Boss level too high!

Well, I tried the Bastion again today. Nice group with a tank, blasters, defenders, scrappers, and two controllers. Everyone was reasonably experienced. People listened to orders (not my orders, by the way).

Welcome back to the prison cells. All it would take is one extra boss to aggro (sometimes just the first one) and half the party is eating dirt before we can react. Oh yes, I'm so enjoying the new bosses. Let's just have a huge, scything blade at the entrance of the mission to save time.

But I'm not bitter. Heh.

[ QUOTE ]
Let's just have a huge, scything blade at the entrance of the mission to save time.


[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you, but we wanted a block of flats, and not an abbatoir.

And no, you cannot be a Freemason.

Thanks for the Python flashback there.

On the topic of bosses appearing in mission text, I just received this mission from Paula Dempsey. (She's a SL 5 - 9 contact, but still giving me missions 1 bubble into 10th.)

Contact's "fluff" text prior to accepting mission:
We've got reports of some Clockwork down at the old abandoned APS Warehousing warehouse complex. Sources say they're using it as a staging area for a massive attack against the city. Cat's Cradle, we've never heard of the Clockwork trying anything this bold! It's absolutely imperative that you go to APS Warehousing and shut down the Clockwork plot!

Contact's "fluff" text after accepting mission:
I hear there's a large robot inside called Piston. Watch out for it while you are hunting for information, Cat's Cradle.

Mission objective appearing in my mission list:
Defeat Piston and its guards.

(1) No mention of a boss prior to accepting mission. It could be argued, I suppose, that key words such as "massive" & "bold" might imply a boss, but equally it could simply be a +1 difficulty mission of minions & lieutenants.

(2) After accepting the mission, my contact told me to "watch out" for the named boss. Only the mission objective itself tells me it's a "defeat-the-boss" mission.

This is, of course, pre-SL 25 with unboosted bosses, & should present no problems. Just another non-specifying boss mission.

It is nice for players to want to compare playing this game to actual comic books, but remember first off NO comic book hero who is not using gadgets or specially made armor ever gets to choose the powers they have let alone gets to have over almost 30 seperate powers ( except Superman ) so please stop trying to use comic book analogies for or against the changes made to the game.

That said the change made to bosses inspite of the addition of the difficulty slider was because as we all know by now it says in the manual only with skill and strategy should even the hardiest of heroes be able to solo a boss of even level or maybe +1, but get help for anything tougher. Granted that should have been apparent from the begining of launch, but was not. The difficulty slider was unrelated to this change and would never be used by those who think bosses are tough enough the way they were before Issue3.

Now for those who think Scrappers or even Blasters have it too easy against bosses still I would advise keeping watch on upcoming Issues and see if they do not get downgraded against bosses as well.

I have done 8 missions with my L33 Blaster ( Energy/Energy ) since I3 came out and I used the difficulty slider to bump it up one notch. I have only had to fight bosses at the end when it specifically said I had to or when it was a defeat all mission. I have not found random bosses in any way guarding objects or hostages ( hostages are always guarded by minions only ) Obviously my 8 missions are not a large number, but they show the oddity of random bosses being near such things to be a bug rather than intended ( unless you are playing on a much higher difficulty where all the extra mobs leaves no room for proper spacing on the map so they end up too close together creating lots of cross aggro )

Btw if you get a random boss early and can't get by him try logging out and re-entering the game to reset the map before running for help since the mobs are random and you may end up with no random bosses at all.

[ QUOTE ]
It is nice for players to want to compare playing this game to actual comic books, but remember first off NO comic book hero who is not using gadgets or specially made armor ever gets to choose the powers they have let alone gets to have over almost 30 seperate powers ( except Superman ) so please stop trying to use comic book analogies for or against the changes made to the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not like our CoH powers really constitute separate superhuman powers. Look at Super Reflexes -- 9 different powers that are really just one "power" that has 9 different aspects. Most CoH powersets can be viewed this way. The hero has a power -- illusions, speed, invulnerability, fast healing -- with varying degrees of expertise over them.

Edit: whoops, never mind the gadget thing...

Well, even the under-25 game has been messed with to 'encourage' grouping.

Just got done running a mission with a SG mate from one of my alts. It was Flux's mission to take out the cave with the 2 bombs. I did this mission prior to I3 with my alt, so I believe I can be fairly accurate. Prior to I3, the bombs could be disabled 1 at a time, no need for a team. Now, the bombs are disable simultaneously. There's only 2 of them, so you only need 1 person, but its that the mission has been changed. Also, both of the final Lts are supposed (or were) to be named Greased Lightning (an Outcast Shocker) and Rundum (a Troll Gardvord), but only GL had a name, Rundum has been downgraded to merely a Gardvord.

Looks to me like forced grouping is becoming the norm, not the exception...

[ QUOTE ]
It is nice for players to want to compare playing this game to actual comic books, but remember first off NO comic book hero who is not using gadgets or specially made armor ever gets to choose the powers they have let alone gets to have over almost 30 seperate powers ( except Superman ) so please stop trying to use comic book analogies for or against the changes made to the game.


[/ QUOTE ]

I disagree. This games whole gimmick is the fact that you are a super hero and not an elf or dwarf or whatever. That's the reason many of the people playing this game are new to MMOs -- they are or were comic fans who wanted to actually roleplay a super hero. You even get a comic book as part of your subscription to the game. This game was meant to bring comics to life for the fans. If not, it really is just EQ in spandex.

I'm always amazed at how defensive some players get when you criticize a move made by the Devs. Newsflash...they are human and they make mistakes. When they do, it's our job to point it out. It's in their best interests to know what we like and what we don't, since ultimately we pay their bills. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the majority of vocal players see this change as bad.

Why is it so hard for the Devs to figure out that in a game about super heros, people want to *FEEL* like a super hero?

Well I gave it a week before I formed an opinion.

I am a Blaster eng/eng level 35.

Before I3 some Bosses were a bit easy, not all but some. Some were hit and run, repeat till boss was dead.

After I3 though I do think they are just a bit much. Freakshow tanks can now 1 shot me like crazy. During the level 34 respec I was hit for 1200 points of damage. The scrappers were being killed in 2 shots.

Missions are a death trap for me now. My life as a blaster depends on me keeping the LTs and bosses at a nice distance. When that’s not possible I used to be able to take 1 round of attacks which was a small safety margin. Now that’s just not possible.

Outdoor hunting isn’t so bad though I can and have killed +1 bosses in the streets. I had distance to keep me safe though. Street hunting is just not my thing. I like and enjoy the missions. It’s a goal and I like that.

Any boss and I mean any boss that can close to melee range now means I am one dead blaster, no ifs ands or butts about it. This is even more so in teamed missions. There’s not a healer out there that can heal fast enough to heal me when a freakshow tank decides he wants to kill me.

I acquired more debt and suffered more deaths this week than my total time playing this game since release. This simply isn’t my idea of fun.

So what do I think of the changes? I think they stink.

I will give it till my next month runs out then I am moving to WOW as well. Having my character killed so easy has anything but a superhero feeling.

[ QUOTE ]
I've generally agreed with most of what the devs have done up until now, but even I have to chime in on this. I don't like the new boss difficulty. It's all well and good to say that a solo player should need a team to deal with a boss in a mission, that bosses are supposed to be major characters, but if that's the case, then generic bosses should NOT spawn in missions, -ever-. These are just general spawns in the mission and aren't mentioned in the mission text. This happens, States. I've seen it myself, numerous times. Particularly in Devoured Earth missions. Devoured and lesser devoured spawn all over the place in those. What's more, because they're not the "named" boss, the +1 fix doesn't work on them, and I see red bosses all over DE missions. Something which you guys claim isn't supposed to happen.

What's more, you need to rework the spawn patterns for task force missions, if this is the ideal. I wasted a big chunk of the day on the TV freakshow trial. At the very end a large number of Tank Smashers spawned. A -very- large number. Far more then one for one, and if you're not supposed to be able to solo a boss, then how is a team of six supposed to contend with 10 Tank Smashers? We got -destroyed-. -Utterly-. With a bubbler, a healer, two scrappers, an invuln tank, and a blaster, we got DESTROYED. Pow, day so far wasted completely. If we had taken 8, there probably would have been even more. And if -not-, then, well, that TF needs to -require- 8 people to start, because it's not terribly possible with six people right now.

In short, I don't like this change. I don't like it at all. And I -like- teaming. I team all the time. But even -with- a team, this makes bits of the game too hard.

Think about it this way. You guys designed all your missions and TFs around the way bosses -used- to work. Now that you've changed that, the bits that -used- to be the tough, challenging battles are now impenetrable walls.

This is just my initial observation, and hey, maybe this will change in time, but just FYI, for once I'm not in agreement with you guys.

[/ QUOTE ]

The best part is one thing that wasn't mentioned in this post... The wall of Freakshow tanks? It usually happens in the very BEGINNING of the mission. Yup. It's sad because that's my very favorite TF, it has the best story and fun archvillian.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

So I got a reply from Statesman. His response was for me to /bug it. BTW he didn't go look at the pictures that I put up for him -- the counter on the page showed "2" when I looked. 1 from me when I put the page up to make sure that it looked right and 1 from me when I went to see if he'd looked at them. I guess that they just love their /bug reports.

I am a bit disapointed with the response. I pretty much indicates that we should bug almost every mission (ok that's an exageration, how about 70% of the missions?). I guess the game is headed for City of Paperwork. Is anyone afraid of having to /insuranceclaim after every hospital visit?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I didn't really pay attention until yesterday, but I know every missions I did yesterday could not be completed without defeating the boss.

[/ QUOTE ]

I certainly believe you, but, unless you did a pretty small number of missions, that's pretty unusual. Stealth BTW is a good power to ramp up the percentage of missions one can do without fighting bosses.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wait, now we're suppose to use stealth to avoid villains? Some heroes we are. Batman and Superman must be proud. (I know this seems kinda like a personal attack against you personally. But honestly, how can you make a game about heroes and design it so the heroes have to do something like what was posted above?)

[/ QUOTE ]

This does kinda go in the face of Statesman's position that no one should be required to take a particular power pool -- I thought that was why they were "looking at" the fitness pool.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

So I got a reply from Statesman. His response was for me to /bug it. BTW he didn't go look at the pictures that I put up for him -- the counter on the page showed "2" when I looked. 1 from me when I put the page up to make sure that it looked right and 1 from me when I went to see if he'd looked at them. I guess that they just love their /bug reports.

I am a bit disapointed with the response. I pretty much indicates that we should bug almost every mission (ok that's an exageration, how about 70% of the missions?). I guess the game is headed for City of Paperwork. Is anyone afraid of having to /insuranceclaim after every hospital visit?

[/ QUOTE ]

Wait, you got a response from him? When did you send the PM and when did you get the response? I sent one on Friday and I haven't gotten the read recipt thing back yet (I clicked that because I wanted to know if it actually got read). Of course, I'm not even expecting it to get opened as the title was 'Regarding Recent Changes'.

Replied with PM

Add me and my brothers vote to the bosses are to hard now category, we already have a difficulty slider, the now bosses are pointless, take forever to kill, and aren't even worth the xp, and if your playing a non uber build, will make just about all your missions unsoloable, imo all missions that dont have elite bosses or higher in them should be soloable, don't give a damn what the devs think, I DO NOT want this game to be EQ in spandex damnit, bosses should be soloable by your average player, plain and simple.

EDIT: The best thing about this post which I have nixed is I get annoyed with something I did myself-- not read what the person was actually saying. /em smiles and waves.

[ QUOTE ]
If you just read the page that this post is on, you would have seen several more specific instances.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, most of those I wager will be explained by the longstanding hidden-defeat-all condition bug. They need to get that fixed.

I remain skeptical States is wrong otherwise about boss-objectives being listed because 1) a lot of people are sure to be actually dealing with the hidden defeat all bug, and 2) because people obviously (see this thread) have a hard time distinguishing between a boss they *want* to defeat and a boss they *need* to defeat in order to finish the mission, since they're accustomed to doing things like leisurely soloing with blasters (which always should have been a dubious proposition IMNSHO).

[ QUOTE ]
I find it rediculous as a blaster that I cannot win a mission anymore that has a boss in it.


[/ QUOTE ]

ANY mission?

It seems to me there have always been missions that couldn't be soloed by given ATs. My main's AT is actually fairly good at going after bosses, it's just extremely slow. There were missions back in the day I couldn't solo because they had the right comination of a tsoo boss and sorcerer.

Let me throw another unpopular fact out there while I'm on a roll:

You realize that going in three times with inspires and dying twice to take down a boss is still successfully soloing it, right? I've had to do it occasionally. Pre I3.

[ QUOTE ]
That is the most anti superhero thing I've heard yet. In the comics, how lame would it be if superheros had to run and get help everytime they came up against a boss? I'm not even talking about archvillians like Doctor Octapus, Shocker, Kraven the Hunter, etc. I'm talking about run of the mill thug bosses.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not a fair comparison at all. In the modern comics, how many superheroes do you know that go toe-to-toe with at most ONE real "supervillain" -- a super powered villain-- (AV according to you) in the first third of their career? Few. Bosses are indeed in many ways filling the supervillain role in CoH, as best CoH maps to the modern comics.

Furthermore, the average modern comics superhero is ceratinly not incarcerating one to three supervillains per mission. So, there's nothing about being a hero that requires us to do so.

If you want a simulation of the modern comics in CoH, you complete your mission first, and risking it all to capture the supervillain (boss) comes later, if at all, depending on your morale and drive. How often does the villain get away to fight another day? All the time. It's perfectly genre to leave those bosses alone.

yeah I agree, they are silly. I had an orange Underboss Tommy Gun my Defender through a 6 SO Defense Slotted Dispersion Bubble and 4 slotted Manuevers and never miss. Naturally my Accuracy enhanced Detention Field misses him and then he one shots me with his 450 Damage Point Haymaker. Funny, but my level 32 Tanker only gets 90 points out of a 3 slotted Haymaker.

I don't think raising Boss HP's and Damage makes Gameplay better because they mostly just do the same predictable AI routines only now thay make you suffer through a ridiculously long battle while they repeat their AI routines. It forces you to boringly break down the AI Routine rather than just play your hero's powers against them and that cheapens the gameplay. It makes the gameplay silly.

The worst part of the change to Bosses is that affects each AT differently. It's harder for everyone, but for some Heroes it is impossible or not worth the XP Debt incurred to tackle Bosses and that is what makes it wrong.

What I continue to support is that the Boss Upgrades get rolled back quite a bit and that a new type of Boss gets introduced instead. An Elite Boss, maybe it has a random name, and they spawn in a lesser density than regular Bosses. They also could have special attacks to make them unpredictable.

[ QUOTE ]
Wait, now we're suppose to use stealth to avoid villains? Some heroes we are. Batman and Superman must be proud. (I know this seems kinda like a personal attack against you personally. But honestly, how can you make a game about heroes and design it so the heroes have to do something like what was posted above?)


[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely!

And Batman *is* a stealth guy. If he has an objective that, yanno, is gonna save lives, he's not the sort to come bumbling out of the shadows to try and incarcerate Two-face in his element and at his strongest, when there's something more important afoot, that being beaten by the badguy would keep him from.

So, yeah, stealth is one way to do it. Stealth past bosses to rescue hostages and win the day? You bet your sweet bippy I do, all the time, and I feel quite heroic when I do it, thanks.

Stealth is just an example. In a general sense, the only alternative is, make missions so easy they can *all* be soloed by *anyone*. Some can be soloed by nearly anyone. Some require either certain ATs or certain other combinatinos of powers. Another way you can get through missions like that is, as a Mind Controller, with a judicious use of confuses, mass hypnosis, and sprint. Another way is to be defeated several times, and keep coming back. I'm not the CoH guru, so I can't give you an exhaustive list of ways to get around bosses.

But since we can say neither "some missions are soloable by none," nor "all missions are soloable by only a narrow few," there's a lot of soloing to be done, even if part of it requires you to make some semi-intelligent power and AT choices.

Making semi-intelligent power and AT choices if you want to solo a lot is not that great a burden.

It hasnt been a huge issue yet as I usually group and if I get a random mission to kill oh say "mr. Poo" or whatever I save it for a team or get my friends to help.

I dont see why bosses were ramped up other than the developers saw something in datamining or some trend as to warrant an increase in bosses. I still dont quite understand why but I am forced to live with it and so far thankfully it hasnt been a huge roadblock.

My two cents: I feel like the boss change is too much, but for a slightly different reason. I don't mind the absolute difficulty level of bosses that much, but what is bugging me is the gap between Boss difficulty and Minion-Lt diffculty. I was looking forward to making use of the new mission slider, but as it stands right now, I am forced to choose between:

(a) Boring, easy fights throughout a mission with one good, challenging one at the end.

or

(b) Good, fun fights throughout the mission, but I can't finish the mission because of the boss at the end.

Regardless of how challenging they want to make bosses, the wide gap between bosses and everyone else is now making for less fun missions, as there's no such thing as a missions that's fun (ie: challenging) the whole way through.

[ QUOTE ]
My question is: Does it mention anywhere in that mission description that I'm going up against a frigging Arch Villain and should bring a team?

[/ QUOTE ]

"Investigate psychic disturbance" (leads to the Psy Clock King, who you MUST defeat-to-complete).

I could be mistaken, but I think at least one of the Envoy missions doesn't mention Envoy's going to be there (but to their credit he isn't a mission requirement either).

The Madame of Mystery is mentioned, as is Countess Crey and Antimatter.

And heck I went into a Council mission last night with five (count em) five Fame Nems in a solo mission--no mention of *any* kind of nemesis being present came up in the mission text.

I think States was pretty clearly mistaken in thinking bosses are pointed out by the mission text, it is very frequent that they aren't...and some AV's aren't either.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That is the most anti superhero thing I've heard yet. In the comics, how lame would it be if superheros had to run and get help everytime they came up against a boss? I'm not even talking about archvillians like Doctor Octapus, Shocker, Kraven the Hunter, etc. I'm talking about run of the mill thug bosses.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not a fair comparison at all. In the modern comics, how many superheroes do you know that go toe-to-toe with at most ONE real "supervillain" -- a super powered villain-- (AV according to you) in the first third of their career? Few. Bosses are indeed in many ways filling the supervillain role in CoH, as best CoH maps to the modern comics.

Furthermore, the average modern comics superhero is ceratinly not incarcerating one to three supervillains per mission. So, there's nothing about being a hero that requires us to do so.

If you want a simulation of the modern comics in CoH, you complete your mission first, and risking it all to capture the supervillain (boss) comes later, if at all, depending on your morale and drive. How often does the villain get away to fight another day? All the time. It's perfectly genre to leave those bosses alone.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obviously, your idea of a super hero and mine must be totally different. The thought of a super powered hero being beaten down by a boss who isn't even important enough to be named in the game is absurd. Couple that with the fact that you can find one in the majority of group outdoor spawns and missions, and it's even more absurd.

And to answer your question, nearly all super heros I am aware of go toe to toe with a real supervillian in the first third of their career. It'd be a pretty boring comic book series if they didn't. And since my blaster is 34, you can't really say he's in the first 1/3 of his career either.

Bottom line...I don't pay 15 bucks a month so I can feel like a weak super hero wanna be. I pay to roll play a REAL super hero. You know...one that doesn't need stealth to sneak past the bad guys, one that isn't afraid to take on thugs and thug bosses, and one that can start a mission and successfully see it through to the end without help.

[ QUOTE ]
His response was for me to /bug it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Given the vast number of missions that don't hint at bosses in their text, I view this response as a disingenuous way of saying "/shove it".