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If you want the "threat of death" you now have a slider that you can push to the extreme setting ! There was no need to force everyone into this situation . I could kill for hours bosses without being in real danger and still not get bored . You see ? Everyone is different . LEts just hope Statesman will come with something acceptable for both of us
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Seriously not trying to start an arguement but ... if you notice I do have mine turned up all the way. That's what the "invincibility" comment was about. Sorry guess I should have made that more clear.
What I was saying is that even with it turned up all the way I still wish there was an even higher setting on the slider.
Jolly Green Giant
Grey Gargoyle
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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!
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Thanks for dropping a line in at least.
Anyway, having played with it a bit more...I'm dealing with the bosses okay on an individual basis, when one crops up in a mission, with the right inspirations and the right strategy, I can generally take one on, tho it can get dicey and if I get caught by suprise, I'm screwed very, -very- quickly. All in all, it reminds me a bit more of when I was a lowbie and was getting plowed by bone daddies. ;p
But Task forces that are geared to the old boss difficulty are still a huge problem. That TV respec trial with the freak tanks was just absurd. It's not just that they were tougher bosses, or that there were about ten of them to our six heroes, it's that they were all +2, +3 to boot. Two hits, and my regen scrapper was down. Most of our party was one-shotted. Only our invulnerability tank was able to hold up for any time at all, and he just couldn't keep going against that much power. It just wasn't feasible.
Anyway, it's good to know you're looking into it, and I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with for a compromise. Keep us updated!
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!
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As for why we put Bosses in missions at all in other words, why isnt everything solo-able the answer is simple. We want gameplay that encourages the best part of the game: teaming up. Soloing is fine, but a MMP really shines when you meet other people and play alongside them. Ive made many good virtual friends through other MMPs that I simply would not have done if I could solo everything all the time. I admit it: Im anti-social. Its hard to get me to group up with strangers. But after I do it, I always wonder why dont I do this more often
I might still be anti-social in real life, but in MMPs Im a social butterfly (I have no doubt that this will appear in sigs for years to come
)
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Okay, here is the one problem I have with this concept States... Yes, CoH is a MMO and yes, MMO's shine when your group with other people. I agree with that.
BUT, if you like to solo over grouping, do you have a better game in mind that would be more fun that I can switch to? Any suggestions? Cause I think freedom Force sucks, and it is about the closest thing to this genre of game I can think of. I'm infatuated with the genre, and the way CoH plays. So even though it shines when you play with a team, I think it still shines when you are off soloing. I would really hope that you do too.
You built this great game for a Massive amount of people. People are diverse, different people like different things. The people who like to solo pay the same money for the game and get their enjoyment from a different aspect of the game, and I dont think the solo playstyle should be disrupted too much.
And the final truth of the matter is that the people who could solo before, still can. If you really think making a level 50 boss as tough as a 51 boss is going to inhibit my Fire Tanker in the least, you are dead wrong. And making Mobs tougher for the other classes who already have a tough enough time is EXACTLY the reason why I have a level 50 Fire Tank instead of a Level 50 Empathy Defender (See Purple Patch).
You guys have done an exceptional job with this game, but it has taken on a life of itself. I understand the amount of time and dedication put into the game by the development team, and I know you had a vision of how you wanted everything to work, but some things have worked out a little differently. Changing some things too much to move the game back to the original vision of the game can be pretty detrimental to the game itself (Again, see Purple Patch).
CoH may not be EXACTLY as you intended it to be, but it is still a marvelous game, and I think that the Devs may need to understand that the game is what it is. Guide it, groom it, build it, but a big change to the fundamentals needs to wait a few years City of Heroes II. Your baby is growing up. Let it be what it is.
Just my two cents on the matter.
States, what kind of comics do you read? I want to know, because you've been billed as some kind of comic book brainiac, and yet, your holding onto some idea that 1 hero = 3 white minions, and i want to know what, in all of comic books, do you find a hero so pethitic, he can only handle 3 MINIONS at a time? Man, even side kicks handle more then that at a time...
and now bosses can't be, or, better said, you don't WANT them to be soloable... becauce it's common place to see spiderman slowly wade through a warehouse full of thugs, only to get to the lead thug, and have to park it and phone of back up... yeah, like i said, what comic books did you grow up reading? I ones i grew up reading played out nothing like what your working to achive. Hell, even the leagon of superheros, a book that's very life blood was the super team, didn't protay there heros to be as weak as you want us to be. Even Matter Eather Lad could handle more then 3 thugs at a time if he had to.
But no, not us. We need back up to handle a boss now. (well, at least, that's what you want. as it is now, we, the higher level guys still don't find bosses to be all that challanging yet, which once you find out, i'm afraid will only result in more nerfs/buffings...)
And don't get me started on AV's. I've almost come to terms with the fact that, I'm not a REAL hero who can handle his own arch nemisis. I have not hope of defeating my own personal Joker. No, when the AV's show up, i have to tuck tail and run for help, no matter how unheroic or out of Char it is, and get help. "You just wait here Anti Matter.... I'm getting my SG on the phone, and were going to kick your !@#!@" Man, what hero's were are. Were using thug tatics to take out the thugs. 
How heroic.
And the funny thing is... what completely cracks me up is, dispite your best attempts at forcing the group... And yes that's what your doing, you remind me of the button men in IP."You don't HAVE to pay our "protection" fee, but...." You get the idea? No, we don't HAVE to group... we can street sweep blues and greens to 50 if we REALLY want to, but if we want to do anything REMOTELY cool, it seems we HAVE to group now...
it hasn't worked. LoL. I STILL can't get a team together to run missions. I can't get a team together for Zero G, nor any of the alts i've made over the last few days (trying to find a scrapper build i like... no luck so far.)
The ONLY people who want me on a team are PL'ers, (can you PL my new epic? "No, now go away and place me on ignore.) and wolf herding groups. (who only really want extra bodies or a bridge.) And That's it. Maybe it's just me, but i don't see any more grouping now then before, dispite all your changes, and the only thing these changes have done is make the squishies life's harder. THANKS ALOT.
KingSnake. (just another screwed squishie) 
@KingSnake - Triumph Server
@PrinceSnake
My common sense is tingling... ~ Deadpool
If you can't learn to do something well... learn to enjoy doing it poorly...
Making bosses harder doesn't encourage teaming, it encourages dependence.
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Note: It's very important that you don't get something like this in the contact's mission selection window:
Go Rescue the hostages from the Freakshow!
and then get this once you selected the mission from your contact:
By the way, you'll need help, because you'll be facing Dreck!
Or, seeing, once you select the mission for your nav bar:
Arrest Dreck and his crew, rescue 5 hostages.
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I got that! Or rather, one like it:
"Go rescue these hostages from the Banished Pantheon home dimension! You have two hours!"
"Okay, I'm on it!"
"Great. By the way, you also have to defeat Adamastor!"
Fortunately, I had a team at the time I took the mission.
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LOL. That's *exactly* the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Got one this morning: Medicate the stockbrokers after they've been gassed by the Devouring Earth. Timed mission. When I got into the mission, was told "Medicate 5 stockbrokers, find clues." Ok. No problem. Got to the last room, and what did I find but a "generic" Devoured. Wasn't named or anything. He wasn't too much trouble for my tanker, fortunately. It helped to avoid getting hit that I was able to taunt some other minions down from a nearby balcony.
Ok, full disclosure:
I like COH as a game, I like MMO's in general. I like soloing a lot. I have nothing agaist teaming and sometimes I like it a lot.
So why do I think that "encouraging" teaming like this is a bad idea?
Think on these for a moment:
How much does a bad team annoy you? That would vary from experience to experience and person to person right?
Home much _more_ fun do you get teaming in COH compared to soloing
What is the ratio of bad team/good team ++fun events?
How much time do you have to play the game, how valuable is that time?
If you find a good group and run with those guys/girls would you feel obliged to turn up when they were playing?
For me, 99% of the time:
1. I really want to play this game, COH
2. I'm not going to risk blowing at least an hour with people who annoy me.
3. The missions are _single player content_ not group. The second you do them as a group you end up re-doing the same missions for different people which really hurts the "suspension of disbelief". If you like the story then it runs better when you ignore the rest of the players.
4. Requirement to do something I don't want to do often terminates what fun is available right there.
So I team with my RL friends when they're on (because I know them outside the game I feel no requirement to be online) and solo the rest of the time.
I've done the Frostfire arc/fight 5 times now. And thats just between two players. If you want to encourage teaming give different people _totally_ different content, that will make people want to team. To see what the other guy/girl is doing/getting.
E.G.
Friend: "Sure I'd love to team, but I pissed of 'Bone rictus' last week and he keeps escaping from jail and ambushing me, that might cause trouble. I should try and find his base and sort him out for good"
Me: "Really Who's 'Bone rictus'?"
Friend: 'Oh he's a Skull boss, but different from the rest. I'm not sure about his background yet but I think he was experimented on by Vazilok, he has some really odd power, and his minions are really freaky'
Me: "Cool, I'll help you with that"
See? right now there is very little variation in the minion/lt/boss mold for each villan group. Sometime the have... what... 4-10 lines of text and a name? Lets run through the variations that are "easy" to do:
1. Shaders changing the colour/texture of the outfits
2. Mix and match the anims more
3. Change the colour of the attacks.
4. Chain some short attacks to make more interesting ones.
5. More reactive flavour text.
6. Bosses that act like bosses and not minions-with-more-powers.
7. More scripted scenes like the ones on strigia isle, but in missions and randomise the stances so they aren't so similar.
8. More temp powers that arent based on normal powers (Purple healing lightening). Make sure all teammates get the powers.
And some things that would require a little more DB storage and coding
1. Have villan bosses remember players that fight them. as such appear in other mission arc as secondary characters.
2. Have villans taunt the player in a appropriate manner:
player was in the previous mission with this boss but did <10% total damage, "Ahhh _playername_ finally I have you all to myself I think you'll find this slightly more painfull without your friends to do your dirty work for you"
player was in the previous mission with this boss and took the most damage but still did very little damage "_playername_! so good to see you, I have missed the sound of my fist pounding on that empty head of yours"
etc etc
This is _imho_ the way to encourage teaming, carrot rather than stick.
First, as this is my first post, I must begin by complementing the R&D staff of Cryptic for the extraordinary acheivement that City of Heroes is. So many elements, from the graphics and animation through the game and graphic design to constant content and game improvements demonstrate rare creativity and diligence, not just for game development but for software development generally. Thank you.
I also want to commend the majority of responses on this thread which have been thoughtful and carefully considered. No wonder teaming with heroes like these can be so much fun.
Nevertheless, I have to applaud the previous poster's many good suggestions and fundamental summary about using the carrot instead of the stick. Another metaphor you might want to consider is the one about herding cats. That was coined for software developers but applies equally to players in my humble opinion.
I'm empathetic to Statesman's concern about preserving and creating balance but it also seems to me that the specific issues that the boss changes were supposed to address may not have been defined with sufficient precision to enable clear analysis of the consequences. I cannot believe, given the richness of controls that the developers have in the game, that solo play had to be damaged so much to balance team play. Further, as several others have pointed out, these changes strongly discourage teaming at higher levels: the amount of debt that can be incured does not balance that possible experience gained. I suggest that some risk versus benefit analysis, taking into account the additional time played to eliminate debt would show this clearly.
I hope Cryptic pays particular attention to this thread and the issues in their planning for future patches and updates.
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A solo player (unless the mission calls specifically for a boss in a spawn override) will create spawns with minions and lts. ONLY. My concern at the mid and higher levels is that a solo Archetype isnt all that powerful.
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That may be your intention, but that's not what's happening. Last night my wife was clearing out some older story arc missions by herself. One of the missions she went into, which didn't say "Defeat SomeGuy and his minions," spawned 4 Warhulks. If she'd been doing this mission at the intended level, she would have been unable to defeat those Warhulks.
There is an issue that the game does get easier at some point. I'd move that point to somewhere between 30 and 35, because while you can start getting SOs at 25th level (actually, you can buy them at 22nd level), on their own characters start having the influence to use mostly SOs in the 30-35 level range.
Just like the devs looked at the different types of villains and tweaked the xp for them (appreciate the increased xp for sappers), they should look at the individual bosses and tweak their difficulty. 5th column human bosses were underpowered at this level, so I assume that council bosses are too. Dark Mages, if you have status protection (and most do at this point, if nothing else have enough inspiration slots to carry lots of disciplines) were underpowered. Masters of Illusion were NOT underpowered.
And same with Archvillains. Tyrant was underpowered. Nemesis was underpowered. The three Carnie AVs were a challenge for every group I've been in that fought them.
If the problem is the game was too easy, a targetted increase and a bit gentler increase (say, +25% HP and +10% damage for the weakest) would be a better solution.
If the goal is to stop soloing, first I oppose the goal, secondly the way it was done is hurting teams as much as it is hurting soloers.
My current primary character just hit 22nd level. But I bring out my 50th level blaster to offer help to my SuperGroup when they need help. I'll be very reluctant to offer help to an individual who wants help with a 49th and up level Master of Illusion, and I'll be very reluctant to offer help to any group facing a Carnie AV.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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I do like the new boss changes, solo or teamed it adds a dangerous quality to teaming that was lacking before. Without the threat of death I am one of the ones that got quickly bored.
I regularly team up with a Defender and we are always saying how even on "invincibility" mode the missions are too easy. We actually get happy when there are a couple bosses next to each other in our missions.
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Can you place your statement in context? Your Defender buddy, is he a bubbler/empath? Do you always play with him? What AT are you playing?
My nrg/nrg blaster experience with I3 is as follows:
1) teamed with a good emapth defender and staying out of melee range we can defeat a yellow boss as long as the defender spams nothing but heals
2) teamed with a bubbler defender with the bubble that keeps bosses out of melee range and having bubbles everywhere we can defeat a yellow boss, but if he gets lucky I need to use a heal inspiration
3) Solo, if my blaster even attemps an even con boss I have to use a tray full of insiprations and there is no guarantee that I still won't be making a trip to the hospital.
I appreciate your view point, but without know if you are talking about running a scrapper, tanker, etc and the lvl of them there is no way to tell how valid it is to us that are bothered by the change. You didn't read the other messages, but most of us agree the boss changes don't effect all the ATs equally. Btw, my blaster is lvl 37.
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I do like the new boss changes, solo or teamed it adds a dangerous quality to teaming that was lacking before. Without the threat of death I am one of the ones that got quickly bored.
I regularly team up with a Defender and we are always saying how even on "invincibility" mode the missions are too easy. We actually get happy when there are a couple bosses next to each other in our missions.
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Can you place your statement in context? Your Defender buddy, is he a bubbler/empath? Do you always play with him? What AT are you playing?
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Good point there. To expand a bit:
(1) My soloist (SL 36 claws/SR scrapper) is still fine. She was fine on Test - that's where she lives - when Issue 3 was introduced, although fights suddenly took much longer & usually involved lots of CaB inspirations, or a run for the elevator for endurance resting.
(2) My team character (SL 31 dark/dark defender)... not so good. She teams exclusively with two or three blasters - no meleers at all, which has been fine up to this level, pre-Issue 3. Post-Issue 3, we can still tackle orange-con bosses fine; for reds... well, let's just say that even a boss debuffed with Darkest Night is going to hit occasionally, & even with the damage debuff that DN does, one melee hit from a Rikti or a Warhulk is enough to drop my blasters into the red. (Other red-con bosses aren't quite so bad.)
The boss change was over the top, & should be scaled back at the very least.
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but I do recall you once saying that people who prefer to solo are mentally unstable... Should I take your comments in that light?
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Good grief, talk about taken out of context. And for the record, "Sociopath" isn't text book mental instability, quite a number of them function unto themselves quite fine in society, it's only the people that deal with them that pay the price.
And there's no "light" to take my words in since I've built my own controller explicity for soloing, was successful, and will likely do it again with a Defender at some point in the future. If I have any agenda, you won't see me promote it here because I was against this Boss change from the start when we began testing back in November. I stood with a number of players who thought the Minion and LT changes were fine. But I wasn't going to be hasty then and I see no reason to be hasty now.
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and if you aren't a scrapper, a tanker, or a fairly narrow specialized other AT build that can deal with it, your soloing days are over. We are just saying the choice shouldn't have been taken away.
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Well let's face the facts too, these missions have always favored one kind of AT or build for soloing. ...So maybe we need to shift our focus towards new TYPES of missions. Give Tankers "Protect Squishy" missions to solo where all they have to do is Survive an Onslught. Give Controllers and Defenders Infiltrate missions, Protect/Heal tasks, and "Garrison duty" where they buff and heal NPC fighters. And give Blasters spread out missions with very light resistance and tons of objects to blow the sh** out of 
If things are going to change, then why not demmand some new changes that benefit ALL of our playstyles instead of demmanding a return to the same old crusty stuff we've already done way too much of.
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Great ideas here. I'd venture to say that this is probably the way to go. Statesman wants to keep the game challenging because people are losing interest, but the way to make it challenging is not simply to turn up or down some numbers. The way to make it challenging is to present more complex, and varied, not simply more difficult or tedious, situations.
Infinity:
Ellen, 50 MA/Inv Scr
February Night, 14 Ice/Ice Blstr
Guardian:
SilverSwordmaid, 29 Kat/Rgn Scr
Vicious Killer, 33 Emp/Enrgy Def
Electromagness, 40 Rad/Rad Def
Sense of Humor, 50 Fire/En Tank
Virtue:
Kickfest, 50 MA/SR Scr
Freedom:
Glorious Ending, 29 EM/DA Bru
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So maybe we need to shift our focus towards new TYPES of missions.
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Very very good idea! AT specific missions are very in line with the story too: who would ask the invisible girl to do the same mission as he would ask worlverine? Let the contacts preselect some missions that would fit best with the specific hero.
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Note: It's very important that you don't get something like this in the contact's mission selection window:
Go Rescue the hostages from the Freakshow!
and then get this once you selected the mission from your contact:
By the way, you'll need help, because you'll be facing Dreck!
Or, seeing, once you select the mission for your nav bar:
Arrest Dreck and his crew, rescue 5 hostages.
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I got that! Or rather, one like it:
"Go rescue these hostages from the Banished Pantheon home dimension! You have two hours!"
"Okay, I'm on it!"
"Great. By the way, you also have to defeat Adamastor!"
Fortunately, I had a team at the time I took the mission.
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I currently have ALL of my missions slots filled with AV missions. One of them explicitly said, "Hey, you'll be fighting Infernal." Of course, they didn't mention that he was immune to fire, so that means my fire tanker's going to need a group for it. The second went from a "Rescue the hostages" mission to "Hey, go kill Neuron!" when I finished the first part, with no warning that I can remember. The last slot, which I had managed to keep AV-free for all of about 5 missions, got filled last night on a mission that said little more than, "You might want to bring along some friends." That's just messed up. "You might want to bring along some friends" could mean, "There's a boss!" or it could mean "There's a group of glowies that require multiple players" or, apparently, "There's a big frikking archvillain in the fourth part of your mission! Not the first part, when we said you might want to bring friends along, the fourth building you had to run to!"
There needs to be some system to definitively flag what's going to be in a mission. WoW has this and it works great. They flag some enemies as "Elite" and missions which contain those enemies are flagged the same way as well.
I propose a system of symbols, B for Boss, MB for multiple bosses, V for Archvillain, T for Timed, MP for multiple players. Just little icons that appear next to the mission when you get it that indicate that at some point during that mission, you'll be going up against that thing. And I don't mean just the first instance you go to, any of the instances in it before you can go back to your contact are counted for the purposes of the icons.
So if you go to your contact, and the mission he sends you on has four parts, and the first is a hunt 50, the second is timed, the third is a normal instance with a boss, and the fourth contains multiple bosses, the mission would have the T, B, and MB icons. If a player wants to be surprised, make Icon Display an option that could be turned on and off.
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So maybe we need to shift our focus towards new TYPES of missions.
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Very very good idea! AT specific missions are very in line with the story too: who would ask the invisible girl to do the same mission as he would ask worlverine? Let the contacts preselect some missions that would fit best with the specific hero.
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What is a "Defender" specific AT mission? Protect/heal so many "friends" in a mission?
Poor FF!
Still here, even after all this time!
So, here's a sad but sort of funny story illustrating how broken these boss changes are.
I log on my regen scrapper this morning for a couple of minutes before work, and am lucky enough to get immediately recruited by a team to take down the Winter Lord. I'm 25, it's spawned at 28, and I get SK'd up to 27.
So, I'm standing there, whacking the Winter Lord, doing pretty well -- my team and I get him down about to a quarter health. I've been able to survive just fine without needing the defender's heal. I had the usual regen powers, plus the wedding ring +def power, and I use Divine Avalanche (+def parry); a lot of the monster's attacks were whiffing on me, and between my regen rate, Reconstruction, and one Respite in a sticky spot, I was at full health or near it the whole time.
Then we accidentally aggro'd a pack of Freakshow while chasing the running Winter Lord.
A tank swiper (boss, also at level 28) gets one hit on me for 500 points of damage. Combined with the slight amount of damage I've already taken, this is enough to kill me.
Now, looking back at my chat messages, the giant monster of the same level does 210 points of damage with either his ice sword or foot stomp.
Isn't it incredibly insane that the generic boss does two and a half times more damage than the GIANT MONSTER of the same level -- and can hit me when the giant monster keeps missing?
Think about that one a bit.
I just wanted to confirm that last night I as a solo (lv 33), walked into an office building for a stop a weapons deal (this one was crey and Rikti). In the last big room (this map it was the one with an office in a small room 3 levels up, and a middle tier that was a big open ring) there was a rikti lt, and a crey minion talking. But a dozen yards down the squared off ring, there was a rikti +1 lv Chief Soldier (non-named boss). Standing directly under him was a second one. After clearing the rest of the room (praying they were far enough away that I could complete the mission and ignore them) i was forced to shoot one, it alerted the other, and I went to the hospital despite 4 lucks on, I did get one snipe damage done to the one CS. I came back, popped 4 more lucks, shot and ran, got lucky and while they took me down, one did ran back to his spot, the other loitered about half way back, as soon as there was enough room, I used a bounce back, rested, popped my last 4 lucks, finished off the wounded one, and managed to take out the other one. Net, 12 lucks, 4 rightous rages, 3 disciplines, and 27k debt. But the mission finished and I got 2k more back.
A solo can and does spawn un-named bosses in their mission, sometimes in multiples.
Malatraxia
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This game was marketed as solo friendly. People bought the game thinking the goal and direction of the game was a solo friendly MMO.
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It was marketed as a team game that was solo friendly. Notice the emphasis was still on team play. There is FAR to much emphasis on solo play to live up to this prior to issue 3 and even post issue 3 due to peoples ability to solo most or all of the team content.
Lets face facts here. In the long run a subscription based MMO cannot survive catering to a solo audience because it offers nothing that you cant have in a standalone game. This means team play needs to come first and have greater scope then solo play. This isnt to say a degree, even a large degree of solo play is not a nice addition, but it cannot outweigh team play.
Here is something to give some people a little perspective. Prior to the purple patch some of the best fun to be had in this game was going after a spawn that had a boss or two 8 to 10 levels above your own. It took a well played well constructed team, but when you could do it, it was amazing. It felt far more heroic then anything you can do in the game now.
Lets face it wiping out masses of weaklings who pose you no real threat is fun from time to time but beating on someone who cant fight back is not heroic in any way shape or form.
The new bosses are simply the old bossed +1 level. This means that a +3 boss is equivalent, or perhaps slightly weaker then a +4 boss prior to the purple patch, but back then people were routinely taking on much tougher bosses then that. This means that there is still a lot of headroom left, people just need to rediscover those skills instead of resorting to simple attack it until its dead.
I understand the desire for immediate gratification, but making things easier seldom makes them more fun in the long run. Doing something difficult far outweighs will provide much more satisfaction and enjoyment then simply doing something easy over and over and over again.
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Lets face facts here. In the long run a subscription based MMO cannot survive catering to a solo audience because it offers nothing that you cant have in a standalone game. This means team play needs to come first and have greater scope then solo play. This isnt to say a degree, even a large degree of solo play is not a nice addition, but it cannot outweigh team play.
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I disagree very strongly. It can continue to survive by continuously offering new, excellent, immersive content. At some point in time the technical engine will end up being dated (Ultima Online, etc.), but there is a very long timeframe involved there, especially now that increases in computing power have slowed down.
If people enjoy a particular type of gameplay, they will continue to seek that type of gameplay -- thus the popularity of sequels and expansion packs for standalone games. Playing an MMO is like getting a continuous stream of sequels and expansion packs, all incorporated seamlessly into the existing content.
This is not to say that the multi-player capabilities are trivial; they're not. Many people enjoy playing with folks they know -- you can see this in the standalone market with the demand for LAN play. There are a lot of people who treat an MMO like a dynamically expanding standalone game that is network-hosted by a third party. Think of it like a continuous LAN party with ever-fresh content. People like being able to play with their friends, without being dependent on their friends for enjoyment.
The ideal game has great solo play and team play, of course. Balance is demanded in the game design, but I don't think that it's unachievable -- City of Heroes, as it existed in I2, presented enjoyable solo as well as team play, after all. The problems that people raised with team play were primarily around bad pick-up teams, which is fundamentally a problem with the players and not a problem with the game itself.
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Here is something to give some people a little perspective. Prior to the purple patch some of the best fun to be had in this game was going after a spawn that had a boss or two 8 to 10 levels above your own. It took a well played well constructed team, but when you could do it, it was amazing. It felt far more heroic then anything you can do in the game now.
Lets face it wiping out masses of weaklings who pose you no real threat is fun from time to time but beating on someone who can&#8217;t fight back is not heroic in any way shape or form.
The new bosses are simply the old bossed +1 level. This means that a +3 boss is equivalent, or perhaps slightly weaker then a +4 boss prior to the purple patch, but back then people were routinely taking on much tougher bosses then that. This means that there is still a lot of headroom left, people just need to rediscover those skills instead of resorting to simple attack it until it&#8217;s dead.
I understand the desire for immediate gratification, but making things easier seldom makes them more fun in the long run. Doing something difficult far outweighs will provide much more satisfaction and enjoyment then simply doing something easy over and over and over again.
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Er, except for everyone mentioning "+30-60%" isn't just a +1 boss increase. The damage increase and HP increase is generally only about 10-20% on a +1 boss.
I found a -3 boss in Bricks yesterday with *three* times my hit points and doing at least twice my damage (six-slotted) and obviously has the innate -5 resistance to mezzing.
That's pretty much 1 boss = 3 heroes.
Still here, even after all this time!
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I think the genre (and the great game) attracts many of us who want some online gaming experiences, but need it to be flexible enough that we can solo at will (instead of standing around trying to form a team for 10 minutes).
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Eighth - you've hit the nail on the head! Positron and I were just talking about this; part of the beauty of the game is that you don't need to wait in order to get to fun. I don't want to lose that in the rush to encourage grouping. Like I've said, I'm going to review the missions this week and see how many have bosses at the different level ranges.
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You know States, I fill all giggly that you responded to me directly. I feel like I'm 12, getting a letter back from my favorite rockstar.
Thanks for listening -- I love teaming as well, but the game you guys have produced, unlike a lot of the competition, is great in team or solo and I think we're just trying to preserve that.
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I'll admit I haven't read all the pages of this thread ... too tired but I did want to throw my opinion in with the rest.
I do like the new boss changes, solo or teamed it adds a dangerous quality to teaming that was lacking before. Without the threat of death I am one of the ones that got quickly bored.
I regularly team up with a Defender and we are always saying how even on "invincibility" mode the missions are too easy. We actually get happy when there are a couple bosses next to each other in our missions.
Anyway these are just my opinions,
Jolly Green Giant
Grey Gargoyle
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If you want the "threat of death" you now have a slider that you can push to the extreme setting ! There was no need to force everyone into this situation . I could kill for hours bosses without being in real danger and still not get bored . You see ? Everyone is different . LEts just hope Statesman will come with something acceptable for both of us
I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Voltaire