Futurias

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/vote yes on /power_lock

Not that I'm ever so uncoordinated I switch my powers rather than activating them *shifty eyes*.... no siree...

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My nephew had this exact same problem. Some sort of "lock" would have helped him a lot.

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So, we are considering a change to the default bindings to use left control for the third tray, if few of you are using these binds today. The lctrl+number keys would work on the third tray like the lalt+number keys work on the second tray. Making this change this will remove the tray-switching keystrokes (except for the = and - keys which will still rotate through the trays).

Of course, the slash commands for changing the tray will still exist. You will be able to bind them yourself. In addition, we will add a keybind profile which works just like it does now.

(Further, to promote use of the teammate keystrokes, we are planning on putting small numbers (like the ones in the tray) next to your teammates' icons in the team window.)

What do you think about this change to the default binds?

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Sounds good! I never used the switch tray function (and would *really* love to be able to disable any key that does that switch and just use my mouse if I wanted to change that).

Odd little GUI thing from the chat interface, there is an "A" on the different basic channels. Oddly enough, it works just like the "S" for Supergroups.

Alliance Chat is being tweaked, you think?

Statesman also mentioned a teleport system between higher level hazard/trial zones (40+) or so, an idea I posted just a few weeks earlier.

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Don't forget to add "more mini-events like the giant Octopus, the Ghost Ship and the infamous Paladin."

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While this sounds cool, I've never participated in any of these. It doesn't seem to happen often enough (or people aren't yelling out when it does when I'm in those zones.)

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Hmm... here's a thought. If the devs had wanted SS to hit as hard as the other tanker secondaries THEY WOULD HAVE MADE US HIT AS HARD AS THE OTHER TANKER SECONDARIES.

Seems pretty reasonable to me.

Now since we can pretty safely assume the devs DON'T want SS attacks to be as powerful as other tanks, how do you think they're gonna like it when you take what they designed to be a limited-use situational power and use it perma so that you CAN have attacks that are as strong, if not stronger than other tanks?

Now stop and think about that. Wait. Think a little longer. Again

(hint: they don't want SS attacks to be as strong as other tank attacks and I'm misusing a power to allow me to do what they don't want and never intended me to do, that is, have attacks that are as strong as other tanks)

Got it? Now try and see if you can figure out why they're changing Rage?

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IMO, Super Strength should be *slightly* weaker than the other secondary sets of tankers without Rage, but (slightly)greater with it. At that point, a *modest* drawback (slower END recover, slow movement, END hit at the end, just something not as drastic a 0 END) is perfectly valid.

It gives Super Strength flavor without being over balanced.

Or Rage needs to be turned into one of those very situtational powers that you can't use often, but it *really* kicks assets while it is activate.

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Many players complained about the stun at the end of Rage because it turned off toggles and left them helpless. At the same time, hardcore players with perma-unstoppable or Unyielding were able to avoid the Stun effect. Thus the casual player was getting penalized and hardcore player wasn’t getting the desired penalty. We're still looking at the issue - so feel free to post your thoughts & ideas!

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As I've got a INV/SS tanker at low levels, a 0 END drop is horrendous. Not that you haven't heard that already.

But I agree that it should have a penalty that can't be "circumvated" by other powers in the tree.

I'd suggest a penalty to END regen (with maybe a -10 drop at the end like Hasten) to symbolize being "tired" out. Maybe even a small movement penalty too.

Or is that too D&Dish?

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Many players complained about the stun at the end of Rage because it turned off toggles and left them helpless. At the same time, hardcore players with perma-unstoppable or Unyielding were able to avoid the Stun effect. Thus the casual player was getting penalized and hardcore player wasn’t getting the desired penalty. We're still looking at the issue - so feel free to post your thoughts & ideas!

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The 0 END drop is too much (and will basically make this power never used IMO).

I do like the -10 END at the end of Rage, basically like Hasten. Now you have to watch it or you *can* (not will) drop your toggles if you overextend yourself.

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Very nice. You took several of the ideas for getting what you want done in a better way and improved them. I think you could have kept the boss hit point increase in, that increased the strategy. It was the boss damage increase that killed the strategy. But it will be nice to feel like a superhero again.

Scorus

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Even just the increase to Boss HP was more tedius than challenging. You either just pound on it safely for a *much* longer time or you just perma-held it for longer (my option as a Dark Defender.)

Bosses just took too long and were more avoided because of that.

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A suggestion if I may.

Right now setting difficulty higher gets bigger spawns. I've heard your not supposed to but this occurs, I have seen it. This better be changed because I am gonna hate fighting named Lt's as I will for any future characters be bumping up the difficulty since this game shouldn't be so easy on me. Also, if I set myself to Invincible, can all Named Bosses because Elite Bosses? This feels appropriate if you guys fix the "bug" with setting reputation higher and getting more spawns when soloing when sometimes all people want is higher level enemies.

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THis isn't correct. Default is normal spawns. +1 up the difficulty is bigger spawns. +2 up the rep is +1 level difficulty. +3 is bigger spawns at +1 difficulty. +4 (or top difficulty) is +2.

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My guess is that, using the awesome power of the GM, they clicked the blinky for you, thus completing your mission.

I'm not entirely sure they can otherwise mark missions complete for you. Perhaps they can. I doubt they would for an undeclared boss. In any case, they have better things to do, like helping people with unfindable blinkies or hostages.

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Actually, I wasn't even in the mission when the GM marked it complete.

Never underestimate the power of a GM....

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But if they don't want to assist you, they will be obtuse to point of making me angry.

What part of "There are no level 41-43 Malta in Peregrine Island" didn't he understand?

And I know have *TWO* hunt 50 Malta missions at level 40. I thought I would be getting them out of my way at the same time, only to find out that the only spawn of Malta (lowest leve) is *46*.

Ouch.

Oh, BTW Statesman?

Someone mentioned the REALLY COOL idea of showing XP split among "regular" and then showing your "team bonus" seperately. That way people can see the bonus (just like you added the "critical" that shows up for scrappers now.)

Now if I could only get you to add a "Defended" popup that shows how many attacks missed because I debuffed the boss by 80% Accuracy and 30% Damage! Then everyone could see how useful my Dark Miasma Defender is!

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4.Stab my eyes, this will be a doozie! I made a character for CoH named Mass( now my primary w/o Super-skrull. I had him copyrighted back in '92 when you could still do it by mailing it to yourself. ( I was 17 ) But I read in a looooong ago post that Cryptic has rights to all "toons" made for it's game. How is this gonna suck? Should I contact one o' the boys and find out thier take on what I should do? Any o' you law-dogs got input?
Mass has been in indy comic print by way of my friends basements for ten years. Hell, I would be flattered if he got into the CoH comic with a tear of joy seeing him in color print!
Several of my alts are all his supporting cast of goods and bads from the last ten years as well.
Now, granted, the CoH version can't do everything the comic Mass can, the image, name and all are dead-on. ( with the exception of a full torso red M instead of the smaller CoH M )
Lil' help, anyone.......anyone........Bueller?

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I hopped on this morning while waiting to call in sick to work (just before maintenance) to try and track down some level 40-43 Malta in PI. (Which I'm almost certain don't really exist.) I hit team seek as I normally do.

But, because of the hour, no one grabbed me (and I doubt anyone was hunting Malta, anyways.)

So I needed to be able to solo. But if there was a level 42 boss in any of the mobs, I'd be SOL. Because there is no way that my level 40 Defender is going to be able to solo it now.

That would be like an old equivilant to a +4 or +5 boss. I never even dreamed of that before I3.

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Well I sure wouldn't mind seeing the Enhancement filter. It gets annoying to have to stop in a mission and clear out all the training Enhancements periodically. Not game breaking or anything, just annoying. Meh.

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I'd just be happy that you quit getting training enhancements by 32 (ten levels after you *get* SOs.)

With a 10 holder slot and the new low drops, I'm really glad I only have two full "buys" of SOs. I might be able to survive on what I'm getting now and the 10 mil I already have.

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Not true. There are a number of missions (most notably the warwolf/shadowhunter ones) which level 50 tanks routinely invite 5 other people, two of which are being powerleveled, to come in the door for. Then they round up all the mobs and kill them, all by themselves. They may use a few defense inspirations during the process, but they use no help whatsoever from teammates.

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While this is somewhat true, the tank would usually ask for help in wiping out the mobs (after they are all nice and stacked) so that it doesn't take him forever.

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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.

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. These people then become outraged when told that not all the content in the game was aimed at them.

Clearly given very consistent message from cryptic and the dev team this is a misconception on the part of these solo players, nothing more.

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Um, no. If I'm "hammered" into grouping for everything, that is directly impacting my need to solo at times. As one of the lower level people in my SG, when people team, they *want* to do the higher level peoples stuff for the challenge (and many people hate to "lose" their uberness so don't want to exemplar down.)

So if I want to try to get my souvenirs, I have to solo sometimes. Soloing with a lot of bosses (I think I've had one out of ten mission without a boss in this last arc.)

A +60% boss means that I CAN NOT even think to use the difficulty slider at all. Which is odd, because I think the bosses are too insane and make the fights *boring* while the minions are a waste of time.

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Since I found Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series to be incredibly boring and repetitious after about book 4 or 5, I've stopped buying those as well.

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<hugs Dasha_Blade>

Thank you! I'm the only one in my group of friends who thinks this way. I'm not crazy!

<runs off cackling wildly>



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Me too! He should have just finished it off after book three. Then written a different series to "finish" off his vision.

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Here is something to give some people a little perspective. Prior to the purple patch some of the best fun to be had in this game was going after a spawn that had a boss or two 8 to 10 levels above your own. It took a well played well constructed team, but when you could do it, it was amazing. It felt far more heroic then anything you can do in the game now.

Lets face it wiping out masses of weaklings who pose you no real threat is fun from time to time but beating on someone who can’t fight back is not heroic in any way shape or form.

The new bosses are simply the old bossed +1 level. This means that a +3 boss is equivalent, or perhaps slightly weaker then a +4 boss prior to the purple patch, but back then people were routinely taking on much tougher bosses then that. This means that there is still a lot of headroom left, people just need to rediscover those skills instead of resorting to simple attack it until it’s dead.

I understand the desire for immediate gratification, but making things easier seldom makes them more fun in the long run. Doing something difficult far outweighs will provide much more satisfaction and enjoyment then simply doing something easy over and over and over again.

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Er, except for everyone mentioning "+30-60%" isn't just a +1 boss increase. The damage increase and HP increase is generally only about 10-20% on a +1 boss.

I found a -3 boss in Bricks yesterday with *three* times my hit points and doing at least twice my damage (six-slotted) and obviously has the innate -5 resistance to mezzing.

That's pretty much 1 boss = 3 heroes.

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So maybe we need to shift our focus towards new TYPES of missions.

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Very very good idea! AT specific missions are very in line with the story too: who would ask the invisible girl to do the same mission as he would ask worlverine? Let the contacts preselect some missions that would fit best with the specific hero.

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What is a "Defender" specific AT mission? Protect/heal so many "friends" in a mission?

Poor FF!

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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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If success is determined by whether or not your target audience likes the game and you want to succeed then yes even if you are dissapointed it is still a success.

On the other hand if you define success as making a game that you feel proud of and damn all the critics and profit margins then success is determined by self gratification.

You seem to be argueing that the devs should ignore their market in order to fullfill their vision and to let their product die rather than answer a market demand.

In the majority of every market that I can think of businesses that succeed provide both a means of meeting market demands and a clear direction for meeting those demands. In the end though they are selling a product to a market not making a product for themselves.

I am sure someone will come along and say that if they catered to every whim of the market and tried to please everyone that no one would be happy. More the fool you are for not understanding the above.

Having a clear direction to meeting the market demand is what is in question here, not whether or not they are willing to please everyone.

Many people thought this game was directed at people who wanted to play an MMO but did not like the forced teaming aspects of MMOs. That is the market that was targeted. It turns out that the market they should have been targeting was something else all together. As statesman has said this game was really aimed at people who want to team and that should have been clear at the outset before people bought this game.

Statements about how this game was going to be solo friendly were made eroniously in light of the design focus. This game was misrepresented as an innovative MMO that was breaking out of the mold. Instead we find that it was designed to be just like all the other cookie cutter MMOs with a better combat system. Kudos on the combat system and thanks but no thanks on the rest of your group dynamics. Balance through imbalance has been done to death and could have been left out of the game entirely. I personally think that if Statesman regrets one thing it was the implimentation of the Archetype System.

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It needs to be a balance of both, of course.

For this boss change, maybe a "real" change to the +1 level (or a smidge less) might work out really well.

But with the change as it is and the difficulty slider too, they both amplified the problems of either horrendously.

Fighting huge spawns of Nemesis with snipers and bosses in just about every mob was *insane*. I died like four times (after respeccing myself a bit too, I admit) but the game was not fun or playable for me then.

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To heck with the design. Make everyone happy by rolling back boss-damage and have people who like more of a challenge put their slider on 'you have got to be f-ing kidding me'.
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Never in all my years of game play have I seen a game improved by abandoning the design.


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I am only talking about rolling back the boss-damage here. I am not suggesting they flush their entire game down the drain. The point is and remains that people who want their game harder now have the tool to do so. Making the bosses harder across the board for the 25+ crowd makes no sense to me.

Can you, as a game-designer, explain in layman's terms exactly WHY the devs of this game felt it was necessary to up the boss-damage? Because, quite frankly, I cannot make heads or tails of Statesman's explanation.

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Bosses were "too easy" to defeat" (which is really odd, for most people, they were too "grindy" to *bother* to defeat regularly.) There are still many "orphan" bosses in Perez Park from people AOE minion farming.

But this new change went over the top, IMO.

If the idea was to make them +1, it failed by quite a big degree. Bosses *feel* like they are at least +3 on the difficulty chart.

So now people who want more challenging (and rewarding) fights with minions (up to +2) get saddled with *effectively* +5 or +4 bosses in their midst.

Now be the -2 or -3 low man on a team.

Yeah, that's the sound of debt being rung up on the "fast service" register right there.

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Cons and levels are arbitrary. They're only there to let you knwo the level of challenge a foe presents. a level 50 minion is going to be more challenging than a level 2 minion. But the colour coding of their challenge level is supposed to remain constant. That's the point. How is it a cop-out? How is it different from Challenge Rating in d20 RPGs?

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Actually, quite a bit. Most minions really aren't that *different* from the 20's level versions. Maybe they have a few different powers.

In d20, a challenge rating 20 critter can be quite a bit different in *how* it fights.

Why don't we see an enemy group with Super speed? Super Jump? Or a *really* fast flight speed?

Or ones that do some really odd things? Like 1 minion that turns into three -1 minions (not underlings, actual minions.)

Or if you don't take out the "radio" man quickly, you get reinforcements that *run* over to you from the far side of the room?

Just a general comment...

On live, I have now easily maxed out my debt at level 40. Bosses *routinely* two-shot me. My SG could not do the Eden trial.

The synergy between *really* tough bosses and the difficulty slider I don't think were really well thought through.

A boss has three times my hit points, easily does twice my damage and is fairly resistant to holds. That is not "1.5 times" my defender

And the most important thing?

I'm no longer having much fun because of borked bosses and maps spawning 90% +1 mobs (even on Hard Boiled.)

I no longer feel like playing at all, group or solo.

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How many hold enhancements do you have in those powers? Just curious.

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Holds only have hold duration increases. With *FOUR* things spamming holds, that should be enough to lock a boss down.

But it typically won't before I get zapped by they mega mezzing.

I really think they boosted bosses to about +2/+3 level. Which means any +1 boss you run into "acts" like a +3/+4 boss.

I know my Defender never *tried* to solo a +3 boss without tons of insperations, which is what it requires for a +0/+1 now. Any "support" minions/lieutenants makes them unkillable.

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Statesman,

Regarding the boss changes, I appreciate and approve of the desire to make them tougher. I believe it brings a needed honesty and challenge to the game. Further, I like the fact that you are addressing the environment and not our ATs directly.

Now, having said that, the bosses are just too hard. I could enjoy this challenge on named bosses and AVs but street bosses is too much. My controllers and defenders are getting regularly one or two-shotted -- particularly by blade bosses -- at even levels.

Further, my powers to hold have also apparently been significantly reduced. This is a particularly lethal combination and has made me reconsider playing a primary character played for many, many months. I have even tried adding in a 6-slotted tactics and Temp Invuln using the free respec and have still found myself a great deal weaker against bosses on street hunts. I can only imagine what the respec TFs are like.

Please consider a quick update patch to dial-down a bit on the generic bosses. I concur wholeheartedly with Valerian on the 25% increase from I2 but not the current level of damage.

TheOriginalOgre
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Champion Ogreczar L45 Fire/Rad controller
... and 5 other toons

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You noticed the hold thing too? It appears all "hold" type powers only last about 2-3 seconds on bosses, but *their* hold powers now last on people about 20-30 seconds.

I could not hold a +1 Rulari boss (the eye thing) with *three* Dark Servants and my own hold power (that has a hold duration in it.) Or if the holds took, it wore off almost immediately.