The News Thread

[Alkiera]

Another good response from the CoH thread:

Affirmitive Action for Enhancements.

Fantastic Idea!

Those Nasty Damage SO's have had their way for far too long!

The Recharge, End Reducer, Range and Knocback Enhancements didn't need a Hand Out, they needed a Hand Up.

Thank Goodness Stateman is watching out for the little guy!

Alkiera

[Llava]

Im not a number cruncher, but how exactly does this REALLY effect things?  Can someone give me some concrete examples?

Well, remember permanent Hasten and all the things it made work before?  Forget that.

Regarding actual numbers, we CAN'T give you examples because they haven't given us a chance to test this, nor any concrete information.  All we know is that you'll start seeing a reduction in effectiveness when you get to a 70% bonus.  The farther over 70% you go, the bigger the diminishment.  So yes, that means if you have a Hamidon Damage/Accuracy, and two damage SOs in a power, you will see a reduction in damage.  The more damage enhancements you have, the more you'll notice the reduction.

I'm still willing to give this a try, but this is absolutely a potential game breaker for me.  It sucks, because I was really enjoying myself again.  i5 worked wonders for me, I was having a blast, I felt like hero/enemy balance was right where it needed to be, and I was looking forward to the release of CoV.  I was in the proverbial sweet spot.  Then they had to go and fuck it up.

[schild]

Then they had to go and fuck it up.

Proving once again that there's no such thing as an above average dev team. Sigh.

[Llava]

It's like they hired Mackey from Mythic and decided to have him take over or something.

[Llava]

Someone else summed up my feelings completely:

Just for fun, I loaded a couple characters into hero planner and lopped off all duplicate enhancements over three. Then went about trying to fill in and re-assign the slots. I was wrong, it wasn't fun.

On the whole, when I was done I didn't see any real gain or true variety in the characters. Mostly what happened was lowering the power's effectiveness and compensating for the nerfed recharge/endurance by slotting in rech/endred enhancements. Less than break even, and NO diversity in the powers.

I suppose the problem there could be me, trying to keep my powers working as they did previously as much as possible. But the way they were slotted was how I thought they ought to be working. Spectral Wounds: 1acc 5dam becomes 1cc 3 dam 1 endred 1 rech. Where is the difference?

When the first things people will reach for are endurance reduction and recharge (because of the losses in Stamina and Hasten), what's the point of Enhancement Diversity? Nothing was diversified, no new aspect was enhanced. Only something nerfed and then made to be compensated elsewhere.

This is a useless trade, unless the goal is truely to power-down the game further. If that is the end reason, this will achieve that.

Someone else suggested that the next Issue should be "Issue 6- Harrison Bergeron".

EDIT

  I have reason to believe we are not overreacting.

[Typhon]

I can't imagine that they haven't thought this through, but it seems like that is the case.  Or, probably more accurately, they are thinking about this from a game-balance perspective only - this change will reduce the effectiveness of hasten and stamina, and encourage people to slot differently, and that is all they see.

They don't seem to have thought about it from a player perspective at all, which seems demented.  If they have plans to add enhancements which offer other options (e.g. an enhancement that adds slow-type secondary effects to that power), then this would be reasonable.  Unfortunately there is no carrot with this change, and not even a hint of a carrot to be shipped later.

Seems like a poorly thought out communication of change.  Also seems like this dev team no longer respects it's clientbase, and that is a very bad place to be.

[tazelbain]

Sounds like a free slot to me.  How can that not be powerful?

You overestimate the value of a single slot.  Try out a power 5 slotted sometime, then try it out 6 slotted, see how night-and-day the difference really is.

It seems like, if this statement was true, people wouldn't be going apeshit over the nerf to enhancements.

[Nevermore]

They claim this has been in the works since March, so I suppose they've thought it through.  They've reached the wrong conclusion but hey, they've given it 6 months of thought!  What pisses me off about this is this is what I5 should have been.  Hell, some of us even suggested this as an alternative to those I5 nerfs.  But here we are, getting nerf on top of nerf.  Cryptic's fatal flaw seems to be that instead of choosing between a number of nerfs, they just go and apply them all. 

[Trippy]

Sounds like a free slot to me.  How can that not be powerful?

You overestimate the value of a single slot.  Try out a power 5 slotted sometime, then try it out 6 slotted, see how night-and-day the difference really is.

It seems like, if this statement was true, people wouldn't be going apeshit over the nerf to enhancements.

The value of a single slot (and the enchancement that goes in there) goes up by a lot if it takes you over some important threshold value, the obvious example being perma-Hasten. In the case of slotting for damage, a single slot may mean the difference between one or two shotting a mob. It's really bad if your attacks are slotted to do, say, 80% damage in a single shot on an even level con minion, for example. That's potentially a huge waste of endurance depending on the mission difficulty. Or maybe a single slot takes you from being net positive endurance recovery to net loss endurance recovery with all your normal toggles running.

[Llava]

Sounds like a free slot to me.  How can that not be powerful?

You overestimate the value of a single slot.  Try out a power 5 slotted sometime, then try it out 6 slotted, see how night-and-day the difference really is.

It seems like, if this statement was true, people wouldn't be going apeshit over the nerf to enhancements.

Due to the NDA, I am unable to explain why you are incorrect.

[Big Gulp]

Due to the NDA, I am unable to explain why you are incorrect.

Oh, fuck the NDA already.  This game is due out in three weeks and they're still trying to keep everything under wraps?  Here's a quick rundown for anyone who's been living in a cave:

A)  Total lack of villainy.  There is no random crime, no heist planning, no whooping of civilians, etc.  Oh sure, there's the bank robbery, but that's really small potatoes that you'll only play once compared to the rest of the game, which is in every way identical to how City of Heroes plays.  Most of the time you're doing the same thing you did in CoH; fighting villains.  Sure there are some new villain groups, all of which are one degree of lame or another.  Need I go into how utterly jackass the snakemen look?

B)  With the exception of the Mastermind class all the other archetypes heavily recycle, often word for word, the powers from City of Heroes.  All of the effects are the same.  The powers are identical, and the only real difference the archetypes bring in is what the secondary/primary powersets are.  Brutes get rage, but other than that their power choices are identical to tankers.  Stalkers get hide and assassinate, but their power choices are almost identical to scrappers.  I am not exaggerating when I say that you can literally taste the lack of imagination.

C)  Costume options won't exactly set the world on fire.  Essentially it boils down to "what type of skull motif do I want to go with"?  Again, you can taste the lack of imagination.

If you want to save yourself $50 just reroll an alt in City of Heroes, because the experience will essentially be the same as playing CoV.

ETA:  Oh, and to address the nerf issue, yep, you're a hell of a lot weaker.

[Nevermore]

I won't argue with points A or B, though I don't think it's as bad as you do.  To me it's different enough to make it worth playing, but it didn't go as far as I thought it should.  Point C though, when was the last time you looked at the costume options?  They added in a lot more since the start of beta.

[Big Gulp]

Point C though, when was the last time you looked at the costume options? 

I'd say around 2 weeks ago.  I just don't feel one ounce of urge to go back and give the game another try.  It really is that underwhelming.

When I last played there were only really three new costume choices:  Skull motif, barbed wire/chains, and shitty looking beast thing.  All other costumes were from CoH.

[Trippy]

Here are some numbers somebody posted in the CoH forums. I have no idea if they are accurate or not:

Schedule A (33.3% Buff enhancements)

    ......... I5 ............ ED*
    1 ... +33.3% ... +33.3%
    2 ... +33.3% ... +33.3%
    3 ... +33.3% ... +28.8%
    4 ... +33.3% .... +5.0%
    5 ... +33.3% .... +5.0%
    6 ... +33.3% .... +5.0%

Defense Buff/Resist Damage

    ......... I5 ............. ED*
    1 ... +20.0% .... +20.0%
    2 ... +20.0% .... +20.0%
    3 ... +20.0% .... +17.0%
    4 ... +20.0% ..... +3.0%
    5 ... +20.0% ..... +3.0%
    6 ... +20.0% ..... +3.0%

If those numbers are close to accurate I wouldn't call that "diminishing returns" -- that's more like a fricking cliff. Diminishing returns would be more like 33 16 8 4.

Edit: fixed typo

[Llava]

That'd be the NDA protected info I wasn't going to post to display why tazelbain is incorrect.  So I guess it's out there already, and I don't feel bad expanding on it.

It goes deeper than the difference of one enhancement.  If you're doing 265 damage with a given attack and someone else does 298 damage with that same attack (this is roughly the difference that one SO would make on an attack with a base damage of 100.. which I don't believe any power has), no big deal.  You can work around that.

But we're talking about the death of permanent Hasten, which makes many alternate builds work that otherwise would be entirely unworkable (for example, my human-specialist Warshade... he just plain DOES NOT WORK without Hasten) and a huge global nerf- you will be doing roughly 63% as much damage as before with 5 damage and 1 accuracy in an attack, and you will have 63% the defense you had before, no permanent Hasten so your most damaging attacks will be recharging slower, so even LESS damage, and Stamina won't be as effective as before so you'll be going through more endurance.

This means you will run out of endurance faster in every fight, especially if you rely on Stamina.  Because you are doing less damage, you have to attack more to win a fight.
This means more damage taken.  Because fights are taking longer, and your defenses have been greatly reduced, you now have a much greater chance of losing all your health before the enemy.
This means more deaths.  There's no way around that.  So more debt.  So a longer grind.  I had thought that i5 did a lot to lessen the grind- apparently that was just a bit of lube for what was to come.

And, all in all, this actively punishes diversity.  Sure, it encourages that you slot more than one type of enhancement in your power- but make damage enhancements entirely worthless, I'm still not slotting Knockback in Crane Kick.  I'm just going to try to spend those slots on something else.  Powers are made less customizable by this.  You now have less ability to maximize a given aspect of a power (recharge, damage, accuracy, whatever).  Because of that, powers that could be made useful with effective slotting and useful power synergy (read: HASTEN!!) are now stuck in their ineffective forms.  So you have even more of a "This power is good, this power is crap, this power is good, crap, crap, good, crap, crap, good." situation than before.

Balance between heroes and enemies is right where it should be right now in Issue 5.  Heroes do not need to be nerfed any further.  Individual powers need attention, !!!ALMOST NONE OF THEM NEED TO BE DECREASED IN POWER!!! Attacks like Martial Arts>Crippling Axe Kick, or Spines>Barb Swipe, or the Claws set as a whole, or Super Reflexes, or Trick Arrow, or Archery, or Ice Armor need to be brought up to par with the rest of the game.

But this doesn't even bring the other powers down to their level.  This leaves the imbalance between individual powers, and just drops everything down into the basement.  This change accomplishes nothing but increasing the length of the already overly long grind.  Enhancement Diversification is a joke and needs to be repealed entirely- not put in with a less strict set of numbers, REPEALED ENTIRELY.  Delete the spreadsheet it's in and issue an apology that it was ever suggested.  This is one of those things that should've never gotten past the "Hey, I have a crazy idea..." stage in the discussion room.

[Llava]

I'd say around 2 weeks ago.  I just don't feel one ounce of urge to go back and give the game another try.  It really is that underwhelming.

When I last played there were only really three new costume choices:  Skull motif, barbed wire/chains, and shitty looking beast thing.  All other costumes were from CoH.

That's very outdated.  For example, there are something like 40 face choices now.  As I'm still trying to honor the NDA as best as I can, I won't go into further detail.  But there are a LOT more costume choices.

[Signe]

No worries about Trippy's post.  It's been posted on the CoH boards so I think he's safe as far as prison is concerned.

(he's be a hit in prison)

[Jimbo]

What the hell is Jack smoking over there?!?!  The game was fun when we can blast the snot out of a bunch of enemies and feel heroic.  I don't want it to be EQ with capes, but he seems to have bitten into the EQ/DAoC let's slow everything down and make the players suffer mode.

I know he'll reply back that he doesn't think we had a balanced risk vs reward, but nerfing everyone sucks!  I guess I liked AC's version of allways introducing mobs to balance out the over-powered than the bullshit that EQ, DAoC, and now CoH wants to do...

It is a shame though, my son and I love comics and used to love playing CoH together as a team.  He won't understand it when the nerf hits, but he will just not play it anymore.

[Signe]

Awww... poor kid!  Maybe, with lots and lots of luck, the two superhero mmos that have been announced, will put a spark of joy into your boy's life again.  Well, if they actually get into development.  And published.  And if they don't suck.

Of course, by that time, your boy will be all grown up and will just want to play with girls.



This post is, yet again, brought to you by, "Conjuntion Junction, what's your function?"

[Glazius]

What the hell is Jack smoking over there?!?!  The game was fun when we can blast the snot out of a bunch of enemies and feel heroic.  I don't want it to be EQ with capes, but he seems to have bitten into the EQ/DAoC let's slow everything down and make the players suffer mode.

I know he'll reply back that he doesn't think we had a balanced risk vs reward, but nerfing everyone sucks!  I guess I liked AC's version of allways introducing mobs to balance out the over-powered than the bullshit that EQ, DAoC, and now CoH wants to do...

It is a shame though, my son and I love comics and used to love playing CoH together as a team.  He won't understand it when the nerf hits, but he will just not play it anymore.

The thing is, I've seen this work, or something like it.

Back around the time GemStone III rolled into GemStone IV.

Far beyond the point where you could learn more spells, you could still pump points into "spell training" to increase the base power of your spells. The game was designed to make two shots per level reasonable and three shots per level require you to sacrifice just about all other character development.

Problems set in when the devs had to make new monsters 'round about level 60 or so, when there was a 60-point difference in spell power between the 2-mages and 3-mages. Do you make them tough but possible for the 2-mages to hit, with their wands and scrolls and other miscellaneous tricks to tide them over in the interim? Then the 3-mages can walk all over them effortlessly. Do you make them tough for the 3-mages to hit, to make them think again about focusing everything into one pursuit? Then the 2-mages will find them nearly impossible, even with all their extra tricks - because there isn't a trick to bring up spell power.

So they introduced diminishing returns, or cliff returns - one training was 3 points, two were 2, three was 1, so the 2-mages and 3-mages became 5-mages and 6-mages, and the relative difference in power wasn't that much anymore. But then they redefined the monster curve, gave players a respec, and nearly turned the game on its ear.

Simutronics hasn't gone bankrupt, last I heard, though I don't know if it's only the Gemstone money that's funding Hero's Journey.

I don't know how the game is going to turn out as a result of these changes. My 1-year subscription came up for renewal days before this announcement came out, and thinking it was the end of changes I happily tossed the money in. I preordered CoV too.

But this is a sledgehammer to morale, more than just a game change. Looking over my characters' builds there really isn't much that'll be affected, except for my fire tank's loss of permahasten.

It's Monday. I don't know when the devs are going to speak up or what they're going to say. Apparently they've been internally testing the stuff since March, even though when they talked to the playerbase they talked like the enhancements worked the way they always did. (Maybe this is why some of the numbers seemed off.) If they rescale hero and monster power to actually fit this...

I don't think AC's "hit the uber-templates" is the answer. That just reinforces the gap between 3-mages and 2-mages; the people with uber-templates and the people who wanted to explore the game. I want to hope they'll have the guts to do what GS3 did to turn into GS4. Leave people at the same relative power level, but their optimal build is no longer necessarily the optimal point. Or if it still is, then the other non-optimal points are closer than they were before.

--GF

[shiznitz]

It really is amazing. Whenever I start thinking I may actually d-click that CoH icon on my desktop and sign-up again, the devs do something like this. Time to uninstall this game once and for all. CoV and i5 got me to 4 (out of 10)  on the re-sub temptation meter. Now it is back to 1.

[Cheddar]

AC works on a curve.  So a level 80 is relatively comparable to a level 140.  Well relatively so I mean; I wonder if this change they are implementing is a knee jerk reaction or to assist in future project planning.  I lean towards them preparing for future content; COH has proven time and again that they DO have a plan.  I cannot say that about many other MMORPG companies.  Lack of project management forsight is a massive issue in todays subscription based services.  I believe we have gone over the correlation of retentions effects on quality numerous times though!

[Jimbo]

Well AC is kinda diffrent in that they basically had three classes: mages, meele, archers.  The mobs might be tough to 2 types but easy for another.  Plus if a debuff or buff was working so good on all the mobs, they would bring in mobs that were resistant to that debuff or buff.

Plus AC had a good balance of Solo vs Grouped content.  You want to log on for a hour and wack some mobs and get cash, items, and drops?  No problem.  Have a few hours to kill?  No problem, they would have quests of diffrent lengths that you could complete with diffrent amount of people.  I guess the lack of elves and that it was skill based made people not like it.   

I guess if Jack had came out from the get go and said that we could only fight 3 even con villians at at time and that is all they want us balanced for...it would have been okay.  But this is so far into the game and wanting to change it sucks.  That and the fact that he has allways said he didn't want to make it like EQ....but his actions sure are speaking louder than his words.

[Alkiera]

Another forums quote...:

We're going to need a new mission difficulty setting called "Nerfed Hero" that only spawns -2 minions.

That is all.
Also, as of noon CST(the time Cryptic seems to use for everything... are they based in Texas?), there has been no dev replies to the LONG threads on both boards.  The CoH thread was over 3600 posts, in less than 24 hours.

Alkiera

[Cheddar]

(the time Cryptic seems to use for everything... are they based in Texas?)

Yes.

[Trippy]

(the time Cryptic seems to use for everything... are they based in Texas?)

Yes.

Cryptic's not (they are in the SF Bay Area) but NCSoft USA is.

[Signe]

From Positronm, a few moments ago:

With Enhancement Diversification comes a benefit for ALL City of Heroes powers.

Every power, across the board, is getting a 13.33% reduction in its Endurance cost.

[Cheddar]

Sounds to me like they need to 6 slot their spin control power!

[Alkiera]

Looking around a bit, I've noticed you can get the WoW box, which also gives a free 30 days, for $39.99.  $39.82 if you don't mind shopping at Wal-Mart.

Given that pretty much every issue since i3 has added primarily nerfs to the game, and secondarily some minor additions to the game...  WoW is looking more and more tempting.

From Positronm, a few moments ago:

With Enhancement Diversification comes a benefit for ALL City of Heroes powers.

Every power, across the board, is getting a 13.33% reduction in its Endurance cost.

Currently, 6 SOs is a 198% bonus.  So if you have an attack with 1 ACC, 5 DMG, you do (base dmg) * 2.65.  If the worst of the rumors I've heard are true, that number will be more like base*2.3.  So you lose an entire SO of damage, and gain... less than a DO in end reduction?  Even

Gee, thanks.  If I needed an end reduction that bad, I'd just drop 1 DMG for an ENDRDX, giving me 33.3% reduction, and still be doing about the same damage as with this nerf, depending on how bad the actual numbers are.


Alkiera

[Xanthippe]

I don't need end reductions as much as I need faster recycling times for my Controller's powers.

This is going to make fights last longer.  Quicker fights are funner fights, more heroic fights.

So now I'll toss out a power, buff my nails, toss out a power...

At least my nails will get done.

[Nevermore]

Why didn’t you do it at I5?

First, there were some tech issues. Secondly, because I wanted to test the changes individually (i.e. powers and Enhancements)…I5 on the Training Room provided numerous insights on powers alone!

You’ve destroyed my character!

Everyone is entitled to their opinions; I can’t deny that. But please wait till you play with Enhancement Diversification before passing final judgment. I think you’ll find that slotting previously underused Enhancements, such as Endurance Reduction and Recharge Time, really makes a difference.

You’re doing this only after we’ve pre-ordered CoV.

If we were that Machiavellian, we would have waited until after CoV was out for a few weeks. I wanted to put this change in before hand so that everyone knew the system well before CoV came out.

Our opinions don’t matter.

Demonstrably not true. Feedback from players resulted in many changes to the initial launch of I5 – Dark Armor Endurance Reduction, lifting AOE limits for certain powers, making Controller pets permanent, buffing Ice Tankers, increasing Hold durations, increasing Instant Healing duration…etc. The forums are a vital place for us to get player input. Data and personal anecdotes only go so far!

Once we get this up on the Training Room server, we’ll be able to start looking at modifications to the system.

I’m sick of all these nerfs.

The goal with I5 was to address the base abilities of powers. But as many pointed out on these boards, Enhancements were also a significant problem. In fact, many people suggested on the boards and in PM’s that we look into some form of diminishing return.

I already said that I didn’t want powers touched any more in a large way after I5. Same is true with Enhancement Diversification; I think we have finished the large scale changes to bring the game into the right borders.

Does this mean no more changes? I’d like to promise you that there won’t be ANY changes in I7 that are “nerfs” and that any change is a “buff”, but that’s unrealistic given that there might be bugs, errors, etc. It simply wouldn’t be honest. BUT I do promise that I don’t foresee any more big swings on how things are done. And I hope that the powers list for I6 has very, very few power patch notes. And I7, and I8, etc.

The least they could have done is given us some sort of carrot with this.

Couple of things didn’t get posted. We’re cutting Endurance costs by 12% across the board (to ameliorate the effect that Enhancement Diversification has on Stamina). We’re also cutting the Debt cap in 1/2 . Yep. In half.

The above was posted by Statesman in that gargantuan Enhancement Diversity thread.  Not long after it was posted, it was deleted for some reason.  I'm thinking he's going to start a new thread, but haven't seen it yet.

[Xanthippe]

It's still there.  I think the boards are acting goofy because of all the action on this thread.

EDIT: Oh wait.  The entire 365+ page thread was deleted.  Then reposted.  Now it's got 6 pages or so.

[Nevermore]

Yeah, I just saw that.  Old thread broke under its own weight.  Statesman's post is back up in the new thread.

[Llava]

Currently, 6 SOs is a 198% bonus.  So if you have an attack with 1 ACC, 5 DMG, you do (base dmg) * 2.65.  If the worst of the rumors I've heard are true, that number will be more like base*2.3.  So you lose an entire SO of damage, and gain... less than a DO in end reduction?  Even

Gee, thanks.  If I needed an end reduction that bad, I'd just drop 1 DMG for an ENDRDX, giving me 33.3% reduction, and still be doing about the same damage as with this nerf, depending on how bad the actual numbers are.


Alkiera

It's worse than that.

You are losing .61 of that equation, meaning you're losing 2 SOs of damage.  That's with 5 slots.

Essentially, slotting any enhancement of the same type beyond 3 in a power means that many more enhancements you're losing in effectiveness.

You’ve destroyed my character!

Everyone is entitled to their opinions; I can’t deny that. But please wait till you play with Enhancement Diversification before passing final judgment. I think you’ll find that slotting previously underused Enhancements, such as Endurance Reduction and Recharge Time, really makes a difference.

Thanks, but it's not my opinion.  I've played my own characters, I know what makes them work.  Throwing recharge reductions into my powers isn't going to do it.  One of my characters who was viable and on the same level as other heroes using an alternate, frequently considered "gimped" build, is going to be unable to reach the level of other heroes now with his current build.  In order to make him viable, I will have to completely rebuild him and change his playstyle to a style that I specifically avoided because I do not find it fun (amazingly, this is the build that most everyone else uses already- so hooray for diversity making us all the same).  So yes, you have destroyed my character.  That is not opinion, that's a fact.

[Signe]

It's still there.  I think the boards are acting goofy because of all the action on this thread.

EDIT: Oh wait.  The entire 365+ page thread was deleted.  Then reposted.  Now it's got 6 pages or so.

Yeah, posts, threads and whole pages are disappearing every so often.