*pulls down pants*
Right here, if you would.
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*pulls down pants*
Right here, if you would.
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Nah, nothing to really hang them on...
*turs around*
Ok, how about here?
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*turs around*
Ok, how about here?
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sure we could do this all day, but nah... Just slide on the ice my friend, slide on the ice.
Alright...tested out the theory today being exemplared to a DM/DA Scrapper, L29.
We did his missions set to one person (he went in first and then invited me), again undocumented bosses, again right next to items which needed to be either rescued or clicked. He has Cloak of Darkness and was able to stealth by several of the mobs. As stated before, I have SS+Stealth so was able to move around rather freely. He had one mission TO defeat a Named but this one WAS documented.
And one mission became a stealth "defeat Named boss" with absolutely NO indication in the documentation whatsoever. It was a scientist who became a Devoured. An oj boss.
I have had this happen with past missions. One which comes to mind is rescuing a man from the CoT who had captured him. When you find him, HE is the boss, often oj boss (based on my own and when friends ran the same mission). NO documentation, no warning, he's a Named boss WITHOUT any clues whatsoever in the mission text.
If the bosses were not engaged, if left alone, yes the mission could be ended. The exception were the "defeat all" missions. Two of them were documented "defeat all" and we had one turn into a stealth "defeat all".
So...this experiment proved: IF the boss is a Generic UnNamed, it is possible to solo your mission. It means leaving the boss or bosses alone and never touching them. This, however, cannot be depended upon as a fact because it has been proven time and again that many missions become stealth "defeat all". This means engaging the Generic UnNamed boss or bosses in order to complete the mission.
It also proved: IF the boss is a Named, it will state so in the documentation. USUALLY. It has been proven time and time again there are missions with a stealth Named boss which must be fought in order to end the mission.
So what Statesman said is not exactly a truth for Named boss missions as he has posted. There are TWO missions that I know of which have stealth Named bosses.
And the posts I've read also prove one of my points in an earlier post: IF you have Stealth or run SS+Stealth or Cloaking, or have ANY type of stealthing capability, you CAN solo your missions by avoiding the boss or bosses and leaving them behind. If not, then you must solo the boss.
Part of the problem is that a lot of those "surprise, the person you were sent to rescue is actually one of the enemy!" missions absolutely rely on NOT telling you about the presence of the boss. It would rather ruin the plot twist, what?
My main, a defender, was usually able to soldier/solo on and finish the mission/arc anyway. Because that's what a Hero would do. Now, however? I'm honestly not sure I can. I've been holding off on taking any new arcs while I wait to see which way this whole thing is going to fall.
I still don't see why we needed an increase in boss difficulty in the very same update that a slider was put in so that people could choose a higher difficulty if they wanted. (Unless the devs don't want to leave it up to player choice...)
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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Considering how many other threads Statesman has been replying on, I think we can conclude the answer to the claim that bosses are now too hard is "It's the VISION tm, suck on it!"
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Agreed... As soon as the complaints come in about this, he's a true superhero... Able to dodge speeding complaints, can leap big issues in a single bound...
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Well, to be fair, he is getting hammered a lot. I expect an announcement about it on Monday.
Yesterday I did 7 missions. Every mission had a boss at the end. Only one was announced in the text before the mission. According to Statesman, 'If you see a boss, you should get help.' I was thinking about this...
I also read comic books. Once in a great while a comic book hero will be in over thier head and have to go get help, but you don't see Spiderman going off to get help EVERY issue. I would think CoH would be the same way. Once in a while you need to run off and get help for a mission (for maybe an AV), but I don't think I should have to run off and get help for every mission I take.
OK. Using "named" and "unnamed" in this context is still confusing me. You told me this story right after you did it, and I didn't really understand what you'd found.
Again, there DEFINITELY are named bosses that are NOT mission objectives (and need not be defeated to finish the mission). Seen it scores of times. Also, there effectively can be unnamed bosses that you do have to defeat (in defeat-all missions), and I'm not sure I haven't see a few explicitly "defeat the boss" missions that had the generic name on the boss. Not sure about that.
Regardless, and maybe this seems nitpicky, but the named/unnamed distinction is not related to the mission-objective/not-mission-objective distinction.
So, essentially, you found (evidence to the effect that) that (normally) missions that require you to defeat a boss will always mention the presence of a boss.
And, correct me if I'm wrong: there are two known exceptions. The buggy undocumented-defeat-all missions (which may contain bosses), and stealth-boss missions, like Akarist and Terra.
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
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Part of the problem is that a lot of those "surprise, the person you were sent to rescue is actually one of the enemy!" missions absolutely rely on NOT telling you about the presence of the boss. It would rather ruin the plot twist, what?
My main, a defender, was usually able to soldier/solo on and finish the mission/arc anyway. Because that's what a Hero would do. Now, however? I'm honestly not sure I can. I've been holding off on taking any new arcs while I wait to see which way this whole thing is going to fall.
I still don't see why we needed an increase in boss difficulty in the very same update that a slider was put in so that people could choose a higher difficulty if they wanted. (Unless the devs don't want to leave it up to player choice...)
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Those are my sentiments exactly. I had taken on the first of the major Freakalympics arcs, a huge outdoor instance, with 4 bosses to locate. Pre-3, I did actually locate one of them. Orange. Orange THEN. 
I can't expect to solo an orange freakshow boss with his 5 guys scattered around. I have stealth, I know how to use it. But he's the guy I NEED to get for this mission. Period. Four of em. Yes they're in the text. But... emp/dark. yeah. Fun.
I've declined a ton of respec, tf and teaming requests lately, more so than I often would get, people sounding desperate. Can you heal?! We reeeealy need you!
No, what you reaaaaly need is for Statesman to wake up and rollback the darn bosses...
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
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Once in a great while a comic book hero will be in over thier head and have to go get help, but you don't see Spiderman going off to get help EVERY issue.
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Yeah, they don't often go for help. But they don't incarcerate at least one major villain in every single mission. Modern comics of course don't have as many minions as CoH, so the comparison isn't perfect. But I don't think any new terrible disjunct with the genre is introduced if you sometimes don't defeat the top villain in a mission.
So, as an alternative to getting help, you can always let the lead villain get away. Superheroes are brash and shortsighed like that, don't you think?
If you MUST do it by genre, complete the mission's objectives, THEN go fight the boss. And if he's about to kick your butt, you can run away, or stick it out and be defeated. EITHER way, the mission's over. The boss was tougher than you. But you took care of business.
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
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If you MUST do it by genre, complete the mission's objectives, THEN go fight the boss. And if he's about to kick your butt, you can run away, or stick it out and be defeated. EITHER way, the mission's over. The boss was tougher than you. But you took care of business.
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I didn't really pay attention until yesterday, but I know every missions I did yesterday could not be completed without defeating the boss.
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Considering how many other threads Statesman has been replying on, I think we can conclude the answer to the claim that bosses are now too hard is "It's the VISION tm, suck on it!"
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Agreed... As soon as the complaints come in about this, he's a true superhero... Able to dodge speeding complaints, can leap big issues in a single bound...
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Well, to be fair, he is getting hammered a lot. I expect an announcement about it on Monday.
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Maybe... He NEEDS to get hammered right now, because at least he is giving off the impression right now that he is totally ignoring the pleas of the players.
I hope you are right about an announcement, I'm about at the end of my rope, and it seems like I'm not the only one...
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Considering how many other threads Statesman has been replying on, I think we can conclude the answer to the claim that bosses are now too hard is "It's the VISION tm, suck on it!"
[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed... As soon as the complaints come in about this, he's a true superhero... Able to dodge speeding complaints, can leap big issues in a single bound...
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, to be fair, he is getting hammered a lot. I expect an announcement about it on Monday.
[/ QUOTE ]
Maybe... He NEEDS to get hammered right now, because at least he is giving off the impression right now that he is totally ignoring the pleas of the players.
I hope you are right about an announcement, I'm about at the end of my rope, and it seems like I'm not the only one...
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I sent Statesman a PM yesterday concerning this issue. In it (I feel) I was polite and considerate, no l33t speak, no ranting or raving, and simply stated the facts (from my experiences). I offered some solutions that I had thought of (if I remember right, pretty much all of them included a rollback of some kind, but with variations). I even signed my name to it (not my forum handle, even though he could get my RN easy enough).
Will he read the PM? Probably not. Will my opinion matter in the end to this issue? Again, probably not. Will I get in trouble for sending him a PM? Probably.
I just wish my account hadn't renewed the day before I3 went Live, or at least hadn't renewed for 3 months.
I'm simply not having fun any more. I can't log on for more than 15 minutes on any character, my main (lvl38) or any alt (all under lvl14) without getting tired of it. I haven't even logged the main on since it went Live (after a few too many beatdowns). I took a break for about a week at the beginning of December-ish and it helped renew my playing. Maybe its time for another break and go pick up the new Zelda GBA game and if that's not out yet, get that Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls.
Well, I'll chime in with my experience. I just tried to put together a pickup task force (Bastion), and collected about 49K of debt. Admittedly I'm not the best player in the world, but we couldn't even break out of jail without getting our butts kicked. It stopped being fun after a while. The non-dedicated players will eventually get tired of this treatment and quit.
Still, the devs will do what they feel is best.
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Until HE says to the contrary, I'm remaining convinced that he meant that every mission that *requires* you to beat the boss *to finish the mission* mentions the presence of a boss.
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Okay, but if you read this thread you will see many, many instances where his statement is still untrue. There seem to be as many missions with must-kill bosses where it is not said in the text as there are missions with bosses where it is.
Scorus
I think this is a problem going to be soon solved. Based on what happened after issue 2. With the Rikti minion one-fit kills I managed to rack up my first 100k+ debt. The issue was resolved with the next update and they all cheered.
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Boss level too low. (No seriously, I think it's perfect. And the rewards are much greater as well for XP)
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Ok, so I killed a blue con boss yesterday on my ice/ice blaster. I got 30 pts more xp than I got killing an oj con lieutenant. That's THIRTY. And it took me 3 to 4 times longer to kill the blue boss, with at LEAST twice as much damage. That isn't enough compensation in my opinion. Not enough at all. I'll take the oj lieu any day.
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Yesterday I did 7 missions. Every mission had a boss at the end. Only one was announced in the text before the mission. According to Statesman, 'If you see a boss, you should get help.' I was thinking about this...
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OH and in response to this (quoting here since I didn't see the Statesman quote) I was invited to "help" with my controller on one of these missions. I was one shotted 5 times by 3 purple and 1 red con freak tank bosses. (Somehow I drew aggro from the tank and the scrapper every time I put a hold on these guys) And because I was only there for the last part of the mission... you know, the part with all the bosses? I didn't even get mission xp for my debt. How nice is that? And how often do you think I'm going to be retarded enough to join an already started mission again? So if you ask for help, make sure everyone exits the mission to give the appearance that you haven't already done enough so that anyone you're asking for help isn't going to get screwd on the mission xp.
Ok Ok i'm bitter I know
And as an aside, this was a level 32 mission, my controller is level 32. The owner of the mission had pumped up the mission to rugged from hard-boiled so we were going up against lvl 34 bosses and the mission owner and I were the highest lvls in the team of FOUR people. I shudder to think what that mission would have looked like had the slider been up any farther.
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OK. Using "named" and "unnamed" in this context is still confusing me. You told me this story right after you did it, and I didn't really understand what you'd found.
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Named bosses are FrostFire, Atta, Mr. Po, the several named Rikti in the missions from the contact Angus gives you, Ubelmann, etc. These are the ones you are told to arrest.
Generic UnNamed bosses are Paragon Protectors, Lesser Devoured, Devoured, Tank Swipers, Master Illusionists, Ring Mistress, Dark Ring Mistress, Gunslinger, Zeus Titan, Hand of Artemis, etc.
Statesman said that if there is a boss it will be mentioned in the text. How many times have you come across these Generic UnNamed bosses in your missions? People have been posting mission text and in one case given a link to a screenshot of a boss in a mission which was not mentioned at all in the text. So what Statesman said is not fact: there are bosses appearing in the missions which are NOT mentioned in the text. This has been going on since the BEGINNING. Over the last 8-9 months.
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Again, there DEFINITELY are named bosses that are NOT mission objectives (and need not be defeated to finish the mission). Seen it scores of times. Also, there effectively can be unnamed bosses that you do have to defeat (in defeat-all missions), and I'm not sure I haven't see a few explicitly "defeat the boss" missions that had the generic name on the boss. Not sure about that.
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I think some of the DE missions are "defeat the boss" which have a generic name on the boss. And I think some of the Nemesis are that way as well as some Malta...I think.
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Regardless, and maybe this seems nitpicky, but the named/unnamed distinction is not related to the mission-objective/not-mission-objective distinction.
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Alright, point taken.
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So, essentially, you found (evidence to the effect that) that (normally) missions that require you to defeat a boss will always mention the presence of a boss.
And, correct me if I'm wrong: there are two known exceptions. The buggy undocumented-defeat-all missions (which may contain bosses), and stealth-boss missions, like Akarist and Terra.
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Yes.
My problem is what Statesman said, that if there is a boss, it will be mentioned in the text. He did not differenciate between Generic UnNamed boss or Named boss. He just said "boss". That has sparked many to relate their experiences with Generic UnNamed bosses, which proved Statesman's statement as either flat out wrong or overly general.
In another post in the "List of borked things in Issue 3" (page 5, 7th post down), Statesman says this: "Anytime a Mission has a boss, the mission text SHOULD clearly identify that a boss will appear regardless of the team size entering it (bosses appear in spawns usually if there's 2 or more heroes on a mission map). /Bug it if the text isn't clear. We'll be improving this UI shortly so that there are icons that point out when a mission requires help and when it's solo-able."
Again, Statesman is not giving clarification whether it's Generic UnNamed or Named boss. Again he is being either overly general or flat out wrong.
Another point: Statesman states that a boss will appear if there are 2 or more heroes on a map. We all know this to not be truth or fact. Bosses are appearing, have ALWAYS appeared, in missions set for ONE person.
I'm sorry I'm cranky about this, but Statesman either 1) does not play the game, or 2) doesn't check his facts before issuing blanket statements. Either way, he's shooting his credibility in the foot.
/em cranky
I sent a PM to Statesman yesterday with a link to some pictures (no I'm not posting the link) showing the mission text from my contact mentioning nothing about a boss in the mission and, of course, the boss standing in front of the final blinkie that was needed to finish the mission.
I doubt he'll respond but hopefully he'll take a look and realize that he was very, very mistaken about his statement with all the anecdotal evidence that's been presented.
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I sent a PM to Statesman yesterday with a link to some pictures (no I'm not posting the link) showing the mission text from my contact mentioning nothing about a boss in the mission and, of course, the boss standing in front of the final blinkie that was needed to finish the mission.
I doubt he'll respond but hopefully he'll take a look and realize that he was very, very mistaken about his statement with all the anecdotal evidence that's been presented.
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I suggest that we start doing this from now on with EVERY mission we undertake. Maybe that will convince him hes wrong when he sees 1000+ PM's with photos and mission text 
Torden - Lvl 50 Electric blast / Electric manipulation / Electric mastery Blaster - Triumph
General Thrax - Lvl 50 Mercenaries / Poison / Mace mastery Mastermind - Freedom
Here's a doozy, there is a surprise, unnamed boss in one of the Stiga Island missions (a Totem). So this is even the case for missions that went live recently, not just the older ones, and it is gating the entire Stiga Island mission series for me. No, grouping isn't forced, unless you want to enjoy more than 25% of the content in the game...
Defeat all zombies in mausoleum
Tobias Hansen: Are you familiar with the reanimated zombies known as the Banished Pantheon? I certainly am. Theyve been digging up my churchyardm haunting the Morass, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Yesterday I located a mausoleum full of the creatures. Will you rid the mausoleum of these dread creatures?
There was a time when I would have gone with you, <Character Name>, but Im afraid those days are behind me now.
Found 1 +1 level Totem (L29). I killed everything else, he took be down before I could get him to 50%. Fun game
Wait till you get to his next few missions. More bosses NOT mentioned in the mission-briefing.
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Damn, do you people actually play this game, or sit around in your pity parties all day?
I have my difficulty set to invincible. I walk into a Rikti mission. +1 and +2, giant [censored] mobs. How many times do I die? Not once.
I get a team together. Me a DM/Regen scrapper, and an inv. tank. How many deaths? Nadda.
Another team: just me and the Scrapper. How many deaths? Zero, zip, and ziltch.
Every mob spawn had at least 1 boss. Even solo.
And I'm a Gravity/Kinetics controller. According to the "experts" on the Controller forum, I'm weak. Yet I'm able to solo +2 Rikti bosses, no problem.
Maybe the game isn't hard, and you just... what's the word I'm looking for... suck? Hey, I'm a "gimp" Powerset taking on bosses no problem, but you can't. Something to think about it.
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Where would you like your gold star and brownie badge?