_Story_

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All I can say is it's a good thing Awry doesn't read the forums or else she might have realized she was being tricked into giving out information that would be broadcast to the world!

Wow. Close shave there, huh?

Amazing stuff.

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Well, since I didn't ask anything really underhanded and, in her reply, she seemed to give tacit approval for me to let everyone know, I did.

If she had asked me to keep it to myself then I, of course, would have. (And sat smugly at my computer watching the speculations fly )

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Heh he. . . I really have to stop keeping things to myself. Meh, but the last time I said I knew anything it stirred up a bit of a frenzy. For now though I'm not sitting on anything. I have to start asking more of the right questions. As of late I've just been submitting ideas and suggestions for various additions, fixes and possible changes. Some content, some feature changes, but mostly just QoL fixes/updates.

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Toggle-dropping is a terrible kludge. I'm sorry if you like it.

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Well, they're working on that too.

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Kali was the first person to respond to that Statesman post yesterday, for goodness sake.

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Well, then it appears I must have missed that little detail whilst copying and pasting the link. It is 3 in the morning and I'm only reading the forums because I woke up and can't get back to sleep. Pardon me if I'm a little scatterbrained and should most likely be sleeping and not posting responses in game forums. It also appears that I have an entire string of nothing but my posts for a while because everyone else is in bed sleeping.

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Give me the doooooom posts anyday. These bootlicking marathons just make me ill.


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If I get called a fanboi for this, I'll probably have a heart attack from laughter, as several on this thread will understand.

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I really know the feeling. If I'm not being called a fanboi I'm being called a troll. Just like the developers it seems no matter what I do I'm damned either way.

Note - Yes (to those in the know) I have done many a stupid thing and have been called on it, but not everything I've said was wrong.

I'm just happy to see everyone else so happy.

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Well, in CoH, a blaster can punch the tanker's toggles off. In WoW, a mage cannot punch a warrior's armor off.

Advantage = WoW.

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Funny I read that exact same sentence and concluded the opposite.

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Toggle-dropping is a terrible kludge. I'm sorry if you like it.

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Well, they're working on that too.

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This means no suppression either, right? That would incur most of the same problems the original nerf brought, so I hope we're sticking with stealth as-is.

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If you read Statesman's comment on it, yes supression of stealth will be coming in a future patch. They will be pulling the current method so they can code supression in.

Its only being pulled because otherwise idiots would use group and castable invisibility abilities to grief and harass players.

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Oh okay, so it's just the usual bait-and-switch that comes like clockwork. Suppression still brings in a huge host of QOL problems and is as bafflingly asinine as the previous idea. They may as well just change the power name to "kinda sneaky...sometimes".

Well, so much for boosting my expectations.

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I'm not one who believes that using stealth to click glowies was an exploit - you paid for it by getting less xp, for example.

However, I want to know - what kind of QoL problems does this change bring?

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Well, a few of them are: 1. It can greatly increase the length of time some missions will take. You already pay a penalty in XP not killing the baddies, and it seems pretty reasonable that a "stealthy" character could get the job done without having to tear through the opposition guns blazing. 2. It also creates issues when the clicky target is near a foe that the player is no match for and whose style is to outwit the foe by sneaking by. So basically the change punishes squishy soloers who rely upon this ability. 3. It also is damaging just in general to those whose playstyle or character's persona is to avoid up-front conflict in such a manner.

I just think it's a silly, petty change that has no reasonable basis designwise. It's amazing to me how obsessive some people are about someone gaining XP in some other way. I don't think risk v. reward is a sound premise for game design, so I can't really identify with changes made on account of it.

Anyhow, I'm not going to get involved in a big discussion about this except in PM. It will dominate the thread in an unnecessary manner.

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From what I understand the intention is that you fight (at least some of) the enemies in these missions. As for stealth based missions that are created for the purpose of stealthing, I think these will comming soon. Players have been asking for different kinds of missions. I just think that the developers had in mind that these others missions as they stand are not stealth missions and that people have been avoiding all the risks for their reward, even if it is somewhat lessened by the fact that there are less mobs killed. In fact I often see many teams just click out as soon as the mission objectives are completed and don't bother to clear the map. I personally like to clear everything out regarless of what kind of mission it is.

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This means no suppression either, right? That would incur most of the same problems the original nerf brought, so I hope we're sticking with stealth as-is.

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If you read Statesman's comment on it, yes supression of stealth will be coming in a future patch. They will be pulling the current method so they can code supression in.

Its only being pulled because otherwise idiots would use group and castable invisibility abilities to grief and harass players.

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Hate to spoil the fun but you do realise those who predicted abait and switch were...right

The devs AI is as predictable as a vazalok cadaver without a mortie

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So...

Your not happy with the Dev's because they never listen to the playerbase, however, anything thats done that appears to be listening to the playerbase is all really part of some bait and switch?

Way to go, you've got it set up so that no matter what the Dev's do, its the wrong decision.

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go read the "marked glowes thread" wthat stated the steath outcry

one of the most common respodendes was "Watch the devs post how their going to lesten it to suppression and give us the old bait and switch 'see we do listen toyou its just going to be suppression now"

and what has happened now

"we heard your crises and are making it suppression instead'

predicted to the letter

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I could make a thousand predictions and if just one of them appears to come true people could say I made an accurate prediction. Then again maybe I just got lucky. Predictions as a whole are easy to twist to suits ones purposes.

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This means no suppression either, right? That would incur most of the same problems the original nerf brought, so I hope we're sticking with stealth as-is.

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If you read Statesman's comment on it, yes supression of stealth will be coming in a future patch. They will be pulling the current method so they can code supression in.

Its only being pulled because otherwise idiots would use group and castable invisibility abilities to grief and harass players.

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Hate to spoil the fun but you do realise those who predicted abait and switch were...right

The devs AI is as predictable as a vazalok cadaver without a mortie

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So...

Your not happy with the Dev's because they never listen to the playerbase, however, anything thats done that appears to be listening to the playerbase is all really part of some bait and switch?

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It's more like they do some change that is extreme, and then like usual some players suggest something less extreme even though the original change in the first place was unneeded and the alternative is only reasonable in comparison to the original change, rather than being reasonable in itself. That's what is now happening with stealth powers. Changing them in the first place was asinine, and suppression still retains most of the problems and is nearly as unreasonable. Most clickies don't even give XP, and risk v. reward is making fun and time v. reward take a back seat even though they have a lot more to do with making the game enjoyable. I remember ED was also mentioned as "player suggestion" despite it being a suggestion in place of the I5 nerfs. We got I5 nerfs + ED and the blame was placed on "see! we listen to our customers!" in order to make it look like we're really being listened to.

What would probably be a more effective tactic in the future when changes like this come is to not offer an alternative for the devs. All we end up doing is giving them some sort of excuse to implement something largely similar when we wanted neither in the first place. Otherwise, we end up just pressuring them into implementing something we didn't even want in the first place, but merely would have wanted rather than the original change. It's not a productive cycle to be in, and the forums seem to fall into it every single time in an incredibly mechanistic manner.

People say Jack and co. don't know PR, but they've managed to rather successfully placate their customers _repeatedly_ even after the most egregious of changes. The best PR is the PR that people don't even recognise.

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You seem to be the type to have very little faith in people. Almost paranoid and very cynical. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to disagree with your viewpoints and state that I believe that the developers are not being deceptive in the slightest. I think that they're doing the best that they can and you are simply applying your views to situations that can easily be mistaken as such. Any number of people can perform the same series of actions but have different motivations for doing so.

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This means no suppression either, right? That would incur most of the same problems the original nerf brought, so I hope we're sticking with stealth as-is.

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If you read Statesman's comment on it, yes supression of stealth will be coming in a future patch. They will be pulling the current method so they can code supression in.

Its only being pulled because otherwise idiots would use group and castable invisibility abilities to grief and harass players.

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Hate to spoil the fun but you do realise those who predicted abait and switch were...right

The devs AI is as predictable as a vazalok cadaver without a mortie

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It couldn't be that maybe they're actually listening to the players?

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Good job! I, for one, never lost any faith in your abilities.

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I feel the same way. I've always had a good feel about these developers.

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On vacation - first in Indianapolis with my in laws for Christmas, then off to the Fiesta Bowl with my wife to see the Buckeyes. I was back at work last Wednesday, but there was a lot to catch up on.

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Welcome back.

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CuppaJo is still on her vacation. Unless she's just hiding from me. Which would be hard because I'm such a rabid-fanboy-stalker.

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I went on vacation to hide from you A-Cat.

Yes - I was busy scaring myself half to death playing F.E.A.R. and The Movies for a week after the regular holiday. So if you sent a PM and haven't heard back yet - give me a few days.

Issue 7 - Tentative plan for releasing the "Feature Update" to the website is mid February - so you might as well settle in for about a month of waiting unless a dev decides to drop some hints.

Of course you already know I7 includes 40-50 content for CoV, and as with every update more art updates, missions, and quality of life features. The other items in I7 will be revealed when we get the Feature Update.

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F.E.A.R. eh? What do you think of the game. I was thinking I might give it a try. Another game that I recommend you try out when it finally gets released is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadow of Chernobyl.

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Channel Name: Dreamscape
Purpose: For discussions on creativity and imagination. This includes games, anime, manga, comics, animation, sci-fi, fantasy, horror and all other forms of creative expression you can think of.

Feel free to join.

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This channel no longer exists.

Two channels I did run across recently are "Paragon Hotline" and "Paragon Chatline" although they seem fairly new. The first seems to be for setting up teams/taskforces, badgehunting, monster sightings and sharing any useful game related information. The second seems to just be a large chatroom where you can talk about anything. In the short time I've been in the channels I've already been promoted to operator status.

I'll just throw this up just because I can. I'll do better when I actually have decent RAM and a graphics card in my computer so I can actually take in-game screenshots of decent quality.

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War Witch (the dev) has a personal website with a real pic.

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Wow! She's pretty cute.

Channel Name: Dreamscape
Purpose: For discussions on creativity and imagination. This includes games, anime, manga, comics, animation, sci-fi, fantasy, horror and all other forms of creative expression you can think of.

Feel free to join.

The Veiled Hand is closing it's doors. Since September of this year the groups activity has slowed to a crawl. I'm trying to get the more active members to merge into another more active supergroup. Eventually TVH will most likely become a ghost town of nothing more than a roster full of inactive members.

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Join the Murder Men...or die.

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Can I have a third option?

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um I can say my sg had a meeting about various things the other night then afterwards we all went and did AV's with our 50's, and we didn't earn much prestige. Plus I have seen people post on this subject about how you could earn a possible 7mil prestige in a week. I find that hard to believe, but even so did any of you play this on beta? They gave us 36mil prestige to play around with on beta and that was just enough to build a decent base that was able to participate in base raids. 36mil prestige didn't get you the best stuff. Plus if rent is the same as it was on beta then in a couple months the bonus prestige you got for your max 15 members is already gone just from paying rent.

I think I realize now why on beta you got sk'd up to lvl 40 for base raids. You won't have a decent base because you won't be able to afford one until your members are lvl 40. Let me clarify, by decent base I mean a base that has decent enough features to have base raids. I'm still peeved over the whole issue that sg's that have been around for a year or more get absolutely no benefit comparable to newer sg's, and bigger sg's get no benefit comparable to smaller sg's. Older sg's should've gotten a set amount of bonus prestige, and there should not have been a max on prestige per member. If they had actualy given bigger sg's and far older sg's more prestige we would already be able to be testing scheduled raids, but instead we'll be waiting several months to get to access this new content.

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This unfortunately would give olde and larger supergroups an unfair advantage over newer and smaller supergroups. I don't think that's what the developers want at all. I think they want everyone too be on an even level for superbases.

Wow! That was fast.

Thanks again. This is a great read.

War Witchand Ravenstorm were two of the ones I didn't get a chance to see during the event. Same with Ms. Liberty and Agents Darwin, Bucher and Abbot whove I've been told were there also.

I did on the other hand get to see Back Street Brawler, Positron, Synapse and Statesman, who I all got to tango with for a bit. Agents Jax and Snow I got to fight as well, but only saw Agent Hyde as at the time I didn't realize that it wasn't just on of the NPC AIs. I almost got to tangle with Manticore, but as I mentioned my computer crashed.

All in all it was a great event. For me it started out a little poorly, as I seemed to be in all the wrong places, and my underpowered computer was really giving me a hard time. Despite that I had a great time.

t would have been nice to dance with the Agent who was dancing with a few of the players afterwards before flying off. Apparently I just missed it. Well, either the developers are going to have to have more events like this in the future if I'm going to get another chance to hang with them like this again, or I'm going to have to get them to hire me.

You guys (and gals) at Cryptic should create a list of all the comments used during this even and post them on the boards here for everyone to see.

I was there for that one. I had the opportunity to complement him on smacking me across the street. "Nice shot Positron! That had quite the sting to it!"

I would have loved to have traded some witty banter with you Manticore, but alas my computer crashed just moments after I had engaged you in combat.

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With Enhancement Diversification comes a benefit for ALL City of Heroes powers.

Every power, across the board, is getting a 13.33% reduction in its Endurance cost.

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This is a strange number. How did you come up with this particular figure?

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Because this is the diference between the endurance costs in CoH and CoV. They're simply just adjusting the endurance costs to line up with those in CoV.

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Is that a fact, or a theory? I haven't seen a thread comparing the same power's END cost in CoV vs. CoH, have you?

It's approximately the equivalent of an END REDUX DO in your power (about 1% shy of that).

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An extrapolation. This change was already in the CoV patch notes, and has since been announced here. I simply made the connection.

Edit - And if you need further confirmation then you can PM Positron and he can confirm it for all of us.

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With Enhancement Diversification comes a benefit for ALL City of Heroes powers.

Every power, across the board, is getting a 13.33% reduction in its Endurance cost.

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This is a strange number. How did you come up with this particular figure?

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Because this is the diference between the endurance costs in CoH and CoV. They're simply just adjusting the endurance costs to line up with those in CoV.