Chrondeath

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The Gaspee - The HMS Gaspee was a British navy ship that was burned by American colonials after it ran aground while chasing a suspected "smuggler" in an attempt to collect taxes from the itinerant Americans. It was a fairly large event leading up to the Revolutionary War.

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Did the ship "founder"?

I like this idea. I don't currently use ctrl+num, so it wouldn' t negatively impact me (my Kheldian form tray-switching is handled with a bind).

It will take a while to get ctrl+num ingrained into muscle memory, but even if there was no number combination for the third tray at all I would still find it useful at higher levels just to place power icons for toggle powers I have bound to other keys.

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He's also not basing himself on Alucard from the Castlevania series, Kosh. He's based on Arucard from Hellsing, and he's using the name as it is used in the translations of the series. So really, the whole "Backward Dracula" thing doesen't work here.

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It's spelled with an L in the english translation of the Hellsing manga....

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Skills is in Issue 5...

Issue 4 revolves around the Arenas (now under construction)....

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Are there at least going to be any new Trials, TFs, or power sets in Issue 4?

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Alright. I stand corrected. I didn't know there was already a group bonus to mission xp. I haven't noticed it. I get the same xp for clearing a mission solo as I do grouped. Always have. Save for the few times mission xp has gone completely weird on me - posted in the tech/bug forum about that one. The issue as I described it seems to have ironed itself out, but still, same xp solo as grouped.

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I don't know about any team bonus to mission XP, but I don't believe that's what Statesman was referring to.

Currently, there is a group bonus to XP in that the total XP given by a mob increases with the number of group members. Just to make up some example numbers, a mob might give 100xp to a solo player, 60xp each to a team of two (120 total XP), 50 each to three (150 total xp), etc.... It is this bonus that I believe Statesman is referring to when he says "Team up XP bonuses will be increased."

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Again, I'm not Joe Solo, and quite honestly I have no personal beefs about the greater group xp (other than being able to outlevel arcs easier. it's already easy enough to outlevel them with the new mission difficulty settings) since I'm by and large a grouper. It's not gonna affect me much. It won't take any enjoyment from the game or slow down my leveling. I'm just saying that if a player doesn't want to team, let them be. Don't beat them down because they have a different playstyle than what the devs envision the game should be like.

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Well, I AM Joe Solo (as you describe him), and it's not going to take any enjoyment from the game or slow down my leveling, either. They're not reducing solo XP, they're increasing group XP. Not the same thing.

The group bonus to XP already exists; why do you think the proposed increase of it would make any difference?

Thanks very much, Statesman. This makes me feel a lot better about the game's direction...I was getting worried after some of the initial things you said at the beginning of the whole boss changes debate, and I'm very happy to see that it looks like you intend to keep solo play as viable as ever.

As long as I'm posting, I just wanted to throw my support behind this suggestion...

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What I would like to see, for groups, is the ability to complete the same mission from multiple team members at the same time.

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...as something that would, to my mind, lower some of the barriers to asking for help on missions. I realize it might conflict with the goal of providing "too much content" in that it would allow people to finish contacts faster, but I think it would help to change group-requiring missions from "A hero begging for help" (which is how I see individual AV missions currently, although I realize others may not share that perception) to "A group of equals taking on a tough challenge" (which is more like how I see Task Forces currently).

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Hell, I had a surprise Adamaster portal mission, (the timed 90 minute one). With 38 minutes left, only Adamaster remained, and I couldn't sol;o him (I did give it a shot). Instead of bemoaning the game and the Devs, I went out to PI - made of request post detailing the situation (and this was at 11:00 PM or so on Guardian when the total serveer population is around 1000 or so); and withing two minutes I was joined by a Level 48 Blaster, and a Level 35 Defender - which we SKed to the 48; and we poped back in and took Adamaster down in less than 3 minutes (Adamaster was Level 44).

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I had the surprise Adamastor mission myself. I recruited a controller and a scrapper from the search feature to help take him down. The scrapper got in and soloed him before the controller arrived, and the controller proceeded to chew me out for calling her in unnecessarily.

I felt like [censored] after that. That's damn near enough to make me want to quit the game.

Maybe you have fun like that, but I don't.

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For example, explain why returning the bosses to their pre-issue 3 state and then sliding the difficulty slider to maximum difficulty won't accomplish what you want out of the game.


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I already addressed this in a previous post.

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What is this, proof by nonexistent reference? I just went over every post you've made in this thread, and you've done no such thing. Unless the search function is borked, the only post you've made in the past week that even contains the word "slider" is the one I'm responding to. If I've missed something, please provide a link to the post where you address why the difficulty slider (or minor modifications thereof, like higher difficulty settings) couldn't fix this perceived "broken" team play that the increased boss difficulty is supposedly addressing.

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It was marketed as a team game that was solo friendly. Notice the emphasis was still on team play. There is FAR to much emphasis on solo play to live up to this prior to issue 3 and even post issue 3 due to peoples ability to solo most or all of the team content.

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What "emphasis" was there on solo play? It was possible, therefore it was emphasized?

The XP was better solo? Increase group XP.

The game was too easy in a group? That's what the difficulty slider was added for!

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This is a strawman. No one has suggested solo play be reduced to an insignificant part of the overall experience. This is entirely different then suggesting team play is the first focus.

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Bosses being unsoloable WOULD lead to solo play being reduced to an insignificant part of the overall experience.

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It is becoming more and more apparent that the real source of much of the discontent is coming from solo players who have appropriated 99% of the games content as their own despite the consistent position of the dev team that this was a team game first and foremost.

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"Appropriated" content? How is anyone "appropriating" it?

If a law gets passed that people named "Bob" can't drive on 80% of highways, and the pro-Bob lobby raises an outcry about it, are people named Bob "appropriating" the highways?

And could you provide some examples of this "consistent position" that this is "first and foremost" a team game?

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Since when is bribing people with xp in order to get them to undertake an overly simple unchallenging task an acceptable way to promote group play?

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Since when is forcing people to street sweep because they can't accomplish that simple task on their own an acceptable way to promote group play?

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Promoting team play means providing people with a source of good challenging content to undertake as a team. If that means that you can’t do some of it solo, it is not a big loss as there are always other solo tasks available.

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There are NOT always other solo tasks available. Street sweeping does not cut it; it's even been explicitly recognized by the developers that street sweeping is a sub-par form of gameplay.

Now, if it was possible to tell a contact to shove it when he wanted to offer nothing but group missions, and there were enough soloable missions in a tier to get you a good fraction of the way through it, you'd have a point here.

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They are. They are trying to get a badly needed fix to team play removed on the grounds it prevents some people from soloing 100% of the games content.

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Now who's got the strawman? I haven't seen a lot of posts with people suggesting that task forces and trials be soloable. In fact, I haven't seen any.

And what was "needed" about this fix that wasn't covered by the difficulty slider? Or, at least, couldn't have been better addressed by adding higher settings to the difficulty slider?

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What is it that you disagree with about on being penalized for soloing now? Most guides and the manual clearly state that only 1 AT is designed for soloing.

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Being pigeonholed into a single AT sucks, no matter what the manual says. Different ATs and powersets provide the only replayability the game has. (Admittedly, they are trying to change this by providing "too much content" for one character.)

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Do you actually think we should be encouraged to solo the 4 Support builds too?

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Absolutely. Why shouldn't a Controller be able to solo, aside from "the manual says so"?

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I know some people were upset when I didn't at least post a status in the Burn & Invulnerability threads (even when there wasn't much else to say), so I thought I'd try to avoid that mistake again!

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Thanks; it really does help to hear that it's still a concern.

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Great. That goes to whether the changes are crucial to their "vision" though, not crucial to the success of the game. They could end up with an incredibly successful and fun game that's miles away from their original vision.

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And I don't feel they should. Besides what is a "successful" game anyway? Is it successful if you design and build a game that you are dissapointed in?

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A "successful" game, I would say, is one that's fun to play. If it's fun to play, a game designer shouldn't be disappointed in it, even if it doesn't match The Vision. (If "fun" is not the goal, what the heck are you doing designing games?) If The Vision requires that fun features be removed, that's a sign that The Vision needs to be carefully reexamined. The best would be a compromise to allow The Vision and the fun features to co-exist.

Note here that the "fun feature," and I think most would agree with me, is not the ability to solo +4 bosses: it's the ability to solo interesting missions. The Vision requiring that bosses equal 1.5 heroes does not conflict directly with that, and I think a lot of people have offered good suggestions on how to reconcile the two.

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I hope they wouldn't tamper with that success in order to achieve some vision that may or may not work or be fun.

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Like any artist I'd want them to be happy with their creation.

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If George Lucas planned to re-edit the original Star Wars movies and replace them with six hours of Hayden Christensen looking pouty with Jar-Jar dancing in the background, claiming that it was his original vision, you'd be lined up to trade in your Star Wars DVDs for the new version?

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What bothers me about the recent changes is not the individual difficulty of the boss changes but the level at which they spawn in Task Forces, both numerical and relative level. I have seen many times now TF missions spawn exclusively +3 and even +4 bosses (in addition to minnions and lts.) to the highest lvl character in numbers of up to 6 per group for an 8 man TF set at the default difficulty level. Worse yet is that the TFes sometimes don't spawn at this difficulty level until you are multiple missions into the TF, giving people a huge sense of lost playing time and frustration.

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I ran the second Striga TF three times in the past three days.

First TF: Got wiped from three wandering bosses in the second mission. Two people dropped (leaving five); we finished the TF in about three hours.

Second TF: I believe one person dropped, leaving us at six or seven. A couple more dropped on the second to last mission after repeated deaths. The TF took us about four and a half hours.

Third TF: We had trouble getting enough people for this, so we recruited one guy just to get us over the limit (he dropped immediately). We lost an exemplar on the first mission (down to five), and another to connection problems about halfway through (down to four). All squishies; I was the only one who'd done the TF before. We finished the whole task force in NINETY MINUTES, mainly because the only bosses we encountered were end-of-mission bosses.

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A solo player (unless the mission calls specifically for a boss in a spawn override) will create spawns with minions and lts. ONLY.

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I think this may be accurate as far as dynamic in-missions spawns go. (It also explains why getting the Legionaire and Banisher badges is a pain without a group!) As others have mentioned, though, there are a LOT of static boss spawns in story arcs and other missions that appear regardless of group size. I'm very glad to see you'll be looking into that; thank you.

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As for why we put Bosses in missions at all – in other words, why isn’t everything solo-able – the answer is simple. We want gameplay that encourages the best part of the game: teaming up. Soloing is fine, but a MMP really shines when you meet other people and play alongside them. I’ve made many good virtual friends through other MMP’s that I simply would not have done if I could solo everything all the time. I admit it: I’m anti-social. It’s hard to get me to group up with strangers. But after I do it, I always wonder “why don’t I do this more often…” I might still be anti-social in “real life”, but in MMP’s I’m a social butterfly (I have no doubt that this will appear in sigs for years to come…)

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I can't quite decide whether to agree that teaming is the best part of the game. Going through a good Task Force in a good team is definitely up there...but I would say that "story" is a pretty big contender as well.

And that's my real problem with unsoloable missions. Teams don't want to pause for people to read the clues. Teams don't want to do missions from one person's story arc consecutively. Teams wind up having to do the same mission over and over because every member of the team has to get it cleared. If I want to get the full experience (in the non-XP sense) from a mission, I really have to solo it.

Task Forces and Trials are different. The whole team is there for a single arc. There's no sense that you're imposing on anybody just to help *you*. There's no arguing over whose mission you'll be doing next, and there's no need to kill the Clockwork King eight times because everybody's stuck with copies of the same mission. There's still some problem taking time out to read the story, but at least everyone can see the clues (I wish there was a way for everyone to see the contact's mission complete text). Teaming up for Task Forces and Trials is a blast.

Begging for help on a single mission is not a blast. It's not a group of people all going through an interesting story; it's me, imposing on other heroes so that I can get further in my own story. That really makes me feel like a total jerk. It's moderately fun to help other people out on their missions, but without the storyline behind it it's no better than street hunting. Teaming for individual missions means I go from spending all my time progressing through story, to spending 1/8th of my time progressing through story and 7/8ths of it killing random mobs in an unknown context....and that's assuming that the group even gets around to doing any of my missions, which is by no means a certainty (especially if some members of the group are higher than me). It's just not fun.

(One suggestion I've seen that would make it better is to allow team members to consolidate identical missions; that way, if you find two or three people with the same story arc/mission set, it's more like you're doing a mini-Task Force than a round-robin charity. That seems like it would be rather difficult to implement, though.)

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Like I've said, I'm going to review the missions this week and see how many have bosses at the different level ranges.

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Please, also consider the way that even a relatively small number of unsoloable missions can "clog" your contacts, preventing you from continuing a story arc or from being offered any more soloable missions until the unsoloable ones are cleared.

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If solo EAP is -30% stuff and teamed (3+) EAT is 0% or more, I don't see why solo EAP should change anything. EAPs are for teaming, not solopowerleveling.

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I don't believe the EATs should be gimped for soloing just because....hmm....I don't think I've ever actually seen a reason why they should be gimped for soloing, aside from "because we like teaming."

But that aside, the -30% base damage hurts the (human form) Kheldians pretty bad, even in groups.

The penalty is to base damage (just confirmed this on Test). Level 30 Warshade against a level 1 Hellion; unenhanced Shadow Bolt did 58.09 damage, 72.62 with one Rage inspiration; 72.62 / 58.09 = 1.25, exactly as expected. If the penalty was not to base damage, we would have expected a base damage of (58.09 / .7 = 82.99), and an enhanced damage of (58.09 + .25 * 82.99 = 78.83).

The grouping bonus is NOT to base damage (confirmed this on Test about a month ago; haven't heard of any changes to the Kheldian bonus since then. Here are the numbers).

Say your unpenalized base damage (it's never been clear to me WHAT base number the 30% damage penalty is being applied to) is 100. Your base damage after the Kheldian penalty is 70.

To get up to 100 damage (i.e., to overcome the penalty), you'll need a little more than four teammates of the appropriate AT (70 * 1.4 = 98). It seems to me that's already pushing things a bit, requiring a group of five and at least half your group to be two ATs just to get over the penalty....but don't worry, it gets worse.

Say you've got your human-form attacks slotted with three damage SOs (let's round the total enhancement bonus to 100%). Without the penalty, you'd be doing 200 damage; currently, you're doing 140. You need to gain 60 damage to get over the penalty; that's (60/70 = 85.7%) of your base damage! You're not making it even with a full seven appropriate AT teammates.

The -30% resistance doesn't leave you in quite so bad a boat, I think, because resistance-boosting powers are all additive, not multiplicative. But the damage resistance penalty is being removed; we're not sure about the status of the damage penalty.

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Just because they didn't change anything immedietly, or to your liking, doesen't mean they ignored things. It simply means they disagree with your line of reasoning, or they felt given their resources and timetable, certain things needed to be put off.

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And if they'd come out and said

"Hey, we know many of you (hate the Invulnerability changes/hate the boss changes/think Kheldians are underpowered/think there are too many bugs), but (we need the Test Server for Issue 4/we're behind schedule/you're all whiners/I'm a rat [Censored]), so we're putting Issue 3 out anyway."

I'd be a lot more inclined to agree with you. They've had no problems saying what they mean before; to have the issue go live with no comment at all on the numerous outstanding concerns many people have about the changes, though, just doesn't suggest to me that they cared at all what we had to say.

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As for the Invulnerability, Kheldian, Burn, etc. feedback - all of it was read and considered. We were pleased with the data we received and thought that the changes met our goals. That isn't to say that we might not tweak these things further - but by and large, we are happy with the changes.

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Could we at least get some responses to this feedback, even if it's too late to do anything? Going live with no comment, it feels like the response to all of the feedback generated over the holidays is "We don't care."

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I'd also like to be ambushed in missions. For the most part in a door mission you see the villain mob ahead, everybody gets ready and you attack after you have been buffed and dropped inpirations. I'd like to see bad guys pour out of two doors that were locked to you, and pincer atttack the party, or erupt from a trap door in the ground. Something to shake it up a bit and never let you TRULY feel safe.

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There are a few in-mission ambushes already, in Shadow Shard missions and some Malta/Knives of Artemis missions. They're just like out-of-mission ambushes, except...they're inside a mission.

I agree, I would like to see this sort of thing used more often...along with the rave map, the burning Hellion map, the Superadine Lab map, the Freakshow map, proximity bombs, NPC heroes...all that other stuff that shows up in only one mission and then is never seen again...

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OK gang, we'll throw at least 2 of your wants into Issue 4.

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You do that on purpose, don't you?

The SSOCS

Sonics, Arrows, or some other new powerset, for an existing AT or for a new epic AT

More badges

Flashback system, or at least better RSK options for task forces

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Your confusing sociopathic and psychotic behavior for anti-social behavior. They are not the same thing bub.

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In common usage, they're not. Clinically, though, the term "antisocial personality disorder" is very similar to psychotic and sociopathic behavior.

The common use of "antisocial" to mean "shy" is probably closer to "social anxiety"...there were some other similar disorders, but I can't remember them at the moment.

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The game is clearly not "group-only" gameplay. What I'm "sick of seeing" is an army of whiners every time there is content added which requires cooperation.

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Speaking for myself, I have no problem with them adding new task forces, trials, raids, and other things that qualify as "group-only content." What I have a problem with is when they take existing content (like contact missions) and turn them into group-only content (by adding simultaneous objectives or nerfing the ability to solo bosses, although they may not be doing that inentionally).

It's fine to have group-only content. I just want to see a reasonable amount of soloable content, too (and street hunting doesn't cut it).

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That said, "this is an MMO" is, in fact, a perfectly reasonable response, because that is the driving force behind the design philosophy. As I said above, one of the core tenets of the MMO genre is content which emphasizes cooperation. The designers of the game have chosen, as 99.9% of persistent online game designers do, to include content which not only encourages but requires the participation of more than a single player.

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Hypothetically, if someone created a game that supported a persistent world, thousands of players, and RPG-like story and character advancement, but every encounter in the game could be completed solo, what would you call it?

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How often do you find yourself with 3 mission slots filled with missions that cannot be solo'd?

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Post-40? All the frickin' time. If I ever DO clear out an AV-filled mission spot, it's usually blocked again in about an hour.

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If it does happen to occur, what are the chances at least one of those missions can't easily be completed by just grabbing one other person and duo'ing the mission quickly in order to make room for more solo friendly content?

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Easily completed if you can get the RIGHT partner, maybe. Finding the right partner? Never easy, unless you have a large, active supergroup or a lot of friends who play the same times you do. And how do you tell which AVs you can duo? They don't come with labels saying "You will need two scrappers or a tank and a controller to beat Nightstar."

Do most people NOT feel terrible when a stranger or a friend dies to an AV trying to help you out?

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EXACTLY. Bosses weren't meant to be solo-able UNLESS a particular player used Inspirations & strategy. Hence, the Help text & tutorial indicate that a player "probably" should get other friends to take out a boss.

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Ok...thank you very much for clarifying, and I apologize if I was overreacting to the original comment. If inspirations and strategy were the "help" you were referring to for bosses, then I can agree that it's not unreasonable for them to require it.

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The absurd part is that you HAVE heard otherwise:

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Bosses, Elite Bosses and AV's usually require help

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and yet you are still determined to ignore it.

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Let's put it back in full context, then. There's a big thread going on, with people expressing concern that they won't be able to solo missions with bosses, and Statesman says this:

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You should always be able to do your own missions alone.

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I never, never, never said that. Many missions ARE solo-able. Many aren't. Bosses, Elite Bosses and AV's usually require help. So if you see any of those on a mission, get help! The mission text indicates this....

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Someone says "You should always be able to solo your missions," and Statesman replies "No, bosses usually require help." From this, you don't get "Bosses aren't supposed to be soloable"? What do you get, then? It can't just be a blanket assertion that "In the game, currently, bosses usually require help," because that's patently false and an assertion like that is nonsensical in the context, unless Statesman is very confused.

Now, ok, if Statesman really is confused and thinks bosses currently usually require help, and he's just listing all the missions that he thinks CURRENTLY aren't soloable to illustrate that not all missions are soloable, then yes, I'm misinterpreting this and overreacting. If he knows that bosses don't currently usually require help, then he must be talking about the game as intended by the design team, which means they don't want bosses to be soloable.

It's either a statement that "bosses aren't usually soloable", or a statement that "bosses aren't intended to be soloable." How do you read it?