[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Herding goes way beyond what I am talking about. Even on impossible the typical spawn for a 6 player mission is trivial for a large number of builds. The people herding pre issue 3 (and possibly post issue 3) were fighting 10+ spawns simultaneously. I.E. it was supposed to take a team of 6 people to fight one of these spawns and they were fighting/killing 10 of them at time, often solo.
[/ QUOTE ]
can you enlighten me which mission you're talking about?
[/ QUOTE ]
Shadowhunter/warwolves. It's not the only one, but it's the most common one probably.
[ QUOTE ]
and what AT can solo a mission meant to be for a 6+ mission and what lvl?
[/ QUOTE ]
Tanker, mostly fire tanker, but the other types (certainly Stone, Ice, and the old version of Invuln) can do it too. Level 50.
[ QUOTE ]
and just how do you know the "optimal" # of people these missions were designed for?
[/ QUOTE ]
If 6 people go into the mission it is designed to be a 6 person mission. If 1 goes in it is designed to be a 1-person mision. Mob number, types, and levels, adjust to the number fo people entering.
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
If the purpose for the boss changes is to force grouping then I, as a squishy, can say that it has failed in my case.
I have two ways of fighting bosses and continuing to solo all the way up to AV's. Forgive me if I don't say how in the forums. The dev's have me scared that my use of tactics as a means of survival doesn't fit their "vision" of a blaster being crippled by debt. I am an AR/Dev Blaster lvl 41 and I solo the 3B way. (never let them see ya coming and always shoot 'em in the back) Not heroic at all, but it is the only way I can get the job done without perma-debt.
When I group I die. Plain and simple. I wear the aggro crown, I wear the robe of debt, and wield the mighty septere of one shotted idiots. If I do my job in teams I die, always, no matter how good our healers are. My job is damage, to survive I have to not do my job. I have to sit and wait till my blast will provide a killing blow. This means I only contribute to at most a quarter of any fight with a boss in it. Which is every fight with a 4 member group. Waiting and contributing most of nada for a huge percent of each fight is not how I want to play my toon. If I use the tactics that insure my own survival I am a liability to any team, as I am not doing the damage to make up for the extra mobs my presence creates.
I group on occasion to experience new content that I am unable to get solo, accepting debt as the cost to read the storyarcs. All too often however, my pick-up teams don't give a <censored> about reading the content and I end up getting rushed thru missions with little of the story reward.
The majority of groups for me are NOT fun. I have met some awesome players, and have teamed with some really great people but almost every group that forms has one or two idiots that get everyone else killed. I include myself in the idiot column, mostly because the high aggro of my attacks insures a boss or lieut. that gets missed by the tanks provoke-hits will come charging straight at me in the rear of my team where the squishys are. I try to do flanking attacks (out of healing radius') most of the time so that I am the only one that dies, but once that extra boss peels away from the tank all the squishies go to heaven. I can live with debt from groups. I can't live with causing perma-debt for other squishies.
My point is for teams you need to either lower the boss damage or give the non-squishies better defenses and a HUGE boost to aggro, or lower the aggro caused by all one-shot-squishy activity damage/debuff/buff/simply standing around with easy meat sign on neck/holds/ect.
My point for solo is make sure everyone can solo their own missions. If no one is suposed to solo bosses then stop putting bosses in 90 percent of the missions, leave them out all together for solo heroes. I can accept the loss of challenge a boss gives me if half the other people in the game can't defeat them and complete a solo storyarc. I would simply put the difficulty slider all the way up and continue blasting.
Thank You for the game even though your making me a liabilty to others,
Ultra-Marine
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My guess is that, using the awesome power of the GM, they clicked the blinky for you, thus completing your mission.
I'm not entirely sure they can otherwise mark missions complete for you. Perhaps they can. I doubt they would for an undeclared boss. In any case, they have better things to do, like helping people with unfindable blinkies or hostages.
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, I wasn't even in the mission when the GM marked it complete.
Never underestimate the power of a GM....
[/ QUOTE ]
Not at all impossible for them to have entered the mission themselves, after finding the blinky, and clicking it. I believe, from reading accounts from people who have obtained help from GM's, that they are able to instantly appear anywhere they want, including within a mission, and can "team" with you without it showing in your team window, and thus click on a blinky and complete the mission for you.
I know I've been outside of one my own missions when a teammate completed last objective and saw the Mission Complete indicator. I had LCTMS'd, and had to log back in. They re-invited me, we had nobody with recall friend. Since they were deeeep into the mission, I told them they could just finish it. And they could, and did.
Neither of us knows just what they did, of course. But, we do agree that it's unlikely they'd complete a mission for you because a boss was too hard.
OK, I'm sick and tired of the soloers compromising more and more, and the teamers just trying to take more and more. Let's take things in a slightly different direction.
Look, everyone can solo at all times, not everyone can alwasy get a team. By that logic, EVERYTHING should be soloable, but it's not that big a deal if certain aspcest of content aren't available to teams. Abolish the badges that require teaming (for mentoring, for example). Make task forces soloable. Any mission which currently contains AVs or monsters should either no longer contain them if you enter solo or the AVs/Monsters should, in some way, be soloable. I want to see story arcs, missions, and other cool content which teams can't get at all, ie, only available to people when they solo. I want to see it made possible where most people can solo most groups in hazard zones, solo.
I'm sick of this. Look, nothing prevents you from teaming, but currently every single MMOG on the market focuses on teaming, and tons of people stop playing those because they don't like to be forced to team. Do somethign different for a change here. Let's focus this game on soloists, with the possibility for teaming. Let's make all content, especially the good story content which people in teams won't have the time to read anyway, soloable, and let's make tons of stuff available ONLY for soloists.
Now that's going to be a fun game.
And or all those people who insist this game must be another clone of EQ with team-only garbage, incredibly slow advancement, items required to get, and epic encounters of one mob versus hundreds of players, well, if that's what you want, play EQ, damnit, or one of the many other MMOGs that are virtually clones of it, and stop littering up a fun game.
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
[ QUOTE ]
Look, someone made a big boo-boo here. Statesman says this, and then he says that. Missons should be soloable (he says), bosses are not meant to be soloed (he says). Explain then why so many missions have bosses in them. Never mind 'stealthed' boss-missions and their supposed bugginess (which I don't buy for one second by the way. If this has been an issue for months, as has been stated by many, then this should have been fixed months ago). I'm talking about ANY mission with a boss, even those that are announced.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think you've really nailed the problem here. I was completely flabbergasted when Statesman said that bosses should not be soloable because I clearly remembered him saying that every AT should be able to solo. I'm extremely glad that someone dug up that quote because in the last week or Statesman has come perilously close to denying he ever said that.
To be frank, I don't believe for one minute that bosses are not supposed to be soloed or that anyone at Cryptic was unaware of just how many bosses appear in the game. That's pretty incomprehensible. If you look at the history of this change, it becomes quite clear that the story is being changed to fit the circumstances:
1) Originally, Statesman says that the post-30 game is too easy for many players so they are planning on boosting the HP (note, no mention of damage) for mobs post-30.
2) For Issue 3, they boost HP & damage (though they only say HP) for all mobs over 25.
3) There's an outcry, so they remove the change for everyone but bosses.
4) This goes live, and now many ATs can no longer solo missions.
5) DAMAGE CONTROL TIME: Statesman says "oh, we want to encourage grouping" (totally new claim) and "you were never supposed to solo bosses" and "bosses hardly ever occur for solo players"
This makes no sense.
First, there was never any mention of wanting to encourage grouping until after this went live. If encouraging grouping was the idea, why boost bosses over 25? Is grouping something that will benefit low level characters.
Second, people have been soloing bosses for 9 months now. Are we really supposed to believe that no one noticed this? When purple con spawns were being beaten, they made a change to stop that within a couple of months. Why has the dreaded boss soloing gone on for this long?
Third, similar to point one, why is just fine to solo bosses prior to level 25? My level 21 Scrapper has not encountered a single boss in any mission he cannot take solo. Why does this have to stop in 4 levels opposed to now?
Finally, are we really supposed to believe that no one at Cryptic is aware that, conservatively speaking, 75% of missions contain bosses? It's not even the slightest bit plausible to me that a boost to bosses would be a candidate for either boosting the difficulty of the higher-level game or encouraging grouping if they weren't aware of just how many bosses there were. If bosses were are rare for soloers to encounter as Statesman wants us to believe, how would boosting their difficulty encourage grouping at all?
What I think has happened is they were aware that a combination of decreased game difficulty and an increased need to grind XP at higher levels was leading to too many people at high levels enjoying the game less and looking to greener pastures. They decided on the boss boost to fix this, but they boosted them too much and now have entered damage control mode. What irritates me about this is that for the first time in 9 months, I'm starting to really doubt the honesty of the answers we are getting from Statesman et al.
For the record, I don't think the answer is to decrease the number of bosses or to rollback the change entirely. I think the 60% boost should be decreases to 30% for now, and experimented with until the amount is right.
As I see it, if you think of this as the Evil Genius Island of Undetermined Location
Underlings - Popcorn. Drop in droves. One-shot by most basic attacks, minimal damage at best. Dangerous in groups of 8+, but even then... disposable. These are the native tribes on the volcano island duped into following Dr. Evil. Untrained, fight with sticks.
Minions - Jumpsuit clad generics. One shot by 'powerful' attacks like Snipe, minimal defenses, moderate attacks. These are the jackbooted thugs, the mooks. Come in large numbers but only really dangerous in groups of 4. 3 should be easily handled... with AE's, they should drop like Flies. These are the ones the hero takes on (always one or two at a time but in great numbers as they rush to be slaughtered) Picture Bruce Lee fighting in front of the big metal door. In groups of 2-3 at a time, they just kept coming... and just kept falling.
LT's - Not Henchmen, these are the guys in generic jumpsuits who boss around the other generic thugs. They're the ones with the orange hardhat when everyone else wears white. Not much tougher, but they always come with minions and can deal some decent damage. Likewise, all sniper-types should be at least ruled as LT's. Most attacks moderate but one attack is high and/or stuns & holds and they can be very difficult when coordinated by...
Bosses (should be renamed as 'Guard') - Still quasi-generic, these unnamed 'bosses' aren't in charge of much. Like LT's they may have dangerous (high dmg/stun/hold/etc) attacks and are considerably hardier. They're members of the 'brute squad' that are the elite of the minion pool. Think of him as the one generic minion who says 'It's James Bond!' and then pulls the alert, charging in. They're loyal, more dangerous than the mooks, but still disposable to the organization as a whole.
Named Bosses - Hey, a henchman with one or two lines! These guys are the ones who actually rise above the rank of 'generic'. they're not the Archvillian, but they're notable in that they can put the hurt on most groups, much less the lone hero. Ordered around by name, these are the ones whom the Evil Genius (AV) use to enforce their will on their minions. All their attacks are High damage, many special effects, and you don't want to meet them alone, much less when they're surrounded by 20 disposable meat shields.
Named Boss (alternate type) - The specialist. You know... that one guy who's a henchman but he's 'got a rep'. Chances are he's got one Extreme range attack, but everything else is moderate/high. He's the sniper you'd really worry about, the paid mercenary who has his schtick and can't be taken care of easily without having some serious protection against his specialty. I'm (to give an example) thinking of the Sumo-size guardsman named as a disgraced ex-world champion or somesuch. For him, he has obscene levels of defense, exceptional hitpoints, but his attacks are pretty straightforward. Just like the named Sniper who has one big, slow shot, likes to run like hell and has stealthy skills over damage resistance. A good example is Oddjob or Jaws from the Bond series.... you beat them because you don't let them use their strong-points against you.
Elite Bosses (Henchmen) - Whoa-nelly... these are the 'You can't get close to Dr. Evil without going through' guys. Surrounded by mooks, in charge of the operation on a day to day basis... All their attacks should be very high, their hps will take some pounding, and they won't go down easy. Most pre-I3 AV's should actually fall into this category... if the entire faction isn't named after you, you don't get to be called an 'Arch' anything. They're tough, determined, and powerful. At this point, I will say 'NEVER' soloable. These guys are the reason you have TF's.
(True) Archvillians - Doctor Doom is the best example. Wants to take over the world, tears apart tanks when they annoy him and has dozens (if not hundreds) of minions to fulfil his whims. Runs from battle at 10% to his pre-made escape route. Get excellent exp when you foil his plans, special bonuses IF you can take him down. As soon as he announces, "How can this be?!?! My plans were foolproof!" and turns to run, another dozen minions should come from around the nearest corner at top speed to cover his retreat. Catching & capture should be rare at best.
Othervillian (Noncombat) - Anyone think it's a bit odd that EVERY Archvillian is a damage machine? How about this... you meet up with Countess Crey's Illegitimate Cousin (Assistant VP of World Domination) and... he's human... surrounded by 8 power tanks, a cadre of Infiltrators, and three hired mercenaries from the KoA... The anti-hostage mission. Because of his status, he has to be taken alive but can't be killed because he has to testify. Instead of him having buckets of hps/damage/resists, he has... you guessed it, Minion/LT summoning. A walking, talking, portal. those 'cosmetic doors' in office missions suddenly open to bring another 30 people to the party and they don't look happy. Once he's alone, he surrenders, asks to call his lawyer, and is mysteriously assassinated by drowning in the cup of coffee he was given while being interrogated. Shame, that.
Yes, I've seen too many bond movies... and yes, this post is rambling... but can you see what I'm trying to say? The problem isn't boss hps... it's that 'bosses' aren't properly bosses of anything.
Being an active, contributing part of a team = Fun.
Being a spectator while other people do your mission for you = Not Fun At All.
People need to feel like they're contributing something useful in every situation.
As a side note, being able to successfully do missions with a moderate spread of levels is vital to having sidekicking be useful. Useful sidekicks make it easier to find pick-up teams, and for groups of friends and SGs to play together, obviously.
[ QUOTE ]
Where do they break down? My 37 Ice/FF Controller regularly does red and purple bosses. I can even do them without the use of a single inspiration although that makes the fight a lot longer. One example: last night I soloed a 40 Death Mage + 40 Guide. Fight was never in question. With proper slotting I can hold boss, do damage, summon pets and keep my toggles up indefinitely.
[/ QUOTE ]
I did open my statement with "in broad terms". But more specifically, do you have any powers besides Stamina for End reduction/recvovery? Have you slotted your powers for end reduction contrary to common practice?
This game allows for tremendous variation. Between powersets, power choices, number of slots and what you put in slots, two heros can perform radically differently. I'm not so foolish as to think my analysis covered every hero.
But in this very thread are other controllers describing running out of end before they could kill the boss. I've seen it happen to my controller buddies, too.
Maybe you've got a nicely optimized combination. And certainly Controllers are something of a weak discussion point on this, since it can be argued they aren't supposed to be able to solo at all (a concept even the devs seem to have rejected since they're looking at "petless" power sets).
But I don't think you can come along and say "ooh, ooh, I don't fit your pattern" and say that invalidates it. If a lot more controllers / blasters / defenders come in and say that they have no problem soloing bosses without the exception builds I mentioned then I'll admit my observations were in error. So far, most of this thread seems to back me up. My experience with Tankers may to be skewed - the ones I know had endurance issues soloing a boss, but posters here seem to counter that.
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
Not to sound like an old fogey remembering war stories, but I remember back in beta that any mission I attemped with ANY AT with any build I could solo. I must be the only scrapper I know who doesn't have stamina or hasten, because I wanted to build a regen scrapper that supposedly didn't need
it.
/sarcasm mode That was obviously a flaw in my thinking, since I should have taken both of those powers by level 20 and then getting the higher level heals and six slotting hasten with recharge enhancments. Oh, wait, I should be able to solo bosses with my scrapper anyway, because we are the uber archetype that can't be stopped. Oh wait, Tankers are actually suppposed to be able to do damage and rely on attack powers? Wow. I'll have to tell that to my non-fire based tanker the next time I see him. Oh yeah, that's right, he's still stuck at level 7 due to my mismanagement of my power selection. Silly me, I should respec him, and then any of my new level 1 guys, and then write or type out my power tree structure before I build the character. Oh, and I need to read the guides the uber power level players put out so that my heroes can effectively team, as my controllers and defenders shouldn't do any mission alone. Oh, and don't forget to take hasten and keep adding those enhancement slots for recharge. Let's see, blaster and defender blast powers actually have a secondary effect? I didn't know that. Maybe I should take one of the fancy colored enhancements that enhance the secondary effect, or even more. Nah, I can't do that. I can't do enough damage unless I 6 slot my attacks with 1 accuracy and 5 damage augments. Wait, the blaster secondary pools actually do something other than acting as an low end immobilize or planting bombs all over the battlfield under cover of an LCD cloaking device. Quick, I need to set up my Al-Qaida assault rifle blaster and take devices to undermine these sneaky Americans and their corporate culture. Roleplaying? We can roleplay in this game? That was what I missed in the MMORPG description. Cool! Does that mean if I type out a description and plot hook for my character, I should get some type of reward. And you can contact GMs to solve problems? I must have encountered the wrong GM then, because all I ever received for the 30+ petitions I sent on various issues was a nice message about the GMs thanking me for my input, and all of the nice rewards and benefits Issue 2 had made for me. That must have been a typing mistake on my part. Oh, and I'm not supposed to build up debt from Tsoo minions, correct? My tactics and playing style must be to blame. Cool./end sarcasm
So, if I'm not supposed to solo play, I should team all of the time right? Hmm, EQ 2 looks better and better all of the time. At least there I can team with groups of 50 people and generate money from the guilds as our teammates work together. Supergroups? Other than having a group of people to team or gain influence with if they are not busy with life, how does a supergroup benefit me?
Oh well, D&D online will be out in the second part of 2005.
[ QUOTE ]
What is a "Defender" specific AT mission? Protect/heal so many "friends" in a mission?
Poor FF!
[/ QUOTE ]
I could think that with nearly no coding you could do a "protect" mission for a specific amount of time over a certain area.
Could be one person going over a specific shown route on a map, going from one end to another. THe FF in this case has a couple of options: bubble the objective, and arrest everyone on the route... or arrest each as they come.
This wouldn't be very solo friendly, but since when are protection details very solo-friendly in the first place?
Another alternative would be to have the defender defend an objective (stationary or mobile) for 30-60 minutes against all comers...
again, difficult solo if there is more than one way into the the target.
Then again, there could be multiple glowies that need to be hit to shut down doors maybe so that only one or two entries could be open... ooh that's starting to sound fun...
[ QUOTE ]
I'm starting to really doubt the honesty of the answers we are getting from Statesman et al.
[/ QUOTE ]
bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha. gasp...... muwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. wheeze....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha haha.
It took you this long?
I will now don my flame retardent suit and say several Hail Mary's in advance to atone for the heresy I am about to utter.
In my more cynical moments I actually wonder if what has happened overall with CoH is that they set out to make a game with a bold creative vision: an untapped genre, an extremely flexible character generator, accessibility in that you didn't need special items to succeed and could get into the game right away, and a game that would support BOTH team play and soloing. There are enough direct quotes from Statesman in interviews and such to establish that was one of their goals, not to mention all the reviews, hype, and promotion in that direction. And they more or less succeeded, initially better than they knew. I think a portion of their breakneck ramp up in numbers of subscribers was due to this overall unique take on MMO's.
The game had some flaws that needed to be worked out. It does, apparently, break down for team play in the higher levels, becoming too easy for competent teams. Adjustments needed to be made. But it's at this point that the heresy comes in.
I can't help but wonder if having gotten through that burst of creativity they look over their creation and have a combination of "Okay, how do we fix this?" combined with "Well, where do we go from here?" And the unfortunate answer that was spoken was "Well, what are the other MMO's doing?"
And so we move to a new explicit emphasis on teaming, just like every other MMO. New areas to explore and new bad guys, while more than welcome, aren't any different concept-wise than other MMOs, they all do that. Higher and higher classes/levels aren't different from other MMOs, they all do that too. Granted, CoH has the genre spin of the comic universe but conceptually, fundamentally, that by itself is not different from the competition, just a different theme.
Mind you, I like new content just as much as the next guy and any sort of game like this needs that to stay fresh. That's not my point. My fear sometimes, just sometimes, is that having established this beachhead in unique MMO territory (group AND solo), with no real maps for direction, no examples in the field to draw from , is that the trailblazers have lost their way and are falling back on the tried and true, the conventional wisdom (MMO's are about grouping, ya dummy!) and are going to pack up the boats and withdraw from the beachhead rather than continue to explore the Undiscovered Country.
(now zipping up the faceplate on the flame retardant suit)
[ QUOTE ]
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
)
[/ QUOTE ]
I realized that my problems with this perspective are twofold.
One, making it harder to solo doesn't encourage teaming, it discourages soloing. In the end, teaming may end up looking more desirable once soloing has lost some points, but "Damn, it's harder to solo." isn't a thought that leads to "Wow. Teaming *is* the best part of the game, I should do this more."
It's kinda like closing some roads hoping that making it more inconvenient to drive will get people to take the bus. It might but you'd get much further by improving bus service so that commuters look at the bus riders with envy.
In short, trying to get people to pick up one side of the game by making the other more inconvienient only raises the overall inconvenience level of the game.
But also upping the bosses doesn't make teaming any better. Team spawns also increase with bigger teams and now we're getting more of those hard to defeat bosses. Last night my friends had our first big grouping and we got hit hard with a good number of deaths, including one that caused a mass crash (all of our dead teammates got booted from the game). We didn't have fun.
I have become more and more convinced that the conflict isn't about team players vs solo players. It's (once again) about min/max'ers vs the casual players.
My friends are hardcore casual players, we play for long hours but we like the content, by which I mean we like the stories, the villains are cool when they can be beat and we like the archetypes. Sometimes we pick powers because we think they "fit" with the character or we think they sound cool.
More importantly we team to play together. Sometimes we get teams that are too large and get those awful mega-spawns. That sucks for us because we just want to play together. We'd rather not kick each other out of the team because including someone on our team tilts the balance off. It's not that we want to play in god mode, we just want to play in hero mode.
It's frustrating enough that we feel like we have to take "turns" on playing Task Forces. The first time we did a TF we made a big deal of it and treated it like something special. People arranged their schedules so we all could play together for the day. That turned out to be a mistake because when you have a team of seven, you end up facing way too many foes and multiple bosses. We went in so excited and left very frustrated.
Then again, taking turns on a TF isn't that difficult if only because we're all still so frustrated that a number of us avoid them until it's their last chance for the group to do the TF.
So. Yeah, I think teaming is broken too because my SG logged off last night not sure if we could still have fun together in this game without switching to one of our alts.
Just for the record, soloed three missions last night. Two against Sky Raiders, one against Banished Pantheon. None had any indication that there would be a boss. All three had bosses. One had a named boss. I bugged all three.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm starting to really doubt the honesty of the answers we are getting from Statesman et al.
[/ QUOTE ]
bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha. gasp...... muwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. wheeze....hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha haha.
It took you this long?
[/ QUOTE ]
Honestly ... yes. It has not been my experience so far that his answers are completely nonsensical. In this case, I smell an ex post facto rationale offered for what is essentially a mistake.
[ QUOTE ]
Not to sound like an old fogey remembering war stories, but I remember back in beta that any mission I attemped with ANY AT with any build I could solo.
[/ QUOTE ]
OK, I would be frustrated if that's your experience. Hey, in the comics don't all the solo heroes, well solo?
[ QUOTE ]
Oh well, D&D online will be out in the second part of 2005.
[/ QUOTE ]
*sssshhh* I'm still looking at that!
yeah i have a lvl50 herder for months now, i'm pretty familiar with those herding maps. 
my question was really directed at moridin. he says he sees people "routinely" solo a mission designed for 6 people. therefore, the teaming mechanic is broken. i pointed out to him that only certain ATs can herd spawns for 6-8 person team. then he said he wasn't talking about those herding missions. to which i asked him what mission he's talking about? no answer from him, and no surprise there. as far as i know, majority of ATs can't solo a mission with spawns that huge. even the typical herder ATs can't do that until a decent lvl(30s).
Ok, I'm sure no one wants me to say this. But in my opinion bosses are actually easier now than they were because of the increased endurance drain of powers. So, what if they hit harder and have more hp... If they have no endurance then all that is pointless, it just takes me about 30 seconds longer to kill them. I have an ele/eng blaster, and with a couple of snipes I can totally drain a boss of endurance, so all he can do is stand there. Just have to make sure I have a couple def buffs before I start the fight.
I haven't read all of this thread, so I appoligize if this is redundant. My observations on Live Servers is that Boss Changes have essentially made 6-8 person teams unrealistically difficult and far too unrewarding xp-wise. Teams of 4 are fine. Teams of 3 or less (or even soloing) are THE way to get xp. IMHO, this is discouraging large teams, and is counter to the general preference of playing an MMORPG.
I'd suggest that the HP and damage changes NOT go only to the Bosses, because Bosses already have higher chances to hit. If the Dev's don't want to do that, then I'd suggest dramatically increasing the reward for fighting bosses, and/or reducing the cost of debt in large teams.
Farming minions is now like cutting the grass--no risk--whereas building a large team to fight Bosses is often suicidal. I understand the Dev's intent to make soloing possible (thus no bosses), and to make the missions more challenging for teams (thus uber-bosses), but IMHO, these changes miss the mark. There is an obvious penalty for forming a large team because the challenge, xp/time reward, and high probability of catasrophic debt-xp really discourages large teams. Luckily, most of CoH hasn't figured this out yet, so if I want to play in a large team, I can find people with which to team. But, I'm increasingly feeling like I'm tricking/using them when the team gets large because it becomes a lose-lose scenario. That's probably not what the Dev's intended, and certainly now how I'd like to feel when joining/building a large team.
And if we were ALL playing elec/eng blasters that would be just wonderful. Glad it's working out for you.
Wasn't there an Eagles song that said the saddest words in the world were "I got mine."
I dissagree. I did the Manticore TF for the first time since the update. Most of us were lvl 35 and we were able to fight 4 or 5 lvl 38 PP at the same time with no problems, mainly because after a couple shots the bosses were totally drained of endurance and unable to attack.
[ QUOTE ]
I have an ele/eng blaster, and with a couple of snipes I can totally drain a boss of endurance, so all he can do is stand there. Just have to make sure I have a couple def buffs before I start the fight.
[/ QUOTE ]
So what you're saying is you, along with the majority of us, can't solo anymore either?
Maybe that was the thinking behind the respec? Get an endurance draining power...IF ONE IS AVAILABLE (Because i've been informed over half the builds do not have access to a single endurance draing power)
Sorry, I meant def insp instead of def buffs.
[ QUOTE ]
Hey I'll still build Soloers out of the Support AT's myself though, or try to, and if I fail, why should I NOT accept ridicule from players who told me I wasn't supposed to solo? ...It's just this simple... A superior player will find a way to overcome the difficulty anyway. And a Humble player will accept their role in a team.
[/ QUOTE ]
Good thing that if I can't be humble, I can just be superior?
Hmmm. I was hoping that those two states aren't exclusive.
I have a non-optimized rad/rad build (no Hasten, no NB use; using X-Ray and CBurst) and I feel that at Tenacious, I'm a very viable build. I use tactics from the 3B club that Concern started and uses, I use my debuffs and cluster the bad guys. When I hit 31, I want to try Rugged with a 6-slotted CBurst.
_Ilr_, I think that two things are needed for this I3 to go well....
1.) good tactical solo advice for players from the players for this release for each primar/secondary combination (already done in many forums)
2.) some changes to the current bosses from the devs: keep the DPS the same if you must (I'd prefer it toned down), and look at those one shots (didn't believe it myself until I saw the report in the global tab: no critical, just one clean shot past all the debuffs: ~741 damage when I had full health at 639).
Otherwise? (directed at those folks favoring the "everyone can solo" camp) I really have to believe that not *every* possible build can be soloable. If you 6 slot Brawl, Rest and Sprint, I'm sorry, you're just not going to be able to solo.
Concept builds are cool. I have one myself. Still, realize that there are some costs to concept builds. Like real life, concepts change when they hit reality. Some concepts can't solo 100% of the time. I've had to change AT's and now builds to survive in I3. Kinda like my own life where I've had to change careers 6 times before I was 30.
I think both sides need to step back, calm down and look at what they need to do to survive in I3. Those people who want to play alts while the devs sort this out? I'm happy for you! Those who want to play through and figure themselves out? I'm happy for you too and I'll help you if you're on the Virtue server...
There are some smart people on these boards. Some are very cool build experts. Some a good tacticians. Some don't even come on these boards and just build and succeed anyway.
Guys and gals, take a deep breath, and calm down.... it's a game, and I think this cool community can help each other get through it...
=)