[ QUOTE ]
Actually, if a boss will appear in a mission, the mission briefing mentions it. Check the text.
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Clarifying question: By "a boss", do you mean (a) a named boss, (b) a boss that must be defeated to clear the mission, (c) any boss at all, or (d) something else?
Here is one example from my last 2 hours of play time of a named boss appearing with no mention in the briefing. This mission had an orange-con named boss (Chief Genghis), who had to be defeated to beat the mission (as far as I could tell).
The mission briefing read:
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Fareed Abdullah: I just got a call from the police department; theyve got a cop missing from his beat! I need you to find Office Bill Hudson. We cannot allow a decorated officer to be abducted.
Bring that officer back safe and sound, Bobby Flay.
[/ QUOTE ]
The mission title in the nav bar was something like "Defeat kidnapper and his guards", which also doesn't explicitly indicate that the kidnapper is a boss.
Would you say that this mission briefing needs to be changed? Should I have filed it as a bug?
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While I understand your complaint, your situation is in large part your own doing. Being antisocial is more of an impediment now than before Issue 2. I solo when I am not in groups, because it gets boring sitting around and doing nothing, and like you because often I want to do missions on my own. Similar to Batman. I don't think it's bad to want to "go it alone" because that is QUITE a common theme in comics.
But so is teaming up when you fight villains too big for you to handle on your own. Hence teamups, comic crossovers, even super hero leagues.
Just keep in mind that being a hero and being super are 2 different things. You didn't play this game just to be super, right?
Be a hero. Don't give up.
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Actually, isn't the point of the game to be a SUPERHero? Not just a hero? That logic works both ways.
And just because someone enjoys just being able to jump on and solo on occasion makes him antisocial? Or just a casual player that wants to just jump in on occasion, or they are RPing or playing a theme character that is the "Lone Wolf"?
I know and agree that AVs and Elite Bosses are supposed to be tough enough to require grouping, it's within the whole Superhero genre where there are epic badguys that need at least a handful of superheroes to defeat, but we are talking about just the common, garden variety, generic bosses that in the comics the superheroes should be able to take solo with a moderate effort. Named bosses, maybe Elite Bosses, should be the toe-to-toe, knock down dragem' out fights.
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Uhm, ok... Sure... I'm sure that makes sense in your little world somewhere.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sticks and stones.
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If you say so. Sorry, I guess I just don't subscribe to your narrow little vision of things (thank god).
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No you have your own narrow view where you believe anyone who disagrees with you has malicious intent. Hence your jab at me that I should be a Dev because I say people who adapt will be more successful than those who don't.
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I find it completely amazing that if you have any complaint that another person doesn't agree with your instantly a whiner.
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Yes, because rather than have intelligent discussion about it, you complain incessantly about it. That's whining.
Unless you disagree with me that people who adapt will die less often than those who don't, you have nothing constructive to say to me. So not only does that make you a whiner, it makes you a flamer.
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If you'd like to consider me a quitter be my guest, but usually if I find something that is heavily biased against me I don't see the need to keep "beating my head against the wall" so to speak.
[/ QUOTE ]
You're the one that gave up, not me. You're the one that said the following:
"Now my blaster can just avoid his missions altogether so he won't get beat down by generic bosses!"
Yeah, go ahead and quit missions altogether, like you said you would, and tell me you're not a quitter. That's as honest as anything else you've claimed so far.
[ QUOTE ]
Actually, isn't the point of the game to be a SUPERHero? Not just a hero? That logic works both ways.
[/ QUOTE ]
True, and even Batman, a hero with no super powers, is still a superhero. Because he's not a quitter. Nor is he a whiner.
[ QUOTE ]
And just because someone enjoys just being able to jump on and solo on occasion makes him antisocial?
[/ QUOTE ]
Nope by his comments Snow Lionne said the following:
"I DO NOT team well, I play games so I don't have to be social. If I wanted to chat with people, I would go hang out with friends. A lot of teams ask me why I don't chat, what's wrong with me that I don't type "LOL" everytime one of them says something remotely humourous. I don't want to team, I don't care for the changes in the bosses as it makes it next to impossible for me to solo, with ANY of my chars "
I'm not being mean by saying he's antisocial. Batman is a classic antisocial hero. There's nothing wrong with that. I sure as hell wasn't being flippant with him as you are with me. I even admitted that I too am antisocial sometimes and that from time to time we are all like that. (practically speaking)
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Or just a casual player that wants to just jump in on occasion, or they are RPing or playing a theme character that is the "Lone Wolf"?
[/ QUOTE ]
I took his words by the context he used them. He wasn't speaking as one of his characters, to my knowledge, so yes I assume he is speaking about himself. I am not calling him a loser, mean, etc. I am just saying that someone that ADMITS he doesn't want to be social, doesn't want to chat much, doesn't want to team, etc. I take him at his word, and I take him seriously, which is more than I can say about you.
[ QUOTE ]
I know and agree that AVs and Elite Bosses are supposed to be tough enough to require grouping, it's within the whole Superhero genre where there are epic badguys that need at least a handful of superheroes to defeat, but we are talking about just the common, garden variety, generic bosses that in the comics the superheroes should be able to take solo with a moderate effort. Named bosses, maybe Elite Bosses, should be the toe-to-toe, knock down dragem' out fights.
[/ QUOTE ]
And you know, I think the bosses are a little too hard, compared to the LT's and minions. If you use the baseline, right now a LT equals about 1 minion but a boss equals about 8 minions. I think that's just a little too steep a curve for me.
You can either a) recognize that I am offering constructive and valid opinions, and either agree or disagree with me, or you can keep making flippant comments that I never asked for or provoked. It's your choice. But my purpose on these threads is not to play tit for tat forever with you or anyone else over irrelevant comments.
Here is the mission breifing for my 1st level 40 mission
"Indigo: I've been watching you alot *hero name*. You don't know it but I've allready had you 'rescue' me twice just to see if you are as capable as I've heard. I think you can help us. I'm Indigo. Not Miss Indigo or Indigo Smith or anything. Just Indigo. And I can help you fight some very bad people. If we both want to stay safe, that's all you'll ever know about me. I'm not trying to be a 'woman of mystery' or anything. I'm just trying to stay safe. Now, like I said, I can help you fight some very bad people. However I may ask you to do some things without knowing why. I'm sorry about that, but that's kinda for both our safety. Now I'll never ask you to do anything bad, or hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it, but I may not be able to tell you how or why I know what I know. If you can work with that, if you are willing to trust the person who vouched for me, and if you want to put a hurt on some really bad people, then lets get started."
This was the only warning I recieved for my mission. The mission was a defeat all with 2 red bosses as part of it. In the same room and had to be faced together. burning thru all my insp I still was defeated 3 times. Once the moment I found them when they each hit me once. Twice attempting to hit and run and getting blasted as I ran. the fourth time I rested after getting hurt, coming back less than a minute later to find both bosses were at full health again. I call this far from fair warning.
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Here is the mission breifing for my 1st level 40 mission
"Indigo: I've been watching you alot *hero name*. You don't know it but I've allready had you 'rescue' me twice just to see if you are as capable as I've heard. I think you can help us. I'm Indigo. Not Miss Indigo or Indigo Smith or anything. Just Indigo. And I can help you fight some very bad people. If we both want to stay safe, that's all you'll ever know about me. I'm not trying to be a 'woman of mystery' or anything. I'm just trying to stay safe. Now, like I said, I can help you fight some very bad people. However I may ask you to do some things without knowing why. I'm sorry about that, but that's kinda for both our safety. Now I'll never ask you to do anything bad, or hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it, but I may not be able to tell you how or why I know what I know. If you can work with that, if you are willing to trust the person who vouched for me, and if you want to put a hurt on some really bad people, then lets get started."
This was the only warning I recieved for my mission. The mission was a defeat all with 2 red bosses as part of it. In the same room and had to be faced together. burning thru all my insp I still was defeated 3 times. Once the moment I found them when they each hit me once. Twice attempting to hit and run and getting blasted as I ran. the fourth time I rested after getting hurt, coming back less than a minute later to find both bosses were at full health again. I call this far from fair warning.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, indeed. So far I've had about 5 or 6 Malta missions. They all have had bosses, two missions had dual +1 named bosses. None of the mission text indicated that there were going to be bosses.
Maybe the devs think that anyone 40+ should just expect bosses in all missions give how high level they are. I'm actually OK with that; it just is counter to Stateman's statement regarding all missions with bosses should be obvious from the mission text.
Z.
"I don't have an angel and a devil on my shoulder, I have Rocky and Bullwinkle." - Lore Sj�berg
just want to add my 2 cents that i think the boss changes are just too much. now, i'm ok with a bit more of a challenge, but this? 
i also don't like the precedence cryptic is setting with their updates. each time, they try to force increased difficulty down our throats. this one seems especially driven. it also makes no sense in light of the mission difficulty slider.
anyway, i'm just repeating what plenty others have said, but i'll say one last thing. statesman keeps saying that we were never meant to solo bosses, that it's in the manual. the manual also says that we should be able to handle whites fairly easily, doesn't it? so which is it?
It's boiling down to it's pathetic how *many* missions have "surprise" bosses in them. It's really saying something about the devs if Statesman doesn't retract the statement in my sig.
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If it is now impossible for me to solo kill a boss two levels above me with out a lot of candy. How is it a Boss two levels below me (My character should be a Major Boss in mobs eyes IMO) to kill me after a fairly long battle that I got him down to 1/3 his health. Again this boss was two levels below me and actually conned white to me. I should have no more problems killing it as I would a minion of equal level. Please readjust the Boss levels. Major Bosses, IIE Named Bosses in Missions, AVs, Monsters make them as hard as you want but your everyday run of the mill boss on the street and in a random mission should not be impossible to kill. Your taking the fun out of the game for those who like to solo, who only play 1-2 hours a day (Thus not using up valuable bandwidth) these people are the bread and butter of the game. They are the majority.
Again please reconsider the boss level, and just the boss level.
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I think what's happening here is that people aren't used to change. Statesman has said that he did not intend for Bosses to be such a trivial challenge. Just because they were, does that mean that he's supposed to leave things unchanged because something slipped through the cracks? I don't think so.
I agree with you that the bosses do seem like a serious problem, but I attribute to the debt I've amassed against Issue 3 bosses to a hard head. This was a change that will need a playstyle adjustment. If you don't want to adjust, you'll be subjecting yourself to a lot of frustration for no good reason.
Think about the positives of this change. It gets the support ATs a higher value to teams. A Defender was simply not needed after the 30s game. I mean, they were but they were just icing on the cake and not a necessity. Controllers still had a place because they could lock things down, regardless of their challenge. Can you honestly tell me where a debuff was needed outside of speeding up the rate of experience to take down something?
I personally want to feel like I have a challenge that's damn near insurmountable but possible if I use my head and my powers to their best situational use. I welcome any challenge the DEVs throw at me, so long as it's fair and reasonable. I think right now it's an awkward transition at least in terms of instanced missions because bosses are showing up in solo missions without much indication outside of text when you click on the mission. Statesman has said that there will be indicators for missions that will be soloable or will most likely require a team because there will be bosses. Until this happens it's more or less mission buyer beware.
It's sad to think that people want such an easy ride through such an enjoyable game. Not everything in this game will be soloable.
I do want to make clear that I think the boss changes are too much, too. But I can't decide how much that is, really. I enjoy the challenge, but the disparity between LT's and bosses is noticable.
Maybe leave the damage changes in but lower the HP to normal. Something. I don't mind them being somewhat tougher. But it just takes dramatically longer to take one out than LT's, and that's what I have an issue with.
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Be a hero. Don't give up.
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I am not giving up. I am getting debt. After Statesman has finished Data Mining the changes and comes to the conclusion that the boss changes are pushing the game in a direction that a large group of vocal players don't like, I am expected a refund of all the influence lost during this debt fest.
Don't get me started on teaming. Currently I stear clear of Large 8 man teams unless they are all the same level and include a bubbler or Debuffer plus a healer. Anything less and bosses **** my tank. My Defenses seem to get hit by streak breakers too often for my healing to catch up with the damage. Maybe its just the Tsoo. I have more testing to do with my tank. On test I only tested with my blasters and scrappers and a low level invul tank so I never saw what happens to Ice tanks in the mid-levels. Right now solo I am fine but in large groups I am getting spanked by bosses.
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Been saying this for 5 WEEKS on the test forums..Statesman doesn't care. He was determined to make these changes regardless of how it affected the casual or solo players.
The ONE area of this game you should always be able to solo is your own missions UNLESS it CLEARY states you will need help before you accept it.
Generic Bosses should NEVER have gotten the boss tweaks.
This is now a power-gamer's game..casual and concept players will be forced to group to finish their own story arcs for the entire second half of the game. Just when they should be starting to feel really powerful because they are starting to get the really cool powers..WHAM.. no we're sorry.. you are not a HERO you are just another peon in tights. Step aside third stringer.
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This could cause the casual or solo player to be discriminated against. What I mean is that it could be possible that with these changes that the casual or concept builder (not min/maxed or 6 slotted attacks all damage) would not be able to stay on a team because they are not doing enough damage.
With the increase in hps and damage boss fights must end quickly or there are more chances of losing and going to the hospital. Let's say you had two scrappers on a team and scrapper A.) casual or concept builder does not do the damage of scrapper B.) the true uber build. The team could say that if you do not change how you slot your scrapper (respec totally change your powers and slots) you will not remain on this team, because you know that these fights with the bosses must end quickly.
Ebony Fists: Level 50 DM/Regen Scrapper, Gloom Piston Robotics/Dark mastermind level 34, QueenFireMare: Level 34 Fire blaster (pure fire),
[ QUOTE ]
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Actually, isn't the point of the game to be a SUPERHero? Not just a hero? That logic works both ways.
[/ QUOTE ]
True, and even Batman, a hero with no super powers, is still a superhero. Because he's not a quitter. Nor is he a whiner.
[ QUOTE ]
And just because someone enjoys just being able to jump on and solo on occasion makes him antisocial?
[/ QUOTE ]
Nope by his comments Snow Lionne said the following:
"I DO NOT team well, I play games so I don't have to be social. If I wanted to chat with people, I would go hang out with friends. A lot of teams ask me why I don't chat, what's wrong with me that I don't type "LOL" everytime one of them says something remotely humourous. I don't want to team, I don't care for the changes in the bosses as it makes it next to impossible for me to solo, with ANY of my chars "
I'm not being mean by saying he's antisocial. Batman is a classic antisocial hero. There's nothing wrong with that. I sure as hell wasn't being flippant with him as you are with me. I even admitted that I too am antisocial sometimes and that from time to time we are all like that. (practically speaking)
[ QUOTE ]
Or just a casual player that wants to just jump in on occasion, or they are RPing or playing a theme character that is the "Lone Wolf"?
[/ QUOTE ]
I took his words by the context he used them. He wasn't speaking as one of his characters, to my knowledge, so yes I assume he is speaking about himself. I am not calling him a loser, mean, etc. I am just saying that someone that ADMITS he doesn't want to be social, doesn't want to chat much, doesn't want to team, etc. I take him at his word, and I take him seriously, which is more than I can say about you.
[ QUOTE ]
I know and agree that AVs and Elite Bosses are supposed to be tough enough to require grouping, it's within the whole Superhero genre where there are epic badguys that need at least a handful of superheroes to defeat, but we are talking about just the common, garden variety, generic bosses that in the comics the superheroes should be able to take solo with a moderate effort. Named bosses, maybe Elite Bosses, should be the toe-to-toe, knock down dragem' out fights.
[/ QUOTE ]
And you know, I think the bosses are a little too hard, compared to the LT's and minions. If you use the baseline, right now a LT equals about 1 minion but a boss equals about 8 minions. I think that's just a little too steep a curve for me.
You can either a) recognize that I am offering constructive and valid opinions, and either agree or disagree with me, or you can keep making flippant comments that I never asked for or provoked. It's your choice. But my purpose on these threads is not to play tit for tat forever with you or anyone else over irrelevant comments.
[/ QUOTE ]
Kinda hypocritical here... The last post I had made that you continued to be "flipant" with me on had no jabs at you and was attempting to voice my opinion, yet you felt the need to continue to be insulting toward me.
Now maybe my initial post toward you was a bit too much on the smart-[censored] side, I was quite irritated at the time, and frankly your post at the time came off to me as your being a bit of an A-hole about the concerns being addressed, basically to the tune of "deal with it and shut up", which I have little appreciation for.
Anyway, if I took it out of context to your intent and came off a little forward, I apologize. But I think you need to step back a little too.
Something just doesn't jive here... There are many things in this game that don't seem to fit with the increased difficulty of bosses. This feels like it was something that was introduced to address whatever concerns some people at Cryptic are having.
For months, since the game was released, we've expected to solo the majority of our missions. I can't recall this ever being negated by any developer. As a matter in fact, the developers seemed to ensure that we could solo missions. They stated that we should be seeing any villain higher than 1 level over our hero. It ensured we weren't getting bosses too far beyond what we could handle. If we found a mission not consistent with that it was bugged.
I thought that was scalable missions and task forces were meant for heroes. Standard missions were meant for those who solo.
Was all this meant only for heroes below level 25? If so, the distinction was never made.
The new mission difficulty option doesn't quite fit with this intended difficulty. Now we have the option to have missions populated by orange, red and purple villains. So what we are expected to solo doesn't add up.
For all intents and purposes, impossible to solo missions with bosses set at higher degrees of difficulty. I don't even think it would have been possible at higher difficulty settings to defeat those bosses as they were before issue 3. So where is the motivation there for this change?
So, were developers trying to slow progress with this boss change? Well, with the release of this issue XP has been coming at a fast pace, provided I avoid most bosses. I expect to see players turning up the difficulty and farming missions for XP. Players now have a reliable, controlled environment for doing it. The kind of people who want to powerlevel will always find a way to do it, and in many cases could care less about the content they're skipping.
I'm having a hard time seeing the logic behind these changes. However, I don't know if I want to blame the developers. They have to understand this game better than any of us. As expansive as the game is, they must have a good idea of what kind of effects changes will bring.
Having experience in the corporate world, I can't imagine that developers have the final say in many of these decisions. I can only assume that people higher up, like management and sales/marketing departments are trying to impose these changes on the game. They want to see certain things change, and want it done a certain way, but don't quite understand the game mechanics.
Now, don't quote me on that. Its sheer speculation, I may be completely wrong here. It's just a guess.
From what I've seen, CoH came to represent a sort of anti-EQ. The elitism of EQ wasn't present in this game. There was no loot, no high end content locked off to all but a few exclusive guilds, and even casual gamers had the hope of reaching the higher levels of the game. From what I've read, and all of the friends I know playing the game, that was a big draw for them. The precident being set by issue 3 changes all that.
All in all I am very happy with City of Heroes. Cryptic has done a great job with the game. I'm still having a lot of fun. And the difficulty settings make for exciting missions. However, I do have my concerns. I'm worried about where the game is heading and the fact that I'm essentially being forced to group in order to complete many of my own missions.
I think this is the last I'm going to say about this issue. At this point I'm just going to wait and see what happens.
[ QUOTE ]
Kinda hypocritical here... The last post I had made that you continued to be "flipant" with me on had no jabs at you and was attempting to voice my opinion, yet you felt the need to continue to be insulting toward me.
[/ QUOTE ]
I was replying back. I later reigned in my tone because I saw some things you wrote were actually pretty good. I never started a fight with you. I just push back. 
[ QUOTE ]
Now maybe my initial post toward you was a bit too much on the smart-[censored] side, I was quite irritated at the time, and frankly your post at the time came off to me as your being a bit of an A-hole about the concerns being addressed, basically to the tune of "deal with it and shut up", which I have little appreciation for.
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You read way off on my post, and I didn't appreciate the personal attack from out of nowhere. 
[ QUOTE ]
Anyway, if I took it out of context to your intent and came off a little forward, I apologize. But I think you need to step back a little too.
[/ QUOTE ]
Roger that. And I apologize too. We'll treat this as your typical first-time superhero clash were 2 new heroes meet for the first time. 
I think ultimately the Devs realize they made many of us heroes too powerful for game balance. But it wasn't evident how bad it was for awhile, and as usual, took a long time to work out.
And if you give everyone in the same AT that comparible power you eliminate tons of challenge from the game. States has talked about this over various posts but nobody ever quotes that. They just quote a handful of select quotes and try to pit them against each other. He says more than that.
I'm not a fan of nerfing an AT to keep it in line with others, but too often in other MMO's the amount of power exhibited is a fraction of what we see here. I think this is the reason for their actions.
In EQ as a Druid I could kite a few mobs and kill them as they follow me. Some risk, some skill, but it allowed me to level quicker than many others. I could kite a hill giant or other mobs that way, too.
Warriors really couldn't singlehandedly tank much, and they're the toughest ones there. In CoH you have literally HUNDREDS of even con or higher mobs being kited not just by tankers, but by scrappers. Heck there are a few AT/power set combos I've seen that do that well, too. FF/Storm for example. Bring them to a couple strong AoE blasters and absolutely amazing HP.
To many people this extended beyond super but into godly. I'm not here to argue that one way or the other, but that's the perception of some if not by others.
Clearly the Devs felt that way, too, and made a change accordingly.
BTW if you have a good team an 8 person Unyielding group is absolutely insane and it's wonderful having everyone contribute, rather than some sit on a rock and chat the whole time. If you're going to have Booster Gold on your team, at least have him do cleanup.
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I wont' avoid bosses because I am playing a superhero. If I can, I will take on whatever seems likely. That's WHY I play the game. Not to team. Not to sulk around and not fight. I do it because that's what the game is for.
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Hmm and I suppose you kill every mob you run across, including grey ones? Not completely out of the realm of possibility, especially if you're a roleplayer.
Well, then, I guess you'd better prepare yourself for debt, if tactics make no difference.
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No, but apparently you don't understand. If I leave a boss standing by the roadside, and there's an NPC he's been hassling, I also don't get the npc influence bonus or drop they're waiting to give me. So I get to watch someone else take that while they 'help' me finish a boss off? No. Wrong.
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I understand that, and really it couldn't make less of a difference to me. By the time you're 35 influence will most definitely NOT be a problem unless you're giving it all away.
But then I wouldn't likely be needing to call anyone in to help me kill the boss if we were on the street anyway; I'd just skip on by.
[ QUOTE ]
Oh okay - a storm electric defender, which is to say, the "blaster" of defenders? Hrm. Yeah. Has nothing to do with build, and all strategy. Bull.
[/ QUOTE ]
Doesn't apply to me. I'm still out killing orange to purple minions with ease, and LT's of similar levels with somewhat less ease. The only bosses I go after are those I must, though I am still able to do so consistently. One red or low purple boss just isn't worth the risk when I see a group of 3 or 4 red minions headed by a purple Lt for me to waste just down the block. (That's like ringing the dinner bell to my storm def.) With less risk he'll clear a couple times the xp he would have fighting the boss, and be in roughly the same condition by the end of either battle. On top of that, bosses run like hell from him, where practically none of the rest do.
Btw I also have two dozen other characters across the spectrum, ranging between lvl 2 and lvl 20 and pretty evenly distributed in between. I seem to prefer defenders, though: a D3, a couple stormies, kin/rad, emp/elec off the top of my head. Just because my main is 35 doesn't mean I don't have experience with other builds.
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I have *exceptional* strategy. When I can't use it along with a ton of inspirations to solo something, it's not me or my character's build. It is, as is painfully obvious from every other post here supporting me, the game design.
[/ QUOTE ]
You wanna know what my strategy tells me? If I can't solo something and I really have to kill it, I get others together to help me remove it as an obstacle from my path. I have successfully completed every single mission to 35, some in group and some solo, with my main. I've needed several times to get a small group together to achieve my objective.
It is your expectations that are the problem, really. You don't expect to be able to kill a +10 mob solo, so you don't attack one. But your build now can't kill an even boss consistently, if I read your complaints aright. And you expect to be able to kill an even boss, with any build. Instead of taking the obvious (at least to me) logical option of avoiding said even boss, you use a different strategy: convince the devs that their new tough bosses are a BAD thing so they will make them easier to kill again.
[ QUOTE ]
I know that within certain missions (and see above posts regarding the number of mission based bosses that are missed by flavor text) that you "don't have to" get the bosses. When I can avoid them, you bet I do.
"Bite the bullet."
But as another poster put so well, we are heroes - we are playing people to whom fighting this war against crime is their lifeblood. If I leave that villian to do his deeds again, should it be in the plotline of this game, he WILL do other things and heroes pay the price again and again. I'll only come up against a villian boss in another mission. I won't hide all the time.
[/ QUOTE ]
I know of no comic book superhero who hasn't needed help at some time in his/her career, and usually many times. If the enemy was too tough to be dealt with alone, they sought aid and planning from others, notably other superheroes.
OK, then, let's say you send him to prison. He gets out eventually through whatever diabolical plan he had prepared for such a revoltin' development, or he has good lawyers, or whatever. (You didn't think the writers were going to waste a good villain, did you?)
My heroes are usually more interested in stopping the villain(s) at the crucial times than at all times.
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But nor should I ever for a moment back away and say I better get someone else to do this for me. I should be allowed the option to say "I better get someone to HELP me do this" but your statements have really given me the bad taste in my mouth that says you don't know squat about a *defender* like an emp/dark. I've been playing her for only 3 months, but solid. And as I've said before, I play solo more than 90% of the time.
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I've stated my qualifications above, and as a matter of fact, I have both a D3 and an emp/elec. I play defenders for about 90% of the total time I'm logged in to the game. I am far and away a defender player. The only places you'll usually see me posting are in the General forum, the General Powers forum, or the Defender forum. I've read damn near every post in the defender forum since I've first played, a month after release. So spare me your judgments on my knowledge.
[ QUOTE ]
I know the way to work a mob. I know tactics for my toon. VERY WELL. But I don't like being at the mercy of a team mate who decides to use a power poorly, run away or toward something at the wrong moment, or other such disasters. Read the other threads about why we don't like teaming. THey're quite true and edifying.
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My own experiences are edifying, even if I hadn't read all those threads in the defender forum before. I have felt the pain of pickup and adapted so as to diminish it as much as possible. Sure helps to have teammates you know and work with often. But ya know what? That's life. You adapt or perish.
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I can take out an even con mob of 5 guys, minions or lt's, with absolutely no assistance whatsoever. I can take on lt's and bosses pre-3 with thought and care. LIKE I SHOULD BE ABLE TO.
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Who says you should be able to? What Constitutional Amendment covers that? Find a damn group and work with them regularly, or modify your solo tactics.
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I don't like playing scrappers. Period. I do not have to play a scrapper. But they're the only ones able to take on bosses now, and even they are having trouble. It's not me, my tactics, my build or my inexcusable desire to solo at fault here. It is, obviously, the difficulty level being too high for bosses that used to be tough.
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Hmm...being the expert on defenders that you apparently are, you should be able to come up with a series of defender builds that can still handle bosses. Storm/elec, Rad/rad, Dark/*. Heck, you even mentioned one, my main. As for other AT's, a lot of blasters can, several builds of Tanker that I know of for sure. Pet Controllers. Scrappers are not nearly the only ones able to take on bosses reliably.
Funny enough, now blasters aren't really anywhere near capable of soloing bosses anymore MOST of the time. Any 'blaster' type boss is dealing damage now in proportions you see when taking a potshot at some poor hellion while flying overhead at level 20.
Elite bosses are a wonderful addition, and I've managed to kill a small handful alone [only thanks to constant powerpush, caltrops and half a dozen Catch-a-breaths over 5 minute cat/mouse games].
Lt's have always been the 'tougher minion', the one you tried to keep back for a few seconds while you dealt with his 1-3 subordinates. The guy you want to try and take out either dead first [snipe+1 attack on aim/buildup] or dead last [once the minions are out of the way.]
Old bosses were a tougher lt; the guy you had to think three times about, but could win over at full health/end if you went at it carefully.
New bosses are Arch-villains in all but XP and health only. one-shotters [or insta-kill combo that's "technicly not that powerful if half of it misses(which it doesn't)"], often better range than my sniping with their 'light ranged attack' that deal roughly the same damage, and, of course, a handful of minions, just in case that first crossbow-bolt didn't COMPLETLY finish you off.
and we're supposed to go after these all the time for xp because we're 'single-target' blasters?
getting debt-capped twice in 3 days says otherwise...
I'm also on the "bosses are too tough" bandwagon. While I realize this boss change really hasn't impacted lower levels, I see some great examples of how it should be at lower levels.
In the hollows, you eventually have to go up against Frostfire, then later against Atta. These folks (Atta for sure, maybe not Frostfire), are classified as Elite Bosses. Tough as nails, impossible, or nearly so, to solo unless you outlevel the mission, and a great way to end a storyarc. I'd look forward to things like this being incorporated into the end missions or important missions of a storyarc. I have no problems having to get a group to polish off villains like that. It makes sense.
However, it seems to be rather insane to have to get a team together to fight some random street boss of whatever faction, or even to have to get help to take out some relatively unimportant named boss in a mission that I receive from a contact whose story arc or series of missions isn't coming to a close. Yes, they are 'bosses' but they aren't the elite, team stomping villains of a massive story. Using inspirations, tactics and maybe a pinch of luck, a hero on the default settings, pretty much regardless of build (and I know there are some builds that can't solo period; that's a person's choice) should be able to take down "named boss 09" in his mission. Sometimes that boss might take round 1, sometimes a person might need to run; but they shouldn't, on a large scale, have to recruit a team to take out villains of that stature.
Elite bosses, monsters and archvillains, definitely; and that's fun. They are 'epic' and it makes sense for a team of heroes to band together for them. But removing the ability to solo for a large portion of the populace is a painful way to remove enjoyment from the game for people. The slider bar is a great tool, for the elite player with mad skills, but for normal people who want to be able to pop on for an hour or so, do a mission and log off, the game is being removed as a viable system.
Personally, I play for the missions and storyarcs, and while not everyone may play this way, it is removing this as a, for much of the game and its players, a viable option for playing. It is not always an option to get a group, nor is it always desireable. And street hunting is not a fair option to the masses, and in my opinion, street hunting is alright once in a blue moon, when you are out of missions, but for me this is not why I play city of heroes. From what I've read here on these boards, many others feel the same way.
For the most part, I've had no real problems with the changes, except the one involving bosses. Again, I have no problem with certain bosses being buffed up to the status of elite bosses and taking a team to battle, but your standard (as a crappy example) bone daddy or damned, or other unnamed boss, and your "Tommy Two Thumbs" of the Family are not guys that an entire team of heroes should have to combat.
I would hate to end up quitting a game I really enjoy because I'm unable to complete my missions for the most part unless I can find a team to do them. And that is simply neither reasonable or satisfactory at some times for me.
grouped with a blaster for manticores TF he said he didnt like the boss changes but i saw he didnt have too much trouble and was in fact causing the most damage to the bosses out of all of us
Personally I love the rewards and dont find them too threatening unless theryre 2 purple levels above .. I can handle just barely purple but its tedious ... (fire fire tank) get s a bit hard to protect the other heroes from them though which is irritating ...I did like it better when i had more than 5 seconds to regain control before it killed the healer/buffer/controller
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Quote:
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.Statesman doesn't care. He was determined to make these changes regardless of how it affected the casual or solo players.
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Dooooooooom! Doooooooooom!
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This seems to be your only response to negative feedback on several threads.
Do you actually have something constructive to say?
If not I would keep your expansive vocabulary to yourself. You come off looking like a boot-licker.
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ROFL!!!!...I have only one thing to say to this...
Dooooooooooom! Doooooooooooom!
Personally, I think it's pretty evident that missions all contain, or can contain, bosses (except perhaps some of the ones in the first 12 levels?).
I'd really like to see a clarification, though, of what you mean, Statesman, when you say a mission will always indicate if it contains a boss.
My assumption was, you were speaking to the soloability of missions and therefore speaking to mission *objectives*, and meant that if a mission contains a defeat-a-boss requirement, the mission will say so.
I'm reasonably sure I've never seen anything to the contrary, too, excepting the fact that there's that 2% of the missions that have buggy, inappropriately hidden defeat all conditions.
BTW-- so far, I'm very pleased with the net effect of the HP/XP/Damage buff on MObs. And I don't mean that in a completely selfless way-- +1 bosses are still now effortlessly safe with me around, and I'm pretty sure, more rewarding per hour, too. They are nowhere near as safe, now, without me around, from what I gather both in games and on the boards.
I feel like a hero. Possibly for the first time.
Choosing a Controller V2 | Splattrollers | Plant/Rad | Fire/Storm | Mind/Emp & Mind/Rad
Weird Controller Powers | Conf & XP/Time | Controller Damage
Being a Healer | The word Necessary | Natural Concept Characters
I'm sorry to say this but I'm also joining the 'bosses are too difficult' side of the argument.
My level 29 MA/SR scrapper got taken down in about 10-20 seconds by a red totem yesterday in a kill all mission (didn't use any inspirations to see what it was like). Coming back for the second go I used about half my load of inspirations and took the totem down. The totem was hitting for 417 damage with claws and 217 + 22*6 with a ranged spines attack against my under 900 hp. The totem hit fairly consistently too although my defences are on the light side.
Next mission was against a named orange vampyr boss (Archon Wylde I think), first attempt against him and his friends resulted in a defeat even with moderate use of inspirations. the second attempt had me pulling the various minions away first and then taking out the vamp with a lot of inspirations.
A couple of thoughts have come from this:
Boss HP increase is okay, makes fights a lot longer even though the MA scrapper is the 'boss killer'.
Boss damage increase is phenomenal which combined with longer combats makes them even more deadly.
Boss accuracy seems to have increased as well, and although this is only a feeling they seem to hit me more often than previously.
The combination of these increases is too much to handle for my solo oriented character, I was looking forward to using the mission slider to up the difficulty of missions in general but now there's no way I can do that because any bosses will wipe me out without good preparation and lots of insps. Any mission with two bosses either together or apart is going to be almost impossible.
I'd like to see the damage toned down please.
p.s. My scrapper is not an uber build but is 2-4 slotted with a mix of enhances and has the whole fitness pool, stealth and nothing else other than MA and SR.
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Personally, I think it's pretty evident that missions all contain, or can contain, bosses (except perhaps some of the ones in the first 12 levels?).
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Those were named bosses tho...Bonebreaker, Marrowsnap, Bonefire...then later were Piston, Bolts, Cutter...I remember several with Tsoo named bosses and there are the named CoTs...it goes on. When the bosses are named, then it's warned about. But when they're just generic run of the mill boss, it's not warned about.
Like the mish tonight we did...3 Paragon Protectors, orange, bosses. I had no clue and if not for you I sure would not attempt them on my own. I would and did when it was pre-3. I've taken on PPs with my little blaster and proved able to take them out fast enough. But not now. You saw the damage, one hit from me with Build up, Havoc, and additional Fortitude from you and still the first shot was enough to take off just a sliver. Not good.
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I'd really like to see a clarification, though, of what you mean, Statesman, when you say a mission will always indicate if it contains a boss.
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AGREED. I'd like to see clarification too, as I'm sure others would as well. Statesman, DO you mean a NAMED boss will appear in the text or do you mean ANY GENERIC boss will appear in the text? From my experiences with the many many missions I've run, of my own and my SGmates and my friends, I have to say that yes, NAMED are mentioned, but ANY GENERIC aren't.
Statesman says that a boss will be warned about in text. I've yet to see it for ANY GENERIC boss.
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My assumption was, you were speaking to the soloability of missions and therefore speaking to mission *objectives*, and meant that if a mission contains a defeat-a-boss requirement, the mission will say so.
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For Named boss, sure. I've yet to see it for Any Generic boss.
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I'm reasonably sure I've never seen anything to the contrary, too, excepting the fact that there's that 2% of the missions that have buggy, inappropriately hidden defeat all conditions.
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I've had too many of these...and I've come to expect it. I hate it. Going in with one idea in mind due to what you think are facts only to be caught by surprise when it becomes suddenly defeat all. Usually in the form of "stop all the X mob". You know the type, "Stop the Circle from sacrificing the magicials" or "Save X person from the Circle". It's either defeat all of them or actually take out a certain percentage, usually close to 98% of them, before Mission Complete.
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BTW-- so far, I'm very pleased with the net effect of the HP/XP/Damage buff on MObs. And I don't mean that in a completely selfless way-- +1 bosses are still now effortlessly safe with me around, and I'm pretty sure, more rewarding per hour, too. They are nowhere near as safe, now, without me around, from what I gather both in games and on the boards.
I feel like a hero. Possibly for the first time.
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Aw...Doc...*hugs*
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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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You're welcome. I've been reading reports mostly from the fighter classes, not much from Defenders, so chimed in.
My Heal Aura is 1 recharge and 5 heals, 45++. That's enough to put back half a bar almost in one heal. Heal Other is 1 recharge and 4 heals, enough to put back 3/4 of a bar. My healing was overwhelmed by one boss. In order to keep up, I figure I'd have to either drop the recharges and put in another heal, but that would then slow down the cycle despite perma-hasten.
I didn't set these slottings according to my usual team of 1 Cont or 1 Cont and 1 Scrapper or 2 Scrappers. These slottings were what I had as I leveled when I would do a lot of tfs. I've handled 8 man teams being the only healer. Yes, it was hell, but I could do it with a lot of herding of the players and good tactics. I could even handle a shoot first and charge team. The way things are set now, I'd not dare get into any 4-8 man team without another Emp or Kin and/or several Conts who can lock down.
After much retrospection, I see that it's becoming a golden time for Controllers. Today, my husband was in KR and a 28 Blaster was having problems and put out a call to anyone who can help. He told the other he had a L8 but would help with sk. He went in, sk'd, locked down the boss, the Blaster took it down.
So yes, I understand that tactics and such are now needed. But...what bothers me is this: yes, we're guests at a party, but where before we could dance as we wanted, and for many that was off in a quiet corner by themselves, but now we're being forced to partner up and dance the way our host wants us to. It doesn't seem fair, it seems unreasonable, but when they're the only party in town for what you want, you have to do what they enforce.
I know of many who have left to WoW or EQ2. I3 is after the Xmas rush so CoH will have new blood to replace the old timers who canceled. This new blood didn't have the experience we old timers did with the way things were. They'll see nothing wrong, CoH will gain the players who play the way they want players to.
Boy, that sounds like a conspiracy theory, don't it? I'm honestly not meaning to, but this just occurred to me as I type. For every old timer who leaves, they gain new blood to replace, so for CoH it's not really a lose situation. For the complaints on how Statesman does not listen let alone hear (yes, two different things) I have this to offer: because it's not a losing situation for CoH to not change things back, there ISN'T a reason TO listen or hear.
So...bottom line...it's dance the way Statesman wants us to or go elsewhere for the freeform dancing we all love. Unpleasant, but there you go.
Me...I'm trying to learn the dance steps...but so far don't like it one bit.