PicassoCat

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you are still here and have obviously not quit as you said you were going to.

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I know this is an argument I'm not part of, but just as a note, I've cancelled my billing (current subscription ends June 1) and am able to continue posting - apparently until either the subscription runs out, or someone goes over the cancellation list and manually turns off posting ability - so it is entirely possible that the person you are addressing has, in fact, quit.

(As for why I'm still here - I intend to continue checking the forums on a semi-regular basis, and should something entice me back (straightforward dealing with perma-Hasten in some method other than penalizing non-Hasten builds with outrageous recharges on powers, for instance), I might return.)

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Are there more pirate hat options? Please tell me we can have a tri-cornered pirate hat. I really want a pirate hat. Please let there be pirate hats.

/em crosses fingers.

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Yes! Grace O'Malley demands a pirate hat!

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In fact, I created so many that I've stopped giving them an alt slot and just jotted down the attributes in a database for when I want a new character later. Crazy man, it's just crazy.

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<chuckles> You aren't alone. In fact, I spent the last three days of beta just figuring out what costume options I wanted for my first few characters, and putting all that information in an Excel file, so I could race through costume creation on opening day and make sure I got those names! I still spend usually one evening a week playing with costumes rather than playing the game!

<sighs happily> I can play Wild Blue now. She just didn't look right with the zipped-up "leather armor" top, but a motorcycle jacket over a tee shirt... yep!

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For Dark Miasma, The skill just becomes redundant as they already have an auto-hit disorient in Darkest Night that also functions as a slow and an AoE rez.

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Just to note: Darkest Night is neither a slow nor an AoE rez - it is an anchored AoE accuracy/damage debuff. You may be thinking here of Howling Twilight, which is an AoE rez with a slow and disorient component.

However, Black Hole doesn't seem to do anything for me that Fearsome Stare doesn't do more cheaply - namely, make a group of mobs stop attacking. Black Hole has a longer range, and intangibility, but I can't choose when to turn it off; FS has a shorter range, and allows them an attack whenever they're attacked, but I choose whether or not - and in what order - to tackle them. <shrug>

(Edit: Wow. I never thought I'd see a thread on Dark Miasma get the little flame symbol for "hot topic!" Are there that many dark defenders now? Or is it just that those of us who are here are pretty passionate about the powerset?

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Its endurance cost has been reduced in Expansion 4 to 11.25.

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That will help.

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Black hole is a Magnitude based power. That means Enhancements will not increase the duration, but rather the Magnitude. What this translates to is the more Intangibility Enhancements you slot in, the higher rank and level foe you can affect, but the duration is constant.

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Could you make that a little more clear in the power's description, then? We've all been operating under the assumption that intangibility enhancements enhance intangibility duration, not intangibility magnitude. What is the reasoning behind this? Would you be amenable to making these enhancements duration-based instead, if this is how your player base would prefer to use the power?

And on a separate note, prior to the release of Issue #2, you had mentioned the possibility of making Black Hole (and "similar powers," which I believe includes only Dimension Shift) a toggle power. Has this idea been scrapped?

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I would love to see more "alternate" methods to completing missions (and still get credited with the AV's defeat) without having to resort to a slugfest. Who knows... maybe a dev may read these ideas and incorporate them into the game someday...

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I couldn't agree more, and not just for AV missions.
I happen to like Controlling more than anything else, but when my blaster, scrapper, and tanker friends all outlevel me because they can go off on their own and get some xp from missions while I have to sit around with Seek Team turned on, I get kinda upset.

The obvious response is to pull together people to make a team and lead it myself. Often I do, but not by CHOICE (I seem to recall our star-studded head honcho making this a priority word...) and the people I choose aren't even people I know. I like to team with my forum pals and real life friends. If they aren't on, my Controllers either have to create pick-up teams they might not be able to trust, or I log off to go do something else for a while.

This is not how I want it to be.

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I'll add my vote to the "defeat" without "slugfest" option - and not just for soloists! My husband, a couple of friends and I have a team of characters that we play only as a team. We're not optimal - one dark/dark defender and two or three blasters (energy/energy, AR/energy and fire/fire), with some odd power choices - but we've been doing fine. However, the Issue 3 bosses had us seriously considering canceling our accounts because even when debuffed (six-slotted SOs), various red-con bosses could two-shot any of us. Based on that experience, we really aren't looking forward to the AV levels, and we'd like the option of being the sneaky heroes who outwit the villain without going toe-to-toe with him/her.

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I can't find anyone available with Psionic defense and what am I supposed to do while that person battles the King for me anyway. As regen scrapper even MoG is worthless against him. So the mission has sat there for several levels and I still can't clear it. Am I going to have to wait until cons green or grey to beat him?

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Look for a Dark Miasma defender. With Shadow Fall slotted for resistance (psionic, energy and negative), the entire team can participate in the fight - provided everyone stays within Shadow Fall's PBAoE radius. I'm on Pinnacle, or I'd offer to help.

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That was certainly my interpretation of it. I.E. that bosses would be cranked back up once people could avoid them completely in solo mission by setting the difficulty slider down, or simply having the mission removed from their list. This way people who wanted the tougher challenge presented by the new bosses could have it while people who didn’t want it never had to fight them in a solo mission.

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I hope that any later change would be more gradual, & more focused, than Issue 3's massive ramp-up so that there is not a dichotomy of "Issue 3 boss or no boss at all" on the difficulty slider.

The Hollows missions aren't compulsory. Your first or second contact will send you to Lt. David Wincott as a mission, & to complete the mission all you have to do is speak to Wincott. You don't have to take any of his missions, & can simply return to your other contact & proceed normally.

I believe you'll outlevel your first contact's missions this way before getting the Kings Row contact, so you'd need to street sweep a bit if you don't do the Hollows.

Although I agree, it's not very clear that Wincott is entirely "skippable."

Devs, any chance we can get a second "normal" city zone for the Kings Row levels (SL 5 - 9, roughly), for those of us who are soloists or small-team players? My normal team of three tends to avoid the hazard zones as well, due to the spawn size.

Thank you! My group's subscriptions don't expire until June 1, but it's nice to know we'll still be playing. My soloist will be increasing her difficulty level; my "teamist" & her fellow squishies will probably leave the difficulty low.

Apologies in advance if I'm restating something mentioned earlier in the thread (no coffee yet, barely functioning):

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We will be making it so that a Boss will NEVER show up on the mission for a solo player at the lowest Reputation level (Hard-Boiled, though we’re changing that to Hero). Instead, any named villain will be a Lieutenant. That Lieutenant will have the same name, powers and costume as the Boss; his villain rank will simply be lessened. In this way, solo players won’t miss out on the flavor of the mission’s story. If a team or a player with a Reputation at Tenacious or higher enters that mission, the Lieutenant will become a Boss.

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Excellent idea for the "squishies," although may I suggest that you let players know this via an email when it's implemented? The forum-goers are a very small population, & I'd hate to see the builds who can handle bosses when solo be suddenly surprised by their absence.

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Players normally receive story arcs only after they’ve leveled their Contact up to the highest level.

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If I'm reading this correctly, this is a "long-term" goal. If so, please reconsider. Even with my team (three or four people), we outlevel contacts well before their confidence bars are filled - I'd hate to lose out on story arcs because of that. Currently, we seem to get story arcs within the first few missions done for a contact, although even so we're completing, on average, only two arcs per person per contact level range.

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The Mission UI will be improved to designate various elements of mission: timed missions, team up required, etc.

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Very nice! Might I suggest an "on/off" option so those who want the RP surprise can still have it?

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A system will allow players to drop unwanted missions or do old missions that have been passed over (the infamous “flashback”).

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Thank you!!!

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Well, the title thing, as i said, i learned form PMs. And wasen't the filter discussed at the last live interviewed where Jack said : mmm, interresting concept?

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In my family, calling something "interesting" is polite code for "wow, is that stupid/insane/ugly/etc."

Not saying that's what he meant, but it's a very bland statement.

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If you want to make progress through your story arc, or, as you go up in levels, unlock your Enhancements from the appropriate contact, you will end up having to solo.

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The bolded problem would be solved by getting rid of the Power Ten/non-Power Ten distinction & putting all enhancements in the origin-specific stores, starting in Steel/Skyway.



We now return you to your regularly scheduled debate.

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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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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?

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Good point there. To expand a bit:

(1) My soloist (SL 36 claws/SR scrapper) is still fine. She was fine on Test - that's where she lives - when Issue 3 was introduced, although fights suddenly took much longer & usually involved lots of CaB inspirations, or a run for the elevator for endurance resting.

(2) My team character (SL 31 dark/dark defender)... not so good. She teams exclusively with two or three blasters - no meleers at all, which has been fine up to this level, pre-Issue 3. Post-Issue 3, we can still tackle orange-con bosses fine; for reds... well, let's just say that even a boss debuffed with Darkest Night is going to hit occasionally, & even with the damage debuff that DN does, one melee hit from a Rikti or a Warhulk is enough to drop my blasters into the red. (Other red-con bosses aren't quite so bad.)

The boss change was over the top, & should be scaled back at the very least.

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What of the suggestions, including one of my own, to make the difficulty slider go both up AND down? As long as you make it onerous to move it down game balance could be preserved and perhaps that would not take too much coding?

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Your "suggestion," stageIII, does not make it more "onerous" to move this hypothetical slider down, it makes it an actual punishment. No xp or influence, or actually costing xp & influence? These (xp & influence) are the only methods by which to progress in this game. Your slider offers non-optimized builds who attempt to solo the non-choice of character progression, or preferred playstyle.

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The other major problem with teaming for those of us that like the story elements is that if I work with a team of three, we won't all be able to complete all of our story arcs. Even soloing every arc, it's difficult to get them all in without out-leveling them, especially if you are trying to get in all the Task Forces as well. With the extra experience gained from running all of even one other person's missions along with my own, I would never have been able to complete all the arcs. This situation would be compounded in a group of three or four. Savoring the stories often just isn't practical in even small group situations.

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Absolutely true.

I have one dedicated soloist character (hasn't even done the TFs & Trials) who's completed every single one of the story arcs through her level (36). Granted, that won't be possible post-40, with all the AVs, but that's fine, I planned to retire her once her mission slots became entirely clogged with AVs.

My other main character is a dedicated team member (dark/dark defender - so heavily specialized as a "deftroller" she has problems with packs of blues & greens). The group is regularly only three members, occasionally four (our fifth has quit the game), & we've managed to do, at most, two of each person's story arcs in each level range. And those have been completed in such a haphazard way - trying to do equal numbers of everyone's missions - that even I, who've already done the arcs with the other character, have problems following what exactly it is we're doing.

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and the person that says they don’t do pickup groups EVER is silly. How do you find friends to play with if you don’t do a pickup group once in a while.

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I'm not the person you asked this of, but I'll answer it anyway:

I team with my husband & several RL friends. We met in the late '80s, have been pen-&-paper gaming together since (I.C.E.'s Rolemaster, if that means anything to anyone), & graduated to MMOs starting with the original Neverwinter Nights in the mid-'90s.

I'll team in answer to a random call for help - & yes, I've met some very nice people that way - but frankly, not everyone plays MMOs in order to meet & team with a bunch of strangers.

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As for why we put Bosses in missions at all – in other words, why isn’t everything solo-able – the answer is simple. We want gameplay that encourages the best part of the game: teaming up. Soloing is fine, but a MMP really shines when you meet other people and play alongside them. I’ve made many good virtual friends through other MMP’s that I simply would not have done if I could solo everything all the time. I admit it: I’m anti-social. It’s hard to get me to group up with strangers. But after I do it, I always wonder “why don’t I do this more often…” I might still be anti-social in “real life”, but in MMP’s I’m a social butterfly (I have no doubt that this will appear in sigs for years to come…)

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Ah, well, this has made up my group's minds - I'm with the earlier posters regarding social engineering, & the difference between wanting everything soloable (or, in our case, doable by a small team of squishies) & wanting personal contact missions soloable (or doable by a small team of squishies).

Teaming up may be "the best part of the game" for you, Statesman, or for Joe Schmoe or Mary Whosits. It may even by "the best part of the game" for me, on occasion. But that's a subjective decision, & mine alone to make.

But take heart. I'll never do a one-year subscription to an MMO again.

Thanks for the Python flashback there.

On the topic of bosses appearing in mission text, I just received this mission from Paula Dempsey. (She's a SL 5 - 9 contact, but still giving me missions 1 bubble into 10th.)

Contact's "fluff" text prior to accepting mission:
We've got reports of some Clockwork down at the old abandoned APS Warehousing warehouse complex. Sources say they're using it as a staging area for a massive attack against the city. Cat's Cradle, we've never heard of the Clockwork trying anything this bold! It's absolutely imperative that you go to APS Warehousing and shut down the Clockwork plot!

Contact's "fluff" text after accepting mission:
I hear there's a large robot inside called Piston. Watch out for it while you are hunting for information, Cat's Cradle.

Mission objective appearing in my mission list:
Defeat Piston and its guards.

(1) No mention of a boss prior to accepting mission. It could be argued, I suppose, that key words such as "massive" & "bold" might imply a boss, but equally it could simply be a +1 difficulty mission of minions & lieutenants.

(2) After accepting the mission, my contact told me to "watch out" for the named boss. Only the mission objective itself tells me it's a "defeat-the-boss" mission.

This is, of course, pre-SL 25 with unboosted bosses, & should present no problems. Just another non-specifying boss mission.

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As a Defender, this makes it harder for me to be the only Def in a group of 3-4.

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Not good to hear - one of my mains is a scrapper (who lives on Test, so I was living with Issue 3 for a while); the other is a dark/dark defender, who's permanently teamed with two (sometimes three) blasters. It's not an optimal team, but we're all playing what we want, & being successful at our own missions. Definitely not good to hear from a defender that this may be a problem now.

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So, where in this text does it mention there will be multiple bosses on this solo mission?

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I vaugely remember that mission. Do you have to fight those Bosses?

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The question of whether or not you have to FIGHT the bosses is irrelevant in light of Statesman's assertion - which is that the mission text will tell you if a boss APPEARS in the mission.

Appears. As in, "to be visible or present." You see, the (non-goal) boss may spawn on top of the actual mission goals. Avoiding said boss is not always possible.

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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".

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A lot of missions have this vague "you'd better bring some friends," or "hurry - there's not much time!" or some other text which does not reflect the actual mission goals or difficulty. I've had the "better bring friends" text on missions that had NO bosses (as well as on missions that had MULTIPLE bosses), & I've had the "hurry!" text on both TIMED & NON-TIMED missions.

Eight months in, the inconsistency in contact text has led me to ignore the "fluff" text entirely.

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They would have realized that on test if a lot of players had played a lot/did a bunch of missions/ TF on test server.

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Go to the Training Room forum. There are several long threads on just this issue - we did play, we did test, & we did offer feedback. (Occasionally very bitter feedback, but feedback all the same.) It made no difference; we didn't even get an "official" thread made on which to discuss this change while it was still on Test.

HeroGuy, I gave you five stars just for an intelligent, courteous, non-confrontational post. Too bad there aren't a couple thousand more like you to post.

To chime in: I play solo & in small (four people & under) groups. We do not min/max, & with the exception of the group my dark/dark defender is in, we do not usually take "stealth" powers. We avoid hazard zones like the plague. We play for the fun of beating up bad guys, not to sneak slowly & cautiously through zones designed for large groups with spawns many levels higher than we are.

Running (or, actually, carefully sneaking) a mile or more across hazard zones to reach a mission door - when the mission isn't timed & we have no option to remove it from the task list - is not fun. It's good to hear from Statesman that this is being addressed.

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Congrats to a certain Gaffer on his promotion to VP of Product Development!!! Hopefully this doesn't mean we'll be missing your presence on these boards. You've been a great line of information from the veritable "Powers That Be" at NCsoft, and I think I speak for a half dozen or so of us that really appreciate that. Thanks!

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Thankee Actually happened a few months ago, we hadn't gotten around to announcing it...so no change today.

-jg

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Well, belated congratulations anyway! And remember not to be a workaholic, take frequent sanity breaks, & play City of Heroes regularly!