GadgetDon

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Most of the posts regarding ED I have seen are at least 60% against it, if not more. Is there anything being done about it?

James

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Actually, ED on it's own isn't so bad.

Do I think it was needed? No.
Do I think that it helped as much as it hurt? No.
Am I willing to put up with it for the sake of other players? Sure.

The real "problem" with ED isn't a problem at all. It's the Issue 5 defense nerfing combined with ED that is a problem.

While it's nice that the Devs proposed two solutions and used both (lowered mob to-hit, and soon will release a new +Defense model in I7), the simple facts are:

1. Removing the Issue 5 changes is WAY simpler than rewriting your Defense code.

2. Removing the Issue 5 changes means that you don't need to tweak the mob's to-hit values, get them wrong, and tweak them some more.

3. Removing the Issue 5 changes means that +Resist passive powers work, and while I'm sure that they will get buffed eventually, we don't really want that to take 8+ months (or Issue 8) to happen.

4. All of the above reworking has taken Dev time away from developing new content. While it's great if the new changes work properly (which will need testing), that doesn't suddenly give all the time wasted on reworking Defenses back to the Devs.

Sadly, since they've blown 7 months of their time fixing something they could have rolled back, we won't see them do that now. The best we can hope for it that some of the Invuln and Fire +Resists get buffed, but, as any other change, that also will take more developer time away from new content.

It's really depressing and sad to write this, but once again, here we are, campaigning to fix something that didn't need to be broken... and will get fixed... someday.

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I wouldn't completely roll back I5, but I would do something similar...

For every power that had its effectiveness cut in I5 (hold duration, defense, damage resistance are the biggies, recharge rates--and I'd include the recharge rates that got greatly increased in I4) should have the base increased so that 6 slotted post ED is the same effectiveness that it was 6 slotted under I5 without ED.

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I am putting the requirements for Contacts - and their location - in the Prima Guide...

but here was our intent with these Contacts - reward Exploration. Reward people who poke around to find new things. Now, the down side is that once found, these Contacts don't inform the player about what it takes to unlock them.

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The problem is that there was nothing suggesting it happened. When badges, another reward for exploration, was introduced, it was a big thing. There was a brand new category in the navigation bar just for them. And some badges were placed so that they were easy to find, you got a great big flag that these are in the game.

Unlockable contacts are invisible. Those who came from CoH, where every contact is given you, are at an even bigger disadvantage in figuring these out.

(1) There needs to be something in the game to teach you about unlockable contacts, similar to the missions to learn about PVP zones, difficulty changers, etc.

(2) When you have fullfilled the requirements to unlock a contact, you need to be told the contact is available. Next contact you talk to should introduce you to the contact.

(3) When you talk to an unlockable ocntact you haven't unlocked yet, you should be told roughly what is necessary to unlock them. Perhaps not the specificity of what you're putting in the guide, but a head start.

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Don't know if this has been answered...

When Positron says "the rewards will be increased," is he referring to the number of people/teams that get the badge?

Because if that's the case, it's going to get annoying. A lot of people refrain from making public announcements as it is, for fear that another team will try to gank the badge from them.

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He said earlier that everyone on a team that provides 10% or more of the damage bets the badge. So, up to 10 teams theoretically could get the badge, realisticly 3 or 4 teams will.

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Zone Giant Monsters are getting the buff. GM's that are mission-specified (like the ambush ones, or the Eden trial, etc) are not being touched. Those GMs are "arch-villain" level, i.e. made to be beaten by 1 team.

Zone Giant Monsters are the GM's that appear randomly (or triggered) in zones. This does not include the ambushes that are triggered from missions.

This change will be both CoH and CoV.

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Thanks. I still don't think they need a buff, I think you're catering to your best players and leaving your more casual and less skilled players behind, but at least content won't depend on these.

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When Giant Monsters get tougher (Issue 7), this number will drop to 10%(or more), encouraging more teams to fight them. The rewards will be increasing as well.

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Problem with this...some monsters are set up for just one group:

Babbage: Ambushes team doing Synapse TF
Krakken: In Sewer Trial, must be defeated four times at bottom even if you can avoid the Krakken in the scaffolding
Adamastor: In instanced mission at end of Numina TF
Kronos: Surprise ambush after exiting mission, and then in surprise timed mission.
Quarry: Two of these must be defeated in an instanced mission in the Eden trial.

I may be an exception, but I don't find giant monsters in need of a buff. My only complaint is with how often they spawn.

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Arbiter Leery is a special case, since the "I have the Respec and have not used it" and "I have used this Respec" badges are actually DIFFERENT badges (we take one away and give the other). A contact can only have one badge that 'unlocks' them, and in this case we needed 2.

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Would it then be possible to give one of those nifty invisible badges (like the one people are reporting for the Valentine's Day missions) for successful completion of the respec SF, and then hook up the unlocking of Arbiter Leery to that badge? Then he'd be available to anyone who has done the respec strike force, whether they used a respec, still have a respec, or even chose a respec as their reward.

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Done. All you need to do is choose the respec as the reward, and you can do Arbiter Leery whether you respeced or not. (Upcoming patch)

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Thank you!

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now that those are live...
will there be a way to do the cross-platform missions and such later? I've heard rumors they are being closed later this month

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Not a rumor, pocket D missions are Valentines day event lasting 2 weeks.

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The current missions will go away. But I can't believe they won't create more, now that they've got the technology working.

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Thanks Positron. I have one question.

Since CoH and CoV badges are the same, why doesn't CoV have a version of the Transmogrified badge from CoH? You get that badge after completing the respec trial once (no matter which of the three incarnations you do), and it doesn't change no matter if you've used a respec or not. Why can't that badge be awarded to Villains and then have Arbiter Leery key off of Transmogrified?

It makes sense to me, but there must be a reason this isn't the way it's set up.

If I have to waste a respec just so I can do a couple missions to help pad out the empty 35-40 range, I'm going to be a sad brute

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Actually, on CoH you do have two badges. The title and graphic is the same, but the text changes--before respec it says "your powers are changing", after respec it says "your powers have changed"

But I agree that you should not have to waste a respec just to unlock a contact. I'd say don't bother, just do newspaper missions. If I'd known that clearing the mission would require wasting the respec, I'd never have taken his missions.

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Arbiter Leery is a special case, since the "I have the Respec and have not used it" and "I have used this Respec" badges are actually DIFFERENT badges (we take one away and give the other). A contact can only have one badge that 'unlocks' them, and in this case we needed 2.

The original way was the "unused Respec" badge unlocked him. This sucked because once you used your Respec you couldn't get the contact anymore. This was changed to the "used Respec" badge, since now if you used your Respec you could get the contact, and if you hadn't used your Respec, you could still get the contact, by using your respec. It was less gating this way, but thats not to say any less irritating. It's simply a limit of the way the contacts work.

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This sucks equally. It means that if you do not need a respec (and are looking ahead to the possibility in I7 and want to preserve it), you must blow that one of three respecs you'll ever be able to earn in order to unlock the content. As long as there is a hard limit to earned respecs, requiring one be blown in order to unlock a contact is wrong.

In my particular case, I got the mission to destroy the Tears of the Spirit under the prior rules. I was sick and tired of all the freaking AVs and heros at that point, that mission required defeating Wretch, and so I let it just stay. Now, with the change from AV to EB, I went ahead and did it. Went back to Leery to report the mission was done--and he said he only talks to villains who have proven themselves powerful and I haven't done it yet.

I petitioned, and was told it was a known bug, the devs were aware of it, so since he's at cap I'd just wait for it to be fixed.

Now, as I understand you, it's not GOING to be fixed, and unless I use the respec that I have no need for one of my mission slots is going to be filled and there's nothing that can be done about it.

I've got problems with the whole unlockable system anyway, since there's nothing ingame to tell you what to do in order to unlock more content nor once you've unlocked it anything to tell you where to go get it. It's conceptually cool, but we're constantly told that the vast majority of players never comes to the forums. For that vast majority, the content might as well not exist.

But if it's going to be there...requiring you to both get a badge that gives you something and give it up is wrong. It would be like having to use up all the nectar before you can get the snaptooth missions from DJ Zero.

Please tell me I'm misunderstanding you and that there WILL be a fix for Leery that does not require me to waste the respec.

Is there any possibility you could squeeze something in to help with the 35-39 range? OK, as was mentioned in another thread there's Warburg, but I dislike the environment PvP engenders.

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No need to rewrite history and sugarcoat it. I'm simply trying to remove this shroud that several angry players have placed upon these forums that have been demonizing everything the developers have been doing. Shining a light in the dark so to speak. It's an almost futile task given my lack of ability to communicate intent and information as well as the fact that people have the tendancy to only see what they want to see. On top of that I've let my anger with some of the content in these forums cloud my judgement several times and at this point it has severely tarnished reputation as a poster in these forums. As for quotes I'll have to go looking when I have more time. I have several important things I have to do tomorrow early in the day so I can't spend all night searching through the forums.

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Yes, a lot of people are angry. Many people feel they've been given the mushroom treatment. Long threads for developer feedback with no feedback.

And then ED. For many people, ED was a serious breach of faith. Why?

(1) We'd just gone through I5 with SERIOUS reductions in powers, after I4 with reductions in many powers, after I3 with some. People were talking about viewing future issues with dread, wondering where the nerfbat was hitting next. Statesman came in saying they had to make big changes because they wanted them all done at once, the devs were now happy with how the game was, and no future changes to powersets. That last part technically didn't cover ED, but clearly the big changes WEREN'T all done at once, and the devs weren't happy. The implication was clearly, the nerfbat has gone into the closet.

(2) ED was revealed only to the CoV beta people, late in the beta, and we were told that to reveal it to the non-beta people (deciding whether to renew their account and place orders for CoV) would get their account yanked. We were encouraged to go ahead and do testing...with our players in the teens or early twenties.

(3) We were informed that this had been decided back during I4, that all the testing and decisions they'd made in I4 and I5 was made based on ED. And all that testing we did in I4 and I5 must have been round-filed because we weren't testing the environment they were making decisions about. Yes, Jack Emmert came along later and said "Well, it wasn't really nailed down" but does that mean that the first statement was incorrect or they were just playing around with the numbers?

(4) We were saying "Get it on the test server so we can test it, give it time for it to be fully tested." ED went on the CoH test servers for two weeks before it went live. We've been assured that ED was fully tested internally, planned for months, but it couldn't be made available for testing in CoH for more than two weeks???

(5) MANY posts were made about ED's issues. Yes, some ranting, some rather out there, but also a lot of considered analysis. NONE of it was responded to. The statement finally made about ED after pages and pages of complaints? "The developers are happy with it." Not even an acknowledgement that many, dare I say most, of the players were NOT happy with it.

The message from the developer response threads without a developer response and the back-handed posts about ED was, "We developers, you players. We design, you shut up and play." And people respond poorly.

THIS event is a real change. I hope it's an indicator of things to come. Communication is good, early and often. Yeah, there are some so soured that anything that isn't a complete rollback of ED and I5 will cause complaints, there are others who will rant about anything. But those aren't the core. At least, they weren't.

There is no downside to communication. Those who will whine and rant will whine and rant when the changes hit anyway. Early communication has three possibilities: As players, we get to see things from the developer's perspective and even if we still don't agree, we understand the whys. As developers, they get to see how these things come across from the player's perspective (which is more than just "Yes I can still do missions"--best line I ever heard about this was "You can't datamine fun") and might head a problem off before it even hits their internal test servers. Worst case, those who defend the developers against the whiners and ranters can say "Look, Statesman completely explained this here: link"

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With so much of the insanity that explodes across these boards everytime the developers make a change or a mistake is made, it's not suprising they only talked about the here and the now with what the players knew. Why discuss changes that might not be needed and therefore not be released? In the end they decided they were needed after all and implemented them. It doesn't seem to matter how they handle things though, there turns out to be a spectacle regardless. They tried to play it cautiously and it blew up in their face anyway. Seems to be no matter what they do they lose.

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Why?

(1) Those who spent hours testing I4 and I5, carefully seeing what the problems were, where things got cut too far, etc. wouldn't feel slapped in the face as they are told "Guess what? What you were testing wasn't really what we were looking at."

(2) Some of the changes like recharge rates that were hard to swallow even without ED could have been argued for what they did to the real game going forward

(3) There would have been more than a couple weeks of testing the concept of ED and would have been more time to address things like powers that only take one type of enhancement (by, say, adding extra effects) or whose secondary effects are so minimal it's not worth slotting (by, say, making knockback or disorient enhancements increase the chance of the effect instead of "should this effect happen once per blue moon it happens longer")

(4) It would have been honest. We wouldn't have been told, for example, that Instant Healing can be active almost half the time with six-slotted recharge and permahasten.

As I've said elsewhere, I approve of ED conceptually. But ED on top of the nerfs in I4 and I5 make harsh nerfs even worse, and ED needs some tweaking to actually give us a reason to diversify instead of just punishing us for using the only effective enhancements.

With this stealth issue, I think it's clear that as players from our perspective, we see things that the devs don't see from their perspective. Same with the AV to elite boss for small teams (not just solo). It's there game, they have to make the tough decisions. But by talking about things with us, we can provide them with another perspective that sometimes can help them make better ones.

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There was no 'might be' about it.

Sure there was but it happened and that's all that matters.

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All playtests, QA checks, difficulty adjustments and balances have been done with Enhancement Diversification in mind since March 2005.

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It was planned and implemented (ED) and led to a huge explosion here on the boards

The boards just want to explode. It is their purpose. It is so on any internet gaming forum.

My how history gets a bit twisted with the passage of time.

Statesman himself said that ED wasn't a done deal at the time of I5. Your quote doesn't actually disprove this fact. It does prove that they've had the system in place for quite some time and could have possibly pushed it out much earlier if they saw it as needed immediately.

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Here's the issue.

All developer playtests, QA checks, difficulty adjustments and balances have been done with Enhancement Diversification in mind since 2005.

But all player testing, player feedback, player comments prior to the announcement of ED was done without Enhancement Diversification. There had been NOTHING to suggest that it was going to be changed. And many of the complaints for players (particularly in terms of recharge times) were answered by rednames pointing out the effect of the change with permahasten and six slotting.

ED may not have been a "done deal" but if we are to trust the first statement it was pretty clearly something they were considering. They knew we were evaluating I4 and I5 without ED in mind.

Had it been presented as something to consider during testing, as something they are testing internally and may happen, at the very least the feedback would have been different.

You didn't say "defeat" you said "gank". That suggests the mindset that gets people teleported into areas they can't leave, ambushed when they are trying to leave the zone, etc.

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I recently went to Warburg and there was a "Gentlemans rule" of not messing with others without a challenge

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Your server sucks. I say gank them all. You issued a challenge to any takers when you entered the zone.

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And thus I will never be in a PVP zone if I can avoid it. Because I think your attitude is far more prevalent than the honorable one that the poster suggested exists in Warburg on his server.

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And AV missions were not designed to be soloed. That's the design I'm referrring to. They are meant to be teamed. I will now have a harder time getting teams but I'll just resign myself to that. I /like/ getting the call "Need help with [insert AV here] rest of mission is cleared please come help" and I expect I will never get one of those tells.

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If the reward they are adding for AVs is compelling enough, you may still be getting those tells to help clear AVs.

I am 100% in favor of encouraging and rewarding teaming. I hate mandatory teaming.

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Out of curiosity, why is the original intent relevant?

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As a game designer myself I want the implementation of a game to match it's design.

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Good. Then I shall fight the spawn next to the AV with stealth and SS running and be unseeable by the AV until I'm ready, with my Instant Healing Toggle running, or perma-MOG ready to take him on.

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Or simply, when a mission is completed, then the mission is marked as completed.

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But since this is the way it actually does work, there is no exploit there.

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I thought the idea was:

Person A has glowie mission, set to Invincible
Person B joins team, both enter
Person A quits
Person B stealths mission, gets mega XP

Person A's mission isn't marked as 'completed' because they weren't there - it was finished by someone who wasn't on the team.

(so in that case, you could potentially fix this by denying mission completion bonus if the owner wasn't present when the mission was completed.)

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If it works that way, then when Person B finishes the mission, Person A should get a mission completed notice (similar to what happens if a GM completes a mission for you when you're not in it, or similar to what happens if you have a "defeat 30 Rikti" mission and you're in a door mission taking out Rikti).

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Any time you use "most" in a situation with exploit, someone will turn it to "always abused".

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But part of what makes an exploit an exploit is repeatability. If we're talking mission complete XP here, how is that exploitable? Once you've finished the mission, you can't go back and do it again.

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Yes, it is repeatible. You set up the mission, *quit* from the team and select a different mission. The team is doing your mission, but you are no longer connected to it for completion purposes.

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OK, that's an exploit I hadn't thought of. The solution may be, if a person quits a team (as opposed to disconnects) the mission fails. Or simply, when a mission is completed, then the mission is marked as completed. GMs can complete a mission while you're offline, so should completing a mission.

This is not dumpster diving, where the only downside of blocking dumpster diving is that you can't dumpster dive anymore. There are very legitimate reasons people wish to do this, and to take it away because someone can abuse it, is wrong. And I hope the devs don't do it.

Stalkers can use their stealth on one opponent per spawn (assuming that they never have to fight more than one spawn at a time). They then must pause between spawns so stealth suppression expires. (Devs, while you're listening, any chance stealth suppression could be cut to the length of travel speed suppression?). That makes defeat all missions slow slogging.

Power levelling uses farming, doing the same thing over and over, the lather rinse repeat. There simply aren't enough "click glowies to complete" missions to powerlevel. (Yes, there are some quirks that need closing, but suppression of stealth is required to do so.)

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one of the most common respodendes was "Watch the devs post how their going to lesten it to suppression and give us the old bait and switch 'see we do listen toyou its just going to be suppression now"

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The Devs haven't said that. States LIKES the suppression idea, which was suggested here.

What the players need to do, IMO, is address the problem rather than the solution. If a stalker (for example) can whiz through a mission, click all the glowies and thus finish it without once facing a risk, is this a problem?

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This would be a "yes" as there is no risk for the reward, and can be exploited with massive XP bonuses for end mission rewards.

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Given that (a) they have given up any XP for the opponents defeated, (b) the number of missions where you can complete the mission by only clicking glowies is limited, and (c) most of those who like to do this are running characters where defeat all missions take longer and represent higher risk than those who go through missions leaving a wake of defeated foes as they move towards the glowies, I'd say No. At most, it balances things out.

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one of the most common respodendes was "Watch the devs post how their going to lesten it to suppression and give us the old bait and switch 'see we do listen toyou its just going to be suppression now"

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The Devs haven't said that. States LIKES the suppression idea, which was suggested here.

What the players need to do, IMO, is address the problem rather than the solution. If a stalker (for example) can whiz through a mission, click all the glowies and thus finish it without once facing a risk, is this a problem?

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Exactly. My arguement would be that, with my Masterminds, I can work through the same mission without really much more risk. Yes, it will take longer, but I'll get a lot more reward from it.

In the next mission, which is "defeat all", my Mastermind will be at far more risk than the stalker and be done far faster than the stalker. So it all balances out.

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go read the "marked glowes thread" wthat stated the steath outcry

one of the most common respodendes was "Watch the devs post how their going to lesten it to suppression and give us the old bait and switch 'see we do listen toyou its just going to be suppression now"

and what has happened now

"we heard your crises and are making it suppression instead'

predicted to the letter

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Actually, what States said was (somewhat paraphrasing, don't have it handy),

"You brought up good points, we're pulling back this change, Suppression sounds good but will take time."

As one of those predicting a bait and switch, I was certain they had suppression waiting in the wings and would roll it out immediately. Given that it's not ready for immediate roll out, that seems to argue against a deliberate plot.

And...they've shown a willingness to listen. This change got yanked because people rationally made the case of why it was bad. You don't want suppression? (I don't). Make the case of why it is bad.

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That sounds like a smart implementation, but when you say an Elite Boss, I hope you don't mean that the AV will spawn as an Elite Boss.

AVs are supposed to be special. I would prefer that when my group size is too small, etc. that they AV not be in the mission, but at least I got one of the factiosn bosses.

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Elite Bosses are supposed to be special too. With the exception of Longbow Balistas, every Elite Boss is a unique individual.

In the comics, ArchVillain is the mover behind plots that bedevil heroes. Some of the more interesting ArchVillains are fairly weak in combat. The trick is getting to the ArchVillain, and when you get to the AV wondering what traps he has prepared, or "OK, GenericHero, you're going to have to choose...take me in or rescue Linda Lovely who is being lowered into a shark tank in Paris".

In CoX, ArchVillain (or Hero) is a power rating. I still believe Countess Crey should never have been ArchVillain, should always have been an EB, even though her right-hand man Hopkins should be an AV based on his storyline.

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Y'know, at first I thought it was kinda sickening the way people are falling all over themselves with joy over this. After all, none of these are really that big of a deal. Yeah, the AV one is great for soloers, but getting AV teams was never really that tough. GOOD AV teams? A bit tougher, I admit, but hardly impossible.

But these are certainly not worth offering one's firstborn for...

But then it occurred to me that maybe this just shows how starved for something positive the players of this game really are. These reactions are not unlike giving food to a starving man, or water to someone that has just walked across a desert. Maybe you should take this as a sign to give some positive changes to this community rather than nerf on top of nerf.

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While I'd be happy if the developers do see the joy that improvements can bring it is a big deal for those who like to solo. First, most soloers like to be following the story line, and having to shelve the story as you get a team together is the biggest annoyance around.

(Although, given that they'll have the same powers, many of the EBs may still need teams of three or four. I'm particularly thinking of Madame of Mystery with her insane regen ability, which may only be duoable if one of the duo is a rad defender or controller.)

This has been the holy grail for the soloers. I think you'll see a similar reaction when automatic completion of simultaneous missions hits CoH, only muted because they know it's coming and this was a huge surprise.