UberGuy

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The problem, Lothart, is not that people are complaining that they can't take on two +4 bosses anymore in the godly manner they used to. They are complaining that they can't reasonably take on one single even conn boss anymore. A rather substantial difference that negates much of your argument.

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I fail to see how when Statesman says in the first post in this thread that 1 Boss=1.5 heroes.

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You are far too fixated on what Statesman says and his vision. If you can't understand that people are disagreeing with the vision itself then you're going to be posting a lot of counterpoint in here to little effect.

As consumers of this game service, we have every place in expressing dissatisfaction with an expressed vision that was only recently inflicted on us. We are trying to convince those who control the direction of the game that the reality they started with was more fun than that vision.

Should what the game went live with have never changed? Of course not. Should bosses be tougher than they were pre-I3? Perhaps so. Should people have to team to do missions? Many, many respondants in several threads say no.

This is an online game. Even FPS online games change, suffer through rebalance, "nerfs", and evolution.

Let me tell you a story about an FPS called Tribes. It was released by the now-defunct Dynamix as a way to recoup costs on an engine they developed for another game.

It was a team-based shooter. You had a jetpack and could fly in a limited fashion, but you always had to land again.

When it was released, people hoofed around a lot. It was an outdoor game with large, mostly empty hills and valleys with a few buildings, etc. Combat was fairly slow, but the game was fun.

Then people discovered a bug. If you constantly jumped on a sloped surface, the physics engine removed most of the simulated friction you had with it. Skillful use of this allowed you to slide down hills (and with momentum, up the other side). Then the lift from your jetpack let you catapult long distances, and the momentum from "skiing" (as it became called) down hills let you achieve tremendous speeds. The game was changed dramaticallty.

And it was a blast.

This was declared as a bug. It was never in the dev's vision for the game.

But it was so much fun they left it in.

Not too long ago, a 3rd version of Tribes was released. Like the one before it, "skiing" was built in by design.

Sometimes the mistakes - the things furthest from the vision - are the right thing to stick with.

Lothart, there's a real simple problem for me with what you describe.

I'm not paying for the devs to be artisically satisfied with their product.

I'm paying for an entertainment service.

The analog is that we all were paying a monthly fee for all the hot dogs, hamburgers, and coke we could eat. But because the cooks decided hot dogs and hamburgers were much too bad for us and too far from what they hoped to provide eventually, they started giving us escargot and espresso.

But we are paying because we all heard how great the hot dogs were. All the condiments were free, and you could stop in, get a hot dog, and run back out. We all told our friends, and they came and ate there with us. But the place was fun and had a good history, so it was worth visiting alone, too.

But now you have to wait an hour for the escargot. It's still free, and it still comes with condiments, but strangely they are still ketsup and yellow mustard. And certain escargot that replaced the really big hamburgers now can't be ordered unless you have a party of three or more.

My silly analogy above would be wonderful for the chefs. But I would completely stop going, stop paying, and find something new to do with my time. If enough people did that, it sure wouldn't help the chefs, would it?

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Emphasis below is mine:
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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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If I though that was fun, I'd play any of a half-dozen other MMOs on the market. God knows most of my real-life friends are already.

I'm not playing those games. I am playing CoH. There are reason for that. Should the reasons go away, so will CoH for me.

Three white minions is not heroic.
Required teaming to experience more than three white minions is not what I'm looking for.

I accept that those are nothing more than my humble opinion. Looking around, I feel justified that my opinion is not uncommon.

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Holds only have hold duration increases. With *FOUR* things spamming holds, that should be enough to lock a boss down.


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This is only my understanding, but I was under the impression that multiple holds don't increase the length of the hold they only add to the magnitude.

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This is correct. However, for bosses, which a single hold cannot affect due to inadequate magnitude, overlapping durations of multiple holds creates an "apparent" hold duration.

If you need two holds, each hold lasts 10 seconds, and you land the 2nd one 5 seconds after the first, you will hold the target for 5 seconds.

If the target has hold resistance, they often also reduce the duration of holds (sort of like a damage resistance for holds). This will create a shortening of the hold "window", and lead to either no hold or a very brief one.

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Tell me, does anyone actually enjoy street hunting?

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Yes.

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Really?

I stand corrected then. There is at least one person (presumably representative of some kind of group of people) who do enjoy street hunting. Frankly I'm a bit astonished. Nobody I have met in game has said they enjoyed this, but tastes do differ. Enjoy then. At least that is still perfectly doable solo.

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For the record, I like it too. I like missions much more, however. But before the slider the vast majority of missions were too easy. And I mean for all my characters.

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BUT -- no matter what your feeling about the content is, it's a lot harder to really savor content on a team, because you're likely to be switching from arc to arc, depending on who has missions in which zone ("why schlep to Talos for that next mission on your arc when there's two others right here in Brickstown?"), and who can call a contact for new missions instead of having to run across the city for more missions.

So for me at least, there's a contradiction. Teaming is a lot of fun, but it's harder to really appreciate significant parts of the content when you're teaming. I solved this contradiction by soloing my story arcs.

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Amen!!!

You posted my post for me.

Teaming, task forces and trials are not a time to experience content. With friends, fine. But with random people the goal is usually to move as fast as possible, either to max XP/hour or just to finish the 4-hour-long activity. Most Trials are timed, compounding this.

IMO, making the best content (Story Arcs, IMO) punishes everyone, including you, the makers of all that story content.

States,

A couple of things. Others have said these, but I want to reinforce them:

*) Based on what you're describing a ludicrous number of missions have bosses in them. Plain old missions will crop up often that have +1 bosses in them with no help from the slider.

*) The presence of bosses makes the slider useless for anyone but Scrapppers, well-put-together Tankers, and ATs which can combine effective holds/stuns with damage. (An example of the latter is any Blaster with Energy secondary who can stun bosses with Total Focus).

*) Fights now consist of tear through the minions and most LTs and then approach the boss with care. There are of course a few exceptions to paper-minion syndrome, such as Sappers.

*) My advice is: do not beat us with the Stick of Teaming. Just because you have had a good experience teaming is not a valid reason for forcing it on anyone else. If you want people to team, give them motivation to do so. You attract more flies with honey than vinegar.

Your game's best "meaty" content (story arcs) is currently:
- available to the solo player
- thick with bosses
- some of the most interesting things you can do outside a TF or Trial.

I simply do not understand why you want to force teaming on someone who can blunder into that content solo. If I have the choice of teaming with strangers on my mission I will simply not do it. Ever. I only do that with my friends.

The only exceptions are because I'm offering a badge mission to people or it's an AV, both of which are things I think are worth sharing with the community. That and AVs are clearly and have always been meant for teams.

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Moonbean - 7.6667 Negative Energy

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Hehe, Moonbean!

I, for one, am happy enough with the amusement factor of having a team of Scrappers fire their Crey Pistols at Nosferatu and root him in place for the beatdown that followed.

Actually the ghost is just a CoT villian. You see them in the 15-30 level range.

Still cool though.

I know our SG's Elec/Elec blaster uses his end drain abilities to solo. I've watched him make Rikti do neat things like pull out their big swords, stand there a second or two, and put them away. So it does work. I guess it doesn't work well enough for those complaining here, but it does have an effect on the game.

On the matter of AV/Monster Endurance bars, I know that Adamastor, the Envoy of Shadows and Terra all have 800 Endurance. All you have to do is hover your mouse over their end bar and it will tell you.

Neither our Blaster nor our Kinetic/Electric Defender can drain an AV reliably - it's more useful for them to spam damage or buffs/heals, respectively.

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Here's what gets really tedious in Coh. Alpha strikes. Alpha strikes ruin the strategy of this game. I've been in so many groups where the blaster just runs in a boom, dead grp. Okay, I'm gettting exp. But what's the point?

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Fight more challenging foes. Alpha strikes don't kill bosses. Last night I did a level 40 mission (it was mine) with 7 other people. It was full of 5th column wolves and vampyres. Sure, our blasters went nova after some gathering by yours truly, where I would come streaking back needing heals despite running unstoppable. And guess what - we would still need to battle the bosses (at least), people still occasionally got dead (stuns/holds = bad in melee with bosses). And we had a good time. We're talking battle with upwards of 10 bosses at a time here. That's not a cakewalk.

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Also, post 40 most scrabber/tanker builds don't need heals. Why? So they can solo? So why have defenders?

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See above. They only don't need defenders if they stick to things they can solo. Add in a defender and they should be attacking scarier things.

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There are some great zones at high lvl, but because of the reliance on damge, because once builds can stack certain powers they're nigh on invincible, the game becomes tedious.

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In your opinion.

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Good lord, there is no hope.

Atlas Park is a CITY ZONE. You even said that in your post.

Now reread what I posted, I am comparing a hazard zone (perez et al.) vs what you have called a hazard zone (faultline). There is no difference between a hazard zone and a trial zone other then symantics.

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He's telling you that the three zone types, of which he gave you examples, have increasingly large spawn sizes.

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Isn't there a basic flaw of logic in this argument. I'm tired I might be missing something ... but if the mobs are readjusted so that someone who takes on 3 reds now can only handle 3 whites and the XP goes with Statesman's risk = reward thing, then doesn't everyone win?

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It works out fine. All I'm pointing out is defeating 4 or 5 white con minions "feels" more heroic.

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Can't you just fight 10 blues or greens (dependent on how the exp scales) to feel the same way you used to against whites (and get the same exp)? Remember that both their challenge and exp value will have gone up too.

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Sure. But why would I? Today it makes sense to fight whites (or higher). But the XP and the "basis" set by the (currently miscalibrated) con colors tells me that white is my baseline. Fighting at that current (miscalibrated) baseline feels really fun because it is easier than one of the same foes were 10 levels ago.

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Is it really just a colour issue? Even if the reality of the situation changes will fighting blues feel wimpy to you no matter what?

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Probably. I'm not arguing that this does not have a strong psychological component.

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Let's say that the the XP doesn't scale exactly like that, but you still get more XP from a future white than you currently do. Then when you fight a higher level foe you'll get even more exp than you do now, it'll just be harder. When you group it will mitigate the dreaded purple patch.

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And I think that those things tell us it's likely to work this way. But who knows, if we point this out, maybe Cryptic will let there be some creep in the minion count a hero can defeat safely but LTs and Bosses will be something you really want to stick to same-level.

Icarus_Factor and numspha, I am only referring to this in the context of Drayvis' reference to extremely grey foes. Obviously high-con foes have huge relevance.

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Thing is, this isn't a matter of opinion. At level 20, you are more powerful than you were at level 1. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. You're choosing to be blind to the fact that you're taking on more powerful foes. You are creating a false illusion for yourself.

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And what you are absoulutely refusing to accept is that that relative level of power has no effect on the game and is not in any way related to anything we do to progress our position in the game - i.e. our level. We are not exposed to it. It does not enter into our game experience. Ergo we do not give a damn about it.

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Yet again, I ask: How does being able to take down a foe that would have OBLITERATED you at level 1 not feel more powerful? People aren't answering this.

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I answered this in my previous post.

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The same piddly minions of the Joker are the same relative power to Batman as Penguin's minions are... As Batman learned more and more tricks, got more anmd more "powerful", was he able to beat more and more of the Joker's and Penguin's minions? No...their minions seemed to get smarter and more powerful too.

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This doesn't really fit the game though, because it is an MMO. Batman in CoH would eventually be approximately as powerful as Superman (tanker?)or Green Lantern (blaster?), because he would get to level 50 with them.

The only paralells you can draw to the game mechanic, and I'm pushing it here, are things like new heroes still coming into their powers - a common theme in the X-men for a while as they picked up "newbie" mutant. As the character comes into their powers, they often do get more and more powerful and in fact can come to mop the floor with dozens of bad guys.

This is where Drayvis' perspective comes in. In the comic those dozens of baddies were all level one, and the mutant is now level 10 or 15. But unlike in a comic, we have no reason to mess with level 1 villians.

The organizations or whatever that we oppose in the loose game world literally have no level 1 minions, or none that we ever face. We only ever face baddies of our current level or there abouts. That is what we are presented with and the only way we gain XP. So, in that context, it feels more powerful to face more of those than the same amount.

BTW, at this point I'm just trying to explain this perspective - not fight for it in the game. I said my peace along that line and once is enough.

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Because they're STRONGER foes. They would have wiped you out a few levels earlier. What's so hard to grasp about this?

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You should seriously consider taking a step back to calm down. I am NOT required to agree with you. If you don't like the fact that I do not agree with you, you are not required to read my posts. Feel free to ignore me - I'm strongly considering ignoring you based on the attitute you are projecting.

To me, a white con minion is a white con minion is a white con minion. I could care absolutely zero that at level 20 I can obliterate a level one minion into little motes of dust. That means nothing to me because I now face new level 20 minions. I do not feel "more powerful". I gain nothing from obliterating lower level foes. My only effect on the game (which is basically on my character) comes from those foes who are my level (give or take). Thus, my "sense" of power comes from how many of those I can defeat at once.

I like SheckyS' post about levels. He's right - mob con is an illusion. But mob quantity is not, at least not in the same way. There is both a quantitative and qualitative "improvement" in the ability to defeat larger numbers of mobs. Given that our goal is to defeat enemies there is no possible context for which it is not superior to defeat more at once. If the game is balanced such that we can no longer do that, we will feel static.

You are not required to agree or even accept this. But it is a fact that many people feel this way.

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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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Thanks, States.

One day we may even trust you guys to do that sort of thing without questioning you. But you probably shouldn't hold your breath, just in case.

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Sorry, but being able to take down a mob at level 35 that would have 1-shot killed you at level 5 doesn't make you feel more powerful?

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Not really.

At any given level, why would I ever feel more powerful if I can only ever reasonably fight the same number of foes? I don't "feel" the difference in power. I don't defeat things faster or in larger numbers. I am static in power in the environment in which I operate. Sure, my power level changes, but I am now moving to new environments where I cancel that change.

In today's CoH, there is a slow increase in effectiveness relative to your environment - at least agasint certain foes. This contributes to two things: you feel more powerful, and for some, the game becomes too easy.

I see three things in this game that determine mob difficulty:

1) Power sets. How many powers does the mob have? Can it fly? Or stun? Or heal itself or its allies?

2) Hit points. Hit points scale with level for heroes and villians. Damage scales with level also. Broadly speaking, this is a zero-sum game. It still takes my Scrapper or Blaster 3 shots with my early attack powers to kill a white minion, even though those attacks do around 250-300% of the damage they did when I got them

3) Level differential. There is a penalty for attacking things higher level than you and a bonus for attacking things lower level. When combined, this makes attacking (really) high-level foes dangerous because you suck against them and they rock against you.

The impression I'm getting is that it's 1) and 2) that are at the heart of the change that's being planned. You see, we heroes get more and more powers, and often they are more and more damaging. We get to do our low-level damage, scaled by advancement and SOs, PLUS additional attacks that may do even more damage per attack.

If the enemies are given powers that enhance their survivability, and perhaps more hit points, fights will last longer in the face of this addtional damage.

But carrying on some variation of a fight with three guys, over and over and over, for 50 levels...that seems static to me. Yes the fights may be much more interesting than they are today, and I'm sure that will help, but we're talking about doing this sort of thing literally tens of thousands of times to get to level 50.

While I understand there is a very precarious balance to strike, I personally like the current "feel" where I can take on more and more or higher and higher level foes. But of course only to a point - and that is what Statesman is trying to address. I'm not sure I'll like his solution, but I'm throwing my thoughts on the matter out there.

If I never say anything, after all, my opinion might not be considered,

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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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I think this is a really good question, and it applies to Tankers too.

Also, Statesman had been previously said that levelling rates were pretty much satisfactory. But I don't know anyone in the 30+ game who doesn't level on +2 - +4 level mobs. All things being equal, scaling people back to +0 - +1 is going to net a lot less XP per time unit. Statesman, is this intended as well?

The solo phenomena isn't limited to Blasters. It's just really obvious for (some) Blasters at lower levels. Trans-32 it's really true for Scrappers and some Controllers too - you can beat down either large groups or small groups at something like level +4. And if you can believe it, you can build solo Defenders that don't suck at street grinding (I think they'd always be better with an attack AT, though).

Unfortunately, I think the fix for this is looking like that solo butt-kicking is being reduced by beefing up the foes. Now I only say this is unfortunate because, no matter how much I know it's needed, being able to kick that kind of butt is fun. But villian mobs are being beefed up in issue two. The clear implication is they are currently too easy, though I think most people would have thought that only of mobs post 28 or so and not all the way down to Level 1s.

The solo XP will be more dangerous, which means slower. If this works, it may mean that group XP will be the superior XP, but that's still today's group XP, which many of us currently feel is slow.

I don't really have a point here - I'm not complaining, but am sort of lamenting the (potential) loss of today's solo street XP rates (unlike some, I actually enjoy street sweeping). Hopefully the boost to mission XP, the non-combat XP, and for those of us who are willing, the group XP will still keep things from being a true grind. Challenge is good, but grind is not. But I'm not sure we can have it both ways.

Edit: changed a sweeping opinion I attributed to everyone

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This is closer to the spirit of my statement - but the crux here is "decent rate of speed." Some Archetypes do it faster than others. Controllers, and to a degree Defenders & Tankers, solo slowly. That's totally acceptable.

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Totally acceptable? To whom? Not all players.

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Fixed.

Don't presume to speak for everyone.

Drayvis,

This is a matter of opinion (I suspect you think it is a matter of fact, but the simple matter that I disagree suggests otherwise) on which I think you won't find enough universal consensus to get what you're looking for. Ultimately, since I don't endeaver to do more than get all my contacts to "max" and do all their story arcs, it's no skin off of my nose either way, so I wish you luck.

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I'm just curious as to why they use development time on AT changes if balance is not the goal in the end.

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The idea that balance should be equated with all character types having the same damage output / arrest rate is not one that all people share.