FuzionMite

I decided to finally weigh in on one of these Dev Response threads. Since I have a L50 Fire/Fire/Fire tank I think this is a good thread for me to post too. A little background to give my bias for what I post. I have a family. This is my first MMOG. I started playing CoH a few days before the game went live. I initially played an INV/SS tank to lvl 10, switched to a NRG/NRG blaster and a DARK/REG scrapper. I got the scrapper, my solo character, to lvl 32 and my blaster, my SG character, to lvl 39. My SG is made up of people like me. It is nothing for us to pause in the middle of a mission for five or ten minutes while one of our members deals with a real life issue. Completing a TF has taken us as long three weeks. We lost our tank around lvl 35. At lvl 39 it became apparent that we needed a tank, so I switched to my lvl 18 fire/fire tank, since I knew I had the best chance of catching him up to the SG level. I have read various guides and know the ins and outs to create good characters. However, except for my scrapper I have avoided hasten just on principle, I fully understand what it does.

My fire tank has acrobatics, tough and weave. He was pretty boring to play from lvl 40 onward. The only thing that really proved to be any threat was a Malta Sapper which eventually came down to eliminating him first or at 41 when I picked up Char, it becames a binary equation of holding the sapper or not. I didn't really have any problems with keeping mobs in the burn patch using BA, Combustion, BoF and later Fireball. I understand lower level fire tanks may not have been as good due to a weaker punch-voke. I haven't had time to test I5 changes for fire tanks yet though, maybe this weekend. However, the fact that at high lvls I wasn't challenged seemed like a problem to me.

I have read lots of posting of anger, disillusionment, mistrust, etc about the I5 changes and about Statesman's vision comment. I would like to give my perspective on this. My SG has four people that had a Defender as their primary character. Their game experience was significantly different than mine while I was playing my fire tank. Their missions were challenging at heroic or rugged while I consistently played on unyielding/invincible. Statesman has repeatedly stated that defenders were where he wanted them since, well pretty much the start of the game to the best of my recollection. The only defender issue he has mentioned being concerned about was that post 40 defenders weren't getting the same love from the big teams. I5 seems directed at moving all the ATs to a similar game experience as what the defenders have been having. I would be willing to bet that those who have found the I5 changes to be okay on test have been playing at heroic/rugged and are used to fighting white and yellow mobs mostly. I further would be willing to wager that those complaining the most are used to fighting at unyielding/invincible where the average mob is orange/red which provides a sense of having become more powerful. The manual, pdf and shipped version, both still are firm in stating that orange and red mobs are supposed to be very dangerous, which in the current I4 game aren't really after lvl 35. That is the main reason I see for the I5 changes.

Cryptic, and Statesman, have communication issues in the forums with their releases. Using this Burn change as an example. The change was rolled out to test on Friday with a little blurb and nothing else which immediately sends the fire tankers into a frenzy. We get a red name thread, but the chances are slim that any red names will actually post to thread Friday are minimal, in fact there weren't any. The frenzy and frothing will increase over the weekend. Generally, Monday seems to be a catchup day, so the first post from a red name will be on Tuesday. Even if it is an, oops we left the fear/terror effect on by mistake, it will already too late to undo the hysteria that has built up on the forum about it. This doesn't happen everytime, just the majority of the time. I like Statesman having personally talked to him a number of times at various conventions, and he has indicated that he himself plays a fire tanker. I am not sure what process/release constraints they are under that causes these patches/builds to be rolled out on Fridays, but I doubt they want people to lose their minds during this time.

By the same token, the forums are almost as bad as most women I know, sorry ladies, in that they never forget and always bring up past mistakes from long ago. I am quite sure Statesman doesn't usually take hours analyzing what he is going to say before making a post. I know I don't, and except when addressing something indepth I assume he doesn't. Therefore, we sometimes get things that are badly worded, if you were sitting across the table from him when he said something with regards to the vision of CoH it wouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen in a forum. Somebody always remember and feels compelled to whine, wail, scream or vent vile about it. Then the fan boys who believe Cryptic can do no wrong will show up doing the exact opposite.

I guess what I am trying to say in a long winded way is that for the majority of ATs the post 32 game play was broken. Red and Purples aren't much of a threat and when they are, it is a binary sort of threat. You are either perfectly safe or defeated without much middle ground when playing at that level. If solo fighting at those levels have been giving you a more heroic feel, then I think you are going to ultimately be disappointed with I5, since the direction seems to be towards what is in the manual that they should only be taken on in a team setting. Be aware that Cryptic isn't going to respond over the weekend most likely, hey they have families/live outside of the game too. Post reasoned beefs with burn. If what I have read about mobs fleeing the changed burn patches is true, then say that. I am sure lots of reasoned posts will have much more impact than hysterical ones. While the upcoming power changes may be personal to you, the devs aren't doing it to personally screw you.

I'll close by saying, we're DOOOMED! DOOMED, I tell you. 8^)

Personally, I like the Manticore character in the new series. It is exactly how I felt while I was playing a blaster. I also like how Statesman has been portrayed since I have felt the same way while playing my tanker. I especially liked Manticore's solution to the Prometheus problem, sort a Spock sort of solution for the Trekkies out there.

Geez Recluse,
I thought you were an evil villian and here you go and make all sorts of reasonable statements. Are you sure you are Lord Recluse? You aren't his Praetorian counter part pretending to be evil are you? Thanks for the post.

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I do like the new boss changes, solo or teamed it adds a dangerous quality to teaming that was lacking before. Without the threat of death I am one of the ones that got quickly bored.

I regularly team up with a Defender and we are always saying how even on "invincibility" mode the missions are too easy. We actually get happy when there are a couple bosses next to each other in our missions.


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Can you place your statement in context? Your Defender buddy, is he a bubbler/empath? Do you always play with him? What AT are you playing?

My nrg/nrg blaster experience with I3 is as follows:
1) teamed with a good emapth defender and staying out of melee range we can defeat a yellow boss as long as the defender spams nothing but heals

2) teamed with a bubbler defender with the bubble that keeps bosses out of melee range and having bubbles everywhere we can defeat a yellow boss, but if he gets lucky I need to use a heal inspiration

3) Solo, if my blaster even attemps an even con boss I have to use a tray full of insiprations and there is no guarantee that I still won't be making a trip to the hospital.

I appreciate your view point, but without know if you are talking about running a scrapper, tanker, etc and the lvl of them there is no way to tell how valid it is to us that are bothered by the change. You didn't read the other messages, but most of us agree the boss changes don't effect all the ATs equally. Btw, my blaster is lvl 37.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a change where the devs wanted to encourage slotting of hold powers. Are the patch notes for yesterday up yet?

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


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This is only my understanding, but I was under the impression that multiple holds don't increase the length of the hold they only add to the magnitude. I don't know all the magnitudes, but as an example:

Say a lvl 32 boss has a resistances of -8. To hold him you need to get that to zero. You cast your hold of magnitude 4, and each dark servant cast their magnitude 2 hold, giving you a total 2 on the boss he is held. However, when your hold falls off durations wise he is back to -2 and free.

The other thing to consider is that some bosses have resistance to holds/disorients which shorten the time supposedly. This is the reason you may want to try the same confrontation with hold enhancements. I would be interested in the results as this post is based off things I have read on the boards not actual experience.

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Keep that in mind as your competitors. A lot of players like me are paying for CoH despite the MMO aspect. A lot of us picked up the game thinking "I can't imaging paying a monthy fee to pay a game I've already paid for." with our friends' enthusiastic endorsements winning us over. The MMO has always sounded like a hassle and CoH had (until I3) found a balance that made the MMO much less of a hassle than we thought. Now it's getting to be a hassle since we have to do it. Why bother loading up CoH if I'm gonna log on, find out conditions aren't ideal for teaming (low pop in the right zones, my SG all offline, etc) and close the game? Why not just load up The Sims 2 instead?

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While it wouldn't be The Sims 2 for me, the rest is spot on. A year ago if you had asked me if I would be playing a MMOG, I would have laughed in your face.

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

Actually the difficulty in the Hollows was increased, at least for the Frostfire and Atta missions as both are now elite bosses.

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Statesman made it clear what the goal of the increase is. The increase is to make many of the previously soloable missions and soloable street mods unsoloable, so that those who solo now will group.

Many of those posting here, including myself, consider that a bad goal. A terrible idea. One that will remove the fun from many players who are having lots of fun now.

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Yes, he only told us the goal not the reason why. The goal is to encourage teaming. I suspect the reason why is to minimize the hosting resources. As an example, if you have 80 people running in solo missions uping the difficulty and encouraging teaming means that instead of 80 missions to host you have 10 to 40. With the upcoming launch outside of the US, they have to be examining the resources required to actually host the game. This is all speculation on my part of course, and is probably just going to lead into more absurd speculation as well.

Besides hurting my solo career, this has had a huge impact on the support ATs. The defenders in my SG have had to resort to spamming heal when we do missions. Tankers complained about being provoke bots, my defender mates now complain about being nothing but health pez dispensers.

Someone said it earlier though, if you have a power that lets you control a boss in any manner it doesn't matter how tough he is made. If I could could count on always getting knockdown with my nrg/nrg blaster, I could still solo with no problem at all. It would be boring as hell, but it would allow me to solo. Assuming I street sweep through the next million XP, I should be able to try out total focus which has 100% chance to stun apparently. Thing is that it has a long animation and requires me to get in melee range. No, I don't have hasten or superspeed, so getting near a boss and getting it off will be difficult at best.

I checked the testing room forum and people did complain a lot about this issue before it went live, so I just don't know what to think at this point. I always considered myself a supporter of Cryptic willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Now I just don't know what to think or feel. Strange, none of the other changes bothered me nearly as much as this one.

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I play on pickup teams a LOT. My main is a bubbler which there seems to be fair demand for even in the end game. I get /tells and /invites out of the blue all the time. It does not take long to get a feel for the group. I actually did Eden the first time on a pickup team and we played a very organized and tactically sound mission. (One of the controllers stayed too far away from me for dispersion and maneuvers to cover her and died a lot, but that was it.)


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And there is the rub, a bubbler is so massive in altering game play that you are in high demand. One of the defenders in my SG is a bubbler and he made the 2nd Respec mission a cake walk pre I3. Post I3 his bubbles allowed use to complete the Numnia TF. However the two empathy defenders had to spam healing to make it work. Enjoying the content was non-existant.

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A number of folks have stated the MMOG definition is a tired old argument that has been refuted beyond question. Not exactly. This is not just any MMOG. Statesman has decided to put a certain priority on teaming in CoH. It is not pervasive and it does not ruin the game for those who like to mostly solo. The bottom line is CoH is a game where occasional teaming is probably necessary. For those who like to team that is a plus. For those who do not that is a minus.

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It isn't a question of disliking or liking teaming for me and many others. A parent with spouse and kids just don't have the same flexibility as others. The main reason my SG exists is to give us the ability to do TFs. We take take a week or more to do them and it isn't that unusual for us to stand around for 10 minutes in the middle of a mission while one of us deals with family.

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The developers CANNOT please both groups.


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They were pre-Issue 3.

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For those who want to be able to solo every single mission I do not know what more to say than to ask, "Do you know what the letters in MMOG stand for?" This is NOT an FPS. For the majority of missions you can solo good for you. But, for those few you cannot you really do not have a leg to stand on complaining about it. Either the game is going to be set up so you can solo absolutely everything or so tight teams with good tactics and execution can still be challenged ccasionally. It cannot be both.

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That's pretty damn hilarious. A tight team with good tactics, huh? How many pickup teams have you played on StageIII? How often do your kids or wife need help for 5 minutes while you are in the middle of a mission? How many of your pickup team understands this? Anytime I have to go AFK in a pickup team for more than a minute, I come back to find myself kicked. I am glad you like the changes, keep them on the difficulty bar/setting.

Okay, just one more thing after testing a little bit and re-reading. I went on several regular missions that didn't have bosses just as you said. However, if I go into a story arc mission this is not true. I think most of the posts have talked about story arc missions which is a real shame. I like them because I get mementos which act as log, the only thing is that I only get it if it is my mission which pretty much means I have to ask my SG to do all my story arc missions with me now which really isn't going to be possible.

One last thing, a patch was applied today. Looks like it provided the free respec; however, if it does anything else I don't know as the updates page doesn't list the patch.

States,
This changes effects the casual game much more than the power gamer. I am running a nrg/nrg blaster as my primary character. He doesn't have hasten or the fighting pool. He is lvl 37. Since issue three came out I have suffered more defeats than anytime in my history of play. I regularly group with my super group and despite our best efforts I continue to be defeated. I might as well not even have nova since it is just an invitation to being defeated. I can handle being a glass cannon, but now I feel like more of a liability to my super group than an asset.

The thing is that I counted on solo play to be able to keep up with my supergroup who has some truly hardcore players compared to myself. Sidekicking really isn't a solution when TFs and Hazard zone have level restrictions, as I start to fall behind I'll just be unable to team with my mates. This is not good, imo.

This change is forcing me to consider going with a cookie cutter build that includes hasten and the fighting pool. Not what I want to do, but I really don't see much choice. I am hoping that the addition of Total Focus at 38 will allow me to return to soloing on those occassions where I need to catch up, but I have grave doubts at this point.

I've talked to you several times at conventions and I've agreed with you ideas, but this change seems particularly untested. Please sit down with Positron again like you did with the whole tanker/scrapper dmg resist cap. Bosses are not +1 lvl difficulty now. Thanks.

Leeland