GeezerButler

You wrote that whole thing just as a cover so you could point out the irony of your avatar... didn't you! CONFESS!

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I noticed that you have a level 50 blaster listed. Do you even know anything about tankers/tanking? I'm betting on "no" based purely on what you've written.

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Don't you hate it when these idiots without a level 50 tanker in their sig try to talk about something they obviously know nothing about? This beer's for you, Captain Amazing.

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I'm glad to see good points made here, and at least some level of understanding, if not agreement, reached between those of opposite views of I5. Thanks Katahn, Great Scott, Mogster, and others.

Great Scott: my experience forming, finding, and running with pick-up groups in I5 has been nothing like your own. I've played PUGs at a variety of levels and at a variety of difficulty settings, and in general PUGs are not any harder to form or run for me in I5 than they were before. Nor has anyone I've played with, either close friends or random people in PUGs, complained about PUGs being more difficult to create post I5.

In fact, in recent memory I have *never* been in a PUG where the group has been at a standstill because they "needed" archetype X. I've been in groups where people have said "we could really use a tanker" or "we need a healer," but I've never been in a group that was completely unable or unwilling to function because it lacked a particular AT.

Why our experiences are so radically different I'm not sure.

My condolences on your SG sufferings because of the reporting. What level was the character? My friend and weekly teammate the Blue Bas'tard was finally reported and Generic'd at level 23 recently (I think I warned him at creation it would happen eventually). Bad but not terrible. He got a new character back up to our team level within two weeks.

I'm not saying that I5 tankers are more powerful. You're misunderstanding what I mean by "contribute," or I'm not making it clear enough.

I4: you have one tank, or one controller on your team. That one character provides close to 100% safety for the team. Nobody else's powers are needed except to kill off mobs that represent almost no threat. Any of the other 7 players could do nothing at all, and the team still wouldn't fail, it just wouldn't progress as quickly. In I4, the first tank or first controller "contributes" enormously to the team. Everyone else contributes very little.

I5: Each player added to the team "contributes" in the sense that the team is better off when he performs his role. A second tank actually could be useful. A second controller could be useful. Everyone is still useful and needed even with one tank or controller already on the team. Everyone contributes.

Yes, an I5 tank is not as powerful as an I4 tank, but that's not what I mean by contributes. I'm talking about the marginal utility provided to the team by each player added. In I5 that marginal utility is a lot smoother from 1 up to 8 heroes, across all ATs. In I4 that marginal utility may have spiked with the first tanker or controller, and then been much lower for everyone else.

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If one Tank can't carry a team (by design), then I need two (or more). When I need two or more, that's someone else telling me how to make up my team.

In Issue 5, it's great that Heroes are no longer redundant. I like that, everyone gets to feel Heroic.

Then there's me, Team Leader. I now need 2 Defenders, and/or 2 Controllers, and/or 2 Tanks....two of an AT, when before I needed one. This makes team-building hell, and leads to me kicking my Blaster/Scrapper friends on some occasions.

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"2 Defenders, and/or 2 Controllers, and/or 2 Tanks"--so you're saying that filling 2 out of the 8 slots on an 8 man invincible team with support-ish classes (tank/controller/defender) is team building hell, or someone telling you how to build your team? I don't think I've ever been on an 8 man pickup team that didn't have at least two slots filled by tank/controller/defender by default, without even making some special effort to get them.

The point is, you don't need exactly 2 or more tanks to have a viable team. What you need is 2, 3, or 4 tankers, controllers, or defenders, in any combination. Out of 8 possible slots, I don't see that as all that burdensome or unreasonable.

Each additional player added to the team contributes more to the team now than in I4, where all you may have needed for success on an 8 man invincible team was a single tank or a single controller, and everyone else was just there to help move things along more quickly.

I just don't see how the I5 changes to tankers and controllers make team formation that restrictive or difficult. Again, if you're having problems on invincible... it's the hardest difficulty setting. I don't understand the people that have this sense that any team, with any combination of ATs, experienced or not, should be able to do missions at the hardest difficulty setting.

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rather then Cryptic who had no vision for the end game so just decided to nerf the whole thing.

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You honestly believe that? To me that's a big non sequitur.

I'm all for content and agree with you wholeheartedly about adding content in the form of making existing zones better (through more detail and more immersive gameplay), not just making the game bigger with new zones. I just don't see the I5 changes being a result of the devs being unable or unwilling to create endgame content, which is what you appear to be saying.

You seem to use the word "uber" as a stand in for "a character who can make an 8 man team on invincible completely safe through his efforts alone," which might apply to I4 controllers (permalocking everything) and I4 tankers.

The way I see it, that's a poorly designed game. It has nothing to do with jealousy. I will be bored in a team where I'm never in any danger and all I do is contribute some damage to the mobs buzzing around the tanker, or punch statues held by the controller. So to me, the I5 changes were about improving some fundamental aspects of the gameplay. You, on the other hand, see the I5 changes as some sort of easy way out in lieu of improving the game by adding content.

Sure, choice is a beautiful thing, but it's not the number one priority when you're designing a game. Why not just add a god mode to COH? You never take damage and when you create your character you can choose your level and as many powers as you want. Why limit characters to four power pools? More choice = better, right? The game designers have to balance choice against making a game that is challenging and fun for all.

If you want to say that the I5 changes should have happened sooner, I won't argue with you. If you want to say that COV is pulling away dev time that could be spent improving COH with new content, I won't argue with you. We just disagree about the reason for and the benefits of the I5 changes.

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This was a chaotic hell that ended us in perma-debt. Just like I5 was supposed to encourage.

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Right... I5 was designed to put us in more debt.

If you're fighting +4's, I assume you're on invincible? And you're upset about debt? If your team doesn't mesh well, did it ever occur to you to lower the difficulty setting from its highest level? I'm on a mixed team that plays together once a week, and after setting our difficulty back to heroic after I5 hit, we've now got it back up to Unyielding. We may raise it to Invincible at some point, but until then we're doing fine and having a great time chugging along at Unyielding. We get great XP and a good challenge. Occasionally things go south (almost always due to aggroing too much at once), but not enough to ruin our fun or slow us down much. Especially with half debt in missions, our debt is gone almost as soon as we get it.

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I can only imagine how bad it would have been for inexperienced players...

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Inexperienced players doing an invincible mission against +4s... yeah, death, debt, and failure sounds like a pretty natural consequence. I see that as a good thing--not out of spite, but because it means that the difficulty setting actually means something. Something's wrong if "inexperienced players" can waltz through invincible missions with no problems.