Today's Patch (6/3)

[stray]

By glancin' at the CoH boards, it appears to be a patch that enforces slower lvling and kills group xp (at least inadvertently). Did I quit the game at the right time? One player has even gone so far as to give the devs the "Raph Koster Award for Player Punishing Mechanics". That bad? Good thing I catassed when I did.

[Krakrok]

Slower leveling?

Fuck that. It is already to slow.

[WayAbvPar]

Patch notes-

Missions:

         The Vahzilok disease issue has been fixed.
 
Task Forces:

      All remaining issues with Task Force missions have been fixed.
 
      Task Force Story Arcs are among the most interesting and challenging tasks in City of Heroes . We have adjusted the levels of these arcs so that they will spawn villains at the highest level possible to receive the mission. Positron's Story Arc will now always spawn 15th level villains, for example. The rewards will match the greater risk however. Continuing the Positron example, if your group wants a challenge, they may try the Story Arc starting at 10th level. You will receive rewards as if you were a 15th level character. Here are the levels we consider appropriate for each Task Force:
o  Positron: 15
o  Synapse: 20
o  Sister Psyche: 25
o  Bastion: 30
o  Manticore: 35
o  Numina: 40
 
Good luck with the Task Force Story Arcs and remember...if a signature hero is asking for your help, the task will likely have a high degree of difficulty.  

   
Balance:

Increased the difficulty of fighting villains that are much higher level than you. Fighting villains within you range +/- 0 to 2 levels have not changed; Fighting villains +/- 3 to 4 levels changed somewhat; Fighting villains +/- 5 levels changed significantly. This was done to have the risk represent the reward, especially at the higher character levels.
 
Raised the Max cap of most attributes at lower levels. This will prevent you from reaching a cap at early levels with Enhancements.
 
Fixed a bug where players were dead and managed to travel through a door got double XP debt. This could happen when they click on an exit (usually in an attempt to flee) and are defeated by a villain immediately before the transfer takes place.
 
Powers:

A minimum movement speed has been set for all villains so they cannot be Immobilized (zero movement) with a slow power (e.g. Caltrops or Snow Storm).  To fully immobilize a foe, you will need to use an Immobilize power.
 
Auto Turret: Decreased number of bullets in a burst from Auto Turret and increased the damage of each bullet in the burst. Auto Turret was firing too fast, and the system chat messages and overhead numbers could not keep up with its fire rate. This gave the impression that it wasn't doing much damage. The reduced number of bullets will allow you to see its true damage. Actual damage was not changed (except for the overall change to Pets Range Damage).
 
Fixed Katana Whirling Sword not reducing targets defense.
 
Reduced End Cost of Claws/Shockwave.
 
Slightly Reduced Recharge Time of Hasten.
 
Slightly Reduced Recharge Time of Accelerate Metabolism.
 
Telekinesis is now an AoE: Ranged (Targeted AoE), Foe Hold, Repel - "Lifts a foe, and any foes, off the ground and repels them. The targets are helpless, unable to take action, and will continue to hover away, picking up any passing targets, as long as you keep this power active. Keeping up this level of concentration costs a lot of Endurance."
 
Increased Energy Manipulation/Conserve Power Duration.
 
Fixed Battle Axe/Swoop Short Help fixed Battle Axe Damage type (it was doing Smashing damage instead of Lethal damage).
 
Removed Dimension Shift from Singularity.
 
Increased damage of Fire Blast/Flares (it was about 40% too low for its recharge time). Reduced END cost of Fire Blast/Fire Blast power.
 
Updated Short Help of Caltrops.

I don't see any HUGE problems. Are people bitching because they can't solo reds and purples or something? IMHO, a purple should be nearly unkillable solo.

 I am happy to see that the TFs are a go finally. Now, to get to level 20 so I can try the Synapse mission. Haemish, shall we give it a go next weekend? We should be proper level by then.

[stray]

I don't see any HUGE problems. Are people bitching because they can't solo reds and purples or something? IMHO, a purple should be nearly unkillable solo.

The patch actually helps the solo game more than grouping...You get more xp soloing whites and blues than you would in a group forced to fight whites and yellows. Purps are nigh-impossible to groups now, so that doesn't just effect soloers. A group of 30's can't kill 1 purple 35 mob...They're better off fighting yellows and whites -- which is really, really slow. Even if you did manage to take out Reds and Oranges, the Reward isn't worth it. This also hurts non-damage dealing classes, like controllers, defenders, and some tanks, who are forced to group. Now the same slow xp rate they got while soloing will be the same in a group.

[HaemishM]

I'd love to do a TF, but not sure I can do one this weekend.

I played at lunch, and never saw those patch notes. Did I just not scroll down far enough?

[geldonyetich]

Guess I could try out Conjecture's new Telekinesis and see if it's actually worthwhile.    Since they nerfed it's abilities to effect anything bigger than a Leuitenant, I've been feeling that character's sunk mighty low.

As for the slower leveling rate, saw it coming back when they announced they were going to make combat more difficult for mobs more than two levels higher than you.    Should have known it would effect groups more than soloers - guess what a group's primary target is?

Biggest trouble I see there is that it wasn't broken and it didn't need fixxing.  They've already implemented level caps for the amount of experience you can take in to prevent exploiters from making more progress than if they were fighting things red or higher.   They didn't need to make things purple or higher that much difficult to compensate.

Oh well, guess we can always group up and fight yellows and oranges, which are usually what we're up against anyway.

[boley]

The change is a pretty dramatic one. Anything 4 levels or higher than your character is virtually immune to your attacks. Even using the much maligned Burn skill I was unable to knock off more than 5% health from any bad guy 4 levels above my character. The point of such a change seems counter productive to a desire to slow down solo power levelers. I personally play one of the much maligned Burn tankers, and figured out early on that packs of yellows are where the real xp is (they drop fast and result in no down time).

This change comes off as a major kick to the sack for support classes (Controllers and Defenders). Most folks seemed to group primarily to take out higher level mobs, and with this change that tactic is no longer possible.

Very odd move, and combined with a flurry of nerfs and rebalances it just smacks of devs who are ticked that "omg, the players are beating my game to fast!!".



Edited spelling like a moran.

[Rasix]

I really really dislike this type of dev thought process.  I REALLY REALLY FUCKING HATE IT AND ALL OF THEM DO IT.

"Hey, this mob is in our 'impossible to solo' category.  Lets make the fucker near unhittable so even groups get buttrammed by it."

"Good thinking Tim, I'll go back to working on other ways to make our game painful to play."

Doing this just does a bunch of stuff that doesn't benefit your player base in any way shape or fashion.  

1. It slows down leveling. People just love slow leveling.
2. It makes certain missions near impossible.  Get a front loaded mission with a red boss, HAVE FUN JACKASS.
3. It punishes having even a small level spread in your group. Heaven forbid your blaster now has to fire at reds/purps. I can't imagine a group taking down 2 red bosses now without multiple people chowing dirt.
4. It takes away any sense of heroism.  Did you like popping inspirations and taking down that purple boss in a blaze of glory? Good, take a mental picture, that's the last time.  Groups that took down impossible odds now will probably just get reamed the next time they try it because they'll be missing like they're trying to do DAoC RVR at level 45.

Not addressing any of the weaknesses of your game and throwing out a nerf just makes me want to labodomize someone with a Taco Bell spork. Punishing players for beating your content should always take precendent over making the game better, DUH.

In their defense, they did finish task force missions.  Good for them. Now they need to get back to work and finish the rest of the shit they promised. Maybe I'm overreacting, but the initial impressions of this patch with regards to mob difficulty just makes me stabby.

[geldonyetich]

(My Mind Controller,) Conjecture's Telekinesis sucks as much as ever.   The high endurance cost of maintaining it makes it unfeasible for use in soloing.    I tried it out on some 5th column 6 levels under me and wasn't able to injure them more than 10% of their overall health before my endurance from remaining Telekinesis ran out.    Geko is usually pretty well on the ball, but he hasn't a clue as to how to balance Telekinesis with the rest of the Mind Controller's power line.

Rasix basically outlined everything I hate about the idea of "lets make higher level mobs tougher" mentality.    The flexibility that you could, given the right inspirations, skill, and luck, take out something much tougher than you was something that made City of Heroes truly great.   Now, in response to a choice few power leveling individuals who have exercised absolute catass mastery, everybody else loses out on that.

[edit]:Geko explains it all here.

What he says is pretty reasonable, and some players say that they are actually enjoying fighting in groups more because things feel more challenging.    However, I really, really don't look forward to running into my next red con boss when attempting to solo a mission.

[Morfiend]

I just skimmed the big thread on the CoH boards, and I think we can safely say 99% of the board users are unhappy with the patch.

I personally dont see any reason why they did this. Exp in the game is capped at +3 levels. So who cares if a big group is killing monsters +10 levels, they are only getting +3 lvl exp.

For being a official board, some of the posters had some VERY valid points.


Patrolling the city for crime is going to be VERY hard now, or very boaring. Since most zones have a around 5 to 7 level range, it would be VERY easy to run in to unkillable monsters.

Also, when fighting a +5 lvl monster, if you do the math, it would now take 75 players do be as effective as one player prepatch. Basically making anything +5 levels higher totally unkillable.

Big groups are a thing of the past, as you cant kill higher level mobs hardly at all, and killing groups of even level mobs is not worth it in a group of 7-8.

I personally do not like this one bit.

On the bright side, I guess task force mission work great now.

Maybe we could do one this weekend.

[schild]

Ironically, I'm glad I cut off my subscription for this month. I may resub when they get their act together as a live support team. But at the moment, I feel no regret. Mr. Ripley will be there when I get back.

But this does show something neat about the game, it's so casual guild leaders aren't even needed.

[Rasix]

Reasonable explanation. I guess I'm basing some of my judgements off faulty data. I thought trying to hit a red con that's one level above (ie a boss) was like trying to hit something 3 levels above.

However, if they're worried about power gaming. Just cap the damn exp at 4 or 3 above your level.  I thought they did that anyways.  

I don't get this change.  Wiffing 92% of the time doesn't sound like fun.  Makes me wonder how they're going to implement an end game.

[stray]

Geko explains it all here.

So why this change? We are not balancing the game for power gamers. There was a real problem with the game. Players were routinely fighting foes 10 levels higher than themselves. This was not an isolated incident, this was commonplace.

I doubt this was anything new to them. I'm sure they knew it was goin' on since beta. They just kept in at release so powergamers could soar through and test out high-lvl content. Now they change it, when everyone was used to the old (fun) way. Stupid move. No one would bitch if lvling was set at the new pace when the game was released, because they'd have nothing better to compare it to (then again, I probably wouldn't have bought the game either).

It promotes power gaming, twinking, burning through content (which destroys replay-ability)

In this game, I thought character building and player interaction were what constituted "replay-ability". I could be wrong, but why give me so many fucking character slots? Anyways...Now, a person would be crazy to lvl up 3 or 4 different characters/story arcs. I'm not so sure as many people as before are going to want to see much of the content now, and if they do, one time is probably enough. So much for "replay-ability".

Besides, there's always only so much "content" to give. Give me fun combat, a good character creation system, a modest lvling pace (or no fucking lvling at all, how about that?), and more ways to create "content" with my fellow players, and I'd be happy.

The one good thing I can see is that now debuffers and controllers are essential to a good group. The other side of that coin is that very few are going to want to play them.

[Miscreant]

I'm sure they knew it was goin' on since beta. They just kept in at release so powergamers could soar through and test out high-lvl content. Now they change it, when everyone was used to the old (fun) way.

NASA faked the moon landing, too.

[stray]

I'm sure they knew it was goin' on since beta. They just kept in at release so powergamers could soar through and test out high-lvl content. Now they change it, when everyone was used to the old (fun) way.

NASA faked the moon landing, too.

I just don't see how they could have missed that in beta. Groups begin lvling like that starting with Perez, then Hydras, Steel Canyon, and so on from there. The more experienced players already knew how to lvl quick once the game launched. It was all pretty obvious, but only now Geko says it's game breaking. Maybe it's game breaking, maybe it's not, but if it is, they should have fixed it long ago.

They chose to ignore it. This way they hit the release date, while depending on powergamers to weed out some last minute bugs and get some players through the high lvl stuff. It's just a theory. It'd be a conspiracy theory if I said the catasses were in on it.

[Miscreant]

I hear what you're saying, I just doubt we need moustache-twirling to explain the most commonplace of MMO problems -- that they are tough to balance.

[stray]

I hear what you're saying, I just doubt we need moustache-twirling to explain the most commonplace of MMO problems -- that they are tough to balance.

Heh..You got it.

[geldonyetich]

Well, I found one way to entertain myself given the situation.

[stray]

Well, I found one way to entertain myself given the situation.

So far, so good. I can't believe you haven't been flamed yet (it's sure to come).

[geldonyetich]

I'm a little taken aback myself by that.  I actually went up from 1 star to 2 star rating on that board.   Geldonyetich with something resembling popularity?  My god, good day for a lotto ticket.   Maybe I should make all my points with satirical anecdotes.

[eldaec]

If they are aiming for *really* small level ranges for groups and bad guys, then they really need to take another look at front loading and sidekicking.

Front loading can easily lead to a 3 level mob range within a mission, and add a three level range to your group and you straight away have problems.

Sidekicking can still leave a 3 level gap between you and your sidekick. under these arrangements that would seem to be a problem.

The change also nerfs outdoor spawn camping. Heh. Colour me unconcerned.

Finally, narrowing groupable ranges makes constructing a group harder. So they *really really* need to make the lfg tool work across zones and instances.

I don't think the no-killing-purples rule necessarily breaks the game. I do think it required rather more thought around the consequences for other systems.

[Phred]

Everyone loves a good story, it's probably a better way of making your point than they usual "OMG you've fuxored the game, I'm quitting" posts.

Personally I'm glad I stuck to my MMOG rule with this one of not buying until the game had been out a few months. I was tempted to cave in with all the positive reviews it was getting here and elsewhere but this sounds exactly like what they did with DAoC which caused me to make that rule in the first place. While some might think it paranoid to think so, there's a nagging suspicion in my mind that in both cases, the game was put out with the easier experience and looser grouping intentionally to build the buzz. Word of mouth is huge in MMOG sales and a relaxed game that's fun and can support a wide range of levels in the same group is something everyone seems to want, except the devs of said games. It really sounds so much like DAoC, where overnight, groups went from open to almost anyone to very fussy about levels because adding someone outside a narrow range of levels killed experience for everyone.

Also, if you're limited to fighting close to your own level mobs, as others seem to have mentioned, it looks like support classes will become a liability in an efficient group, and not very fun to play, as no one likes to feel like their contribution isn't needed for the group's success. Sounds like if groups are limited to fighting mobs some classes can solo just as effectively, grouping is going to be a lot less fun now.

To bad, it was sounding like a game I would have liked to play, but doesn't anymore unless they back off on these changes.

[SurfD]

I must say, I really Really dont like that at all, especially as a person who likes to do a lot of missions solo.

I have encountered missions where there were a fair number of red con bosses in the mission.  Indoors, with a blaster, I sometimes pop nearly all my inspirations to kill a boss (Tank Freaks are nasty).  If it has just become that much harder to kill mission end bosses, then I am going to be royally screwed.

Add to this that one of the last missions i did had a level 30 nemesis leutenant spawn in it, who, with a lot of insps, buildups and running like mad i finally managed to take down, which was quite a rush.  Making something like that completely untouchable does not a heroic experience make.

  I still think that if the experience was capped at around +3 levels, then making everything +4 levels untouchable is not the answer.  Change the cap dynamics a bit, maybe give things +4 a scaling bonus to defence/damage or something, but dont make them impossible.

Exactly how does the cap work anyhow?
From what I understand
Minion of your level = White
Leutennant of your level = Yellow = Your level +1 for determining exp?
Boss of your level = orange = Your level +2 for determining Exp

So, does that mean that if you defeat a Boss of your level +2 (your level +4 for exp purposes) that it is going to con purple, AND only give you your level +3 when exp is calculated?

[eldaec]

So, does that mean that if you defeat a Boss of your level +2 (your level +4 for exp purposes) that it is going to con purple, AND only give you your level +3 when exp is calculated?

Correct.

Interestingly - archvillans count as level+5 afaik.

A typical archvillan mission might have base mob level at your own level + 1.

Meaning that in the brave new world, when fighting an archvillan who has aproximately 10 times a typical player HP total, sees you as grey, and will have 2 or 3 attack powers to choose from, while you can only have a maximum of 7 friends to help - the following will often apply...

Foes 6 levels higher than you - You have a 8% chance to hit and you powers are 3% effective.

I hope I'm misunderstanding this.

[Alrindel]

Ladies and gentlemen, the honeymoon has left the building.

[tar]

There seems to be a misunderstanding of the colour/con/level system.

I think the most important point is that the to-hit & power effectiveness changes are based on the actual, numerical level of the foe, not it's con-colour.

So, an Archvillain your level may con purple to you but it actually hasn't changed at all. It's no harder than it was before the patch.

Here's something poz wrote about the misinformation:

poz
Cryptic Studios Senior Programmer
 

Correcting some misinformation

#592311 - 08:08 04/06/2004
 

I've been reading the many, many posts our most recent patch has generated and have found the same incorrect information floating around. It comes largely from outdated information in the manual and in the Prima guide.

If you haven't seen it written elsewhere: the change to accuracy in this patch is based on the LEVEL of the villain, not its color. The exact accuracy changes made are outlined by Geko here.

You can sidekick other heroes as long as they are 3 or more levels below you. When you are sidekicked, you act as if you are one level below your mentor. Your enhancements are boosted up with you. You continue to combine and slot enhancements as if you were your actual security level and it does help you.

There is already a group XP bonus which varies by the size of the group.

Villains in your missions should never be more than 2 levels above the mission owner. If you find a mission like this, it is bugged. This seems to be a problem especially in the 5th Column missions right now. We are actively working on solving the problem. Even so, continue to report bad missions.
If we make a change to the game and it doesn't work out, we'll change it again. All changes we make are based on data we mine out of game logs. We don't dream this stuff up out of nowhere. After the change, we mine the data again and make sure that it's working like we want it to. If it isn't, we'll change it again.

So, I ask you to play City of Heroes. Try out some new tactics. Maybe Accuracy enhancements are worth more to you now. Maybe you need an extra Controller or Defender to control the scarier villains now.

Obviously, we think the changes that we made are good, but the data will tell us for sure one way or the other. We'll know if team size has decreased, or if teams no longer have controllers or defenders, or if soloing is better than teaming up across the board, or if anything else is going south. If these things come to pass, then we'll fix it.

[eldaec]

2 observations on the dev reply.

1) The manual says sidekicking ups the sidekick level to 1,2, or 3 levels below the mentor - depending on the original level gap. I'm not sure if this is a manual error or a dev post error. Given the new narrow effectiveness bands, 3 levels below is a significant difference.

2) The phrase 'need an extra controller or defender' does not, for me, sit well with things like never allowing other players to mitigate xp debt, for fear of making certain ATs or powers seem 'necessary'.

[SurfD]

Well, it is good to know that it is Level based and not Con Colour Based.  That solves a hell of a lot of my worries.  Sure, it will make group hunting things much higher then my level in Terra Volta or similar places more difficult, but personally, I thought it was a little overboard to begin with when a group of 8 level 24-25 heroes can easily obliterate a group of 15 level 31 Freak Show and Sky Raiders, with leutennants and bosses in tow.

Regarding the quote that mobs should never appear to be more then +2 the mission holders level, does that mean that the level 24 mission I took that had a single level 30 Nemesis Leutennant was bugged, or do single "special" mobs in missions count differently?

[SurfD]

2) The phrase 'need an extra controller or defender' does not, for me, sit well with things like never allowing other players to mitigate xp debt, for fear of making certain ATs or powers seem 'necessary'.

This brings up an interesting question however, what do you consider the optimum group makeup, in an 8 player group?

Myself, that means:
1 - Tank - For damage soaking and holding aggro off the weaker guys
2 - Scrapper - For the up close and personal damage
3 - Scrapper - Could be replaced with another Tank or Blaster
4 - Blaster - Single Target with Area Effect (like Ener/Ener, or Elec/Elec)
5 - Blaster - Single Target or maybe AoE DoT (Like Fire and some Guns/Dev builds)
6 - Controller - Crowd Controll (like Earth Seismic Shift ROCKS at CC)
7 - Heal Deffender with Crowd Controll or Damage
8 - Heal Deffender with Buffs

In this situation, you already have the "extra" Deffender.

I have seen a lot of groups that are just 2 tanks, 5 blasters and a deffender or controller. These are the groups that they are probably referring to.

[tar]

eldaec, about your point one, my best guess is that the manual is incorrect. This is based on one, the Dev post being more recent and two, my in-game experience.

The manual says that you cannot sidekick people 5 or less levels below yourself. I have sidekicked people 3-5 levels below me, I have also been sidekicked by people 3-5 levels above me and seen a change in con colours.

There's also something in combat chat spam (or used to be, I switched it off a long time ago) which says something to the effect of 'You are now fighting at level X' when you are sidekicked and when you enter/leave sidekick range of your mentor. So you should be able to test this in game quite easily.

[Fargull]

Situation :

Three level 31 mobs in Bricktown.

One blaster 27th and one tank 27th level
One 25th level Tank and one 25th level Blaster (me)
Two SK'd blasters (One 26th and one 25th(guessing))

All 25ths where hitting about 5-10% of the time (AIM and Buildup would let me hit with those three attacks).

The fight took three to five minutes to kill them all.  Xp was good, but not good.

Red LT's, which where two levels above me are easily taken down and give good xp in the group.  We moved from Bricktown back to IP and hit groups of red (28th) to me goons and I was hitting and killing like normal.  Biggest impact was against mobs 5 plus levels above.

Overall impact of this move was to create greater level diversity and create a non casual gaming experience.  Blah, bad bad patch.

[SurfD]

Out of curiosity, what makes it all that "non-casual"?  I just logged in, rant two level 25 missions from a contact, gained a bub and a half, and logged out (i am now preparing to leave for work).  Total time spent, 2 hours.

All it really means is that we will now have to be a bit more selective as to who we group up with.  Not much else has really changed (unless you happen to spend all your time in hunt groups in TV hunting things way above your level for capped exp anyhow)

[Sky]

We are not balancing the game for power gamers.

Well sweet bejesus. My 17th level ass does a little dance.

I like the new changes, but I think they need to loosen up the level spread restrictions on enemies to something more like +/- 5 levels. Then it wouldn't seem so harsh. But I've been saying that since beta, eh.

Imo, red should mean 'almost impossible', and purple should mean 'run in fear, tights'. It's only the tight level spread that throws a wrench into that.

[Fargull]

Out of curiosity, what makes it all that "non-casual"?

Before we used to be able to gather a group of 18-25 level SG members and run missions.  We would not worry about who's mission we grabbed, whether the 18's or the 25th, though of course the 18's would not net much xp, but we were just having fun.  Now, unless we SK them to with in a level or two of the top tier person(s), the mission spawns are going to require a tighter grouping of character levels.  The SK system makes this a positive, but if you have three 22nd level members and 1 27th level member, your looking at either SKing one and running the 27th level missions and netting a slow and probably debt building experience because the missions are still going to scale up but the power out put of those two 22nd level characters just became a null factor in dealing with the thugs.  So, it is either hunt small groups outside and mooch.  Chose gangs of guys between the two tiers of characters, but the higher level character can net much greater xp growth by soloing.  And while I am not playing the game for the need to level, many people are and those that are in the common group I run around with and thus effect my play ability.

Overall I like the changes, but I think the pendilum swung way to far on the grape ape change.

[tar]

if you have three 22nd level members and 1 27th level member, your looking at either SKing one and running the 27th level missions and netting a slow and probably debt building experience because the missions are still going to scale up but the power out put of those two 22nd level characters just became a null factor in dealing with the thugs

Yeah, this is a problem. When you've got more low levels than people to sidekick them you run into problems. Either the high level missions become too hard or the low level missions are too easy :(

Mind you, this has always been a problem. Ok, yeah, things are harder now but most of the casual players I know weren't doing missions like this before the patch.

It's born out of the way missions are generated. They look at the level of the person who holds the mission (as of when they got the mission), they look at the number of people going into the mission but they don't look at the respective levels of the people in the team.