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anyway, I can kill you with my brain.
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No power in the 'verse can stop me.
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Sir, I think there is a problem with your brain being missin'.
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Now let me think. You know, I believe you might be right.
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Uhm... Relying? I think not.
Listen, do you understand the concept of game balance Concern?
Game balance is not always that every class can perform equally well solo, in groups each class brings something different to tha table.
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Wrong Game balance does mean any class can survive solo as well as in groups. Groups may be needed for tougher mobs but any given sunday Joe Controller should be able to go do as well as Jane Tanker. Infact I think Tankers and Scrappers need damage nerfs not raising the level of the mobs so the other five arctypes have trouble leveling. Yes I know I'll get crap for this but someone had to say it. Instead of raising the damage that Tankers do, they should have left it the same and added the inate taunt effect to the attacks. Scrappers are a melee master, but right now I know a Dark Offender who is nearly as good as my blaster at taking out mobs ranged. That's not right. Perhaps the damage from the Snipper and base range for Blaster attacks should be looked at. If Blasters are supposed to be ranged extreme damage experts make us that way. As it is sometimes I feel like six slotting range increasers into my attacks just to make it that way but then I lose my offensive punch. Yet a Scrapper need only six slot damage into his attacks to get effective use of them.
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I am beginning to think that the 'you should think about bringing allies' text is the new clue, though. I've seen it several times since I3 went live and hardly at all before that.
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Not sure about that. I kept encountering that phrase with a Fifth Column arc last weekand kept thinking, "Well, I'll give it a shot and if I can't beat it, go get help." Never happened. Knife through butter - though it was a lvl 39 MA/SR scrapper, to be sure. There were multiple bosses, mostly orange to a lvl 39, and one red in there (bosses that that character can still take down handily in Issue 3).
Maybe it is intended as a codeword for "bosses present," but predates Issue 3.
My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.
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It also leaves us in the hitherto unusual position of needing to get help *during* a mission, since we have no way of knowing beforehand whether or not there's going to be a boss in there. That will be awkward in timed missions.
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Actually, if a boss will appear in a mission, the mission briefing mentions it. Check the text.
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This is NOT true, bosses appear in 3/4 of the missions and most of them do NOT mention it.
Boycott Ncsoft if they close down Coh.
Rune, if every class could work as well solo as any other class then there would have to be MAJOR and I mean *MAJOR* game changes to help out the specialists.
Because if a controller gets to be as effective solo as I do then I want to be as effective in a group as they are.
What this means is every tanker would need special abilities that are totally group oriented added to them that somehow didn't involve one of the following:
1) Massive AOE Damage (blaster territory)
2) Damage Mitigation through Buffing others (Defenders)
3) Healing (Defender/Controller)
4) Crowd Control (controller)
5) Endurance Regeneration buffs to the team (Defender)
6) Damage Buffs to the Team (Defender)
7) Debuffing (Controller/Defender)
Yeah thats the problem, if a Controller becomes as useful solo as a Tanker or a Scrapper then we have to become as useful teamed and that would DESTROY any semblance of balance this game has.
Tankers and Scrappers are good solo but we don't do jack squat for a team. In fact in order for us to be useful to a team there has to be a defender or a controller or a blaster there already. The same statement is not true of Blasters, Controllers, and Defenders, they don't NEED a tank to help a team, they don't NEED a scrapper to help their team. We DO need them.
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Perhaps what is needed is a 'More Information' button on mission acceptance text. The standard mission text would be thematically appropriate to the story being told and would could be vague, misleading or have other surprises, and the More Information button would open a second window which spoils some of the surprise.
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To quote Statesman elsewhere:
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.
So, folks, /bug it if the text isn't clear. 
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Well let me be nasty here for a second.. It's not my job!
Look, when sweeping changes like this are made to the game it's the Devs responsibility to go through and touch every system that's related.. That's their job!! That is unless Statesman has been feeding us BS about this touch every system line he's feed us in the past. I have no problem /bugging things, as they happen, do it all the time, /bug it everytime I have an outdoor "door" mission, or anything that's a bug. I refuse to do the devs work for them. They should make sure all the mission texts are correct, not me. That's not a bug, that's sloppy dev work.
Now if they've done this.. I'll eat crow and never speak of it again.. but they still haven't fixed some of the "simultaneous" one from issue 2 yet. And still random timed ones from release that are still that way.. not one word the description about it being time.. and bam-o..
This is a cop out attitude from the devs and frankly I'm tied of it. Same line the fed us with the simultaneous missions.
Not every kill "whatshisface" and their minions is a boss, but sometimes have a boss before it..
The devs are slowly destroying the ability for most archetypes to solo their missions, and they need to stop.
They want to have group only missions.. fine.. put some new contacts in that do groups.. but quit mucking around with what's already there.
Put Bosses back to normal, make new group contacts, and put elite bosses in there. Got a new class might as well be more than two of them.
Okay, I'm a little miffed now. I'll admit it. Have been ever since I found out that the difficulty level of this game was only ever being raised - never lowered.
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Except for the fact that Statesman has said that ALL ATs should be able to solo, that's almost a good point.
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That's actually only part of what I've said. Solo players should always have something to do...
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Translation: go street-sweep for a while. Or try to find some teammates who aren't idiots. But not experience content at your own pace, oh no.
I just. Want. To reliably complete my own missions with non-power builds. I got this game to play a SUPERHERO of my own imagination, not a cookie-cutter "toon." I don't want a game without challenge, honestly I don't, but I also don't want to keep running into brick walls!
You put great content in this game. I want to see it. Not half of it, because I have to go outlevel the mission (and the contact) to beat it, and not none of it because it's safer to just grind my way to 50. All of it.
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If a player sees a boss of his level, he should probably get help...
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Who are willing to come into the already cleared mission, paste the boss in two minutes, and get no reward for their trouble (except a warm and fuzzy feeling for helping a frustrated fellow player). Right.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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It also leaves us in the hitherto unusual position of needing to get help *during* a mission, since we have no way of knowing beforehand whether or not there's going to be a boss in there. That will be awkward in timed missions.
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Actually, if a boss will appear in a mission, the mission briefing mentions it. Check the text.
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Except for the missions that tell you the goal is to 'rescue N hostages', or 'find N glowies', and then when you get the last displayed objective, the mission objective changes to 'Defeat all X in wherever'... and you sleazed past three bosses to get to the last hostage/glowie... I remember my Scrapper having one mission against the Rikti where the mission goal was to find three containers of mutagen (or whatever), and after I'd found two canisters and mapped out the entire cave, I spent half an hour slipping around with Super Speed and Stealth trying to find the third canister, finally petitioning the mission and waiting around until a GM showed up, who told me that the mission was a 'defeat all' mission that wasn't mentioned anywhere in the mission description or in the displayed mission objectives; that mission had two Chief Solders and two Chief Mentalists in it when I did it solo.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
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If a player sees a boss of his level, he should probably get help...
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Who are willing to come into the already cleared mission, paste the boss in two minutes, and get no reward for their trouble (except a warm and fuzzy feeling for helping a frustrated fellow player). Right.
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I am, and I know I'm not alone.
That said, I don't know if I like the implication that the standard response for an average hero running into an even boss should be "Whoops, I better run get some help".
It might all work out for the best though. I'll reserve final judgement until people have played around more with I3.
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Actually, if a boss will appear in a mission, the mission briefing mentions it. Check the text.
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You are totally wrong, and it's not even a matter of old missions which might have borked descriptions. Mission briefings usually but not always mention named bosses. They never mention generic bosses.
I took a brand-new Striga Isle mission (my toon is 28). It involved whacking Banished Pantheon. The very first thing on the mission map was a +1 Totem boss by its lonesome. There were +1 Totem bosses all over the map, in fact. I had a teammate -- a scrapper. We both died repeatedly, even with emptying out our inspiration trays and using what I thought were pretty good tactics -- he's BS/regen, I'm fire/dev, and consequently trip mines, smoke, hold in the form of a web grenade, and knockback in the form of the temp power for the mission were all available, not to mention plenty of damage. We wiped the minions with ease, the LTs (the shamans) were somewhat tougher, but the bosses owned us. We did eventually beat them all, but running back to contact multiple times in the middle of a mission to refill inspiration trays does not qualify as either heroic or fun. I've had other missions with Totems since then, and the answer seems to be: Get an empathy defender.
I have seen named bosses in two other Striga missions, as well. While the missions are completable without killing either of those bosses, this is only true if you have a character build that gives you invisibility (stealth + SS will work, stealth/cloaking device/etc. by itself will not).
Much of the new content is awesome. I am even all for making bosses more challenging. But I died frequently when fighting named bosses on Live, as both my scrapper and my blaster (and I make liberal use of Inspirations, and team often), and occasionally died fighting generic bosses. Right now, my boss-induced debt is easily exceeding my XP gained on those missions. This does not qualify as fun.
I took on a single (non-minion-surrounded) yellow-con boss last night on Striga, as well, with my blaster, with an empathy defender as my partner. This went fairly easily, but it was tedious -- repeat attack cycle over and over again, while emp defender pours stream of healing onto me. This, too, did not qualify as fun.
I am all for a challenge. Having something one-shot me is not a challenge, either to solo play or team play. Having something two-shot me is not much better, especially when the things that can one-shot often have some kind of mez power that means that the second shot is basically a given.
The current level of increase to boss HP and damage decreases the fun of the game, and it makes the mission difficulty slider pointless. Want a challenge? Up the difficulty slider. I'd be all for taking on tough minions and possibly LTs, and even tougher bosses when compared to I2, when I'm teamed up with solid reliable players that have good builds. As is, though, I can't think about using the slider because I'm never sure who my team is going to be, nor am I willing to risk making the bosses any tougher.
City of Heroes is fun because it's got fast and furious action, with portions that require tactics. I love tactics. I really enjoy teaming. What I don't want is either forced teaming (especially if we need the exact right blend of ATs), nor do I want it to take forever to kill something by doing something tediously repetitive.
Thumbs down. I like the new content, but the boss changes suck.
As usual, Amberyl comes along and says it better than me.
Also, Stargazer wrote:
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I am, and I know I'm not alone.
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Oh, I'd do it too. But see below.
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That said, I don't know if I like the implication that the standard response for an average hero running into an even boss should be "Whoops, I better run get some help".
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Exactly.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
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If a player sees a boss of his level, he should probably get help...
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Given that help (or at least good help) is often not available at the hours some of us play on some of the less populated servers ...
How do I cancel a mission and get it off my list, so I can go on to another mission?
Or does this mean that no only am I forced to find a group if I want to finish the mission, but in fact I'm forced to find a group to get any new missions?
Right now my L14 Tank is sitting on the max three missions: one is a rock monster hunt through Hollows that I cannot survive solo, one is a hunt for Clocks in a zone that I cannot survive solo, and one is a "kill boss and guards" door mission that I may not be able to solo. If you're telling me that I must group to complete these missions so I can get more missions, then you have just flubbered the entire game and its status among MMOs as being solo-friendly (at least for some classes).
Please advise.
the boss changes serve two purposes for Cryptic:
first, forced grouping.
this seems to be a high priority for them lately. Don't ask me why, when the game was marketed and sold as solo-friendly.
second, slower levelling.
Longer boss fights, many deaths from boss fights, having to leave missions and recruit teams to beat bosses that are not mentioned in the mission text (does anyone at Cryptic actually read mission text? the way they attribute miraculous powers to something that misleads as often as it informs makes me think not...), etc etc.
All this talk of "this is the way it was supposed to be all along" yadda yadda yadda is just window dressing for a force majeure decision to ram a difficulty increase down the throat of the playerbase regardless of their wishes.
And yes it's their game and they can do what they like with it, but I have enjoyed it up to this point and would prefer it remain fun and playable for solo-heavy casual gamers like myself.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I've got one more thing to add:
In game design, it's all very well and good to say, "Here is the ideal that I have in my vision." The problem is that when vision meets real people in the form of players, the measure of success is whether or not those players are having fun, not whether you have achieved whatever theoretical design goal you set out to achieve. "Fun" is a particularly crucial factor in a paid MMORPG, because fun equates to subscriptions which equate to revenue.
People have fun in different ways. Some people like to solo, some people like to group, some like to do both. Some people like their games to be as challenging as possible. Other people like their games to be pretty brainless and easy. Some people like having a lot of luck in the equation. Other people like planning to significantly reduce the role that luck plays.
City of Heroes can potentially accomodate all of these desires, via the use of the mission difficulty slider. The relative advancement rates of people with different levels of "fun" can be equalized out by changing the XP values awarded -- or making the maps bigger or smaller. (So, for instance, if you want blue cons rather than white cons, the map expands so in the end you have to wipe more of them to finish.)
When a lot of people are posting on the forums that something is not fun, this is a warning, because plenty of people will simply stop playing rather than deciding to gripe on the forums. Moreover, the activities that players are engaging in are clear indications of where the fun is and isn't, or of what goals people are trying to achieve (I suspect, for instance, that the farming/herding/PLing behaviors are effectively a statement of "leveling up the usual way is sufficiently time-consuming and boring that I am willing to engage in periods of incredible tedium in order to avoid a longer period of mediocrely interesting play").
Yes, people will tolerate some changes that decrease fun, if other things are added which increase fun. Ultimately, though, what is going to determine longevity of subscriptions is fun, not how long it takes to get to level X. Plenty of people will abandon existing achievements in order to go do something more fun -- hours invested just makes it harder to leave.
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Tankers and Scrappers are good solo but we don't do jack squat for a team. In fact in order for us to be useful to a team there has to be a defender or a controller or a blaster there already. The same statement is not true of Blasters, Controllers, and Defenders, they don't NEED a tank to help a team, they don't NEED a scrapper to help their team. We DO need them.
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I have to disagree with you here. Tankers and Scrappers are GOOD in teams. Now espeically with the improved taunt. Sure you need a defender or a controller to buff, but show me a Blaster or a Defender that can sit there and take attack after attack without eating candy like crazy. A Tanker or Scrapper is a front line unit for sure and requires the support of a defender or Controller teamed. But a Blaster 8 person team would get creamed a lot faster than a Tanker 8 person team. 2 Tankers, 2 Scrappers, 2 Controllers could make mince meat of any mission in the game. 2 blasters 2 scrappers and two tanks would not be a good balance. 2 Blasters 2 scrappers 2 tanks, and two healing providers now on the other hand would be great teamed.
That's niether here nor there though. The OP (me) started this thread about Boss difficulties. And I stand by my statement bosses as they are now set in the game are too difficult for someone who is SOLO Street Sweeping. As I said in mission, I've called for higher level support before after clearing a mission and am willing to do it again.
If players have a difficult to hard time hitting bosses two levels above them. Then the new bosses should have a difficult time hitting me when I am two levels above them. This is not the case and needs to be tweaked. To a Boss below my level I should look like a boss, and be as hard to hit as a boss would be.
The quick and dirty solution/rollback to the boss changes would be (in my personal opinion) is simply to lower their damage potential and leave the HP increase. This would provide a more equitable curve of difficulty from the minons to bosses.
If you think about it, even though they have more Hitpoints, this alone can increase their damage potential over time, allowing them to stay alive longer to attempt more hits.
My biggest problem with this isn't the soloing aspect. Ok, so now we gotta call teammates just to finish garden-variety missions that we used to solo... I guess I can adapt to that easily. It's the one-shotting potential and lack of fun involved when people quit groups or the game entirely because of changes that are very anti-player (in my personal opinion).
As some have stated before:
The level difficulty slider for missions would have provided the challenge people wanted.
The boss bump for average (Non-named AV wannabes, not full fledged Boss mobs who SHOULD be taken by groups, not solo) street type bosses was totally unnecessary. The damage increase and hp increase coupled with a mission difficulty slider only caters to the powergaming "I made my build exactly how it should be to kill with maximum effectiveness vs endurance cost and speed" A.D.D. Ritalin-popping players, not people who actually want to make that flawed concept hero, experience the content, have some fun with friends and *gasp* role-play.
If you want suicide missions, put in some contacts for that.
It's so sad that I've said "No, I'm not playing WoW or EQ2 with you guys, I'd rather play CoH" to some people I've spent years playing with, only to start to see the same trend that has hit every other MMORPG on the market (like EQ).
Next we'll have flagging, alternate planes of existence that you can't get to without completing 50 badges, 6 AV at once fights where you have to have 200 people to finish them....
The ONLY thing I liked about EQ that would be interesting in this game is Faction. That would introduce another dimension to the game: Sure, I'm friendly with the mob now for helping them by clearing Tsoo from their docks, but boy those Tsoo sure hate me for it more.
It's really funny, other than the boss change, I think the patch was ok for the most part.
If it's any indicator of the new boss problems:
I've been waiting for the free respec to make some changes to my Rad/Rad. Until yesterday I used Mutation a total on once in my run up to lvl 30. So it was definately outta there.
Yesterday, in one day, with the I3 changes, I used it at least 10 times. Not to mention the number of times that I had to be rez'd or the times where people ran out of missions to buy rez insp from contacts just to complete a mission.
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Odds are you don't need to defeat that Boss either.
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Bzzzzt! Wrong! Try to pay attention. There are many, many missions that end up being undocumented "kill all on map" mssions, kill all including those 1 or 2 bosses. It's starting to look like Statesman doesn't play this game much.
I fought a -1 Power Tank with my Fire/Fire blaster (L35) yesterday. My initial snipe did less damage to him than his return shot did to me. Over the course of the fight I popped about 7 greens and 2 shields. In the end I think I did enough damage to kill him pre-I3 (about a 4th health left on him). For a second I thought I was going to get him. I had a couple of more greens left, but he was dealing such big chunks of damage per shot that I didn't get a chance to use them.
My blaster would probably not be considered optimized by some folks as I use end reducers on some attack powers and not all damage. Of course if we all have to start using narrowly defined builds to play at higher levels, what's the point of the options?
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Odds are you don't need to defeat that Boss either.
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Bzzzzt! Wrong! Try to pay attention. There are many, many missions that end up being undocumented "kill all on map" mssions, kill all including those 1 or 2 bosses. It's starting to look like Statesman doesn't play this game much.
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Bzzzt! Wrong!
"Starting"? Did you just now start paying attention?
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If players have a difficult to hard time hitting bosses two levels above them. Then the new bosses should have a difficult time hitting me when I am two levels above them. This is not the case and needs to be tweaked. To a Boss below my level I should look like a boss, and be as hard to hit as a boss would be.
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I've wondered a few times where we stand in the minion/lt/boss chain... I've always thought that we were about equal to a generic boss, but that's obviously not true now. I guess it varies by AT, though I hate to think of my L35 blaster as maybe just above a lt - though she gets stunned like a minion.
I also don't like the idea that Controllers and Defenders are handicapped as soloers (and Blasters are getting there). I create my characters based on the powers not the AT. I can only take so much Scrapper and Tanker playing time before I start feeling like a button-masher in combat. I don't know what balance is supposed to be in this game? Making everyone feel even at the same level? Making everyone be able to fight every boss by themselves? Or some sort of PVP balancing? Regardless, I don't think it can be achieved... someone will always feel slighted.
I accept that my Storm Defender and F/F Blaster can't solo every boss near their level, but I'm starting to worry that they can't solo ANY boss near their level.
after all this.. I have to agree that we should have a slider that is
-1 to our level, even, +1 to +4
I can go with that...
normal mission would be ALL even level.. (no random +1) if you want random +1 then go to difficulty slider and pay for your +1
if people want to -1 their mission, give them a warning that they will probably run out of mission (or repeats) and may have to result in street sweeping
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Actually, if a boss will appear in a mission, the mission briefing mentions it. Check the text.
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As with the many problems with not mentioning timed missions, this is very hit and miss. I've had lots of occassions where a random Incinerator Bot or Lost boss or Ruin Mage appears in a mission even though there was no indication in the text. This may be your goal, but you are currently far from it.
Also keep in mind that hunting missions are FAR easier for groups than soloists and therefore soloists mostly do indoor missions. By making 50% (higher at some levels, lower at others) of missions suddenly unsoloable, you are really killing the soloist's lifeblood. You are forcing grouping, if nothing else just to get the dang mission off your list so you can get another, and forced grouping is precisely what you have said over and over you did not want.
Scorus
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Odds are you don't need to defeat that Boss either.
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Bzzzzt! Wrong! Try to pay attention. There are many, many missions that end up being undocumented "kill all on map" mssions, kill all including those 1 or 2 bosses. It's starting to look like Statesman doesn't play this game much.
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Way to pay atention there yourself they guy.
For you that missed it:
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Statesman:Actually, if a boss will appear in a mission, the mission briefing mentions it.
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chrizUnless it doesn't. I've run into Bosses in Shadow Shard missions with no mention of the Boss in the mission description. Should I bug these?
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Me:Odds are you don't need to defeat that Boss either. And that's the point. Yes there are many missions that have Bosses in them. BUT, Defeat All missions and Named Bosses are the only ones you accually have to fight.
Why are we still having this conversation?
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I was commenting on what chriz said. Specifacally those Shadow Shard Missions. Most of those you don't need to fight the Boss in them. I some time do, sometimes don't.
And I even went on to say "BUT, Defeat All missions and Named Bosses are the only ones you accually have to fight." Did you miss that? Those are the only 2 times you have to defeat the boss.
NCIS: Best gorram show in the 'verse.
-------------------------
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Actually, if a boss will appear in a mission, the mission briefing mentions it. Check the text.
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This still seems inappropriate for a couple of reasons.
1) Until I'm able to delete missions or say to the contact "no, I never want to do this mission" or "show me another mission instead" then I'm blocked on getting more missions unless the contact happens to have 2 being offered at that time. Some soloers street sweep, some do missions. This blocks mission soloers who don't want help. At least having an in-game mechanism for telling the contact "That's got a boss, I'm not up for it, give this mission to a team" would alleviate this blocking problem some. In fact there needs to be a way to abandon a mission with a boss in it, a "calling for backup" option where I call the contact in-mission and say "I can't complete this along and no other heroes are available, you'll have to assign it to someone else." If influence is lost because I'm a wimp or it was timed, fine.
2) Despite what you say, I'm sure I see missions all the time that don't say thay have bosses, but that do. Maybe I just have poor reading comprehension skills. I know the day before Issue 3, I took the Freakolympics mission, which I've done many times before on other characters. It may mention bosses, or maybe bosses are implied by the fact that its factions of Freakshow competing ... so the presence of a boss may be implied. Maybe it says it and I don't remember. If you guys are now going to take the position that any mission with a boss in it is now a group-recommended mission, at least take the extra step and BOLDLY FLAG IN RED missions that have bosses in them.
In fact, expanding point 2, sometimes you get involved on a long story arc where in one mission you found something weird going on (no boss), in another you found some evidence tying into it (no boss), maybe the next mission your contact sends you to investigate ("be ready for anything in there" must translate to "bosses, you'll need a team") and then later they'll refer to a boss by name that you have to take down. Well, the entire arc needs to be flagged as having a boss in it somewhere OR there needs to be a way to back out or skip an arc later if you cant handle it solo and you don't want to pursue the arc anymore. When I start an arc, I want to finish it. I don't like teaming for my own missions. 3 missions into an arc, I'm shafted, unable to beat the boss, unwilling to get help because I want to be able to say I soloed my character, and unable to progress because that's the next mission, or the mission I am on.
OK now some general comments.
The mission where I had to stop the Freakolympics, I took it the night before I3 and I logged. Next day I tried it and with my Ice / Energy blaster who EXCELS at killing bosses if nothing else, I got my butt handed to me. I only died once but I was running constantly. My blaster's mega one-target damage output seemed almost inconsequential. I would have been better off doing this with a defender. I tell you what, if I had any Rad characters, I'd respec and make a 6-slotted rediation infection and 3-slotted Enervating Field my #1 priority over everything else in the game, just out of necessity. Anyway, I always used to pride myself on being able to beat a Boss quickly and with footwork. The risk was that I might get a stun in on me, and get 2-shotted. Now the risk is that I can get 1-shotted at any time (unless at absolutely max life) and there is no room for error on the ground. So, while I had always prided myself that I wouldnt have to hover 15 feet over a tank boss and merely shoot, thats what my risk-oriented ground-pounding ice blaster has become. A hover monkey, who *plinks* away at bosses.
Just lovely.
Finally, with this (what I consider to be) RADICAL change to bosses .... not just the HP and Damage but the Dev approach that any misison with a boss in it is one where a team is probably needed, I feel like the charade is over. Let's not have any pretense that soloing is of high concern. Since just before Issue 2, most street packs have Bosses in them. Does this mean that street sweeping is no longer solo material? And yet now missions are set up to where you can be part way through an arc and get a boss, or you cant say "no" and get the next misison. This means that many missions, and you never know which ones (because even if there are bold hints, I dont know that the NEXT mission in the arc has a boss, or even if 2 missions that seem connected to me are even part of an arc) have bosses, so you never know which ones are soloable.
As a solo player, this will drive me AWAY from missions, and onto the streets, because even though Streets are officially team content (many packs from steel onward have bosses in them), at least with a lot of hunting around, I can occasionally find a pack with no boss, which means I can control my gaming experience.
So, as a player who liked solo more but likes grouping also, I have some requests involving contacts.
1) We need BOLD INDICATORS stating whether a misison is part of an Arc, has a Boss, or will require a team (presence of a Boss, or multiplayer triggers, etc), is timed, etc. FULL DISCLOSURE. These indicators should be turned OFF by default and players that want to see them can turn them on.
2) We need a way of saying to a contact "no I will never do this mission" as well as "my allies aren't available now, unblock me and give me a solo mission, I'll come back to this one later" as well as a way in the mission to say "I know I'll lose influence but I want to call in for back-up and have another team finish for me" (abort mission).
3) Provide 3 fully distinct contact types. 1 contact type that is for trials, task forces, and team mission EXCLUSIVELY. When you go to that contact, you know that somewhere in the arc there WILL be team-only content generally at every stage. 1 contact type that is the normal kind, the "mix it up" kind where you never know if you are doing an arc or a one-off mission or whatever. Finally, we need 1 contact type that ONLY gives solo missions. I know when going to that contact that I will never EVER have to worry about any mission that might be better with a team. If I want to take a team, it should still scale to one, but the default should scale to one person. That means, apparently and sadly and officially, no bosses on these missions, because if there were a boss, "you might want to get help". Heck they could even re-use the same missions from other contacts that are on-offs.
By splitting into these 3 contact types, solo players could stick to solo contacts, people who wanted a team mission could go to the team mission contacts, and people who liked surprises or wanted to mix it up or do it all could go to the normal style contacts.
Thanks,
Lewis
Random AT Generation!
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