Dysmal

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You can get the Prima Strategy Guide to the game for FREE, which will help you a lot as well.


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Just to be clear here, it should be noted that this guide is basically only for CoV, and does not have information on the CoH AT's or CoH only powersets. You can infer alot of things on shared powersets though. The original Prima Guide is not free as far as I can tell.

None of this is to say you shouldnt get the guide though, its a very handy read.

Smaller than a breadbox?

No, it wouldn't necessarily effect everyone. There are thousands upon thousands of possible combinations of hardware, software, and internet connections between the 180 000 some odd CoX subscribers. Its quite believable that some people will have no problems, while others will have massive problems.

Its pretty clear that these problems people are having since I7 are due to I7. If we could play CoH fine before I7, and have made no changes to our system since before I7, and suddenly the game is performing terribly, it's fairly evident that the problem lies not with the users, but with the changes made to the game in I7.

My personal experience is that I now get three or four hard crashes out of CoX to desktop every day now, where prior to I7 I would experience a crash like that at most once a month, and probably much less frequently than that. I haven't made any changes to my system.

Not gone, promoted more like.

Is there a listing somewhere of all the AT Modifiers and what they apply to? I'm not finding anything like that in the guide so far.

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Some people believe that any posting about a perceived problem or balance issue is whining. That every such post is a thinly veiled attempt by someone to get a buff for a character they like. That making powersets within ATs have parity is always driven by jealousy.

Some people can't accept that other people might like balance as an abstract concept, and strive for their peception of what's balanced as a goal unto itself.

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I agree. I also believe that some people are so sensitive to criticism about anything they like, that they'll irrationally reply with something negative as a knee-jerk reaction without even bothering to think about the subject being discussed, because they love their opinion more than they love anything else, even the truth.

It's a psychological thing, imho, and I think it's even more obvious when you discuss something that's a problem that's not so numbers-related, or more tangentally numbers-related than what we're discussing now.

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Yeah, this is very true. Its just as irrational as the people posting emotional fueled rants about how the game is doomed, and just as unproductive.

Back on topic, in regards to player testing, the developer team would have done it self a large favour had it provided the playerbase with the numbers on powers a long, long, time ago. I'm glad that they've started to provide numbers for us to consult via the Prima Guide for I7, but its long overdue.

As Castle says, there are thousands more of us players than there are Devs. In order to capitalize on those thousands of players, we need some sort of reference. Otherwise, its far too difficult to know if something is a bug or working as intended. With the new Prima Guide numbers, if I think something is wonky with my villain's powers, I can consult the guide, and see if a power's recharge, endurance cost, and so on is working properly.

Personally, I've never bothered to do a lot of testing things like new powers or changes to powers in the past, precisely because of this issue. Now that Cryptic has produced numbers that can help me help them, I'm much more likely to test and report possible bugs.

Now, if we could just a little more useful detail in patch notes, we'd be well on our way.

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i'd like illusion as a primary, even if i had to lose my control

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So, roll a controller?

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mm's can't control their pets that well either

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Theres a difference between "not well" (which isn't really true IMO) and "not at all".

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I seem to remember one of the devs posting a while ago, (Issue Five-ish I think) That with the inventions system would come an enemy group called The Batallion, which would be so difficult that the temp powers from inventing would be neccessary to defeat them. Maybe that group is coming with the universities being made useful.

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Hey, yeah. Whatever did happen with the Batallion?

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Wasnt there a magazine article mentioning them a while back. Maybe in CGW or some other magazine.

Hmm, all I can dig up about the invention system is this quote from Posi.

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GameSpy: With each issue, it seems that the new base features come closer and closer to a true "crafting" system. Is this where the game is heading, a real crafting system?

Miller: That's the goal. The current base item creation system is the foundation for the "invention system" in City of Heroes and City of Villains. That's not to say you need a base to craft. The Universities were put in for a reason.


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I imagine the Unversities will be the source of the Invention system that was discussed a while back, which makes sense as universities are often research centres. So, Invention system tenatively planned for I8 perhaps. That would be good. I'm not that entranced by the idea of crafting, but I know there are lots of people who are, and anything that adds non-combat based gameplay to the game is a big plus IMO.

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I'm not too excited. My guess is that whatever they're doing with Universities in I8 will just be bringing the Salvage system to the invididual level. I'm betting that you'll be able to bring your Salvage to a University and make temporary powers out of 'em, or something along those lines.

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Thats more or less what I expect as well. Salvage crafted into temp powers, inspirations, or possibly some kind on enhancements.

As I said, not exactly something that I'm awaiting eagerly, but it will at least add a new dimension to the game, and expand the accessability of the salvage system to people other than base architechts.

Thanks to all the E3 attendees for their info. Its great to get this kind of stuff for those of us who can't make it to these kind of things.

Wings being a costume option is a big suprise to me. I had always thought Wings would be an Avillian only thing. It makes me wonder whether Avillian's as an EAT are going on the back burner or perhaps being scrapped altogether.

I imagine the Unversities will be the source of the Invention system that was discussed a while back, which makes sense as universities are often research centres. So, Invention system tenatively planned for I8 perhaps. That would be good. I'm not that entranced by the idea of crafting, but I know there are lots of people who are, and anything that adds non-combat based gameplay to the game is a big plus IMO.

Speculation time. I seem to recall that the invention system was supposed to be launched with an event featuring some new enemy faction that you would need the inventions to fight. This sounds to me like an oppertunity for Hero/Villain teaming.

Also, yay for more confirmation of the 5th returning. Perhaps we can finally put an end to the sheer stupidity of the "omg the germanz banzored the nazis!!!" stuff.

Just poking my nose in here to say I love the new animations for Claws. Swipe is great, though probably still not a power I would take on a live build, and while the new Strike animation is just a reused Jab/Boxing/Radiant Strike animation, it feels really brutal with Claws.

Good job on this one Devs and folks like Stupid_Fanboy who've been pushing for this for a long time. Seems like Claws is finally going to work the way it was intended to.

Yep, the thing that makes Thugs different is the Tier 1 Thugs have no inate resitances like the other pets, but the Tier 2s have leadership powers.

My feedback so far on my lowbie Thugs. The animations are great for the two low level attacks, and the two different brawl animations with pistols out are a nice touch. The guns do seem a bit huge on my smallish female character though.

Only negative is that I hate the whistle summoning animation, and especially that it leaves my character in a weird crouched position.

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What about the scrapper/tanker detoggling attacks? Spines does it a lot, Energy Melee does it a ton. Broadsword doesn't do it at all anymore. We need a complete list.

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Uh, I'm 99% sure Scrappers and Tanks have no detoggle effects. Energy Melee for Tanks detoggles because it has stuns attached to most powers, and being stunned drops your toggles. Spines doesnt have any mez effects that woudl result in a toggle drop.

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This is a disturbing trend to start... if they're going to have additional content that you have to pay for, I will become worried. I can write-off buying CoV since it's essentially a new game, but to pay for a new powerset, or a new AT, just bothers me. I mean, should we expect such "premium" ATs to be better than the regular ones? I'd also be worried if pay-per-content expansions became the norm, and the free content took a backseat...

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I think its inevitable that you're going to see regular paid expansions over the life of the CoX universe. New retail box expansions give the game presence on store-shelves that it would not otherwise get, which brings in more cash for Cryptic, and helps attract new players to the game. I think the game needs semi-regular injections of new and shiny above and beyond the regular Issue Updates to stay healthy, and to grow (and I think we should all want the game to grow, as more growth could mean more staff to work on things)

It would be unfortunate if the paid expansions come at the expense of the regular Issue updates that are partially funded by our monthly fees (as per the Knowledge Base), but in some respects this is a horse that fled the barn six months ago.

I think we should remember that you wouldn't just be paying for one new powerset, or a new EAT. I suspect that a new expansion may very well feature a new group of zones in an area that is neither Pargon or the Rouge Isles. Space and Underwater themes quite handily lead themselves to this sort of thing in my opinion.

I'd pay for a Galaxy of Heroes, or Ocean of Heroes expansion with a new, optional group of zones and a related EAT(Coralax for Ocean obviously) assuming a reasonable price and some other packaged benefits (free month of play, an extra four slots per server like CoV gave us). Also, given that this paid expansion is not going to be a stand-alone game, the cost is going to be lower than a full game I would assume. Well, at least lower than the official Cryptic price. Best Buy has CoV on for $9.99 right now.

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Cool! A bride for not cancelling our accounts

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I lol'ed

Neat stuff. Good to see Posi is taking PM's again, I thought he had them disabled for a while.

The veteran rewards sound's great, and hopefully it will soothe some of the folks who have been playing a long time and want a kheldian but haven't fulfilled the requirments yet.


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Beyond that, we are looking to release another Issue building up the story towards our next retail box, due in 2007. This will include going back and revamping some of the zones from City of Heroes, using everything we've learned from making City of Villains and Issue 7, plus a bunch of other cool stuff including new powersets and an epic archetype.


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Does this mean that there will be an issue focussed on new powersets and a new EAT, or that those things will be in the new retail box in 2007?

Also, I hope any new retail box will give us more slots per server in the same fashion as CoV.

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Take the time to understand what people are complaining about before you attempt to tell them to "wait and see."

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Alright. I'll let myself get suckered in by the ill-veiled insult one last time.

I understand what you complain about.
You complain that the part of the picture you've seen doesn't fit the kind of development you'd like to see (to put it briefly; I don't want to paraphrase this entire thread and everyone like it).

My point is that we won't know if we're seeing the entire picture 'till, you know, we've seen the entire picture.

Maybe we know everything there is to know. Maybe we don't.


I'd return the insult, but I got nothing. Sorry

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That wasn't an insult on my part. Your comments about waiting to test things pretty clearly seemed to convey a fundamental lack of comprehension about the complaints people are making at PPPs.

It's no an insult to tell someone you don't think they've sufficiently understood something. If I was to imply that you were incapable of such understanding due to a character flaw, IQ level, nationality, or some other reason, that would be an insult. Had I wanted to insult you, I would not have been subtle about it.

If you feel that my implying that you dont understand something is an insult, I'm afraid you may just be overly sensitive to such a mild form of criticism.

We've seen the whole picture. We know that there are only four PP pools, we know what the graphics for those powers, what they do, their names, and in many cases can deduce which of those powers are the same as pre-existing powers. Do you read the interviews and articles on other sites about CoV? We've been told everything there is to know about Patron Powers other than the hard numbers, which we'll learn when I7 goes to test.

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Oh geez, Posi and them already said they will look into it. The reason they couldnt do it differently right away was because of the fact they never put tech into CoH/CoV that allows you to completely breakoff a contact and lose any souviners/story arc progress.

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I think if the company had offered true APP equivalents of a universal/elemental nature in addition to unlockable PPPs this would be an almost moot conversation. I think it may speak to how ambitious and thinly-stretched they are, resource-wise, that they didn't.

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Theres also the question of if perhaps they didnt offer an alternative to Patron powers because they didnt want to end up with a posible situation of a large number of players opting for APPs instead of PPP's, which would make the decision to spend time and effort on PPP's look like a bad one.

Well, if people were doing that, you might have a point. But people aren't. They're expressing their distaste for several aspects of the Patron Power system that have been 100% confirmed and documented.

The things people are complaining about such as lack of thematically appropriate choices, permanent nature of the pools, etc, are not concerns that can be addressed by playing with the powers on the Test Server.

Take the time to understand what people are complaining about before you attempt to tell them to "wait and see."

We have all kinds of concrete information. I'm not sure how people don't grasp this. We know the power names, we know their themes and graphics, we know we don't have alternatives, and we know we can't respec out of them. This has all been confirmed by Dev posts, interviews or Feature Update articles.

Are we really going to have to pull out the "I don't have to get kicked in the groin to know I won't like it?" comments again?

Damn, I did. I think I owe LaserJudas royalities now.

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This complaint would be all fine and good. If it had been posted a week after I7 was released to test.

I'm sorry Samuel, I tend to agree with a lot of what you post. But lately you've been bashing I7 (the PPPs in particular) based on nothing but hearsay.

My advice: Wait. Give it a try. Even if it's just half an hour to talk to one of the PPP contacts. THEN come here and post how much your artistic expression is being repressed.

Maybe there are redeeming qualities. Maybe there aren't. I doubt you're more precognitive than me, so we'll just have to wait and see.

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We've seen the graphics, we know there aren't alternative APPs, we know we can't respec out of the pools.

What's to test aside from the hard numbers of the powers like BI, recharge, endurance cost, etc.?

Is this the same as the one from the German site that was posted by someone lastnight?

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FIRST THING: I want the devs to take their time with I7, seriously. Take your time. No rush, get it right, yadda, yadda.

SECOND THING: That said the inmates are getting restless.

SO,

THIRD THING: Like the subject line says, how about a quick Q&A with Positron (like his recent badge thread) where we're allowed to throw out questions and Positron answers as few or as many as he wants. Just friendly, perhaps we sic Clintonian on anyone who trolls (since Happy Fun Taser is out of that business).

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I'm crazy busy right now, but I'd be happy to answer a few questions, as long as none of them are "when is I7...?"

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Soooo, when is I8?

I dunno, we've already had many a Positron interview with various sites about I7. I don't know that doing another one on the forums is going to accomplish much. Perhaps they could just post a sticky with links to all the interviews on various sites that Posi has already given?

I'm also sure he's probably busy with last-minute I7 stuff and prep for E3.

edit: Of course, while I'm writing my post, Positron posts in the thread.