Regarding recent changes
By
AbuliaDon,
Posted on: 2004-05-13 19:13 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Hate to burst your bubble, but at least in nova's case it almost always drained all endurance. This isnt anything new. 
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Hate to burst your bubble, but at least in nova's case it almost always drained all endurance. This isnt anything new.
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Dude, I think you are missing his point. Blasters are surpose to be near one shot killers because they have low HP. So they need the strongest offence to do as much damage as possible in order to stay alive.
But now since isuue 3 release all that has changed. NOVA blast has been transformed from I can kill you in one shot. To I HOPE it can if possible kill you in one shot otherwise I get easy dept. 
So when it comes to the Energy Blasters since issue 3 they are the one that got hurt. Which I think is an oversight on the devs part since the intend of issue 3 was to promote team play and make the game more of a challenge.
What the devs need to do is test the Energy Blaster themselfs and see if NOVA blast is still the extreme blast they promised. Or has it been transformer into a low damage giving power with an extreme endurance cost. 
The so-called Provoke nerf was a good thing. I've always had a problem with a pool power (Provoke) being better than the Primary/Secondary power (Taunt). Provoke wasn't nerfed it was brought in line with what a Pool power should be. It in no way stops the "Burn Exploit" because with the free respec the burn tankers just respeced into Taunt instead.
Until I3 Provoke was always a better choice for Tankers because it easily outshined Taunt. I also highly agree with changing the Scrappers Taunt to Confront.
Be a hero!!
I have to disagree. Nova was intended to take ALL your END from the start, at least that is the way the description read. I play a Energy/Energy blaster and see very little difference in the use of my NOVA blast. I still do around the same damage and it usualy took all my end befor. I keep blue Insp for when I use Nova. No you cant regen end for awhile but one blue pill followed by Conserve Power keeps me going until I can regen END again. Don't blame the Power working the way it had always been intended for a lack of tactics on your part.
BTW: does your Nova blaster use Hasten? If so try a build that doesn't inherently require more end to begin with. Also what are your teammates doing to help while your temporarily down? If your trying to SOLO with a blaster then there is your problem. SOLO with a scrapper. I regularily use Nova and I do occasionally die but that is an understood limitation to the power. Nova wasn't nerfed it was fixed to mach it's intention. It isn't the end all be all power, no level 32 power is, you always take a chance when you use it, so think first.
Be a hero!!
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6) It seems to me there's something wrong with the enemy kill counters (I feel like someone must have posted this before). I dusted off my lvl 18 blaster last night from about 2 months of disuse and noticed he had no gear kills. He had made a small living killing Clock Princes before, and I know I wiped up a fair # of gears too. Similarly, he had no kills for any other boss type. Were the counters reset after the badge patch, or do you have to kill at least 1 of something post-badge patch for the kill badge counter to come up or what? I feel there's a bug in here somewhere.
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No bug here. None of the kill counters (or debt counters, or heal counters, or damage taken counters, etc) counted anything that happened before the badges went live. They only started counting after the badges were created. The only things that were retroactive were the mission and task force badges (because they could go through your character data on the server and see if you'd done those).
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Only your last TF,I had done Positron with one of my characters but only got credit for Synapse
I would love to know more about these new archtypes
@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian
I wholeheartedly agree with you! Leave the non-exploits as they were and move onto new stuff. You think hasten is too good? Make a power that does somethign similar, but better in some ways, worse in others. Give players options. AM is too good? Make a new powerset that does other things - some btter, some worse. Instead of hamstringing existing powersets, why not create new stuff to whet people's appetites. Make new power pools that maybe speed you up but also do other things. Make power pools that give status ranged attacks. I don't know... make more options, not fewer, crippled ones... Also implement a reroll system for players you have so-reduced in effectiveness.
Im not going to sludge through every post here so if you are tired of what Im about to say then ignore it. Endurance costs of powers is rediculous. They cost too much. And some powersw dont cost enough. Ex Fly is a major drainer and its a slow power, SS can be left on all day and your fast as all get out. I know Fly has other benifits but its cost is too high for the slugishness of it. Also with so many toggle powers in game Staminia is a must. I think it would be more fun if end cost were reduced and stamina was made less effective. Just my opinion
There are two things I wanted to bring up that I think are not even remotely balanced. First, I think the two new hero types should not be for characters who have a level 50 character only. This is just plain bias. I work full time and attend a university full time so I do not get a lot of time to play. I am luck to slip a few hours in during the week. With the amount of time I have to play I have a better chance of deciding that I don't want to play anymore long before I might make level 50. I have a tanker on triumph and he is level 25 and I might be able to try the new class types by .... October, November if I am lucky. I pay the same amount a month as players who rack up my months playing time in well under a week. It is just wrong and my opinion of the designers plummeted when that was added. Those type of ideas were the reason I took time off from games like these. My mothly fee should allow me full access to the game not a limited access. Bad decision on your part!
My other point is the Respec TF. There should be another way to get a respec. For the last two weeks I have tried to complete this TF and have failed eight or nine times. I have been in a group that SK'ed everyone to near 30 and we fail. I have been in one where we exempted ppl to around 25-6 and failed. New Players and very experienced player alike fall from this. Still being relatively new when I made my tanker that is my primary and for the most part only char i play, i have made a few mistakes with my powers that I want to correct now that I have become more experienced. Since I lack a great deal of time to play why must the only way to get a respec is this Armageddon style task force but not a mission someone could do solo. Generally, everytime it gets really tough someone quits and the entire TF is ruined since everything is still gears for the initail amount of people. This game is based on being a comic book style super-hero fighting off evil that lurks at every turn. I wonder why I can't be a loner all the time if I really chose. Again on your part, I feel you have made bad decisions. People who have insanely busy in life but manage to sqeeze a little time in to play should not have to play knowing they are at the mercy of a design team that makes the game nearly unplayable for the casual player.
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I wholeheartedly agree with you! Leave the non-exploits as they were and move onto new stuff. You think hasten is too good? Make a power that does somethign similar, but better in some ways, worse in others. Give players options. AM is too good? Make a new powerset that does other things - some btter, some worse. Instead of hamstringing existing powersets, why not create new stuff to whet people's appetites. Make new power pools that maybe speed you up but also do other things. Make power pools that give status ranged attacks. I don't know... make more options, not fewer, crippled ones... Also implement a reroll system for players you have so-reduced in effectiveness.
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This is exactly correct! You guys are focusing on the wrong things with alot of your time, sorry its the truth. If each new upgrade is bringing reactions in droves of this sucks, that sucks, maybe you should listen or your measely 4% market share will dwindle even more.
Imagine putting out updates were the majority is happy and exited as opposed to your last 3 were the majority is outraged and dissapointed....duh!
Dtrain
Loose the stupid class based system!
First, the Dev's did a huge favor to ATs who have not reached 50 by not allowing Epic ATs. When you get to the point where you actually have to manage more than 2 trays (which doesn't happen until your 40's) and you face AVs that require a greater amount of strategy and teamwork, then you're ready for the headache that is Kheldian, IMHO. I mean to further your argument, why can't you just roll a 50? Why should people that pay as much per month as a 50 have to start as a level 1? Paying a fee doesn't mean you get to short-cut everything. Besides which, how long to you think people would subscribe if everything was immediately available to everyone who paid a monthly fee?
Regarding the new ATs, it depends on whether they are considered "epic" (what else is the point in getting to 50 is there is no reward) and how complicated they are. If they are just graphic differences and variations on the two power set of the standard ATs, I agree with you. If the new ATs are more complicated, like the Kheldians, a level restriction makes sense.
Regarding Respec, there is a way to Respec without the TV trial. Type /respec. If your toon was in existence before update 3, you can respec that way. I do agree that for folks who have used all 3 TV respecs need some relief when the powers they picked (or opted out of) change markedly, but that is a different concern.
Lastly you're at 25. That's not halfway to 50 (from an xp perspective). I spent at least as much time getting from 38 to 50 as I did 1 to 38. So just play and stop worrying about what other people are doing - if you're not having fun why the heck are you playing anyway? Really.
CoH exists because there's a little hero in all of us.
Ridolfo 50 DM DA.
& far too many alts
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Imagine putting out updates were the majority is happy and exited as opposed to your last 3 were the majority is outraged and dissapointed....duh!
Dtrain
Loose the stupid class based system!
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Majority? What are you basing that on? Did you take a poll or something? It seemed like people had a few problems with the free updates, but I wouldn't say the majority was "outraged and dissapointed". Some were, but not the majority.
We all know they'll listen to us and do what they can to fix problems. They're nice devs.
Houston, we have a problem.
There has been a pattern of dev changes to this game in recent months, and until I spoke with a friend about it last night I really could not put my finger on it. Around every couple of weeks we get news of changes made or changes in the works, and each time this happens the things that detract from my enjoyment of the game always outweigh those that enhance it. Some of these have been nerfs to powers that I use, some have been nerfs to powers my friends have, and some have been more general game changes. I will touch on a few specifically.
Foremost in my mind we have the scrapper scrutiny that's going on right now. This process could have been good for the players. The devs could have performed their tests, gotten a baseline, noticed that dark armor is underpowered, invul is strongest (according to their criteria), and that super reflexes needs some help outside of the perma-elude build, and moved on from there. Instead, they chose to start this process by nerfing a balanced set, and then nerfing the weakest set... both before doing any structured published testing. The devs chose to do nothing to enhance the enjoyment of dark armor players and instead chose to make them and regeners go through another miserable round of nerfage.
Then we have the changing of content that people enjoy... the high level wolf missions, specifically. Again, the devs did things backwards. They could have offered us new content (maybe luring some players away from repeated wolf farming), but instead chose to remove content. Not only that, we had to put up with facist accusations that players who farmed wolf missions were not having any fun. Last time I checked this was a computer GAME. The whole point is to have fun. If players did not find wolf herding fun, they would not do it. There were some players who did not enjoy playing the game that way and did not participate. There were some that did enjoy it. The devs did nothing to enhance the enjoyment of those players who did not wolf herd (except for a sadistic few elitists who were glad the missions were nerfed), and at the same time, they robbed players who did enjoy those missions of the option to repeat them.
Most recently I log in and hear (read, actually) chatter about accuracy debuffs being placed in Super Speed and Super Jump. On one hand I find this not a big deal, but then again, if it's not a big deal, why did they bother making such a drastic change this late in the life of those powers? Is it truly abusive to be accurate and mobile in combat at the same time? Do the high endurance costs of those powers not make up for that? Why could they not instead remove the -acc from Fly so that flyers can be mobile and accurate in combat without having to resort to complex bind sets or the increased button pushing and annoyance of making sure that your movement powers are toggled correctly. How, exactly does this help the game? From my point of view it doesn't, it is just annoying.
This is not my "I quit" letter, but I am a little upset in general about all the negative changes to the game that I love and play for 20+ hours each week. I'd like to log in and find that my heroes have become more heroic or have more opportunities to be heroic, not less. Can I get an Amen?
Just because I don't want to make a second post, here's my wish list for the devs:
[*] No more nerfs. Balance through power set improvement and mob difficulty adjustment. Yeah it's harder, it's also less aggravating. Make my weaker heroes more heroic, not my stronger ones less so.
[*] Allow the respec trials to be repeated for respec reward. Powers get changed every issue and between issues as well. Number of respecs is capped. That's not cool. Also, allow /respec command to work for all respecs.
[*] Stop imposing your ideals of what is fun and how the game should be played on your players. There are parallels to this behavior throughout history. One of them was named Hitler. Once a game like this is out of your studio and in the hands of thousands of players across the globe, it is unlikely to be exactly what you originally envisioned. It is no longer just your creation. It is influenced by every player who bothers to write a character background, make a post, or otherwise go beyond the mechanical grind of clicking icons. Let go. Let the game live as it will. (Sorry to go all hippy on you there.)
[*] Add a Dark Astoria Task Force... this is a really cool zone with little story support.
[*] Add a TF for SKULS.
[*] Give more details on flashback. Will I be able to go back to do TFs and trials that I missed and get the badges? Will I be able to finish old storylines and mission arcs from incomplete contacts?
[*] Make reward from monsters and AVs worth the bother of fighting them.
-Junction Boy
Sometimes I feel like I'm stranded on an island populated only by myself and a bunch of viscious, retarded monkeys. Don't laugh... you're one of the viscious, retarded monkeys.
Warning: Detecting point of 0 credibility.
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You just lost all the credibility you built up in the previous paragraphs with this one...
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Warning: Detecting point of 0 credibility.
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You just lost all the credibility you built up in the previous paragraphs with this one...
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That was my attempt at humor. I can't help it if you chose to not find it funny. =P ...but assuming I were serious with that particular comment, if you don't find beating up skulls fun, then I cannot fathom why you play this game.
GO. HUNT. KILL SKULS!
-Junction Boy
Sometimes I feel like I'm stranded on an island populated only by myself and a bunch of viscious, retarded monkeys. Don't laugh... you're one of the viscious, retarded monkeys.
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Warning: Detecting point of 0 credibility.
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You just lost all the credibility you built up in the previous paragraphs with this one...
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What does a desire to Kill Skuls have to do with credibilty. I guess that means I just *Detected Extreme Humor Bias*
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Warning: Detecting point of 0 credibility.
[ QUOTE ][*] Add a TF for SKULS.
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You just lost all the credibility you built up in the previous paragraphs with this one...
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Wow, that's where you think he lost credibility? I thought he lost it when he compared developers attempting to balance a MMORPG with being Hitler.
Okay....Listen. Just because because Junction made a couple of colorful, and even silly remarks in his "second post" section, let's not lose sight of the ACTUALLY important stuff he said. This game is about having fun. Trust me, people had alot more fun when the were actually super. As a tank who always bank'd in basic resists, and never had Perma-Unstop. I was actually happy with the invince changes (and just for the morons out there invincibility already got nerf'd) because it validated my build. On the other hand, i felt bad for my friends who did use perma unstop, and i watched helplessly as their enjoyment of the game dropped, eventually leading many to quit playing their tanks. Nerf'ing has never made anyone happy (and if im not wrong, a devs main concern should be making his customer happy). Its only made them feel weaker and less cool.
As for the restriction of content, ala. wolf farming, this also leads to a lessening of a players enjoyment of the content. As I belive Junction was pointing out, why not spend more time creating new and interestings things for us to do so we will leave our farm mishes and actually have somethign to do, besides just standing around waiting for someone to ask us to pl them. I can't tel you how many times i come upon a new restriction and wonder'd: "Why are they wasting time messing up the fun stuff and not spending it making more stuff for me to do?"
And for those "squeaky wheels" out there: Stop being so worried about how I play my game and go play yours. If you don't like pl'ing or farming, fine, you don't have to, im not gonna twist your arm; God knows I have enough other people begging for me to help them out. If the fact that i work'd my [censored] of gettin to 50 the first time and now i just wanna makes some toons and HAVE FUN pisses you off... well... i dont know.....GO PLAY SOMETHING ELSE. We pay our money too. Stop screwing things up for us.
Lastly i will talk about the Arena. I personaly, don't care. I like PvP, but my main focus is on PvE, you know: the game I pay for. I won't begrudge the PvP-heads their fun, I too enjoy a good match. But tweaking powers just so that they are more even in the Arena is bogus. The Cardinal rule of this game has always been: a Blaster should never be able to go toe to toe with Tank. This is a team game, with each ATs powers balancing and accentuating one another. A balster should need another tank to occupy the big nasty, and said tank should need the squishy blaster to ever do enough damage to take out his tanker brother. Thats why, frankly, team battles in the arena are still more fun than dueling, but the changes made to ATs for the arena affect them in the ACTUAL game, you know: the one they pay for. If you start nerfing things (or should i say, having nerf'd things) your gonna make everyone who doesn't live in the Arena very pissy. As i mentioned earlier, people don't like being made less powerful, we're superheores for pete's sake, we're supposed to be ridiculously powerful.
All in all i don't mind the changes, im gonna play either way. But if everyone else quits because the devs stomped on their nutz, well, then who am i gonna have to play with? All the whiny crybaybies who screw'd it up for the rest of us? Thnx, I'll just play with myself. 
Ive only played a few months but i have to say this patch comepletey ruined a perfectly good game. My scrps couldnt hit the blind side of a dam barn if there life counted on it. /useless and going to be deleted.. My ctlr's pets are so dumb now they dont tank they just draw agro to u. PA are no longer usefull at all. Along with loss of acc i dont even wanna play the game anymore. I think we deserv refunds. I want a server with is 3 on it myself cause 4 plain sux. I sure as hell wouldnt have payed up if i had known u would ruin the game like that. Worked so hard to hit 40 on my main and now i wont ever use it again. Thx for the wasted time. 
I waited to post my opinion hopeing they would fix the probs but i had to get it off my chest. It was a very awsome game. 
If they do increase the accuracy I just don't want them to make it too easy to hit stuff and get hit. . As far as the decrease in accuracy goes I really don't mind it as much, but I do think they went a little overboard. Oh...It's still way worth the dough cause' the game is still awesome.
Since there isn't an official thread open about the travel powers changes, I'm guessing this is where I should come to whine about them.
First of all, I like the idea of suppression. I think it works, but the problem is that it is applying to certain defensive powers. I know the official dev statement is "this is working as intended. Turn off Invincibility while you travel," but that doesn't cut it in my mind and I'll explain why.
Okay, Invincibility "damages" enemies in melee range adding to your accuracy and defense while also taunting them. That's why your travel powers are supressed if you get too close to a mob with it turned on. That almost makes sense until you realize how integral Invincibility is to keeping a scrapper alive and that other scrapper defensive sets (and tanker sets) don't have the same penalty.
If I have Invincibility on I do have a chance of agroing groups that I would not have without it on, so I've made a habit of not traveling with it a lot of the time anyway. If I'm in a place like the Hive and am surrounded by groups of monsters, I tend to leave every defense on though. Why? Because if I'm close enough for Invincibility to agro them I already screwed up and need all the help I can get.
So now I need to choose between a defense bonus that can agro a mob I get too close to (but that I can normally get away from between SJ and SS) or having my travel powers supressed every time I get to close to a Skull in Perez Park on my way to a mission. Is that a game-breaker? No. Is it annoying? To the extreme.
If I was, say, a regen scrapper though I could leave every single power in my defensive set on and have no problems whatsoever. While it almost makes sense that Invincibility would supress your travel power, does it make the same amount of sense that if my regen scrapper (and I do have one that I'm pulling through the 20's right now) should have their travel powers supressed if they heal damage from someone they accidentally agroed while moving through a zone?
I don't think it makes sense for a regen to have their powers supressed, but it does follow the same logic as why an invuln is being supressed. My solution isn't to apply it to everyone because the players that are currently being supressed are having it done (in my opinion) unfairly. I say remove the supression for all non-damaging powers.
Now I realize that since Invincibility "damages" enemies in melee range to determine how many are there, that might be more difficult than I'm anticipating. If that's the case then let us know, but if it's just a matter of the devs thinking that it should work that way then I respectfully disagree.
Now I'm off to play my Warshade.
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Thnx, I'll just play with myself.
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Dude....waaaaay too much information.
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Stop imposing your ideals of what is fun and how the game should be played on your players. There are parallels to this behavior throughout history. One of them was named Hitler....
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Oh no -- not the NAZI card!
(That's always an effective way to win someone over to your POV: Compare them to a megalomaniac manic-depressive psycopath. I'll have to write that one down.)
Don't give them an excuse to scrap all the good things you had to say by throwing barbs like this into the mix.
Geek_Boy, there actually is a semi-official thread over in the training room forum on the SS/SJ/Fly changes regarding supression. The reason it is on that forum is because it was initially put on test (thus the start of the thread), and not expected to be dumped onto live servers two hours later....otherwise the thread probably would have been started here instead.
You say that you like supression and that it works, yet give an outstanding arguement of exactly why it DOESNT work regarding invincibility. Its a great arguement, and you got some stars for it. Keep in mind though, there are a multitude of other toggle type powers that supression affects just as adversly as invincibility. As for regular attack powers? Well It doesn't do much for those except supress the fun of fighting with travel powers on. Jousting can and still does work just fine, and if one still does choose to use travel powers for jousting (which isnt even necessary), they can just use key binds.
Fact of the matter is, supression doesnt do ANYTHING except annoy people and "supress" the enjoyment of the game. Thats the ONLY purpose it serves (regardless of what the devs intended it to do). Everything that was possible before supression is still possible now; except now you have to put up with this annoying 4-second sluggishness every time you use an attack power. I know the devs had some benevolent purpose in mind when they made these changes, but whatever it was, they missed it by a lot.
Constructive or not ~ Supression is stupid and needs to be removed ASAP.
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Now that thats out of the way, there is a real problem with super speed that actually does affect game play in ways that dont only regard personal enjoyment of the game. Apparently the stealth component of super speed has been changed (without notice). Before Issue 4, if you had super speed up, the stealth wouldnt drop until after an attack activation sequence had completed. Now the stealth component drops the instant you activate an attack, essentially giving away your position before your first attack can complete, leaving you vunerable to alpha-strikes.
This one simple little change has killed the solo game for close range blasters which relied upon the stealth component of super speed.
As of right now, super speed is at the rock bottom of the travel pool powers list IMO.
Is anyone else hugely upset with the nerfing of all blaster (and some defender/controller secondary) pbaoe lvl 32 spells such as inferno, nova, etc. For those of you who haven't noticed, this has been changed to the complete loss of all endurance instead of a huge chunk as a cost, along with no endurance recovery.
---AREN'T BLASTERS FRAGILE ENOUGH ALREADY???---
CoH team has just made blasters most powerful spell useless against anything that it won't kill in one hit, which means useless against bosses which you need your most powerful spells for. It is plain suicide because you lose all your toggles and can't even activate a travel power to escape, not even sprint! WHY WAS THIS DONE? I've seen tankers be able to stand in the middle of 70 +lvl enemies and take no visible damage but this has not been nerfed, but why would it?...they are TANKS! Why has the offensive juggernaut been reduced to one hit and then dead?