IanTheM1

I thought having context would make things look a bit better than they do, but no, that just makes it look worse.

Unless I've missed something, EvilGeko's post didn't cross any of those lines, outside of maybe a vague interpretation of the already vague fourth point. Ghost Falcon's, on the other hand, crosses anywhere from one to three of them.

Now I'm left wondering if it was an epic level misquote or something, because I have no idea where the morally bankrupt part came from that you're so dutifully parroting.

Is what begets a giant piece of redname snark like this:

So, I'm forced to ask, especially since lots of others in this very thread are eager to meet expectations, and myself as well: What is the exact amount of constructiveness we need in our feedback to get proper dev attention?

Because from where I'm sitting very little has actually changed on the Paragon Market despite a pretty constant flow of feedback; not all of it positive, but mostly pretty fair, I think. And in my humble opinion, the Market has only gone more and more downhill with things that were guaranteed to stir up controversy, like Super Packs.

Also, if anyone has any pointers on how to constructively phrase "the prices are too damn high", I'm all ears.

As if we needed more evidence that the beta process for these market items has some kinks to work out.

Much like that horrible looking foot.

Asking level 15-20 character to go visit IP is not the nicest idea.

That's all fine and dandy. I think Poison should get some more tweaks myself. But that's not what this thread is about.

TAoE shields don't affect the caster. I don't see why it couldn't work the same.

Mind you, the entire idea was a lark to begin with.

This wouldn't mess with the Posi TFs, but would instead mess up Synapse's TF, where you need to visit Posi to get the Clockwork Immobilizers.

I had kinda blanked on that, but isn't O2 Boost mez resistance, not protection?

It dawns on me that flipping my idea around would be far more interesting. There are no targeted AoE heals in the game right now. Turning O2 Boost into one would be neat. Not a huge buff, certainly, but neat.

This is more or less where I'd lean towards on the matter. Various bits of incidental or glossed over lore imply that post-Rikti War the Vanguard fell back into a more lobbying/administrative/research role (See: The Herald Division of Vanguard; Incandescent. There might also be some tidbits in the official timeline and backgrounder about it.).

Also, the Crash Site was added during a time when actually putting a proper storyline into a zone wasn't a big priority. I think the fairest "reality" of the Crash Site was that it was devoid of a Rikti presence outside of the ship, which was entirely locked down by its forcefield and was thus carefully monitored by the Vanguard. I believe this is more or less what is said regarding the mothership either in-game or again in one of the official site's backgrounders. I also think it'd be fair to say that the Vanguard base always existed in some form.

(The billboards are possibly an Alpha stage CoH holdover, from back when there were a lot more "active" hero groups. Originally instead of individual contacts, you'd get missions from terminals belonging to various groups. It's likely the Vanguard (and the Midnight Squad) were to be some of the mission givers beyond the Freedom Phalanx.)

Except that right now the current Collections tab isn't publicly viewable.

Heyas, Z. I wanted to weigh in with my own thoughts, since this is definitely a hot-button topic I've had more than a little interaction with.

While I don't believe that the dev team wholesale ignore us, I do feel there's been a noticeable gap in communication as of late. I can't say if it's particularly larger than usual or not, but I feel it's there.

And while in the old days, most of the stuff to get riled up about were "simple" in-game matters, I think far more people have been far more agitated in recent cases because actual real money is on the line.

Right now my favorite dev who posts on the forums is Synapse. Primarily because he jumps right in and solicits feedback straight from us, and he then posts quite a bit as he tweaks powersets based on that feedback. There's a feeling of closeness there that's unparalleled and as a game designer myself, I love watching the refinement process as he and the players get powers into shape together.

There's also something to be said for how he posts. Without being standoffish, he's direct. He says what he's doing, why, and then follows up to say he did it. He posts like he has a plan and wants to stick to it, while also being open to feedback. There's a lot of dialogue there.

Now, obviously other parts of the dev team don't have the luxury of being able to give us running updates with stats and numbers and incremental tweaks (guess what guys, we managed to reduce the number of triangles in that new belt!). But I think people get far more upset over *little to no* dev acknowledgement than dev acknowledgment they disagree with.

If you come out of nowhere and slap me in the face then run off without saying anything, you look like a jerk. If you point out "there's a fly on your cheek", then slap me and run off, at least you revealed your thought process. I still hate getting slapped (and I have dead fly on my face), but at least I can understand why you did it, even if I disagree with it.

Also, as someone who loves debate and really getting into the nitty-gritty (like you couldn't tell), it's much more interesting and probably more important in the long run, to be able to talk about the overarching why of a repeated issue rather than repeat the same individual squabbles about the prices of every new market item or every pre-tinted costume piece or what have you.

Now, I also fully understand that the devs can't spend all their waking moments talking to us on the boards either. And they can't answer every single line of feedback and shower us in minutiae about the ongoing process. But I think there's still some definite room for improvement.

Along those lines, another thing that warps perception of developer interaction is that there's no centralized location where this sort of feedback, if it does exist, can be found. Sure, Super Packs were tweaked based on feedback. But, and correct me if I'm wrong, I was under the impression that a lot of that feedback was received at the Pummit and most of those changes were made before the Packs arrived onto Beta. That effectively renders that feedback process invisible to the masses.

There's also something to be said for the fact that only so many folks know of the beta boards' existence, only so many folks can access VIP beta to begin with, and only so many folks go to the boards at all. Similarly, the sort of bits and bobs of information that get sprinkled into the live streams. Player-curated notes are posted, yes, but you sort of have to know where to look if a team member didn't happen to post in a given stream's thread.

I don't have a particularly good answer for this issue myself. I can envision a sort of curated Dev Digest, where instead of a chronological list of dev posts, it's sorted by topic and includes relevant player posts, outright shining a spotlight on feedback and dev communication. But I could see that being messy and probably obnoxious considering the state of the forum software, among other problems.

But in short, any dev communication, even "unpopular" communication > little to no dev communication. We like talking to you folks. And a bit of additional dialogue would keep the faith as it were.

Thanks.

I might agree if Range enhancements were ultimately worth anything to anyone. Generally speaking, they're not. I have never been in a situation where a teammate would be interested in taking a Range SO off my hands or was otherwise pining to slot one. +Range is only really useful in Boost Range, IOs, where it doesn't ruin your slotting efficiency, and in about three or four types of powers where they legitimately help or can be just tossed in (Teleport, Taunt, Clear Mind).

Also, since the only enhancements that drop off a reward roll are the Power 10*, there's already so-called "artificial luck". Every other possible drop, with perhaps the sole exception of Defense (I think that's in the Power 10...), is generally usable on the majority of characters. Range SOs are the booby prize and I'm sick of getting them.

To be clear, I'm not complaining about random drops. I'm specifically referring to the reward rolls that occur at the end of story arcs and zone events. Also I'm inherently and vehemently against penalizing soloers through convoluted means just to support a "multiplayer feel".


*Techbot: The first 10 enhancements on the store list, give or take (remove Defense Debuff, add Recharge) are the Power 10. These are the ones that were originally available in any store, while the rest you could originally only get from contacts. They're also what drop off of random SO reward rolls. I don't recall the exact list of them, but most are the "universal" enhancement types.

Based on that incredibly vague clue, I think I can safely pin it down:

The Letter Writer is the Team Up Teleporter.

So, for instance (though I don't know the exact names), Fire Boots 2 and Ice Boots 2 are effectively identical (or at least darn close)? The Robotic Arm 3 pieces are all entirely separate.

And as I keep saying, players aren't going to get to the point where they feel like spending $5 if they're treated like dirt to begin with.

My point was: This is nothing more than a slippery slope, and assumes far, far too much to be a reasonable argument. To be perfectly honest, I'm finding it hard to take it seriously at all since the two "extremes" as you've helpfully outlined are apparently either the game dies, or people act more annoying on the forums.

And if that someone doesn't have a credit card or another valid means of online payment? Or if that someone just plainly does not have the money? Let's keep things in perspective here - we're talking about chat channels. Not Praetoria, or First Ward, or Beam Rifle, or the Mission Architect. Just basic communication systems. I just don't see how wanting some improved means of talking to other people for free players is tantamount to stealing from Paragon Studios.

I'm not speaking to you in particular here, Claws, but I'm honestly a bit shocked by some of the posts in this thread. For all the abrupt claims of entitlement being levied against free players (who, might I mention, have not and can not contribute to this discussion, so I'm not sure where those claims are even coming from), there's been so much more verifiable elitism displayed here by VIPs.

See, now this is an angle I can at least understand. Not so much having a valid CC for impulse buys, but rather for security purposes. RMTs are less likely to be signing up lots and lots of accounts with valid CCs, after all.

I still stand by my original point though, which is that restricting free players from interacting with the community as harshly as it is now is bad for drawing players in and keeping them interested. Especially when those restrictions were very badly cobbled together without further thoughts of usability and accessibility.

Maybe I'd be less sore over it if the system was revamped to make it clear that the person you're sending tells to cannot respond back. Or just allow free players to respond to tells, just not send them. Or if the /Help channel of my favored server wasn't a huge cluster-mess of fact, opinion, and falsehood.