SheckyS

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We're going to be dipping into missions of ALL levels and improving the art, AI, etc. with every Expansion. There's a bunch in Expansion 3.

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Oooh, Statesman, you tease!

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You only get enhancements for killing a villain if they con Yellow or higher to you. (sometimes white)

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In personal experience I have found just the opposite to be true. Try doing the Positron TF as a lv 14. All the mobs will con yellow, orange, red or purple in most of the TF. But you will get few (if any) enhancement drops. Then on the few missions in the TF that used to be front-loaded where the mobs are blue or less, you get lots of enhancements. I have complained about this before, but no one responded. Something is seriously wrong with the way this is working.

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We'll also be tuning down Trolls and Outcasts even more - to make them like Skulls and Hellions (fewer powers, etc.).

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Yeah, wouldn't want them to be interesting or anything. :-P

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One quick question Statesman, what about the Defenders and Controllers that ALREADY have a hard time with mobs?
How would these changes affect them?


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We'll need to give the more "oomph" to keep up!

Oh - and on the XP - if we up mob HP, then we definitely need to up XP rewards! If the battle is more challenging for a player, then he should definitely get more reward.

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You should put that XP bump quote in your signature.

People around here have the reading retention of a Fig Newton.

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One thing I've NEVER seen in a game is the xp return/time increased proportionally to the decrease in performance of the characters fighting the mobs. Typically, you see drastic reductions in power, minor to moderate bumps for weak abilities, and a minor to moderate bump in xp. This leads the overall result to be slightly better or no gain for the worst off, and drastically reduced results for the best off.

I could be overly cynical (I prefer realist) however they're already doing that. Bosses and Lt's are being made more difficult to kill, while the best hero's are becoming weaker, and there is no increase in XP coming for those same bosses/lts, or compensation elsewhere in powersets for the nerfs/fixes/whatever being handed down to Illusion, Fire Control, Kinetics, Devices or whatever else I'm missing thats being neutered.

So, basically what I've said will probably happen, has actually started happening with Issue2 already, albeit slowly.

Theres so many factors that go in to xp/time, and the factors aren't even consistent across powersets.

Regardless, my biggest issue is, I don't care even if it ends up being the same xp for killing 3 whites as I used to get for killing 10 oranges - I have more fun killing oranges and feel more superheroish and I LIKE the scaling in relative power.

Everyone might not feel thats important, but a significant portion of the game does, just simply talk to people in a random team in the 20s and ask them (thats what I've been doing).

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There is something fundamentally flawed with this. You (and a lot of others here) are basically saying that the only thing that matters to you when you fight a villain is that the villain cons higher than you. BUT THIS IS AN ILLUSION! The orange mobs you are fighting now are NOT tougher than you. They are not tougher than any hero who is the same level as you.

You are basically saying that the CON color of a villain should LIE to you and tell you that the villain is stronger than you when it is actually not. And somehow, this makes you feel more heroic?

As for me, I would rather face a villain that is actually as strong as my hero and is actually a challenge to fight rather than a villain that is artificially represented as being as strong as me but is really about as tough as my left pinky.

If it make you feel better to delude yourself and beleive you are fighting tougher villains, then why not make Every villain in the game con purple? Then you would feel great about beating up level 1's. Woo-Hoo! Wouldn't that be fun?

This whole argument is based on perception. The idea that it is more fun to fight mobs who con red simple becuase they con red is ludicrous - and that's what everyone is arguing for.

Once you reach level 20 or 30 or so, you have to fight red mobs just to make it interesting and get decent XP. This does not make you more powerful, it means the mobs of your own level are too wimpy.

If you took the approach or re-programming the game so that once you hit level 20, mobs 3 levels higher than you con white instead of red, the argument here is that this would be less fun because now you are fighting even-con mobs again, just like you did at level 1. This is just plain silly, but that's what half the posts in this thread are saying.

The fix to the problem is essentially to take the mobs that are red just as they are and change their level. If they made it so that a level 20 mob had the same powers, hit point, and ability as a level 23 mobs do right now, and give the same XP, all the problems go away. Your missions would now be filled with challenging mobs, and street-sweepers could go hunting even-con mobs for the same XP and challenge that they get for reds now.

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I respectfully disagree with this design goal. Making us fight the same number and color of mobs the entire game will really reduce the perception of advancement and make the various areas of the game seem even *more* similar. One very visible and simple way to see progress in the game is to face higher color mobs. By retuning the game away from that simple progression you are removing a effective method of demonstrating an increase in capability.

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I've seen this argument about half a dozen times so far.

You are basically saying that what makes the game fun for you is beating mobs who con higher than you, which you could not do when you were lower level. But this is an illusion - it's pure perception, it's not really anything. The only real distinction here is that you like fighting mobs who con a different color. But the con color is just the game's estimate of where the mob is relative to you. You are basically arguing that if someone TELLS you that a white-con mob is three levels more powerful than you, it's inherently more fun to fight that mob. This is bunk! After you take on 3 of them at a time about 50 times, you will realize that whoever told you that was lying.

The reason you are able to beat those red and orange mobs when you are a higher level is not because you have become more powerful, it's because you have become more powerful RELATIVE to the mobs of your own level.

Someone else here posted that if you wanna realize how much more powerful you are now than you were three levels ago, go fight the same mobs you kicked your butt three levels ago and see how easy they are. There can be no doublt that as you rise in levels, you are becoming more powerful. But if the mobs of your own level do not become equally more powerful, then the game becomes far too easy.

The reason you enjoy fighting red and purple mobs at higher levels is because they are at least a tiny bit of a challenge. Mobs who are your own level are boring and give little XP. If the mobs at your level were as powerful as the reds are and gave the same XP, you would be fighting those white mobs and it would be just as much fun as fighting the reds. The only difference would be the con color.

So you are basically arguing that mobs you should be fighting at your level should con red instead of white. As I said before, this is pure perception, and really it's downright silly. The whole purposes of the color-con system is that it give you an indication of the mobs you can and should fight at your level. If the only way for you to enjoy the game is to fight reds, then either the con-color system is inherently broken or (as I beleive is the case) the mobs are.

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1. Mission difficulty needs addressed - but not by lowering hero's, but by raising the bar on the missions. Allow 2 sliders on the bar where you get to pick A) Size of mob spawns, from 1 to 15ish and B) Level of mobs that spawn, from -1 to +4 (or if they'll give up the purple patch, +8.. hehe in my dreams).

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Statesman didn't say anything in this post about HOW he was planning to balance the post 20 game. But he did mention in another thread that one of the things they are considering is raising mob hit points ( and XP reward proportionally ). So it appears to me that they plan to change the mobs, not the heroes, in order to address this particular issue.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that nerfing the heroes is a way to make the late-game better. To me, it's pretty clear that it's the villains who are to wimpy.

The original poster of this thread seems to be concerned that the developers are forcing people to play a certain way. I have found this not to be the case. Take Statesman's vision of scrappers as boss-killers, for example. Toward this end, they added criticals and now in Update 2 critical will be more likely to occur against bosses. This was an excellent way to encourage scrappers to go along with the program. But at the same time it does not decrease the viablity of scrappers in general.

This game has always strongly encouraged grouping. Statesman has said that soloing is possible. But the reality is that playing solo is MUCh more difficult and time-consuming than playing in a group. I feel for the soloists out there. I used to be one of you. Every MMORPG I have played in the past, I avoided groups whenever possible. But in CoH, I find I have a lot more fun in a group and when I play solo, I quickly get bored, anyway.

Powers get nerfed occassionally, yes, but that's just a fact of life. I have found that most of the time, they are nerfed very little. People screamed when Hasten was nerfed, but many people still use it and consider it an invaluable power. Burn was nerfed and it's STILL overpowered, if you ask me.

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There's really no reason a ball of flame shouldn't burn a +20 level, but otherwise normal human, just as much as it does an even one. You don't "dodge" an all-encompassing ball of flame that fills the entire space. You don't "dodge" a lightning bolt that has found your body.

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Just a comment on this. In Dungeons & Dragons, there was a thing called a Saving Throw. Basically, higher-level character have a chance to reduce or completely avoid damage from Spells like Fireball. The explanation for how this works is that the character finds some way to avoid the damage. In the case of a fireball, there are ways you could avoid being burned, such as hiding behind some obstacle (a shield?) or diving out of the range of the fireball, or dousing yourself with a bucket of water right before it hits. Far-fetched, I know, but then again, the whole game concept of fighting dragons and such is far-fetched. So CoH or EQ could explain this kind of thing the same way. You don't actually see the hero animate the defensive move, you just have to use your imagination.

I think Statesman is absolutely right.
My entire SG is bored to death with missions post 30. In fact, most of my group doesnt' even bother playing their 30+ characters any more. When we play at all, we play alternate heroes level 1-20.

The reason is that the post 20 game is BOOORING.

1) Missions are WAY too easy. A level 6 hero going into a mission and fighting 3 even-cons is fun, because the hero actually has to work at it. And when the battle is over, he will often have to take a break and heal because he took SOME damage. Post 20 this hardly ever happens. Post 30 it's a joke. My team and I tear through mission without ever even encounting a challenging fight any more.

2) Missions yield too little XP. Can't wait for Update 2 to fix this!

3) Street sweeping is INCREDIBLY BORING! Sure, you can find and fight orange, red, and even purple mobs on the streets and rake in XP, but I can't even begin to imagine why anyone would want to. If I want to do tedious, repetitive, mind-numbing, thoughless tasks, I'll go to WORK!

I absolutely agree with States that something must be done to re-balance the mobs post 20. The thing that scares me the most is that the change won't be made until Update 3. That is just WAY too long a wait. What am I supposed to do for the next 3 months? Keep playing alts? (yawn)

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i hope its an in game event. ever since i heard of the invasion at the end of beta i've wanted to participate in one.

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The Rikti invasion at the end of beta was rather exciting at first. But the lag was unbeleivable. Hopefully, the servers are now optimized to the point where that won't happen. If this is another Rikti invasion, it will be awesome.

And if it's something else, it will be even more awesome.

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Since I wanted to completely agree with Gothryd's post in the now closed "groups vs solo" thread I Will repost his words here. Again I could not agree more on his suggestions, they would push CoH to the next level IMO.

Posted by Gothryd:
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Having missions where the only way to solve it is to have 3 people (any 3, just have 3 bodies) on a team is 'forced'. This seems artificial and contrasts too sharply with the rest of the gameplay. Accomplish this mission using X, Y or Z tactics is better than accomplish this mission by having N number of characters.


Plese consider some of the following ideas to add a dynamic to group play:

Have a villain who must not be injured (meaning you need some sort of hold/disorient/sleep to incapacitate her without dealing damage). Innocents who are coerced into being bad guys is a staple of the genre. Stopping them without hurting them is more challenging than blasting them in most cases.


Have a villain in a room with a bomb that he will detonate if he sees any heroes (meaning you need someone with invisibility, some form of grant invisibility, stealth, etc to sneak past). Watch any number of movies and this situation arises. Their finger is on the button.


Have a room that has some bomb to deactivate or some important relic that will be destroyed if you don't retrieve it but that room is on fire, causing enormous amounts of damage to anyone who enters (meaning you need someone like a tank or someone with resist buffs, phase shift, etc)


Have a mission where healing skills (defenders, controllers, anyone with medicine) saves a victim with their healing powers.


Let's have some more missions where brute force is not the only answer. In the above examples, each problem can be overcome using more than one skill/power/tactic.

As the game stands on live, every mission is accomplished by dealing damage. That's it. Every mission today is right up a blaster's or scrapper's alley. What about a mission that is right up a defender's alley or a controller, or a tank?

CoH can be much more than just a 3rd person shooter.
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Implementing these missions in the game is not as simple as it may sound, because what if you get one of those sneak-up-on-the-villain missions and you are a blaster with no capability for stealth? Now you are right back at the beginning of this thread where you are forced to group.

The way around this problem, of course, is to make Archetype-specific missions. So there would be missions that would only be offered to you if you were a particular AT or have a particular power or combination of powers neccessary to accomplish it.

Personally, I feel like the game needs more mission options in general and this would be a great way to add new mission types and new choices for players.

Just a suggestion, but rather than ripping these kinda of missions out of story arcs altogether, why not simply let the contact offer it as an option?

I know I always feel very limited by my contacts mission offerings. 1 or 2 options is just not enough. It would be great if the contact give you 3 choices: a hunt, a solo mission, or a group mission. Or even more choices, if possible.

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/e afk is the same as /e newspaper.

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Unless that's changed. If you /AFK it will just put that over your head. If you /em Newspaper it will show you reading the newspaper. You have to /em Newspaper /AFK for both. You can add a message instead of AFK over your head by typing /AFK Message.


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"/e afk" not "/afk"
or "/em afk" if you like

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Actually, this works:
/afk <message>

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3.) Someone WILL reply to your ticket in a timely manner – If you do not need or wish a reply, use /bug.

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Timely manner? Timely manner you say? I don't know what you consider timely, but I have waited HOURS for a response from a petition. I have actually gotten an e-mail more than a day later telling me that they could not help me because I was not online. Well, of course I wasn't online after an entire day!

If it is at all possible, it's quicker to simply restart the mission than it is to wait for a response from a petition.

When I do not have that option, I simply crawl into a fetal position and sob uncontrollably.

I scoff at your timely manner, Sir.