MaWeiTao

Earlier I did the two CoT missions that awards the Frontline badge. Nowhere does the text mention anything about bosses. The first mission was fine, no bosses.

The second mission had, not one, but four bosses (death mages) and it was a defeat all mission. They were spread out, and I was able to complete the missions. However, I had to run out and get inspirations every time I went up against the bosses.

Oddly enough, they didn't seem to hit nearly as hard as their counterparts in Founder's Falls do, especially for being +1. They didn't even see to hit as hard as Death Mages did before Issue 3.

I'm sure I would have visited the hospital a few times if they we're hitting as hard as normal. Thats something odd I've been noticing with bosses since issue 3 went live. Sometimes they're extremely tough, other times they don't do much of anything. I don't remember seeing this kind of inconsistency before issue 3.

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And THIS my friend is why the scrappers should be VERY leary of any chest thumping over this change, you put your finger right on it. Because if the other AT's are running as they should for the new boss set-up, it stands to reason that if the scrappers are sliding through (not a breeze, but you get the drift) then they'll eventually get smacked back down to compensate.

Because if *not every mission should be soloable* and scrappers are still soloing them all, the devs WILL sit up and take notice.

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Actually... It was a typo which I just noticed... I don't support the changes and my other posts reflect that opinion.

I'm not having as easy a time with these changes as people expect. Its not like I can run up to bosses and have a field day with them. And having friends who play blasters and controllers I completely sympathize with their plight.

Sorry about the misunderstanding...

I'm not supporting these changes. However, in Statesman's defense, he did say that if we discovered a mission with a boss and there was no warning given in the description that we should report it as a bug.

Regardless, it feels like a square peg has been jammed into a round hole. I don't see much in the game that really indicates that these boss changes were planned all along and that the game is now working as intended.

Its troubling that these changes seem to ensure that scrappers are going to get the shaft. I feel like I've got a giant nerf target painted on my hero. And its not like I'm having an easy time with bosses myself, although I can imagine its worse with other archetypes...

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Oops... I just noticed a typo... I mean to say I don't support the changes, not that I support them.

I suspect that if the developers reduce boss difficulty they will raise it for minions and lieutenants to balance things out.

Especially in light of the fact that its acknowledged that there's a big discrepency in minion and lieutenant difficulty versions boss difficulty.

Actually, I'm not sure if that would be a good or bad. I didn't notice a significant difference with minions when they were harder on test, but that was just me. I don't think others were so happy about it.

Something just doesn't jive here... There are many things in this game that don't seem to fit with the increased difficulty of bosses. This feels like it was something that was introduced to address whatever concerns some people at Cryptic are having.

For months, since the game was released, we've expected to solo the majority of our missions. I can't recall this ever being negated by any developer. As a matter in fact, the developers seemed to ensure that we could solo missions. They stated that we should be seeing any villain higher than 1 level over our hero. It ensured we weren't getting bosses too far beyond what we could handle. If we found a mission not consistent with that it was bugged.

I thought that was scalable missions and task forces were meant for heroes. Standard missions were meant for those who solo.

Was all this meant only for heroes below level 25? If so, the distinction was never made.

The new mission difficulty option doesn't quite fit with this intended difficulty. Now we have the option to have missions populated by orange, red and purple villains. So what we are expected to solo doesn't add up.

For all intents and purposes, impossible to solo missions with bosses set at higher degrees of difficulty. I don't even think it would have been possible at higher difficulty settings to defeat those bosses as they were before issue 3. So where is the motivation there for this change?

So, were developers trying to slow progress with this boss change? Well, with the release of this issue XP has been coming at a fast pace, provided I avoid most bosses. I expect to see players turning up the difficulty and farming missions for XP. Players now have a reliable, controlled environment for doing it. The kind of people who want to powerlevel will always find a way to do it, and in many cases could care less about the content they're skipping.

I'm having a hard time seeing the logic behind these changes. However, I don't know if I want to blame the developers. They have to understand this game better than any of us. As expansive as the game is, they must have a good idea of what kind of effects changes will bring.

Having experience in the corporate world, I can't imagine that developers have the final say in many of these decisions. I can only assume that people higher up, like management and sales/marketing departments are trying to impose these changes on the game. They want to see certain things change, and want it done a certain way, but don't quite understand the game mechanics.

Now, don't quote me on that. Its sheer speculation, I may be completely wrong here. It's just a guess.

From what I've seen, CoH came to represent a sort of anti-EQ. The elitism of EQ wasn't present in this game. There was no loot, no high end content locked off to all but a few exclusive guilds, and even casual gamers had the hope of reaching the higher levels of the game. From what I've read, and all of the friends I know playing the game, that was a big draw for them. The precident being set by issue 3 changes all that.

All in all I am very happy with City of Heroes. Cryptic has done a great job with the game. I'm still having a lot of fun. And the difficulty settings make for exciting missions. However, I do have my concerns. I'm worried about where the game is heading and the fact that I'm essentially being forced to group in order to complete many of my own missions.

I think this is the last I'm going to say about this issue. At this point I'm just going to wait and see what happens.

I guess, technically, in most cases we're not supposed to be able to solo bosses.

This is just wild speculation, but I have a suspicion that these changes were some kind of mandate, perhaps from upper management, perhaps from investors.

Honestly, these changes are somewhat more consistent with what was described in the manual. However, if this were a serious enough issue I would have expect this fix to have been made within the first month of the game's release. It could have even been put in place during beta.

It would have gone over much better then as it wouldn't impact much of the playerbase. By the time people hit these levels with the boss changes they'd just take things as they were. No one had played the game any other way.

As it stands people have been playing a different type of game. Its been a game where soloing is a reality for most players. Its been friendly to casual gamers. In some regards things were a big on the easy side, hence the anticipation in the introduction of a difficulty slider.

Having these boss changes put in place now is causing a big upset in the expections many players had of CoH. I can't say for sure, but this is the strongest reaction I've seen against anything in the game to date. And yhe developers appear to be more adamant about keeping these changes in place than they have at any time in the past.

I'm having trouble justifying these changes, especially in light of the mission difficulty option. A boss difficulty boost may be a good idea, but did it have to be so severe? What is the rationale behind all this?

Did they find that people were levelling too quickly? I didn't think there was that much of a lack of content that there was a risk of driving players away. Especially since we've been getting consistent updates. Or do they want to slow the game down in anticipation of City of Villains.

Did they determine that the number of players leaving the game at higher levels were greater than the number of players they risked losing to these changes?

I'm thinking out loud about what may be driving all this. I'm guessing orders have come from higher up to change things, particularly in light of the release of a few popular MMORPGs. Then again, I may be completely wrong about all this.

Not that my perceptions and expections really amount to much in the greater scheme of things but I'm compelled to point this out anyway.

Bosses, to me, are glorified leutenants. They aren't unique; we've all encountered countless bosses in Paragon City.

Think of is this way; if villain groups were a corporation, the minions would be lowly employees; leutenants are team leaders, but still your basic employees, and bosses are department leaders. They have limited authority, but in the greater hierarchy they don't have much pull.

But now we have these guys, who are essentially part of a faceless horde of villains, now comparable and perhaps greater than many superheroes.

Most bosses aren't all that distinguishable from their minion bretheren. The Crey Paragon Protectors are among the first I've seen that stand out somewhat from the rest.

Elite bosses and perhaps some named bosses should be filling the role currently occupied by conventional bosses. And they should visually reflect their status. They should have archvillain-type features to reflect their stature, something that makes us feel like we're fighting someone important, someone for whom we might need help in order to defeat.

Regardless of some concerns I've been having of late, I still think CoH is great. Its a lot of fun and one the best, and certainly most unique MMORPG available today.

In-game GM support has been phenomenal. I've never waited more than 10 minutes for a response and they've always been very friendly. I've also found the developers to be very responsive to player concerns. I guess sometimes they feel they have to put their foot down on some issues, but beyond that its been great.

I think you can find a decent correlation with the Xmen. With them you see a fairly good range of powers and strength.

You had Sentinels, which qualify as monsters and required a team to defeat. Then there was Magneto, Mr. Sinister and Apocolypse who were archvillains also requiring a team, and being extremely difficult to defeat.The Xmen normally didn't win in a direct confrontation with those guys.

Then there were the rest, who I'm convinced qualified as bosses. The Xmen definitely could take those solo. Wolverine could handle Sabertooth, Lady Deathstrike and anyone like that alone. It was common to see battles where each hero had his or her respective opponent. There was the occassional elite boss, like Omega Red who required a handful of heroes, but those were less common.

Prior to issue 3 City of Heroes seemed to follow those conventions. I'd argue that bosses were a bit on the easy side. However, to say that they should require a group to defeat the majority of the time is a bit surprising.

It may be consistent with the RPG genre in general, but I don't think it quite suits a superhero universe. Then again, the developers can do anything they want, can't they?

I don't agree with the original poster... A lot of people are making these problems out to be far more serious than they actually are. None of these problems have any significant impact on gameplay.

In the beginning glowing objects made no sound and people managed just fine. I don't know the situation with Touch of Fear, but I can't imagine its that bad. And if it is, avoid using it until its fixed, its not a big deal.

The same goes for all the other known problems I've seen. Some may be a nuisance, but none qualify as critical. Considering how much has been changed and added with this update I'm fairly impressed by how smoothly things have gone.

I for one, wasn't convinced that the bosses changes on test were a good idea. However, I want to play a bit on the live servers before I make any judgement. So far I've seen predominantly good reactions to it, which I'm surprised about.

As far as the community goes, I think CoH has one of the best communities of any MMORPG, both in the game and on the forums. I frequented EQ's forums for a short while. I've visited the EQ2 and WoW forums to get a sense of what things are like. With WoW in particular you don't have to look far at all to find some people with really bad attitudes.

I have to say, on the CoH forums, even people who have complaints and are threatening to quit are courteous and try to be thoughtful in their arguments. I guess it helps having strict moderators.

I heard that there's going to be a package available at a lower cost that allows you to buy all those items offered in the DVD edition, excluding the actual DVD itself.

Pricing hasn't been indicated yet. I think thats the package intended for current players. I'm guessing the DVD edition was put out for the holidays, to entice people into trying out CoH. They need to keep the game fresh in the consumer's mind, especially with so much else out there.

The difficulty change was intended for levels 30 and up; I dont recall if 20 and up were supposed to be changed as well. I'm guessing that there was some profound connection between all levels and difficulty. So when things were changed it affected all levels. Or they wanted to change the difficulty for some low level missions and it affected them all.

And thats also why it hasn't been fixed yet for the low levels, because things are so intertwined and I'm guessing they can't fix one thing without breaking another.

I don't see a reason for them to have wanted to sneak in a difficulty increase at the low levels. I think it was generally agreed that things were working fine below level 20. And things slow down sufficiently in the later levels that it balances out with how quickly a hero can reach level 15-20.

Villians have been using powers above their levels since the game was introduced. I guess with this latest update its become more obvious. That doesn't bother me.

What bothers me more is that so many villain powers look just like the hero counterpart. In a way it is a letdown to see some guy use a power at levvel 10 that you only get at level 32.

I can accept that some powers have more of a generic look, and they'll be the same for both heroes and villains. But I also think that certain powers, particularly the 8th and 9th powers in our skillsets should look more impressive and unique.

Well, I've been playing for much of the evening since I got home from work. And I play on Guardian, so I hoped I'd catch something since the server is based in California and I'm on the East Coast.

Unfortunately, I've only seen one spawn in Kings Row and I was told of a second.

I don't know if this means they invasion was thwarted earlier in the day. I'm hoping this is just leading up to something big tomorrow or Saturday. Thats what I'm betting on for now, because what I've seen in the game doesn't seem to justify the alert that has been posted.