el_generic_hero

I guess I read it wrong. At first, it looked like they were talking about the opposite case.

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Essence of Curare: Acc/Hold (Recipe) all show as Essence of Curare: Acc/Hold/Rech (Recipe). This mixes them in with all the actual Acc/Hold/Rech recipes, and means there is no Acc/Hold listed in the left-hand pane under that recipe set. The recipe description, however, lists it as Acc/Hold, and once crafted it has the correct name.

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I had basically the OPPOSITE and bugged it. I tried (twice) to craft an ACC/HOLD/RECH and it just gave me ACC/HOLD. Yes, I bought the correct recipe each time... ACC/HOLD/RECH.

And since I already had an ACC/HOLD slotted, it obviously wouldn't let me slot this new one.

It's a public forum. That's just the way it goes. Nothing to get uptight about. Anyway this is OT, so let's drop it.

I can't stand when people get mad at others for asking questions on a forum. That's what it's here for.

Vort,

1. That really wasn't necessary, "for crying out loud".
2. I don't go in the arena, so I wouldn't have been able to read about it there.
3. I never noticed it in the in game menus. I don't even remember seeing it in the printed game manual, although I could be wrong. Then again, it seems a lot of things never make it into the manual, or are only covered very briefly. They ought to make a FULL, online manual, but instead they choose to let us rely on these forums.

What are these "gladiators" and what do they do (if anything)? I've gotten them but have no clue what they are.

Heh, of course people are going to focus on the negatives... that's just human nature really. Evolution may someday change that, but we surely won't on this forum

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The real problem is that buffs/nerfs to villains affect all players and tend to have an overall greater impact than what was intended and as such don't get to be used.

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Like I said, I thought buffing the villians was a good idea, just unfinished. Maybe they could've buffed the higher-level baddies, while leaving the lower-level ones alone (since casual players are less likely to get to the higher levels in the game). Maybe they could've made it work, maybe not. But you bring up a good point about it affecting everyone (pros and noobs alike), which only strengthens the idea of coming up with an alternative to nerfing/buffing (or however we want to look at it). I'm talking about thinking outside the box..

Examples:

If they don't want people PLing, take away their reason to PL by either reducing the upper-level experience-grind or by giving us something else to do that doesn't require gaining levels, like building weapons/items or some other type of tinkering. I know bases are on the way and that's a great start!

If they want to even the playing field for PvP, ok, instead of nerfing, why don't they designate one of the servers as "pro-players-only" while leaving the rest for noobs? Or maybe they could assign everyone some sort of status level based on the total number of game hours we've played (or whatever). This staus level thinger would be displayed for everyone to see so we'd all have a decent way of telling the more experienced players apart from the newer players. The status level would be something earnable by everyone, giving noobs something to work for. Either of these could not only keep the noobs from getting their butts handed to them in PvP by the pros (by letting them know that they might want to think twice about taking on a pro player), but could also give the pros a way to avoid noob pickup teams in PvE.

Just a handful of outside the box ideas completely off the top of my head... took all of ten minutes to think of them. Sure, they need a bit of fleshing-out, but they are simple ideas that do not involve any sort of nerfing.

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I see this more of a problem with the public than with the industry itself.

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Unfortunately, this is not the way business works. While educating customers certainly helps to this effect, a business cannot rely on the public "coming around" to their way of thinking. I know this very well because I've run my own business for the past 5+ years. If a percentage of your customers don't like what you offer, you either make changes or lose those customers. Period. Telling the customer they're wrong is not only naive, but it's a sure way of losing that customer. If CoH can afford to lose the people that don't like being nerfed, then by all means nerf away.

In the case of us "pros", we may not be in the majority, but we are the more stable/guaranteed source of ongoing income for the devs. "Guaranteed" (I use the term loosely because nothing is truly guaranteed) month-to-month income is a very valuable thing for any business to hold onto.

One thing we should all keep in mind is that the MMORPG industry is still very young and immature at this point. The problems we all experience and the arguments we have will get resolved over time, but it's not gonna happen overnight. You're never going to please everyone, but when a certain style of problem-solving has had a history of severely and consistently upsetting a percentage of the paying public (ie; many games have been through this same nerfing-predicament), it's time to find a new method.

Ok, heh, I reallllly have to get off of this now... seriously this time hehe. Best of luck to all of you

PS: I'm not trying to trounce on anyone's ideas or opinions, so I hope no one thinks I'm disprespecting them. I'm not

I should point out, btw, that whenever I've used the term "nerf" I was referring the strict definition of it, not the purpose.

Thinking a little more about what you just said...

It sounds like maybe we're talking about two different things... the definition of "nerf" vs. the purpose of a nerf. The definition is, in simple terms, "a change that negatively affects a player, enemy, item/weapon, etc." The purpose of a nerf is completely different... to enhance gameplay overall.

Whether anyone likes or dislikes the nerfs done in I5 is really besides the point... the point is, again, that there is enough of a public outcry over nerfing in this game and many others that the industry would be wise to find other more positive ways to balance their games... and then put those ideas into action.

Anyway, that's enough for me, I've made my point

Have fun folks

Huh? They publicly listed all of the nerfs that were done, just as they do in all games where nerfs are done. I didn't "percieve" anything, I just read them off of this website (as with other websites of other games).

Look, I don't honestly care who likes the nerfs vs who doesn't. My point is this... nerfs cause big "upheavals" like this in all of the games I've ever seen nerfed...and therefore the game industry should figure out these alternatives... and use them There are better ways to solve problems than simply resorting to the ol' standby called nerfing.

Granted, but regardless, it seems the end result is almost always the same... nerf. This industry needs to pull itself up out of this downward trend. If they come up with inventive solutions behind the scenes, great... use them.

Just to make my opinions clear, I do realize that there were some "balance" issues in the game, but the nerf bat is a cop-out solution that is used 95% of the time in this industry... when it should really only be used 5% of the time. It's become the de-facto method of solving ALL balance issues in games, when it should only ever be a last resort.

C'mon devs, you used creative thought to MAKE this game, now use that same creative thought to FIX it.

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I5 wasn't about nerfing the casual player. I believe that it was to align the abilities of the powers in the powersets with CoV and within teams, make the Arena PvP more equal and lowering the abilities of those in the top 10% of the playerbase who were rapidly PLing all of their buddies.

It's not those of us with level 50s and/or post to the boards who are important to the continuing health of the game, even though we are the best players of the game. It's the *other* 90% of the players that should and will be considered in changes to the game mechanics--rightfully so, since I would guess that they contribute at least 5 times as much money to the game as we do. (Not 9 times because we often have multiple accounts and stick with the game longer.)

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With all due respect, that makes no sense at all. If we're such a minority compared to the casual player, why spend all this time and energy making changes that affect only 10% of the players? Especially seeing as how we DID NOT WANT these changes (nerfs). That's the problem... no one gained anything from the I5 nerfs. The casual players are largely unaffected and the rest of us are angry.

On the other hand, if they had chosen to spend their time to ADD MORE UNIQUE CONTENT, well then EVERYONE would benefit. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of posts to back up what I'm saying.

The nerf bat is an industry-wide problem nowadays. This just happens to be one extreme case out of many. Devs of ALL GAMES need to learn that the nerf bat is easy to swing, but all-but-impossible to stop swinging. This is because of the simple fact that - as with everything in life - it is far easier to destroy (eg; nerf) than it is to create (eg; add new content).

There are smarter ways to achieve "balance" in this game than to nerf the living bejesus out of everything. Making bad guys stronger was a start, but it was an unfinished idea. Not a bad idea, just an unfinished one.

I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about from another game... Desert Combat (the BF1942 mod). The problem was spawn-camping... killing people as they spawned into their bases, and therefore racking up a serious score. There were a gazillion posts on ideas of how to essentially "nerf" the game to keep people from spawn-camping. Everyone was arguing about these ideas for months.

I told them, if you want to stop spawn-camping, you need to take away people's DESIRE to do it... make it so that you don't get any points for killing someone who has just recently spawned in their base, say, using a 30-second timer. It was such a simple solution compared to all of the nerf-o-rama's that everyone else was suggesting, and it didn't negatively affect any other aspect of gameplay at all.

Without trying to sound like I'm patting myself on the back, heh, the devs need to learn to take this sort of logic and apply it to CoH. Forget the nerf... there are smarter ways to fix problems. Nerfing is a REactive solution. They need to think more PROactively.

So... questions... can you pick powers from more than one Epic power pool? I just hit 41 and got Indomitable Will in Psionics (so sick of mushrooms zzzzz-ing me). So can I now pick something from Ice Mastery too? Or am I now stuck with Psionics? I heard you could also pick from a 5th regular pool (I've got stuff from 4 of them already), but I didn't see a way to do that.