Not once, not twice, but three times...
By
008Zulu,
Posted on: 2006-01-10 16:26 in Developers' Corner
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First...I confirm that we're working on right now (as in pohsyb in the next room) to add CoV costume parts into CoH if you own both games....
Then we repeal the hated stealth nerf. The reason why: many well reasoned posts. It's that simple. You guys pointed out the problems.
AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.
In order to incentivize larger teams, Positron is going to add a bonus to AV rewards!
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Just to calrify: The Archvillain thing is ONLY for Mission AV's, Archvillains in Task Forces/Strike Forces and World Spawns will not be changed.
In City of Villains, Archvillain-class enemies are called "Heroes" and this change applies to them as well. (With the exception of Strike Forces and World Spawns of course).
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Very cool. I have just one thought though. And that's the use of the word "Heroes". When I hear "Heroes" I tend to think of other COH players, who are no where near as strong as say, Statesman or Positron. Why not give those guys a stronger sounding classification title, like "Superhero"? It's just that when I hear "Archvillain" that word just reverberates the point that this is a very strong opponent. Using the word "Hero" just doesn't convey that same intensity. If Marvel won't let you use "Superhero", then consider something like "Legendary Hero".
Just my 2 cents.
Also, does this change also affect villains like Tyrant, who are the baddest of the bad?
FireWild - lv 50 Fire/Fire Blaster (Justice)
FyreWyld - lv 40 Energy/Energy Brute (Justice)
... and way too many others
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First...I confirm that we're working on right now (as in pohsyb in the next room) to add CoV costume parts into CoH if you own both games....
Then we repeal the hated stealth nerf. The reason why: many well reasoned posts. It's that simple. You guys pointed out the problems.
AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.
In order to incentivize larger teams, Positron is going to add a bonus to AV rewards!
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Thank you, thank you and thank you.
YAY!
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Any time you use "most" in a situation with exploit, someone will turn it to "always abused".
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But part of what makes an exploit an exploit is repeatability. If we're talking mission complete XP here, how is that exploitable? Once you've finished the mission, you can't go back and do it again.
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Yes, it is repeatible. You set up the mission, *quit* from the team and select a different mission. The team is doing your mission, but you are no longer connected to it for completion purposes.
Still here, even after all this time!
My concern with this is that you will not be able to manipulate the level of an AV anymore. For example when soloing a mission you would have an even lvl AV on villanous up to a plus 2 or 3 when on relentless. So now if you want to solo an AV the only way is to be set on relentless and have to fight a plus 2 or 3 guy? What if I want to try and solo an even level AV? that will no longer be an option with this new system.
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AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.
In order to incentivize larger teams, Positron is going to add a bonus to AV rewards!
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This is an excellent solution. While I'm sure someone will still find something to cry about this seems like the best solution I have ever heard of to keep everyone happy.
Way to go.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
I'm an FF defender...I need a team even for bosses/elite bosses 
So all this means is now I gotta do the same amount of work getting a team for less XP unless I wanna work to gather a large enough team or I wanna jack up my difficulty (thereby making the rest of the mission even harder too)
And now people can get those badges an accolade w/o ever having to team and probably without much risk to those ATs that are typically "soloers" anyway since those are Scrapper/Tanker and they can usually take on an even level AV without much fear of death.
Not sure what this change accomplishes other than to shut up the soloers by making one of the very few non-soloable aspects of the game softer for them.
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Oh okay, so it's just the usual bait-and-switch that comes like clockwork. Suppression still brings in a huge host of QOL problems and is as bafflingly asinine as the previous idea. They may as well just change the power name to "kinda sneaky...sometimes".
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No bait and switch at all. His posting is quite clear that the current version on test is being pulled so they can recode it to suppression.
Further Statesman comments that he liked the idea of supression that other players proposed and they would be using that. So you have the players, us making good and solid arguements about some specific problems. Not the problems your complaining about but other problems. And a suggestion by players of an alternative mechanic to do it.
Statesman read the two suggestions and aggreed that the fix as implimented on test could be abused to harrass people. So they would pull it, further he agreed that supression was a better fix then simply requireing it to be turned off and that they would recode it for that.
This is bait and switch how?
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Its a bait and switch because most people didnt see this as a problem to begin with and as such needed no solution. Now instead of just leaving it alone, we are happy it just not being nerfed like it was planned.
They can say they listen to the playerbase because it was suggested by a few that suppression be used instead of no clicky, but most people said just leave it alone.
Its like me taking $10 from you, I let you stew over it for awhile, I give you back $5 and say here now that not as bad, you're happy just to have $5 instead of being pissed you dont have it all back. Ok! that was a bad analogy, my haed hurts.
A copy of this message has been sent to Statesman via pm.
Dear Statesman,
Thank you for designing an excellent game. This is my first pm to you despite numerous forum posts. I don't bother busy people like yourself frivolously so please understand I consider this issue important.
Regarding:
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AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.
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Let me say I realize I am likely in a minority here but I deeply dislike this change.
As a player who solos many missions I still want to be able to encounter Archvillians. Under the current set-up I will find those Archvilians when I take the missions they are in and then be forced to find a way to deal with them. I like this.
Under the new set-up I will be forced to research every mission I take, in advance, to ensure that I have enough people and/or a high enough difficulty to see that AV.
This raises a number of questions in my mind:
1) I thought Heroic was the base level of the game. Why do I have to increase my difficulty to experience the base content in the base game?
2) When will this check be performed? When I accept the mission? When I zone into the mission for the first time? Or when I reach the point on the mission map where the AV/EB will spawn? If I have an appropriate sized team but someone link dies or drops just as we are about to spawn the AV will I have to reset the missions? If so, won't I outlevel my contacts even faster than before because I'm now being forced to both raise my difficulty, pad my teams and quite possibly redo missions multiple times if I encounter an Elite Boss and want to upgrade them to an AV?
I am not asking that this change be reversed but I am asking for the following:
1) mission text for any mission that could spawn an AV needs to state that directly and explicitly so that I know I have to round up more people in order to spawn an AV.
2) AV spawning/not spawning needs to lock the first time the mission entrance is clicked so that if someone drops and the rest of the team wish to try to continue anyway they still face an AV. Otherwise they can reset and face the EB. I feel the onus should be on people who seek to avoid the AV rather than the people who seek to face it and this will help with that.
3) The bonus for fighting AVs should be significant. even to a character at the level cap. Significant enough people will hopefully dust off retired level 50s to rerun old storyarcs with new people.
Adding these, hopefully minor, features should go a long way to mollifying the concerns of the people who were not calling for a change.
Thank you for your time. I would be happy to receive a reply but understand if the sheer volume of mail you receive makes this impossible.
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This is bait and switch how?
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Its a bait and switch because most people didnt see this as a problem to begin with and as such needed no solution. Now instead of just leaving it alone, we are happy it just not being nerfed like it was planned.
They can say they listen to the playerbase because it was suggested by a few that suppression be used instead of no clicky, but most people said just leave it alone.
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Just because most people didn't see it as a problem, doesn't mean that there isn't/wasn't one.
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Any time you use "most" in a situation with exploit, someone will turn it to "always abused".
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But part of what makes an exploit an exploit is repeatability. If we're talking mission complete XP here, how is that exploitable? Once you've finished the mission, you can't go back and do it again.
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Yes, it is repeatible. You set up the mission, *quit* from the team and select a different mission. The team is doing your mission, but you are no longer connected to it for completion purposes.
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OK, that's an exploit I hadn't thought of. The solution may be, if a person quits a team (as opposed to disconnects) the mission fails. Or simply, when a mission is completed, then the mission is marked as completed. GMs can complete a mission while you're offline, so should completing a mission.
This is not dumpster diving, where the only downside of blocking dumpster diving is that you can't dumpster dive anymore. There are very legitimate reasons people wish to do this, and to take it away because someone can abuse it, is wrong. And I hope the devs don't do it.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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My concern with this is that you will not be able to manipulate the level of an AV anymore. For example when soloing a mission you would have an even lvl AV on villanous up to a plus 2 or 3 when on relentless. So now if you want to solo an AV the only way is to be set on relentless and have to fight a plus 2 or 3 guy? What if I want to try and solo an even level AV? that will no longer be an option with this new system.
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I think people need to just give up on this. The devs declaratively don't want anyone to have that capability. If you do have it, history tells us you've got a nice string of nerfs coming. For quite a while now I've only heard of one AT across the two games pulling it off.
I'm all for players being powerful and soloing lots and lots of content. But I can give the devs that they just don't want anyone doing this, and that, as such, I can't see arguing for anything that's related to doing it.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Any time you use "most" in a situation with exploit, someone will turn it to "always abused".
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But part of what makes an exploit an exploit is repeatability. If we're talking mission complete XP here, how is that exploitable? Once you've finished the mission, you can't go back and do it again.
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Yes, it is repeatible. You set up the mission, *quit* from the team and select a different mission. The team is doing your mission, but you are no longer connected to it for completion purposes.
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Get a badge mission. Have other people join your team, getting inside the mission. You quit the team (to get on another character to get this badge for example). You now join this team on a different character. Team finishes mission, everyone gets the badge. You re-log onto the first character. This character gets the badge and mission complettion rewards. Mission is DONE.....cannot be repeated. Even if you didn't join the team on a different character, that original character's mission is finished without being able to be repeated.
I'm not seeing what you are seeing.
I've already forgotten about most of you
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Yes, it is repeatible. You set up the mission, *quit* from the team and select a different mission. The team is doing your mission, but you are no longer connected to it for completion purposes.
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Ooh, I learned something new!
OK, that's very interesting. So you could basically just complete the same mission over and over and PL yourself with no risk.
Makes sense that they wanted to nerf that, then.
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OK, that's an exploit I hadn't thought of. The solution may be, if a person quits a team (as opposed to disconnects) the mission fails.
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Alternatively, boot the team-quitter off the map unless it's their mission, in which case you boot everyone else off the map.
I'm not saying that I think AV's are too easy, just that the game itself is. I base this on my own experience in playing the game as well as the sheer number of people that I find at high levels that still have no idea what they're doing.
I have never, ever had a character spend any significant time in debt that didn't come from a specific event. I have reached the debt cap exactly one time since October of 2004, which was from a failed Hydra mission. I guess that I can also say that I've hit it a few times after I got to 50 and stopped caring if I died, but I don't think that counts. My wife also plays, and she hasn't ever been in this largely mythical "perma-debt" either.
You might argue that maybe I'm some gaming God (I'll accept that - no need to correct you there 
) or that I min-max all my builds (my 50 has two travel powers and only got rid of Whirlwind because of ED), but my wife is anything but. She hadn't played a game since Super Mario Bros. and only picks powers based on their description and/or the advice of whoever is online at that moment.
I contend that if you're spending that long in debt, you're doing something wrong. It's time to change up your strategy, change your build, or accept that the No Pets Mastermind you're using nothing but pool powers on simply isn't going to make it to 50 solo.
I'll admit that I'm perhaps a bit spoiled since I never have to contend with pick up groups unless I'm just feeling social, but even when I did I didn't have the problems I hear other peolple describing. They're simply not what I've encountered in my rather lengthy and varied experience (this may also be because I won't stay on a bad team and am happy to kick morons). This includes standing over my wife's shoulder as she plays with random teams asking her over and over again why she's still on the team.
And I know I can still get the AV's if I want to, Uberguy. My concern is that we'll have even more people rushing through content and then whining about not having anymore contacts until they reach a certain level. A lot of people I know that play solo all the time are already having this problem in CoV. Big team=more enemies=more XP, so if you team more you'll end up leveling without being as likely to run out of missions.
AV's are the only type of forced teaming that I have any kind of approval of. Double and triple clicking glowies is tedious and I hate hate hate hate hate those missions. An AV that you can try to kill yourself and then have to call in the troops to help out? I think that's a good time.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I seem to be the only one who thinks this, so I'll concede to the wishes of the masses. I'm just making sure the dissenting voice is heard.
And for the record, I rarely read these boards anymore. Both the "I hate the devs" and the "devs, please have my babies" threads make me want to vomit. I use these for news only nowadays.
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Its a bait and switch because most people didnt see this as a problem to begin with and as such needed no solution. Now instead of just leaving it alone, we are happy it just not being nerfed like it was planned.
They can say they listen to the playerbase because it was suggested by a few that suppression be used instead of no clicky, but most people said just leave it alone.
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And I can see that they really want to fix something that they think is a real problem, be it an exploit or a risk/reward problem, or a mix of both. They are going to do something to fix it. Period.
What they came up with as an initial fix sucked eggs. We said as much, and they accepted it. That doesn't mean they still really want to fix something, and that we can convince them not to fix it (especially if it really is a problem).
I'm really damn cynical about this game, with some of the most nerfed powersets in the game well represented in my hero list, but even I can accept that this is the above and not some calculated bait and switch.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Regarding the AV/Elite Boss thing, they'll still count toward badges/accolades if you defeat them as Elite Bosses, right?
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good question... i think they will even though I think they should not... gettign abadge for killing 8 or so Elite bosses... gimmie a break... badges for AV only plz.
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OK, that's an exploit I hadn't thought of. The solution may be, if a person quits a team (as opposed to disconnects) the mission fails.
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Alternatively, boot the team-quitter off the map unless it's their mission, in which case you boot everyone else off the map.
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And hope mission owners never lag out?
Still here, even after all this time!
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And hope mission owners never lag out?
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hmmm. point.
I'm going to go with my 'stealth-suppressing cameras and +perception patrols' solution, I think.
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And hope mission owners never lag out?
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hmmm. point.
I'm going to go with my 'stealth-suppressing cameras and +perception patrols' solution, I think.
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Excellent choice, miss.
And for dessert?
Perhaps you'd like to try the creme brulee.
If the problem is Stealthed characters getting XP from glowies, isn't the obvious, simple, leas game impacting way to eliminate this problem is to change it so that NO GLOWIES GIVE XP? Or is that to logical to work.
ps Thanks for the AV changes, now I have a chanse to get my Blaster to 50 since my SG mates would rather spend time on the villan side
On Justice
Global @Desi Nova Twitter: @desi_nova Steam: Desi_nova. I don't do Xbox or PS3
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OK, that's an exploit I hadn't thought of.
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Sure, that would be an exploit if that is the way it actually worked.
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Or simply, when a mission is completed, then the mission is marked as completed.
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But since this is the way it actually does work, there is no exploit there. 
Once, twice, three times a lady...
Good news for a change on the forums, cool!
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(5 million customers=doing something right).
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It's called 'successfully pandering to the lowest common denominator'.
Popularity =/= quality.