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In other words if you are not an AT or build with resistance to status effects you are not allowed to solo at high lvl?
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That's what the Inspirations are for! To help the solo player!
Discipline apparently decreases the time I'm stunned from a couple of seconds to a few seconds. It's meaningless, in those few seconds I'm dead.
Please States, re-read my post a few pages back. (Copy'd below)
Make this game TRULY different from other MMO's.
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Just let ANY archetype levelup after roughly 6 hours of gameplay doing their own missions SOLO.after the first 1-10 levels (which should stay as fast as they are now), and remove the purple patch and include huge rewards for grouping and taking on higher level/larger mobs.
The powergamers will be happy that they can still tweak and look for 'uber builds' for maximum Team Grouping XP pwnage, and the casual player will be happy they can play their character solo for three hours a night and level every two days, and the Comic Fan will be happy that they can feel like a superhero and NOT some artificially derived support class whatever archetype they choose to play.
But really...the fun is leaving this game...i dont want a another job, I want to log in for three hours, smash badguys stop villains and get a level or so every other day doing it. That's STILL a huge time commitment to most people who play the game.
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Statesman, I have to say I'm VERY disappointed in your lack of understanding this problem. You are missing 2 keys things:
1. More villains does not mean harder. A group of 5 can take on an infinite number of reds. It's called "herding," maybe you've heard of it. Why would any group take on more members than 5 when at that point you can fight every mob in the zone, hazard zone, or trial zone?
2. Not all people want to take on large numbers of villains. Some want to take on small numbers of harder villains, similar to an archvillain battle. Thanks to the purple patch, villains are 4 times, then 17 times harder, without 4 or 17 times the XP.
We are left with 3 choices: easy, lots of easy, and impossible. The game is easy because that all we can face, you have eliminated our ability to take on hard.
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Just so that I'm clear - the larger the group, the larger the spawn. The problem is not the "purple patch" - the problem is that players are approaching MOB spawns that are simply too small for their group.
Oh - low level trials - Sewers (upper). Faultline.
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I have never, ever heard of a trial in faultline. Not from any of the hundreds of players I have played with at all levels of this game. I think this may be the first mention of a trial in faultline in the history of CoH.
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And apparently you're not aware that Faultline itself is a TRIALZONE. It's even listed as such on quite a few sites...along with TV, Sewers, Abandoned Sewers, and Rikti Crash Site.
example
example 2
Perhaps getting the sarcasm out of your text/voice people and quit hammering Statesman like he's the troll instead of you all, might actually do some good if you quit coming across as the way you are right now.
There is nothing wrong with stating your opinion, there is something wrong with how you say it.
Hey, back off the Statesman. You wanna piece of him? You gotta go through me first!
Way to fight off the whiners/trolls/power gamers, States.
In my opinion Status effects are not the answer to making thegam emore challenging. Doing something to help reduce the Alpha strike syndrome would be better. Honestly Alpha strikes seem to trivialize much of the content in my opinion.
I completely agree! I often am being sked or sking another friend which halts any use of Hazard Zones. I actually like the Hazard Zones, but if it means dropping a friend from the team, I won't do it. Remove the restrictions for Hazard Zones, please!!!
so let me get this straight...
I know full well that a level 52 chief soldier can kill me in ONE melee shot even with all my defenses and what not. He WILL do 1800-2000 dmg to me. I only have 1380 hp at level 50.
So if i were to find a LONE boss level 52... as a DM/REGEN, I should avoid him? I should call for back up? If I'm soloing a mission story arc and enjoying myself immensly, then run into this guy that I know can send me to the hospital with JUST ONE HIT... what would you have me do?
I've recently succeeded respec and found an alternative to augment the dmg from a soldier- 6 slotting Dull Pain to compensate for the enourmous damage he does.
But the point is, I shouldn't have to have a specific power to SURVIVE one shot from him. What if I was a Super Reflexes scrapper?
The minute you have certain gang and foes that can kill ALL but one type of player in one hit, and they are within 3 levels of you... you lose the ability to solo.
The scrapper and blasters are the key solo artists in the game. I'd say the scrapper is better at it because of survivability. Against a 52 chief soldier, neither is going to survive. I've watched a 50 eng/eng blaster snipe then nova a soldier boss only to have the boss lay him down with one hit. The boss survived this guys two hardest hitting blows then killed him.
How is it fun for me to know that if i grab aggro of 2 level diff bosses that are chasing a blaster- i'm dead?
How is it fun for me knowing I can SOLO a monster off peregrin that is level 50, yet I can't solo a boss that is merely 2 levels above me.
How is it fun knowing I can take a lvl 50 death mage kamikaze and walk away with half my life, yet one blade from a rikti lays me out?
I understand the need for difficulty for the sake of challenging. But if I have only a short time to plan and want to do a mission or two, I shouldn't NEED to call for back up once I get to a boss that I know will kill me in one hit.
All I'm saying is scale back what you have done with the RIkti bosses.
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And apparently you're not aware that Faultline itself is a TRIALZONE. It's even listed as such on quite a few sites...along with PP, Boom, etc...
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PP and Boom are hazard zones, not Trial zones.
[url="http://tinyurl.com/4ylgy"]The Wanderers[/url] of Virtue
We farm fun!
I also think the purple patch hard limit of +4 should vary based on the size of the group as a proper solution. Just wanted to throw that out there. Keeps the happy single player +10 mob killers that brought on the purple patch at bay too while allowing groups to up the ante with bigger targets as they add heros.
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In other words if you are not an AT or build with resistance to status effects you are not allowed to solo at high lvl?
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That's what the Inspirations are for! To help the solo player!
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Mobs don't drop Disciplines as often as they use holds. If you're not hunting right next to a contact, you can't get enough inspirations to solo. Are we supposed to run to a contact after every 5th fight?
I just got finished grouping with a 5 person team (39-41) we were just mass killing everything (42-43) mobs. The group was balanced and we just killed everything in our path for good xp (6-9k) per group. I made over 500k in about 90min
Now that may seem slow to some but thats good for street sweeping and leagues better than the 7 hours needed to gain one level in FF online. Best XP you get in that game is roughly 5k xp per hour and high levels need 35-50k to level and it keeps getting higher!!!
Most people dont complain because that game isn't for the casual players. On CoH only in the 30 does it get kinda bad, but that changes in the 40's where grouping is desired, is faster and most important of all....SAFER!!!!!
So I dont see how Xp is an issue. Maybe its all about the 8 man group? Well I guess the max team sized should be lowered and allow for an alliance system like FF to fight the bigger stuff like Hamidon.
Changes like that always happen.
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That's what the Inspirations are for! To help the solo player!
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But you need to eat 1 or more of them before every fight in order to be able to do anything (againt mobs like carnies its 2-3+).
What about making them reactive?
After all if you are taking too much damage you can make a comeback with heal inspirations. If you suffere from bad debuffs you can counter it with inspirations (damage and acc).
If you are hit with with a status effect inspirations wont help you a bit, you can just stand there and watch with increasing frustration how your character is chain mezzed again and again and again until you are dead.
But if purple inspirations could be used to get out of status effects they would help you against those effects in the same way that heal works against damage and acc/dam works against debuffs.
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Mobs don't drop Disciplines as often as they use holds. If you're not hunting right next to a contact, you can't get enough inspirations to solo. Are we supposed to run to a contact after every 5th fight?
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We're going to be increasing drop rates. Sorry I didn't mention that.
"So if i were to find a LONE boss level 52... as a DM/REGEN, I should avoid him? I should call for back up? If I'm soloing a mission story arc and enjoying myself immensly, then run into this guy that I know can send me to the hospital with JUST ONE HIT... what would you have me do?"
Purple boss? Hell yes you should have to call for back up or go into it being gutsy knowing that it might one-shot you.
I run a fairly large SG on Virtue. It has been my goal from the start to create a SG thats focused on grouping. Currently we run two 8 person teams a night. I've yet to hear anyone complain about "Lack" of exp. mostly I hear exp. is awsome and "Ding" alot. We do both missions and street sweeping.
On missions we prefer to portal corp or tram missions. With 8 person teams we get a fair amount of bosses. We try and stick to highest persons missions for best exp. The only problem we've encountered is SK options. I prefer missions because your not fighting for spawns.
Street sweeping has always been a good sourse for steady fast exp. The biggest problem here is spawns. If there's a duo or single hunting then the spawns seem reduced. On the upside with a team of 8 you roll through stuff giving you more exp over time.
As you get higher in SL you devolope a sixth sense on when ambushes may occure. For us the group leader will warn people to hold for an ambush. This really comes from working with the same teams constently. You won't find this pick-up groups.
The dreaded "Exp Debate" will carry on through WoW, Eq2 and future games alike. I always laugh when someone joins a team hunting even cons and says "we should hunt harder stuff" Here is group getting mass exp with lil to now downtime and they move to harder. Yes, the exp per kill is more but over time it ends up less due to downtime or death. So, purple isn't always better. 
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And apparently you're not aware that Faultline itself is a TRIALZONE. It's even listed as such on quite a few sites...along with PP, Boom, etc...
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PP and Boom are hazard zones, not Trial zones.
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correct. my error.
Harker, you seem to be missing the point.
You can solo SOME mobs in the game. You can't solo ALL mobs in the game.
You can solo SOME missions in the game. You can't solo ALL missions in the game.
There is a hell of a lot more that you can solo in CoH than in any other mmorpg I've played. Be happy with that instead of trying to turn what is a group based game into a solo fest. That's not part of the design doc or intention of the developers. Above and beyond all else it's a GROUP based game that allows anyone to solo if they want to. It doesn't mean you'll necessarily solo as fast as if you were in a group. It doesn't mean you can solo every mob or every encounter. It means you can solo specific things if that's how you choose to play the game.
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In other words if you are not an AT or build with resistance to status effects you are not allowed to solo at high lvl?
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That's what the Inspirations are for! To help the solo player!
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If so, Inspirations are either going to make those mobs trivial, or still make them impossible for scrappers and blasters. Here's why.
If the inspiration truly does stop status effects, solo guys will just buy them. The cost of inspirations at L30+ is trivial. The only XP effect will be downtime going to the store.
If the inspiration does not stop status effects, like the current broken inspirations, no one will use them. These mobs will then be virtually impossible to solo.
IOW, without radical changes to how status effects work on players, it looks like inspiraitons will either be irrelevant, or make the mobs trivial anyways.
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1. More villains does not mean harder. A group of 5 can take on an infinite number of reds. It's called "herding," maybe you've heard of it. Why would any group take on more members than 5 when at that point you can fight every mob in the zone, hazard zone, or trial zone?
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More villains should be harder. The "herding" as you described it is a problem. I've already said this - the high level players can take on reds or purples with little to no risk. That needs to be addressed.
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2. Not all people want to take on large numbers of villains. Some want to take on small numbers of harder villains, similar to an archvillain battle. Thanks to the purple patch, villains are 4 times, then 17 times harder, without 4 or 17 times the XP.
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Then that group can go into a zone with smaller spawns, but higher levels mobs. So a group of 8 level 30 guys could go into a hazard zone with spawns for a group of 3 to 5 - but with levels +1, +2,+3 to the group...Heck, a single +4 should be a challenge to several heroes. But it's not. That's the problem.
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Just so that I'm clear - the larger the group, the larger the spawn. The problem is not the "purple patch" - the problem is that players are approaching MOB spawns that are simply too small for their group.
Oh - low level trials - Sewers (upper). Faultline.
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I have never, ever heard of a trial in faultline. Not from any of the hundreds of players I have played with at all levels of this game. I think this may be the first mention of a trial in faultline in the history of CoH.
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And apparently you're not aware that Faultline itself is a TRIALZONE. It's even listed as such on quite a few sites...along with PP, Boom, etc...
example
example 2
Perhaps getting the sarcasm out of your text/voice people and quit hammering Statesman like he's the troll instead of you all, might actually do some good if you quit coming across as the way you are right now.
There is nothing wrong with stating your opinion, there is something wrong with how you say it.
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Perhaps if you learned the difference between a trial zone and a hazard zone you could chime in
Faultline is a hazard zone. Just like Perez and Boomtown and Dark Astoria and the Sewer Network and the Abandoned Sewer Network and the Rikti Crash Site.
The Sewer Trial zone is located through a door found in the center of the abandoned sewers. You get a mission from a lady in Founders Falls to kill 150 Rikti, and for that you get a code to the door. Use the computer by the door to start the mission and allow the team access to the Sewer Trial Zone. There is another trial zone, it is where you fight Hamidon.
why though- since no other 2 level boss can kill me in one shot like he can?? consistency!!! no other +2 boss can even come close to ending me in ONE hit. NONE.
plus, you have no choice BUT to face these bastards when doing respec- in fact, you get to face 53s!!!!
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But you need to eat 1 or more of them before every fight in order to be able to do anything (againt mobs like carnies its 2-3+).
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But the goal is to nudge the soloer to groups -1,0,+1 and groups of 3. This should make it so 1 should be enough to tackle the fight.
I would agree with the idea of them being reactive. Though I thought the description says they are, which means we are looking at a bug?
There is one big reason why people dont use hazard zones.
The lvl minimum to enter them.
A typical group often have lower lvl sidekicks in it. That group cannot go to the hazard zones to XP since their side kicks cannot follow them to the zone.
Its also very disruptive to groups that do missions since you fear at every talk with a contact whether or not the mission is in a zone where the sidekicks in the group cannot come with you.
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Something that I also see as broken... exp for a level 14 white 5th column is the same exp as a level 14 white vahz. We all love to kill 5th because relative to many other mobs they are easier. Each mob needs a system much closer to 3rd edition D&D that bumps up the exp value based on powers and how hard it is to kill and or survive a fight. A mob that can chain hold you is much more of a pain than a mob that does only melee punch damage. The chain holder should be worth X2 or X3 the exp of the same level puncher.
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Although this is only tangential to grouping, it is valid. Those mobs are much tougher than others. It appears that the answer is to give all mobs status effects, so that all mobs are equally difficult.
Problem is, that'll suck for soloing scrappers and blasters.