rdtjr

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I bet your a systems admin

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LOL! Close... kind of... it's complicated. That was funny though.

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You have seen powers adjusted in multiple games? Wow, I'm so shocked. Because, you know, it happens in EVERY GAME. I'd wager "the forums" never played as major a role as people seem to want to believe.

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I agree with you there with a caveat: SWG. Anyone who witnessed first hand how that one went down knows there were two groups at fault: whining players and "please everyone" Devs. In fact this goes to the heart of the argument. At least the CoH guys are sticking to a plan. The SWG guys just willy-nilly started changing crap in an attempt to make everyone happy and in the end left everyone angry. They literally left no skillset untouched. Here when someone points out something that may be broken they check it out but I've seen them say "It's not broken" and often as they've come back and said that the data seems to show a change may be in order.

The fact that the main poster is calling the SG change a "nerf" says a lot. A power that results in zero risk and is more effective as a secondary power set power, than an equivalent primary power set power is broken. Period. It needed to be fixed.

Edit to add: Oh and the big difference between SWG and CoH is that, so far, the CoH devs are generally increasing the power of ATs instead of lowering almost all of them.

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When I first started the game, there was a nice scaling to how much risk I took to how much reward I got.

That scaling has been slowly eroded. Now I must take twice the risk for half the reward (even in teams).

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And the devs have said repeatedly that the difficulty level did not scale right at first. They fixed that. The badguys have levels attached to them for a reason, it's supposed to mean something. Stateman has said time and time again that you should not routinely be soloing +3 and +4 bosses and LTs or higher. That said I can routinely (once SOs kick in in the 20s) handle minions +3 and +4 for great xp... if I am careful and kick in a few inspirations. So what's the problem? The great irony is that if things were this way from the get-go no one would be the wiser. What then would the complainers that follow every game complain about.

You want to see gamer requested nerfing witness the first 12 months of SWG. That was the doom-and-gloom scenario. You know something, it started right away with the second or third patch. I saw it and quit because of it. Every class I played was nerfed into futility. CoH's fixes have been nothing like that. As I pointed out these guys are actually increasing the effectiveness of the vast majority of powers and ATs.

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Actually, I've done every single story Arc so far (probably more than you).

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Non-sequitor. What's your proof of this. With my main toon I have completed every single story arc up to 30. Be much deeper in if I had the time to play more often.

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I spend a lot of time helping SG mates (well used to, theres not many any more) SK'd to clear off their debt.

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So what? Me too. I've never even played my main without at least a duo, in the form of my wife's character.

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I don't even worry a TON about how fast I level. However, feeling like I'm making so little progress it will take me 10 nights of hardcore gaming simply to get 1 level isn't that much fun either.

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So it isn't about how fast you level... but it is about how fast you level? Color me confused with your direct self-contradiction.

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The fact is, what CoH was at release was a wild success and people loved it.

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The fact is that CoH is still wildly successful and people still love it. I've toyed around with the newest expansion on Test, it rocks! It's got some bugs they are still working out, but as much as most of the players will love it there will be more whiners clamoring for attention. "Boo-hoo a trial zone is too hard for me to do alone... boo-hoo." It's like this insistence that every single thing in the game should be soloable. Utter nonsense. I swear I'm waiting to read someone's complaint that TFs should be soloable too.

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They loved that they could control the difficuly of what they fought, and the rewards scaled significantly. Adding people meant fighting harder things.

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Still does. The Devs have said repeatedly that the difference is that the way in which the difficulty scaled down was broken. They fixed it. You still get the same affect, people are just too worried about the rate at which they level and the min/max curve that they create a grind for themselves where it doesn't have to exist.

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Then the purple patch went in, and it caused about 200 more balance issues with support AT's than it fixed. So now the answer is to nerf more stuff big time, and provide a bunch of small boosts to support AT's to bring the game in line with their vision.

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Those problems had more to do with min/max play patterns that left some archetypes behind as the Devs have said. Making minions a little stronger puts things back to the way they should be.

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I'm simply saying that is a dangerous route to go.

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I'm saying that. It is your opinion that what they are doing is dangerous. My opinion is that you opinion has no basis in fact.

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So you can get off your high horse, I like to build effective characters, but so does everyone.

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As do I, so far all of my characters are effective and I have one of every archetype. If levelling is such a chore how is it that my SG has several members into the 40s, that went from early 30s to 40 in just a couple weeks. (In fairness one plays like 6 hours a day, but the others don't. I don't play nearly that much and have one toon at 30 and a half-dozen others scattered from 12-20, it's not that hard. Oh yeah, I hardly ever solo... which according to most around here should slow me down immensely, strangely I always seem to level faster that way though.)

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I've done task forces, story arcs (the arcs were fun, just not rewarding as they should have been), hunted trial zones, all mob types including their bosses

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As have I and many others. The exception for me is that I've only done one TF so far because I keep outlevelling them too fast. Maybe grouping isn't all that bad. I've actually been hoping the levelling does slow down a lot in the 30s so that I can do all my story arcs (as well as my wife's) and still have some xp room to do TFs.

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and probably died 10 times a level because I liked to push what I could do rather than sit and safely kill whites/yellows for max xp an hour.

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Again, me too. So what? The wife and I do mostly missions with a little +2 or +3 street hunting. I'd say that we averaged 3-4 hours of playtime per level in the 20s. You could double that in the 30s and that is still pretty fast levelling. With increased xp from missions, story arcs, and TFs coming what is the big complaint?

You've done a lot of talking without presenting much of an argument. How about some examples of these big nerfs? You're entire rant seems to be about the much balley-hooed purple patch which was put in, what 2 1/2 months ago? Haven't subscriptions gone up since then? Must be doing something right. Would that mean your doom-and-gloom prophecies are actually wrong?

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Don't assume so much about me.

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Actually, I did nothing of the sort. My comments were about the nerf whines in general. I didn't say that you were a min/max'er or focused entirely on levelling. Strangely, you responded by saying first that you didn't care about that stuff and second that you are levelling too slowly...

As others have said, the Devs have to worry about making this game fun for over 180,000 gamers. Most of whom may not share the same idea of "fun" as you and like me may think many of the changes the Devs have made are just fine and actually improve the game.

Nerf, nerf, nerf.

I'm so tired of hearing that whine everytime a change is made that someone doesn't like.

Statesman and others have said repeatedly that they are trying very hard to not "nerf" anything, they are simply out to fix things that are broken. Broken may equal fun to players who get the vastly overpowered skill (smoke grenade) or find the levelling loopholes, but fixing it isn't a nerf no matter how you break it down.

When the vast majority of the player base picks a particular power to the point that it becomes "must have" there is a chance it might be broken - fix it. When one or two ATs or classes are so advantageous to play that a clear majority of the player base plays them it might be broken - fix it. When one or two builds are so advantageous to advancement that a majority of people playing that AT use the build over others, it might be broken - fix it. When a power results in zero risk to a player, it might be broken - fix it. When a certain AT or power set is hardly utilized at all, it might be broken -fix it.

I especially don't get where from many of these whines come lately. They've actually been increasing the relative power of many ATs and skills as opposed to weakening others!!! Weakening one set to balance out a perceived weakness in another might be a nerf, but by and large that has not happened. Defenders, Controllers (mostly), Scrappers, and now Tankers have all had a good look and gotten some lovin' to increase their capabilities. How is that nerfing them?

And if the big guys say that many villians have been much easier to defeat than they imagined, so what? It's their game, their perogative. Folks should really stop worrying so much about how fast they level and spend more time enjoying what's actually in the game. I never understood this desire to tear through all the levels to hit maximum level (at which point the "fun" is mostly over). How is that fun anyway? I mean if you and I spend the same amount of money on the game and I stop to read the stories and do the missions (you know -- "content") and you just min/max and only do the things that level you the fastest, only to get to the end and complain that it was too fast or too easy or there was no content, who's getting the most bang for their buck?

Geez. Get over it.