DarkArchAngel

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Fine, Statesman, but how about the mission I had today (1 hour timed) to take out Sidokan and His Coven with my L18 Energy/Energy Blaster. The overall mission not too bad in spite of a number of +1 Astral Followers until I got to the Boss (+1 RED) who cast stuns and holds in chains so that the toon could not move, run, attack or anything until dead. He died twice trying to take the boss out and finally gave up and let the mission time out. I have done this mission before Update #2 with other alts and never had this kind of experience. Bug? I have petitioned it.


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It is a bug. Petition away - though we're working on a fix.

Oh - forgot another change - shrunk the size of wandering patrols.

These are most certainly reactions; had we seen this better on the Training Room server we would have changed each and every one.

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Working on a fix for this mission is fine, but that in no way takes care of the 1900 needless debt my toon accrued nor the xp I missed out on because I failed the mission. Since we don't know what missions are bugged, would you then suggest that maybe we just quit playing until the repairs are made?

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Just out of curiosity, for those complaining about massive debt did it ever occur to anyone to stop doing what they were doing to get debt in the first place. If the mission was too hard to solo and you died did you keep going back just to get killed again without taking a different approach?

Hehehe, I just think it's funny these people claiming, "I've got 10000000 debt please fix the game". That's like telling someone, "I keep slamming my head into this wall so please remove the wall." Ummm...does anyone just stop to think about what you are really doing to yourself?

Honestly, I cannot understand what is so "game-breaking" about the bugs. Why is it some can solo mission and others can't? I don't think "stop playing" is an answer so I agree but all I will say is have patience and if whatever you are doing doesn't seem to work for you now then either group, badge hunt, or street sweep. Surely there is SOMETHING you can do besides your 1 mission with bugs versus not playing at all.

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In other words, we should test more and complain less?

Agreed.

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These are most certainly reactions; had we seen this better on the Training Room server we would have changed each and every one.

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The people who say otherwise are like the people who complain about the state the US is in and yet never vote. Of course we don't get paid to fix the country, the country should fix itself.

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BTW: Statesman stated a few days ago that the slider MAY come as soon as issue 3 but maybe later. You sure you want to wait that long? That makes it around Xmas time. I sure don't.

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They are going to fix the problems that we are having now before the Slider is put in. The Slider isn't the answer to this particular problem it's just another nice feature to insure difficulty issues like these won't be as big a problem in future updates.

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EQ but with Super Heros is not my cup of tea. I would sooner go back to playing NeverWinterNights for my RPG fix than continue playing a CoH that tried to be "other".

But, I don't see that as happening... maybe you can enlighten me as to why you would think that?

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Amen! My respect for you just leveled up. Should COH ever go in the direction that it's being claimed to, I would also go back to playing in my persistant world in NWN. That game had me addicted for a long time (well not the game really, the PW I played on).

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First, please check your facts, the post I replied to had no smiley in it.

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And before you complain that they don't listen to us anyways

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Well, I would never do that as the word "anyway" should never be pluralized..

Glad you enjoy playing, wish I still did.

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First off at the bottom of page 12 is my original post that contains a smiley whereas you replied right beneath mine so I'm not sure which sets of posts you are referring.

Also "anyways" as per dictionary.com:
an·y·ways ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-wz)
adv. Nonstandard
In any case.

It's not plurazied....

Back on-topic: I'm glad Statesman has a chance to comment and although others think his words are empty, I for one am glad that they are making the efforts which is more than I can say for other games.

I'm sorry for Veg that he seems to think this game will turn into EQ in tights, I just don't see it happening. In fact, COH has many things that make it anything but EQ...but we all seem to play with different perspectives.

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Honestly not trolling you on this:

No, there was no smiley on the post I replied to.


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Funny isn't that the same thing that's been said about your posts?

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Yes there was as this was what prompted your "I never speak for anyone" off-topic line. Sorry if you misunderstood, let's get back to the original debate.

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Constructive ideas...

I posted a zillion ideas, I detailed how certain dynamic missions
could easily be implemented, I detailed how to implement a
costume creation system for playing with costumes offline, I
asked them not to change the game for power gamers when
they ripped a ton of fun out with the purple patch...

I've given up.


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Well they fixed the purple patch....

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The developers of this game cannot understand that min/maxers
will always blaze through a game, but with no PvP or economy it
doesn't matter how many people hit the level cap.


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But you're not thinking ahead....there will be PVP and the economy is left to the imagination (which I hope they don't do). PVP aside, balance is still needed as no one wants a multiplaying game with God-Mode enabled. It's not in anyone's interest, the Devs or the players.

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One of this game's biggest appeals is making new characters.

With the way the game is set up now, who are the only people
that will take their alt to the level cap ??

Min/maxers.


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Not true, I'm an avid re-roller and I make characters with RPGing in mind...not which power equals "teh win". I doubt I'm the minority here.

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What is the percentage of players that are min/maxers ?

If the playerbase is composed of a majority of min/maxers then
retaining them by slowing them down is good business.

If the majority of the playerbase is casual, or even totally new
to MMORPGS, what will retention be when those players have to
grind thousands of mobs to see character advancement ?

The game is leaning hard towards min/maxers and since that is
the case I no longer care.

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Who's grinding? I just made a bunch of new characters even dispite the "difficulty issues which are being fixed" and have no problem leveling. I made level 15 in 2-3 days of casual playing and I don't min/max. I don't believe the majority of the players are min/maxers so you only force yourself to think on the negative and tend to think the game is going down the tube when in fact it's probably quite the opposite.

All I have to say is we saw these kind of posts when the Hasten Nerf and Purple Patches were released...so far all those "problems" were tweaked or fixed. Why should this situation be any different.

And if you claim that the previous issues should teach them better, well like I've mentioned before stop playing MMORPGs because the concept in the entire genre is that it continues to change. Change means new variables which means even more testing. Limited testing will never be able to isolate every situation until it's exposed to a much large perspective. Again this is just basic statistics whether you believe we should test the game or not...obviously someone needs to test it and obviously there needs to be a LOT of people doing so.

Consider this, either they hire more internal testers and up the monthly fee or they actually (OMG perish the thought) let the gamers help them critique the game and make it better for all parties involved.

And before you complain that they don't listen to us anyways; we have numerous posts stating they do listen, they do hear, they will fix it...so we just need patience until we are proven wrong when a year from now we still have the same issues (cough..cough..SWG..cough)

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I'm sorry but you tried speaking for Statesman earlier since you appear to be the authority on what lurks within the hearts of evil Devs.

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Ugh, don't be a complete twit..

There is big smiley on the end of that first post.

Taking a dig at Statesman and speaking for him are two
different things.



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There was a smiley on my post too! Don't be an arrogant jerk!

In any case, seriously why don't you present to us constructive ways of dealing with the situation instead of trolling the Devs like they broke your favorite toy. Or else all you'll get back are sarcastic remarks as that's all you seem to dish out.

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I never speak for anyone but myself.

Try again.

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I'm sorry, but according to Statesman this is more "fun".



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I'm sorry but you tried speaking for Statesman earlier since you appear to be the authority on what lurks within the hearts of evil Devs. Forgive me for reading into your posts...

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Posting mock pictures of Statesman doesn't necessarily lend you credibility. And it doesn't it make you seem funnier to the rest of us...

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Pfffttt..

Lots of people have told me that pic is funny.

And just who are "you", again ?

Save your "rest of us" commentary for when you get elected to
speak for someone besides yourself.

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Funny isn't that the same thing that's been said about your posts?

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What I dislike about these posts and why I'm still arguing is because I can't stand arrogant-pessimistic-ruin everyone's fun-posters who try to trash a game because they are mad at the world and the Devs didn't hug them enough when they were young. I know I'm exaggerating but that's the attitude that comes across.

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You see that's exactly the problem.

Statesman is my ******* father, and he left me and Caliban to
grow up as angry trolls in Skyway.

Where are the hugs, dad ??

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LOL! Well there you have it then...we need to Nerf the Dad!

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I put up with posts like these from other MMORPGs, lets at least try to be constructive than believing every Gaming Company out there has some deep hatred for it's gamers to purposily ruin the games they play (all except for SOE, they are the devil!!)

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I do not believe anythng of the kind.

But, caveat time, I have watched this game since beta and I
have seen what the power gamers did to Statesman's ego
and I firmly believe he is still hurting and wants nothing more
than to slow the game down.

Lil' States came out quite a while ago..

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../lilstates.jpg

And not without reason.

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Ok so if they are purposily slowing the game down who are you to say that it will have a negative effect on everybody. Obviously some people are not being effected by this Issue, some apparently are. So who's right then? No one and it never will be for "every"one. This game will appeal to some while it is a chore to others.

I love Final Fantasy games but playing FFXI is a chore for me. I don't want to camp, I don't want to farm, and I don't want to wait around for hours waiting on a party. The reason I play COH is because the Devs of FFXI don't see those issues as being problems and therefore have no intention on changing the game, at least not for awhile.

The Devs of COH when presented with issues are taking the proper steps to fix them and so far they are fixing things they will still keep me playing. If they intended on bringing up the difficulty and then claim this is a feature and they will not be changing it...well then perhaps if I found the game too difficult I will go elsewhere which is understandable.

What I dislike about these posts and why I'm still arguing is because I can't stand arrogant-pessimistic-ruin everyone's fun-posters who try to trash a game because they are mad at the world and the Devs didn't hug them enough when they were young. I know I'm exaggerating but that's the attitude that comes across.

Ok lets go off of precedence and see how the Devs handles the difference between "bugs" and "features". When the Hasten Nerf was put in, it was not a "bug" and the Dev's never said it was. They overshoot the nerf and it was later fixed but they never said "Oops, the long recharge time for Hasten is a bug" , in fact quite the opposite. Second point was for the "Purple Patch", again they never said this was a bug and they overshot that nerf as well and yet again they fixed that. So why in the world would they try to "cover up" this issue and claim it was a bug when their other "mistakes" were intended and were stated as being intended minus the aftermath effect. This whole conspiracy theory is silly.

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I'm sorry can you please post links to the posts you did in the Testing Server prior to this going live so we can see just how much help you were to the testing process.

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They didn't listen in beta, so what makes you think I would waste
my time trying now ?

I pay to play.. Cryptic and NCsoft get paid to test.

You have no one to blame but yourself then. Again you have no concept of how beta testing works and if you expect bugs not to happen then I suggest you stick with console games...oh wait nevermind that usually happens in those too except without any way to patch them.

On that point sell your computer and stick to reading your books with properly formatted indents and sentence structure....but beware of the misprint materials because something got by the editing department.

On the topic of the Difficulty Slider, I expect we have awhile before that is put in the game but at least it's coming. In the meantime they will fix what they have said they will and for future reference a Difficulty Slider would balance any upcoming balancing issues concerning difficulties at any level..at least where missions are concerned.

As far as the list of posts showing problems pre-live some of those aren't very clear of the problems. Actually that first one has the third poster stating the Difficulty Slider idea and I know that wasn't mentioned until after the Update went Live. The rest refer to things already fixed such as the Hollows and Rikti problems. Point being I don't believe there was this "huge" clarification on the present issue prior to the live launch.

And it makes since, a larger playerbase will be able to find more bugs than the Testing Server community and twice as many more than internal Testing. What bothers me is all these complaints aren't even bothering to accept the facts that this will be fixed, they are just complaining for the sake of complaining.

I put up with posts like these from other MMORPGs, lets at least try to be constructive than believing every Gaming Company out there has some deep hatred for it's gamers to purposily ruin the games they play (all except for SOE, they are the devil!!)

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Well lets hope not with the next issue. I hope that the DEVS learned that when the testers tell them that something is wrong, or its too hard or any other thing they think is wrong while its still in test that they listen.


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I agree. Hopefully they can resist the pressure to prematurely release Issue 3. I wonder where the pressure to release Issue 2 when they did came from the most.

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I'm willing to bet the same people complaining are the ones who wanted Issue #2 released ASAP so they wouldn't have to play it on the Test Server to find out what changed. But should this "Difficulty Slider" be implemented anytime soon, this entire debate on difficulty will be a moot point and we can all move on to complain about other things. I'm not above showing where something is wrong but at least where it's reasonable and open minded.

On another note, very well said in your previous post on the aspects of Beta testing and retroactive perspectives. Some people really need to be realistic about these sort of things.

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I agree the ignorance is amazing. How you can think that regardless of internal testing that things don't slip through.

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If you think that something of this magnitude "slipped" through,
you are an idiot.

And try hitting the enter key once in a while, it would make
reading your posts slightly less painful.

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I'm sorry can you please post links to the posts you did in the Testing Server prior to this going live so we can see just how much help you were to the testing process. And don't exaggerate on the "magnitude" of the situation because from what I can see it's not affecting a large percentage of the playe database and the rest of the complaints are bandwagoners who were going to cancel anyways.

And forgive my non-enter-key-ness...I didn't realize people have troulbe reading a paragraph. When was the last time you opened a book?

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I do not know this for fact for I did not play on the Test Server nor read the Training Room boards. I have "heard" that the players who DID play there /bugged the Devs about the low end bugs. The devs apparently were aware of the problems. If ONE /bug report comes through, doesn't that warrant at least a look into by the Devs? Statesman appears to be the "idea man" behind CoH so that makes HIM accountable for what is put out live.

I do echo your thoughts on finding REAL information about what went on pre-issue 2 on the test server. I have to admit that much of my ire is based upon assumptions and heresay. I may be looking for that because of my dislike of where the game is heading with all the new status items. Status items just rub me the wrong way.

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Agreed, all I'm hearing are people who claim they reported this prior to it going live. I don't remember seeing these posts or at least not in this volume. But most of these complaints are people saying that this new difficulty is a feature, what would prompt them to "bug" it if it wasn't a bug. And let's not forget the 100s of posts of people saying "Please hurry up and release Issue #2" and the Devs respond "We will when it's ready"...we have no one to blame but ourselves. What I DO remember seeing was posts about other bugs that did get fixed...not of the current situation. Again, please someone post links to posts prior to the update going live that have these issues mentioned.

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The bug is being worked on.

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The ignorance of the gaming populace never ceases to amaze me.

I will reiterate in the hopes of penetrating your neutronium skulls:

Issue #2 ran on internal test servers LONG before any of you
saw it on the player test server.

They knew exactly what they had when they released it.

Now you go on believing it was a "bug" and I will go on believing
that Statesman knew exactly what he had when he published.

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I agree the ignorance is amazing. How you can think that regardless of internal testing that things don't slip through. This has happened in every piece of software I can think of regardless of how long testing was. Most bugs are never found until exposed by a larger group. Its statistics. A group of 100 testers are likely to find more bugs in a given amount of time than a group of 10. You all must have no business or programming experience at all to think otherwise, sounds like just a bunch of unrealistic end-users. Better wake up, take the red pill, or do something to realize how the real world operates and things are never going to be perfect to suit your needs. Go on believing Statesman personally screwed you if it makes you feel better.

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From DarkArchAngel:
Do you even read the Dev Digest? They never said anything about increasing the difficulty of the game overall nor the low levels, infact Statesman says just the opposite. What the problem has been for months has been the end-game! All the focus was on the end-game and every post Statesman made about making that more fun for everyone was to increase difficulty and make it so other ATs felt needed. Unless you can quote a post that says otherwise then you're just thinking what you want to think.

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I am not a mind reader, but I DO believe that actions speak louder than words. Any Dev in any post can say whatever they wish. When that update rolls out, their true intentions are shown. They have a test server for crying out loud where they supposedly test the rollout and listen to players there and there ideas. I believe words when actions back them up.

I don't know if what Statesman said was truly the intentions or not. I DO know that this rollout went against MANY things he has said previous to this issue. I'll believe the actions for now, thank you.

[EDIT]missed a couple of spellings. [/EDIT]

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Ok I won't deny the existence of the problem if that's what you mean by actions. This isn't a really good analogy in comparing with this kind of debate, I mean did you actually see Stateman code the bugs in? You see a result, not an "action"...of course what this really boils down to is how this result came to be. Is it a bug that was not caught that will be fixed or was it known prior and put in intentionally in order to datamine and then fix it accordingly. Honestly, how many new characters were created during the testing phase, I doubt very many. How many of these posts are from testers that saw this and warned them ahead of time...not very many. My point is I don't think it was as clear as you all are making it out to be. I tested it myself and I never knew there were ANY problems until I rolled a new Scrapper. I didn't even see a problem in my new Defender so obviously this isn't a game-stopping bug nor is it really specific as it's only applying to a specific solo crowd. Maybe I should have paid attention more to the Test Server Forum but I don't remember seeing any of these kind of threads there either. Not until it went live. Please someone who posted in the Test Server prior to this going live stating the problems post a link so I can see it and maybe we can have a legit debate on the pre20 level difficulty.

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kay Veggie-Boy...time to put up or shut-up: Let's see the quotes from Statesman. Or do you claim to know what the man is thinking too.

That's what I thought. You may now go back to your regularly scheduled trolling.

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Statesman flat out said that the game was too easy and that he
wanted to change it to make increase difficulty and make it more
"fun".

You go dig up the quote, I doubt it even exits anymore since it is
over 30 days old.

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Statesman quote in respone to an old grouping thread:
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A well prepared group of 5-8 mows through introductory purples just as easily as it mows through even cons. Anything bigger than that is a brick wall due to the purple patch scaling upwards too sharply.


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Ah - this is somewhat unrelated. The game is too easy at higher levels. Larger groups need to hunt higher level spawns in order to find challenge, and therefore fun.

The missions at levels 30+ contain foes -1,0,+1 to the level of the mission holder (or at least the level he was when he received the mission). Those foes are trivially easy for players at those levels. Thus, they go to street sweeping - because the fun is at fighting foes +5 levels - and consequently they receive A LOT of experience points.

The goal (eventually) is to make the +1,0,-1 level spread as fun at 30th level as it was at 10th level.

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Again he never said in any post he wanted to change the difficulty of the overall game. You are pulling his quotes out of context because when he talked about increasing difficulty he meant at the higher levels. As far as I'm concerned you are just arguing for the sake of arguing.

Yes the Devs have created this large conspiracy to ruin the game so they would lose money and laugh at the people who flounder about to other MMORPGs that suffer the same "bugs". They released the bugs knowing full well that they were there in an attempt to sabotage everything they have worked so hard to do. (/sarcasm)

Now if I remember correctly I believe there were 3 times as many "Hurry up and release Issue 2" posts than there were "Wait, dont make Issue 2 Live because of this". 90% of the people complaining never even tested it first I would bet. I even mentioned I played on the test server exclusively and never realized the problem till I saw all these kinds of posts pop out. Seriously people stop trying to read into every little thing, at least take comfort in the fact that whatever way the bugs got there..they are going to fix it and it's not like we are unable to play for weeks till they do.

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What we are experiencing (in the lower levels) are bugs and they are working on it

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Pffffttt...

The status effects added to the low level mobs are no friggin'
"bug", at all...

They were an attempt to slide the time scale up on the game and
it backfired big time in their faces.

All that crap was riding on the test server, and they knew exactly
what they had when it went live.

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Do you even read the Dev Digest? They never said anything about increasing the difficulty of the game overall nor the low levels, infact Statesman says just the opposite. What the problem has been for months has been the end-game! All the focus was on the end-game and every post Statesman made about making that more fun for everyone was to increase difficulty and make it so other ATs felt needed. Unless you can quote a post that says otherwise then you're just thinking what you want to think.

Now as far as them "knowing" this in Test and released it anyways, well I played Test and I never noticed the problem...you know why...because I didn't start a new character!! Obviously they don't nearly have enough people playing the Test server than the do with the live as if you are familiar with any type of beta testing there will ALWAYS be bugs that appear when it's released to the general public because the limited scenario testing couldn't pick up on it, or not enough to have a clear understanding of what's wrong. That's why I rerolled my characters because I couldn't see why everyone was so mad about the new update. There isn't a problem in the later game as there is for the soloing lvl 1-20. And it's not even a game-stopping problem either, as far as I have play-tested. Go preach your sermons of Doom over at SWG because at least there it's a little more accurate.

Statesman Quote:

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Guys,
I cannot stress this enough. There was absolutely NO attempt to make that pre-20 game more difficult. The numerous +1 level mobs seen in missions are being taken out. The plethora of stunning/mezzing powers for low level mobs have been removed.

If particular changes are making something harder - let us know!

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All the Doom-Sayers can read into this all they want but I'm a Dev Digest junkie and the only complaints are coming from the pre20 group not the higher levels. Statesman was wanting to increase the difficulty of the end-game because that was where all the problems were coming from (AOE = King, other ATS are useless, etc). What we are experiencing (in the lower levels) are bugs and they are working on it so what's the problem here. Every other MMORPG I have played have run into these kinds of issues but at least the Devs are making efforts to fix the problem, and it usually gets corrected fairly quickly comparing to say...SWG? You all are free to play whatever you want but as for me I'll stick with COH and WOW until something else proves otherwise as they are my two favorites MMORPGS right now and their developers at least communicate with the player database.

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However, I will say that I believe most of these complaints may be coming from the solo crowd, as I also tried making a Spines/Regen Scrapper and died 3 times in my first door mission. As far as I can tell, this patch made my Defenders solo better than my Blasters and Scrappers if only because I can heal myself. So end results: Solo = Probably too hard, Group = Seems a lot more fun and not nearly as hard as people are making it out to be.

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HOLY MOLY.

Clearly, you have not been reading the millions of posts on this.

SOLO PLAY IS MUCH, MUCH HARDER NOW.

I LOVE TO GROUP, BUT THOSE THAT DON'T SHOULD NOT BE FORCED TO FOR DOOR MISSIONS.

Does that sum it up nicely?

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Well forgive me for stating the obvious. I have read all those posts and 95% of them are just basically, "OMG TEH N3W PATCH R TEH SUXXORS!!!!SHIFT#1!!!". But even still, it's not "FORCED" grouping yet, because I can still solo but you didn't clearly read my post. I can solo absolutely fine with my dark Defender because he can heal himself. I cannot with my Scrapper without stocking up on Inspirations. With Respites I am fine, without it I die or have to spend 20-30 minutes for one mission by running back and forth and resting in between each fight. But the missions are soloable just not the way they used to be. At least they aren't impossible as fighting purples during the purple patch! I'm just giving some practical examples of my own play experience instead of just jumping on the bandwagon and complaining about things I haven't even tried yet.

Ok time for another personal play experience. So far I made all new characters when the patched rolled out (just so I can start collecting badges and I was bored with my high level Scrapper). So I made a Dark/Dark Defender. My sister also started a new toon and made a MA/Regen Scrapper. So far we are lvl 8 now and we have not experienced any of the complaints that have been thrown about the boards for the past few days.

In fact, when we first went into the Hollows as lvl 7s, we decided to just go wild and try on whole groups of Trolls and Outcasts just by ourselves. Needless to say we beat down entire groups around the entrance without a problem. Not bad for a D/D Defender who missed his heals and a MA Scrapper who just started playing when the patch rolled out. Of course we went through Inspirations like candy (and the new method of passing Insps to other players without having to go through the trade window is pure genious, makes me a much better healer when my Heals miss but I've got like 4 Respites sitting in my inventory not doing anything usefull while my teammate is dying...that change alone has made grouping that much easier).

We also took on the base missions for the Outcasts and had no problem with the higher-power-spewing Electric Eel Boss or the other one with the Earth Powers (Bedrock?). So tell me what we must be doing wrong since we can't recreate the problems others are experiencing even with less than optimal toons. And just for comparison I also did the Electric Eel mission two more times, once with another group of 3 and I did the mission solo. I have only died once and that was because I was one-shotted by a group of 11s on my way to the Outcast base missions....but now since I just got Shadow Fall that should fix that little aggro problem.

However, I will say that I believe most of these complaints may be coming from the solo crowd, as I also tried making a Spines/Regen Scrapper and died 3 times in my first door mission. As far as I can tell, this patch made my Defenders solo better than my Blasters and Scrappers if only because I can heal myself. So end results: Solo = Probably too hard, Group = Seems a lot more fun and not nearly as hard as people are making it out to be.

Yea my vote's on Liberty too...we need to do something because as of right now, I think all the RPers broke Virtue.