Darkhole

I didn't know where else to put feedback, I guess this the place.

Anyhow.. I started CoH in January 2005. Played off and on until issue 12 or 13, can't actually remember. My memory is fuzzy, but I believe I quit just before Cimerora, and mostly because CoH was getting stale. So with background out of the way, on to the feedback.

Why I quit to begin with:
The first time I quit was because of ED. I came back because PvP had taken off. Siren's on Infinity was seeing plenty of players at peak times, I wanted in on the fun.

Then I quit "for good" after the purple IO sets came out. To me, they didn't make any of my weaker characters stronger, as I'd hoped they would, instead they made the already powerful powersets(combinations) even stronger, as I feared would happen. This was a total disappointment to me. To add to that, I saw the PvP changes coming down the line, didn't like a word of it I read (and still don't).

Why I didn't come back for so long:
AE was nothing spectacular for me, since by the time I had heard of it's existence, it had already been nerfed and the hype was over. PvP is dead. Power customization was something that I thought was cool, but it wasn't something that made me want to actually play the game.

My Opinion on Going Rogue- I didn't buy GR, but I wasn't impressed with the trial weekend's offering. 4? new powersets and a lvl 1-20 zone.. Wasn't there already enough lvl 1-20 content? The new powersets are nifty, but not 30USD nifty. Alignment changing is something I was never really interested in, and still could barely care less about. Waiting for 2 issues to be released to actually get the interesting content from GR isn't something I want to do.

The market- It's hard to use, tedious to make money with, and an overall pain in my *** to use. The interface is a nightmare, and honestly the old one was easier to deal with. I feel like, as a person who plays primarily endgame, making inf should be my primary focus. Well, it's hard to do, and not hard in the "This is really challenging my skills!" but hard in the "This is really challenging my patience." kinda way. Storage is too low (for characters and the market storage), reward rolls are too random (like they've always been), and earning merits is a pain when it should be fun. For the economy portion of the game to be enjoyable for me, /something/ has to be streamlined, preferably _all_ of it.

This is probably my biggest frustration. I've never had alot of inf, only ever IO'd out two characters, and have had horrible luck with rewards (like getting 8 centrioles in a row from hami). Over all my toons I have about 500mil, which isn't even enough to deck out one toon with purps and the works, which is what I really want to do at this point.

Too many activities- Out of thousands of badges, hundreds of story arcs, numerous Task Forces and plenty of other things to do, I am left confused at what I ought to be doing, and even more aloof as to what I actually want to do. It seemed like back when there was less to do, there was alot more going on.. which is what I like to see in an MMO: things happening. Remember when Hami was actually fun?

Seriously though... adding more content in the existing level ranges is redundant. In my opinion (and experience), MMOs should build up before they build out. What I mean is: City of Heroes has way too much content for all level ranges... while the endgame has been continually neglected. When this happens players become decentralized, making it difficult to actually find something to do.

Difficulty finding the community- Does one even exist on CoH anymore, other than the forums? I remember Atlas having loads of people, Portal Corp was bumping with action, Siren's being a good place to hang out, Arena chat was lively... it was an overall high sense of community. These days people seem to be niching themselves into private chats, colossal Super groups, or what have you. I cannot find common ground anywhere, which makes the game feel like a ghost town (or Dark Astoria).

So now that I've whined, here's some cheese. What I want to see in CoH:

-Cross Shard activities. When PvP zones were dieing, I said we needed cross shard PvP zones. This is still true. One of the best implementations I've seen in any MMO was a PuG dungeon finder system that randomly assigned people looking for a team to a team. CoH could greatly benefit from such a tool. (And no, WoW did not give me the idea for this,)

-Level cap raised. CoH desperately needs a higher "tier" of content. Somewhere for the "end gamers" to congregate. Sure, it's still a niche, but at least it's a public one.

-Market Streamline. As if I didn't say enough above, this portion of the game is very tedious, and frankly quite annoying.

-More Archetypes. I know this is alot of work, but there are many more possibilities to be had. We saw alot of creativity in the CoV ATs, I know more progress could be made in this realm. How about a Buff/Assault class, like a defender with a melee twist? Plenty of potential here...

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The one thing I question tho, he said they datamined how long characters were at certain levels. Could this info have been skewed by alt-itis? I know when I hit 22-27 range, I usually start another alt and run them for a while. Or even partake in a FOTM build.

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We have a "life at level" stat in seconds. This is how long a character spent at a particular level, logged in. While not a perfect indicator of levelling speed, it's an excellent starting point.

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Heh thats funny. I guess level 41 is going to be super fast xp then.

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Smoothing the XP Curve
One thing that we constantly examine is the rate of advancement in the game. In a future version, we intend to smooth out the leveling curve by changing how much experience is given out for defeating opponents. The intent is to smooth out the “bumps” where players typically get stuck leveling up their characters. Keep an eye on coming patch notes for specifics.


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Making Story Arcs even less worthwhile than they already are.

This is also going to cause inflation in lvl 10-40 IO sets.

GIS is actually more DPS than KO blow, rage aside. FT is also more control per second, as you can feasibly stack FT with itself.

But, therein lies a problem. IMO powers with low recharge should have low activations. There at least needs to be some kind of standard.

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Also, the quote you referred to is across all AT/Powerset combinations. */Ice outperforms many other AT/Powerset combinations.

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Well, if I can assume that your data mining doesn't look at a single powerset, I can also make the statement that I think it should. If you want to balance your game you need to look at individual powersets and their strengths and weaknesses. I will also assume that your data mining doesn't cover damage per second for powersets, seeing as /Fire and /Super Strength will do double to quadruple damage of /Ice just because they have strong AoEs. There is strong evidence of this, anyone running hero stats can tell you. Assuming that your data mining doesn't look at individual powersets, I will also assume that it doesn't look at individual powers themselves. Ice melee's activations are horrible (as well are mace's and battle axe's). Ice melee also only has one power that does AoE damage, and its a small cone. Every other tanker seccondary has a damaging pbaoe attack, and most of them have more than one damaging AoE attack.

The very fact that Ice melee has little AoE damage means it does not perform as well as any other tanker seccondary. Every other secondary can deal damage better than Ice melee, against one target and against many. This is a fact. Whether or not your mined data can actually show the full potential of powersets or not, it is a fact. Ice melee has the lowest potential of all tanker secondaries, and in my ranking it is the third worst powerset in the game.

Tanker secondaries are not very well balanced at all. They're almost as bad as Blaster secondaries. You have Super Strength and Fire Melee, which both deal huge AoE damage. You have Energy Melee which has massive single target destruction, as well as a very powerful secondary effect. You have Stone Melee with very quick activations and really strong control. Warmace and Battle Axe lack behind these powersets because of their activation times, knockback, and the fact that they're drawn weapons. And then you have Ice Melee, which has lower single target damage than all of the above and the lowest AoE damage of any damage powerset in the game. Its control isn't as good as Stone Melee's, and its secondary effect doesn't come close to /Fire's or /Energy's. Did your data mining tell you all that? It should have because its all facts.

And for an example of how bad ice melee performs in the game here is the whole reason I decided to make this post in the first place:
Today I teamed with a Fire/Ice tanker. We were doing a Rikti mission with generators to kill. Of course the two scrappers were off killing all the generators spawning their mass of ambushes. The tanker was trying to kill groups, and he was doing it very slowly. Since he couldn't kill groups very fast (60+ seconds to kill a group with no bosses) and I couldn't help him because I kept getting stunned (I'm a blaster) and the empathy wasn't buffing anyone because she was dead (destroyed by multiple ambushes) I was forced to run. The tanker couldn't kill fast enough to aggro enemies off of me, and I couldn't kill at all without his protection. Later I quit the team because it was awful. This is an example of how /Ice's lack of performance caused me many deaths and frustrations.

Powersink VS Consume VS Energy Absorption VS Dark Consumption

Stone/Electric Brute. I don't have to take Stamina because Powersink is an instant fill-up when I need one. In the case where I will only have one target for a while (vs AV/Hero) I can just hit Conserve Power and/or Power Surge and never worry about endurance.

Fire/Fire Tanker. I am forced to take Stamina to be efficient. Since Consume requires 4 enemies around me, and a to-hit check, every 90 secconds I may or may not have an endurance refill. This is unreliable.

Ice/Energy Tanker. I am forced to take Stamina to sustain my toggles. However, I have an auto-hit power that refills my endurance with about 3 enemies around me and gives me a massive defense boost.

Dark/Dark Brute. I'm forced to take Stamina to have endurance. In addition, I have stymied AoE damage because both of my AoE attacks are on a 120 seccond timer. One of these AoEs is an endurance heal power. I'm not sure whether or not to slot it for damage or drain. It already needs two accuracies and two recharges, so theres not much room for anything else.

Dark/Fire Brute. I don't need to take stamina, but I do anyhow. With two endurance recovery powers endurance problems are a thing of the past. I can afford to slot Dark Consumption for damage, but why bother. Its DPS is horrible. I can't figure out why a power like this is in an attack set.


I did this to show how practical these powers really are. Consume could get a buff, but then Dark Consumption would deserve one too. Buffing both of these powers would make Dark/Fire overpowered. But hey, since AR/Devices gets a synergy bonus other sets should too huh? Energy Absorption needs left alone. Sure, the power itself might be very strong, but the rest of the set is weak. This single power balances the set. Powersink/Energy Drain are powerful. Using these, you can get rid of stamina altogether. They are probably too strong, their drain is massive and they can keep your endurance sustained.

These powers really are not balanced. Given Primary/Seccondary combinations though, I can't see how they could possibly be balanced without some major changes.

Wanna tune my mish with your toon?

Mish is another thing that annoys me.

I figured that the Patron Power Pools might add some new powers instead of recoloring and boosting existing powers.

These are pretty much all of the patron powers:
AoE Ranged
AoE Immobolize
Ranged Attack
Ranged Snipe
Shield
Summon Pet
Hold
Ranged Cone?
Utility power (Power Sink)

There are no new powers. They are all recolors of existing ones, and they may be a bit more powerful than their powerset counterparts. Theyre not even good powers. Look at ones for heroes, like Focused Accuracy, and Force of Nature. Nothing the villains gets comes close to these powers. There are really only 9 or 10 new powers in the PPPs. They just do diferent, albeit useless, seccondary effects. Are the devs just lazy or are they inneficent?