TheHendle

MrCaptainMan,

Though it wasn't the perfect scenario for you, I want to thank you for taking the time to run through and review Silver Aged! I really appreciate all your comments and feedback!

/fancybow

Hi Wrong Number! I've played and enjoyed all of your arcs, and thought perhaps you might take a peek at mine:

Title: Silver Aged
Arc ID: 280017
Creator’s Global Name: @Lazorman
Mission Count: 4
Notes – A tongue-in-cheek look at a retired 'Silver-Age' style hero who must contend with his greatest threat yet: the modern world (with a little help from you!). Inspired by the changing trends in comic history.

Thank you for taking the time to play!

I just finished playing @MrCaptainMan's "The Audition", #182289. This is a humorous arc that brilliantly pokes fun at some of CoH's mythology and conventions, without ever devolving into complete absurdity. I like to call it "Synpase's Incompetent Task Force." The sense of humor is witty and irreverent. There's a musical subsection, and you even get a chance to cheer up a depressed Lord Recluse!

If you don't mind satire (and an homage to an old cliche), I'll plug my wife's mission. While trying to investigate the CoT for Azura in Perez Park, the hero winds up on a "bad team." It's a short, one-shot mission designed for lowbies.

Arc Name: Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls. Arc ID: 158877
Creator Global Name: @tahlana

My wife created a short, satirical lowbie mission (her homage to a familiar CoH meme). Easy for soloists and early heroes, and maybe it will make some folks smile :

Arc Name: Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.
Arc ID: 158877
Morality: Heroic
Faction: Skulls. (Has Allies)
Creator Global Name: @tahlana
Difficulty Level: Easy
Mission Levels: 1-14
Synopsis: Your contact Azura has sent you on what she says is a very important mission to help ensure the future of all humankind. She has assured you it is in no way simply meant to get you out of her hair while she works on her "Mage" and goes "Raiding." Ever the dutiful hero, you travel to Perez Park.

Statesman, thank you so much for clearing up the concerns of your player base and clearly presenting your vision to the community. You are to be commended for going the extra mile to keep your players informed.

That being said, I think I've discovered that your vision and my hopes for the game don't coincide, and I think you've cemented my decision to move on. I had a wonderful time in City of Heroes and love the genre, but the decision to steer the game into a more team-oriented experience leaves me dismayed.

Mostly I duo-ed the game with my wife, occasionally grouping, both with people we met online, and a tight group of RL friends. We almost always had unsastisfactory results in pick-up teams, and found the game and storytelling to be much more immersive and fun when it was just the two of us, usually grouping when all of our schedules permitted or we wanted to be social. This system worked perfectly until the Archvillain levels throughout the 40s.

When we reached that point, we did every single non-AV mission we could, until we had only AV missions. Then we would either find other players with AV missions or have to wait until our other friends could join in. Normally, we would blow through the AV missions as fast and furious as we could, because we knew we wouldn't have a lot of time, and the AV missions were sort of 'speed bumps' that kept us from advancing story-lines.

But I feel like my Archvillain experiences are where the direction of the game is going (as underscored by your earlier comments), and that our method of duo'ing will certainly become more difficult, if not hampered, as the vision of CoH is met. Certainly, our Kheldian characters, which we were at one point greatly looking forward to, felt underpowered and unplayable without a supporting team (and I write this knowing that changes are coming down the pipe for them, so this may not be entirely true soon).

As others above me have pointed out, I would rather see cookies awarded for teaming, rather than punishment for those who refuse to. Keep the sliders, let players increase their own challenge. I don't even mind the occasional AV or big baddie (though in the 40s there were so many, I think it cheapened the experience of them, they became hurdles to leap over, rather than a thrill or climax to enjoy). I wouldn't have written all of this if I didn't care about City of Heroes, as I said I love the genre, have had a lot of fun in the game, and I have great respect for you and your development team for all your hard work. My hope is that perhaps if there are enough of us like me and my wife, we might just influence your thinking in this regard a tad. But for now, I'll continue to wait and watch from the sidelines.

Thank you for all that you've done.

Celestial Fury's post above makes so much sense, I agree 100%.

One of the truly fun aspects of reaching the mid-twenties was that suddenly your hero felt like a "real" hero -- you were out of the training tights, so to speak. Enemies fell swifter before you (though you didn't really level any faster, because of the sloped XP progression). The Boss ramp-up took that away to a certain extent. Now aside from having some new powers and toys, the illusion that you are getting 'more' powerful as you level has been eroded. I hope we never see the "3 minions=you" patch, it would be tragic.

The Boss change seemed completely unnecessary. The strength of Bosses always felt right, challenging, but not overwhelming -- they felt like you were taking on another powered being, but you had a good chance of winning if you knew what you were doing. With the invention of the Elite Bosses, garden-variety bosses should have stayed the same (not to mention Archvillains). People who wanted a challenge could play with the difficulty slider, or roll up a Kheldian ( ). I can't imagine taking on the Terra Volta Trial with these changes (rez'ing Freak Show Tanks anyone? or armies of Chief Soldiers??).

It's sad, because I really love this game, but I see changes like this driving away my friends. I used to play with a pretty tight-nit group of 8 players (that I know in RL), now 5 of them have decided to leave after becoming disenfranchised with the direction the game is headed... with another ready to go after soon. I may be convinced to go along with them soon, when a few weeks ago I was saying I'd never leave CoH.

I cringe now when I hear the term "...brings it more in line with our Vision." I wonder now, were many of the features and play factors purely unintentional? Happy accidents? And why not adjust the Vision(tm) if the game is loved by thousands in it's current state? Why not improve upon parts of the game that are actually broken... oh wait, I guess I just answered my question. In the "Visioned" eyes, the game *is* broken.

(Sorry if redundant, haven't read all previous emotes)

A shaking clenched fist (in the spirit of Darth Vader when he cries, "Together we can rule the galaxy as father and son..." in ESB).