Memphis_Bill

Or frustrate them and make them quit. "Here, you died, now you're WEAKER and get to try the same thing!" is irritating beyond measure.
Let me load from my save... oh. MMOs don't have that? Most every other genre of games has it. Why shouldn't an MMO?

And COH *does* penalize. It slows your leveling for a short time. That's perfectly fine. Going farther than that does nothing but get *irritating,* into "You're not getting my $15/mo any longer" territory. Given an MMO's goal is "Keep people playing long enough to keep paying the publisher/studio money every month," I'd say not irritating and driving away customers is a pretty big goal.

I think those people have to mind their own damn business.

And you know what's been said about the devs -
"If there are three solutions to a problem, and any one would fix it on its own, they'll implement all three at once." No half-measures... even if the result is worse than the original problem (see PVP.)

You can see it in COV.
"COH has too many zones? We'll cut COV down - and *never add anything else to it!*" They may cram more contacts in, but add to it? Nope. Understandable when they had 15 people total, I suppose. With - what was the last we'd heard, 60+? - though?

Co-op does do the "You're a hero, or you're a bad guy who actually wants to be a hero." That is not a solution.

Yes, heroside has too many zones. But one of its strengths is the ability to keep itself fresh with multiple paths to take as you level. Villainside, not so much - and it could use more zones, especially those without the garbage-dump aesthetic. (And no, magically making a heroside zone villainside won't cut it.) But they won't add any, anyway.

No removal - someone somewhere *does* slot for it. *shrug* However, I've suggested before two things:
1. Having something useful to more people added in the "Debt Protection" added - so you'd see "5 pieces - 1% debt protection, 1.5% Recovery" or some such.
2. Taking some of the old sets that are just "vendor trash" off the drop table and putting them into stores. People do use them to frankenslot, so getting rid of them entirely wouldn't be a good idea. Replace with newer sets that are better balanced in acc/dam/etc (as opposed to, say, Calibrated Accuracy) with appropriate bonuses.

7 according to the wiki.

/this.

It's one of the reasons I don't bother with guild wars (other than finding it rather boring - and little things like "Oh, no, there's a pebble in the road, I now have to walk three miles out of the way on this path because I can't jump!" irritating.)

I think I've logged in to GW once in the last year. Not sure why I still have it installed, honestly.

I'm not sure it will be. They've been - *odd* about that. It's not going to be given away free, of course (they've said they will not give away items purchased as part of an edition/addon,) but having it available for purchase I don't see being a problem. (They used to have the 'hero gear kit' after all.)

bah.

Wonder if it's been put up on youtube anywhere.

We're good, far as I'm concerned.

Looks like we're both taking general statements as directed at us personally, then.

I'll admit (and this is probably what's been building in my case) feeling a bit ground down under the "If you don't like it, you're wrong, suck it up" feel that's been going on pretty much since Incarnates, shards, trials, etc. have come up. I stood with Eiko and others and pushed for solo/small team stuff and got just piled with BS and "lolsolo" and that sort of response - and the punitive shard conversion costs pretty much give the same sort of feel from the devs. (No, the vague, hand-wavy "look at it sometime maybe" statement doesn't really act as a salve.) It's obviously, given other comments, given the impression I don't like anything to do with incarnates (which, if you look at some of my characters, would be... well, wrong.) But I think it's getting me a bit more prickly about things - and affecting the way I'm seeing things being said.

Kind of appropriate the sonic issue got referred to in the thread, then. I've never wanted to deck someone so badly as a certain person who was busy telling me that I, the friends who were affected and posters were all "faking" the issues the bubbles were causing, lying just to look for attention. Probably the only time someone's gotten to me that badly on these boards - but we still had others doing the same sort of thing. Want to feel under siege... that did it.)

See above. It wasn't actually meant that way. Still somewhat hostile, as I look back at it, though. And with other peoples comments I've seen - yeah, I guess I am getting really snappy at people these days.

So I'm going to do something I seem to be doing a bit more these days and apologize to you for the attitude I threw at you. (And at Serpine, while I'm apologizing.) I should be able to have this discussion without jumping down your throats. (Seeing GG's quote, she can still go take a flying leap, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, she's part of the problem. Which is why I have her on the perma-ignore list. Avoiding an irritant.)

That would be a "This game is tanking, *cancel subs.*"

Timeline:
Beta: People getting headaches from barely visible, spinning rings. Color and I think 'spin rate' altered slightly.
Live: People getting headaches, migraines, etc. from same rings.
Year and a half of arguing for change. No word from developers.
PM from one of the devs (I believe BAB) at about that time: "Too much work."
Month later: New orange graphics on test.

That's pretty much the timeline.

Quite a few, being re-highlighted of late with the focus on incarnates (not to mention the incarnate bit being a longstanding argument that got... let's leave it as "not very nice.")

Both. The balance of it tends to depend on the issue.
Note that was in response to you saying it would have some emotional impact on the devs and "impacting future performance." There's paying attention to what's being said, and there's taking complaints about a game as a personal attack.

Given that the word I had - oh, within a month of them being changed, I believe - from BAB was "too much work for too little cost" (and this, by the way, was after about a year and a half of fighting on this - yes, I do tend to grab things and not let go, and this was moreso than most for me thanks to it affecting close friends *very* badly) I don't think a potential lawsuit was involved. They would have lost a few subscriptions, at most. And I do mean "a few" - if it hit 200, I'd have been surprised.

I realize how this is going to sound - but I believe, in all cases (specifically referring to the COH forums) that the potential positive impact is *far* higher, regardless of timing, than the potential negative impact. Especially as you're talking about an "emotional milestone" and "emotional impact" - this hardly qualifies.

At most, they're going to say "There's a lot of negative about this" (and I'm sure they'll notice having the Eden trial as WST creeping up) and either ignore it, file it away or actually look at it. The fact it *happens* to be around the same time as the anniversary of the game makes no nevermind one way or the other.

Eh....

You really should go and look at the sets. The reason you see full sets in many builds is that the best bonuses are activated at the sixth slot (not always true, but not infrequent.) Or people don't think about what they're enhancing and think "a full set MUST be better!" instead of looking at what mixing sets (or even mixing in things like Hamidon enhancements) can do.

For instance, look at Thunderstrike - which is slightly odd, though I believe there are other sets that do this:
If you're on - say - a blaster and wanting to go to ranged defense, six pieces gives you 2.5%... no, look higher. You already get 1.25% at three pieces. Then you get ANOTHER 2.5% at six - so 3.75%. And a blaster has a fair number of single target/ranged attacks (including the immobilize in the secondary in most instances.) AND, if they find a set that has a single 3.75% bonus to ranged defense, they can still use up to five of those - because TS is giving two different bonuses to reach that 3.75, not one.

Now, it's not always true - some sets have decent bonuses earlier and real stinkers later - but it is one reason you'll see people go to full sets as opposed to frankenslotting.


Honestly?

I stay with commons in most instances until late, but that's me (exceptions being things like the KB protection IOs.) And the commons I'll often have a high level crafting anyway so there's not much low level outlay. Level 15s at level 12, level 25 at 22, then start looking. Bid early on the high level stuff and just let the bids sit.

/this.

Yeah... someone made an "altaholic" thread, so I pulled up my list on CIT to look.

290+ characters listed.
Characters that can start that: 0
Characters in that level range: 1 (villain, and no, not swapping sides.)
Closest character (heroside) : 2, one a Mind/Therm controller (35,) one that I have to fix a listing of (fire/dark, shows as a fire/EM.) (35)

Yep. If they fix it so anyone higher can start it, it'll help.

You really like making assumptions and setting up strawmen, don't you. Or is it that you can only see black and white?

I'd say the emotional impact of my complaining about things that need complaining about has only slightly more emotional impact on them than my choice to make this word red. So saying "Oh my gosh, you shouldn't complain TODAY, they'll be DEVASTATED by it and it'll impact their future performance!" is horse manure. Actually, horse manure can be useful as fertilizer, and that statement about them being in any way emotionally affected by what I say is worth far, far less.


Why don't you look at my post history and find out?

I've GENERALLY been rather nice - to the point of being labeled a "fanboi," until lately. As far as "How effective the technique has been?" When needed, I *have* been a pain in the devs backside on occasion, when needed. I fought (with a few others nearly continually, so no, I'm not taking sole credit here) to get the sonic shields changed due to the effect they were (physically) having on myself and other players.

You'll notice they're orange now, and don't tend to cause headaches in people.

So, no, I don't find that complaining and making my displeasure at various items and developer decisions in the game is "better spent on another pursuit."

I find the developer attitude toward "new shiny over revisiting old" to be harmful, given the absolutely DEAD zones we have and the lack of need in most instances to have *yet another* new zone. I find many things about the current dev team priorities problematic. And I will NOT be silent about it, whether you or anyone else like it or not.

Can't handle that, learn to use the tools the forum gives you to deal with it.

You mean after asking if you WERE taking things the way I was saying? Which if you weren't, means the part following the "If so" doesn't apply, and you could ignore it - instead of choosing to drag this out and pretend that post count means jack (post count, by the way, being something I've argued for having hidden or removed specifically BECAUSE of BS arguments like you're making now.)

Funny, seem to get attitude thrown at me, but hey, that's perfectly *fine.* Why? For *daring* to point out that, oh, there's a problem with all their "new shiny only" mindset, as pointed out numerous times, when there are old zones utterly devoid of, and fully worthy of, attention.

There's no "being superior" in that. Or for pointing out that, really, the devs *aren't* going to be broken up over criticism, or that comparing this to a *wedding* is a bit disingenuous.

That would be an "example of something to complain about bundled with an announcement of shinies." Thus the "Say they made an announcement" prefacing it.

Say they make an announcement:

"In celebration of this that or the other, we're releasing three new costume sets! By the way, to handle server load, only five people can be logged in to any one server at any time."

Yeah. Nobody should complain about that! Shinies, ooooh! Butterflies and puppies and rainbows out of your backside! If you can't handle people criticizing things, perhaps you should avoid forums, TV, radio, music - pretty much any contact with the outside world at all.