DarthMord

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All but Psi...interesting. Quick question...how come PSI wasn't included?

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Because then powersets that have a psi-weakness like invul would stack up on psi-defense powerpools.

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Besides, a Ranged Psi attack would still be defended against by Ranged Def just like any other Ranged (type) attack.

Looking at this, it's a similar way of accomplishing what I had suggested in another thread. This would allow for the devs to make the highly mobile/agile defenses use positional def (and set those powers higher than type as appropriate). They'd also be able to do the same with Type defenses in relation to Positional.

The end result being the pool power defenses being useful to anyone who took them. This follows the logic that if I take a generic defense power and use it, it should have some level of useful effect.

This is one of their better changes IMO.

Yeah well, it's kinda funny how it's hard as heck to hit a MoG'ing regen with any Psi attacks... Paragon Protectors come to mind here too...

Mind you, I'm not saying the devs are wrong.... I'm just.. umm, "observing".

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Hi all,

What a fantastic reception! I’m thrilled to be here, and will do my best to bring the world of Paragon City to you. There’s no way I can replace Gilgamesh, but my goal is to provide you with new insights to the CoH setting, and thematically echo Gil’s work.

As for my background, I worked as a Creative Director for Guardians of Order, a pen & paper RPG publisher for a handful of years. I was Line Developer on the Silver Age Sentinels RPG, where I was the primary author of the world setting, and an assistant editor on two short story anthologies (with Jim Lowder, the editor behind the upcoming CoH novels).

Over the past 2+ years, I developed The Authority RPG (adapting the DC/WildStorm Comic), a cyber RPG (spanning the classic genre work to post-modern material, called Ex Machina), and the A Game of Thrones RPG (based on George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic).

I’ve freelanced for White Wolf (on the game lines Orpheus and Vampire: The Requiem) and for Eden Studios (on the upcoming CoH RPG). I continue to write games, play games, and perhaps most importantly, enjoy games.

I’m terribly excited to be working here, and I’ll certainly be asking all of you for help and suggestions in the days to come. Unfortunately, as I’m not a villain, I can’t say, “I like it rough” – I’ll leave that for Awry. But I will strive to keep my stoic guard up, be thick-skinned to the nitpickers, and helpful to the needy.

cheers,
Arctic_Sun

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Terribly excited eh? Is that something like "horribly enthusiastic"?

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Do you remember what it was like when they made the bad guys tougher? It was as if millions of voices cried out all at once.....


.....and kept crying until they rolled the changes back.

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That was bosses only and they NEVER explored the rest of the "buff the bad guys" options that were on the table with any of the players. They simply washed their hands of it the moment that idea had a SINGlE failure.

Try again.

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It all happened to start with the I4 regen nerfs and the devs claims of how overpowered Regen was. Their examples included Regen doing such amazing things as solo'ing large groups of +8 bosses. They even went as far as to provide demo "proof" of this feat, a post in which Statesman made a snide comment about us "conspiracy theorists". Well, low and behold, their test enviroment was completely borked.

Apologies were made and thanks given, of course it did nothing to change the course of the nerfs, but I guess that could be viewed as a seperate issue.

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What I take issue with (although I haven't kept up with the thread) is the fuzziness between "The developers are wrong in their assessment of the gameplay", "The developers are implementing a poor solution to a valid problem", and "the developers are lying." The first two I can accept wholeheartedly. As your example points out, they've been wrong. My opinion about the Phase Shift change and (to a lesser degree) movement power supression is that the changes are overkill for the PvE problems.

But lying? No. I don't accept that. I think what happens to a lot of people, myself included, is that we read statements by the developers, take away what we want to hear and ignore the caveats, and when those caveats kick in we turn around and state, "But you said...!"

I think this post by Positron is a perfect example. A search for Statesman's posts pre-I4 should turn up the "whenever possible" caveat. When supression came up there was some speculation that it was strictly a PvP issue, but posts by Statesman, FrostyBot, and Pilcrow -- the latter two going in and demonstrating the PvE problems with movement powers -- showed that there was a PvE problem. Now, whether supression is a satisfactory solution to the PvE problems...

As an aside, I'm going to quibble that Statesman ever called those who disliked the actual changes "conspiracy theorists." He did mention Conspiracy Theorists here, but in context I take that to mean "people who think the developers faked the Zapru-- er, test video. I also quibble that the revelation that the test environment was screwy didn't result in the developers rethinking particular nerfs. Sure, there's still been nerfs, but I suspect they weren't as severe as they were going to be had the playerbase not caught the problems with the developers' test environment.

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FYI, the nerfs to Regen on Test Server at that point in time DID NOT change due to the demorecord being found borked. The same nerfs that were already there went Live even though it was shown the Internal Test Environment was screwed up.

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Stealth, Grant Invisibility, Invisibility,Combat Flight, Weave, Maneuvers, Vengeance, and Combat Jumping will grant a Defense bonus to Smashing and Lethal Attacks in addition to Melee and Ranged attacks.

I added the same to Controller/Illusion/Group Invisibility.

The result of this is that ALL defense builds will benefit from Pool powers. Previously, Ice Tankers suffered somewhat because the Pool defenses did not stack with their defense powers. This is now rectified.

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States, any chance we could have something like this...

You have Positional Defense, Type Defense, Resistance, and Healing.

Your attack first checks against the Positional Defense to see if the opportunity to hit the target exists. If it hits, you go to the next step, otherwise it shows a miss.

The next step would be to see if the type of the attack can hurt the target. Obviously Fire Def is useless against Ice Damage. Otherwise, it works much like Positional Defense. In the case of multi type attacks, the best Defense is what is used. No adding/stacking of different Type Defenses (ie: no stacking of fire/smash def. It's either or per attack). Resolve the hit or miss as above.

This step would take the damage of the attack and run it against the target's Type Resistance to determine how much damage they take.

The final step would be to compare the damage received vs the target's HP to see if the target lives or dies. It would also account for the Healing rate as Healing ticks happen every so often and damage sometimes coincides with it (See Hami's AOE blast while in a healing bubble).

This system has the benefit of allowing granular control of the various versions of personal and team defenses. It lets you make things like SR scrappers who are extremely hard to hit yet take full damage when they are. It also lets you make things like resistance based tanks (Fire & Stone) who have high resistance but are easy to hit. Blasters would be low to nothing across the board in terms of PosDef, TypeDef & Resistance.

This gives you extremely fine control over every aspect of Defense. It also stops TypeDef from stepping on the toes of Resistance. Type Defense basically is 100% Resistance vs that type of damage *IF* the attack "misses" due to Type Def.

In summary:

Positional Defense should determine whether or not the attack CONNECTS / HITS the target. (avoidance of damage)

Type Defense should determine whether or not the attack DAMAGES the target. (deflection of damage)

Resistance should determine how much of the attack's damage is received.

Only Resistance is doing its job. The two forms of Defense are NOT.

Take care, storyteller.

Be that as it may Kat... the psychological impact is drastically different. People are attached to **HOW** their heroes/characters are.

If you increase the difficulty via the environment, people will rise to the challenge.

If you increase the difficulty via character nerfs, people will rise in complaint.

Same net game results, drastically different player results. This is precisely why the devs should have looked at the boss upgrade they did and backed off from and changed it slightly then tried again. They were on the right path there but implemented it wrong. They could have tried many other options. They CHOSE not to.

Something I wish they had tried... Make all +0 minions act like +1 minions with regards to Hit chance against heroes and damage (both giving and receiving). Keep them the same otherwise. It would have made the game more challenging YET not made it substantially harder for low damage ATs to accomplish mob defeats.

But instead, they chose to alter the characters and make them dramatically weaker rather than tweak the mobs. It makes far more sense to balance by giving and taking rather than TAKE TAKE TAKE. It's just like training a child or a pet. You don't use *just* positive or *just* negative reinforcement. You use both. You punish bad behavior and reward good behavior.

It works the same in game balance too.

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I need some positive assurance here. Does anyone really believe that they are going to leave QR alone?

The facts:

1. Rest recharge reduced to less than a 1/3 of its original recharge

2. Vigilance

3. Endurance reductions all over the place.

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I think they're setting up either a massive positive change that would make Stamina truly optional. In such a world, QR might be seen as overpowered.

OR

they are setting up "teh ubar nerf" of Stamina and QR and if we don't like it we can go [censored by me] ourselves.

OR

all of the above plus a nerf to Dull Pain for questioning their intentions.

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The last option of course! Since when have our Devs ever done anything half-arsed? They either go no-[censored] or full-[censored].

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I'd really like to see Khelds suck when solo in human form, but be total monsters in a full team. But I think I'm hopelessly outvoted on this.

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Yes you are. I didn't really start to enjoy playing my Kheldian until that -30% penalty went away. Then it was a fun and challenging game play experience. Before that, it was a boring and tiring experience. I was but a few steps away from deleting my Khelds due to it.

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[ QUOTE ][*] Teleport animation fires off twice (depart & arrive).

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Isn't this true of all teleports? I think it's just the special effect that's in place for the non-kheldian tport that hides the fact that the user is duplicating the animation. Cosmeticly what I'd really like is if the animation were reversed for the arrival (arms open to teleport... arms back to chest to arrive).


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Yes, all teleports are like this NOW in Issue 5. They WERE NOT like this in Issue 4 and earlier. This was bugged repeatedly on Test and shoved Live anyways.

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[ QUOTE ][*] Glitch that makes us human for a split-second while in forms. This can lead to mez/resistance failure!

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I've seen this in my granite form for my stone tanker. Are you sure the character is actually reverting and you're not just seeing a client side graphics glitch? My tanker has never suffered because of these momentary pauses... and I've never noticed my warshade to start to plummet from mid flight when I see this happen to him. If it's more than a cosmetic change, then I definately want this address... if it's just a graphics glitch, then I'd rather other bugs were addressed first.

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I've had it happen to me in Nova and in Dwarf forms. Yes, in Nova, I start to fall and then blip back to Nova and keep flying. In Dwarf, the camera moves down to human height and damage increases for the 0.5 to 1.5 sec duration of the human form blip.

Given how toggle powers have been described in the past, I would suggest that duration be set to a length of time longer than the recycle application of the power.

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A toast! To the */regens - long may they glow goofy green!

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Subsequent patch note:

Regen scrappers are having too much fun enjoying their bright green glow. It's now a dull sickly greenish glow that gives a -100% Res & Def debuff to all players within 100 yards. Everytime a Regen scrapper activates a power that gives the green glow (the entire secondary), the scrapper is defeated and given 2x debt.

This change prevents Regen scrappers from having too much fun.

My guesstimate from the Test Server Forum thread for I6... along with a few modifications since then...

Dull Pain will get the nerf bat and be un-perma-able even with Perma-Hasten, AM, Speed Boost, and Adrenaline Boost. The boost from DP will be reduced to +10% max health, without the healing aspect, and your heal rate will act as though you have 110% max health with DP active rather than 100% (meaning that each heal tick will take the same amount of time whether you have DP active or not).

Integration will move to Resilience's spot in the power tree. Justification will be that high mez protection plus healing is too powerful for a level 16 power.

Resilience will move down to Instant Healing's slot. Dmg Res & Mez protection too powerful to take down any lower.

Instant Healing will move to Integration's old spot and also be reduced to 400% base due to 800% base being too powerful for a level 16 power.

Empathy > Regeneration/Recovery Auras now supercede all comparable /Regen effects (even when the auras have a lesser effect than the comparable /Regen effects). This change makes Empaths more valuable.


As for bugs... I see them goofing up somehow which results in Fast Healing & Quick Recovery REDUCING their respective attribute regen rates (in the same manner as recharge enhancements do) and not being corrected for at least 1 Issue. Reason for that would be the bug isn't game stopping.

I hope you are right. But as is often said in other things... don't hold your breath.

In fact, shortly AFTER States said they were done with sweeping changes for now, they went ahead and gutted two more powers of their usefulness in PvE because the devs can't seem to come up with a way to make Kheldian phase powers work fairly in PvP while preserving their PvE usage.

It's rather interesting though... I am seeing less people on overall, less servers hitting yellow... all immediately after the free trial time expired. I'm sure the apologists will inform me that I'm mistaken and that the servers *just* got upgraded because States said in a recent article they were going to be doing that soon to support CoV.

I simply find it interesting that they cannot make powers work appropriately in PVP when the GAME knows what zone we each are in. Strikes me as odd since the game is giving PvP on a ZONE by ZONE basis rather than player by player.

Maybe it's just a developer version of scrapperlock.

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First, a big thank you to everyone who played on the Training Room server and helped I5 to be one of our best launches ever! We’re extremely happy about how I5 went live.

Second, we’re still scouring the boards for bugs and other issues, but we’ve finished making large changes to the power sets. We’ll still be looking at issues as the arise. For instance, there are issues with Defense builds; we’re going to look at that problem more carefully (the Damage Resistance Inspirations are a step, but there's a little more to come).

Thanks for all your great feedback!

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I'm glad you like how it launched. To date, it was one of the more quiet launches in terms of stability.

I don't however see what the tank changes accomplished. I'm still able to play just as I had before with little change. I dropped one power, replaced it with another and am now able to defeat mobs FASTER than before.

My Shade & PB see no real net effect to them either.

My controller is now grossly overpowered in my opinion because she was built to solo and team support (in that order). Containment puts her way over the top.

My regen scrapper is all but retired. Why? Maybe it had something to do with the chopping in half of our I4 ability to regen damage after repeated statements from YOU & your people saying Regen was fine where it was at. I hate micromanaging my characters. Clicks are for attack powers & buff powers, not for defense powers.

My blasters... LOL nothing changed for them. Defiance was a useless concept that translated directly into a useless ability. If I'm low enough to be getting a decent Defiance bonus, I'm leaving the battle. Sonic blasters... meh. I'm just not that impressed. they were interesting on Test but on Live, their damage appears to be far weaker even though I'm better slotted on Live with Enhancements (at the same levels I was at on Test).

If your changes were an attempt to prevent herding, please try again. You missed the mark.

If your changes were an attempt to balance the game, please try again. You missed the mark so badly the target feels sorry for you.

Long ago, I posted what I though of each Issue. I'll do that again.

Issue 1: baseline. I started playing a few days before patchday.

Issue 2: Good. I was having more fun and many of the changes made sense.

Issue 3: Outstanding! I was having a blast. Every character concept I tried/played was FUN.

Issue 4: Ugh. It was all the bad of Issue 3 without any of the Issue 3 goodness. I had distinctly less fun with this issue and even cut back my playing time due to less interest. Suppression is the worst offender here. This was a major sapper on Fun's endurance. It was ill conceived and foisted upon us anyways.

Issue 5: I play about 30% of the time I did in Issue 4. This issue is a non-fun issue. I don't see what is so impressive about Croatoa. The AI isn't better. It's the same mission suite. Sure the missions now have a few new twists but they are only new for a very short while. They also are NOT engaging. The gameplay changes haven't made my game more fun. They've actually taken most of the fun out of the game for my wife and myself.

The overall nerfing of defense was a misguided idea. It should have been handled on a case by case, power by power basis. Some sets under perform. Some overperform. Balance is achieved when you ADD & SUBTRACT where appropriate, not when you consistently SUBTRACT.

This concept is especially true for Controllers. Some controllers could NEVER achieve perma-lockdown yet they were as thoroughly gutted as those who could do so easily. Yet for all the gutting that Controllers took, you still failed to address certain powersets' overpoweredness.

Lastly, what did the Concealment Pool ever do to so greatly piss off the Dev team?

BTW, I'm still a paying customer because my friends haven't left yet. I'm not here because of the engaging content or neato storylines. I'm here because of my friends. I used to be enthralled by the game and the story until you went overboard and nerf-happy with Issue 4. I'm not anymore. I'm here to support my friends. When they leave, I leave.

PS: The next time you are explaining a power change, just tell it how it is rather than trying to gussy it up. We aren't children. We do understand a logical arguement/debate/statement. We may not necessarily like them, but we do understand them. Treating us like children by giving us non-answers / patently false answers (phase shift nerf excuses) tends not to fly and only serves to whip people into a frenzy.

The only thing I want to add to the Burn changes discussion... I dropped it from my fire tank. Yep. He's a burn-less fire tank. He does a remarkable job of tanking too without Burn.

If the Devs' goal for Burn balance was to make the problems they were having go away, they accomplished it. When players don't take Burn, the players won't have any problems with the power.

The folks who really lose out are those who liked lighting a spot on fire to cause some carnage. All it causes now is a bunch of chaos.

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Again, I REALLY want to thank you for the open, honest, and logical explanation of why things are this way. I don't think you realize how happy it makes me that we are finally getting a reasonable, honest answer about something like this.

If you guys did this more often, I bet you'd only get half the flak you do now for all the "nerfs" and whatnot. So really, I sincerily thank you for the honesty.

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I'm going to second this. This sort of honest, open response does wonders for player morale.

The other sorts of responses we've been getting lately do leave quite a bit to be desired.

Thanks for the honest & open answer Pos.

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I'll pop in here so you guys have a new target.

The original Task Force Datamine took 3 months to finish. That was to go over 2 months worth of data.

We now have 18 months worth of data. We looked for a more effecient solution, but our estimates still come out at 2 years to datamine and get you your badges.

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Ummm at the introduction of badges, was in issue 2, which came out in september if i am not mistaken. the game went live in april, that was 5 months worth of badges. Now yes the game has been out like 15 months not 18 but wouldnt it stand to reason since you caught up to atleast september, and since then any badage TF has awarded, and no TF was added acept strigas moonfire and hess, oh and that calvin scott one, and those were added in issue 3, that really your talking about datamining from issue 3 in january to present. So like 8 months and only for 3 TFs, unless your finally badging the SS tfs which still again not added until issue 2 so going back to sept and 1 year, not 18 months.

COH has long herald itself as a game for casual players. Well as what i consider a casual team player in that i play mostly at night, if i get on line during the day for a TF and spend 5 hours completing it, that is a rare luxary. Andnow i wont get reward for it. Nice is all i have to say. I guess at some point not only did the VISION not include multi spawning pets, herding (though powers increase in effectivness as you do), perma click powers, good aoes, good holds, good defense, an useful blaster inherent power, level 50 cotent..... lets see what am i missing? Point being seems like we players are taking alot of changes for the benefit of living out you alls VISION, how bout cutting us some slack and actually doing something for us for a change. And no the current idea of "balancing" is not for us. Its for your ideas to how we should play not how we want to play. But if we live with it, we dont even get credit for the things we did take part in is kinda, i dont know, craptastic to say the least.

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You know... you got me thinking about that. Issue 2 didn't hit Live until the end of Aug 04 to the beginning of Sept 04. Issue 2 is when the Shadow Shard was put in-game as well.

So they aren't having to go back over 18 months of CoH. They only have to go over 12 months. I also cannot understand why it would take so long to go through the databases. Databases are made for data storage and recovery. They are MADE for queries like this. It's the whole reason to USE a database.

To me, this is just another thing that makes me wonder about the skill level of some of the people working at Cryptic. Amateurish things like simply amaze me especially given the number of years that MMORPGs have been around and lessons learned from them.

These sorts of things make me wonder if they'll be properly managing CoV when it finally goes live.

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You know, as hurt as I have been over the performance and command level descisions as of late, this really takes the cake.

Most badges are nothing but time takers, and serve no purpose other than to make players wait. Taskforces take several hours for no other purpose than to make them longer so more people cannot complete them.

Monster Badges - Could have a designated spawn, where you complete a set of tasks for a zone, and your team gets the monster spawn - Inside of a door mission. Couldn't do that though, that's too easy. That lets too many people get badges.

Monsters spawning regularly to give people badges? Oh can't be that catering to the public. You can't give us what WE want now can you?

Character Badges - Your expectations exclude all but the most rabid fanboys. Let me give you a few examples.

Immortal - Take 1,000,000,000 Damage You are truly Immortal. You have survived one billion points of damage.

Jailed Guess: 100 hours of being held Enemies no longer regard you as a threat.

Now is there any reason for both of those to be as high as they are? No. The only reason is to get people to play a few months longer to get 2 badges with no practical purpose.

You want us to work hard for badges? You want to make us work for badges? Fine, give the badges rewards attached to them. How about every 10 Exploration badges you get you recieve +100 health? How about every 3 Mission Badges you get you get +100 endurance? How about for each Taskforce given by a Hero; Numina, Positron, Synapse, Sister Psyche, etc, you are give +1 power or 2 enhancement slots. No?

How about you make Accolades worth the effort? How about the Crey Pistol actually be effective in combat with equal enemies, worth using. Couldn't do that apparently.

You don't want people to be unhappy with badges? Then quit taking the fun out of them. Stop taking the fun out of everything. I didn't start playing to get the Carrot and the Stick treatment. Stop telling people what they should consider fun and start asking them what they want as fun.

Just so you know, I hate Tyrants...we have enough of them in our world telling us what we should do. Did we start this game for us to have fun? I guess not. We have no one in our corner, we have no voice, we make no desicisions and I'm getting really really fed up with it.

At this rate you might as well take away all the badges, make the level cap level 35, remove stamina as a power, and set the defense cap for everyone at 2%. As far as I'm concerned the developers can take their idea of fun and....

[Censored for the decency of minors, senior citizens, pregnant women, small people, minor household kitchen gadgets, and anyone else with a pulse. Please ignore this flaming volley of profanities and continue with your normally scheduled program]

....grrr...I get so sick of this. I didn't pay for this abuse. If I want to pay for abuse I'll join something like Matrix Online, or call somewhere I can pay $4.95 per minute.

No offense to any City of Heroes fans, only to the Tyrants establishing policy in the name of 'Fun'.

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Keep in mind that regardless of what the propaganda rag (comic book) says, it wasn't Lord Recluse that took away our powers... It was Statesman.

Given that context, it's not that surprising. But yeah, I agree... this is low even for Cryptic.

Yes but the spider legs on his back do fan out like a peacock's tail...

Having served in the military myself and having a wife who still does (we both came from military families) I completely understand this. I hope your brother comes back in the same shape/condition he was in when you loaned him to Uncle Sam.

The one thing I believe most players want from you more than anything else is actual honesty. None of the "controllers were never meant to have multiple instances of their pets out at once 14-16 months after the game has gone live kind of messages". If having multiple pets is overpowering, then simply say so. It would have been better received had the message been "pets are reduced to one instance due to overpowering nature of multiple instances of them"

In a nutshell, if you have to nerf it, say so. Don't beat around the bush or give some explantion that while may be true, will end up ringing hollow to us (due to circumstances). If a blaster power needs nerfing by 25%, then simply say "Power X reduced in hitting power by 25% to bring it in line with comparable powers". This will go over far better and still get the desired message out.

The reason I ask for this is that many players have stated they feel insulted by the way you've worded some of your explanations.

PS: I'm only critical of you guys and the game because I really care about it and have a lot of fun playing it. I don't want to see that fun go away in the name of balance given the flavor of Balance I'm seeing on Test server right now.

The flavor there right now is bland and disorganized. Various powersets are not performing correctly within their specified AT. Certain scrappers are now better tanks than some tanks, high end controllers are very much like blasters, etc. Each powerset should provide the function of the AT it is in. Right now, that's not necessarily the case.

Very good post. Definitely 5 star worthy.

If this is all that Mark Waid can accomplish with COH, we need to get rid of him. I don't care how good he supposedly is with other comics. His work here makes me suspect the rest of his "work" is also just as substandard.

20 out of 21 for me. I missed #15.

I thought that ArenaNet name sounded familiar... Methinks I'll have to go check out Guild Wars.

That works if you are using Gravity to fold/bend space to allow you to warp from point to point. I however use gravity to allow me to float/fly, bend light (concealment pool), and to fall sideways extremely fast (speed).