Interstitial Patch Hits, Player Says "Whoa".

[Glazius]

So a little patch just popped up today.

It has one fairly major flaw in it - if you're loading up the client for the first time on certain NVIDIA cards (currently hypothesized as just GeForce series 7), the game will crash if you select a character who has an aura. Doesn't do it if you quit to login from within game.

But.

XP smoothing

Rewards from 13-20 and 25-50 got severely increased, to the tune of 20% bonuses to all XP/inf, cresting to 50% at certain levels.

Lieutenants are worth 50% more than previously. Bosses are worth at least 100% more, maybe even higher.

Debt was reduced by 20% as well.

Of course, nobody cares about that because Ritki Comm Officers are now giving out 300% xp but their portals aren't worth anything anymore.

Random Power Buffs

Moment of Glory is only up for 15 seconds, but now it actually lets you heal while in effect and doesn't crash.

Frozen Aura, the tier-9 power in Ice Melee, now actually deals damage. Lots of damage.

The Rage crash only prevents you from dealing damage, so you can still taunt and such.

Repulsion Bomb now does significant damage, and just knocks things down instead of blowing them away.

Other Interface Goodies

The auction screen lets you sort by rarity, and claim all your proceeds with one button click.

Vista cursors work now.

And that's really it.

Well, there's this thing where you can see all of your and your opponent's attack rolls, and monitor pretty much every vital statistic of your character with real numbers in real time, but who's going to use it?

[UnSub]

Well, there's this thing where you can see all of your and your opponent's attack rolls, and monitor pretty much every vital statistic of your character with real numbers in real time, but who's going to use it?

According to some people, the 'real numbers' are an absolutely vital part of CoH/V, despite having played 4 years without them.

Also announced: Valentine's Day will have an in-game event of a wedding between Manticore and Sister Psyche. You can buy a Wedding Pack of relevant costume pieces and emotes for $10. The old Valentine's Day missions will be available as will some new ones.

You're absolutely right about the reaction to the Rikti Comm Officers though. They were an easy source of cheap xp and the change has people acting like they just nerfed xp for the entire game despite adjusting xp rates up across the game.

[Glazius]

You're absolutely right about the reaction to the Rikti Comm Officers though. They were an easy source of cheap xp and the change has people acting like they just nerfed xp for the entire game despite adjusting xp rates up across the game.

Well, that furor lasted all of... a week? I think people enjoyed more that Comm Officers became The Lieutenant That Walks Like A Minion. And they patched up that bit where auras crashed certain GeForce cards at character select.

And for the next couple of days Rikti are beaming down with astonishing regularity to invade the city, in addition to showing up when anybody completes the Lady Gray Task Force. I got the Watchman accolade on four heroes without hardly trying, and fighting off alien hordes in a giant knot of heroes is mad fun.

[UnSub]

You're absolutely right about the reaction to the Rikti Comm Officers though. They were an easy source of cheap xp and the change has people acting like they just nerfed xp for the entire game despite adjusting xp rates up across the game.

Well, that furor lasted all of... a week? I think people enjoyed more that Comm Officers became The Lieutenant That Walks Like A Minion.

I've got a theory that the more minor the issue in an otherwise good content patch, the larger the outrage to it will be. Also it will be referred to in the future as an example of the devs nerfing the game, even if the reality of the change is minor.

[Glazius]

You're absolutely right about the reaction to the Rikti Comm Officers though. They were an easy source of cheap xp and the change has people acting like they just nerfed xp for the entire game despite adjusting xp rates up across the game.

Well, that furor lasted all of... a week? I think people enjoyed more that Comm Officers became The Lieutenant That Walks Like A Minion.

I've got a theory that the more minor the issue in an otherwise good content patch, the larger the outrage to it will be. Also it will be referred to in the future as an example of the devs nerfing the game, even if the reality of the change is minor.

The amount of outrage at the game changing is constant, and if legitimate gripes do not present themselves, the playerbase itself will contrive to invent them?

[Trippy]

Part of it was the "no advanced warning" thing. Though it made the patch notes, and I understand NCsoft not wanting to advertise an upcoming nerf of something they consider an exploit (were people really getting *that* much exp of the portals?), people don't like being blindsided by these sorts of changes.

Edit: typos, clarified

[Nevermore]

were people really getting *that* much exp of the portals?

Kind of.  People would run through the Rikti War Zone and hit any portal that spawned once and then run off.  Because of the way the portals are coded, they'd get full exp for each portal as they despawned.  Each portal wasn't giving a huge amount but they could tag a lot of portals and end up with a lot of exp for no effort.  Sounds like a boring way to get exp but then I think any kind of PLing is boring.

[Jimbo]

Is the 48 month rewards out?  Or did they fix the bug that was allowing people to get veteran rewards ahead of schedule?  I can't believe it has been 4 years (I'll hit it in April), but the new pets look cool, even if they aren't that strong. Vet Rewards 48 months
The UK boards were the ones to report the rewards, but also the bug that was allowing people to get the rewards ahead of schedule.

[UnSub]

Yes - there are six different versions of player pets to choose from (you can only pick one) that some in either +Defense or +Damage flavours.

You can choose from Fairies, Drones or Clockwork. The pets are pretty weak, but apparently recharge quickly and apply some good buffs to your character.

[UnSub]

You're absolutely right about the reaction to the Rikti Comm Officers though. They were an easy source of cheap xp and the change has people acting like they just nerfed xp for the entire game despite adjusting xp rates up across the game.

Well, that furor lasted all of... a week? I think people enjoyed more that Comm Officers became The Lieutenant That Walks Like A Minion.

I've got a theory that the more minor the issue in an otherwise good content patch, the larger the outrage to it will be. Also it will be referred to in the future as an example of the devs nerfing the game, even if the reality of the change is minor.

The amount of outrage at the game changing is constant, and if legitimate gripes do not present themselves, the playerbase itself will contrive to invent them?

Well put.