Zubenelgenubi

Did you know...

That the Ghost Ship is supposedly a fishing trawler named the Moraine? And yet this "fishing trawler" is the size of a full-length freighter! Not only that, but apparently the trawler needed a crew of several hundred in order to fish, as this is the number of ghosts it spawns here and there when it appears.

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....Some of us are pretty miffed that we couldn't register accounts for CoH until several months after release as we lived outwith the USA/Canada, and can't get the Hallowe'en event badges, yet people who had the privilege of being here at the start think they are somehow entitled to get Isolator.

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WHAT?? WHAAAAT???

>ahem<

Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of that axe grinding over there. You were saying something about Kheldians?

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However, I really don't care about the argument at this point, since it's obvious you won't be persuaded, and my points have been made one way or another.

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and it’s equally obvious that you won’t be offering BlazingImp that apology you owe him.


and DID YOU ALSO KNOW:

That Devouring Earth emanators used to be totally bugged? The Guardians, Granites, etc. that drop them today only do so when they’re aggroed. But early on they would just plunk ‘em down wherever they were standing when they spawned. Any area inhabited by DE would look (from the air) like a vast field of overlapping, glowing circles. The devs knew that this behavior was not “working as intended,” but the fix wasn’t made for a long time (sometime after i2 or i3 I think).

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AFAIK, the Devs never claimed that ED was in response to balancing future content. It was in response to balancing the current content/gameplay, period.

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Then you are uninformed.

Statesman himself responded to the hue and cry of the i5 nerfs and ED. He stated that without these changes, future content would be very difficult to develop because some players would breeze through it and others would find it extremely difficult. Whether or not one believes this is another topic.

And just saying “period” at the end of a statement does not automatically make it true.


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I'm like a librarian. I like keeping information in check.

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Did I read that right? Librarians like to keep information “in check?” If that’s true then every librarian I’ve ever met was incompetent, because they just let anybody have access to their information!

Bizarre.


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In this case, the idea of whether or not almost all of the nerfs since I2 have been due to PVP and PLing is either false or unknown.

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Logical fallacy known as a False Dilemma.


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I think I would remember if there were an abundance of nerfs related to PVP or PLing. (Considering PVP has been around for half, if not less, of CoH's lifespan, I seriously doubt it's true.)

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Again, you are misinformed.

PvP has been part of this game since its conception. CoV was planned for from the beginning, and PvP is a major part of and selling point for CoV. CoV was announced before I started playing, and I’ve been here since before i1. Just because the arenas didn’t exist from Day One in CoH, that does not mean that PvP was not “around.” Someone had to program the PvP environments. Someone had to consider how powers would interact. The whiteboards in the devs’ offices were covered in PvP issues looong before PvP went live. To believe that the repeated nerfs to regen had nothing to do with future PvP issues would be naive in the extreme.


But really, this discussion doesn’t belong here. This is (was) a nice thread where people reminisced and commented on things that were in the game long ago. BlazingImp posted a long, thoughtful, and well researched summary of past game PLing schemes. Several of them even I didn’t know about. I don’t know why you had to jump all over his [censored] for it. That was rude of you, and I think that you owe him an apology.

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So I'm not allowed to say you're absolutely wrong because I didn't have anything supporting my argument, which was in response to your totally false comment that didn't have anything supporting it either? That's a heckuva double standard.

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Umm… As I read it, nearly his entire post provided support for his opinion. And it was a very long post. Just saying that his claim was unsupported doesn’t make it true!


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I can say confidently that changes directly related to powerleveling have made up at the very very most a whole 10% of changes made to the game. And a nice portion of those changes are actually fairly recent. Unless you're going to claim that things like the Burn changes and AoE caps are meant to be directly in response to PLing, instead of their intended target of herding, which isn't the same thing.

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Strictly and pedantically speaking herding may not be the same thing as PLing. However, the vast majority of PLing strategies REQUIRED herding to accomplish. This was true in the past, and is true still. I have always believed the herding nerfs were made to cut down on PLing. And I am far from alone. Without the herding nerfs, none of the anti-PLing nerfs and mission changes would have mattered much at all. So I’d definitely say that there’s a connection between herding and PLing.


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As for PVP, the only patch that featured a significant number of changes related to PVP was the Issue that introduced it. Issue 4. And all of those changes were restricted to PVP play. Everything else was minor tweaks, if not buffs.

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The i5 nerfs were NOT “minor tweaks” by any stretch! And neither was ED (our happy “between issues” nerf gift). These nerfs continued and refined the devs’ desire to bring damage output and defenses for all characters closer together. While the devs have stated that their intent was to “balance” the game so that future content could be more easily designed, a great many felt (and still feel) that the nerfs were in fact because of the impending release of CoV and the PvP zones therein. Even if you accept that the “balancing” was really for “future content” like the devs said, a great deal of this “future content” to date has been PvP zones. Indeed – aside from a couple of base items and costume parts, what new content will heroes get in i7? A new lvl 50 PvP zone.


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But in the end, the best summary I can give as to why your statement is false: You're scapegoating. Let's blame PLing and PVP for all our nerfing woes. Obviously there's simply no possible way that something negatively changed was because of something other than those two hot button issues!

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And I would say that in the end, the best summary I can give as to why your arguments are false: You ended your post with an unjustified and sarcastic personal attack.

Seriously, I don’t see where your animosity comes from.

Did you know...

Once there was a secret command that allowed heroes to gain access to villain costume parts in Icon? Apparently it was some sort of internal software developer switch that was left in after a patch. In the first couple of hours after it was discovered, all Icon stores were mobbed by heroes taking advantage of the "bug."

(sorry, wanted to be the first to bag this one)

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The Desk would yell NPC comments and attack and run etc.


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Dayaum...

And here I thought that was just because I dropped too much acid at work...

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AND did you know that these Rularuu were hideously broken?

The giant eyeballs would chain-mez anyone foolish enough to come near them, while the brutes would pound them into quivering red stains. They were so outrageously overpowered that a medium size group conning green could easily slay most solo heroes. If you wanted to kill Rularuu, you had to go find grey-conning mobs that gave zero or nearly zero xp (and yet were a pain to kill).

After this became apparent, almost everyone just left them the hell alone. So Paragon City's second Alien Invasion event consisted of a bunch of bored aliens standing (or floating) around in groups throughout the zones while the Brave Defenders of Paragon just swung in wide circles around them while on their way to things that might actually give then XP.

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Untrue! Many of us went looking for the portals in the lower level areas just to keep the new folks safe.
An organized team could take on a normal portal of even cons. They could only chain mez one person and heck, that's what clear mind is for

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Did you know…

That at one time the public school system taught something called “reading comprehension?”

So, for example, when I post something about how a SOLO hero would get chain-mezzed and beat into the dust by green-con Rularuu, an “old-timer” like myself (who attended public school in the late 70’s – early 80’s) would automatically assume that I was talking about a SOLO hero. But someone coming out of the American public school system more recently will apparently just assume that the phrase “SOLO hero” refers to heroes in organized teams!

Freaky, huh?

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3) I2 was introduced with the Ralaruu invading Pargon City. Portals would open in all the zones and Ralaruu would pour out.

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AND did you know that these Rularuu were hideously broken?

The giant eyeballs would chain-mez anyone foolish enough to come near them, while the brutes would pound them into quivering red stains. They were so outrageously overpowered that a medium size group conning green could easily slay most solo heroes. If you wanted to kill Rularuu, you had to go find grey-conning mobs that gave zero or nearly zero xp (and yet were a pain to kill).

After this became apparent, almost everyone just left them the hell alone. So Paragon City's second Alien Invasion event consisted of a bunch of bored aliens standing (or floating) around in groups throughout the zones while the Brave Defenders of Paragon just swung in wide circles around them while on their way to things that might actually give then XP.

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Really the only event source that has not been identified is the Winter '04 event. It's not clear whether or not that was another Malleus Mundi mishap (woo!) or a self-contained event or if it was influenced by another party (like the Gamester).

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The giant walking snowmen clearly were NOT related to the Malleus Mundi! You know the song...

"There must have been some evil,
in that old silk hat they found,
for when they placed it on his head,
he slew all the kids around!"

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BTW, this list of numbers, and the information on how to use them, is exactly the sort of information that should be included in the player guide binder (but which, of course, is not).

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One problem is that this is a dynamic list. Every time they add a new badge, unless they add it to the end of the list, every badge with a higher number than the spot for the new one will shift. So these numbers are really only good until the next time that they add a badge. Usually that's at issues, but not always. End result, any printed listing in the guide could be out of date with no notice at all. So while as a forum post like this people can respond to the changes rapidly and post updated lists, that would be much, much more tricky with a printed guide.

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All of the information in this game is dynamic. All of it. So why have a guide at all?

I would hope that new badges are added to the END of the list. The old list would therefore be incomplete, but not completely useless. I can’t imagine that they would shuffle around all the numbers for the badges every time they made an addition to the list.

Furthermore, the whole point of using a binder for your guide book is so that pages with dated information could be easily replaced with updated pages.

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And then there's the whole badge secrecy thing. The devs want the players to find the badges on their own. Printing a list of all badges in the games kinda defeats that goal.

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Yes. The devs want the players to find things on their own. So again, what is the point of a guide book of any sort?

In the beginning the stores were semi-secret. You had to run around looking for them, or ask someone else in-game for their locations. But the Prima Guide had their locations shown on maps. So at that time the devs wanted stores to be “discovered” but there was still a “spoiler” guide book out there. By definition and intent, any guide book will give away in-game secrets.

Question:

When I use the command to list all slash commands, settitle does not appear. Yet (of course) cov, the one that heroes shouldn't use, appears! Any idea why /settitle doesn't appear on the list of slash commands?

BTW, this list of numbers, and the information on how to use them, is exactly the sort of information that should be included in the player guide binder (but which, of course, is not).

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And then I'd just go around buzzing the lowbies in Atlas Plaza, when they are having costume contests.

They'd all be like, "Holy crap!" And I'd be all like, making airplane noises and stuff.

It would be great.

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That's I8. Be patient.

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/em airplane

*holds both arms out straight from the shoulders, runs around in circles going "RReeeeeeeoooonnnnnnnnnnn"*

Yeah. It's in the future patch notes. But might get pushed back to i9, as they've promised to focus on /em motorboat for i8.

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Actually, I believe it was positron that stated a character is not intended to have every badge. And just because it's not that way now doesen't mean they don't eventually plan to have it set up that way.

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Well... The devs say a lot of things, don't they? (How are your skills studies going at the University of Paragon, BTW?)

It is my hope that they never make any more badges that my main cannot get, or God forbid they create some that are mutually exclusive with others. I think they need to realize that while some of their customers are altaholics, some of us are collectors and completists. There's no good reason why they can't serve both populations.

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Last time I checked, bad design decisions were still usually made in error.

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More clumsy conflation. There's a difference between making an error of judgement and an error in arithmetic, or in basic perception of what's on the screen in front of you.

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Last time I checked with the President, his errors in judgement usually begin as errors in arithmetic.

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What you want more alcohol as a prize? From your posts I thought you had been drinking already.

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Good God I WISH!!

But don't worry. Just a few more years and you'll be allowed some too!

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Last time I checked, errors were still usually made by mistake, yes.

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You're failing to grasp the difference between a bad design desision and an outright error.


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Last time I checked, bad design decisions were still usually made in error.

Now please tell me what I won in the "Belabor the Painfully Obvious Day” contest. (Dear GOD, let it be alcohol! oh please please pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease)

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New improved Dooom now with 25% more quibbling and 75% more hyperbole.

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/em talktothehand

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Order now and get cliches thrown in for free.

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Soooo... do you actually have a point here, or do you just utterly fail to understand what the grown-ups are talking about?

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Yes. NOW you've got it! Priot to Positron's post (THANK YOU POSITRON!) it was perfectly feasible to think that the devs might set the cost of these items too high.

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You simply aren't addressing the 'by mistake' part, are you?

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Last time I checked, errors were still usually made by mistake, yes. Sorry, but I didn’t know that you wanted me to use the word “mistake” in a sentence. Or has St. Patrick’s Day suddenly changed into “Belabor the Painfully Obvious Day?”

OK, well, I’ll bite:

Winter Lords appeared in the winter.
Perma-MoG could only be found on characters with MoG.
1 acc and 6 dmg SO’s in a power means the power is 6-slotted.
The kracken in the sewer trial could only be farmed in the sewer.
People complain about not having the Isolator badge because they cannot get the Isolator badge.
Farming the Hamidon day after day after day means people get HO's every day.
Using portal missions for PLing means that a lot of PLers go through portals. On missions. To PL.

Did I miss any? What do I win?

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New improved Dooom now with 25% more quibbling and 75% more hyperbole.

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/em talktothehand

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Because, of course, the devs never forget to mention important details... Like , oh I don't know, how Enhancement Diversification will affect powers after they are done making major changes to powers.

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You're funny.

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Why, Yes. Yes, I am.

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To listen to you, one would think that was perfectly feasible, on account of the Devs having made too many Winter Lords spawn or some such.

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Yes. NOW you've got it! Priot to Positron's post (THANK YOU POSITRON!) it was perfectly feasible to think that the devs might set the cost of these items too high. And I had a lot more examples than just Winter Lords. But of course, we're just ignoring all those, aren't we?

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It would be almost as catastrophically stupid as making giant walking XP piñatas called “Winter Lords” and putting dozens of them in each and every zone so that players could go from level 1 to 50 in just a couple of weeks, leaving the city overrun with high-level characters who cannot afford to buy their own SO enhancements and who don’t have the faintest clue how to play their own characters, many of whom quickly quit CoH because it’s boring and they’ve “done everything” (even though they have in fact done almost nothing).

...

Let’s see… accidentally over-reward for killing Winter Lords… accidentally over-price empowerment stations. Accidentally over-reward for killing Winter Lords… accidentally over-price empowerment stations…. Accidentally over-reward for killing Winter Lords… accidentally over-price empowerment stations.


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Not to thread-jack here...but..how is it the Dev's fault that the players exploited something they put in for fun? Is it the Dev's fault that those players, rather than having fun with the game decided to do nothing other than PL themselves by exploiting the game? I was there for the Winter Lord fun, and while i made much xp off of them, I quickly went back to doing my regular missions. You know...the way the Dev's designed it to be.

Please don't blame player exploits on the Devs. The most likely reason they didn't limit the Winter Lords before? They thought of it as an ADDITION to the game, not the be all-end all the PL players did. And I don't remember seeing any Devs standing behind any of those players twisting their arms into PL either. Just because an exploit is there does NOT mean you have to use it. Those people who PL'd and then got bored..well as far as I'm concerned, I'm glad they aren't around to spoil things more for people who want to play the game as designed.

Of course, YMMV...

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Oh, a valid enough point, up to a, err... point. But the flip side is that anyone could quickly do the math and see how much easier and faster leveling was if you just focused on the WL’s. And it certainly wasn’t an exploit! The XP given was exactly what the devs chose for them to give. PLers and those looking for shortcuts are part of any MMOG… and the devs should have known that. They themselves have admitted that the WL’s were a big mistake on their part.

Still, the only reason I even brought it up is because of Lady Sakako’s almost religious insistence that the devs cannot mess up the price of the new base items (apparently just because they’re gonna try reeeeeal hard not to). It was a counter example to her assertion. One of several I gave. All of which she either ignored completely or dismissed with an oh-so-compelling hand waving gesture.

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Thank you Posi for posting the numbers, but I think the 130,000 you quoted is light. Assuming these items are craftable, it would require a working Work table.

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Obviously they don't need to be crafted, or Posi would have factored that in. This is a Very Good Thing.

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Because, of course, the devs never forget to mention important details... Like , oh I don't know, how Enhancement Diversification will affect powers after they are done making major changes to powers.

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I grasp it completely. It’s just an irrelevant distinction.

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No, it's not, and I shall explain why. Again.

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Yes, it is, and I shall give my analogy. Again.

It’s like saying that just because someone has atrocious spelling, you do not expect him to have poor grammar. In fact, you would predict that his grammar is excellent !

(Of course, please DO feel free to ignore it again!)