Daikon

I like it a lot better now at 53. The whole thing is faster/better. I've done this thing with a bunch of different players on different teams, and the best team can do it without any temps, and not a lot of issues. The worst teams don't seem to need too many temps now either, which is a big improvement.

8 lvl 50's can do this thing now, and have a tough fight. 8 great players will blow it out of the water, and 8 bad players still probably can't complete it.

I think thats about right. I still plan to brawl hami for my ho's when i get the opportunity.

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We started trending more towards 3/year within a few Issues...mostly because we started learning about the production & QA cycle.


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Seems to be trending to <2/year.

Also I should note that patron powers don't count as content, as they've mainly discouraged people from leveling villains, thus experiencing content.

Why is it that people come on these boards with legitimate complaints, and then a gaggle of posters call "whiner!".

Hey, stop using the boards for one of thier chief purposes!

I don't know if these guys realized this, but the devs have actually actioned issues which have been vetted on these boards. The halloween event is a recent example. Also of note is that the RSF is being lowered to level 53, and villains are going to get access to the hami raid.

Not all complaints are worthwhile, but at least make that case instead of the ad hominem attack of "Whiner!"

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Perhaps the reason we don't get more frequent, smaller updates, is because if we did, no one (other than pre-existing players) would care that "CoH patch 79658" was being released...

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As long as there's been a dev ready to supply quotage, every mini-event this game has done has gotten coverage online. I don't think the problem is that CoX can't get on Gamespy, MMORPG.com, or whatnot. It's that they run out of things that Cryptic people will talk about.



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I don't believe that this is a concern. I believe that Posi confirmed the development schedule as 3 mo for small updates, which would be a competetive schedule within the MMORPG industry.

I think that the current CoX team is unable to meet this update schedule, unlike the Legacy CoH team, due to either innefficiency, sloppy programming, understaffing, buracracy, or a combination such negative traits which are part of the currect team of devs. Perhaps some of the devs leaving, such as Lord Recluse, Statesman, has had an impact.

The causes are speculation, the effects are not.

Someone is watching this thread closely, it seems. A bunch of posts got deleted when Friggin Taser had a momentary lapse in logic.

EDIT: it's ok Taser, ur still awsome.

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Release: 4/27/04
Issue #1: Through the Looking Glass (June 29, 2004)
Issue #2: Shadows of the Past (September 16, 2004)
Issue #3: A Council of War (January 4, 2005)
Issue #4: Colosseum (May 4, 2005)
Issue #5: Forest of Dread (August 31, 2005)
Issue #6: Along Came a Spider (October 27, 2005)
(City of Villains (released October 31, 2005))
Issue #7: Destiny Manifest (June 6, 2006)
Issue 8 - late Nov/Early Dec.

I wonder if this is the face of things to come? Updates were pretty consistent, pre-CoV. Despite massive rebalancing, power fixing, powerset changes, and so on, Issues rolled out every 3 months.

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3-4 months timeframe is in line with the pricing model for CoX:

45-60$ for an update

We see plenty of complaints about how complicated things are, yet, looking at the timeframe for COV i6, it is clear that complicated things can be done with the proper staffing.

In engineering they say you can have it good, fast, and cheap: pick two.

i7(large issue) wasn't fast, and it wasn't good (bug-wise), and it wasn't cheap at 8x15= 120$ in subscription fees.

i8 (small issue) isn't fast and isn't cheap at 5x15= 75$ in subscription fees

So I think it's only right to ask why we aren't recieving issues that are good and fast every 3 mo., because it's not cheap at 45$, which is the cost of a new game.

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It's funny I've argued both sides of this before. Both the "it doesn't make sense to spend on pvp" and "pvp needs attention"

The RV event was huge. I remember a ton of pvp occuring during it too. When I was logging on there was over 20 instances and most of those were "full". I know all the ones I got into were rank with pvp and very little pve occuring.

RV is dead on live though

How many instances of faultline are there right now on test. When I checked it out there was 1 and it was no where near full. And it IS the main feature of i8 imo (before they stuck in vet rewards a week or so later).

I'm honestly in the "if you build it they will come" camp. Have the previous attempts at implementing pvp been failures? ya, kinda, but that's because the dev's screwed it up imo, not because of a lack of interest.

If the pvp population isn't significant enough to warrant attention then one could question why a zone that according to my surveys has less than 2 people in it at any given time, would be completely overhauled with new art and tech (cause a bunch of cov stuff is on that map now). I know that took a lot of time and given the amount of 15-25 content already in coh that zone will likely be sparsely populated in the future as well. Is that a waste of resources?

Grandville is a graveyard most of the time and a ton of marketing and resources went into that zone. Waste?

I agree 100% that pvp is an advertised (quite heavily too) feature of this game and should be given attention soley on that principle. Does it make sense from a business perspective? Not immediately no. But if a dev supported event like the auto level rv event can pull in upward of 20-30 zone instances (most full) I would say it has potential to attract new customers. Cause lets face it pve in this game isn't attracting many new people anymore and it will only get worse as the next gen mmo's start comming out. But pvp is a unique marketing tool and coh is a unique gaming environment. The combination of the two could prove successful. WITH SUPPORT.

Frosticus

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just wanted to say: excellent post

Thanks for working on this Castle & Gecko! It's important to a lot of us!

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Didnt you guys realize its the devs specialty to take away usefulness of Villain ATs?

Oh, wait, theyre fixing the LRSF....and buffing Dominators...Stalkers are easy pvp mode until RV...

The Brute stands alone.

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2 words: Patron Powers

From Lucas:
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guess its time to retire the lvl 50 and lvl 45 brute from pvp since its 10x better to use a scrapper.



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LOL you are trying to pvp with villains! Didn't you ever play that game when you were a kid? it was like, the square peg doesn't fit in the round hole..

J/k , for some reason, us fools in pandemonium are still pvp'ing our villains.

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So how does this guide measure up to I7/I8?

Is Tough at 7.5% base absorb still worth getting?
Does anyone bother anymore with Weave / Maneuvers at an amazing 2.5% base defense?
After I've dumped my first AE attack, is Stealth at 2.5% base defense really going to make a lot of difference?
Or is that about the time I should hit Phase Shift, with a 3 second activation time?

I'm not looking for Uberness here, just looking to avoid 1-hit deaths.

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Simply put, a blaster's best defense is his powers, control abilities, and their brain. Any blaster defenses (outside of APPS) offer so little defense, it's not worth putting slots into unless you actually have slots to spare; at which point, it will still be very little.

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This is true imho, but once you have Epic Force Mastery Defence, you have some of the strongest defences in the game.

I think this is a good idea, but perhaps the method of pay and functionality of personal spaces should be rethought.

Also, I would just like to say that bases are unpopular because that is how cryptic designed them.

-Most people are unable to pay for bases.
-Items of power, a main focus of bases, are still broken.
-Many of the functions of a base, are not that great.

This is how cryptic designed it. It could be very popular, but they made base functionality very narrowly focused, and often available only to the most elite sg's.

Fix IOP's, and make more stuff available to the average player, and it will improve. Make more design improvements and it will improve further. give people thier own personal space, and it will be further improved upon.

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I agree that AS should have two range checks. It's not realistic concept-wise to get hit with a devatating and interruptable melee attack when you're traveling across the zone.

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Ever heard of head splitter? Oh right, it' not interruptible, it's only devestating.

Seriously, it's hard to AS a moving target, and I don't think it should be any harder.

It's even more difficult to do BU+AS on moving targets, because it's easy to screw up and waste the BU, and then when an opportunity shows itself, you don't have BU up. Also, getting someone to stand still long enough for BU+AS requires them to screw up, or be crippled, so you have to predict it.

I think it's a lot more viable to just get a blaster out there and snipe someone with interrupt redux.

to Hedgemon:

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No, Hide+BuildUp+AS is not an 'I Win' button. Neither is Hide+Stealth+BuildUp+AS, for that matter. It isn't an invincible combo that works against everyone.

I will hold, however, that these combos are almost unbeatable in 1v1 situations vs. squishies, given enough tries.

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This is obviously why stalkers are king of 1v1 arena, right?

you can take 24 on this. I didn't test more.

Fixing brute fury also has no eta, but it also has a very big effect.

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I have to say.. I'm quite shocked. Placate is now a lot more useless. In RV, Stalkers are hardly the best. Kill to Death ratios mean that Stalkers repeatedly ganked some lone squishy.

I'm guessing the limitation is "Use only after AS".

Oh well, thanks for posting, Castle. At least it has -some- priority, if a low one.

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You fool!

Ganking some lone squishy who is not paying attention and doesn't know that travel powers counter AS, and that break frees counter stuns, is a faaaaaaaarrrr better metric than what happens in the arena between experienced players, with clear mind and powerboosted fortitude and vengence.

Who will be the first sg to dominate test with stalkers? =D

The the stalker arms race begin!

nice job!

There were only 2 ways to do this strike force:

#1 use force multipliers
#2 divide and conquer

Previously #2 was problematic, but you've done a good job in getting it to be consistent.

I commend you.

this is a matter of opinion, but, choosing the hamios just means we spend less time pursueing loot that we can't use.

the devs were wise to avoid loot in this game. i think it would also be wise to allow people to choose thier hamios - making it easier for casual players to get thier loot, while more of the core players will be able to apply hammios to more of thier alts.

Is this the same thing that causes you to animate multiple vomits when hero heavies fail to put a hold on you?

HAHA, oh yeah, no one cares!

I would gladly take EPPs over this silly snipe. The fact is, the devs philosophy after ED is that they must never make anything overpowered again.

This means that maybe after a year, PPPs might be 80% of EPPs, if trick arrow is any indication of a buff schedule. Hey, don't worry though, they might have brought brutes fury, MM's, and dominators up to par for zones like WB!

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FYI: Melee AT Patron Power Pool Ranged attacks which cause damage will be changed to using the Melee damage scale.

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Follow Up:
Stalker Snipe PPPs are back to being Ranged damage. The changes I'd made to keep them balanced got nixed.

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Don't worry, the patron powers are actually stronger than APPs to account for our inability to respec out of them

The Heroes are casting aside thier FOCUSED ACCURACY, PERSONAL FORCE FIELD, FORCE OF NATURE, in shame!

Baghdad Bob