Westley

Penny Arcade's latest post shows that there might actually be one or two eerie similarities between our beloved game and the 400 pound gorilla in the room...

I feel left out somehow...

You mean that more than 4 are allowed at once? I still prefer Mr. Yellow:

Tell me how it works out for you. It's small and simple enough that there shouldn't be any bugs, but there's always the chance.

Honestly, I think the boards are bugged, I have this same problem and it's frustrating. The only workaround that I've been able to find for this is just to keep my browser window open the whole time, and minimize it when I'm not using it. Then when I want to view the boards again, I bring it back up and hit refresh. This seems like a server side problem to me, like the board server isn't saving your viewed threads properly.

Anyone that wants to add more color to their posts, might also want to try the CoH Forums Color Picker application that I made. Details are on this page.

UPDATE: "New" version (2.0) is now linked in this post. Please try it out, as it is using the .net framework and should NOT need any VB runtime files anymore! Please click here for more details. Here is a screenshot of the tweaked interface on Win7:




Some of you may be familiar with my previous program, FOE (the Forums Offline Editor). These new forums provide what I consider to be an AWESOME What You See Is What You Get editor. If you don't know what I'm talking about, click the New Forums guide in my signature and READ!

Now that this new awesome editor exists, I've decided to discontinue development of FOE, I just don't see a reason for it anymore to be honest. Instead I bring to you the ONLY thing that this forum's editor still needs...

Yeah, pretty much. Ever since and even before powerset proliferation, "being a Defender" has been mostly about attitude. The powersets are already spread all over the place in Blasters, Controllers, and Corrupters.

The thing that makes a Defender a Defender is his/her attitude. If you have that attitude, the attitude of the "combat medic" as Jock used to say, the attitude to shoot the enemy in the face after tossing someone a band-aid, then you're a Defender, no matter what AT you're playing.

This all started off as just a long winded apology.

What kind of monster have I risen from the depths of Hades???

By the way, Lumi, I personally object to your tossing of my collected data samples as "5 minutes" of effort. That took me a good half hour to an hour at least.

Looking at the data and the graphical representation, I think I'll refer to this theory of Defender unpopularity as "The Defender's Cross To Bear" or just The Defender's Cross for short.

So, I took another sample, this time during a REALLY slow time, and this time I took samples at the "top" of the level spread and samples of all heroes across all levels across all servers. Keep in mind that my original sample during the "busy" time had a total of almost 1900 heroes on and that was JUST at the top spot. In these samples, there are only about 400 heroes on at the top spot and barely 1100 TOTAL at all levels, take a look.

First the Top spot:



Note here that the results are MUCH more variable with a small sample size, but the trends are already beginning, Defenders are still low in population compared to all the other ATs, the only one they come CLOSE to is Blasters, and they are still 20% below them.

Also interesting to note that at a low population time, Defenders and Blasters seem to be in the lowest population, while those that can solo the best without the need of outside support (Controllers, Tankers and Scrappers) are at the highest population. No surprise here. In this low pop solo friendly environment, Scrappers are king.

Now to look at the entire population across all levels at this slow time:



Look familiar? The bigger the sample size, the more the trend sticks out. Defenders are still vastly under-represented compared to ALL other ATs.

I still stand by my original findings. The playerbase can tell that Defenders are underpowered, so they don't play them. It's psychology vs. sociology.

While you can argue from an individual perspective with your own personal anectdotes, when you look at a larger population, the trends emerge and are obvious.

The larger the population, the larger the sample size the more obvious the trends.

So, anyone have a specific time frame in which they think they can prove Defender's unpopularity wrong? I'd love a challenge to the findings.

They are underplayed BECAUSE they are underpowered. Popularity comes with power. If we had God mode tank mages, people WOULD play that most of all, because mass destruction is just plain FUN. Fire/Kin Controllers are the closest thing we have to that, which is why they're so prevalent.

An AT's popularity and its personal ability are directly correlated.

Which is why I picked ALL servers at a time where the servers would be MOST populated, but NOT during the weekend. The choice was completely intentional and picked carefully.

Let's buff them, why the hell not.

Well, this is going to be a very hard post for me, so I'll have to get through it quick and get it done.

TS and I have had this debate a few times, round and round over and over. And it always went in circles because we are both so SURE that we're right.

I believe that Defenders are fine just the way they are, as I've never had any problems with them, and Turbo believes that they are inherently underperforming compared to all the other ATs.

I further went on to state that not only are Defenders performing that same alongside all the other ATs, but even that Controllers are the OUTLIER and should be "hammered down" I think my words were. I even stated as proof that the population of Controllers is substantially higher than the population of the other ATs at the high end in the live environment. And that this was PROOF that Controllers were overpowered.

As someone who's personal integrity is more important than his pride, I have to say the following:







































I was wrong.

And, Turbo_Ski was right.

I just ran my own research to find my "proof". I am under the belief that the playerbase as a whole instinctively "know" just by the "feel" of characters which are more powerful and which are less powerful, which are more efficient and which are less efficient. Even WITHOUT them knowing the numbers. I still believe this to be true.

So I took a random sample at a random time during a "slow day" but a "busy time" of the day. So, about two hours ago I did a sample of the 41-50 population of all ATs one by one on EVERY server. I feel this is sufficient a size sample and I believe representative of the "normal" game population.

My results were shocking to me personally, but probably not to most people. Here is the data that I collected:






As you can see, not only are Defenders the ONLY ones "underperforming" in terms of the playerbase's popularity, but they are underperforming to an alarming degree. Also, they are the ONLY AT that IS underperforming compared to the rest. Every other AT is well within 20% of the others on EVERY server, with the SOLE exception of Defenders.

This proves to me beyond a reasonable doubt that the population can "feel" that there is something "wrong" with defenders, and that they should in fact be looked at seriously.

I yield and surrender this point. And I publicly apologize for any personal attacks to Turbo_Ski that I may have made in my fanatical "belief", which was and is an accurate statement.

Scrolling past walls and walls of text...


...yes, Epic Thread is now sufficiently Epic. That is all.

Epic thread isn't quite epic enough yet.

You should join some of my teams then, Claws, it might restore your faith in humanity.