Defense powers and stacking

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Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices. Namely, some buffs had no effect on a player if he had certain Defense powers active.

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Here's an idea, how about you put up on a large poster in whatever rooms you diabolically meet to decide these changes that states your "Basic Design Principles"

1. No uninformed choices
2. Stay true to what you say (didn't you post that no major changes to powersets were going to happen after i5?)
3. The game should be accessible to MMORPG newbies (think you broke this one with your stupid Enhancement Diversification)
4. The game should be FUN! (again, I think you are on your way to breaking this with Enhancement Diversification)

Every time you have made a major change to the game, you have broken at least one principle. Way to stick to your design States. No wonder the playerbase can't predict dev changes and behaviour, we have NO idea of what you are thinking anytime you do anything.

To some degree... We need to know at WHAT degree. Otherwise there are still uninformed choices.

Thanks for nothing.

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Specifics? As in which powers were affected? And how?

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Yes states, what do you mean here? Did you fix the inherent problems with positional vs type in your defense implementation? or are you just talking about adding all but psi damage typing to DEF powes?

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There have been a lot of posts about which Defense powers stack with other Defense powers; some of this has been accurate, but some of it hasn’t.

Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices. Namely, some buffs had no effect on a player if he had certain Defense powers active.

Intuitively, a buff such as a Force Field should provide protection to a player – whether he is a Super Reflexes Scrapper, an Ice Tanker or an Invulnerability Scrapper/Tanker.

As a result, we went through ALL of the Defense buffs in the game and ensured that they provide a benefit to players, regardless of build.

This means that every Defense buff WILL stack to some degree with a player’s defenses, regardless of his power set.

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Please quantify this caveat.

Thanks.

Thanks for fixing stacking defenses. Now address the problems your about to cause again with defense becoming more subpar?

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Yes, this is a good thing.

But could we please get a comment on that elephant over there, Mr. Emmert.

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Yes, and to clarify, it's the elephant that we have been unwittingly making uninformed choices about since March.

What a pitiful attempt at drawing attention away from the big issue of the day. You say that you want all buffs to be effective for all types whether they are applied to a person who is near the caps or not. Then just apply the buff and let it go over the cap without acknowleding it. That way when the effect is DEbuffed, SR Scrappers, Ice tankers that have Force fields can still remain at caps.

Not to mention that you have ALREADY lowered the effective level ATs can reach without outside help in I5 and therefore corrected this mistake previously. This is once again just misinformation and I feel really bad for those who are thanking you for giving ice to eskimos.

Hey States,

Why not add actually numbers to our powers in the enhancement screen. Something like this:

Focused Senses X(Y) where X = value right now, and Y = base value.

Or maybe even give us an actual character sheet so we can see all of our stats, HP, End, (with recovery rates for both), base and enhanced damage for each attack, base and enhanced numbers for EVERYTHING.

That would make everyone INFORMED players.

The only people you hurt with the nerfs are the casual players. How will they know that the 4th defense enhancement will not provide a good benefit until AFTER they trail and AFTER they buy the enhancement for that slot?

What happens when Joe Smith slots up all his attacks with damages while they are leveling up (Using DOs lets say).

While all of those attacks still benefit from those slots, when he buys SOs for his attacks at level 22, suddenly his damage enhancements aren't providing a good return. Why not? It worked that way for the last 22 levels, why did it suddenly change?

BLAH BLAH BLAH,You ruined the game,10 people in PI at 11 am central,5 people in perez park at the same time.Nice going your balance has made wOw stronger and has made City of Ghost Towns.

Your idea of balance is very strange you made superheroes not super at all.Did you ever think people dont want to be an average Joe in a superhero game when they are average Joes in real life.

I have noticed that after doing the tyrant mission for the 150th time that you added yourself to the equation,escorting you out i also noticed that your damage is SUPER,GODLIKE, did you not see fit to nerf yourself?

You have made us all abide by your vision of fun,my opinion it stinks.If your investers dont realize that your devs are insane then they get what they deserve.Lost revenues,a dwindling player base and a certain failure of cov with the hardcore gamers.

RETURN THE GAME TO THE FUN DAYS WHEN LOGGING ON GAVE YOU A SENSE OF SUPREMACY.Now when i log on i wince in pain affraid to open my eyes to the next NERF!

I think you created the best game ever made,unfortunately Statesman someone nerfed your brain and i can only now contribute to your nerfed revenues.You just lost my 9 accounts.

ADDIOS JACK!

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Yes, this is a good thing.

But could we please get a comment on that elephant over there, Mr. Emmert.

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"Elephant? There's no elephant in that mirror."

<<checks the "Other" Mirror>>

"Ah, THAT ONE!"

<<argues with self...>>

"There is No OTher Mirror!"

"Yes there is - can't you see it? Are you blind?"

"I'm not blind! I'm a DEV - That's like a GOD! I'm incapable of making changes or mistakes..."

"No - well admitting them maybe.... Mr. "No-More Changes to the Powersets" last month!"

(Some celebrity voices and their schizophrenic alter-ego's HAVE been impersonated; or at least teased)

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BLAH BLAH BLAH,You ruined the game,10 people in PI at 11 am central,5 people in perez park at the same time.Nice going your balance has made wOw stronger and has made City of Ghost Towns.

Your idea of balance is very strange you made superheroes not super at all.Did you ever think people dont want to be an average Joe in a superhero game when they are average Joes in real life.

I have noticed that after doing the tyrant mission for the 150th time that you added yourself to the equation,escorting you out i also noticed that your damage is SUPER,GODLIKE did you not see fit to nerf yourself?

You have made us all abide by your vision of fun,my opinion it stinks.If your investers dont realize that your devs are insane then they get what they deserve.Lost revenues,a dwindling player base and a certain failure of cov with the hardcore gamers.

RETURN THE GAME TO THE FUN DAYS WHEN LOGGING ON GAVE YOU A SENSE OF SUPREMACY.Now when i log on i wince in pain affraid to open my eyes to the next NERF!

I thingk you created the best game ever made,unfortunately Statesman someone nerfed your brain and i can only now contribute to your nerfed revenues.You just lost my 9 accounts.

ADDIOS JACK!

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And ill second that bro.

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There have been a lot of posts about which Defense powers stack with other Defense powers; some of this has been accurate, but some of it hasn’t.

Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices. Namely, some buffs had no effect on a player if he had certain Defense powers active.

Intuitively, a buff such as a Force Field should provide protection to a player – whether he is a Super Reflexes Scrapper, an Ice Tanker or an Invulnerability Scrapper/Tanker.

As a result, we went through ALL of the Defense buffs in the game and ensured that they provide a benefit to players, regardless of build.

This means that every Defense buff WILL stack to some degree with a player’s defenses, regardless of his power set.

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Seems like you guys have lost sight of a lot more than just design principles. You lost site of as what the players REALLY consider fun and what you try to tell them is fun or isn't fun from them. Doesn't matter if you getthousands of threads, and tens of thousands of post when people are like "WTH are u doing?!" Jack, I used to think you guys knew what you were doing and were taking the game in the right direction. This was from release until about I3. Then me and many(check the posts) others lost that faith. Nerfing everything for PvP whether you admit to it or not, has essentially changed the fun level we the players/subscribers/people who pay your salary have. We go and tell your we're having less fun, yet you tell us we're having more fun. What part of "NO WE'RE NOT" don't you get? If you'd just rollback some of the poorly thought out nerfs and stopped making people angrier so they leave in droves(see my SG members last time on for this proof) and concrentrated more on content than math formulas, you'd gain people back who left and gain new users because we'd actually start recommending CoH to people again. Stop the nonsense already... For the sake of the game and your own jobs!

It's the Wookie "defense".
"Does my client look like a wookie? Does he look like a Wookie??"

"Look at the monkey! Dance monkey, dance!"

I appreciate it when you admit a mistake and work to fix it.

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BLAH BLAH BLAH,You ruined the game,10 people in PI at 11 am central,5 people in perez park at the same time.Nice going your balance has made wOw stronger and has made City of Ghost Towns.

Your idea of balance is very strange you made superheroes not super at all.Did you ever think people dont want to be an average Joe in a superhero game when they are average Joes in real life.

I have noticed that after doing the tyrant mission for the 150th time that you added yourself to the equation,escorting you out i also noticed that your damage is SUPER,GODLIKE did you not see fit to nerf yourself?

You have made us all abide by your vision of fun,my opinion it stinks.If your investers dont realize that your devs are insane then they get what they deserve.Lost revenues,a dwindling player base and a certain failure of cov with the hardcore gamers.

RETURN THE GAME TO THE FUN DAYS WHEN LOGGING ON GAVE YOU A SENSE OF SUPREMACY.Now when i log on i wince in pain affraid to open my eyes to the next NERF!

I thingk you created the best game ever made,unfortunately Statesman someone nerfed your brain and i can only now contribute to your nerfed revenues.You just lost my 9 accounts.

ADDIOS JACK!

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And ill second that bro.

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I'll 3rd that... Bring back I3 when your game rocked...every thing just gets sucker and sucker...we dread updates now. We hate your contsant tweaking and we are all sick to death of respecing... You lost us all Jack a few months back.

to some degree? SO that means ceritan defense powers will be moreeffecti ve when stacked with others?

And when will this be uimplemented? Or is it already active?

to some degree? So that means ceritan defense powers will be more effective when stacked with others?

And when will this be implemented? Or is it already active?

I'm glad to see this post from Statesman. I would like details, of course, but I like the specific and general results.

DEVS: "We found a problem and fixed it."
PLAYERS: "There's a problem? There's a problem! And the problem is bigger than that!"
DEVS: "We're fixing the bigger problem."

They don't fix things instantly. . . and sometimes it takes a couple tries.

As for the elephant? I can discuss the elephant in any one of two hundred other threads.

How about those fixes to damage debuff, Accuracy debuff and Defense in the pvp setting you guys keep putting off.

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Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices.

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Too bad the entire concept of building characters is based on uninformed choices. The manual doesn't list all the effects of every power, it is not updated for every release. There is no place within the game to find out how much benefit you get from power A over power B, you don't tell us how much benefit we get from slotting a power.

Uninformed choices seem to be the rule rather than the exception. What is the big deal about not releasing effect numbers? Let us have them.

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Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices.

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Does this mean we will be getting an updated manual sometime soon? Oh, sorry - probably not the right time to pull THAT old nag out of the laundry hamper.

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There have been a lot of posts about which Defense powers stack with other Defense powers; some of this has been accurate, but some of it hasn’t.

Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices. Namely, some buffs had no effect on a player if he had certain Defense powers active.

Intuitively, a buff such as a Force Field should provide protection to a player – whether he is a Super Reflexes Scrapper, an Ice Tanker or an Invulnerability Scrapper/Tanker.

As a result, we went through ALL of the Defense buffs in the game and ensured that they provide a benefit to players, regardless of build.

This means that every Defense buff WILL stack to some degree with a player’s defenses, regardless of his power set.

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Thank you for reviewing this issue and making sure the DEF buffs do stack.

Run Statesman! I'll shield you with my body!

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Yes, this is a good thing.

But could we please get a comment on that elephant over there, Mr. Emmert.

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This was hilarious though, and I would like some comments on the ED-system. =)

Could you please clarify as to whether or not this is completely in the live game now, and if not, when it will go to test?

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Seemingly, we lost sight of a basic principle of Design: players shouldn’t make uninformed choices.

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Too bad the entire concept of building characters is based on uninformed choices. The manual doesn't list all the effects of every power, it is not updated for every release. There is no place within the game to find out how much benefit you get from power A over power B, you don't tell us how much benefit we get from slotting a power. Uninformed choices seem to be the rule rather than the exception. What is the big deal about not releasing effect numbers? Let us have them.

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Because people get too caught up in the numbers and try to quantify their "fun" using those numbers. "Fun" cannot be boiled down into a math equation. We don't need the numbers. Better, clearer descriptions? Yes, that we DO need. But the numbers themselves are not necessary.