GadgetDon

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1. Actually, we've tweaked SS in the past; the issues with SJ have slowly evolved over time.

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Did any of those tweaks completely break the tactical use of SS?

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2. Disciplines haven't been around all that long; we've changed the way they work and their duration in response to player feedback - in PvE AND PvP. The "Break Free" changes started before the Arena was even implemented (internally, at least).

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I'm curious about who asked for the duration of protection to go from 120 seconds to 30 seconds. That's going to be deadly in PvE, particularly to any blasters with the temerity to solo.

Actually, there's lots of non-AV missions available from 40-up.

Malta - 40-44, no monsters or AVs (or elite bosses for that matter). 45-50 there is a monster, the Kronos, but I've never had a problem getting people to help fight Kronos. The very last Malta mission does have an AV.

Crey - 40-44, there's one AV (the countess herself). No Crey missions 45-50

Nemesis - 40-44, there are two AVs in missions. One of the missions does not require defeating the AV to win. No Nemesis missions 45-up

Carnies - 40-44, one AV (and she's tough, she's got a regen rate that is very hard to beat). 45-50, two AVs (also tough)

Tina McIntyre (portal corp 40-44) - lots of AVs, including the first mission.

Maria Jenkins (praetorian 45-50) - lots of AVs.

(The other portal corp guy 45-50) - a few AVs.

You can spend lots of time soloing in the 40+ game, and by picking your missions carefully you can go for long periods by soloing. But, if you want to complete story arcs, you'll eventually be in the "three AV missions", that's when you look for an AV team.

At low level, range is king. Starting in the 30s, that starts to go away. Nemesis, Carnival, and Malta are all at least as dangerous at range than in Melee. (Indeed, Nemesis tends to use their ranged weaponry within melee range.)

Won't the change from 2 minute disciplines to 30 second break frees pretty much end high level soloing for any hero without a power that protects from mezzes?

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Statesman I have tried to side with you on every change you have made. I understand that you are a visonary that has the best intentions at heart. I watched you build my invunerability/super strength tanker from poor to uber and I loved it. I have also seen names of people dear to me changed, some very very unsubstantial, but I have understood. But here is a change I can not side with you on, this change I feel is going too far.

You are NERFING debt.
And I will not take this and be quiet.

Debt is one of the many reasons I play this game. Debt is the major draw/focus of my supergroup, of the J-Force. If someones debt is not in the 7 figures they aren't J-Force.
I go OUT OF MY WAY to reach the debt cap every level. I have leveled in debt 7 levels in a row (since 33) I am the J-Man and my mass amounts of debt are one of my defining features.

First you take away debt until level 10. I'm saddened by this because nothing is more exciting then your first real death with debt. And now myself, my J-Force and the CoH community have to wait 5 more grueling levels until that first debt. But on this I understand, this is a kind of force/incentive to play beyond level 5 (something I rarely do besides my main).

The second one is really really tough for me. See the majority of my game play is with a large team on invincible missions. The J-Force and I get together NIGHTLY to go on what we coined Debt Runs(TM) and we dont' just keep it to ourselves we welcome any hero who wants to see what real fun is. With only receiving half debt you are effectivly forcing us to work three times as hard to do what we are now, hit debt cap.
I REFUSE to be forced to street hunt.

But after reading each and every post on this thread I see that this comunity is not made up of real men and woman. That its mostly sissy, wimps, wusses, chumps, wankers, girlie men, and even more girlie woman who can't seem to take their debt like the hardcore heros they are. Yes this is griefing of the entire community, because the many are making the life of the few so much more difficult.

Statesman, please, I beg you do not take my debt from me.

But if you do, I have one small request. Please Statesman, remove the debt cap. This way while it may take me longer (much longer) to accure massive amounts of debt I will never ever have to reach a point to where my deaths are worthless, every death will raise not only my purple bar, but my enjoyment of the game.
It has been my dream to out debt a level 50 before I reach it. Never ending debt *swoon*

I appologize if this post sounds rude, I don't want to be rude. I am just very upset at the prospect of losing the ease of my debt.

Thank you for your time

JFS
-The Legendary J-Man-

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J-Man, these are not good forums for sarcasm.

Just a thought, reading some of the concepts, maybe you're dealing with debt from the wrong end?

Maybe debt should be accumulated as normal, but missions should burn it off twice as fast? (I.E....an enemy is defeated that gives 100 XP. On live you gain 50 XP and burn off 50XP. I'm prpoposing that you gain 50 XP and burn off 100XP.)

It also gives you more "tweaking points". When doing something particularly heroic, you burn off faster. When doing something borderline, you burn off slower.

Interesting, it sounds good. My only concern would be that the difficulty of burning off debt goes up, and the burn-off rate at 5th level isn't that bad. Is their first encounter with debt going to be rougher now? I do like the concept.

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All I can say is that if they add killer mimes to the game, then they'd better follow through with killer mime content!

Otherwise they'd just be standing around on street corners, trying to get out of boxes or walking against the wind. That wouldn't justify the effort of putting them into the game, when those resources could have been applied elsewhere. It would be a waste.

And I think we can all agree that a mime is a terrible thing to waste!

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AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!! (5 stars for you)

Perhaps the thing that is not true is the statement that one of those things is not true.

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OK...So we are applauding them changing this to 300'???

THE IDEA STILL STINKS...

STOP SAYING THANK YOU, AND TELL THEM IT STILL STINKS!!!

Less XP is still less XP...
Don't make us grind...

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We're applauding them making it so that it doesn't affect missions (even train/portal missions with the very large outdoors maps).

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Please reread Statesman's post. Any teammate within 300' of an enemy's defeat gets the xp. No matter what. Whether they actually damaged the enemy or not. This includes healers and buffers/debuffers/whatever.

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They get xp if they're within 300' and either alive or died less than a minute ago. A fairly significant "matter what"

There was one proposal that was in the original thread that I hope you'll take a second look at. Instead of no XP if you're dead, XP will go 100% to debt, once you're out of debt then the xp is lost.

For people being power leveled, they'll get rid of their debt quickly but not advance in levels. For people playing normally, one fight isn't going to clear the debt accrued by the death, so they still get credit.

These changes are workable. I've got serious concerns about the two monster ambushes in the game (Babbage and Kronos) where it's easily possible to have you enter the battle at full strength and be dead for a minute before the battle is over.

But...first, with these changes that were necessary, you've gone from making PL much more inconvenient to having a trivial tweak.

Plus, you're encouraging bad gameplay, by giving players incentives other than the success of the team. If you're mentoring someone and get defeated, heading to the hospital immediately is usually bad for your sidekick and thus bad for the team...but it's good for you. Chasing a runner is often good for the team, but bad for you.

The problems that made the original proposal disasterous have been cleaned up, and thanks for listening and responding. The downside that's left is pretty minimal. But the downside is there, with almost new upside. If we were voting I'd still vote no, but it's not going to interfere with my enjoyment of the game.

One serious oversight is the inability to leave Observer mode (or hiding the exit so well that I couldn't find it). Decided to observe a fight, it was inside, mildly interesting, then there's one so called hero that decided to kill the camera. And kill the camera. And kill the camera. The goal to make cameras easily killable--I think we can mark that as accomplished.

It was getting to be No Fun(tm), so I wanted to see if I could get in a match. Surprise! No way out. Nothing but respawn, try to find a place to hide, killed, respawn, try to find a place to hide, killed, respawn, ad infinitum.

OK. How am I going to work COH MMO, COH RPG, COH figures, COH CCG, and going to the conventions into my budget?

Seriously, though, this is so cool. Ever since I got into COH I've wanted to tell some stories in missions. Now I can.

Can serge fit one of those robes over my robotic arm? I know we're a little hard to fit, but I'd recommend his place to everyone if he can pull it off.

Many superspeedsters use vibrating at superspeed for invisibility. Granted, those are run-at-speed-of-light superspeedsters, not run-at-100 superspeedsters.

One of the goals that was stated early on was that people shouldn't have to change their build for PvP. Droping the stealth from superspeed will make people have to change their build for PvP.

One possibility--if you haven't done so yet, you can do the missions for all the store contacts in FF and Brickstown. You've probably done the missions for your origin's store, but the other stores will all let you take on their task.

From what I'm hearing, it sounds like it would only take one small tweak to accomplish what the devs seem to want while still making itvery useful.

Someone has suggested that for the 10 seconds, instead of no attacks permitted, apply a massive (99%?) damage reduction on your attacks. Taunt still works, the provoke-attack still works. It even fits the concept, after the rage wears out your attacks will land very weakly on your opponents.

I am pretty sure that the errors when inviting a SG saying that you've already invited people comes from people with alts. I had the same thing happen to me, and noticed that it was listing people who had more than one character in the SG.

Statesman, I've been very hard on you and your team about some of the things that have happened.

I hope it's never obscured the awe I feel at this world you have created, how impressed I am with the skill you and your team have displayed, and the respect for how open you and your team are.

In my organization, this is called a non-trivial programming issue. Non-trivial as in "Mommy, why is that programmer up there on that window sill?"

The floating aimable (and destroyable) cameras are cool, but as others have pointed out, it has problems when you have large numbers of observers. The Cross-server championship bout of the Martial Arts Scrappers tournament could literally have hundres of heroes wanting to view.

Here's my proposal, the ability to specify official cameramen when setting up a battle. A Cameraman has an indestructable cambot in the arena, either a static cambot that zooms and pans or a mobile cambot that zoom, pans, and moves. The Cameramen have their own chat channel for commentary (text if necessary, audio would be even better). Members of the audience can listen to that chat channel, and can switch from Camera to camera.

What could take that even farther would be the ability to have a Director. The Director switches between the different cameramen, and provide commentary for the battle (audio would be great for this.) The feed from the Director can be stored and available for visitors to the Arena to see at any time.

Most battles wouldn't have cameramen, to say nothing of a director. But if we get serious about tournaments, this could be great for big tournaments.

It also adds another use for the Arena...fanfilms. Yes, episodes of "As Atlas's Globe Turns" could be filmed in the Arena.

I'm hoping for a new zone in I5, like Hollows and Striga, for the 30-39 group. It's easy to run out of missions in that range.

Any update on when the boss rollback will happen? My scrapper has gotten to the point where he can deal with the bosses in regualr missions, but I was on a Terra Volta trial last night and it was just ridiculous.