Discussion: Additional Patch Notes
By
Antigonus,
Posted on: 2007-08-16 13:16 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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Short of exploits, the devs thankfully have never come out and told us how we should play the game, and they never will. They have however told us through these kinds of changes how they don't want us to play the game.
Farming of any type has been frowned upon by the devs and many changes have come about as a way to discourage it. This change is as clear of a message as they are going to send that farmers of all types should seriously reconsider how they play in RV.
(...)
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Except, this isn't about PvP, not at it's heart, IMO.
It's about the PvE in a PvP zone, again, IMO.
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Except that, at it's heart, it is about PvP. The whole point of the zone is PvP, and everything that occurs in the zone is designed to bring about interaction between players. That includes the PBs and Heavies.
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Aside the fact your second sentence is the complete opposite of your first one, care to explain then how enhancement diversification and global defense nerf was never a word from the dev saying us how we had to play their game ?
About the pvp at it's heart, no, it's not. We're speaking about pure pve badge here. You don't need interaction with players from the opposite faction to do those badges. You don't even need any other player than yourself on this map. And don't forget pillboxes wasn't group friendly at all when RV was introduced. Only the one capturing it could advance his progress. That was the intended and original idea : Epic badges requiring a very intense farming. And a indirect way to force players to pvp through introducing pure pve badges in a pvp zone. On the pvp point of view, the problem is, so much people care about pvp you could work on those badges seeing nobody for days. And if you did, it would be many times another badger not interested at all in a fight.
It was only changed to group friendly because people asked for many times. A such amount of farming is for eq or wow, not coh.
Speaking of farming, let's talk about some easy badges that can't be achieved by any other way than farming ? I said easy, like Weatherman on cov side, and not the supid epic one like empath. There are many more examples on cov side for "easy" badges not possible to achieve without farming, and still a lot both sides, like the illusionist badge needing 500 master illusionist pets.
But let's not forget the best of all, Zookeeper. Keep remembering the past, it was a 10 000 rikti monkeys kill badge. Only manageable through decimating the monkey population on the northen island in Peregrine. So players did what was necessary : teaming, as intended. And heavilly putting a dent on the servers handling this zone.
Seems they get fed up by continuous stability problems and crashes on PI exclusively due to this farming, as the badge was drastically reduced to 1000. Still, the number was enough to need farming to finish it. As intented. At least before issue 10.
Farming is the easiest way for devs to keep player hands full all the time. Up to today, there's not a single mmo that does not rely on this. CoH is not an exception here. Just be glad CoH devs know at least what pass for fun and prefer to rely on this most of the time than intense farming ... unless we're talking about badges. Isolator anyone ? For those who existed before the badges were introduced, they only have a single minion on a 45 min-2h respawn timer in RV for a 100 kill badge, and said as intented by Positron himself, many times.
This has achieved the opposite effect of what the Devs intended.
An active farming player using a Heavy to defeat Pillbox turrets and Longbow/Arachnos mobs for the XP/Infamy/Prestige rewards can now only hold on to their pet for a very limited amount of time.
At best, the Heavy will last for just under two pillboxes, or two dozen Longbow Wardens.
If the active player is attacked by a PvPer, the change makes no difference to how the fight would ensue. If the PvPer is tough enough to survive a hit from an old-style Heavy then the same applies to a new non-healed Heavy. The only difference is how quickly the PvPer can destroy the Heavy before moving on to the owner.
A weak PvPer will get owned by a new Heavy just as easily as an old one, still detracting from the quality of PvP in the zone. The nerf does not address PvP concerns.
In addition, a commercial AFK farmer who spends their days in the safety of their base now only need to check back every 25 minutes or so to replace their pet when it is destroyed.
This has led to a shift of power in RV, in entirely the wrong direction.
In the past, the active players had the advantage when it came to grabbing Heavies. Real players were faster and wiser when it came to knowing where the Heavies would be and how to capture them quickly. We healed and buffed them more often, and knew how to approach a Pillbox to get the longest lifespan out of one of them.
Basically, if an AFK farmer's parked Heavy could be destroyed and then captured by a real player instead, it was game over for the AFK farmer. Unless a PvPer attacked the real player, the farmer probably have no opportunity to grab a Heavy for over an hour.
Now the opposite is true. Because AFK farmers only hunt patrolling NPCs, their Heavies last a LOT longer than ones being used as intended. Three commercial farmers can hold on to the Heavies for up to an hour without incident, and have a great chance to grab hold of one held by a real player since those are now being destroyed every 10 minutes or so.
Once the new patch was implemented, the first thing I did was visit RV to discover three players AFK in the villain base, controlling three Heavies parked at the usual East intersection. Eventually one of the Heavies died and I managed to capture its repalcement, but I could only hold on to it for a single Pillbox before it died and was stolen back by the AFK farmer.
Kinda ironic and depressing. I think a timer would even the odds, or maybe we can just cut the nonsense and the Devs could create a REAL level 50 PvP zone without the Pillboxes/Heavies/AVs to worry about.
If Issue 7 had featured TWO high-level PvP zones - RV and a more generic, no-frills zone similar to Siren's Call, then all this trouble with PvP-PvE conflict would never have emerged. 
The Widow's Dark Hand - leader of Faux Pas
Champion Server
Tee Hee!
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Please use this thread to discuss the below announcement:
We wanted to let you know that we added two entries to the Patch Notes for the current live version:
<ul type="square">[*] Longbow and Arachnos Heavies used in Recluse's Victory can no longer be healed. [*] The combative inhabitants in a zone will move off the streets and to safer locations when a Rikti Invasion takes place. [/list]
Our apologies that these changes did not make it into the initial release notes.
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This does not surprise me. But as though the -def and -acc and regen nerf on the Heavy was already done and made the Heavies seriously easy to take down. I'll laugh at anyone who might consider using one in pvp, not that I didn't already. The only question is whether the echo of my laugh will surpass the lifespan of the heavy. Probably will.
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This has achieved the opposite effect of what the Devs intended.
An active farming player using a Heavy to defeat Pillbox turrets and Longbow/Arachnos mobs for the XP/Infamy/Prestige rewards can now only hold on to their pet for a very limited amount of time.
At best, the Heavy will last for just under two pillboxes, or two dozen Longbow Wardens.
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Actually the mobs are much easier in most cases, only approx 2 warden types are any real threat to the villain side heavy. As for turrets, this only means heavy is more aggro containment while the AT takes down the turret or a debuff at reduces the target turret to mush while the heavy takes down. Overall, won't likely impact my farming in RV on the whole. Players having heavies are the most often reason I don't farm RV. Since February-ish, its been Issue 9 and 10, and more badges etc to acquire and such. Although been farming RV regularly for infamy over prestige of late. This change won't change me much, in terms of my farming. It will make the heavy easier for pvp'rs to take away from me, but won't stop me on the whole.
Since all a farmer needs, is repetition and time.
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If the active player is attacked by a PvPer, the change makes no difference to how the fight would ensue. If the PvPer is tough enough to survive a hit from an old-style Heavy then the same applies to a new non-healed Heavy. The only difference is how quickly the PvPer can destroy the Heavy before moving on to the owner.
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Agreed, in fact, I've considered going on a campaign to harass and destroy the heavy anyone with a heavy, just to get petitioned, after all its part of the pvp environment. But if I do it often enough with ease, they'll have to consider something, after all, take the fun out of the game for people and they will stop playing. Although without most of the original farmers that frequented the zone, it is likely to be empty on the whole, if the pvp'rs try to move in who're they gonna fight, I've spent enough time in the one on Guardian to know that they often only found us farmers to pick on. Those that haven't moved to Freedom, have found crickets for their pvp enjoyment.
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A weak PvPer will get owned by a new Heavy just as easily as an old one, still detracting from the quality of PvP in the zone. The nerf does not address PvP concerns.
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Actually just makes it easier to ignore the heavy. A weak player is now someone without defenses and in range of the heavy. I used to pop, Demonic, Overload and 3 Large Purples and maybe 1 out of 20 of the hero heavy's big attacks would hit and one-shot me, with just Overload it was an average of 1 out of 3 or 4 ish would get me. With the accuracy nerf, my odds went up with less defense. And now the heavy doesn't regen or heal and is easier to hit. Those heavies are now just serious jokes.
Player 1: "I'm gonna get a heavy."
Player 2: "What for?"
Player 1: "To help with the AV's?"
Player 2: "The heavies are a joke now, just get Shivans, Nukes, and the HVAS, at least it can be healed."
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On the other hand, since we know how much the Dev's love farming. Getting the heavy badge is much easier, first clear four pills of turrets and make sure that the pills are the ones closest to your sides heavy control points. Once the AV's spawn send your heavy in to die. Then go to the closest control point and get that heavy and send him in to die repeatedly. Since no regen, no healing, and a nice defense nerf that will help him to be mince-meat at the hands of the AV's. You'll get that third badge in no time. No need for another player, you can do it all by yourself.
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In addition, a commercial AFK farmer who spends their days in the safety of their base now only need to check back every 25 minutes or so to replace their pet when it is destroyed.
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Can't say that I ever saw these AFK farmers, we had the commercial stone tanks/brutes on Guardian. They went stone to avoid being pvp'd to death by the rest of us. However, that didn't stop me from taking down their heavies, and now its even easier. I know that they weren't AFK, cause they would move from pill to pill, and it was funny to watch them speak broken english when they'd try to get you to stop or when fellow players would take all the heavies and they'd follow like puppy dogs, "GIVE ME BB" we assume they meant "Big Bot" at our best guess.
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This has led to a shift of power in RV, in entirely the wrong direction.
In the past, the active players had the advantage when it came to grabbing Heavies. Real players were faster and wiser when it came to knowing where the Heavies would be and how to capture them quickly. We healed and buffed them more often, and knew how to approach a Pillbox to get the longest lifespan out of one of them.
Basically, if an AFK farmer's parked Heavy could be destroyed and then captured by a real player instead, it was game over for the AFK farmer. Unless a PvPer attacked the real player, the farmer probably have no opportunity to grab a Heavy for over an hour.
Now the opposite is true. Because AFK farmers only hunt patrolling NPCs, their Heavies last a LOT longer than ones being used as intended. Three commercial farmers can hold on to the Heavies for up to an hour without incident, and have a great chance to grab hold of one held by a real player since those are now being destroyed every 10 minutes or so.
Once the new patch was implemented, the first thing I did was visit RV to discover three players AFK in the villain base, controlling three Heavies parked at the usual East intersection. Eventually one of the Heavies died and I managed to capture its repalcement, but I could only hold on to it for a single Pillbox before it died and was stolen back by the AFK farmer.
Kinda ironic and depressing. I think a timer would even the odds, or maybe we can just cut the nonsense and the Devs could create a REAL level 50 PvP zone without the Pillboxes/Heavies/AVs to worry about.
If Issue 7 had featured TWO high-level PvP zones - RV and a more generic, no-frills zone similar to Siren's Call, then all this trouble with PvP-PvE conflict would never have emerged.
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Nice testing, too bad you don't have more active people working to grief them and worse, people are actually buying the infamy / prestige, Pity those players that think the dev's don't actually want them to have anything.
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A NOTE TO THE DEV'S
On the whole, you've done nothing to change the situation. And once again, prove that you don't see things from our perspective. As Stateman said so long ago and I paraphrase, "we didn't expect players to have full Hami builds this fast." And that is but one of the many examples. He thinks we want an "I win" button. Some might, I don't want an I win button, and I don't believe that a majority of the players in the game do. I don't want it to take 10 years to get the last heal badge with Aid Other, and I do want "Equality" for villains and heroes. If the heroes get Focused Accuracy, then give me a Patron that does something similar. If they have 20 task forces, then I want 20 task forces, if they have 12 city & hazard zones, than I want 12 city & hazard zones. That is how I measure equality.
We go to test to find bugs. Have you thought of privately asking some of your more famous Farmers, such as Beef Cake. "Find us farms in this issue."
Now before people scream, but hey your on test to do that already.
Not really. We're on test to find bugs, and hopefully gain the badge which does not exist (and finding a farm while enough of an issue to warrant a patch, won't earn that badge, thus isn't worth reporting; typically). Bugs and Farming are two different things to us. One breaks the game for everyone. The second, while the Dev's don't like it, doesn't typically break the game until the Dev's try to change it.
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I just ran a test and got thru 1.5 pills before heavy died, finished off last two turrets without him and went and picked up a new heavy and continued. As long as not competing with other players and from Midnight - 4 AM Pacific, that rarely happens, not much really changed by the nerfs.
Yeah the "two dozen Wardens" point wasn't quite accurate. In my experience the only Wardens who can hurt a Heavy are (rather surprisingly) the MA Wardens.
Otherwise it takes a double spawn of two big groups (i.e. four Wardens) to start making dents in a Heavy. A pair of Gravs, MA and Rad can do some damage, but even in those cases the Heavy can still two-hit ANY Warden except the annoying "shiny-coward" Invuln Warden, who requires a slightly more sustained assault.
But this is exactly why AFK farmers can now hold on to Heavies for much longer than real players.
I've been tempted to use a HVAC in RV instead of the villain Heavy, but I know that's like painting a HUGE target on my head saying "KILL ME AND COST ME A WHOLE 250 MERITS YOU LOVELY GRIEFERS".
The Widow's Dark Hand - leader of Faux Pas
Champion Server
Tee Hee!
I still think the heavy nerfs hit villains the hardest with hero heavies having stronger ranged damage. The heavies on either side are just a nuisance anyway other than the PVE objectives. Like that fly buzzing around your head til you swat it all it does is annoy. There is no threat from heavies for most players and no reward for beating them. The farming by AFKers and stone armor characters is made possible because they aren't worth the effort and their heavies aren't either.
The biggest thing of all is this though:
You don't hear any afk farmers complaining that you ruined anything for them.
They continue to farm because they benefit from working around the system. Any implement to make it harder for normal players and those seaking badges gives them greater freedom to work without players killing their heavy for sport or killing them should they be caught out of the base. There is no real penalty for death due to another player anyway so it sets them back very little.
I don't have all the answers. I do have ideas that may or may not work. Farmers are paid, yes paid, to get around the system and rake in more rewards. If they are not paid then they are probably legitimate players looking to make one part of the game easier to have more time for another more fun part. Farming inf is boring and tedious, but it is so necessary to make actual fighting and leveling more enjoyable that people farm.
I truly wonder who is complaining about farmers ruining the game. It sounds to me like they are trying to pin down the surce of a problem they have. Maybe they are mad at the high prices on the market because a lot of people who did and do farm can spend millions, but a person who just started the game must wait til they can farm to be as effective and get the same items unless they get "lucky". The farmers pay for the game just like anyone else or at least someone pays for the account. NCSoft doesn't lose any money in the deal. They may even gain money the more farmers there are. The real issue seems to be that RMT is a big business and companies want a piece of it.
I really couldn't begin to fathom what to do, but nerfing one method of farming and then going further to nerf it for actual players as well is not the answer. Farming continues whether it be for profit or to make time for more enjoyable parts of the game.
Sorry for the extremely far reaching and possibly off topic post, but it must be said.
I tried reading the entire thread...but the flames got too hot. That being said if what I say has been said then my apologies.
I have a /Kin and a /Therm that I use to farm pillboxes in RV. I also PvP with them when approached by a hero. At first I didn't like the nerf to healing them...but now that I've been in RV for several hours at a time since the nerf I actually like it, and here's why.
1. My Heavy only lasts for 1 or 2 pb's at best Bad right? Nope I can just go and get another one now because everybody (including the infamous AFK farmers) is having the heavies killed by NPC's or Players.
2. Accessibility. I used to have to go in at ungodly hours to find a heavy free in RV but now it's not so bad. Rarely are they monopolized like before.
3. It enhances PvP in a sense IMO in this way: I killed a PB my heavy was hurting and I came across a hero with a heavy in a similar state of disarray. Instead of running away or trying to kill the player I actually wanted to kill his heavy with mine while I phase shifted and took the agro. Before this wasn't feasible due to the fact that the other heavy would have regen'd or have been healed.
The only reason I am somewhat against the nerf to heals is because some Empaths due become especially useless to there heavies. The heavy gets buffs: CM, Fortitude, and AB...so 1/3 of the "Support" secondary/primary is usless. Since in a sense a heavy is a Non-player Teamate and since Defenders/Trollers/Corrs are a "Support" build (by the dev's definition) you effectively gimping those characters.
Do I care if they can be healed, nope. Would I get mad if they brought it back? Nope. Do I want the Regen and Speed returned to what it was? Nope. The nerfs they've done are ok with [u]me[u] and that is simply my opinion. I just understand where some people are coming from when they state that they don't like the no heal nerf. That perhaps should have been looked.
One thing I personally would like looked at would be to help eliminate the AFK farmers is this: If you go into a door/portal your heavy dies. So when AFK Farmer gets a heavy drops him off at the intersection across from the statues and runs down to the base, his heavy will die and he will be forced to get another or find a new way to farm. Perhaps they could take away the open ended entrance to the zone and make the actual zone similar to SC or BB. Once you zone in...Your there...there is no safety. The only time your safe is when you're in the hosp. Good thing about that is...there's a door there. I'm sure its wayyyyyy too much to code but its just an idea to fix a pretty hot topic atm.
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One thing I personally would like looked at would be to help eliminate the AFK farmers is this: If you go into a door/portal your heavy dies. So when AFK Farmer gets a heavy drops him off at the intersection across from the statues and runs down to the base, his heavy will die and he will be forced to get another or find a new way to farm. Perhaps they could take away the open ended entrance to the zone and make the actual zone similar to SC or BB. Once you zone in...Your there...there is no safety. The only time your safe is when you're in the hosp. Good thing about that is...there's a door there. I'm sure its wayyyyyy too much to code but its just an idea to fix a pretty hot topic atm.
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I realize you didn't read the whole thread (and believe me, I understand) but this is pretty much the same thing I suggested earlier (glad to see someone agrees 
).
I don't think coding it would be that hard... at least not much more difficult that creating prison cells on mission maps, or how AoE(Location) powers (like ice slick and tar patch for example) are set up to work-- set up an area that covers all the "safe" areas (the whole hospital, base, etc.) then trigger the same code that kills off all your MM/Troller/Patron/Dom/etc. pets when you enter a mission or switch zones.
The ironic thing here is that by limiting the ability to get xp/influence in rv the devs have actually helped people who offer services to pl or purchase influence.
So instead of hurting the gold farmers they've made it more likely that people will turn to the farmers for xp/influence.
Smart move.
The Case Against Hardcase- arc id: 438272
Clowning Around- arc id: 408447
Down the Rabbit Hole- arc id: 193055
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The combative inhabitants in a zone will move off the streets and to safer locations when a Rikti Invasion takes place.
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Aw... no more watching Skulls duke it out with invading Rikti?
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Made it easier for my level 4 to run thru Peregrine Island... Was a bit-ch getting back after the raid was over. Bloody snipers... my Pocket D Pass had yet to recycle.
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It'll make the heavy badges unobtainable, but you can always just delete the badges too, since in this case player unhappiness seems not to matter too much.
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Actually, it'll make the Heavy badge MORE obtainable by not having Heavies locked to certain people for farming purposes. It's # of heavies picked up, not the length of time you own them.
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And this is what happens when ppl don't read the whole post they are quoting. I just skimmed over the post quoted here like on page 2 and I remember what it was saying.
They were refering to a proposed alternative nerf saying something to the effect of...
"after all this, just remove the heavies altogether. That will make the heavy badges unobtainable but you can get rid of those too"
IMO the best way they COULD'VE stopped the AFK Heavy-farming from inside the bases would've been to make it so heavies die if the owner enters the base. At the very least, they'd have to stay out in the open and could be TP-Foed and killed... or perhaps make it so you can't control a heavy if you're within a certain range of ANYONE's drones, even your own base's (if they can set up areas for powers like ice slick, rain of fire, etc. and set up the jail cells on some mission maps to block teleporting, they can set up areas to do this as well).
I've always considered the heavies as part of the PvP action in RV, and they really aren't as ignorable in PvP as people think when the person controlling them knows how to use them halfway decently... I've come out on top of quite a few fights (not all, but enough) even when other players have heavies themselves just by using my own heavy effectively-- and I'm no PvP expert, nor was my build set up for PvP.