Oldhero

I want to address the increased difficulty levels on door missions in the game.

First, I play regularly with my husband and a good friend in real life. We are all mature older adults. We play to relax from the stresses of daily life.

The door missions for the Heroic level have become too difficult for a group of three (1 level 30 and 2 level 29 characters). The stop raid leaders & crews mission in IP was undoable for our group. On our alts we attempted the Hollows mission to defeat all creatures in cave with the igenous creatures and there were so many of them that our one exemplared character had to unexemplared so we could complete the mission. All 3 of us keep our difficulty level set on Heroic.

I repeat, again, that the manual states that the game is possible to solo. I also repeat again that the publicity on the game initially said it would be geared toward the casual player.

When my real life friend complained about the difficulty of the mission by e-mail, he was told that he should have more people in the group or that he should talk to members of his supergroup to get help on the mission. He was also told that door missions need a minimum of 5 people now. This is the kind of attitude that led us to leave Everquest and if it continues we will leave City of Heroes.

Stop the missions with disarm x number of bombs simulataneously. This contradicts your published statements in the manual regarding being able to solo and is false advertising.

Stop tailoring the game toward uber supergroups and adrenalin-addicted teenagers. Remember us older adults who are casual players who do have a life.

Heidi Ho (level 30 illusion controller) Infinity Server and others

Hello all.

I have two complaints regarding the game that I wish to voice at this time.

1. In the Stop All Villains in Warehouse mission in Independence Port a group of 3 of us, all level 27, zoned into the mission and we found the mobs to con: white, yellow, orange, and red. At the Heroic level of difficulty this is unreasonably difficult.

2. My two teammates each took the cape mission in Atlas at the same time. The first time we did it on the same night we had only a handful of mobs in the memorial. The second time we did it, immediately after the first time, we had about 3 times the number of mobs in the zone. The same mission with the same group should have a consistent number of mobs.

Heidi Ho (level 27 controller Infinity server)

Hello again all.

I am following up again to my complaint that missions have become impossible at level 23 given the fact that the groups of mobs are yellow and orange cons and too much for a group consisting of a blaster, a controller (with phantom army), and a defender.

I quote from the game manual, page 7:

"A Blaster can solo successfully, if he remains aware of his situation at all times,......."

Given this statement in writing in the game manual then our group which has a blaster should be able to do missions.

It has been my experience, however, that none of the classes can solo effectively even the blaster, which makes the statement in the book false advertising.

And to the person who wanted to know, yes the controller is an empathy secondary power controller and the defender can also heal.

Heidi Ho (level 26 thanks to the winterlords controller) and others
Infinity Server

Greetings All.

I am following up on my previous post regarding the game being more difficult in grouped missions.

My husband and I and a good friend have playing City of Heroes since May 2004. We all started at the same time and have grouped the same 3 characters together: a blaster, a defender, and a controller.

We have found the missions feasible from the beginning until we all hit level 23 and tried to do the missions (and we tried several) that we had taken at level 23. No one in the group was exemplared or sidekicked. I am speaking of door missions and not street missions. We were level 22 before the last expansion and became 23 after the expansion.

We are all set on Hard-Boiled. We don't need anything more difficult.

We found that we could not make any progress in any of our missions. We would keep repeatedly dying and unable to complete the missions.

The problem is that we were doing what we had been doing for 22 levels and all of a sudden, it wasn't possible anymore. We assumed it had to be something that changed in the expansion.

We don't know what, if anything, we are doing wrong. We are using carefully laid out strategies in the missions on our pulling. We don't just run in and shoot everything that moves.

I am even more perplexed after reading the post by the person who thinks the missions are too easy. We really enjoy playing with just the 3 of us. We find that smaller children and teenagers just don't have the patience to be good group members with us old farts. And as our playing time is limited, we also don't need to spend 2 hours trying to put a group together. This is a lof of why we quit Everquest.

We are also frustrated because we were lead to believe by game marketing and game reviews that a person could solo in City of Heroes and while we found it possible at the lower levels, we find it impossible now that we have reached the 20's.

My husband and I have both experienced the earthquakes when zoning through tunnels since the last expansion. We are each running our own computer with Windows XP as the operating system using recent GEForce 256 memory videocards and 1 gig of regular memory.

We are sorry the bug the cause players to zone out of missions and instantly have full health has been fixed. This is a great time saver in missions.

Our concerns are still present regarding the length of time a person must stay online to completely a taskforce. Our RL friend and I are both physically disabled. We cannot sit for hours and hours straight online. We are frustrated that the taskforce badges will not be possible for us to complete given the current construction of the game.

Heidi Ho (level 26 controller Infinity server) and others

Ever since the last expansion the game has become too difficult even at the Hard-Boiled level. It is impossible to solo missions now and you promised the game would be soloable.

My husband and a good friend and I play nightly and with our level 23 characters even with phantom army we cannot succeed in door or street missions now. There are too many yellow and orange cons in door missions. The missions have become impossible to do even when the missions were taken at the current level.

If we wanted to play Everyquest we would be playing Everquest. You keep trying to make the game harder and harder to please the snot-nosed teenagers who constantly want more and more of an adrenaline rush and in the process you ruin the game for the adult casual players who are trying to escape the frustration of their daily lives. We don't need more stress, folks.

This latest expansion has also introduced an unacceptable number of bugs in the game. For example, there is now a clipping plane bug where you cannot see groups of mobs until you are right on top of them, there are now earthquakes when you zone from one zone to another using the highway tunnels, a player used to return to full hit points when zoning out of a door mission and this is now no longer true, and a player at full hit points when zoning into a door mission is now at half hit points when he/she arrives in the door mission.

I have reached the point where I dread every expansion because the game direction goes where the casual player does not want to go and the game becomes too difficult. I am not asking for a cakewalk of a game. I just want the game to be reasonably playable at any given level; which it is not since the last expansion. And the door missions are certainly not soloable.

I am also concerned about the increasing length of time door missions take as a character levels. As I mentioned earlier, my husband and I and a close friend play nightly. My friend and I are both completely disabled and the increasing time sitting in front of the computer becomes very hard on us physically.

We would prefer to be able to do 2 shorter door missions in a 2 and half hour session than have to do one mission that takes 2 and a half hours because we cannot guarantee that our health will allow us on any given night to sit at the computer for 2 and a half hours straight.

Heidi Ho (Level 23 Illusion Controller Infinity Server) and others

A further concern regarding solo and grouped play.....I miss the days before The Hollows were introduced when you finished with your contact in City Hall where you would be sent to King's Row.

I don't like The Hollows as the next zone for missions because it is virtually impossible to get to the missions in The Hollows as a solo player because of all the groups of mobs in the zone. If you run on the ground you get killed and if you hover you get killed trying to get to your mission.

I wish there were a choice when you are finished with Atlas Park or Galaxy City as to whether you were sent to The Hollows or to Kings Row.

Heidi Ho (level 22 illusion controller Infinity)

My husband and I are concerned with missions such as the Hollows mission requiring the simultanous disarming of 2 bombs that the developers are again moving the game emphasis toward forced grouping as they did with all the darned eyes wandering around in the previous expansion. Obviously this mission CANNOT be done solo. If we wanted to be forced to group, we would have stayed in Everquest.

We fear that the developers are moving toward forced grouping increasingly in each expansion and as casual solo players we are afraid that a game we are greatly enjoying is going to be ruined because some idiot head honcho wants to make CoH more like the other online games out there.

Please return this mission back to where it can be done solo and don't change the game emphasis where it is impossible to solo.

Heidi Ho (22 illusion controller Infinity) and others
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Dr. Grey (22 dark blast defender Infinity) and others