NetherLen

Well, whaddaya know! You CAN please everyone!

In all seriousness, this is an excellent solution to the problem Statesman. Great work! Looking forward to the changes.

You seem to be fond of quoting Statesman. Whenever someone shouts he/she can't solo anymore, you say Statesman has always said not everybody is supposed to solo. Yet when someone digs up an old quote in which he states everybody should at least be able to solo their own missions, you make no sense anymore. Still defending the devs.

Look, someone made a big boo-boo here. Statesman says this, and then he says that. Missons should be soloable (he says), bosses are not meant to be soloed (he says). Explain then why so many missions have bosses in them. Never mind 'stealthed' boss-missions and their supposed bugginess (which I don't buy for one second by the way. If this has been an issue for months, as has been stated by many, then this should have been fixed months ago). I'm talking about ANY mission with a boss, even those that are announced.

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A lesser reward is a punishment.

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IMO, a lesser reward is just that: a lesser reward. It's not a punishment. You play your missions solo, you receive one piece of candy per mission. You team, you get two pieces. In either case, everyone is getting their candy. People who are not pleased with one piece can do the obvious and team up. People who don't have the time etc. to team will just have to make do with that one piece. But it's still a reward.

One question for you though: why is it so important to you that people team up? Plenty of people do, with or without incentives to do so.

For months, people have been complaining that the relative amount of XP received for completing a team mission doesn't match the XP of a solo mission. People still team up all the time. People complain that the more solo heroes, the less people to find for teams. People still team all the time. People say "this is an MMO, so suck it up and team, that's what the game is supposed to be like." Still, up till issue 3, people were soloing to their hearts' content, but still... people teamed all the time too.

Why is the fact that so many people want the ability to solo their own missions back so threatening to you? Does that somehow interfere with your own sense of enjoyment you get from the game?

Not trying to flame here. I'm just really curious to the mind-set of some of the staunchest supporters of teaming.

All that these soloers want, is for the boss-damage to be rolled back to the way it was. Most of them have even stated they don't mind the HP-increase. It's just the insane amount of damage they want fixed.

Good points.

Lothart, if you don't mind, I'm going to reply to your PM in this post.

Answering my question of why Statesman and his gang felt it necessary to up the boss-damage, you replied that the game was getting too easy for many people and thus they'd run out of content in the high-end game.

Seems to me that the obvious solution then would be: make more content! NOT make the game harder and thereby excluding many ATs and builds from even getting to the high-end game.

I realize that making more content would mean to create more missions, zones, what have you. But, that doesn't have to be the case. One of the problems, as I see it, is the fact that one outlevels contacts. Perhaps the devs could make it so that a hero can NEVER outlevel his contacts. At 31 (scrapper) I have yet to run out of content. In fact, at the pace I'm going, and having done a lot of teaming over the past few weeks, I can only conclude I am actually SWAMPED with stuff to do, rather than running out of them. Right now, I have 6 (that's SIX) contacts I haven't even seen yet, because I'm still doing missions for old contacts! The other day I was doing a mission in Skyway with a team. We kind of messed up in the first room and all died a painful death. Upon going back to the mission from the hospital, I made a little detour to one of my contacts there to stock up on inspirations. I checked my map to see who was closest: Carla Brunelli. I went to see her, and lo and behold, she GAVE ME A MISSION! A level 15/16 Clockwork story arc I never finished, simply because I had too much stuff to do. I did two of her missions last night. Breezed through them in less than five minutes, since everything in the missions was level 15/16.

If the dev-team could somehow by-pass the outlevelling of contacts, one would always have stuff to do. Ran out of missions from new contacts? Go see an old contact to check if there's anything you've missed.

Seems like a better solution to the problem of running out of content.

For the record: I do understand the problem, and thank you for clarifying. I just think the way they dealt with this is not the right way.

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It seems like a no-brainer to me that if the THREE ATs built most for team play are a smaller (49.2%) combined part of the population than the TWO others, you make grouping more relevant if you want diversity in the game.

It also seems like a no-brainer that that diversity is not achieved by making the different ATs more alike in capabilities, such as, soloing.

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I disagree. Teaming should be made preferable over soloing by making the rewards for teaming greater. NOT by punishing those who want to solo. People WILL team, regardless. In most cases it IS more fun than going at it alone. The boss-damage problem is a real problem for those who cannot team all the time due to certain issues. As has been pointed out many times in this and other threads, people DO have very valid reasons not to team all the time. People have families, jobs, other hobbies, pets, etc. Or they just play at odd times, when it becomes hard to find a good team, unless they are willing to search for 30 minutes.

How can any dev decide for me or anyone else that bosses were too easy to defeat?

I, for one, did not find this to be the case. I've had plenty of missions in which I got maimed by an even-level boss.

I am sorry I have to say this, but it truly feels the dev-team have once again catered to the needs of the über-builds and powergamers, the min/maxers. I pick powers because I think they might be fun. Rarely do I read the boards to get info on powers, since a lot of people here cannot seem to agree on anything, let alone the usefulness of powers.

Again, for my scrapper it's not that much of a big deal. But I do have several defenders gathering dust right now. And that's a damn shame, because I think defenders are probably the classiest archetype to play. Great power-combos, useful for solo and team-play.

Getting back to the point: bosses certainly weren't "easy" for everyone. Oftentimes they were quite a challenge, sometimes downright impossible without levelling up first.

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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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I want to make the difficulty of the later levels resemble early gameplay. At first, some players will decry "but I can't do what I used to! Ack! I can't solo two +4 bosses anymore?" True - but they'll have fun battling 3 white minions - which is something you can say at level 15, but not at level 35. Long term, the entire game will sparkle once this sort of balance is restored - because so much of the game design hangs upon it.


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Sounds like it's an important, maybe even crucial part of their design of the game to me.


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And that's the part that really baffles me. You fight your way through 22 levels to finally get to that glorious SO-stage. You slot your powers up well, start getting the really cool powers, finally having a sense of being 'super' and all you end up doing is still fighting 3 white minions at the same difficulty as when you were level 1. That's not game-design. That's a cop-out.

Level 1 - 3 white minions=one hero.
Level 50 - 3 white minions=one hero.

Where's the progress? Where's the feeling of accomplishment?

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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bumping the bosses a level was a compromise

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A compromise of what exactly?

Look, I'm no programmer, but I seriously doubt rolling back the boss-damage would be that hard to do. As has been said many, many, many, many times by many, many, many, many people: if you want the game more challenging, you now have the option to make it so! The increase in boss-damage was totally unnecessary and, to a lot of people, quite possibly a HUGE game-breaking issue. Not only does the slider NOT have the option to make your missions easier, the easiest setting (hard-boiled) has been made more difficult by upping the damage bosses do. It just does NOT make any sense!

And I am not speaking for myself here, since I play a scrapper. I DO however have a few defender alts that had already become quite hard to play after issue 2. Now I don't even touch them anymore. They're still in whatever zone I left them, gathering dust. Sadly.

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And, yes, one of the alternatives is to die many many times. I've done it that way myself. For some people that's what soloing bosses will be.


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I think that this statement points out where you and I (and probably more people as well) differ in opinion.

You say it's perfectly acceptable to die a few times on a mission, as long as you can finish it. If that's the case, then you're absolutely, 100% correct: you CAN solo each and every mission.

But seriously, where's the FUN in that? Being in a constant state of debt, only to be able to say "see, I can solo my missions". For my main, a scrapper, this is not an issue. Sometimes I die, sometimes I don't. Debt is worked off pretty fast and doesn't really bother me all that much anymore. I have also joined a pretty small, but cool SG, with some players being online at the same time as I am, usually. So I can always enjoy being on a good group. If we fail terribly on a mission, we laugh it off and try again.

A lot of people, judging from the displeased posts, do not have the luxury of being able to find a good team, or playing a good AT. Ramping up the boss-damage was a big blow to these people. Dying over and over again so as to be able to finish off that pesky boss, usually means being in perma-debt for these people.

I adjusted to the increased difficulty of issue 2 by making a scrapper, even though I enjoyed the diversity of defenders a whole lot more. Pre-issue 2, my defenders could solo reasonably well and I was a happy camper. Okay, what the hell. I made a scrapper. Been having a lot of fun with him. But is this the direction the game is going in? Everyone who enjoys soloing, or is pretty much forced to soloing due to whatever (all very valid) reasons, are now pretty much forced to make a scrapper to be able to play the game and see all it has to offer.

If this trend is continued, the game will be called City of Scrappers in no time. Either that, or Paragon City will become a ghost-town, with the occasional, lonely scrapper wandering around with a dazed look on his/her face.

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The developers CANNOT please both groups.

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Why refute the refuting of a 'tired old argument' by coming up with another argument that is quickly on its way to becoming 'tired and old' as well?

The devs CAN please both groups by rolling back the boss-damage and taking a long, hard and serious look at the supposedly-long-existing-but-never-worked-on-bug of bosses appearing in missions when the mission text makes no mention of them.

By doing this, they will please those who prefer to solo.

Put more incentives into the game that will encourage, NOT force, grouping. Better XP, more influence, more and better enhancement drops, temp powers, etc.

By doing this, they will have made grouping preferable to solo, without making solo-play impossibly hard. Teamers satisfied! And, as an added bonus, they might just pull more players into the whole teaming gig. WAY more than just simply making solo-unfriendly missions. If I, for whatever reason, cannot or don't want to group, I would be mighty POed if my entire mission-tray was filled with unsoloable missions. A lot of people have made VERY valid points about why teaming is not (always) an option for them, like real life issues (kids, family, work, other hobbies, etc.), playing at odd hours, bad experiences with pick-up groups, bad experiences with supergroups that disband as quickly as they were formed, etc.

Please, take off your blinds, and see what I'm saying: they can ABSOLUTELY please everybody. At least as far as this whole discussion is concerned.

Two cents. There ya go. Enjoy them.

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The soloability of a mission does not normally depend on defeating everything in the mission.

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I wonder why you use the word "normally".

In my experience, 'stealthed' boss-missions ARE missions in which you have no choice but to go face-to-face with the big bossman himself. The number of times I HAD to defeat the boss(es) FAR outweigh the number of times I didn't.

Also, I find it QUITE odd that this type of mission is considered to be a "known bug". Why the hell hasn't it been fixed yet? Tonight I had the Tsoo tattoo parlour mission. NOTHING in the mission description said ANYTHING about a boss. Just the "find the blinkies and defeat all Tsoo". In the last room, there he was: Iron Reaver.

Another character, just turned 31. Went into my mission (again, a defeat-all mission) with a group of four. Both that mission and the one immediately after that had bosses. Lots and lots of bosses. The second mission had 7 bosses! Rikti and Nemesis. I can understand the scaling to numbers in a team, but that was a little outrageous.

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It's the rule rather than the exception.

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Exactly! Starting in the 10s, all the way up to 30, I started getting missions with 'hidden' bosses. Either this is one hell of a major bug, and we're talking a T-Rex-sized bug, or it has always been intentional.

Wait till you get to his next few missions. More bosses NOT mentioned in the mission-briefing.

I think Scorus meant that sliding your mission-difficulty up means suicide for soloists, and I tend to agree.

The day before yesterday (I3 had just gone live) I helped out on a mission with a couple of SG-mates. The one the mission belonged to was a lvl 31 blaster, I was lvl 30 (scrapper), and there was another scrapper (lvl 29). The 31 blaster had just set his slider to Invincible (I seem to recall) and we hadn't really understood he did. We went in. Freakshow mission. First room, everything conned purple to me, minions included. We exited and made him change his slider-level. He turned it down a notch.

We all died. Quickly. TWO 33 Freak Tanks made sure we did. I was the last one standing, and got ONE of the Tanks to about half his HP before he smashed my head in. Ugly. VERY ugly.

That mission made me vow I would NEVER touch the slider.

It isn't just the appearance of bosses in missions that isn't mentioned all the time. It's timed missions too. It's simultaneous-disarming-of-bombs missions.

Seems like a LOT of bugs, if these are indeed bugs, as claimed by many.

Either a contact tells you EXACTLY what to expect, or they should tell you something like "I am not sure about this one, you'd better bring some friends".

As is stands now, this does not happen. Unless this has been changed with I3. But so far, I have not been able to find anything concerning incorrect mission descriptions in the notes.

I apologize if this has been mentioned before, but how is this:

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If a player sees a boss of his level, he should probably get help...

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NOT forced grouping? What else has to happen before the "there is no forced grouping in City of Heroes" bandwagon-riders finally realize that that is EXACTLY the direction this game is going in?

At the current level, without adjusting the slider upwards (I am not even TOUCHING that thing) bosses can be found frequently in missions, sometimes there are even two, and more often than not, bosses are a level above. How does this NOT tie in with forced grouping?

I would very much like one of the devs to just come out and admit that this is their plan for this game. No more beating about the bush, no more avoiding questions or giving vague and ambigious answers. Just the plain and simple truth. At least that way, everyone will know what to expect.

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And I am sure it's not possable that you could have just missed the warning?

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I can't speak for you being sure, but I CAN speak for ME being sure. Yes, I read the mission description, as I ALWAYS do, and NO, it wasn't in there until AFTER I accepted the mission.

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It has been stated previously by the DEV's that contacts should let you know when a group will be necessary for a mission.

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Oh, but they DID let me know. AFTER I accepted the mission. That's NOT a bug.

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Well, I havnt seen ONE person that has said you shouldnt be able to solo. What I have seen is people saying there should be LIMITS to what/where and how you should be able to solo.


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There already are limits. They're called Taskforces. I accept that. I am talking about regular missions given to me by regular contacts. Statesman himself claims these should always be soloable. But yet, they are not, apparently.

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But, sometimes you actually have to read, and then re read. Most do, some do not. They are bugs. Send a petition in.

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I read. I read every word and every line. These were two missions given to me one after another by the same contact. The part about needing others did not pop up until AFTER I accepted the missions. In fact, my contact didn't tell me anything about needing more people on the bomb mission. It just said to diffuse 3 bombs. As soon as I entered the (again, timed) mission, the objective read: diffuse 3 bombs simultaneously. And again, I refuse to believe that these are bugs. A bug is something that happened occasionally. Not 2 times in a row. Furthermore, missions like these, and stealth timed missions for instance, have been petitioned for months, but they're STILL in the game. A bug? Don't think so. Intentional? Looks like it.

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Notice, You are getting worked up about SPECULATION. Nothing has happen yet.

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I agree that this is till on test and therefore a non-issue when it comes to live. But the mere fact that they are actually testing it does mean something.

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There would be NO complaining from me if a contact would warn me BEFORE I accept a mission that I will not be able to do it alone. THAT is the beef I have with the current state of this game. Accepting a mission and THEN find out I'll need a team just plain stinks of FORCED GROUPING.

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It has been stated previously by the DEV's that contacts should let you know when a group will be necessary for a mission. If you get on a mission where it does not it is a bug and should be reported as such. It is not an attempt at force grouping just something slipping through the cracks.

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A bug? TWO times in a row? That's not a bug.

I have no friends who play this game. None of my SG was online. I didn't feel much like going out and find random people while the timer is ticking away.

There would be NO complaining from me if a contact would warn me BEFORE I accept a mission that I will not be able to do it alone. THAT is the beef I have with the current state of this game. Accepting a mission and THEN find out I'll need a team just plain stinks of FORCED GROUPING.

On a side note: I get so f-ing sick and tired of people shouting that this is a MMORPG and that I therefore SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SOLO. SHOW me where in that term it actually says I should group! SHOW me and I'll shut up. If you can't, then get off your high horses and shut up. The multi-player part of these games refers to the social aspect. It doesn't mean "you have to group, because this is an MMO". It just means that MULTIPLE players are ONLINE, playing the same game as you.

I don't mind grouping. I have grouped, and I will group. I just don't always want to, or I don't always have the time to do so. Missions like these REEK of forced grouping. Upping the difficulty even more to the point that bosses become unsoloable REEKS of forced of grouping. Can you avoid bosses? Sure, just street sweep. I want to do missions. There are bosses in missions. Plenty of them. And a lot of them +1.

On a regular mission, this wouldn't be too bad. There's always the option of outlevelling it. Painful at higher levels, but still an option.

However, if it happens in a TIMED mission, I do have a problem with that. I had one yesterday, a level 26 timed mission: breaking up negotiations between the Sky Raiders and the Family. My contact informed me, AFTER I ACCEPTED THE TIMED MISSION AND THE TIMER HAD ALREADY STARTED TICKING, that getting some help might not be such a bad idea. Well, I decided to try it alone anyway, since none of my SG were online at the time. In the final room there were a Raider Lt and a Family boss (both named) waiting for me. BOTH CONNED +1 TO ME (Lt was orange, boss was red). I play a scrapper. It took me some careful "tactics" (i.e. running away like a little girl and travelling back the .70 miles to my contact to load up on lucks), but I managed to beat them both and finish the mission in time.

I absolutely SHUDDER to think what would happen if they UP the HP and damage of bosses. Maybe a scrapper would still come out victorious, but other ATs might not have such luck.

I, among many others, have been saying since issue 2, that it seems a lot like the devs ARE moving more and more towards a forced grouping situation. Please, before starting your flamethrowers, take into consideration that I fully realize that nobody can FORCE me to group. I KNOW I can just skip missions and sweep the streets, or outlevel them. However, there's no outlevelling anything on timed missions, especially those of which your contact warns you you'll need someone else to help AFTER you've accepted that.

Need more proof of "forced" grouping? The other day I had another one of those "diffuse 3 bombs at the same time" mission. NO warning this was one of those missions until AFTER I had already accepted it. I cleaned out the mission, but left the bombs. I failed it.

For someone who WANTS to do his missions, this IS definitely forced grouping. I could have just let the timers run out on those missions and be done with it, getting only a fraction of the XP I would have gained if I had succeeded. But that's not what I WANT to do.

Yep. Did mine last night. First time too. I heard about the bug and was wondering if you guys had fixed it. Well, the three Lost (2 minions and 1 Lt) near the capsule, didn't even attack it once! They only had eyes for me. Lucky!

Thanks for the fix. Got my cape!

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+1 level mobs are now appearing in the numbers that we had wanted in missions.


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I don't want to dig up a dead horse and start beating it, and forgive me if it's already been mentioned (I haven't read through the entire thread yet), but to me, the +1 mobs are still a HUGE ISSUE. I still find myself outlevelling missions to make them doable, at the cost of some good XP and influence. There's nothing "heroic", IMHO, about having to go out 3 or 4 times during a mission to stock up on inspirations, in spite of the fact that many people here would consider that "strategy". Yesterday, for instance, I had a 5th Column mission. I decided to try it at the level I got it. In one room, THREE groups of yellow minions started to beat down on me. There was NO way to aggro just one group. They all attacked me (I'm a scrapper - no pulling by using ranged attacks). I used up an entire tray of inspirations, only taking down one group. I just thought "sod this" and exited.