City of Zeroes?

[ninjarat]

I have been playing City of Heroes for a few months now and I have generally enjoyed it. Now, however, some of my friends who have been playing for about as long as I have are thinking of canceling their accounts. After what happened this evening I am about >< close to that point myself. Statesman, Cryptic's lead developer for City of Heroes, has said since Day One that the game can be played solo, which is one of the things that drew me into it in the first place -- a game that I can play when I want, however I want when I feel like it.

I started a new character this evening, because I like creating new characters and trying out the various powers available. Everything is fine until I get these two missions from my two available contacts. The first is against Lost, which Grey Mage is not quite up to handling on his own. The other is Hellions, which would otherwise be no problem at all except for the fact that the "random" mission placer put it in the southeast corner of The Hollows, the most dangerous location in the most dangerous zone that a level 5 character can enter.

Yes, I filed a bug report. Yes, I petitioned for help. That was almost 30 minutes ago after Grey Mage had been killed for the second time just trying to get to the mission. My idle session just timed out, with no response from a GM. I am not a happy camper.

The game can be played solo? Not if we can't get to our missions.

Edit:
This is the GM's response that I finally received. The ticket is marked "Solved", which means it is locked, which means that I cannot let GM Bayla know of my displeasure:

Response (GM Bayla)
12/09/2004 10:35 PM

Hello,

Thank you for contacting the City of Heroes support team regarding your feedback of the recent Update. We always appreciate hearing from our players. The City of Heroes development team is continually making changes to improve the game, and looks at your feedback very closely to make this happen.

You may find some aspects of the game more challenging than before. However, you may also notice that some of the new changes also offer greater rewards, like the ability to “respec” your Hero. This mission location is diffiucult to reach, however it can be done. You may want to hit the tab key periodically as you travel to lsee where the nearest mobs are, that way you will be able to stay out of their path.

Please note that in addition to writing us, you should always feel free to post your constructive opinions/feedback/suggestions on the City of Heroes message board (http://boards.cityofheroes.com) where your fellow players and the dev team will be able to view them first hand. Thanks again!

My response would have been:

You MUST be joking. A group of level 8 (+3) mobs including a Madness Mage (boss) spawned less than three feet away from my character. My character was slept before I could do anything, not that there was anything I could do: few (if any) characters can take on a +3 boss with no preparation regardless of level.

Any opinions, feedback or suggestions I have right now have already been opined, feed back, suggested, requested, demanded and begged-for on the boards already by many, many others to no avail. The difficulty in the 1-20 range remains unbalanced.

I no longer need an answer to this question because it is clear that no answer is forthcoming. You clearly have a canned response that you must provide for issues of unplayable -- and unfun -- difficulty, and that you may not take any action to rectify the situation.


Edit:
Call me impetuous, but I just deactivated my CoH account and deleted my billing info. I'm out. The (apparently) mandatory canned response and automatic marking of the ticket closed without my okay did it.

Comments

Re: Sigh...

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

The players that Statesman is talking about when he says that "everyone played at the easy level" are on Cryptic's internal servers. The early slider was apparantly never put on Test, never exposed to the general public, never made available to the paying customers like me. Stargate Syndrome was the result of one isolated player skewing the limited tests. It was an accident. CoH Syndrome is no accident; Cryptic is consciously ignoring its players.

Re: Sigh...

[mechaman.livejournal.com]

*Rereads the exchange*

That's not what he was saying, I'm thinking. More because I think he's talking more during the mythical Alpha. And if so, sadly, there's a lot more that occludes there. The alpha in question never made it in any real form to even beta, as that version was much much more in a Champs style format and the min/max excesses got even worse. I may be wrong.

As for ignoring the community... I honestly don't know any other game where I get a response from the lead in three hours. I don't think it's conscious as much as you do, but that may well be because I've seen the screwups often too, sometimes from something as simple as not quite having the discrete CVS they thought they did.

Stargate Syndrome was done by isolation, but it's also done by looking at what stats seem to happen. And powergamers do help mask that, especially since alt-ing does expand how it can be done. This problem they still have in spades, as the current froofaw with Regen proved. They tested against the breakers, not realizing some other factors (damage res cap) had already changed part of the equation.

They do have a bad habit of looking at things top-down a bit too much. No arguement there. (I'm having one there with States currently, actually.) But they at least respond and react. It's probably not enough for you, and I can understand that.

Re: Sigh...

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

So what if the lead dev responds in 3 hours? It means nothing if his response is without meaning or merit, or is contradicted by the actions of he and his team. To wit, the statements that the game can be played solo contradicted by suggestions to team up against bosses, missions that require 2 or more teammates to simultaneously open/unlock/disarm objects, overall increased difficulty in issue 3 (mobs have more health in general), and the only-make-things-even-harder difficulty slider. There is hearing and there is listening. Read Truss's dialog (I use the term loosely) with Statesman for a wonderful example of hearing but not listening.

We were *promised* a fix for the too-difficult missions for low-damage ATs like controllers and some defender and tanker ATs. What issue 3 promises is the total opposite: increased difficulty across the board, lower defense and resistance cap for all ATs except tankers and no increase in controller throw-weight. Where I come from we call that a bait-and-switch -- or lying.