ramas100

The one thing that needs fixing in these things is the auto-power rewards. (+movement, +HP, Dept protection etc)

AUTO POWERS SHOULD NEVER EVER HAVE ONGOING PARTICLE EFFECTS.

Someone needs to take that sentence, write it on a piece of paper, and staple it to the forehead of whoever configures these things.

I levelled a guy past 40 yesterday who had just got rid of the prior effects. Bang. Stupid pink swirly things 24/7 to signify debt protection.

Please. For the love of God. Make it stop.

Great news - always good to see another what-the-xp-should-be weekend.

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If flyspeed had the same max as runspeed, why would anyone ever take superspeed?

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Because SS doesn't effectively have a pre-req, as everyone needs hasten anyway.

Personally I think flight could use a small speed boost, but I do take the point geko makes.

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The problem the devs are trying to address is all about accuracy.

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Yes, because otherwise SR scrappers would be too powerful.

</sarcasm>

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In cases where SR scrappers hit the cap, an acc increase would affect SR less than any other set.

In cases where SR scrappers do not, (ie. when not using elude) the disproportionate effect is easy to cancel out by calculating the relatively greater reduction in survival time and adding the delta to low end SR scrappper defence powers.

Low-mid SR scrappers need a small boost anyway.

But lets face it, the vast majority of scrappers today are regen and invul.

Yes, if it was as high as the 100% I mentioned in my post.

Personally, I doubt they need to do much to bosses if they were to fix the minions that come along with the bosses.

The reason bosses are a threat is primarily their already reasonable accuracy.

The problem the devs are trying to address is all about accuracy.

My main is a scrapper (though I have alts of all ATs).

Frankly, you could increase minion HP and damage by 100% and it wouldn't significantly effect my play.

It would take a few extra swings, sure. But it wouldn't ever change the outcome, because minions remain no threat whatsoever while their accuracy is so low.

Currently I can easily take on 20-30 white minions if I want to, but never, in practice, have any reason to take on more than 10.

In the brave new world on test, 10 minions would be as hard as about 13 of the minions currently on live. Practical effect on outcome of battle = zero.

I agree with those who say the wrong change has been made. Minion accuracy should get a boost instead of HP. That would increase the threat to my scrapper, but not have any effect on controller soloing (since it involves holding the mobs), or be too big a deal to debuff/buff equipped defenders, or tanks with uber defences.

Most of those questions have been answered in Bridgers previous posts Greek.

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Welcome Bridger !
So..FYI the post i made:
Greetings from Greece!

So here they are:

1. We who play using the client we downloaded from NCSOft US site...will we be able to use the same client for the European servers ? Hopefully yes because paying AGAIN for a game i alreadfy own and play a long time...is pretty difficult for many of us.


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Nope - you have to buy and use the new EU client.

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2. If we are able to use the client to play in European servers...will we be able to use the same client to play on the US servers as well ? I have invested a considerable amount of time to teh chars i have on the US servers and of course, dont want to lose them.Also many currecty-generation MMORPGS except WoW let players play with the same client to bith continent's servers. And please dont forget that i and lots of others have invested about $300 to this game already and it will be great pity if we lose our characters or if we are not able to transfer them to Europe, or at least if we are not able to play them on the US servers (having also chars on the European servers as well).


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Nope. Though you might be able to transfer them to EU servers, it may or may not cost money.

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3. Will the game client be available for download from NCSOft europe as well


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Haven't seen this answered.
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4. Will there be a character transfer service from the US server to the European server (even with a fee...i dont care).


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Maybe, they haven't confirmed this yet. But have said they'd like to.

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I agree, there are good reasons to have Euro servers. Depending on what you mean by "separate" I may or may not agree with the second part of that statement. If "separate" means "not sharing space on the same hardware" then I agree. If it means "not located in the same country" I agree. If it means that "one version of the game will not let you play on both sets of servers" then I completely and 100% disagree.

If there really is a good reason for segregating your player base, then just tell us what the reason is. If it really is a good reason then many of us will accept it and will stop banging on about this topic. If it isn't a good reason then (obviously) we quite possibly won't.


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I'd go as far to say two 'versions' are even ok, in the sense that you need to run two 'versions' installed to run on test and on live servers.

But having seperately purchased accounts, and no access to the primary forums, and no access to the test server for EU players, and presumably no access to cross-continent global chat, and no access to servers not running with localisation delays (admittedly only a big deal in every country other than France and Germany), and no access to servers running in the other continent; all of which are available under current arrangements, and under the european server arrangements for many of your competitors, is, in fact, a problem.

All that aside Bridger, thanks for the responses, must be something of a pain to have bearing bad news to be your first main communication with the community. But the openness is appreciated.

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Incidentally, I will be in the UK for Christmas this year, and I was wondering...how is the gameplay over there on the US servers as compared to here in the US? Is there more lag, slower framerates, dropped connections, etc... I have the game on my laptop and I'll be playing via a DSL connection, so I was just curious.

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No noticable lag. No effect on framerate whatsoever.

No more disconnects than anyone else (and that means practically none these days if you have a stable connection).

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but to cause all this trouble for the existing customers seems to be a really bad idea.

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What trouble exactly?

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Right, to me it seems like something positive that the game will be launched in Europe. It doesn't affect me in the least, except that the game I play is more successful.

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If you read the last 17 pages, umpteen people explain that while it won't affect you except in terms of lower populations outside of peak hours, it will have a negative effect on everyone who is playing in Europe.

Contrary to your statement above, if it launches in the daoc style rather than the soe approach, effects on european players will be entirely negative despite the fact that the game will have more players.

Which is a shame.

One point that hasn't been mentioned so far is subscription rates.

I'd be willing to be small amounts of RL money that after conversion, beacuse of the lower EU playing population and current exhange rates, people who switch to the EU version will be paying a higher monthly rate as well has having to buy a game they already own again (after all, EU players will have to pay for localisation for the two countries that get that, as well as contributing the relevant share to CoH development).

It's not because Cyptic/NCSoft are being evil or moneygrabbing, but simply because the inferior arrangements being proposed are likely to cost more.

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That really depends on whether you feel that localised versions of the game complete with dedicated customer and billing support, websites, message boards and community teams in those languages and at peak European times offer any benefits...


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You don't have to segregate to do any of that.


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Unless you want their entire staff to be bilngual, you do.

(Actually, multi-lingual in every language they support.)

Statesman may be able to pull that off, but for everyone else that's a bit much to ask

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Why?

You click on the server you want, some are maked 'english' some are marked 'french' some are marked 'german' some are marked 'US'.

You have English language servers with english speaking CS.

French language servers with french speaking CS.

German language servers with german speaking CS.

And uou need to have that anyway under the proposed model.

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That really depends on whether you feel that localised versions of the game complete with dedicated customer and billing support, websites, message boards and community teams in those languages and at peak European times offer any benefits...

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You don't have to segregate to do any of that.

If you let existing and new players have free access to either server set for instance.

The problem is laying down a chinese wall where players have to decide which side they are permanently going to be on. You'll end up with half the EU coh community outside France and Germany on each side of the wall.

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No one will be forced to buy the game again. If you are happy playing on the US servers, you are welcome to continue doing so.

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Yet you argue that there are good reasons why people will want to switch, so logically you expect most people to do so?

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Nope. It's just that, as a few people have pointed out, it's a business decision. While City of Heroes may be played online, the people and companies responsible for running it are based in the real world, and that means that we have to deal with the same restrictions, limitations and practical concerns as any other multinational company.

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Well at least this is an honest explanantion of the reasons.

Though it's interesting that generally the bigger players in the market feel it's worth the effort to run a game with a diverse player base.

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I know a lot of gamers got burned by the European version of DAoC - I was one of them. We're going to do better. DAoC started six months behind and said they would 'catch up'. We're starting up to date and are going to stay that way.

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I'll fully admit that daoc is exactly where my secondary worry, about inferior service, comes from.

Thing is, I don't see how you break the vicious circle.

Localisation delays -> less population as vets hold out on US servers -> less money -> less capacity for your team to localise and run CS -> localisation delays.

This is exacerbated by a setup that means european players outside of France and Germany have to pick a 'horse to back' at the start of the process.

Euro-DAoC wasn't (entirely) screwed up because of GOA, low populations caused by this heath-robinson inspired segregated account model left them in an impossible position.

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Asheron's Call 2, as I recall, gave players the option of playing on a Euro servercluster or US servercluster. No separate game packages or anything - everyone had that choice.


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All SOE games do this as well.

(Although I understand they actually run every single one of their servers out of San Diego, they just label some of them 'East Coast', 'West Coast' and 'European' knowing full well that noone will be able to tell the difference in a non-twitch game)

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Are you avoiding my question as to why this decision was taken in the first place?

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Because the european distributor and publisher was much happier with the idea that his boxes-on-shelves were all for unique servers.

Also, if the hosting is done through a separate company (even a wholly owned subsidiary) it makes accounting for support and hosting costs easier to manage.

At least that's my guess.

It goes without saying that segregation has no benefits whatsoever for the consumer.

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Ask a non-English speaking European who'd like to play CoH if they should play on European servers or American servers.

Hmm, let's think. If they have customer support issues... who do they talk to? An American GM based in NCsoft's US offices? Or a European GM based here?

While of course NCsoft could hire multilingual GMs for the US, why even bother? It'd be easier to recruit people in Europe. Don't get me started on the difference in timezones.

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Nothing whatsoever stops a european based customer service group responding to queries on both US and EU servers, this would have the added benefit of providing better coverage for US and EU players out of their respective primetimes.

On a previous page Bridger said that US players will, for no obvious reason, be prevented from playing on european servers; just as anyone buying in europe will be pointlessly segregated from the US servers.

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Server events in peak European hours.

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As the Coh devs well know, the best server events run over a period such as entire weekend, so that everyone gets a chance to look over the content.

No time is convienient for everyone, even if they happen to share a time zone.

The technical issue is a red herring.

In a non-twitch game (CoH counts for these purposes) the additional transatlantic ping is largely irrelvant. Any choppy connection you have (as opposed to one that has permanently high latency) is almost always caused by your own ISP communicating with your PC, not by the wider internet.

Localisation is a real issue, but for people playing France, Spain, Germany and maybe Italy only. Because lets be honest, no one else is getting a translation, and English speaking nations don't even want it. That said, obviously there's nothing wrong with offering a translation to these countries. If it would require seperate clients for each language (due to localisation delays), no reason you can't just have us run seperate instances ala test. But hell, if you are so sure you are going to do localisation in a matter of days (DAoC said that too - they currently run 6 months behind) you won't even need two clients to be installed, since surely you can delay the English language launch until the translation if it's really only going to be a few days (lol).

Also, pointless segregation kills the population of every server dead outside primetime, which lowers the enjoyment to be had if you happen to be the poor controller who, for whatever reason, ends up wanting to play at some odd hour one day.

Segregation is a real issue.

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Yes, just one server is unlikely,

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They said similar things about daoc.

Howver, european english speaking players of that game remain so pointlessly segregated between the US and EU run servers, that only two english language EU servers could ever be supported, not even giving players an opportunity to experience all three realms.

If pointless segregration of the player base according to which version you buy has the same disastrous effect on the community of English speaking Europeans that it has had in every other MMOG, I fear for my continued subscription.

Which is a real shame, because I love the game as it stands, but I am not putting up with the same crap I have on certain other MMOGs that have made this decision.