[ QUOTE ]
Generally speaking, the following has been true:
* If Statesman says something in the pipeline, we do get it - or we get a reason why we didn't. The weight of examples is the former, and not the latter.
[/ QUOTE ]
Technically, this is true. Statesman did say (several times) that he felt Super Reflexes was underperforming, and that they would look into it, and that changes were coming. In fact, they did look at it, and they did change the set in I5.
The fact that they lowered SR defenses more than any other scrapper set is a tad surprising, but doesn't contradict the statement.
You know, most airlines consider a flight "departed" as soon as it backs away from the gate, even if it subsequently sits on the runway for an hour, for the purposes of "on-time departure" statistics.
[ QUOTE ]
* If a change makes the game painful to play, it gets rolled back or altered so as to remove the pain. Boss boosts in I3, for example, and the purple patch.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is also true, but a qualifier has to be added: if it is painful to them. The boss change is a change that people considered painful, and it was rolled back. Travel suppression was considered painful to some, and it was left alone. INT+IH exclusivity was considered painful, and it was rolled back. The enhanced ("bug fix") crash for the blaster nukes is considered painful, and its being left alone. The devs are probably batting .500 on "pain" issues.
Also, not a change, but practiced brawler's root has been considered painful since the beginning of time: I've actually /bugged it just to express my feelings on that one.
The problem is that sometimes "pain" fits their vision. Vision trumps pain.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You mean whenever States puts down his hand-held and stops fighting 64-bit bosses? Whenever States says ANYTHING I just roll my eyes. He is clueless, and a liar to boot. His team just nods and goes with whatever he says, whether they just don't disagree with him or are allowed to. It shows in the absolute lack of quality in the game.
[/ QUOTE ]
Generally speaking, the following has been true:
* If Statesman says something in the pipeline, we do get it - or we get a reason why we didn't. The weight of examples is the former, and not the latter.
* If a change makes the game painful to play, it gets rolled back or altered so as to remove the pain. Boss boosts in I3, for example, and the purple patch.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is true. It still doesnt mean that States isnt clueless. Look at his laughable explanation of how great defense is vs. resistance.
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Well, can defenders P L E A S E get a damage increase then? In light of the controller containment feature, defenders now have, by far, the weakest offense in the game.
Otherwise, this is a defender damage nerf (it's not a controller damage nerf, since their containment feature more than compensates for it).
[/ QUOTE ]
I think you might've missed all the replies to this: Only Enervating Field was nerfed, all the other powers are untouched.
[/ QUOTE ]
hmm. This was said by the same people that originally said nothing had changed until they were shown the changes, that they themselves had made? ....and I'm supposed to believe them now ? Having some trouble with the logic there.
[ QUOTE ]
I wonder if its time for whoever is in charge of patch notes to be fired?
Its been over a year, and we still cant get accurate or complete patch notes from the Developers. This leads me to believe they either dont keep an accurate change log themselves, or simply dont care about keeping the player base informed, which runs contrary to their stated goal of making sure players dont make uninformed decisions.
Surely, after over a year of not doing a compentant job of communicating information to the players accurately or promptly, its time for some kind of action on Cryptic's part.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm going to go with the latter. (I bolded it for emphasis)
[ QUOTE ]
30% -Res according to Erratic IIRC. -Dam should correspond to that, either directly or relatively.
[/ QUOTE ]
Here's something that is very very sad and disturbing. We have to rely on other Players for honest information about the game, because we can't trust the missives from the company itself.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
30% -Res according to Erratic IIRC. -Dam should correspond to that, either directly or relatively.
[/ QUOTE ]
Here's something that is very very sad and disturbing. We have to rely on other Players for honest information about the game, because we can't trust the missives from the company itself.
[/ QUOTE ]
DING! Thats the main problem that I see as well. I can't trust anything that is written about the powers in this game. Not in game and not out of game by the Devs. Not any more. Not after REGEN and EF fiascos. I originally said that everyone makes a mistake once in awhile and that we should kinda let the regen fiasco slide and just focus on other things.
I expected that the developers would now be on gaurd and paying more attention to players when they say that something is messed up with their testing. The EF nerf taught me otherwise. Now, I am always going to be wary about every power in this game.
Hell, there are still bugs with TA that are not documented and it just came out.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Generally speaking, the following has been true:
* If Statesman says something in the pipeline, we do get it - or we get a reason why we didn't. The weight of examples is the former, and not the latter.
[/ QUOTE ]
Technically, this is true. Statesman did say (several times) that he felt Super Reflexes was underperforming, and that they would look into it, and that changes were coming. In fact, they did look at it, and they did change the set in I5.
The fact that they lowered SR defenses more than any other scrapper set is a tad surprising, but doesn't contradict the statement.
You know, most airlines consider a flight "departed" as soon as it backs away from the gate, even if it subsequently sits on the runway for an hour, for the purposes of "on-time departure" statistics.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, I didn't say that they never make changes that make the game painful to play. I think I said they do make them, and then usually do something to correct it.
Issue 5 may see a change in that, though, given the response to Ice, SR, and FF concerns. Or maybe the devs just hate Defense.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
* If a change makes the game painful to play, it gets rolled back or altered so as to remove the pain. Boss boosts in I3, for example, and the purple patch.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is also true, but a qualifier has to be added: if it is painful to them. The boss change is a change that people considered painful, and it was rolled back. Travel suppression was considered painful to some, and it was left alone. INT+IH exclusivity was considered painful, and it was rolled back. The enhanced ("bug fix") crash for the blaster nukes is considered painful, and its being left alone. The devs are probably batting .500 on "pain" issues.
[/ QUOTE ]
The nukes are an example of Statesman's risk vs. reward. The travel powers did have -acc and that was changed to suppression.
[ QUOTE ]
Also, not a change, but practiced brawler's root has been considered painful since the beginning of time: I've actually /bugged it just to express my feelings on that one.
The problem is that sometimes "pain" fits their vision. Vision trumps pain.
[/ QUOTE ]
Possibly, but in general, the devs have been willing to ease up on some things. Not everything, true.
You do refer to things that have been a certain way since launch, though, and I was talking about things that they changed since launch, and then eased up on.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
[ QUOTE ]
This is true. It still doesnt mean that States isnt clueless. Look at his laughable explanation of how great defense is vs. resistance.
[/ QUOTE ]
More to the point, I don't think jabs at Statesman's competence are particularly convincing.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
30% -Res according to Erratic IIRC. -Dam should correspond to that, either directly or relatively.
[/ QUOTE ]
Here's something that is very very sad and disturbing. We have to rely on other Players for honest information about the game, because we can't trust the missives from the company itself.
[/ QUOTE ]
DING! Thats the main problem that I see as well. I can't trust anything that is written about the powers in this game. Not in game and not out of game by the Devs. Not any more. Not after REGEN and EF fiascos. I originally said that everyone makes a mistake once in awhile and that we should kinda let the regen fiasco slide and just focus on other things.
[/ QUOTE ]
It is very difficult to keep all of the proper data together in one place for easy reference. I suspect that Cryptic has someone collate all of the check-in comments from various powers-changing adjustments made to the game, and that is the official company line with regard to power changes.
Looking up the specific numbers on a power takes some work. Not a ton, maybe 5-10 minutes- less for whoever wrote the code initially.
It seems totally unreasonable to expect Cryptic to invest the time to look into every claim made on the boards or in-game about unnecessary power changes. To investigate a change requires even more work, because you also need to review past revisions of that power, and compare. In many cases, I suspect the numbers do not immedaitely suggest what, exactly, changed from a player's perspective.
I suspect that the changes to EF were done as part of the "global defense reduction" pass, and checked in with that batch of work. Unless someone specifically reviews the EF portion of the code to look for changes, it is totally reasonable for Cryptic's spokespeople (CuppaJoe, Statesman) to stick to what they have documented as the changes.
It's great that CoH has a fan base which is dedicated to getting information out to the people who are looking for it. This sort of thing helps Cryptic and the players alike. But claiming that Cryptic should do the work themselves is simply unreasonable from a development point of view.
--Mr. Strange
[ QUOTE ]
It is very difficult to keep all of the proper data together in one place for easy reference. I suspect that Cryptic has someone collate all of the check-in comments from various powers-changing adjustments made to the game, and that is the official company line with regard to power changes.
Looking up the specific numbers on a power takes some work. Not a ton, maybe 5-10 minutes- less for whoever wrote the code initially.
It seems totally unreasonable to expect Cryptic to invest the time to look into every claim made on the boards or in-game about unnecessary power changes. To investigate a change requires even more work, because you also need to review past revisions of that power, and compare. In many cases, I suspect the numbers do not immedaitely suggest what, exactly, changed from a player's perspective.
[/ QUOTE ]
I think you are very much mistaken. If they really took that long to anylize the data they would never be able to make any changes much less actually work on two games. In any case Geko explained in the latest developer response what I already suspected. The information is very much, right at hand.
Geko:
[ QUOTE ]
All of this is done in Excel. Its pretty massive, but its also quite flexible and powerful since all values are interlinked. And since all these values are in Excel, the data can easily be analyzed. For instance, we can instantly see what the average damage a Tanker will take if we change one number. And we can compare this based on a number of variables such as Level, Enhancements, and Buffs.
[/ QUOTE ]
Frankly, it is not unreasonable to expect to have a game that actually has proper documentation to how powers work and what they actually do. CoH hasn't provided that from day one if you take the time to think about it.
[ QUOTE ]
But claiming that Cryptic should do the work themselves is simply unreasonable from a development point of view.
[/ QUOTE ]
REALLY? So let me get this straight. The players tell the Developers what is wrong with their game and it is unreasonable for us to expect them to check it, confirm it and get back to us with proper notes.
It is also apparently unreasonable to expect the developers to document their own changes (which a good developer always does anyway at some level).
So, are you saying that we shouldn't bother with the giveing the developers feed back AND we shouldn't expect them to tell us anything?
Sorry, but that won't cut it in my book and expect a HELL of alot more from an MMO than what you suggest.
Take your plattitudes elsewhere, ESPECIALLY if you don't know jack about what happened or why.
[ QUOTE ]
It is very difficult to keep all of the proper data together in one place for easy reference. I suspect that Cryptic has someone collate all of the check-in comments from various powers-changing adjustments made to the game, and that is the official company line with regard to power changes.
Looking up the specific numbers on a power takes some work. Not a ton, maybe 5-10 minutes- less for whoever wrote the code initially.
It seems totally unreasonable to expect Cryptic to invest the time to look into every claim made on the boards or in-game about unnecessary power changes. To investigate a change requires even more work, because you also need to review past revisions of that power, and compare. In many cases, I suspect the numbers do not immedaitely suggest what, exactly, changed from a player's perspective.
I suspect that the changes to EF were done as part of the "global defense reduction" pass, and checked in with that batch of work. Unless someone specifically reviews the EF portion of the code to look for changes, it is totally reasonable for Cryptic's spokespeople (CuppaJoe, Statesman) to stick to what they have documented as the changes.
It's great that CoH has a fan base which is dedicated to getting information out to the people who are looking for it. This sort of thing helps Cryptic and the players alike. But claiming that Cryptic should do the work themselves is simply unreasonable from a development point of view.
--Mr. Strange
[/ QUOTE ]
No offense Mr. Strange, but I don't agree. I happen to be part owner and a developer in a software company and if you are using change control procedures then all the changes should be documented. We, since our work deals with people's money (talk about pissing people off), have everyone of our programmers include their changes at the bottom of the file with dates/times. Is it difficult for someone like Statesmen to know the answer? Individually, yes, but there are REASONS we have Change Documentation and any and ALL changes should be registered (btw, we do Tax Software so please don't cite complexity as an issue). What COULD be an issue is laziness or spotty change control procedures/documentation.
Personally, I think it's a combination of spotty change control and the fact that they are working the same programmers on their CoV debut. I'm guessing they aren't willing to pay the cash to have dev's for both softwares and have people pulling double duty or covering other offices (as many companies do).
Luckily for me. We only work on one software. =)
My 2 cents and humble opinion.
Machine00
"I will tank until I die. In heaven, I'll keep on tanking"
[ QUOTE ]
I think you are very much mistaken. If they really took that long to anylize the data they would never be able to make any changes much less actually work on two games. In any case Geko explained in the latest developer response what I already suspected. The information is very much, right at hand.
Geko:
[ QUOTE ]
All of this is done in Excel. Its pretty massive, but its also quite flexible and powerful since all values are interlinked. And since all these values are in Excel, the data can easily be analyzed. For instance, we can instantly see what the average damage a Tanker will take if we change one number. And we can compare this based on a number of variables such as Level, Enhancements, and Buffs.
[/ QUOTE ]
[/ QUOTE ]
Well it's certainly possible that all of the power data is kept together and up to date. But is that excel sheet driving the data, or is it generated based upon data changes in the code base?
If it's the former, than it would be very easy for anyone at Cryptic to check the numbers on a power. It would also be something of a headache to review past revisions, since every change made to any power would all be revisions on the same document.
If it's the latter, then I stand by my assesment of the difficulty for a given developer to get numerical data. That would be something Geko might generate for himself, and it might not be readily available to everyone else.
I strongly suspect it's the latter, since excel documents are difficult to diff between revisions. Not being able to diff the powerset numbers would be an insane oversight.
It's certainly irritating when the players are aware of a change and cannot get confirmation, but how many erronious claims are made on the boards every day? Heck, how many erronious bugs are reported in-game every day?
I'm not trying to imply that anything wrong has occured here - I'm just describing why, in my mind, this type of oversight is totally within the realm of normal, and is not evidence of any incompetency on the part of the Cryptic staff.
--Mr. Strange
[ QUOTE ]
Well it's certainly possible that all of the power data is kept together and up to date. But is that excel sheet driving the data, or is it generated based upon data changes in the code base?
If it's the former, than it would be very easy for anyone at Cryptic to check the numbers on a power. It would also be something of a headache to review past revisions, since every change made to any power would all be revisions on the same document.
If it's the latter, then I stand by my assesment of the difficulty for a given developer to get numerical data. That would be something Geko might generate for himself, and it might not be readily available to everyone else.
It's certainly irritating when the players are aware of a change and cannot get confirmation, but how many erronious claims are made on the boards every day? Heck, how many erronious bugs are reported in-game every day?
I'm not trying to imply that anything wrong has occured here - I'm just describing why, in my mind, this type of oversight is totally within the realm of normal, and is not evidence of any incompetency on the part of the Cryptic staff.
--Mr. Strange
[/ QUOTE ]
What I think you are missing here is not how to look up that changes have been made, but don't you think someone somewhere has to make a decision to make those changes in the first place?
The way you are describing it, it sounds like the programmers just go in and say "Let's change this today, and see what happens..."
I'm not a programmer, I'm not even in IT, but if you work at a corporation or any business, you do not just go in and fiddle with the product without a decision being made to change things by someone, somewhere.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
From Statesman's recent interview on Eurogamer, it looks like some of it is slated for I6.
[/ QUOTE ]
You mean whenever States puts down his hand-held and stops fighting 64-bit bosses? Whenever States says ANYTHING I just roll my eyes. He is clueless, and a liar to boot. His team just nods and goes with whatever he says, whether they just don't disagree with him or are allowed to. It shows in the absolute lack of quality in the game.
They added a graphic to the water in Issue 5. In door missions (ie caves) it looks like crap. Good job team!
- Captain Amazing
[/ QUOTE ]
Gee, calling someone a liar... just flat-out saying he's a liar. That's the way to get respect... NOT!
So, don't pay any attention to what Statesman says, he's lieing... right?
There will NOT be any Damage Resist inspirations in the near future, he was just lieing... right?
There will NOT be any PvP between CoH heroes and CoV villains, he was just lieing.... right?
You can't trust a word he says, he just a liar.... right?
There is "absolute lack of quality" in the game. That's why there are 160,000 subscribers, because that's all they could find who would pay for "absolute lack of quality"? No way it could be because overall, it's a great game... not possible???
[ QUOTE ]
Frankly, it is not unreasonable to expect to have a game that actually has proper documentation to how powers work and what they actually do. CoH hasn't provided that from day one if you take the time to think about it.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's not unreasonable at all, *unless* it is a stated element of the game that that information is not provided.
It would be very reasonable for Firaxis to provide the exact AI formulas for Civilization III, and many people would love to have that info. However, they've decided that withholding that information from the players provides a more immersive game.
Similarly with City of Heroes, Jack has explicitly stated that he would prefer to not release numbers whenever possible. Now, the very nature of the game allows players to figure out most of the numbers involved and they can't stop it. However, it doesn't mean they have to encourage it in any way.
They don't want City of Spreadsheets and while people can play that game all they want, I don't understand how anyone can not see where they can are coming from.
It's not like you're asking them to do something they may just have neglicted to do; you're asking them to do something that they have explicitly said that they *do not* want to do. You're asking them to fundamentally change the feel of the game.
Of course, anyone can ask that, but it doesn't seem like these posts have that understanding to them. It's like they're asking some small thing.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Frankly, it is not unreasonable to expect to have a game that actually has proper documentation to how powers work and what they actually do. CoH hasn't provided that from day one if you take the time to think about it.
[/ QUOTE ]
It's not unreasonable at all, *unless* it is a stated element of the game that that information is not provided.
It would be very reasonable for Firaxis to provide the exact AI formulas for Civilization III, and many people would love to have that info. However, they've decided that withholding that information from the players provides a more immersive game.
Similarly with City of Heroes, Jack has explicitly stated that he would prefer to not release numbers whenever possible. Now, the very nature of the game allows players to figure out most of the numbers involved and they can't stop it. However, it doesn't mean they have to encourage it in any way.
They don't want City of Spreadsheets and while people can play that game all they want, I don't understand how anyone can not see where they can are coming from.
It's not like you're asking them to do something they may just have neglicted to do; you're asking them to do something that they have explicitly said that they *do not* want to do. You're asking them to fundamentally change the feel of the game.
Of course, anyone can ask that, but it doesn't seem like these posts have that understanding to them. It's like they're asking some small thing.
[/ QUOTE ]
Nope, you misunderstood me. It would be nice to have the numbers but I wasn't even going that far. Statesman has said that he wants players to be able to make informed decisions about powers without the numbers.
Let me ask you something, how long is a long recharge time? Is a long recharge time the same for every power or is every power different?
Do some powers have a moderate recharge time that is as long as another powers long recharge time?
Does extreme damage mean the same thing between sets or even between different builds?
Is there any consistancy to the descriptions of powers? No, there isn't.
It gets better though, how many powers had descriptions that were incorrect when the game was released? Hell, look at how many have incorrect descriptions now. I won't even get into powers that accept the wrong kind of enhancements, that is just buggy work.
In anycase, just looking at what is presented by this game and taking into account Jack's own Statement it is clear that they have not kept the player base informed.
Not keeping players informed about the powers seems to have been a goal from day one.
I posted, but it didn't post. So, for laziness and brevity's sake. I agree with Concern.
Machine 00
Wow, the Devs still haven't come out and told us why we got 4 different versions of what happened, the latter 3 of which show that they directly lied to us with the first one...
Speaking of missing patch notes, I swear I downloaded an update this morning, but no patch notes on it? What's going on there?
[ QUOTE ]
Speaking of missing patch notes, I swear I downloaded an update this morning, but no patch notes on it? What's going on there?
[/ QUOTE ]
NO PEEKING!!!
Let's Dance!
It has something to do with miss. liberty's Suprise! read more about it on the main page of the city of heroes website. I hope it's a WICKED cool suprise!
p.s.: Keep up the good work states!
It seems Jack still hasn't figured out whose responsibility it is to provide the Patch Notes.
Don't the players ever get some respect and a break?
[ QUOTE ]
Speaking of missing patch notes, I swear I downloaded an update this morning, but no patch notes on it? What's going on there?
[/ QUOTE ]
Its for the Holiday Surprise thing.
They don't want to spoil it. Notes will be up in the morning tomorrow I imagine.
Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
[ QUOTE ]
Just because you disagree with someone/something doesn't mean that your only recourse is to "drop your account". Stating that you are dissatisfied with a product doesn't mean that you're never going to use it again, it's just one persons opinion and that opinion is just as valid to them as yours is to you. I don't particularly care that Windex ISN'T always streak-free, yet I still use it. Takes me a little longer to get that steak-free shine because I have to work at it a little harder, but I still get it and I still continue to buy it.
I don't like some things about this game but I still continue to pay my $30 a month for it (for 2 accounts) because even with all the changes I do still have fun. I've made comments on regen, the phase shift nerf, and other things. No, I didn't like what they did and I voiced that dislike just like any consumer that had issues with a product would do. Like my Windex, I have to work a little harder at it, but I still play.
[/ QUOTE ]
And all the above is just fine. But it simply means that you _tolerate_ bugs in software and you continue to _pay_ for access to the software, _including_ the bugs.
My point really wasn't that you should just quit paying and leave. My point was that you and I, as consumers, have created an entire industry (software specifically, technology in general) that will pay top dollar just to have something new and different, even when it isn't high quality.
I'm the pot here.....I sell software, very high priced software at that. It gets shipped with bugs all the time, some known and documented in the release notes, some not known until the customer finds it. If I spent all the time/money to ensure 100% error free with every release, I'd rapidly lose market share to my competitors who ship bugged software that contains "enough" functionality and/or "new stuff" to make mine look obsolete, even if mine is perfect.
That's the industry we are talking about, and I was commenting on the views that claim Cryptic should be "ashamed" for pushing buggy code to live and/or not addressing specific user-submitted bugs in very short order. We've created this industry. It works this way because we have paid for it to work this way and won't let it work any other way. And the only way to get what you want is to quit rewarding (paying) for shipping bugs.
Otherwise, learn to live with it...it's what you are basically asking for by demanding rapid deployments of new features. Or be willing to have releases on Test for, I dunno.....6-8 months while every single bug is tested, re-tested and re-tested until "perfect?"