Bladesnow

I dug around and found my original paper manual, and a copy of the PDF version dated July 26, 2005. Both of them read precisely as the current in-game text. Does not entirely rule out there having been text added at some point and then taken back out, but that seems quite unlikely. I think we can at least tentatively put that into the busted myth category.

Oh bother... we just threadjacked my thread, didn't we? Oh well. The search for truth is worth it.

Well, the description on ParagonWiki for Hover looks very much like what I remember. But that proves absolutely nothing, because anybody could have edited in anything they want on a wiki, and clearly there's text in there which did not come from copying the game text. It was such a minor nuisance from a play standpoint I never went looking, I bet people posted screenies at the time if there actually was a change.

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I remember in the description it even said this...

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Screenshot, or it didn't happen.

Please do not be an example of precisely the kind of player that is a demonstration of why they don't state that kind of thing.

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Just out of curiousity, do you take screenshots of every power description just in case they are silently changed at some point? My recollection matchs 'Steele's, not that it means a lot. I was rather surprised that the description DIDN'T mention hover working against knockback when I checked after that change was announced, and am left unsure whether my memory of it saying that is faulty, or if it was silently changed in anticipation of the change.

I kinda hope somebody DOES have an ancient screenshot of hover's description floating around, just because I'd like to know one way or the other. Though as many others have pointed out, what does a screenshot really prove, anyway? Anyone who is halfway decent with photoshop can make a screenshot say whatever they want. But I know whatcha mean. Hmmmn... how many screenshots WOULD it take to record all the power descriptions.... (grin)

Precisely, 'Steele. The hover change was one that irritated me immensely, even tho it really was a pretty minor change. A LOT of my heroes had used hover for KB mitigation. It really irks me to have something work one way for YEARS, then suddenly change to a different set of rules.

This development team is FAR better at communicating with the playerbase than most whose games I've played. Which makes it even more mystifying that they make these sort of poorly communicated changes in the first place, then scramble to mend fences afterward. My suggestion is made in the spirit of disclosure they seem to (eventually) end up reaching in the end, anyway.

As someone noted, there are going to be concerns of exposing exploits, though the level of info I am suggesting they disclose I don't immediately see any danger of that. On the other hand, people find the damndest things to exploit. (shrug) I wish development teams would be as accepting of players being clever as players are of devs changing things constantly.... hmmn, perhaps they already are. (grin)

Anyway, to your main point. I, too, am rather tired of the flux and flow of the definitions of powers. I actually DO tend to believe that the team has a consistent idea of how they want things to work. I really do NOT think they are just winging it, and that there DO exist documents and guidelines for how it all fits together. Given the nature of software development, and to a lesser extent any big project, at the very least someone will have scads of notes and emails saved recording what they decided in staff meetings.

On the other hand, we've seen clear cases where "somebody didn't read that memo", so to speak. We saw a good example of that in the pet recharge issue ongoing right now. Castle conceded that the person who wrote the patch notes on the change didn't know the full story, and consequently wrote a note that left out a lot.

Despite REALLY disliking the pet recharge nerf, the reaction of the development team to this one I found somewhat encouraging. Castle responded very quickly, and immediately made it clear that there'd been a mistake and the patch note WAS misleading. Then he waded right into an exposition of why they felt the change necessary, and why it was not open for discussion.

Again, I don't agree with the change, nor the reasoning behind it. But they DO seem to be moving toward a more open dialog about the way and the reasons they do things, which I think is healthy. Now if we can just figure out how to convince Castle that the Nerf power is grossly overpowered and "not working as intended"... (grin)

My biggest complaint about the pet recharge change is not the decline in combat power of many sets. It is the process, AND the loss of customizability. We have combat power to spare, for most AT/powerset combinations.

But we're losing options and viable alternate character building paths at an alarming rate. And to my mind that is far more valuable than some extra damage or higher attack rates, and a LOT less likely to be datamined and rebalanced at some nebulous future date. Not that I discount the nuts and bolts DPS "adjustments", I just suspect that the diminishing options will do a lot more to drive large numbers away.

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I keep waiting for Castle to snap and post something that gets modded.

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Castle hasn't really flipped out in a long time. Sometimes I wonder if NCSoft pumps Paxilon Hydrochlorate into the CoH offices, and that simultaneously explains Castle's posting behavior, and BaBs.

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Better posting through chemistry? What WILL they think of next? (grin)

Again, Memphis_Bill, not much argument there. I am not sure were I running things I'd want to nail myself down quite so much, though I do feel pretty strongly that the basic ruleset needs to be both stable and "published", for lack of a better term. I give the current team on CoX pretty high marks on keeping us more or less up to date on how things work... not so much on rule stability, though still pretty darn good overall.

Keep in mind, though, that we have on more than one occasion of late been given explanations of why changes are being made that involve what I'm referring to as their 'vision" of how a particular power works. I forget if any of them have ever used that particular term, but they've certainly referred on more than one occasion to a power not working as they intended. So what are these intentions they keep breaking things (from some of our admittedly narrow viewpoints) to satisfy? Inquiring minds wanna know and all that.

And as you've already pointed out, people are ALREADY seizing on any little scrap of comment and trying to hold them to it. Look at how many folks have various quotes from developers about one power or game change or another in their sig, usually with an editorial comment. Might be nice for THEM to at least be held to what they actually meant at that time, rather than some snippet that they intended to mean something entirely different.

I submit for consideration the notion that, perhaps, MORE information might be better than the model up to now. The collected wisdom of the players in the form of the forums, guides, wikis, and website has certainly helped enhance MY experience of CoX. Makes no never mind to me, I'll survive whatever happens, it IS just a game, after all. (laugh)

Castle, since you're still posting (and haven't cracked and been modded), could you share your thoughts on why recharge buffs for Voltaic Sentinel, Lightning Storm, and Gun Drone are so undesirable? I've played fairly extensively with heroes using LS and GD, only seen VS a couple of times. None of them struck me as PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER (tm)... so I am frankly rather puzzled at some of your statements in this thread.

Agreed, Memphis_Bill, it likely is a pipe-dream. Most things worth doing are when somebody first suggests them, and the majority remain that way. On the off chance it isn't, I'd like to see the devs tell us what their design vision for powers is.

Actually, I'd like to see their thoughts on powers regardless of whether it would accomplish that particular goal. The few times I've seen them discuss an individual power their comments have been fairly well reasoned and at least internally consistent.

Hard to judge if that's just the excellence of the individual developer who happens to be posting, but since its been commented several times that they have constraints on what they CAN tell us, clearly there are internal guidelines and discussions and staff meetings. Like we needed that hint to tell us there would be.

And, no, this is not my first rodeo... er, MMO. Sixth or seventh, maybe more, depending partially on definitions. I'm old and wise enough not to post often (though not quick enough on the uptake to have avoided MMO forums eating my life before (grin)), though I've been reading nearly since I subbed... 30 months ago? Gah, has it been so long? I kinda like CoX, think it has a lot of potential and can really develop into something even more special than it currently is.

I lived through the death spiral that was SWG, and hung on far past the point I knew the place was dead. And that perhaps makes me particularly sensitive to sweeping changes and the Neverending Nerf Cycle. Since I've several times seen one developer or another speak about how they thought a power should be working, thought it worth a shot to see if they'd share their ideas.

I doubt they can make the time, they got this game to develop I hear. But I also have seen what the forum community and places like ParagonWiki, Badge-Hunter, and the Titan network have accomplished. I do not think it is entirely implausible that some sort of joint effort COULD create better explanations of each power than the in-game text and real powers numbers and player experience seem to give us. (shrug) The idea is out there, and I'm sure the forum crowd can vastly improve the notion if they deem it worth the bother.

Originally buried in the "Pet Recharge Inheritance Change" thread started by Castle. Thought the notion worth cleaning up and posting as a suggestion so it has some chance of being seen.

For the third time or so just in recent development history, a sweeping change has been made to powers that at least a large portion of the playerbase views as negative and seems wildly unpopular with them. (see "nerf") Once again, the developers sent into the lion's den to explain their reasoning used phrases like "... powers which were never meant to have ..." and the much despised "not working as intended".

My proposal is simply this: the developers need to publicly tell us their "vision" for the powers. Most of the players have (I thought correctly) been assuming that any implementation of powers which survived internal testing, closed beta, and open beta to reach live WAS "working as intended". And the design philosophy & vision could be deduced by observation and testing - apparently another incorrect assumption. Thus their understandable (to me anyway) annoyance when years later it is suddenly announced that some power or game subsystem is "not working as intended" and is going to be "adjusted".

Much of this could be avoided and/or mitigated if you told us HOW you think each power should work. If the vision of the power is so important to you that you're willing to seriously annoy large numbers of paying customers, it should be important enough to tell them about BEFORE they are annoyed and while they are still paying customers. A developer prepared (or at least approved) statement of design intent for each power seems to be one way to (perhaps) head off some of these misunderstandings.

Yes, I understand the magnitude of what I'm suggesting. I have to assume you have at least some documents like this internally, but they almost certainly would be nearly as much work to rewrite for release as starting from scratch. Whether that would be less work and angst than dealing with the bursts of outrage accompanying nearly every issue you'd have to judge internally.

All you have to do is browse the player guides section of the forums and pick out one of each guide for each AT/powerset combo to get an idea of the sheer volume of text involved. Of course, that very exercise of looking at the player guides for that notion of size shows a possible path to making the task reasonable. If you chose you could involve the playerbase in doing a lot of the work for you, with Q&A discussion threads in the AT forums, perhaps. The forum community has shown itself quite capable of responding favorably to requests to help collate and organize information in the past, and to gain a clear statement from the developers on just what it is they are trying to accomplish with each power I rather suspect they'd jump at the chance to do it again.

I will also comment in passing that, though I've come to believe such a series of documents would probably be a good idea, indeed nearly a necessity at this point, that I myself disagree with the design philosophy apparently behind the need. There seems in my view to be an increasing drive from recent development cycles to strait-jacket character designs into fairly narrow channels, though that perceived net effect may well not be the intent of the development team. Be that as it may... I have some hope that more experienced members of the community will think over the idea and provide further refinement and critique in the inimitable fashion so well beloved by all.

Well, Castle, thanks for the explanation of why this change is being imposed. I am still opposed to the idea, futile as that may be to even say.

I at least am lucky enough that none of my affected heroes are high enough to have invested any significant work in utilizing what has now been years after the fact announced as unintended behaviour. You should hear some of the comments from my SG/coalition mates who count on me to read and report to them on forums and patch notes... From their reaction I rather suspect that the minority of the greater player base who notices this nerf is going to be quite put out.

It is admittedly just a matter of taste, but I *hate* radical changes in ongoing game systems. The severity of the problem just does not seem to warrant the magnitude of the fix in this instance to me. But hey, it's your game, and you're the one who has to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous nastygrams and bug reports, not me.

Wouldn't annoy me quite so much had it not happened to another set of my heroes just in the last issue. (sigh) You guys gonna make a habit of this? Last MMO I was in that did became quite unenjoyable because of the constant flux of the systems.

Suggestion for you - since the vision of how each power fits into the whole scheme seems to be very important to the design team's decision making process, how about sharing that vision? There's a forum for every AT. A stickied document in each one giving the designer's current views on the role and design philosophy of each powerset (or ideally each power) and how it fits in the greater whole might go a long way toward defusing the screams of anguish that greet the major changes you discover are necessary as new information comes to light about what your codebase is doing when exposed to those pesky actual players. Big project I know, but you guys must have SOME internal documents and discussions of powersets and powers to use as a starting point. You could even I suppose get the players to do some of the work for you by having some discussion/Q&A threads on the powers and powersets and having each AT forum boil the resulting thread down into a "vision statement" document that the developers review and modify for final publication. Some of the forums already produce some mighty fine documents, you might be able to tap into that.