Freedom: Travel power at level 4

I am glad Zwillinger came and gave out what I hope is correct information (flu ridden OCR guy giving out information from home about what is in closed beta that directly contradicts what was seen at a convention and commented on by someone at the convention does not have me 100% convinced (90% though )). However, this is definitely more than just something said at a convention. The game build on the floor existed that way. I'll admit I am a bit surprised they reverted it, but not shocked.

For further clarification, are the tier 4 powers still available at lvl 14 or are they back to level 20?

It doesn't seem to me like they're taking away my City Traveller reward. It allowed me to pick a travel power 8 levels sooner than I could before. And when I21 hits I'll be able to pick one up 2 levels sooner than that.

Of course, I'd also say that what it allowed me, personally, to do was far more important than whether or not other people could do it as well.

No, you don't lose it. Everyone gets it, and a better version at that!

Correct.

You still have it, and the better version of it too that lets you take a power 10 levels earlier than you could before (which was taking it 8 levels earlier)

Well, you'll get a token to use on the Paragon Reward scheme on something other than City Traveller, like new trail auras or so forth.

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

This is major sadface Zwill.

Can you please ask the devs if the day will ever come when we can stop paying a power slot tax for Tough and Weave (very useful) by having to buy Boxing first (nearly useless, unless you set mule it)?

Have to agree that is a serious disappointment =\

I was actually kinda excited about that change since it was "confirmed" at comic con. It's a shame they changed their minds.

The bad thing in this case wasn't the Devs' fault.

You know, I very specifically warned about precisely this assumption here:

Extending this change to non-travel pools is something a lot of people want, which increases their eagerness to interpret things to mean IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN! IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN!

This would have been a BIG change to the previous policy, and since BIG changes are less likely than small incremental changes, I was skeptical about the claim from the start.

Sure, big changes and policy reversals happen, but it would be smart of anyone to seek explicit clarification and confirmation before becoming emotionally committed to such changes. And by confirmation, I don't mean "some guy at Comic Con asked [someone not named] about it."

While I am not emotionally committed to this change I am not sure how much more confirmation I could expect to have beyond, "the game engine works this way," and a Paragon employee confirmed, 'the game engine works this way currently on purpose right now'. Was I supposed to expect a developer to sign a blood contract?

Until something goes live, I don't become attached. If something goes live that seems off to me, I still do not become attached, and even stuff that is live is subject to change (and I may or may not be attached, for example I am attached to the heal in Energy Drain and its removal has me modestly annoyed or I was attached to the old kin playstyle where you had single target buffs, making them AoE made me modestly annoyed). But I do believe that after the SDCC it was reasonable to believe this change was likely coming, since it was not just a proposed change, but one that actually made it into the beta build. I understand that it was beta and could change, but all evidence we had pointed in the direction that the tier 3s would be available at level 4 without any need for a pre-req.

It is odd to call it an assumption or interpretation when the game was actually working that way.

You appear to believe that the I21 preview build shown at SDCC was close to final, and that there were not going to be substantial changes made before release; based on a careful reading of what's been released publicly, that isn't true.

You appear to believe that the purpose of what CoH has been calling Closed Beta doesn't specifically include trying out controversial and experimental things that may not turn out to work, have some sort of major flaw, require more implementation resources than will be available for the next release, and so on... in a closed environment specifically to limit wild speculation about things that may not happen or may happen very differently than originally envisioned. Based on what has been publicly released about past and current Closed Betas, this is not true.

Admittedly, this is closer to what would traditionally be called Alpha Test; but the definitions of Alpha, Beta, and Gamma testing have slipped in the industry over the last few years. There was a time when CoH was (IMO deservedly) chastised for not putting things up for beta until too late in the process to make substantial changes; the process more recently seems to have shifted to require more restrictive NDAs, but allow at least some user testing and feedback much earlier in the process. In general, I think this is a better way of operating, but it does mean that there will be people outside the company seeing things in a much less "polished" state.

I was not able to make it to SDCC myself, but based on what I have read publicly about what was shown and some of the screenshots & photos posted, it sounds like they did not have the time to produce a special "sanitized" build just for the con, and what people got to play on the floor and were commenting on was effectively a snapshot of the beta process. Arguably, this was not the ideal way to do things, but it probably saved them a lot of effort at a busy time. My recollection was that the official material only discussed the travel pool changes, and that the changes to other pools were technically "leaks", and therefore likely to be in a less final or tested state.

Why do you assume that what you hear today is "truth", any more than what you hear at any other time? More particularly, why do you assume that there is some underlying "truth" to be heard in the first place? Based on past behavior, this seems unlikely; software development in the general case isn't about "truth", it's about compromises, and that holds even more so for gaming software.

I would think that it would be safest to assume that anything not clearly and unequivocally stated in a marketing-approved publicity release would still be subject to change right up to launch (and even those are not set in stone should serious enough problems come up). Besides, it's a MMORPG; things are subject to balance changes at any time, from months before release until years afterward.

It has already been publicly discussed that there was a nearly 2 GB patch to Beta within the last few days (you don't have to be in Beta to maintain the client, I routinely keep all 3 clients updated no matter what these days); should anyone need hard evidence that the SDCC build was nowhere near final, that should do the job

You appear to be under a misconception; one of the points to having a NDA required *closed* Beta is specifically so they can experiment with things that might not be in final form, in a setting where people are less likely to get in a tizzy about experimental stuff that might change substantially or not happen at all. The fact that they basically sponsored a leak themselves due to the way the SDCC preview worked is unfortunate, I agree; but it's best to assume that the devs themselves don't have things in a final state yet, let alone what has trickled out through all the various levels to be discussed in public.

Normally I try to avoid somone is wrong on the Internet syndrome, but given your clearly stated preference for being corrected when under the wrong impression, hopefully this helps.

If there was ever a black kettle...

Ah, did a Paragon employee so confirm?

Here's what we had, as far as I know:

That's some guy telling us some other guy asked "someone there" if it was WAI and was told yes.

That doesn't even specify the person as an employee of paragon, NC Soft, the con, or a temp booth hire; it doesn't differentiate between "working as intended for this demonstration" and "working as intended for the upcoming live Issue." We don't even have names. That's approximately "urban legend level" of proof.

And "all evidence we had" was thin and not well-sourced.

The assumption was that "this thing at the con" represents "a firm promise of what will be in the live game." If that were true, my computer room would have booth babes.

Yeah, I get City Traveler today, probably my last vet reward before Freedom. I won't get to use it long, but I'm glad they FINALLY are lowering the level for travel powers so I'm not bothered by it. So, I say to the devs I should get a free Purple recipe of my choice token on all my characters and we'll call it even

Anyone in closed beta that sees a thread with incorrect assumptions about vague information, or leaks, or anything that needs correction can, should, and often do send a PM to a dev or community person.

Then they quite often come in and correct what needs correcting and no one's NDA is broken. The only time there's a significant delay is the weekends.

I wouldn't be shocked to learn that's what happened here.

Even so there are times in past betas where those under the NDA got great enjoyment out of letting people spin off wild cotton candy mountains of fantasy.

No matter what anyone does, every bit of released info is going to be parsed, examined, regurgitated, buried in soft peat, and all manner of distorted as time goes on. There's little or no point in trying to stop the forum from being what it is, a bunch of puppies making a big deal over a limited array of shinies.

People need to remember one simple thing: Convention or not, dev statement or not, the only version of the release with accurate info is the one we download and login to on Live. Nothing else is set in stone and actionable, and any butthurt you get from reacting to nonfinalized information is your own responsibility. Not the devs, not the people under NDA, not the game.

Well, I have more info than that. Not much more, but still one less level of hearsay.
Why are you using quotes? You are not quoting anyone. You literally made up a statement on your own and then put it in quotes so that you could argue against that statement as if someone else said it.

There are countless other little details that we have only learned about by information people learned at the SDCC. I think it is much more reasonable to believe the information gleaned from the SDCC (until it is changed) rather than live in suspicion that almost everything the devs showed at the SDCC is likely to turn out to be false promises and vain hope. They generally follow through on what they show us, so why would I choose to believe the opposite?

I like this quote so much I've sigged it. Hope you don't mind.

All game features in closed beta are to be treated as subject to change without warning. If people were seeing previews of a game build that was still in closed beta, all of its features should be considered equally subject to change without warning. That's one of the reasons why we have closed betas: to allow for changes at any time for any reason without having to justify them as changes to expectations.

The second you show your closed "beta" at a public convention, that goes right out the window.



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Indeed. I think I am merely responding because I am having a brain-glitch over some of the self-righteous posts people are making. I understand many are just reacting negatively due to JBs post and tone, but I also do not like the implication that the original information was wild speculation and hearsay.

Obviously, stuff in beta is subject to change. But at the stage where they open up beta to the public, most stuff is likely not to change much. It is unreasonable at that point for me to disbelieve, despite the acknowledgement that nothing is ever final in an MMO.

Well, in this case, I do rather believe that they decided "You know what, I don't think we want to do this."

Aid Self is one of the more powerful self heals in the game. Sure, it has an interrupt time, but unless I'm taking DoT, I can usually use it during combat, without any interrupt reduction slotting.

And Invisibility without needing to take Stealth? Why would you take stealth if that were an option?

Obviously for a LotG mule.

Here's another question:

Why should we be forced* to take a power that is more or less made obsolete by the power we actually want just to get that power we want?


*Yes, you have the option to Grant Ivis. Setting aside arguments about the GI's merit, it's still a power pick wasted on a power you may not even want and will never use. That's wasteful and a stupid, un-fun choice to make players decide on the lesser of two evils.

IMO the prerequisites on pool powers are unneeded and are just an annoying restriction that doesn't add any fun to building a character. They should be removed on ALL pools and the only restrictions be the number of separate pools you can dip into and the level you can take the powers.


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