Scorus

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Luminary is actually a Energy Blast, Energy Manipulation Blaster.

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Who do we have to bribe for them to write a scene where Luminary unleashes an AoE, knocking all the enemies out of the Tanker's range so they lose the aggro and the entire party gets wiped out? Um, just asking.

Scorus

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Citadel = Luminary - just seemed appropriate the 2 androids were a team since they are the only 2 who probably can have a conversation on the same lvl

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Consisting entirely of 0's and 1's?

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With that info it isnt a big leap to think as the SideKicks have matured that they would end up forming a team and be heros in their own rights

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At least they didn't call them the Teen Titans. Originally the Teen Titans were entirely composed of Justice League sidekicks: Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy,...seems like there was a fifth but I can't think who. Not Supergirl, I know.

Scorus

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Oooh. Nice information. I really wish this stuff permeated into the game. I know the story is geared to be stories for our heroes, but I think world characters and their backstory should be in the CoH bible somewhere and be heavily alluded to in future content if possible.

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I think the original plan was that this would be much more a part of the game. A superhero or superhero group would have relationships with particular superhero and supervillain groups that would affect the kind of missions they got, what kinds of resources they had access to, etc. So if you did a lot of work for Freedom Phalanx, your reputation with them would grow. If you fought Circle of Thorns a lot, your reputation with them would wither (with what kind of in-game effects, I don't know).

But no MMO gets built to its original plan. It would be nice to see more than just 'flavor text' from the rich history of Paragon City be incorporated into the game.

Scorus

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At the moment, Scrappers, and to a lesser degree, Tankers, are being analyzed. Once we establish a baseline, then we'll be in a better position to look at Blasters.

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I guess it is too much to hope for, but I wish you could just look at all ATs instead of trying to establish a baseline with one or two. The problem is that the baseline seems to keep changing depending on what AT has been the target for analysis most recently. Scrapper defense was changed after you developed the Tanker baseline, but now Scrapper defense seems to be the new baseline that you will end up modelling Tankers after.

Right now the Scrapper v. Blaster choice comes down to whether you want higher damage and superb defenses or ranged attacks. Given how Scrapper achieve the same first strike capability that Blasters have using superspeed and/or stealth, this is just no contest.

And I think PvP has shown us that all the squishies need a little defense/hit point/status defense help.

Scorus

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Just new Kheldian missions in I4...

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Which MANY players are reporting they can't access. I've tried all my characters and created brand new ones and can't get anything out of these guys.

According to several players, you can't get these if you are already on a story arc. Not only that, you can't get them if you have been offered the start of a story arc and didn't take it. That is not the only bug in it, though, as I created a new character to test this. He did no missions other than his first contacts, which he completed. Never talked to his next offered contact but still couldn't get a Kheldian mission.

Scorus

I'm not a big fan of the first. I can understand for five levels when people are still getting used to the game, but by L6 I don't see the need for no-risk gaming. Especially given your affirmation of not wanting reward without risk.

The second...eh. There is really very little risk already, decreasing it just seems to be more least-common denominator stuff and I'd prefer you head the other direction.

Scorus

Two questions:

1) Is this documented anywhere? Don't players have a right to know that this kind of phat l00t is in the game and how to get it?

2) Why is phat l00t in this game? I loved that this game was essentially loot-free. Loot poisons a game, the Hamidon griefing is just the latest in a long, long line of evidence showing that. And the only thing worse that phat l00t is phat l00t that is only available to handful of people (and more available the more you grief).

Dump this and let us all play on an even playing field, please. If beating the Hamidon isn't enough reward then let the player move on to his next FotM.

Scorus

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Hmm I did it this weekend, and never had to repeat goals/maps as you mentioned. So it sounds like you had a bug going there. If you're talking about the Radar stations... It was in 3 different locations for me.

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No, I'm talking about the first mission, to recover two...documents? We had to do that three times, all in the same location. As soon as we left, we got the mission to go back in and do it again. There was only one person in our group who had done it before but she indicated it had happened in her previous attempt so we assumed it was intended.

Guess I'll bug it. Certainly made for a much longer night since those were all kill-all missions.

Scorus

I agree that Striga was very well done. A couple of things to change for the future:

In the TF, is the first mission supposed to be repeated in the same location with the same goals 3 times? I assumed this was a bug but others thought it was intended. It made for tedium.

Has anyone had any problems with crashes in the final battle? We went through the whole thing, were fighting the Archon AV and everything crashed. Since I was exemp, I was then out of the TF. Very annoying to have gone through everything to come out with nothing.

Mark the first contact on the map. I was L27 when Striga went live and had no pointers on how to start the TF.

Keep up the good work!

Scorus

The fact that so many attacks do lethal or smashing in addition to the other forms of damage make those others often superfluous. Stone Armor people learned in beta that they didn't really have to take anything but Stone and Mineral armor until they got to Granite.

Scorus

Assuming this is moderated (send your questions to X and he'll forward them to Y), then this is very common in MMOs.

CoH does do things that others don't, though. More importantly, they let players do things that others don't. Most developers are afraid of their players, eventually adopting an us against them mentality. The CoH devs work with their players, giving them freedoms that most would not.

Scorus

More of a tie-in with Paragon City and the story line(s). Have a supergroup that has satisfied a bunch of (not necessarily public) criteria become known to an NPC supergroup like Freedom Phalanx. I seem to remember something like that being in the original plan, perhaps the idea could be revived. This knowledge could turn into friendship and even alliance, with various perks and possibly restrictions. And, conversely, a CoV alliance could become known to CoT or the Council or whoever.

Scorus

Very nice. You took several of the ideas for getting what you want done in a better way and improved them. I think you could have kept the boss hit point increase in, that increased the strategy. It was the boss damage increase that killed the strategy. But it will be nice to feel like a superhero again.

Scorus

If you want a headstart on your research, you will find MANY examples of solo missions that have unnamed bosses in them in the following thread (and many other threads):
Boss level too high!
I recommend checking out pages ca. 10-20, after you made your 'if there are any bosses, they will be in the mission text' statement but before the thread devolved.

By the way, all but one of the indoor Stiga Islands missions I've done have had an unnamed, unscripted boss in them (either Totem or Archon).

Scorus

You had the holy grail in your hand: a game that both soloists and teams could enjoy. It lacked only one thing: a difficulty slider that would have told the computer to spawn this mission as if there was a party of X+1 characters instead of X (or X+2, etc.). So why change the game to alienate a fair number of your players when you could do it so that everybody has fun and is challenged? You can't see the player for the vision at this juncture.

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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.

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As the many, many examples that have been posted here have shown since you made your 'bosses should only appear in missions if it is in the text", either one or two things is true:
1) There are many bosses that aren't listed in the text. This is possible but I'll point out that most of the instances cited thusfar are of generic, not named, mobs. A totem, an archon, an Aberrant Eremite, etc. That is what we are finding in our solo missions.
2) There is a bug that is causing bosses to spawn in solo missions. This is my guess based on what you have said here and in the past.

Lastly, if this is your attitude then you need to either provide more solo content or be more upfront in your advertising that this game is not suited for players who do not want to group at least occasionally.

Scorus

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Again, most of those I wager will be explained by the longstanding hidden-defeat-all condition bug. They need to get that fixed.

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So if anyone points out evidence that directly contradicts your assertions, you will brush it off by just assuming that it is the result of a bug? If the facts don't conform to the theory then they must be discarded, eh?

The facts are that there are missions in every story arc where you have to defeat a boss who is not mentioned or hinted at until you take the mission, and sometimes until you find him in the mission. This is counter to both Statesman and your assertions and is making the game much less fun for a large number of players.

Scorus

I wonder if they ever solo.

Scorus

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Er, well, true, I didn't read the whole thread.

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If you just read the page that this post is on, you would have seen several more specific instances. In fact it looks like the brand new Stiga Island missions are full of them (had two like that last night myself). So it isn't even a case of old missions that haven't been reformed, lots of the missions that went in just last week have this same problem: bosses that have to be killed to finish a mission but are not even hinted at in the mission text.

Scorus

Here's a doozy, there is a surprise, unnamed boss in one of the Stiga Island missions (a Totem). So this is even the case for missions that went live recently, not just the older ones, and it is gating the entire Stiga Island mission series for me. No, grouping isn't forced, unless you want to enjoy more than 25% of the content in the game...

Defeat all zombies in mausoleum

Tobias Hansen: Are you familiar with the reanimated zombies known as the Banished Pantheon? I certainly am. They’ve been digging up my churchyardm haunting the Morass, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Yesterday I located a mausoleum full of the creatures. Will you rid the mausoleum of these dread creatures?

There was a time when I would have gone with you, <Character Name>, but I’m afraid those days are behind me now.


Found 1 +1 level Totem (L29). I killed everything else, he took be down before I could get him to 50%. Fun game…

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Until HE says to the contrary, I'm remaining convinced that he meant that every mission that *requires* you to beat the boss *to finish the mission* mentions the presence of a boss.


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Okay, but if you read this thread you will see many, many instances where his statement is still untrue. There seem to be as many missions with must-kill bosses where it is not said in the text as there are missions with bosses where it is.

Scorus

Here is what I think is going on:

1) Statesman has always wanted Bosses to not be soloable. They, like most MMO devs, underestimated how strong many player builds would be and are just now putting Bosses where they originally wanted them to be.

2) Statesman believes that most all mission texts tell you if there is a boss. You may remember that he believed that most all mission texts told you if the mission was timed. You may also remember his shock after launch when he found out that Task Forces were not and had never been working properly. He is at the top levels and is a busy man and has to just assume that what he told people to do was done. Like the other cases, however, they are FAR short of this being realized (not that that would solve the problems, IMO).

My opinion: They need to abandon the 'bosses shouldn't be soloable' attitude as that makes the game just too boring for soloists. We need the greater variety of opponents that bosses bring and lieutenants are rarely challenging enough to be particularly interesting. AV/Monsters should not be soloable (despite the fact that many AVs in comic books are), but bosses should just be tougher than lieutenants to the same degree that lieutenants are tougher than minions.

My solution: keep the boss heightened hp but roll back the boss damage enhancement. The former requires strategy but the latter prevents it. There is no at-that-moment strategy to prepare for 1-2 shot kills. Also remove AVs from many higher level missions.

Scorus

My apologies if my rhetoric tip-toed into the hyperbolic.

I did indeed mean that if you touched the slider as a soloist and ran into a boss, it would be suicidal. I guess there are leet builds that can solo +1 bosses, but the average player doesn't come to these boards to find out the best combos before creating his character. And if you have a combo that can solo +3 bosses, enjoy your leetness while you can.

Bosses happen.

Scorus

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At the current level, without adjusting the slider upwards (I am not even TOUCHING that thing)

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Soloists cannot touch that slider. I tested that slider extensively on Test because it was the second thing on my wish list for this game, and found that it only adds levels, it doesn't increase the chance of lieutenants or bosses. But in combination with the boss changes, it is a killer. Minions that are +3 levels aren't that much harder to kill than even con minions (for me, at least, Stone/Stone Tanker), but a +3 level Boss is ridiculous. And, despite Statesman's belief, it is very common to be surprised by a boss in a solo mission.

Scorus

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Actually, if a boss will appear in a mission, the mission briefing mentions it. Check the text.

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As with the many problems with not mentioning timed missions, this is very hit and miss. I've had lots of occassions where a random Incinerator Bot or Lost boss or Ruin Mage appears in a mission even though there was no indication in the text. This may be your goal, but you are currently far from it.

Also keep in mind that hunting missions are FAR easier for groups than soloists and therefore soloists mostly do indoor missions. By making 50% (higher at some levels, lower at others) of missions suddenly unsoloable, you are really killing the soloist's lifeblood. You are forcing grouping, if nothing else just to get the dang mission off your list so you can get another, and forced grouping is precisely what you have said over and over you did not want.

Scorus

Please tell me you didn't send those boss changes live. If you did then you just made about half the missions in the game unsoloable. That's just plain going to kill your solo player base.

Scorus