Chad Gulzow-Man

For which they should phrase the patch note something to the line of: "Warburg Nukes have been temporarily disabled for the Cathedral of Pain trial (on the test server only) while we gather more data on the boss encounter."

No, but storming my house doesn't get you ten awesome Reward Merits (or six and a badge). At best, it'll get you an Xbox, a TV that's only slightly out-of-date and a piecemeal computer that would make Dr. Frankenstein flushed with lust.

Doesn't CoP only give 10 Reward Merits (or 6 with a personal Item of Power)?

This times infinity brazillion. You can't balance PVP in any game where one player (or character) gets access to something that another doesn't.

That balancing act was attempted in Issue 13. Most of the changes went too far (they turned the dial to 11 when a 3 or 4 would have sufficed), but I honestly believe that every thing they changed was necessary for something that at least resembles balance. Travel Suppression (in theory) puts melee-only ATs in a position to strike back at ranged attackers... but it went too far and slowed everything down to a crawl. Diminishing Returns (in theory) limits the effectiveness of min/maxers versus casual players and large teams versus small ones... but it went too far and made buff ATs nearly useless. Heal Suppression (in theory) makes it so someone can't win a fight just by popping more green insps or Aid Self... but it went too far and crippled powersets like Regen whose base mitigation is to heal from damage spikes. The changes to mezzing (in theory) make it so that someone can't be chain held to death over the course of five very boring minutes... but it went too far and now mez ATs are just another ranged damage AT in PVP that happen to be able to stop someone in their tracks for as long as it takes to sneeze.

Anyway, the PVP community is not faultless with the current state of PVP. I was in the i13 beta (mostly complaining because I hate Day Jobs so @#$^ing much). I watched the PVP community burn their bridges when Castle and the other developers were actually listening to feedback. I continued to watch while the PVPers filled that gap with toxic waste and then lit it on fire too. I stopped watching when they tried to wade through the burning sewage and demand that the devs pay attention to them again.

Woooowwww. You'd better be cranking the merit rewards for the CoP way the heck up after that one, because it's gonna be a lot harder.

And the Aspect still has that bug where he can fire through his force field, right? Nice.

I'm not usually one to make these sorts of comments, but... way to prioritize, devs.

A better analogy is to imagine yourself running with a 50ft bungie cord tied around your waist. You can make the first 50 feet with no problem, but every step after that takes more effort and gains less ground, until eventually you reach a point where the cord just won't stretch any further.

Carefully with all that LOLing; you might accidentally bite your tongue.

Sorry, I did intend to comment on the severity of DR, but I'm at work and wrote that post around some tech calls.

But you're completely right--if DR were brought to PVE with the exact same values it has in PVP, it would destroy the game and there would be ragequits abound. As others have mentioned in this thread already, I think that any form of Diminishing Returns that makes its way into PVE will affect the way buffs/debuffs stack beyond what would be considered a reasonable* point and would mostly affect those that are applied by powers as opposed to IO sets.

* "reasonable" to be defined by the developers, of course

Perhaps a perma-Hasten build goes beyond that "reasonable point," though? The IO set bonuses would likely remain unchanged, but the recharge bonus acquired from Hasten would take a hit from DR.

And we already know that Castle rather dislikes the fact that players have the ability to floor the stats of AVs that were specifically designed to be challenging, so we can assume that some form of debuffing DR will crop up at some point as new content is released.

Just my 2 cents on the subject.

I agree with Chase on this, actually. It was also intended to lessen the gap between someone who min/maxed their character versus somebody playing with just SOs in zone PVP, and to provide less of an edge when multiple players gang up on a single player.

Don't forget, Castle specifically said on numerous occassions that the only way that Diminishing Returns will make it into PVE content (if ever) will be the application of DR to debuffs on new high-level encounters. Nothing in the current PVE game is supposed to have DR applied to it.

And even if DR does come to PVE, what makes people think it would be Enhancement Diversification all over again? Sure, you probably won't be able to Clear Mind-stack your way out of Ghost Widow's hold. Is it reasonable to expect that you should be able to do so against a Mag100 hold to begin with? Should a Blaster with the right IOs have better defense than a Tanker with SOs?

The application of DR to PVE (which will almost certainly not happen outside of the cases Castle already announced 2 years ago) would be to rectify border case issues that the original designs didn't take into account. You may want your Blaster to be better than a Tanker, but that's not how the game is designed, and the effect cannot be reciprocated (a fully IOed Tanker still can't compete with an SOed Blaster for damage), so you know this is unfair.

... now, cue the "lrn2ply" posts in response to those last couple paragraphs.

No no no NO NO NO.

You should slap yourself for even thinking something like that. You might as well add an auto-power that only works in PVP, so that community would be forced to fork over their money just to stay competitive as well.

Bottom line: if you don't have ties to one of the game's sub-communities, don't go making awful suggestions on their behalf.

I bound almost every key on my numpad to a different Placate quip on my Stalker.

"I am not the droid you're looking for," "Time out, I just lost a contact lens!" "Here's mud in your eye!" "Oh my god, what's that behind you!?!" (followed up with an AS and "Oh right, it's ME!"), and "Open your mouth and close your eyes, and you'll get a big surprise..." are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. :P

Well, you did beat up a bunch of Longbow...

What you say!?!

I was getting a little disgusted with some of the older costume pieces before I upgraded my video card to one that would support Ultra Mode. Most of the CoV-era costume pieces are passable at worst, but the parts that launched with CoH in 2004 are almost universally icky.

Also, texture quality has very little to do with whether or not you use Ultra Mode. My last video card (an $80 GeForce 9600 when I bought it new) barely works with any Ultra Mode features at all outside of reflections... but I could still run around with the texture, map and character quality settings maxed out and a decent framerate in the 20-30fps range.

The "new wings" you saw earlier are actually the Valkyrie wings. The replacement for the "old wings" will be shaped exactly the same, but have a more detailed hi-res texture applied to it.

And honestly and with no offense meant, Delphine does look like she's just got blue wings stuck to her head, not the fancy fin ears I think you imagine them to be.