Continuum_NA

Thanks, States. That seems well-planned. Simple things like being able to drop missions and more indicators on what to expect in a mission will help loads. Nobody should be complaining, since anyone can use the mission slider to make it harder if they want. And thanks for listening. There have been some bumps, but I get the impression Cryptic is starting to get the hang of things. Most importantly, I don't think any other game company could claim to have as many actual high level developers and designers directly interacting and listening to the customer. The game needs some help, but I have faith in you all.

Thank you for letting me be a superhero. I avoided MMORGs for years because I always heard what a huge time sink EQ was, but I couldn't resist being a superhero. After a couple years tracking CoH, I jumped in on April 28. The rest is history. I have a wonderful supergroup of some of the best people I have ever met, and have had a positively heroic 8 months. This is a wonderful game.

The past few weeks I've been playing WoW a lot - more than I intended to - and it's a great game too. I would say each game is weak in areas that the other is strong. I get worn down on the leveling grind in CoH, and the slower pace, sprawling natural settings, crafting, and more casual play in WoW is a nice diversion, as I intend it to be. Last night I came in to explore Striga after several days slinging an axe instead of radiation or gravity fields, and it was a blast. It was great to be POWERFUL, to move at superhuman speeds, blast into a group of foes and lay waste to them with rad blasts, not worry about getting trapped by a random spawn or add that I can't outrun, and generally be a SUPERHERO instead of a lowly adventurer. And that's what will always make this game special - from day one, you are the superhero. I thwarted some plots from the new L.L. Bean fascists and even joined with dozens of other heroes to stop the enormous octopus.

Thanks for making that real, devs, and thanks for taking the time to wade into these boards again and again. There's a lot still to do with this game, lots to improve and learn from other games, but this sure seems like one heck of a committed crew. I feel like I KNOW half the devs, from your feedback not only to criticism to little things like getting cookies. A lot of times I can't stand to wade into the boards due to the toxic attitudes of your more immature players and people who don't seem to grasp that A) it's a game and B) it's evolving. Thanks for putting up with it, and making sure not only to listen to the criticism but also find the nuggets of wisdom scattered throughout it. This is a great community, and I can assure you that degree of whining you hear on the boards is disproportionate to the general good feeling of all the players. Here's to another great year of CoH in 2005!

Like the others here, I rely on the dev tracker to get to actual meaningful information about what's going on in the game. I understand your idea of making an official thread forum, but unless you have some way to control response it won't solve the problem. I believe that invulnerability thread has been up a day and a half, and it is already 50 pages long - most of it just people whining. The official threads are the worst ones to read, because they guarantee everybody with a chip on their shoulder or a hug to give out will post their 2 paragraphs. It may very well be worthwhile to make non-reply posts with some of your updates and summaries. Or perhaps even to have someone who produces issue summaries, presenting the key statements from Cryptic and a summary of the concerns raised in response. I essentially do just that for my supergroup ( http://cohddf.com/ ) on several issues based off the dev tracker. Perhaps Cuppajoe or another of your fine moderators could provide that service. Or if they are too busy, I'd be happy to come work for you doing it... seriously. I love working with this game, and wouldn't even mind dealing with the trolls, flamers, and l337 twits if it was my job. That option aside, any action you can take to make it easier for us to access more meaningful information about the game and the changes in it would be vastly appreciated.

[ QUOTE ]
The issue (or at least the perceived issue) would seem to be, that on a scrapper for example, dark blast is not going to enable him tokill something from range, whereas a heavily slotted personal forcefield on a blaster may have a much bigger impact.

[/ QUOTE ]No, because Personal Force Field means that you can't attack while it's on. It's the level 1 FF power. I have a FF defender that I slot heavily on attacks to be a FF/rad blaster. Personal Force Field is only useful as an emergency button or for navigating unsafe areas. On the other shields, like Fire Shield, I'm sure that it will be weaker than the Tanker primaries. Perhaps equivalent to the Scrapper secondaries, like Temp Invulnerability for an Inv tanker vs Inv scrapper. Base resistatnce of fire shield/temp invuln will probably be 20% vs the 30% a tanker gets. Maybe even 0nly 12-15% like Tough. So 6-slotted with Resists it will only be 44%. That will make a big difference in the survivability of a blaster, but they will hardly be able to keep up with the tanks. They won't have as much defense/resistance, they won't have all the other supporting defense/resistance powers, and they won't have the hit points. It just means they will be able to take a little more abuse. Keep in mind that the big alpha strike blasts like nova and inferno use ALL your endurance, so you won't be able to use the shields after them for a moment. It will be the same problem, if things survive the strike they'll kill you.

I see no imbalance here. They're carefully choosing powers that will make each AT a little more balanced on their own, but hardly holding their own as invincible. Even a power like Soul Drain - handy, but doesn't make you invincible. They won't give away the money powers, I can guarantee. You won't see a Blaster with Dispersion Bubble or a Controller with Invincibility. It'll all be all right.

Trust me, folks, if you put in the time to get up to level 41 you will be ecstatic to take a couple of cool new powers to balance out your AT's weak spot. And as was said above, you'll still need help. Unless maybe you're a well-built scrapper, and you already didn't need help.

Good heavens, boohoo.

I usually stick with more mature sentiments, but come on, people. Adding some of the basic attacks/defenses from other ATs to those of us who made it all the way to level 41 is not gonna bring doom. It's gonna bring me much excitement to finally let loose with an energy blast from my controller after 500 hours of having LIFT be my damage power. I'm hardly going to put blasters out of business.

Will I be more able to solo? A little bit, thank god, although it's simply a matter of speed since I can solo in complete safety behind my pets anyway. To those who say that mixing this up a little will destroy the need to group, I simply offer this thought. The first epic power is at level 41. Are you telling me you played a character all the way to level 41 and now either A) you grouped the whole time, but made no friends that you would still group with now that you could solo better or B) you never made friends to play with for 41 levels and now you'll never be able to do so? Come off it. People group because they want to play with their friends, and pretty much every AT can already solo post 32. This ruins nothing, it just offers some really cool options to make your hero EPIC in a range where most of us were stuck with the powers we didn't care about for the first 40 levels. I say BRAVO to Cryptic on this one.

Outstanding, outstanding guide. I can't wait to get my sings!