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People should be able to make informed decisions.
...but...
Knowing the numbers can ruin a game.
I have played and run many games of Champions, an excellent point-based superhero game. My Champions campaigns alway works fine until the number cuncher of the group comes up with a way to have better offense and better defense than anyone else.
Then suddenly everyone wants to reroll or respec, regardless of how fun their character is as things are...I exaggerate...slightly...
One thing I think is that there should be a secret NDA-protected Test Server where players who know the numbers can point out when things are borked.
...maybe there IS one...
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The main issue with players wanting to know the numbers is because the descriptions for powers are not accurate. And being forced to adapt to a game with increasing dificulty makes more players number crunchers. If descriptions were adequate there would be less needs for respecs.
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You are arguing that its ok to act like a 3 year-old in the forum, ya goof. I'm not being 'docile' or advocating complete docility, just a fricking adult argument. Sometimes when someone disagrees with you and labels infantile name-calling and antics as immature, it's just because it's immature and not because they're trying to demonize your opinion.You point at a lot of other people and blame them for everything that you don't like. Adults acknowledge that only in very rare cases is one party responsible for a conflict escalating. The devs doing something you don't like or understand doesn't give license to act like a 3 year-old. It certainly doesn't give license to throw tantrums without drawing the ire of people you would likely label 'fanboys'.
Time after time, I've come across critical posts that I've had some shred of sympathy for, but acknowledgement of sympathy and agreement is nearly drowned out by my tendency as an adult to point out and discourage rude, churlish, childish, ill-informed, or short-sightedly subversive talking points. (Though, if if someone is deft enough to be subversive - even for silly goals - I usually give a respectful nod to their rhetorical skill.)
I've never been swayed by a tantrum, but I have modified or reversed an opinion based on a reasoned argument. You're pretty much saying, "If you don't infantile tantrums from grown adults, don't do anything that players dislike." How about we - your fellow players and the devs don't negotiate with verbal terrorists and just you and you tantrum-apologists just grow the [censored] up, eh? Your tantrums aren't that good at fomenting change, and they ultimately diminish the amount of meaningful dialogue about the game between the players and the devs.
Just as 3 year-olds disrupt discourse between adults for the sake of a binky. Awesome line of reasoning you've got there. Way to win hearts and minds.
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I wanna smack a big, fat /agreed here.
There are many reasons for becoming irrate in life and losing your temper: bankruptcy, death in the family, etc.
There are a few reasons in RL to justify showing your temper to someone: they backstabbed you, stole from you, edged you out of something, etc.
But this is a game. We are discussing game mechanics. This may just be me but, for my values sytem, when discussing the mechanics of a game, there is simply no reason to undulge your temper on others. No matter how irritating a change to game mechanics, nothing justifies being a deliberate goon when either making a point or addressing another's. Nothing.
Revolutionaries are for political systems, oppression, the underclass... Martin Luther King was a revolutionary. And he made his points intelligently and politely.
So if he can do it, and the fate of his race was at stake, then why can't we?
It is a game; the more seriously you choose to take it, the angrier and more rude you become, the sillier you look.
No excuse for rudeness. And the game forums are where socially dysfunctional "adults' flock to introduce their kindling to an audience which cannot reach them and force them to address others with respect as they would in real life.
I am not a violent man, but I have pride enough to draw a line in certain things being said to me. In RL, if you step up and, despite my requests, behave in a agrressively rude fashion, then my response is right within arms reach.
But here, nothing to be done... that is why they indulge themselves and it is one of the great sins of cyber communications.
I don't care how in-depth your analysis of the game is, how intelligent your points are, or how unavoidably numbers-based your proof is: if you are rude, you are a waste of everyone's time and would do best to seek help for your eccentricities outside of a forum where others come to discuss a fun pass-time.
Emnity
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Ok... I get the fact that cryptic is new. so what? that just means they should actually listen to their customers more. And quite frankly... it doesn't appear that they care at all what we think. They "change the game for the better." shouldn't the customer decide what better is? I wouldn't be shocked at all if a mass exodous took place from that simple fact alone.
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And as Doc_D stated, how are they supposed to "listen to the customer" when even we, the customers, cannot agree on how things should be done? And at the same time, you completly ignore the many times when they *HAVE* listened to us.
1) Scrappers complained about not being usefull in groups. The Dev's added Criticals to help turn us into the boss killers.
2) Tankers complained about feeling like they HAD to take Provoke, a pool power, to be good Tankers. The Dev's added inherint taunts to many a Tanker power, as well as the Tankers own Taunt powers to help fix this.
3) Players complained about the Boss Changes and asked for a difficulty slider. The Dev's rolled back the Boss Changes, added the difficulty slider, AND set it up so that Boss's would not appear on the lowest difficulty setting, thus making missions a bit easier.
4) Players complained about how missions were worthless XP wise compared to Street Hunting. The Dev's bumped up the Mission XP gains.
5) Players complained about the lack of PvP. Devs added the Arena.
6) Martial Arts scrappers complained about the godawful animation times. The Dev's cut down most of the animation times, and completly changed the animation for Storm Kick (The worst offender of the lot).
7) Players complained about Katana animations. The Dev's completly re-worked the entire set of animations of the powerset.
8) The Dev's added Boomboxes and a "rave" for the heroes.
And many other changes and improvements have been added since the release of live. So they do listen to the players. Just because it's not always what *YOU* want doesen't mean they don't listen.
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Let me try this again. Try to understand that I am speaking out of frustration because I was looking forward to the arena so much. After testing it out, however, I lost interest very quickly. I tested SEVERAL DIFFERENT CONFIGURATIONS of blasters on the test server before i4 came out.
**SNIP**
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Something to keep in mind is that the arena still is, and will be for some time, a work in progress. Balancing PvE is hard enough. However, Balancing PvP is downright insane if you want any semblence of fairness. At the same time, Cryptic is still "new". City of Heroes is their first game, and theres still a learning process going on. (Even after a year). I mean, heck, SoE still can't even pull off good PvP.
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Ok... I get the fact that cryptic is new. so what? that just means they should actually listen to their customers more. And quite frankly... it doesn't appear that they care at all what we think.
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Guess you haven't seen all the things poeple asked for put into the game since launch.
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They "change the game for the better." shouldn't the customer decide what better is? I wouldn't be shocked at all if a mass exodous took place from that simple fact alone.
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Sure ... the customer could deside what is better ... IF all the customers could agree on what "better" is.
Hasten was "nerfed into uselessness" over 10 months ago, now it's a problem that needs to be taken care of. Four such threads have been stared in the last 2 weeks, or so, alone. Many others have been started over the months since the "nerfing."
Who's right?
The ones that said that Hasten is useless or the ones saying it's a "must have" power?
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Ok... first of all... if ANY power is a "must have" then that says to me that there is a problem. If builds were on equal grounds the primary and secondary power sets should suffice for game play. Power pools should just augment the gameplay, IE... to speed things up. If hasten is a must have power to make things go faster... someone needs to take a serious look at how slow things WITHOUT hasten actually is.
I give up. This is my last post ever. I tell you how i see things and you tell me how I SHOULD see things. It just isn't worth it.
coincidentally... if the game was balanced... none of the discussions would be nessecary.
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No recent response to an issue -
Many times, if you do not see a response from the dev team about an issue then either investigation is ongoing and no conclusions have been made yet or the dev team is satisfied with the issue as it is. I want to stress that even though this may be the case, they are always reading your feedback and taking it into consideration.
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1. If something is under investigation, please tell us it is so. No responce gives credence to "the DEVs don't listen" posts. Even if it's just to say, "we are looking at it, but don't hold your breath." Also, this community is a good place to bounce ideas off of. Asking for specific data on a subject will net you much more constructive information then reviewing code, or creating an "Official" thread for people to vent there generic frustrations.
2. Because the DEV team is satisfied with the issue does not mean that there should be no responce. "No news is good news" just doesn't cut it, like it used to. Telling us, "this is As Designed because we feel..." is a much more constuctive then seemingly ignoring the issue in hopes that the flames will burn themselves out.
When the flames start happening on the boards, letting us know that you are looking/not looking at an issue will give us the knowledge we need to better plan chatacters for the future. If I'd have known that you were still considering a change to SS/SJ even with it going live, I would have waited and not wasted the Free Respec on redesigning my toon to function better out of SS in combat.
Just my two pyreals... 
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coincidentally... if the game was balanced... none of the discussions would be nessecary.
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Assuming that everyone could agree on what is and is not Balance, thus the strife. But somehow I doubt you want to listen to anything that opposes your own view on things...
Something I'd really love to know at this point:
With all of their datamining tools, do the devs have a way of telling if people are abandoning their characters? I'm not talking about deleting some alt. I'm talking about taking a character in the mid L30 range and above and just not playing them anymore.
I know I'm not the only one that has given up their Ice Tanker as being unplayable with the release of I4. And there aren't that many Ice Tankers to begin with in the first place.
Maybe someday the devs will get their heads on straight and do something to fix them. But at this point, I'm beginning to doubt it. If they're not even going to take the time to post that they're still watching and paying attention, then the problems will just be forgotten again.
It's pretty sad, really; all of the threads that were discussing the problems with ice tankers in the Tanker forum have slipped off into the lower pages. The official Energy Absorption thread has already slipped to the second page in this forum.
Just goes to show that once people figure that nobody in an official capacity wants to hear their concerns, that it's time to move on.
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But this is a game. We are discussing game mechanics.
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This is a game that I don't just buy once. I pay for it monthly. Why am I, a paying customer, to not be permitted to disagree with what the company does? I've several times seen all disagreement with the developers characterized as "whining". I have also seen people who dare to express anyunhappiness with the severely bugged state of I4 characterized the same way. Why is it unacceptable to expect that one gets a product to ones taste or a product that WORKS AS IT IS SUPPOSED TO (as in "does not crash ten times in an hour") when one pays for it monthly?
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1) Scrappers complained about not being usefull in groups. The Dev's added Criticals to help turn us into the boss killers.
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Then then nerfed regen to the point it gets killed by AoE damage alone in a 7-8 man team. Glad they listened to us...
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2) Tankers complained about feeling like they HAD to take Provoke, a pool power, to be good Tankers. The Dev's added inherint taunts to many a Tanker power, as well as the Tankers own Taunt powers to help fix this.
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Don't play a tanker so can't comment, however I did notice a nerf to Ice Tankers. We all know how powerful and plentiful they were. Glad they did something to kill that set off entirely and put it out of everyone's misery.
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3) Players complained about the Boss Changes and asked for a difficulty slider. The Dev's rolled back the Boss Changes, added the difficulty slider, AND set it up so that Boss's would not appear on the lowest difficulty setting, thus making missions a bit easier.
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No doubt the inital data was done in a borked scenario as the regen changes were and the changes had to be rolled back because of it.
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4) Players complained about how missions were worthless XP wise compared to Street Hunting. The Dev's bumped up the Mission XP gains.
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The devs didn't bump up the xp because of player complaints. They bumped up the xp because so many people were just completely ignoring their "content". This was easily determined through "datamining".
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5) Players complained about the lack of PvP. Devs added the Arena.
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Far more people are complaining now wanting PvP taken out due to the massive problems it has caused. Will it be removed? Nope. Are the arenas nearly as vacant as the Shadow Shard? Yes, at least on Victory.
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6) Martial Arts scrappers complained about the godawful animation times. The Dev's cut down most of the animation times, and completly changed the animation for Storm Kick (The worst offender of the lot).
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Perhaps they did listen here. It is more likely the result of someone that works at Cryptic actually playing the set themselves and not liking it, rather than the dev team listening to us.
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7) Players complained about Katana animations. The Dev's completly re-worked the entire set of animations of the powerset.
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See #6.
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8) The Dev's added Boomboxes and a "rave" for the heroes.
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Ah yes... The Paragon Cricket Chirping building...
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And many other changes and improvements have been added since the release of live. So they do listen to the players. Just because it's not always what *YOU* want doesen't mean they don't listen.
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They aren't listening. If they were listening then they would at least attempt to listen to the people that calmly and rationally explain things to them with numerical data and hard proof. However they choose to ignore those people as well. They aren't listening. Most of them don't even play the game. They can't be or they would see some of the problems first hand because they are glaring. The posted test demo in the regen thread proved that. No one one the dev team knew the feat that was accomplished in that demo was impossible until it was screamed at them by every player with half a brain that the purple patch alone prevents that from happening.
Faith was lost a long time ago. Thank god Empire Earth II is here to tide me over until they can have their heads surgically removed from their collective derriers. Unfortunately they have been stuck there since the AV/red light-green light nerf to controllers.
Sailor eX
"Not in the face!"
<sigh> Viv says its no longer "all me".
http://wendy-mags.mybrute.com/
If they weren't listening they'd keep those travel power acc debuffs...
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If they weren't listening they'd keep those travel power acc debuffs...
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And the -acc debuff has been on Flight since beta why...
...because they don't listen.
Sailor eX
"Not in the face!"
<sigh> Viv says its no longer "all me".
http://wendy-mags.mybrute.com/
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If they weren't listening they'd keep those travel power acc debuffs...
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And the -acc debuff has been on Flight since beta why...
...because they don't listen.
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I think it's not a case of them not listening, so much as them not caring. They have their vision, which bears only a peripheral resemblance to the game they produced. Everybody who might have liked their vision has pretty much tried the game, hated it, and left for greener pastures. Now that they have a game almost exclusively populated by people who are pretty much OK with the game the devs produced, they are trying to bring it militantly in line with their vision. Which, as I previously mentioned, bears only a peripheral resemblance to the game most of their paying customers are pretty much happy with.
Basically, they chased away their intended audience, but accidentally produced a game that appealed to a different audience. Now they're going to chase away their real audience in a bid to make a game to appeal to people who have already left the game and likely won't come back.
What the heck, it's not *MY* investment capital.
TEH WERDZ ON SKREEN HURTZ MI BRANE!
I just wanted to thank everyone who posed here or sent me PMs in response.
There will always be those who back us - no matter what we do.
There will always be those who think we don't care - no matter what we do.
The majority are between the two.
Like I say around here all the time - "You can't please all of the people, ever."
No matter which one you are - We still thank you for playing and we will still keep trying to do the best we can.
People should be able to make informed decisions.
...but...
Knowing the numbers can ruin a game.
I have played and run many games of Champions, an excellent point-based superhero game. My Champions campaigns alway works fine until the number cuncher of the group comes up with a way to have better offense and better defense than anyone else.
Then suddenly everyone wants to reroll or respec, regardless of how fun their character is as things are...I exaggerate...slightly...
One thing I think is that there should be a secret NDA-protected Test Server where players who know the numbers can point out when things are borked.
...maybe there IS one...
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!