Nosferatu Overpowered Just a Tad?

Let me stop you there a sec, Scarl.
I agree, it is, mostly a team game. MMO, after all.
However. However, the game is also laid out so as for most of it to be capable solo. Sure, not all of it, and not with certain ATs/Sets. I don't necessarily *like* that, but the logic and balance behind that works out fine.

It's the stuff that *should* be soloable and isnt that is the problem. People say 'Get a team' for missions people find hard when, by all past commentary and precendent, it shouldnt be mandatory.
Im pretty sure one of the hints or tips, or a dev comment somewhere somewhen was one about how you CAN solo the game (bar TFs), and are not forced to get a team.
Logistically and playerbase wise, thats a good thing that makes sense and should be kept.(people with awkward playtimes, people who don;t gell well with teams.)

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As for the 'dumbing down'...
I'll go back to the LRSF, since that left quite a large scar.

The last missions is not a challenge. It is cheap. Its cheaty. It's, for want of a better desciption , 'lolHax'.

This is meant to be the crowning pinnacle of your Villainous career. You take on the Vindicators and a ton of Longbow and Malta.
We beat every mission except the last. It was my first run. It was fun. We tore down the Kronus Titan, we stamped the Alternate Phalanx and the Vindicators into the floor. Sure, it had its tough moments, but it was doable. And we did it.

And then we got to the Phalanx. And we died. Over and over and over. We took time out, went to get Shivans. We used Vengeance on the Shivans. We STILL died.
They were cheaty level (53 to our 50) they had cheap attacks (masses of AoEs and buffs/debuffs, coupled with lvl 53 accuracy)...
Its poor level design. Its like the last mission in Assassins Creed 1. I shall explain.

Throughout the game, combat is fairly similar. You get better at it as you go on. However; the last mission suddenly throws at you a large number of units that are unlike anything you've ever fought before. You can't counter kill them with you regular weapons. They pull all the nasty tricks that the Elite enemies usually pull (grab attacks, guard breaks, quick attacks). THats not the worst part, either. Elite guards do a good chunk of damage. These things do double, if not treble that.
And then the end Boss takes that to a whole new level. It is, essentially, cheating. Its not challenging, its not hard or a test. Its a quick and easy fix and patch job that makes for a gruelling, cheap and cheaty end game experience.

Exact same thing with the last mish of the LRSF. Theres no tactical stuff to it, except how to get around the cheaty mob of 53s. How to try and get them one by one. Theres no immersion to it; they're big sacks of HP with big, powerful attacks that have lots and lots of accuracy that make you look like a little minion.
We trod all over the other AVs, Heroes and Giant Monsters in the SF. And then it cheats.

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Anyway, long rant is long. I guess this is a call for some consistancy and balance, and that, if you want something to be done on a team, then the Balance should be doable by a PuG. You should *not* have to min/max, get Shivans, Nukes and IOs to be able to do ANYTHING in the game. Optional things should be just that, and not mandatory to completing things.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

You're trying to hold me to textbook definitions that are and have never been true. Yes, it's a game that requires me to connect to a server and exposes me to an environment with multiple other players in it. I dare you to point me to any piece of official documentation, instructions, comments or mandates that state I have to team with these players. Because I would bet my third arm that you will not find such a thing, because such a thing has never existed officially. At most, the developers have created SOME content that requires a team, but this is nothing more than a sidetrack, the occasional forced-team task that can be completely skipped. Not a single place in the game is designed in such a way as to prevent me from getting all the way to the end game completely and utterly on my own. Not a single place.

Furthermore, just because the game has a functionality, it doesn't mean that the game requires that I make use of it. Yes, City of Heroes requires me to log into a server before I can get into the game. So does Steam. So does Windows Live, for that matter, but even though I can chat with people over it, I don't. I only use it to get notifications of when I have unread mail. So you can claim I'm "in the wrong" all you want. Reality disproves your claim, because I have been playing this game just fine and with minimal complaints since May of 2004, and it has only gotten better.

Speaking of which, yes it has very much always been exactly like this. It has always been soloable, and in fact has only gotten more so. It is at a point where there's really not much left to ask for, which explains my unreasonable threads of late. And you're REALLY barking up the wrong tree if you believe yourself capable of convincing me that I don't actually like the game as it is, that I didn't like the game as it was, or that I'm playing the game wrong and should either play it in other ways or find another game. I enjoy the game as it is.

Finally, would you kindly avoid trying to speak about a "large majority?" Unless you won the polls lately (and I didn't hear of any), trying to trump me with "You're alone. The majority feel otherwise." is disingenuous at best and sheer hypocrisy at worst. That is, specifically in light of the many, many people who have complained about not being able to solo this or that over the years, and who still complain about the same things today. This has never gone away, so you trying to just sweep it out of the way by just presuming to ignore it does not work.

Why should the majority suffer? Frankly, unless you're prepared to prove by means of evidence that there is some kind of large majority of people who hate how the game is set up yet still inexplicably pay for it year after year who want it to be too hard, then you have no leg to stand on. Why should they suffer? "They" have the difficulty slider and Task Forces and, indeed, even two genuine raids to use for expressly the purposes you require. If this is not sufficient for "them," then "they" can go to hell.

As long as the game permits me to play through it completely and utterly solo without any places that absolutely require a team, then I was here first, and you trying to tell me I should get off your lawn will not fly. As long as the game permits me to play as I please, then I will be damned before I will allow myself to be told how I "should" play or I'm in the wrong. You're trying to contradict in-game reality, and that does not work.

City of Heroes is fine as it is. There are plenty of MMOs out there that are hard and "epic" in exactly the way you describe, including Champions Online, so I see no reason why City of Heroes has to be yet one more.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

As far as I'm concerned, the zenith of a villain's career is the end of the Time After Time arc when you manage to strong-arm the biggest cat in the box and carve your own place in the Isles. As far as I'm concerned, the Recluse Strike Force does not exist unless you're specifically looking for the Hard difficulty, which I am not.

This is the key failing of practically every MMO out there - the stronger you get, the weaker you actually become, because the enemies scale more sharply than you. At some point you lose the ability to solo, at some point you need good teams and at some point you start needing great teams. Fat lot of good it does me that I have twice as many hit points if my enemies hit four times as hard. Well, I'm perfectly happy to let all the other MMOs have that particular cake, and maybe even eat it, too. That's why I'm here and not there - I much prefer a game that gets easier as I get stronger, to where more enemies are required to take me down. A fledgling Scrapper can barely chew his way through a couple of minions and a lieutenant with much energy to spare. A veteran Scrapper can slaughter hordes of monsters single-handedly and will be left looking around for the next kill at the end. And that's just perfect.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Technically, the LRSF, as well as any other SF or TF, is an optional thing.

However, I sympathize with you, Techbot. I've never been on an LRSF, but I've run into what I would consider plenty of "hax" moments in the game. It sounds as if you simply had rotten luck, but nobody else who has posted here was there to provide evidence. Don't let it frustrate you, and if the game cheats, cheat right back

Fair points both. However, I'd argue that dumbing down causes a massive disruption to the game by giving an unrealistic expectation that (for want of a better expression) the "end game" is soloable. My own feeling here is that it's an MMO and sure, you might be able to solo the end of level bad guy but the game is built for a team - maybe just a small team (see my Trio of Doom post for more of my philosophy on this if you care to) but it's not built for a single AT to work from 1-50 without using the cooperation of our colleagues and friends on the servers. Were that true it would not only be an offline game but the distinction that Trow has also complained about in other threads would not be so prominent. We get 5 distinct ATs, plus a choice of epic. The ideal for this game is the Magnificent Seven (plus a spare.)

In this, the Devs have to walk a very difficult line and I believe they mostly do it pretty well - but to go on to your second point, I think they are victims of the "fanology." Fans seriously love the game. I know I do and I'm not alone but it's kind of like cars. When you get a car you love you want to get under the bonnet and tinker and tweak. So the fans work out what the best builds are (and often I'm sure they do things the Devs never expected) and so the game becomes easier and so the Devs sometimes address certain issues mechanically. LRSF might be meant to be the crowning glory, but it's an exclusive SF (you must have a patron before you get it, why?) and yet when you actually get to the end game, with a team of the right composition who are coordinating, it's pretty much a walkover.

That's a problem of computer games down the ages to some extent. The levels go smoothly but the end of level bad guy owns you unless you know the right buttons to mash in sequence. To be fair most missions in CoX tend to be a lot smoother than this and Paragon could do a lot to make the baddies more interesting - but change is universally hated and they have bigger fish to fry.

Is the mission imbalanced? I might sound contradictory here but I hope not. I think it isn't. When you get to Atlas Park, you've bested some of Pargon's finest and some pretty tough Longbow. But that's it. When you get to Atlas you've got the big guys. The guys every other hero wants to aspire to, waiting to face you, in a great comicbook showdown. That's the equivalent of going up against the Avengers or the JLA or the X-Men with a bit of a boost from the Fantastic Four. It really should be tough I believe and sure, it should be possible to fail.

If it wasn't and every two-bit wannabe with a grudge and the power to mentally control plankton would have walked over Paragon ages ago. If you fail, it's because you've got a way to go - not because they are too good.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

That's why nobody makes MMOs any more - cuz they all fail and nobody makes money

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

That's actually pretty accurate. As i recall, the Future Freedom Phalanx in the final battle is supposed to be all juiced up on Synthetic Hamidon Enhancements, so there is a good reason in that particular instance for them being so much more powerful than normal.

Not to rain on your parade or anything, but as a Fire/Fire blaster, you have an easy way to keep him at range. Ring of Fire. Purple Triangles don't boost immobilization protection.

Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?

Undoubtably the LRSF and STF are meant to be tough. I wouldnt have it any other way. The rest of the LRSF run was challenging, and people faceplanted at times, but it was still fun and, above all, beatable. It helped obviously that we were led by someone who knew what to do, and the characters were all tough by any account.
It's when we hit the last mission that all sense of 'We can do this' went out of the window.
Now, I agree that fail is a possibility, if you have incompetant players, no communication and poor builds. But these were all competant players with good communication and decent builds. Even if the Phalanx were lvl 50, that would probably have made it into 'Challenging yet beatable' rather than what we got, which was 'Hax, Impossible and Not Fun.'

The golden rule of any game is 'Fun'. As soon as it stops being fun, everyone loses. Not just the players, but the whole point of the game, to have Fun, is defeated. And it just becomes Hax.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

The Future Phalanx is mission 3. And they are all level 50, and easy enough to beat with strategy, tactics and usual Hero fighting techniques, albeit in a group.

The last mission is set in the present. Present Day Phalanx. No boosters, no nothing. Just, supposedly, the same guys you've fought in the past. Just with added layers of hax.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Madame of Mystery (downgraded to elite boss) turned out to be a very reasonable fight for my Ill/Rad controller, Claws/Regen scrapper, and Katana/SR scrapper.

Any of my other heroes who don't do lethal damage drop that mission. The Psychic Cleaver doesn't provide enough of a benefit and/or MoM's resistances are too high and/or her regeneration rate is too high, making it an unfair fight for most of my heroes.

(Granted it's much more fair than the original version, in which she didn't downgrade from AV status. I'm happy now that a few of my heroes can beat her, and that I can drop the mission if I want. A more fair encounter would be better, but I'll take what I can get.)

They're also not all remakes of the same game... Just about. There's no point in having multiple games if they'll all be just different skins over the same thing. I don't want EQ in tights and I don't want WoW in tights, which is why I don't play Champions Online despite multiple tries for completely free. You compare to FPS games, but even then, not every game is Quake 3 Arena. Some shooters are a bunnyhopping mess, with Unreal leading the pack these days. Some shooters are atmospheric and imersive, like the decent titles in the F.E.A.R. series, while others are action-packed and scenic, like the Half-Life series. Some shooters are even team-centric, like the Battlefield series, while still others employ RPG elements and problem-solving puzzles, like the Deus Ex games. Some aren't even shooters, like the Thief series, or even the flop that was Mirror's Edge.

If I want to curb-stomp powerful enemies with my mad skills, I don't look to Mirror's Edge, because there I'm a wimp. If I want tactical, strategic gameplay with an emphasis on team dynamics, I probably won't go for Quake 3 Arena. And if I wanted the classic EQ experience, I wouldn't be playing City of Heroes. In order for a game to have a point, it needs to do something I can't get from other, better games, and a large part of what City of Heroes does right is paint me as the hero. Despite all the "City of Pedestrians" threads over the years, this is the one MMO where I can jump into a fight face-first and still come out victorious, and the only one where I can look the big bad square in the eye, slap my *** and get into it with confidence and bravado. This is what the game is, and this is why I play it. Other games offer the other spectrum of the MMO experience, but I don't spend my days lamenting why we can't be more like them. Because I don't WANT them.

That's not necessarily true as an assertion. I'm not sure if this was intentional when the game was originally designed, but I'm pretty much certain that it's intentionally being kept in now - the game is very much easily suited to a single AT to solo all the way from 1 to 50 without ever getting on a team even once. I know, because I've done exactly this. Furthermore, the notion that the "end game" is unsoloable is far from unrealistic. Only the mandatory team content is unsoloable, but that's hardly all there is to the end game. If your idea of final objective is to do raids and hard Task Forces, then that's there for you to do. Mine isn't. Mine is wrapping up my own business by myself, on my own time, by my own devices. And I can. I have, in fact, yet to see a piece of content that I can take while solo which I have not been able to complete, or at the very least get through, without asking for help. Some things are harder than others, certainly, but I've been consistently soloing these seemingly impossible things, and if I ever face any problems, the tools are there to "cheat" anyway.

The one big thing is that this is, admittedly, not guaranteed to be true for all ATs. Some have an easy time, some have a hard time, some might even be argued to be impossible or at the very least ridiculously impractical. But the option is there for those who wish to avoid teaming, and all one has to do is avoid the ATs that aren't build to go by themselves. Or improvise, either seems to work. The point is that the belief that everything can be soloed, up to and including the end game, is based not just in solid fact, but actually in direct experience of people having done it already. I've done it already. Is it unreasonable for me to expect to be able to do it again with old lessons learned?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Except I fought him as an elite boss who comes with elite boss status protection resistance. And even then, I had other means to keep him at range. And even then, I didn't keep him at range much of the time.

And even then, I've soloed him with an AR/Dev Blaster and a variety of Scrappers.

Point is, Nosferatu is not unbeatable.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, there's your problem. Attempting to fight an elite boss without inspiration is all fine and good if you have the bravado, but it isn't grounds to declare something "overpowered."

Yeah, except he shows up in The Eternal Nemesis arc, and not even as a final fight, and I'm pretty sure that one counts solo content. I mean, I didn't see any warnings that this was a Task Force and was recommended for team play. I guess probably because it wasn't. And while the mission itself may or may not have had a warning in its briefing, 10 missions into an arc is TOO FRIKKIN' LATE to be warning me about anything whatsoever. That's like getting into a car, speeding down a steep mountain road and only then noting a postit from your friend that says "Don't drive. Brake line broken." Yeah, it's a little too late for that.

Luckily, he IS soloable with inspirations.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

And also luckily he IS droppable with your one "free" mission drop that you get every three days.

Yanno what? I don't care what you think any more. Why don't you go suck custard through a straw cuz that seems to be about all you're capable of fighting for

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Ah, my mistake. i've only run it a couple times and there wasn't a lot of time to spend reading the briefings and clues, so i got it a bit muddled.

Well... umm... then... they did... err... i got nothin'. (Especially since the "juiced" Freedom Phalanx was the easy one to beat.)

Well maybe they'd been fighting so long that the "juice" was more like a long energy drink binge. They haven't slept in weeks, but are barely awake thanks to the drugs! vv

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Oh, is she vulnerable to lethal damage? That would explain it. Nosferatu was a tough fight for my broadsword/regen and I had heard that the Madame of Mystery was also tough. And then I beat her like a rented mule and wondered what was going on.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Hmm... You know, that is not a bad idea.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The Madame of Mystery ought to be 20% vulnerable to lethal damage like all Carnies are, and she ought to be about 20% resistant to psionic damage. As she's an AV/EB, she might have higher percentages or other resistances, though. As well, Carnies all have heightened regeneration and recovery, and the Madame has her regeneration (and possibly recovery) heightened even further, the same way regenerating Arachnoids produce Biff, whose regeneration is somewhere between "sick" and "Come on, man!"

As for Nosferatu, he ought to be a REAL pain on Regen. By and large, healing as a defensive mechanism has a very sharp scaling curve, almost completely negating lower incoming damage values, but cutting off very sharply after a certain point of incoming attacks. That's why Regen Scrappers tend to say "If they can't kill me in the first 10 seconds, they ain't gonna'." Nosferatu's thing is, by and large, obscene amounts of outgoing damage, which is really tough on Regeneration. He does have debuffs, but they're not nearly as bad as his cloven slaps.

In other news, I hope To Save a Soul isn't 25 missions long, since I'd like to meed the Madame of Mystery some time today.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.