a few questions for us.
I'm Sorry to hear of Kiyotee's passing and I'm glad that the CoH people thought well enough to put him in there. I had wondered for a while if it was named after the guy I knew from the forums, guess now I know...

Here is the mission breifing for my 1st level 40 mission
"Indigo: I've been watching you alot *hero name*. You don't know it but I've allready had you 'rescue' me twice just to see if you are as capable as I've heard. I think you can help us. I'm Indigo. Not Miss Indigo or Indigo Smith or anything. Just Indigo. And I can help you fight some very bad people. If we both want to stay safe, that's all you'll ever know about me. I'm not trying to be a 'woman of mystery' or anything. I'm just trying to stay safe. Now, like I said, I can help you fight some very bad people. However I may ask you to do some things without knowing why. I'm sorry about that, but that's kinda for both our safety. Now I'll never ask you to do anything bad, or hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it, but I may not be able to tell you how or why I know what I know. If you can work with that, if you are willing to trust the person who vouched for me, and if you want to put a hurt on some really bad people, then lets get started."
This was the only warning I recieved for my mission. The mission was a defeat all with 2 red bosses as part of it. In the same room and had to be faced together. burning thru all my insp I still was defeated 3 times. Once the moment I found them when they each hit me once. Twice attempting to hit and run and getting blasted as I ran. the fourth time I rested after getting hurt, coming back less than a minute later to find both bosses were at full health again. I call this far from fair warning.

I have been feeling alot of frustration with CoH but I have been sticking with it because I love the game and followed it for years before it came out. I was even one of the lucky 1st rounders of beta people and got to help shape alot of things that were implimented into the game and feel some pride when I see some of my suggestions even today. Today I feel for the 1st time like seriously giving up CoH.
For a while I've been disliking this trend of forced grouping. I don't mind grouping and at times have had alot of fun and made friends doing it. I've also had some very bad experiences that have left me frustrated, annoyed and sometimes in debt because I felt it rude to just up and leave people hanging. I think grouping should be a choice like Statesman said it would be when we talked on the beta boards. Often he said "You will be able to solo but grouping will give you extra bonuses that will encourage people to group." This was what he and the other devs said all through beta. Then we got with issue 2 that yellow minions and red bosses became standard often in missions. This would barely slow down groups but would put the soloer in a tough but winnable situation. Then came the mandatory "you will need x heroes to finish this mission" wich was definately forced grouping. With issue 3 the added a difficulty slider and I thought that they would reset base difficulty for missions to even con and let the players choose up to harder levels, they didn't set it that way. Now we have bosses that are signifigantly tougher and are sometimes red at base difficulty level. making for people who dont tweak their character for max ability have an incredibly difficult if not impossible ability to solo. I had a mission with an alt and had 9 yellow Clocks in 1 small area for a level 13 solo mission. I was told that "That is not a bug it's a feature. You should be getting other heroes to join you when you go on missions." This was from an official guide telling me the now official stance on soloing.
One thing I was proud of was that I went thru every storyline with my early characters and read every plotline as I went thru them. I read every npc told story about missions and read every clue I found as it helped flesh out the story. I had time to read these when I soloed. In groups I find that I don't get the time to read everything because groups want to get things done and get to the next thing. Ive read very little of the task force stories because of this and have done everyone of them past Positron. I know that they put alot of thought into these stories, but now I feel like I shouldn't bother reading them since I have to group to get my missions accomplished and with WoW and EQ2 that the amount of groups has dropped signifigantly and are still in " lets get this done and get to the next mission" mode.
I hope that they will go back to the solo friendly game that they said CoH was supposed to be and that they realize difficulty sliders should go up AND down so those who found it challenging before won't just give up and quit or feel forced to have to group when due to one reason or another they don't want to/can't group.
I'm sticking with the game because, as I've said before many times "City of Heroes is literally a dream game of mine." I am although, at the moment, very disheartened.
Michael Wilson
Prism 1st round Beta.
La Gata Negra, Whisper, Gosamer, Cow Pattie of the Insane Cow Posse post wipes.