f13.net

Since no-one else has put it here, Cryptic is putting CoH and CoV out in one box: Good Vs Evil Edition (http://www.cityofheroes.com/store/goodversusevil/)

For those who already have the game, you can pick up the extra trinkets on offer for $10 (free month not included).

Hmmm, I don't know exactly what these mean, but they sound a little better than 'a different visual effect for sprint'. Which is the traditional 'bonus' power.

EDIT: It turns out jump jet is form of super jump without the bonus to forward speed (you jump high but not forward very far), this makes superspeed, ahem, quite good. It also grants gives +flight-speed, +jump-speed, to all other travel powers. /grumble

Basically.


Basically like a double jump.

Also:

Do either of those powers remove the grind after level 40?

/golfclap

Just ignore Stray. I noticed on the WoW boards that he's been cranky lately.  I thought your snarky comment was quite witty.

Umm.....I thought it was funny too.

I was just waiting for someone to find an angle to mention the "grind". Nebu managed it. /golfclap

Be really nice if we could go one thread without it.

It's far from the worst in the MMO space.  Fuck, it's not even the worst with a forum on f13.

Actually, it's not far from the worst. It is THE WORST. All those other games, not fun AND have a grind. With Coh, it's VERY FUN and has a MONSTER GRIND. "Here, you were having fun? Stand there while we pee on you." There's a reason grind is mentioned more often than anything else when it comes to the game... Because it fucking ruins it. Not mentioning it would be like a SWG thread without combat in it.

Funnily enough, there were a shitload of those kinds of threads when SWG was in developement.  At least up to the outcasting changes.  I didn't even bother caring about the game after that.

I can agree that it's the only fun game with a grind as painful, yup.

But I still don't think it's the worst around.  Hell, factor in gold farming and you can argue that the WoW grind is worse.

WoW grind is worse, yes, but WoW doesn't have the same potential for fun either (even in it's best moments). I'd rather be pissed at Cryptic for missing the mark than be pissed at Blizzard for intentionally shooting the opposite way.

Not to derail or anything, but how much is the combo box going to run? I couldn't find the price in the above link. I've been tempted to try the game for a while, but just haven't gone and got it.

Probably $29.99. They still aren't listing the price for some reason even though the package is going to be released on the 29th.

Schild hit it on the head.  I am filled with bile over this game because it could be great were it not for a few small tweaks.  I resub to this mmog more than any other only to leave dejected because of the grind and the lack of mission variation. 

It came so close... SO CLOSE.

But gold farming in WoW is optional unless you're working in China or choose to partake in their raid crap. I played through to level 58 without gold farming except a quick bit for a horse, which was actually easy using the auction house. Of course, I only had a couple blue pieces of gear, but who gives a shit?

Grind in CoH is appalling, and I can't believe they don't lessen it. I couldn't stand the grind and quit at level 24, despite enjoying the game.

Yeah, the grind gets mentioned so much because it really is that bad. Were it not for the grind, I'd still be subbed. I kept my sub up for months even when I wasn't playing it because it was just so much fun. But the grind just got unacceptable. After the first 20 levels, it takes way too much time to get new powers or new ways to play the game.

Every time somebody says this, I feel like one of those people genetically incapable of processing certain smells. There's something out there, it's apparently blatantly obvious, but I'm completely oblivious to its existence.

It wouldn't grate so much, except for two things. First, this view of grind as an objective absolute. Second, this nagging feeling that even if I told people how much I liked the game nobody would believe me, because I can't perceive the grind.

--GF

Mentioning the grind is an inevitability.

Calling Glazius a gibbering fanboi soon after that is an inevitability.

Yeah, they need to cut the grind.  The way I see it, there's a historical precedence that lead to a logical fallacy that caused the current perdicament in CoH.  It goes something like this:

1) Back at beta/early release, players could take down mobs 8+ levels higher than them if they were good.
2) Couple of sobbich players exploited AOE DOTs and roots/snares that essentially immobilized targets and started taking down whole groups of 8+ level mobs by rooting them, dropping their DOTs, and runninga round the corner.  Repeat until level 50.  Within a week of release.
3) Developers panicked, made it so you can't even reliably HIT something 3+ levels higher than the player.
4) Developers kinda forgot to adjust the experience gain rate accordingly.

So yeah, you get up to about level 14-25 and your patience is already being tested, you're bored with the powers you've got, and the only way you can render satisfaction from the game is by rolling up a new hero so you can play with their powers.

You read my mind.  Thank you!

Character creation is almost more fun than playing... that's kind of an issue as well.

The first 15 levels, you are getting powers rapidly, and they often drastically change the way the game is played. After that, the time it takes to get a new power grows exponentially, but the content doesn't change except for the location and the skins. After a while, there's just not enough variety in the day to day game play to keep the game fresh.

dammit, I thougth /golfclap was mock approval!  what other web emote do I have wrong?!

Hah. I probably had it wrong now that I think about it.

Internet n00bs!

It's mock approval, Stray was wrong.

I still don't think it's as bad as you all say.  Though I'm not in Glazius territory being unable to perceive it.  It's there, and it should be lessened, but it's not weighing on my mind every fucking second I'm playing.

My only surprise is that we got this far without someone complaining about ED.

I also don't see the grind as being as bad as lots of posters seem to... and then I remember some of these same posters go on WoW raids all weekend.

YMMV, I guess.

You've got me. What was ED?

"Enhancement Diversification". It's where they put in a cliff after 3 SOs of the same type in a power.

Enhancement Diversification. It came on the back of some combat changes and implemented a dimishing returns policy on enhancements past a certain level.

For instance, before ED Blasters would six slot for damage with single origin enhancements and get something like a 180% bonus to damage. Post ED, after you hit an 80% bonus on most enhancements (there are a couple of different categories with different limits) every additional enhancement's bonus is heavily penalised and I don't think you can get beyond about 100% bonus to damage anymore.

What this did was to pull back the capabilities of a number of powers, especially those that only allowed one type of enhancement into them (ie most Tanker defence powers). Players stopped being gods and some people have never forgiven Cryptic for the change... which happened 11 months or so ago.

Ah yes. Acronyms confuse me (almost as much as /emotes).

I had already given up on the game before that came out, but I was pretty much a "3 Acc + 3 Dmg" kind of player anyways.

Then again, I don't particularly care to force anyone to do that either.

Yeah as a Controller I generally have a mix of enchancements in my powers. However losing perma-Hasten was a huge nerf for me since that meant I no longer had "perma"-Phantom Army, and the second most annoying ED nerf was losing my 5 slotted Hover. 3 slotted Hover is just too fricking slow now.

You know... in my field, ED means something very different.  I dare say it almost applies as well to CoH.

The results of both versions of ED are pretty much the same.

The difference between WoW's grind and CoH's grind, is that WoW has a pretty constant rate of leveling. Level 15-16 is about the same amount of time as level 27-28. In CoH, this is not the case. In CoH going from 27-28 is about the same as going from 15-18, just like every other MMOG out there. The higher level you get, the longer it takes to get to the next level.

Which means that since new powers are only granted every other level, it can take the equivalent grind from 15-20 to get a new power after 24.

Yes, we know this but it needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated. It is the single most obvious and easily corrected gameplay flaw in an MMOG today.

Yeah, see? This is what I'm talking about.

I have fun playing the game, and I follow developer comments on it pretty well, and yet I'm automatically disqualified from any serious discussion _about_ the game. To actually talk about it and not be dismissed out of hand, I have to somehow find the force of will to stop myself from having fun.

I just don't understand.

--GF

Except that reports are 60-70 will be like 1-60.

My understanding of the WoW grind is that the leveling curve will be similar the same between 60-70 as it was between 1-60.  Note that this statement is far different from, it will take as long to get from 60-70 as it did to get from 1-60.  Of course reading and comprehension are hard [for me, so I may be very wrong].


[Edit: because I'm not picking on Llava, I'm picking on Typhon]

Actually I was told that 60-70 will be like going from 1-60 in person, face to face, by a WoW player.  I don't really keep an eye on WoW news because I don't play it.

I was going to say something like, "If the discussion is about something as subjective and perceptually biased as "is the game fun", and the person you are having a conversation has already made statements that make it clear that his bias is very far from your own, then how is a serious conversation possible?"

But instead I'll say, "It's because we're bad people who mistrust and belittle anyone who has found some joy in life.  In short, it's because we hate you for continuing to have your smug fun, while all our fun is gone.  You smug, happy, fun-having bastard"

I think the question he's asking is why his bias is considered less valid than your bias.

And I'd say it's a reasonable question.

Why would they know? Anyhow, the total experience needed doubles between 60 and 70.  So at 60 you'd have X exp and then at 70 you'd have 2X exp.  Of course, exp per mob and quest exp will scale upwards to make it similar to the 50-60 progression if not a bit longer.   Of course, all of this info is contained in the thread that started with a similar misconception.

Edit: And of course, another 50-60 won't feel bad to me (if anything it was a bit fast, the quests were more interesting), but that's because I enjoy WoW.  I never really enjoyed CoH. I thought it was very neat and had a good premise, but the game just rings hollow for me (I just didn't feel heroic at all   :| ).  If you enjoy a game at the atomic level, no grind is going to seem THAT BAD to you.

Bias is bias, especially on a topic that is largely subjective.  I'm not saying his bias is less valid then mine.  I'm offering a theory as to why his viewpoints seem to be dismissed on these boards - because his comments on whether there is a grind or differ significantly from a majority of the other posters (hereafter called "the majority").

If the majority felt that the value of Pi is 3, but the minority could show that it was an irrational number something like 3.14159..., the majority would be wrong because the value of Pi can be determined via cold mathmatical processes, regardless of how Pi or the majority feel about it (to my eye, Pi is rather shy... no, I don't know why I rhymed)

If the majority feels that a game is grindy, but a minority feels strongly that it isn't, the majority should pelt the minority with rocks to appease the game gods and assure that the new crop of games is less grindy/more fun.  This is the way it's always been.

Yet another reason besides fruity horde elves that I'm not really that interested in Burning Crusade.

I don't know that he'd know.  But he'd know better than me, since he can't having a fucking conversation that doesn't involve WoW, so I assumed there had to be some level of truth to his statement.  Whether or not it's true, doesn't anyone find it the least bit disturbing that he thought that to be the truth and was anxiously looking forward to it?

My answser will likely infuriate you.

Simple answer is: I'm not worried about a bad grind being added in because it will be an aditional thing to do in a game that I'd be playing anyway.  I want to see what additional alchemy and enchantments they add.  I want to see what higher level fish and cooking recipes do.  I want to see what socketing does.  I want a flying mount.  I want to see some of the higher level instances, especially since I play with a distinct set of 5 people (we've really just started with DM/XBRS/Scholo/Strat - which are the lowest "high level" instances you can go into)

There are plenty of diversions in WoW.  Because of the progression/history of the game, at this point gaining levels is the game, it's just one more diversion, one more thing to do.

CoX doesn't get that "buy" because, for me, CoX is leveling.  And that leveling is, for the vast majority of the experience, slow and repititious with very few other diversions.

I think it goes beyond that. If you enjoy a game "at the atomic level" (which is a phrase I've previously espoused but which is, also, rather flawed), there _is_ no grind.

Grind is... the sentiment "I'm not having fun now. I can see something on the horizon that looks fun, but I need to soldier on to get there." Something like that? I guess with Co* there might be a spike in fun at "new power" levels if you don't enjoy the combat, but that's about it. (From my perspective, not even all "new power" levels have that spike. Every archetype has.. maybe 3 or 4 defining powers and a bunch of filler? Something like that?)

From my perspective, Co* was built to deliver fun one scrum at a time. The environment only contributes as far as it offers opportunities or challenges in positioning. Missions only contribute as far as they slap a thin veneer of context on the punching. Ragdoll is fun in a visceral sense - I slotted my stone brute's attacks for knockback in senseless violation of all that is just and holy, and I love watching things go flying all over the place. Particle physics are great for bells and whistles. Some of the control sets are made for that, gravity in particular, but there's also this passive sense of there actually being powerful explosions that scatter a pile of shell casings to the four winds. And this one time my earth controller helped take down a lusca, spamming Stone Prison on the tentacles, and after it was defeated I realized because of the proportionality of the animation and the particle effects, there were now GIANT BOULDERS ALL OVER THE BAY FLOOR. I booted them around and laughed while everybody else was passing out congratulations.

Yeah, that's why I squee about ragdoll and about particle physics. That's also why, in apparent defiance of reality, I can say that ED, the controller retool, aggro capping, etc., all those "nerfs", actually made the game more fun, because they made the scrum more fun. Where I position my taunt means something. Enemies aren't perpetually in two states, "helpless" and "dead". The long-recharge powers seem like they have _more_ of an impact because they change the way a battle goes instead of being always there. Most things survive the alpha strike, meaning everybody gets to do some split-second prioritizing immediately after.

From the way you've described WoW, it sounds like... a very long checklist. Every time you tick a box, you get a little packet of achievement fun, and the underlying game is designed to spread out the boxes so that there's always something to get but there aren't too many to choose from. This is just a capsule summary, and certainly that's not infuriating me. But is it accurate?

I'm still trying to articulate why Co* is fun in a non-raving manner, and I think I'm getting closer but I'm not there yet.

--GF

I enjoyed the combat in COH. But, after a while, in the 20's, it became very samey-samey. Every fight would be similar, and in order to get to new villains who fought differently or to get new powers that would make the fights different, I had to do more and mroe of the samey-samey fights. In short, there was too much samey-samey, and not enough variation in the combat once I reached a certain level. That's when the grind shows is ugly head.

Did you ever play with Enhancement Diversification in effect, Haemish?

Yeah, that's what I _really_ don't get. You quit, because things had gotten boring, right when the game started to really open up. The 20s have the greatest variety in enemy groups of any level band in the game, and while there's a little samey about them (Warriors,  maybe Family, early Freakshow), for the most part there's some real variety from spawn to spawn, especially with the Council, Tsoo, Circle, and Banished Pantheon.

--GF

It would never have affected me, because I don't min/max. I don't think I ever even 3-slotted a power, much less 5 or 6-slotted one type of enhancement. It was one of those changes that just had no meaning for the style of play.

Don't get me wrong, there were some cool parts of the game. The Harbor zone they addd after release, with the funky soundtrack and the 5th column werewolves and the big tunnel area, that was one helluva killer zone. But by 29, I felt the grind HARD. I'm not much of an alt player, I soloed mostly, it just ended up frustrating me. I tried the CoV beta, with the hopes that the villain archetypes would really change the game. But it just bored me.

I never found the Enhancement Diversification to be a real big deal.  It'll impact you most heavily if you were in the habit of placing 4 or more of the same kind of enhancement on the same power, but rarely did I see the neccessity.  With powers like Stamina, sure, drop six endurance recovery enhancers on there.  But with the average attack, I was better off dropping one or two accuracy, two to four damage, and maybe some endurance reducers or recycle speed increasers. 

The grind, however, was definately there.  Now, I recognize it's going to vary from person to person, but one doesn't have to look past the unusually high saturation of lower level (recently rerolled) heroes to see that most players aren't satisfied.

Things have improved a little bit on the City of Villains side with the introduction of Meyhem Mission powers.  These aren't that hard to get one's mitts on, and diversify the amount of powers you get at a lower level substantially.  Still, it's not quite enough.

The ED sounds like it would hit my playstyle pretty hard, I played as a true flying blaster. I tried to never touch down, unless it was on some high ledge or rooftop. I forget how many power reducers I slotted to be able to fly without any hit to my power pool (or whatever it's called, it's been over a year since I've played :)). I'd fly in, hit hover, blast away, hit fly and reposition, etc. If Fly were sucking power, I couldn't use it nearly as much tactically. I love flying in that game, especially zooming around a big melee in progress.

Considering enhancements work on percentages, there'd never be a point where you'd have no hit to your Endurance for having hover on.  However, Hover was a pretty cheap power to begin with (0.22 end/sec where you generate 1.67 end/sec naturally).  No matter how many Single Origin Endurance Reducers you stick on it, you're reducing what was only about 13% of your power regeneration to begin with. Single Origin Endurance Enhancers are 40% each for most powers, with three of them you're looking at 0.09 end/sec instead of 0.22, so that's a gain of 1.58 end/sec instead of 1.45 end/sec.  You'd be better off sticking a few Endurance Reducers in your more costly attack powers, ones that can potentially eat 8 endurance every 4 seconds, for mucho endurance savings.   

Stamina is the easier route, which is probably why it was so popular to grab that and six slot it.  Now it'll top out a about 150% instead of 200%.

Actually, they dropped the endurance cost of Fly in a recent patch. Swift will also speed it up, and you can slot it for +flight speed. Hover + Swift should be pretty sweet.

--GF

Ah. I think that might be the other reason for my irrational fanboy lust.

CoH popped my teaming cherry. I played GemStone III/IV, a glorified MUD, and then tried out Anarchy Online, and neither of those did much of anything for me as far as making teams went.

But... was it around Striga they put in the Server Team Seek interface? That thing's a godsend. Find like three other people without terrible spelling, make sure one of 'em is melee and one of 'em is support (if you don't qualify for either of those), and you can do just about anything.

--GF

Ah, pardon, misread what he was saying.  Yeah, Fly was pretty expensive.  Still, when we're looking at the difference between pre ED and post ED, we're looking at it not impacting things like Endurance Reduction so much as things like +DEF and +RES.  The difference between having 90% RES/DEF scaling down to 75% RES/DEF [is going to hit you a lot harder than] having 15% less endurance savings while your fly is on before going into the cheaper hover cycle.  Sky probably wouldn't have been grounded by the ED, but he would have probably considered moving a few Fly endurance enhancement slots to other powers since six slotting EndRed wouldn't have been as lucrative anymore.

Folks who were into "herding" were perhaps the main target of the ED - they'd basically scoop up gigantic amounts of foes and then ask their AOE blasting friends to nuke em' to oblivion.  Massive experience if you can get it.

Granted, this was another miss on behalf of Cryptic.  Those obscene RES/DEF scores that rendered them down to only being hit for 5% of the time were due to the Defensive Inspirations, not the Enhancements.  Stack enough +25% DEF enhancements and you're capped easily enough at the foes having only a 5% chance to hit you.  Even a Blaster can tank in that situation, but real Tanks can herd with less +DEF inspirations and a higher margin of error.

I was in a lot of herding groups, never saw anyone relying on inspirations to do it.  Mostly it was Invincibility (toggle, PBAE taunt, the more enemies around you the higher your defense gets... capped your defense with I think less than 10 guys around you).

ED really screwed up a lot of my characters.  Then I respecced them all and tried them out, and they are actually more fun now.  The sole exception is my Warshade, who is basically screwed.  I want to play him as human only, and that option is nearly impossible now.  Or, at least, I can't figure it out.

The real effect of ED was preventing permanent Hasten, which meant that the uberest attacks weren't always up, which meant that different strategies had to be used in different fights depending on what was available, which really helped vary the gameplay.

Plus it became less possible to alpha-strike everything to death before they could react, so the game wasn't all about getting the biggest, hardest hitting AE you could and focusing only on that.  Turns out, there are a bunch of other powers in the game too.

Designing to beat the people min/maxing in CoH is kind of like tailoring content to beat raiders in other games.  The targetted group will always find a way to optimize their characters to get around challenges.  The ones that just want to have fun get smacked a lot harder.

ED was needed on some level, but it was handled poorly.  Especially for the power sets with a large number of powers that used only one type of enhancement.  There is no diversification there.  The plan should have given those powers alternatives, too.

Uh, actually?

ED did something subtler there, but it was needed too. My original build of my tank basically took attacks but ignored slotting them, in favor of putting as many slots as possible into defenses. This meant that while she was a good magnet in a team situation she couldn't solo to save herself from terrible, terrible, stand-there-while-your-damage-shield-does-all-the-work, grindiness.

Because ED lowered the bar as to how high you could be expected to get your defenses, the rebuild, with slots distributed sensibly, was like manna in the desert. Not only could I solo decently, but Taunt stopped being the only power that could actually benefit my team.

--GF

The problem with that being that, while your slots are distributed more evenly, now that's the sort of build that every tank is going to have because it doesn't make sense to do anything else, which I'm pretty sure is not diversity.

I do wish more styles of builds were still available like pre-ED, because that's always an important factor in the fun of any game, but I do have to say that the fun in playing the average individual character has gone up.

I would rather have the option to slot how I like.  I prefered slotting defensively but had plenty of attacks to solo.  I had a couple of fun powers that brought me little benefit besides, you know, FUN.

Then I got the option to slot all of my primaries with 3 resistance and some with 1 endurance.  Anything more is pointless.  My secondaries are now all six-slotted because I have no where else to put them.  All went from 1 Acc, 1 End, 4 Dam to 1 Acc, 1 End, 1 Recharge, 3 Dam -- my DPS is identical to pre-ED in the powers that were six-slotted before, and because of the required lowering of endurance, the faster attacks make endurance drain a wash.  Only now I have more fully slotted attacks, I am forced to favor my secondary over my primary, and I had to dump my FUN powers to make up for faceplanting to groups of white minions.

I can do okay after a few respecs, picking up powers I never wanted, and adjusting to the fact that anything using non-smash/leathal causes me serious risk.  But it isn't the character I designed, nor the one I played for 43 levels, nor do I feel diversified.  I feel like I have fewer choices, my concept was deleted, and I no longer find playing that character FUN.

YOU chose to ignore your attacks in favor of all defense.  I am glad you learned from the ED that maybe your carefully min/maxed group-oriented build was not the most fun way to play the game.  Why, exactly, is having to change the way I play my character for you to learn a better way a good thing though?

Fixed that for you.

*sigh*

I do not dispute that many Tanks had too much defense and needed some adjustment.  Maybe, just maybe, not everyone built optimally and instead built what they thought was fun.

I blame the grind, people where only going to extreme of herding to get through the crappy grind.

I heard the grind was the gunner on the grassy knoll.





People herded because they could.  Cut the grind into a quarter of what it is, if you could still herd people would still be doing it.

Herding was fun for the tank and fun for the blasters.

And Controllers (pre-AE nerf).

There was no need at all for control in a good pre-ED herding group.  Stuff died incredibly fast with six slotted AoE attacks and it's not like the tank was ever in any risk of dying anyway.

That's true but it was still fun holding a bazillion mobs at once. Made you feel like you were, you know, a superhero.

Confused again.

I've done the math - the game gives you enough powers and slots to basically four-slot every power you choose except for one or two, but that doesn't even start until you're getting 6 slots every 3 levels post-30.

Exactly what were you doing that you could slot your primary and secondary as described and not have, like, a third of your powers with only one slot?

--GF

(edited: trimmed off excess after-quote)

Her point being that she was having more fun with a few powers that actually weren't slotted, specializing in specific powers because she wanted to.  ED doesn't allow for that, and that's its major flaw.

Most my controller contributed to a herding group was the debuffs from Radiation.  My AE Hold was too risky, because it was point blank, so if I tried to use it I'd almost always end up dead and there was really no gain in using it effectively.

Personally, I didn't like herding much.  Oh sure, there's the potential defeat of the evil grind that is the numbah one inhibiting factor towards CoX's enjoyment.  However, after burning out from Evercrack, I've zero tolerance towards grinding for grinding's sake.  The missions/quests - things that provide context what's otherwise an exercise in killing everything that moves - are what makes MMORPGs worth playing to me now.  So it was that herding, a practiced art of killing everything that moves, is my mortal enemy when it risks becoming the dominant playstyle in the game.  It's cheap and degrading to the story - how often do we see Captain America taunting every punk in town and leading a massive gang of 1,000 of them into a corner so Iron Man can nuke them all at once?

I don't know - but damn that would awesome!

Exactly.  Thank you, Llava.

I aim to please.

And my aim is very, very good.

It's a PvE game with no loot.  Why do they even care if it's balanced or people level too quickly?  How about worrying about if it's fun?

...I'm still not seeing it. Did unslotted powers become less effective after ED? Are there actually powers out there where you slot them and they get worse?

4 slots per power means that if for some reason half your powers only take one enhancer you can still 3-slot them and you're up to 5 slots on whatever's left.

--GF

This is the MMOG business. Too quickly is codespeak for "Will cancel subscription."

...why do you think they didn't?

If it's not at least roughly balanced, people who play the classes/specs that got the short end will feel terribly inadequate ("the only thing you're contributing to this mission is more AoE fodder for XP, so sit down and shut up!") when teamed with the "superior" classes/specs. Feeling inadequate and/or useless isn't fun.

When people "level too quickly", it often means people are going outside what the developers had originally planned for gameplay into some degenerate pattern (run around the entire map, jump in a dumpster, have the blaster fire an LRM into the pack). Degenerate patterns are 95% unfun setup and 5% somewhat fun payoff.

--GF

I'm sure they are concerned about whether it is "fun".  The problem is that "fun" is different for different people, and they want to make the game have at least the illusion of a "challenge".


ED was just a way to soften the blow of an accross the board nerf, because that's really what it was.  The alternative to ED would have been to reduce the effectiveness of ALL enhancements so that 6-slotting your defensive power would be the same as 3 slotting it is today. (and the same goes for Damage on attacks, etc..)

By leaving the effectiveness of enhancements the same and only allowing the first three to have full effectiveness, they were able to achieve their goals of a power reduction while still giving the small condolence of being able to have more powers slotted to the new "limit".

But that isn't true.  You could drop 6 of the same enhancement on the same power if you wanted to.  Yes, it would be with diminished returns after the 3rd or 4th enhancement, but having 6 enhancements would still be  perceptably more potent than 5. 

Thus, you have a choice about whether you want more potency in that power at a diminished return, or if you'd rather have those slots spent elsewhere.  One is actually exhibiting one's freedom by saying, "I don't think that power is worth 6 enhancements, just 4 gives me all I want out of that power."  All the ED does is encourage players to make that choice, not force them.   Granted, I realize that you may not think so if you've decided that encouragement = forced.  Especially if your mindset is still adjusted towards the days when the ED didn't exist.

If I look really hard at it, levels serve as a means to control content flow so you don't go through the entire game in a single week.  (*cough*DDO*cough*) 

The question that many developers need to ask themselves is this: "Does the content of my game sufficiency justify the amount of time I expect players to spend in this level range?"  This is a very important question, because if you set that time too long then players feel the grind, and if you set that time too short then players finish your game too soon.

On a somewhat encouraging note to people who fear the grind, take a look at World of Warcraft.  The current level distribution chart looks something like this (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php), with a giant spike of players sitting at the maximum level.  Most of us here know why: Because WoW's grind is pretty fast.  About 300 hours to maximum level, last I heard.  Players go through content in that game as a ferocious rate - you could probably consume the whole thing in a couple months with five hours a night.  In going through all that content, players are kept relatively pleased by being continually introduced to new content.  (Granted, when they got to the end and found EQ-style raids waiting for them at the end, they weren't so pleased... but WoW being a giant bait and switch is another story.)

Taking a look at City of Heroes, you can see a longer grind manifesting.  Players are given a change of scenery about every 5 levels, but each of those levels take longer and longer to get, and it's only a matter of time until the content can no longer sustain the player's enjoyment.  (Granted, this will vary from player to player, for purposes of this conversation I have to speak in generalties.)

WoW's leveling rate is relatively constant, and it's doing pretty damn well so far as subscriptions are concerned.  (Okay, that's an understatement - WoW is doing "pretty damn well" in the same way that nuclear fusion is "pretty damn hot".)  So I'm going to say that Cryptic's belief that people exhausting their game's content in 300 hours will kill them is misplaced.  Especially now that they've a whole other side of their game (City of Villains) for players to grind through.  They really need to consider adjusting that grind accordingly.

In other news, I'm thinking it's time for me to resub to CoH.  It's good in small doses, while the novelty lasts.  Frankly, I wonder how much of my whining about the grind is influenced by the fact that I keep starting over again.  It's a catch22: I start over again because the grind annoys me, but the content can't keep me amused as much as it did the first time around so the grind asserts itself more.

I'm thinking I should use green text next time. 

The power I no longer have because I had to pick up several others to compensate for not being able to survive became a lot less effective.

I do not find having pretty much one way to build my character fun or enjoyable.  Dying a lot if I try to fight the system is not fun, either.

Are you being pedantic or do you really feel a 5% increase to a defensive power which gives 10% resistance is perceptively more potent?

My point is still being lost.  I have a plethora of slots.  Way more than I need.  Sure I could over-slot some power for a trivial increase but that still fails to make up for the fact that I had to completely remove powers I enjoyed to take powers I am now required to have lest I die regularly.  It puts me in the position of either not enjoying my daily play experience or not enjoying my character.  I lose either way.

This is not about numbers.  This is not a fact which can be debated, it is about my opinion.  It killed my enjoyment of the game.  I am only trying to explain why.

Not the fairest example, as good tanker power would have about a 25% base resistance.  10% is maybe a passive (no endurance cost) scrapper power.  I've got to get the actual numbers before I can really look at this, but I'm pretty sure a Single Origin (40%) enhancement wouldn't be so diminished by the time it gets to the 6th slot that it's just a 5% increase.  (Or would it?  It's been awhile since I played CoH.)

You feel the game was ruined for you because of the ED because it forced you to drop certain powers.  I'm not saying you're a lair, but I am saying I'd like to put that to a scientific test to see how much of that was due to opinion versus actual numbers.  (Ah, now there's a City of Heroes message board vibe for you.)  Changes of balance are often quite deceiving this way, that the true value of an aspect of the game is obscured under the expectations of how it used to be.

You could call that pedantic, but that's the bottom line of proving that the ED really is limiting your freedom as opposed to you, yourself, choosing to limit your freedom.

SOs for defensive powers are 20%.  Passives are 10% for tankers now, Scrappers 7.5%.  (Or very close, I don't really have the need to go searching.)  Smashing/Lethal can still be made close to 90%.  I remember the breakdown for what I finally respeced into being something around 86% physical, 33% elemental, and of course 0% psi.  The defense penalty of Unyielding nullifies Tough Hide.  Invincibility does give defense but I stopped trying to follow how much after so many changes to it.

(Are you including the Issue 6 defense/resistance changes, which were supposedly taken into account when designing ED?)

I could make a survivable character after respecing.  That is STILL not my gripe.

I'm not going to press you for the specific reason why the ED killed the game for you, as there's oft vague reasons why a change will kill one's enjoyment of the game that are about as easy to figure out as do-it-yourself brain surgery. 

My only qualm was with the statement that six-slotting something with the same enhancement would be useless.  I feel that might be overstating things a bit.  Would it be as useful as pre-ED?  Not at all, but even a 2.5% resistance difference can be worthwhile in the long run.  Passives suck, but that ws the same before and after the ED.  Scrapper Super Reflex passives actually went up in potency a bit in Issue 6, I recall - prior to that, they were 2.5% base.  Pathetic.

It would be lowered to 5% by the 5th SO of the same type.  The 4th would be around 7%.  For a comparison, the 4th would be about 25% and the second and first  would be 33%.

Ah, I see (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Dev&Number=3826972&bodyprev=) it kicks in after you reaches a certain percentage point depending on the kind of boost it is.  For damage resistance, it starts being affected at 40% and becomes "more severe" at 60% or beyond.  Statesman, once again, wrote a fairly reasonable but heavily controversal thread (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=3263859&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1) about why the balance change was needed.

I did play a lot earlier in this year (Spring - Early Summer), long after the ED was introduced, and didn't feel that badly influenced by it.  I actually thought ED made things more interesting with diminishing returns.  But then, I wasn't playing a hero/villain that relied heavily on maxing out a power to survive.

My favorite was the final room in the Eden trial. Send a tank out to herd a ton of Devouring Earth back to the beginning where you dropped in. There were a couple pits you could herd all the DE into. Once they were there, I'd take my energy blaster and hover over them, aim/buildup, stop hovering and drop into the mess, then use Nova. You'd take out most of them and the rest were easily cleaned up.

Advice: Go into your PlayNC account right now and make sure they've got a good birthdate on file for you.

Due to the August Lineage II password leak, and my having played a one-week trial for Lineage II tied to my main account, they randomized my password.  Due to the password recovery system involving birthdate identification and apparently their records for me are incorrect, I'm unable to recover it. 

Suckage.  Been trying to resub to CoX for two days now, and their customer service hasn't managed to do more than merge two tickets in the last 48 hours.

The Eden trial is the one case where I miss herding.

That last room was insane.

I miss the spectacle.

I don't miss having my computer fall over clutching its heart after the blaster connects.

I'll see if I can persuade my current SG to take on Eden, dunno if we can get together enough people for it, but I'd like to see how it goes in the new new millennium, or whatever.

--GF

WoW does get grindy, but not until 60, if one continues to play past 60, is a crafter, and wants to make things that require faction.  So a lot of WoW players really don't care about the 60-70 grind, because they are already out killing mobs for loot, cash, crafting components or reputation.  At least now they'll have quests and a direction to go.

Currently in Wow, at 60 the game is either over or you raid or pvp or craft (which means rep grinding).

I've played WoW a great deal more than CoX.  I've come back to CoX more than any other mmo, to check out what's new, but seldom last more than 2 or 3 months.  The first couple of months are fun, but then things get to be too slow and too much the same, as other posters have said.

It's weird, because it's the most accessible, mmo I've seen in terms of jumping in and feeling powerful and heroic at the beginning.  But sometime in the 20s it just ... stops being so fun for me.  And when I go back to playing again, if I start a new toon (like I did with CoV), I have a lot of fun and feel great until sometime in the 20s.... and then it just stops being so fun again.  I don't know what happens after that, because I think the highest I've gotten anything is 32 or 33.

It's got so much going for it - a great community, best toon creation tools out there, fun theme, communicative devs - and this coming from a person whose focus has largely been in crafting in mmos whereas CoX doesn't even have that - but it just falls apart for me mid game.  Well, not mid-game, because it gets so damned slow, I'm sure I haven't even seen half the played time to get to 50 or whatever it is yet.  The curve is just nasty.

I'll check it out again, I'm sure, but I doubt I'll stick with it - at least the levelling part - until they do something about the grind.  IMO, they should have capped it at 40 or increased the xp gain or something.

While I haven't been back since CoV came out, I was the same way. Go back every few months, have a blast, get bored and quit. I think it was half the grind and half the repetetive nature of the game. I wish I could have a character with the game mechanics of my flying energy blaster in other games. So much fun to zip around knocking stuff all over the place.

I wish they'd get around to rolling the powers on to the server.  I want my $9.99 jump-pack and Pocket D hearthstone.

I just received an email saying my account is being activated between now and Sunday, October 8, as part of the promo for Good vs. Evil.  I do not know that I will have the time to take advantage of this, but those of you wanting some CoX without a full month subscription might want to see if it works for you

GvE should be available for download Oct. 6. Lord knows why there was a delay in getting it into NCsoft's own online store, but there was.

It's up for download right now.

For some red tape reason, though, Mastercard isn't accepted.  Not my problem because 1) I probably won't buy the code and 2) I have a Visa.  It's everywhere I want to be.

Hmm, I wonder if they've actually rolled those power sets on the server?  That would explain that "back end patch" (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=general&Number=6622431&bodyprev=#Post6622431) they did yesterday that required a larger than tiny client patch.

You confuse  me when you say power sets.

You mean the jump pack?

I would imagine so. But I can test.  I just saw a screenshot of the costumes and decided, fuck it, it's only $10.  I'm a weak man.

Yup.  It's there.  It's weird.  Basically it's on for 30 seconds, and you can just keep on jumping when it's there.  Hold down the space bar and you keep going higher.  Course, you can't hover, and that means you couldn't perform any interruptible attacks while doing it.

Cool, I'll grab it when I get home.  I, too, am weak.  For me it'll probably be a bit handier because my travel power is superjump.  Vertical movement is my main shortcoming. 

That PocketD recall should be handy as well.  I'm hoping it'll also make PocketD a good congregation area, increasing the social aspect in CoH that is often lacking.  PocketD never really was terribly popular, and it's application as a handy shortcut was cut short by base teleport pads.  Everybody who bought access to the GvrsE powers but doesn't have the Recall to Base veteran reward should end up a regular patron of the PocketD now.  That should mean that that many people will end up flowing through the area.  Social aspect boost granted, right?  It's hella better than sitting under Atlas's stone pants all day.

As long as the elevators don't go carnivorous again like they did right after I7.  ;)

Pocket D is the main area for socializing on Virtue.  Virtue, being the unofficial RP server, has a vastly more social community than my  previous server, Infinity.  I'm waiting for character transfers so I can bring my heroes over with me.  I definitely enjoy myself much more where I am.

Power sets are in.

However, there's no indication you get them.

But if you open up your powers tab, there they are, ready to be dragged onto your powers bar.

--GF

Pocket D teleport is love, too.

Pocket D teleport + Veteran reward Base teleport + the base zone teleporters + CoX's fast travel powers = sweet, sweet easy-mode travel that gives Vanguard fanbois apoplexy. Plus I really like the animation they gave the Pocket D teleport.  :mrgreen:

I feel like at some point my hair should go all yellow and spiky, but it's a great windup.

--GF