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Tell me, does anyone actually enjoy street hunting?
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Yes.
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Really?
I stand corrected then. There is at least one person (presumably representative of some kind of group of people) who do enjoy street hunting. Frankly I'm a bit astonished. Nobody I have met in game has said they enjoyed this, but tastes do differ. Enjoy then. At least that is still perfectly doable solo.
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For the record, I like it too. I like missions much more, however. But before the slider the vast majority of missions were too easy. And I mean for all my characters.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Look whos talking 
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire
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Holds only have hold duration increases. With *FOUR* things spamming holds, that should be enough to lock a boss down.
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This is only my understanding, but I was under the impression that multiple holds don't increase the length of the hold they only add to the magnitude.
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This is correct. However, for bosses, which a single hold cannot affect due to inadequate magnitude, overlapping durations of multiple holds creates an "apparent" hold duration.
If you need two holds, each hold lasts 10 seconds, and you land the 2nd one 5 seconds after the first, you will hold the target for 5 seconds.
If the target has hold resistance, they often also reduce the duration of holds (sort of like a damage resistance for holds). This will create a shortening of the hold "window", and lead to either no hold or a very brief one.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Emphasis below is mine:
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I want to make the difficulty of the later levels resemble early gameplay. At first, some players will decry "but I can't do what I used to! Ack! I can't solo two +4 bosses anymore?" True - but they'll have fun battling 3 white minions - which is something you can say at level 15, but not at level 35. Long term, the entire game will sparkle once this sort of balance is restored - because so much of the game design hangs upon it.
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Sounds like it's an important, maybe even crucial part of their design of the game to me.
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The problem, Lothart, is not that people are complaining that they can't take on two +4 bosses anymore in the godly manner they used to. They are complaining that they can't reasonably take on one single even conn boss anymore. A rather substantial difference that negates much of your argument.
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They are just +1.
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No they're not. They're more. In some way - both in terms of hit points and in terms of damage, they are far more than +1. I have more trouble with +1 bosses now than I ever had with +2 before the patch.
From my own comparison of numbers before issue 3 went live, bosses recieved a +40% to hit points and a +40% to damage. I don't know if accuracy was boosted as well, but I certainly hope that was not the case.
If bosses, prior to issue 3, went up 40% in hit points and damage every level, I suspect people would have complained about boss difficulty long ago.
I'm not sure what the difference is, but this +1 boost in difficulty is not true.
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I compared test to live a few days before issue 3 went live, in creys folly. a lvl32 warhulk and crey protector both went from 1460 to 2355 hp (just checked on live, it is still correct), a 61% increase. Their damage went up 61% as well.
Fighting a +1 makes my powers around 10% less effective and accurate. I dont know how much it affects the enemy, but it is not 61%. Perhaps it is a bug/misstake.
Now I dont have much problem with it... but it seems way too harsh for many.
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Can we get a response to this? It seems obvious that Statesman is at best...misinformed about the implemented status of some of the changes. They are starting to stack up a bit-the number of generic bosses without any warning in "solo" missions, the number of malta sappers in a spawned group, now the amount of the increase in power of bosses between issues 2 and 3.
Given the choice, I think it would have been better for the devs to up minion and LT hps and exp and to have left bosses the same.
Gives a little more challenge for all builds, but doesn't make the missions un soloable for those who built their chars for concept rather than performance.
States, I understand what you were shooting at but I don't think this was the right solution. For the myriad reasons listed by these posters, I think you should roll-back the change and take another crack at it.
Cheers!
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And I don't feel they should. Besides what is a "successful" game anyway? Is it successful if you design and build a game that you are dissapointed in?
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If success is determined by whether or not your target audience likes the game and you want to succeed then yes even if you are dissapointed it is still a success.
On the other hand if you define success as making a game that you feel proud of and damn all the critics and profit margins then success is determined by self gratification.
You seem to be argueing that the devs should ignore their market in order to fullfill their vision and to let their product die rather than answer a market demand.
In the majority of every market that I can think of businesses that succeed provide both a means of meeting market demands and a clear direction for meeting those demands. In the end though they are selling a product to a market not making a product for themselves.
I am sure someone will come along and say that if they catered to every whim of the market and tried to please everyone that no one would be happy. More the fool you are for not understanding the above.
Having a clear direction to meeting the market demand is what is in question here, not whether or not they are willing to please everyone.
Many people thought this game was directed at people who wanted to play an MMO but did not like the forced teaming aspects of MMOs. That is the market that was targeted. It turns out that the market they should have been targeting was something else all together. As statesman has said this game was really aimed at people who want to team and that should have been clear at the outset before people bought this game.
Statements about how this game was going to be solo friendly were made eroniously in light of the design focus. This game was misrepresented as an innovative MMO that was breaking out of the mold. Instead we find that it was designed to be just like all the other cookie cutter MMOs with a better combat system. Kudos on the combat system and thanks but no thanks on the rest of your group dynamics. Balance through imbalance has been done to death and could have been left out of the game entirely. I personally think that if Statesman regrets one thing it was the implimentation of the Archetype System.
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Emphasis below is mine:
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I want to make the difficulty of the later levels resemble early gameplay. At first, some players will decry "but I can't do what I used to! Ack! I can't solo two +4 bosses anymore?" True - but they'll have fun battling 3 white minions - which is something you can say at level 15, but not at level 35. Long term, the entire game will sparkle once this sort of balance is restored - because so much of the game design hangs upon it.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sounds like it's an important, maybe even crucial part of their design of the game to me.
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If I though that was fun, I'd play any of a half-dozen other MMOs on the market. God knows most of my real-life friends are already.
I'm not playing those games. I am playing CoH. There are reason for that. Should the reasons go away, so will CoH for me.
Three white minions is not heroic.
Required teaming to experience more than three white minions is not what I'm looking for.
I accept that those are nothing more than my humble opinion. Looking around, I feel justified that my opinion is not uncommon.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
[ QUOTE ]
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And I don't feel they should. Besides what is a "successful" game anyway? Is it successful if you design and build a game that you are dissapointed in?
[/ QUOTE ]
If success is determined by whether or not your target audience likes the game and you want to succeed then yes even if you are dissapointed it is still a success.
On the other hand if you define success as making a game that you feel proud of and damn all the critics and profit margins then success is determined by self gratification.
You seem to be argueing that the devs should ignore their market in order to fullfill their vision and to let their product die rather than answer a market demand.
In the majority of every market that I can think of businesses that succeed provide both a means of meeting market demands and a clear direction for meeting those demands. In the end though they are selling a product to a market not making a product for themselves.
I am sure someone will come along and say that if they catered to every whim of the market and tried to please everyone that no one would be happy. More the fool you are for not understanding the above.
Having a clear direction to meeting the market demand is what is in question here, not whether or not they are willing to please everyone.
Many people thought this game was directed at people who wanted to play an MMO but did not like the forced teaming aspects of MMOs. That is the market that was targeted. It turns out that the market they should have been targeting was something else all together. As statesman has said this game was really aimed at people who want to team and that should have been clear at the outset before people bought this game.
Statements about how this game was going to be solo friendly were made eroniously in light of the design focus. This game was misrepresented as an innovative MMO that was breaking out of the mold. Instead we find that it was designed to be just like all the other cookie cutter MMOs with a better combat system. Kudos on the combat system and thanks but no thanks on the rest of your group dynamics. Balance through imbalance has been done to death and could have been left out of the game entirely. I personally think that if Statesman regrets one thing it was the implimentation of the Archetype System.
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It needs to be a balance of both, of course.
For this boss change, maybe a "real" change to the +1 level (or a smidge less) might work out really well.
But with the change as it is and the difficulty slider too, they both amplified the problems of either horrendously.
Fighting huge spawns of Nemesis with snipers and bosses in just about every mob was *insane*. I died like four times (after respeccing myself a bit too, I admit) but the game was not fun or playable for me then.
Still here, even after all this time!
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Great. That goes to whether the changes are crucial to their "vision" though, not crucial to the success of the game. They could end up with an incredibly successful and fun game that's miles away from their original vision.
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And I don't feel they should. Besides what is a "successful" game anyway? Is it successful if you design and build a game that you are dissapointed in?
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A "successful" game, I would say, is one that's fun to play. If it's fun to play, a game designer shouldn't be disappointed in it, even if it doesn't match The Vision. (If "fun" is not the goal, what the heck are you doing designing games?) If The Vision requires that fun features be removed, that's a sign that The Vision needs to be carefully reexamined. The best would be a compromise to allow The Vision and the fun features to co-exist.
Note here that the "fun feature," and I think most would agree with me, is not the ability to solo +4 bosses: it's the ability to solo interesting missions. The Vision requiring that bosses equal 1.5 heroes does not conflict directly with that, and I think a lot of people have offered good suggestions on how to reconcile the two.
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I hope they wouldn't tamper with that success in order to achieve some vision that may or may not work or be fun.
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Like any artist I'd want them to be happy with their creation.
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If George Lucas planned to re-edit the original Star Wars movies and replace them with six hours of Hayden Christensen looking pouty with Jar-Jar dancing in the background, claiming that it was his original vision, you'd be lined up to trade in your Star Wars DVDs for the new version?
Lothart, there's a real simple problem for me with what you describe.
I'm not paying for the devs to be artisically satisfied with their product.
I'm paying for an entertainment service.
The analog is that we all were paying a monthly fee for all the hot dogs, hamburgers, and coke we could eat. But because the cooks decided hot dogs and hamburgers were much too bad for us and too far from what they hoped to provide eventually, they started giving us escargot and espresso.
But we are paying because we all heard how great the hot dogs were. All the condiments were free, and you could stop in, get a hot dog, and run back out. We all told our friends, and they came and ate there with us. But the place was fun and had a good history, so it was worth visiting alone, too.
But now you have to wait an hour for the escargot. It's still free, and it still comes with condiments, but strangely they are still ketsup and yellow mustard. And certain escargot that replaced the really big hamburgers now can't be ordered unless you have a party of three or more.
My silly analogy above would be wonderful for the chefs. But I would completely stop going, stop paying, and find something new to do with my time. If enough people did that, it sure wouldn't help the chefs, would it?
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
Hello Statesman,
Most of the posts on this thread are saying the same things I would say. The increases to the generic bosses are just too much. And the suggestions many others have put forward are very good alternatives.
If your intention was to boost the named bosses, that I could understand. Maybe turn them into more Elite Bosses, with the appropriate boost in stats. But the generic bosses in missions and on the streets, I feel, should remain at the same level as pre-Issue 3.
Just really wanted to throw my voice in with the many others who didn't like this change.
Prof. Entropy---Lvl 29 DM/DA Scrapper on Justice.
I think the datamining should be done now. So far the opinion seems to be, "let the mission slider determine boss level/difficulty". The few that don't want it rolled back, or alterable are just that...few.
I played for two years in AC2, was monarch of a very large, very active allegiance. (Over 4k members...) Every quest, hunt, etc, after lvl 30 was something you needed a group for. After logging in, I was constantly answering the calls for help from lower level players, and very rarely got the opportunity to do any quests for myself, as they all required a group, and I just didnt have the time to do that sort of thing.. I had to spend literally 5-6 hours a day on line, just to get about a half hour of playtime in.
When CoH came out, I bought it, to check it out, as I do with most MMO's, and was immediately attracted to the game. The manual that came with the game, if I remember correctly, said, "every AT can solo, just not all at the same level..." (Could be wrong, but I'm wrong a lot..) I made blasters, tankers, scrappers, controllers, defenders, and had fun with all of them. I had so much fun, I cancelled my AC2 account. Because I could finally just log in and PLAY. No teams needed, but I could do so if I wished. I could play for an hour, I could play for 5 hours, and I didnt HAVE to team up.
Please, please, please, listen to the overwhelming response from your playerbase, and allow the boss difficulty to be set by mission slider or group size, and remove the multiple clicky things from missions, if the mission was received by a solo hero. I group every night, but primarily with my gf, and would prefer to keep it that way, only teaming with unknowns when I WISH to do so, not because I have to.
It is a game, and as long as we play by the rules, the way we play should be our choice. Is basketball any less fun when you are playing one on one, or playing with a full 5 member team? (Not from my perspective, since I'm a ball hog anyway 
)
A hallmark of MMO's is the open ended game play. Do what you want, when you want. Let's keep that in mind...
I think they need to change the pricing structure so that we only pay for when we play. Then when the game gets nerfed in such a manner that many of us can no longer play in our chosen way we don't have to pay anything until it's fixed.
I shouldn't be billed when arbitrary changes are made to software I've paid for and the changes are such that I can no longer use it under the same pretenses that it was sold to me.
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Sounds like it's an important, maybe even crucial part of their design of the game to me.
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In that case, the game succeeded on the design not being realized. For me, now that it has been the entertainment value has plummetted.
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I don't really think of them as artists (or, at least, I only secondarily think of them as artists). I primarily think of them as product manufacturers or engineers. They aren't putting out a product just so people can appreciate its aesthetic appeal and well balanced theory... they're putting out a product that people are supposed to enjoy.
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And filmakers don't? Or musicians?
I say artist first and foremost, and there is where we have a basic values clash.
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Dwindling? I dunno. Smaller? Yes, but that's to be expected for all sorts of reasons, including competition. Let's assume it IS dwindling though; the game had a high soloability at launch. I haven't seen many changes that increased that soloability, but I've seen several that have hurt it. Why the reluctance to assign the "dwindling" to the shift towards solo-unfriendly gameplay?
And guess what? A lot of these "loyal fans" you're concerned about are on the message boards saying they don't like the changes.
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Just that the industry belief seems to be that people who group and form social bonds in the game world are more likely to be loyal. That may be a myth for all I know.
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Then I hope I don't purchase any games by you.
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You can't at this time. I mostly worked on online web games. One was bought out by a major competitor just so they could close it. One got embroiled in a legal issue and the site owner felt it was not worth the trouble of fighting so closed it.
However, I did have a fair amount of design input as one of the core playtesters on the upcoming WWE: Know Your Role d20 RPG so you may wish to steer clear of that.
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"Not working as intended" does not mean "broken." The Devs might have unintentionally stumbled upon a fun game design. If a feature is fun and the playerbase enjoys it, then I'd say it isn't broken.
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If there was a bug that levelled people to 50 by typing in a word there would be members in the playerbase who would enjoy it. Would you still say that wasn't broken?
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Especially if the fix (the return to "as intended")makes the playerbase enjoy the game less.
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We're miles apart on core values underlying this debate. I fail to see how we can hope to reach any form of consensus.
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That's extremely foolish. You're running a company. You have investors and employees. You have hundreds of thousands of customers who are playing and enjoying themselves, and they've spent at a minimum of $50 each (usually much more) to play your game.
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I'm not a capitalist. The econmoic arguements won't sway me.
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They're having fun as the game is but not as you want it to be, so you'd shut it down. The customer be damned... you want a designer-oriented game.
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I wouldn't shut it down in one fell swoop. I'd fix it and hope it remained viable. Let's look at it this way. If the core design is borked how can I add new content? How can I take any steps at all to balance issues that crop up? If the designers are not happy with how the game plays do you think that's not going to affect the future of the game?
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If you're a game designer, as you say, please let us know which games you work on. I would like to avoid them.
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See above, I have next to nothing on the go right now.
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The problem, Lothart, is not that people are complaining that they can't take on two +4 bosses anymore in the godly manner they used to. They are complaining that they can't reasonably take on one single even conn boss anymore. A rather substantial difference that negates much of your argument.
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I fail to see how when Statesman says in the first post in this thread that 1 Boss=1.5 heroes.
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The problem, Lothart, is not that people are complaining that they can't take on two +4 bosses anymore in the godly manner they used to. They are complaining that they can't reasonably take on one single even conn boss anymore. A rather substantial difference that negates much of your argument.
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I fail to see how when Statesman says in the first post in this thread that 1 Boss=1.5 heroes.
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You are far too fixated on what Statesman says and his vision. If you can't understand that people are disagreeing with the vision itself then you're going to be posting a lot of counterpoint in here to little effect.
As consumers of this game service, we have every place in expressing dissatisfaction with an expressed vision that was only recently inflicted on us. We are trying to convince those who control the direction of the game that the reality they started with was more fun than that vision.
Should what the game went live with have never changed? Of course not. Should bosses be tougher than they were pre-I3? Perhaps so. Should people have to team to do missions? Many, many respondants in several threads say no.
This is an online game. Even FPS online games change, suffer through rebalance, "nerfs", and evolution.
Let me tell you a story about an FPS called Tribes. It was released by the now-defunct Dynamix as a way to recoup costs on an engine they developed for another game.
It was a team-based shooter. You had a jetpack and could fly in a limited fashion, but you always had to land again.
When it was released, people hoofed around a lot. It was an outdoor game with large, mostly empty hills and valleys with a few buildings, etc. Combat was fairly slow, but the game was fun.
Then people discovered a bug. If you constantly jumped on a sloped surface, the physics engine removed most of the simulated friction you had with it. Skillful use of this allowed you to slide down hills (and with momentum, up the other side). Then the lift from your jetpack let you catapult long distances, and the momentum from "skiing" (as it became called) down hills let you achieve tremendous speeds. The game was changed dramaticallty.
And it was a blast.
This was declared as a bug. It was never in the dev's vision for the game.
But it was so much fun they left it in.
Not too long ago, a 3rd version of Tribes was released. Like the one before it, "skiing" was built in by design.
Sometimes the mistakes - the things furthest from the vision - are the right thing to stick with.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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So you dispute that the player base is dwindling? This is hardly surprising yet, at the same time, now is the time to look at who are going to be the long term loyal segments of the player base and start working to keep them loyal.
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IMO, that would be the casual, slow-leveling, story-oriented players who enjoy the game for its story and its variety, and who will keep logging in for months to do arcs and try out alts. NOT the people who race to 50, get bored, and wander off to try the next Kewl New MMOG.
Just my opinion, of course.
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Let's see, been here since January 8, 2004, restarted on opening day. My 'main' in 42, and I have 4 alts as well in the Level 25 - 30 range. Yep, I'm certainly 'racing to 50' and bypassing all the content to get to the endgame asap.
Please. I guess it's impossible to believe that ANYONE enjoys the difficulty change to Bosses; sorry I'm not a paying customer who's voice should have equal right to be heard, since I obviously am either a Hardcore power gamer, or a runner of Uber builds.
Did you miss the part of my lat post where I started what my characters were, and the fact that I aven't bother with the 'build advice' on the BBS? Guess so.
The fact is: The game (and Bosses) get very easy for most AT's post 30. Once Conbtrollers have their pets, they do just fine. Sorry, but I don't think you can state that only the casual players are left. hell, every night, 4 of the 11 servers are in the yellow Post I3, when previously they were all in the green. Don't know about you, but with 1.5 weeks having passed, and the server load increasing, I would say most players are enjoying the changes, and have RETURNED to playing the game again.
Well, I can say for the most part that I do enjoy the game, in fact it's the greatest game I've ever played. The constant updates (free) are an excellent way of maintaining interest and keeping the servers active as you pointed out Armsman. However, Issue 3 has been something of a mixed blessing for me.
I play a Rad / Rad defender and while the debuff boosts have been fine I am having a terrible time being able to take on even an even con boss. Problems to the point that with some villain types it is impossible for me to finish the mission. As a result I am being FORCED to group to complete my missions. At first glance this isn't a problem but as a defender, I am most often being asked to do TF or help people with their missions. Owing to the fact that a defender can't tear through their missions at higher levels like scrappers, blasters and controllers do I'm finding that my missions are being left behind. My class just isn't soloable anymore. If I want to be able to work through my own story arcs on my own I should be able to do so without resorting to having to build my char like an "offender" or carbon copy a build posted on the boards. I would like to continue having fun playing this game but following my story arcs is one of the most enjoyable parts of the game IMHO. The boss increases are just too much to make this feasible.
I am asking that perhaps the bosses should be scaled back just a bit, scale defender HP up to medium or perhaps just apply the "uber buffness" to boss mobs at the end of story arcs or when grouping. The current changes make it much to hard to solo for certain classes at differing levels. Death & Debt while sometimes unavoidable should not be something that is a constant worry for players who are just on for a small amount of time and looking to have fun. Being forced into a group all the time is not my idea of a good time.
I think I've rambled long enough . . .
Ni Cad 36 Rad / Rad on Justice
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I don't really think of them as artists (or, at least, I only secondarily think of them as artists). I primarily think of them as product manufacturers or engineers. They aren't putting out a product just so people can appreciate its aesthetic appeal and well balanced theory... they're putting out a product that people are supposed to enjoy.
[/ QUOTE ]
And filmakers don't? Or musicians?
I say artist first and foremost, and there is where we have a basic values clash.
[/ QUOTE ]
Let's use filmmakers for an examples, then.
Films, other than art films, ARE quite often tailored to give the public what they want. Movies are test screened, and sometimes entire movies are rewritten or endings reshot because the public just isn't happy about the original version. In a very real sense, movies (as an economic enterprise) will often HAVE to adapt to the will of the public if they want to succeed.
And before you reply that MMOGs should be like art films, think about whether that makes sense. Those are usually made with very limited budgets. They're usually shown in limited release to a very narrow audience. If you built a MMOG model around art films ("creative vision is supreme, and everybody else be damned"), it would NEVER be viable. You'd never be able to pay for development, much less the servers and maintenance.
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Dwindling? I dunno. Smaller? Yes, but that's to be expected for all sorts of reasons, including competition. Let's assume it IS dwindling though; the game had a high soloability at launch. I haven't seen many changes that increased that soloability, but I've seen several that have hurt it. Why the reluctance to assign the "dwindling" to the shift towards solo-unfriendly gameplay?
And guess what? A lot of these "loyal fans" you're concerned about are on the message boards saying they don't like the changes.
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Just that the industry belief seems to be that people who group and form social bonds in the game world are more likely to be loyal. That may be a myth for all I know.
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I would strongly argue that it's a myth. Part of what CoH's appeal to me (and to many others) was that it was SUPPOSED to be a departure from industry norms, with innovative features such as quick combat and solo-friendliness. As long as CoH operated under those rules, it would really be in a market unto itself.
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Then I hope I don't purchase any games by you.
[/ QUOTE ]
You can't at this time. I mostly worked on online web games. One was bought out by a major competitor just so they could close it. One got embroiled in a legal issue and the site owner felt it was not worth the trouble of fighting so closed it.
However, I did have a fair amount of design input as one of the core playtesters on the upcoming WWE: Know Your Role d20 RPG so you may wish to steer clear of that.
[/ QUOTE ]
Gotcha. Will avoid.
Although, I'm more open to the "creative vision" idea of a fire-and-forget game that's released once (a la most console games). With those, the public knows what to expect and can choose whether to participate.
With a game that's an ongoing endeavor, however, the public would often be duped into playing if the game functions one way during its infancy (and when most of the reviews/press focuses on it) and then makes a major paradigm shift months into its existence.
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"Not working as intended" does not mean "broken." The Devs might have unintentionally stumbled upon a fun game design. If a feature is fun and the playerbase enjoys it, then I'd say it isn't broken.
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If there was a bug that levelled people to 50 by typing in a word there would be members in the playerbase who would enjoy it. Would you still say that wasn't broken?
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Maybe not, in this scenario:
- The Devs have an extensive testing period. They are aware this feature is included in the game.
- They market the game, and one of the features they solicit is "Jump to 50!"
- They release the game. It's a huge success. Part of every review heralds the "Jump to 50" feature as one of the reasons. The players love the "Jump to 50" feature as well, because it allows them to experience end-game content. They still have incentive to play the rest of the game, however, to experience that content.
With those facts, then I would say it wasn't broken, and it shouldn't be changed.
OTOH, if the game was never intended to be that way, and that feature was released as a bug, and they fixed it as soon as it was obvious, then yes.
(As an aside: Bear in mind LOTS of games have cheat codes that allow people to access all the game's features... that doesn't keep people from playing through the real content of the game.)
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Especially if the fix (the return to "as intended")makes the playerbase enjoy the game less.
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We're miles apart on core values underlying this debate. I fail to see how we can hope to reach any form of consensus.
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Agreed.
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That's extremely foolish. You're running a company. You have investors and employees. You have hundreds of thousands of customers who are playing and enjoying themselves, and they've spent at a minimum of $50 each (usually much more) to play your game.
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I'm not a capitalist. The econmoic arguements won't sway me.
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Well they should, because this is a business. Customers pay, and developers work for money.
The second I start getting this game for free is when I develop tolerance for artistic license which affects overall fun.
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They're having fun as the game is but not as you want it to be, so you'd shut it down. The customer be damned... you want a designer-oriented game.
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I wouldn't shut it down in one fell swoop. I'd fix it and hope it remained viable. Let's look at it this way. If the core design is borked how can I add new content? How can I take any steps at all to balance issues that crop up? If the designers are not happy with how the game plays do you think that's not going to affect the future of the game?
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The core design ISN'T borked, just because it isn't how you wanted it. If the game is fun and allows everybody to select their level of challenge, it's working, even if it's not working as intended.
MMOGs are a dynamic environment. Players have to deal with changes. So should Devs. If they can't deal with the game building a life of its own outside of their vision, they should release offline games over which they have final say.
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States, it has been the experience of a great many players (mentioned on other threads) that *multiple* unnamed bosses show up on missions that they entered alone.
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I did a sky raider mission where i encounter 4 boss.
Then a family mission where there was 1 freak and 1 family together.
First off, I'll admit that I didn't read the entire thread (I'd rather play than read for the most part). Appologies if others have already thrown in this idea:
Add a new step to damage calculation at the end:
if x > (.5 * total_hp) then x assign (.5 * total_hp), where x is equal to the damage from any given attack after all mitigation has been calculated.
In a nutshell this means that if you take more than half your hitpoints in damage from a single attack after resistances, the balance over half is eliminated. Tada, no one-shotting. Obviously the percentage can be adjusted per dev desires, and the extra calculation could be eliminated from certain scenarios. Face it, the devs might want us to be one-shotted now and then.
Just wanted to drop a line...
I've been discussing many of these issues internally with the team...and I think I might have something interesting that satisfies both parties...but I've got to do more research first.
I know some people were upset when I didn't at least post a status in the Burn & Invulnerability threads (even when there wasn't much else to say), so I thought I'd try to avoid that mistake again!
How can any dev decide for me or anyone else that bosses were too easy to defeat?
I, for one, did not find this to be the case. I've had plenty of missions in which I got maimed by an even-level boss.
I am sorry I have to say this, but it truly feels the dev-team have once again catered to the needs of the über-builds and powergamers, the min/maxers. I pick powers because I think they might be fun. Rarely do I read the boards to get info on powers, since a lot of people here cannot seem to agree on anything, let alone the usefulness of powers.
Again, for my scrapper it's not that much of a big deal. But I do have several defenders gathering dust right now. And that's a damn shame, because I think defenders are probably the classiest archetype to play. Great power-combos, useful for solo and team-play.
Getting back to the point: bosses certainly weren't "easy" for everyone. Oftentimes they were quite a challenge, sometimes downright impossible without levelling up first.