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And Batman is a Scrapper and Supeman is a Tanker, both better suited to dealing with a Boss. Funny how that works out huh?
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Ok. Doc Strange is a Controller, yet he can take on Dormamuu.
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A post-pet Controller. Most likely level 50 to boot. If we are going to do a straight convet anyway. And I don't know who Dormamuu is, can't really comment on it. Does he con blue or red?
NCIS: Best gorram show in the 'verse.
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Statesman said:
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If a player sees a boss of his level, he should probably get help..
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So what you are saying is that we are not playing comic book superheroes. While Batman and Superman are able to solo the Joker and Lex Luthor, our heroes can only solo street thugs.
We should be able to at least take on unique, named villains once in a while- solo- so we can actually feel like heroes. I had thought that the purpose of bosses was to give us our own Jokers or Lex Luthors, while ArchVillains were the rare ones that required teaming. Comic book superheroes don't find themselves in over their heads when they take on anything tougher than a common street thug.
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And Batman is a Scrapper and Supeman is a Tanker, both better suited to dealing with a Boss. Funny how that works out huh?
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Johny Storm aka the Human Torch is a Blaster, your point? Funny how there are more than Scrappers and Tankers in the Comic books that can take down common street thug bosses.
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This is disingenuous. Bosses spawn in missions where they must be overcome just to move through the environment.
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Or avoided using powers available to every character.
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But doesn't that imply that every character intending to run on small teams (or solo) must adhere to one of several cookie-cutter formats to avoid boss aggro?
This begs the question of opponents specifically designed to defeat stealth and aggro mitigation (Rikti drones come to mind). Their attack triggers the aggro of other mobs in range.
I like shinobi and ninjutsu as much as anyone, but don't know that mandating them as must haves are the appropriate answer to the ubiquity of bosses.
My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.
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Whatever the devs intended, I don't think this was it. I certainly hope that this wasn't it, anyway.
[/ QUOTE ] You said it yourself that you didn't have to defeat him to finish the mission. Defeating the bad guy wasn't needed to "win the day."
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I also said that even if I can skip a boss (which was only doable because I have a stealth power, by the way, which not everyone does, especially in mid-twenties), I don't want to skip the boss. I like a challenge, and the rest of my mission was an entirely trivial cakewalk -- we're talking one white minion at a time. But I want a challenge, not a massacre. It seems absurd to have nothing between "pathetically easy" and "flat-out impossible".
In I2, named bosses were a challenge for me. I had to pop a couple of inspirations and come up with a plan. I made plenty of hospital trips regardless. But with a well-loaded inspiration tray, good tactics, and a little luck, I would win more often than I lose. Regular bosses were tough but nothing that a couple of inspirations and reasonable tactics wouldn't take care of. This seemed like a reasonable balance to me.
I prefer to team. But I can't always find a team, especially when I play at odder hours of the day. I'm perfectly willing to power-level a defender or controller a couple of levels below me, for instance, or sidekick someone, but an awful lot of the time, there's simply nobody LFT that can join me.
You -- or the devs -- can potentially spout theory about how this improves the game. But frankly, it hasn't improved my play experience. I pay to have fun. If the game continues to fail to deliver on fun, I will spend my dollars on something else.
Don't think that people who are talking about quitting are making empty threats, by the way. The impact of continued non-fun takes a while to show itself -- people have multi-month subscriptions, and people will stick around to see if things change -- but it does eventually take its toll. The cooler heads right now are adopting a "complain, wait and see" attitude, on the belief that sanity and statistics will eventually make the devs realize that the boss changes are not a positive addition to most people's fun, as well as a desire to experience the recently-released new content, but an arrogant declaration of, "it's better this way, if you were smarter/cooler/more like my perfect self, you'd realize that" without measures that make things more fun will eventually result in people shrugging their shoulders and finding something that they think is more fun.
I think you can find a decent correlation with the Xmen. With them you see a fairly good range of powers and strength.
You had Sentinels, which qualify as monsters and required a team to defeat. Then there was Magneto, Mr. Sinister and Apocolypse who were archvillains also requiring a team, and being extremely difficult to defeat.The Xmen normally didn't win in a direct confrontation with those guys.
Then there were the rest, who I'm convinced qualified as bosses. The Xmen definitely could take those solo. Wolverine could handle Sabertooth, Lady Deathstrike and anyone like that alone. It was common to see battles where each hero had his or her respective opponent. There was the occassional elite boss, like Omega Red who required a handful of heroes, but those were less common.
Prior to issue 3 City of Heroes seemed to follow those conventions. I'd argue that bosses were a bit on the easy side. However, to say that they should require a group to defeat the majority of the time is a bit surprising.
It may be consistent with the RPG genre in general, but I don't think it quite suits a superhero universe. Then again, the developers can do anything they want, can't they?
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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[
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Unless the boss is in a corridor and you have no stealth, or he's standing close to a glowy.
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And Statesman isn't forcing you not to take a Stealth power ... you are. And many of the Controller and Defender Powers sets have some form of Stealth/Distracting powers in them .... I wonder why?
Controller Primaries: All before level 25
Fire: Smoke --- It's main use is Stealth
Ice: Artic Air --- Group Stealth
Illusion: Deceive and Superior Invis
Mind Controll: Confuse --- If used before combat the mob will ignore you [Aplies to Deceive also]
That's 4 of the 6 Primaries that a Controller can get.
Defender Primaries:
Darkness: Shadow Fall --- Group Stealth [Only non-Controller Secondary]
Force Field: PFF and Repulsion Field to keep the power hungry madmen at bay.
Kenetics: Repel --- Keep mob at bay
Storm Summoning: Snow Storm --- Group Stealth
Then ther is Concealment and Super Speed from the Power Pools. And sloting Controller Hold powers for longer durations will let you get that last, herd to get to, glowie.
Maybe I should have said "have to defeat" in steed of "have to fight"?
Fight Smarter not Harder.
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That is SUCH a lame argument. By that thinking you HAVE to build your character a certain way to be able to effectively play the game, instead of building the character to your "vision" of what you want, hence you are being painted into a corner as to how you build your toon.
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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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If it's a NAMED boss it does that. I.e., "Defeat So-and-so and his crew", etc. Generic bosses are not indicated in ANY way they'll be encountered in a mission. Plus, missions are STILL constantly spawning +1, and now sometimes even +2 mobs. Try soloing one of those missions, or even duoing without a legitimate damage dealer around, or a dedicated bubbler/empath.
Yeah, the game's challenging. But it first and foremost should be fun. Life's challenging and frustrating enough for me to have to worry about frustration and disgust while playing a game I use routinely to ESCAPE the life. 
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As concerns the comment about the vocal minority I don't see where you showed us any figures to say the group that wanted more of a challenge was first off even in the minority. Just because you do not like it and a few people who feel the same post on the same thread does not make your view the majority view.
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The population of the forums is but a fraction of overall player subscriptions. By the definition of the word, that's a MINORITY. A fraction of those people wanted the game harder. So it's even smaller. A minority of the minority.
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I killed a +2 boss, and while it certainly took a long time (and half my candy) it was well worth it to see the exp I got from the kill.
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Yeah, but the fight probably took longer right? Have you looked at the xp/minute to see if it's really better in I3? I suspect there's an increase, but not enuf to offset the rampant increase in debt that's a "way of life" now.
Actually, that would be a good way to do the first week of a new patch then thay make sweeping changes to the game. Have no debt for the first week after the patch goes live.
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I think you can find a decent correlation with the Xmen. With them you see a fairly good range of powers and strength.
You had Sentinels, which qualify as monsters and required a team to defeat. Then there was Magneto, Mr. Sinister and Apocolypse who were archvillains also requiring a team, and being extremely difficult to defeat.The Xmen normally didn't win in a direct confrontation with those guys.
Then there were the rest, who I'm convinced qualified as bosses. The Xmen definitely could take those solo. Wolverine could handle Sabertooth, Lady Deathstrike and anyone like that alone. It was common to see battles where each hero had his or her respective opponent. There was the occassional elite boss, like Omega Red who required a handful of heroes, but those were less common.
Prior to issue 3 City of Heroes seemed to follow those conventions. I'd argue that bosses were a bit on the easy side. However, to say that they should require a group to defeat the majority of the time is a bit surprising.
It may be consistent with the RPG genre in general, but I don't think it quite suits a superhero universe. Then again, the developers can do anything they want, can't they?
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Thank you... The X-Men analogy was perfect. I agree the named bosses (Elite Bosses?) should be harder, and may require a small group, and that AVs of course being a great challenge, but your run-of-the-mill generic bosses should have been left alone or maybe just tweaked up a SMALL bit. I see Statesman is pretty much convinced he is right, and we should play HIS vision of the game, instead of his listening to what WE (the paying customers) enjoy.
It's too bad, I was looking forward to CoV for a while, but if this is how the continuing dev cycle is going to be like, forget it. I'll still hang for a bit to see if the devs do something uncharacteristic like listen to us, and in the meantime I'll put a little more time into WoW and less into CoH.
I know I don't represent the player base, nor do I have any figures on how many people feel this way, but some of the people I talk to in the game that generally don't complain about changes and tweaks are pretty incensed about the boss tweaks, and have mentioned that they will not be putting any additional money forth for any expansion packs or CoV because of things like this.
Also, I would like to clarify, I'm not saying that I3 is crap or anything, overall I like it... But frankly the boss tweaks alone have just killed the fun factor for me right now.
So far i have tried a few bosses and haven't had much trouble. At 42 I was able to solo a +2 Master illusionist and it got 6.5k XP out of it. Just took alot of inspirations and mines. Placed six mines behind her and then attacked her from the front knocking her into the mines. True they are VERY tough but with planning or help you can get around it. I am tired of people whining about the game get over it. It has it faults but nothing compared to the game I came from "Everquest".
I've been a die hard fan of the game ever since it's been out and I must say that the boss changes are really a tad too much.
I have a lvl 35 MA/Regen scrapper that was taking on a lvl 36 Paragon Protector in a mission and was practically one shotted even with Dull Pain on.
I'm all for challenges, but I now know that I am dependent 100% on a healer to keep me alive during a mission now. It's very much like EQ in the sense that you had to depend on a cleric to do ANYTHING really.
Before you guys say anything about how I suck or that I slotted my stuff wrong, hear me out please.
I'm not necessarily complaining so much about the increased challenge, but more along the lines of not feeling heroic anymore. One thing I really really liked about this game was that mobs for the most part were following the same rules that we were. Such is not the case anymore.
I can site 2 examples. 1, the Paragon Protectors can heal after using MoG. I don't know if that is a change or not, but all I can say is, wow, impressive
2, A mob "crane" kicked me for over 600 damage. It was a boss, and it was +1 lvl on me. My Eagles Claw is fully slotted with 1 acc and 5 damage and even with a critical, I couldn't reach 600 damage on that mob. It was a "generic" boss, too.
Point being, I just don't feel like a hero anymore. I feel like wet paper getting ready to be shredded. I liked being able to jump into a group of mobs and take them down 1 by 1 and survive. It was FUN! Even if the xp was less, I was enjoying the game for what I thought it was supposed to be; To make you feel like a real hero.
Any thoughts?
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Any thoughts?
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Yeah. That the devs look at data and nothing else.
Tough bosses looks great on paper, but apply it to sky raider/Freakshow respec or any task force with a full group. Bosses are prevalent. I know, I played to 50. Very, very prevalent.
Oh, the Numina TF's last mission was a debttrap last I heard.
*shrugs*
By the way ,excellent X-men analogy.
Dawnslayer on Virtue.
Someone high up in the CoH employment food chain must like scrappers an awful lot. Scrappers were obviously more powerful than any other class in the game. Rathar than draw back the power level of the scrapper to make them in line with the other classes and the villians of the game, they up the power level of the bosses to challenge the scrappers. Of course this makes it so that the other classes can no longer even complete their own misssions... but this doesn't seem to be a problem.
I tried my first mission after the patch with my blaster. It was tough... a challenge... a good mission. Until I got to the boss. I used 6 inspirations including three 'good luck' and went into the fight. I hit him one time. Then he hit me once, took off half of my hit points, and knocked me down. When I was on the ground, before I had time to get up, he hit me a second time and killed me. I had to zone out and ask some scrapper to come in and defeat my boss while I watched.
Then I went to my second mission. Again it was a good mission until I got to the boss at the end. Again I used all the luck inspirations I had at the time (4 luck inspirations). Again I got in the first shot, then was hit for half my hit points and knocked down, again I was killed by a second shot before I was able to stand back up. Once again, I zoned out and asked a scrapper to come into my mission and defeat my boss while I watched.
I am going to hang up my non-scrapper characters until they fix this. The game is no longer playable to the non-scrapper characters.
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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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I've been in a few missions when named "bosses" wind up just being lieutenants (the freakshow mission with Dap Dap and a nemesis lieutenant is a recent example). Am I expected to take a team only to find that they were lieutenants I could have handled on my own?
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If a player sees a boss of his level, he should probably get help...
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Then maybe you shouldn't put bosses in almost every freakin mission? Then maybe they should be something RARE and the mission should say, "only take this mission if you are going to bring along some friends".
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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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Contact: Juliana Nehring "Eliminate all Diseased Vahzilok"
Boss: "The Doctor" Orange-Con Mire Eidolon. No mention of boss in text. Should I be /bug(ing) these as they come along?
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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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This has probably been said already, but I'm not going to read 15 pages to find out. Bosses have never been as easy as minions, because THEY'RE BOSSES! Nor should they ever be. A same-level boss has always been tougher than a same-level-lieutenant, which has always been tougher than a same-level minion. Bosses are two classes removed from minions.
If you don't like that bosses are tougher, simply avoid them and go find another bossless group of mobs to kill...plain and simple. You might even find the exp faster if you do it right.
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.
Jason Heavensrun
Swift : Freedom Server
http://www.bladeandepsilon.com/CheckmateStudios
Check out my first Architect Arc, "Bring Up the Sun", arc #339507, and let me know what you think!
Guys I think it comes down to a single simple point.
Statesman doesn't listen to the players.
If something we say is already in his plans it's cool and it's great. But the amount of heat these changes got -before- Issue 3 went live says alot about the developement team.
Anyone, should be able to play a game however they like. Wether they're a hardcore powergaming scrapper, or a casual play-testing controller. Everyone should be able to complete the game however they like.
The worst part is this has been quoted as 'a step towards' his vision. It's not this current patch that has me the most worried, it's what's going to happen in the future? If this is just a step, what's the next one? And will we, the paying customers, have our voices ignored in the quest for the Developement Team to reach their 'Vision'?
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This has probably been said already, but I'm not going to read 15 pages to find out. Bosses have never been as easy as minions, because THEY'RE BOSSES! Nor should they ever be. A same-level boss has always been tougher than a same-level-lieutenant, which has always been tougher than a same-level minion. Bosses are two classes removed from minions.
If you don't like that bosses are tougher, simply avoid them and go find another bossless group of mobs to kill...plain and simple. You might even find the exp faster if you do it right.
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They were tough enough already after issue 2 came out. I abandoned a number of alts dying too often because of those, and now they're even higher.
"Doing it right" - according to who? You? Do you play my build? Or anyone else's who've posted? Or a flavor of the week build?
I do not want to have to slot everything one way - "the" way - in order to play this game. If I wanted to do that, I'd just buy a first-person-shooter/non-online game like Halo 2, and be done with it. It's pretty. It's fast. It's fun. But it's not what I want to play.
I don't want to have to fight with the GAME to play my TOON. Working around glitches, bad AI and the like has always been in my opinion a failing of every computer game out there. Learning how to beat a villian because it tracks you a certain way, or can't see around simple obstacles, or has some kind of bug in the program, is NOT playing the game right. I've never been a button-masher, and I really don't want to be.
This is my first and currently only MMO, and I'd like it to play approximately the same fun way that it did when I started in July. I came in RIGHT after issue 1, missing the first invasion. I enjoyed playing briefly for issue 2 and then made my current alt who is *capable* of soloing orange bosses, but only barely, and I'm not fond of debt. AT ALL. I pay attention to the content in the game and I love it. But I hate how we're suddenly being told that if you get a mission with any kind of boss in it (any 1/3 of your missions in other words) that you'll have to find a team mate. No. I do not do that. Many people - most, I would hazard, don't.
Perhaps it would not be so bad if the controllers and defenders had their endurance costs lowered, this was brought up in another thread I believe. Since we're responsible for keeping a team alive, our team-based powers and toggles should cost far lower. That would encourage some of us, possibly me, to play with more teams.
But to *require* it, even with the slider for "more" damage? Heck no. Ridiculous. And clearly - Statesman hasn't read a lot of his own mission text. Since this many people can point out this many problems with just that one line - sorry. It's not true that we are warned. We're RARELY warned. And, a lot of folks can't figure out subtle warnings when they are there. They SHOULD be apparent, or just as another poster suggested, available in addition to a soloable mission.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
I have now changed my mind about the bosses they are really tough. I think that if they were toned down just a little then it wouldn't be so bad but as of now they just arent fair. I have noticed that they seam to have been given an increase in just about very thing including acc. which for a SR scrapper that's just murder. I am not asking them to make them super easy but I think they do need to be toned down just a little.
I agress as well that the boss difficulty is not fair. I am a lvl 35 energy/energy blaster who generally had some difficulty with bosses....DE bosses would most likely kill me without inspirations juicing me up. But now gaming is absurd, I got a mission today and went through it as normal until i reach the boss(+1)...after dying 4 times (i solo as it fits my time schedual) the last time being fully loaded with inspirations I gave up on my missions alltogether. I only was hit twice, and died, and I have to assume my defence was maxed out.
So here I am, a hero...being pretty much unable to play the way i loved to because bosses hurt way to much ( as a note, I got the boss down to 50% after the 4 deaths) So I spent all of today collecting exploration and history badges, waiting for a team to develop to help me...a team i did not find. Its just ruined my mood towards the game. I was once going through all my missions having fun collecting mission badges and such, but now I feel useless solo if there is a boss....i basically have to cry for help. I had no debt until issue 3...now i seem to just compond it everytime i log due to bosses and my soloing nature.
I am left to wonder how horribly i would be absolutly slaughtered if i would change my difficulty lvl even a slight bit.
<echo>
39/DM Regen - Min Maxed Build (I like to solo)
2 people @ Level 40 Carnie mission to the Ringmistress or something: Level 40 Boss (conned Red) sapped me for End, toggles off took me down in less than 15 seconds.
Clockwork King mission, no mention of AV in the text description, level 40 AV; not attempted, guess I should /bug the mission text so I could have avoided it. (In fact, opening mission of Arc, "We don't know what's going on down there" or something. So much for allowing me to avoid AV's)
Arrest Dr Voight & Visitors: 2 x Level 40 Boss. Just managed to beat both with lots of inspirations and running away on red health more than 2-3 times. Only beat because Malta boss seemed to have just one attack.
Level +1 Rikti Boss/Fake Nemesis (Seperately): Tough/Weave/IH/Int/DP/CJ/Crey Pistol + Luck/End/Heal Insps - Just beat due to conservative running away and timing.
Othe friends reporting similar if not worse problems given I'm supposedly an 'uber' build.
---
Everything in else in I3, great.. bosses/AV's, spoiling it for all.
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And Batman is a Scrapper and Supeman is a Tanker, both better suited to dealing with a Boss. Funny how that works out huh?
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Ok. Doc Strange is a Controller, yet he can take on Dormamuu.