Creole Ned

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Well, if you've got immobs you'll be able to immob him in place once Castle gets his fix in.

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they could just fix the AI so they dont spaz out and run round the whole map, scrapyard is a joke these days

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The whole "running around like a spaz" thing is supremely annoying. I can't explain it any better than to say it's just not fun.

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and then they would just starting running around like a super speeder on meth until they regened.

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Ah yes, be advised ... this is very important.

DO NOT use any power containing an "Avoid" effect on them; ie., anything that signals "leave this area." That includes Freezing Rain, Caltrops, Burn, and any others. Mako, at least, runs like a maniac and afaik cannot effectively be speed-debuffed, so if you drop Freezing Rain on him, by the time he settles down again he'll be half-regenerated.

I've run the States TF twice: one success, one failure. The failure was because we gave up after trying for a half-hour to kill Mako ... as a result of this exact problem. The next time we made sure no Avoid powers were used (having learned our lesson from forum discussion); Mako stayed right on me (the tank) the whole time, and he died in a heap. It makes a huge difference.

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Not a big fan of this school of design ("The powers you normally use will be ineffective here"). It reminds me of the purple triangles and how utterly kludgey they are. The devs rely a lot on this sort of thing for their "big boss" fights and it's one of the reasons I think AVs in general just don't work right (for me).

I ran the STF with a good team and we stalemated on Mako the exact way you describe, FCM. Guess what AT I was playing? Storm defender. :P It's not especially fun to have my best powers actively work against me. I don't mind if they're less effective but Mako just keep buzzing around all over the place. It got pretty dull after awhile. I felt sorry for the melee guys. I could at least take a few potshots at him with my blasts.

The TF up to that point was pretty good, though. Aeon is, as always, a hoot and is one of my favorite characters in the CoH/CoV universe, so I was glad to see him again. The spread of bosses and AVs works fairly well, too.

My criticisms:

- blowing up stuff mayhem-style is fun. Being able to only blow up a bunch of cables is a bit of a letdown, though.
- nice use of scenery from CoV, particularly taking players into the fab in Grandville. I was disappointed that there were no genuinely new maps, however.
- the cutscenes allowed me to follow the story fairly well without having to read the mission text. I like that. Some people may complain about their length (especially Aeon's) but I was okay with it.
- the AV fights in the future Atlas Park felt a little too staged, not "organic".

Still, the pacing is good, the fights are busy (ambushes ahoy!) and overall I enjoyed it and look forward to doing it again.

The Ernesto Hess TF still remains my favorite for overall execution and presentation, though.

I ran the event with a few alts then just ignored it for the remainder of its duration.

My feedback:

- GOOD: co-op missions are always fun. Did one run with my kin/rad defender and a ninja mastermind. Very fun stuff. BAD: Making co-op play mandatory. The winter event approach is better, especially given the disparity in hero/villain numbers on most servers. Provide incentives to mix heroes and villains, don't make it mandatory.
- GOOD: having buyable temp powers that greatly benefit the opposite faction but still boost the same faction. This is a nice incentive for mixed teams, as described above. More of this would be good.
- GOOD: Plenty of rewards. BAD: None for logging in, badges encourage farming teams, which detracts greatly from the spirit of the event for people who want to play it "for real".
- BAD: Too many missions. Four missions is too much for an event with five distinct rewards
- BAD: Snaptooth is tired. Get a new villain in, preferably a unique one.
- GOOD: The duration of the event meant there was little chance anyone would miss out. BAD: I think the event ran *too* long. 19 days is more than was needed, really and interest just fizzles out toward the end.

Suggestions:

- make the event shorter, perhaps 7 days total
- replace Snaptooth with a unique villain
- make rewards global, not per character to cut down on repetition and farming
- reduce total missions from four to two maximum
- provide incentives (temp powers, alternate paths in mission) that encourage cross-faction teaming but do not require it
- add a secret pie easter egg somewhere

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I don't quite see how they can say they learned something and then say this. Having a certain AT be required, which is basically what this says, is no better than having one or more be marginalized.

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No, having certain abilities be /required/ to beat something is /good/. We /need/ more of this. In old school RPG's you had to have all your bases covered with classes. Every class has specific roles that had to accomplish that only they could accomplish. Now everything is really homogenized because, "Oh no we don't want them to be stuck if they can't find /blank/." Well dammit, this is a big [censored] mission. I say put stuff in the missions at are /impossible/ to say, hit with melee. Or things that need to be controlled to advance, make things that you /need/ a tank there to taunt away otherwise they'll waste everyone. And of course you'll need defenders to keep the party going and scrappers to deal with the hordes of things that /are/ in melee range. Do it, I want teams to die and team wipe because they thought they could run it without X AT because "dey are squishy". I want people to cry and wail in misery and gnash their teeth for building unbalanced teams and neglecting ATs. Maybe it's a bit harsh, but /not/ doing this is what leads to people running teams through LRSF with only certain classes. Because if you don't /need/ an AT for the job and another AT is /easier/ to run it with, then people are going to go with the AT that is /easier/. No question.

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It's true that a lot of MMORPGs count on players sticking to the classic triad/pentad group make-up when tackling the big dungeons/instances/encounters. But I would not be surprised if the bulk of players who enjoy CoH and CoV appreciate how Cryptic has largely deviated from that particular formula.

Personally, I rather like the fact that most task forces can be done with virtually any team composition. It provides variety in the encounters and allows players to use different tactics depending on the particular team make-up. Putting in designs that *require* certain ATs just narrows down player options and tactics. Is that something most CoH/V players want? I'd wager not, but perhaps I'm mistaken.

Now, providing the opportunity for an AT to shine in a TF by presenting obstacles it is suited for overcoming is *good*. Allowing for teams lacking such an AT to brute force their way through or use different tactics is even better. This is hopefully what Positron is meaning when he cites controllers as being desireable for the Statesman's TF.

True, it's not an ideal solution and maybe it needs to be knocked around a bit to make it fair to all still on a TF. But I prefer it to nerfing Shivans, which I see as an issue that should be dealt with separately from Task Forces.

Or to put it another way, whatever the solution is, I'd prefer it apply to the TFs directly.

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Please leave Shivans alone. They are very useful to the squishier AT's in the game.

The simple thing to do is to make the rewards tie into the minimum team size. If the TF need 4 to start, you must have 4 to get rare drops. Make the missions scale to the TF minimum, instead of for a solo player. Leave it so that you can still complete the TF if under the minimum, just no rares will drop.

I think that would solve the problem.

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This strikes me as the most sensible option. TFs are not meant to be soloed even though many can be. Tie the rewards to a team being present for the last mission.

There are plenty of threads for game issues and performance. The devs are aware of the problems. Hijacking this thread isn't going to get anything solved any faster than otherwise would have happened -- but it will pretty much kill the on-topic discussion that was taking place.

No, it could be an exception. There are already exceptions, there's no rule that says "No more exceptions!"

I can't think of a good reason to keep Inertial Reduction rooted. It's a travel power and it's damn annoying to have to land every time it's about to expire so you don't fall out of the sky.

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You may have noticed some click powers that used to root you and now don’t. These powers snuck their way into the wrong build (see what happens when we don’t root them), and most of these will change back in the next build that makes it to live. Consider this an official head’s up.

Again, sorry for the confusion this has caused. We’ll get it all sorted out shortly and we thank you for your patience and understanding.

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I think it's time you guys fixed your development process.

It's broken.

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Obviously there was confusion or a lack of clarity among the devs over the scope of the changes. When the changes hit Test, we, the players, caught the discrepancies. Within a week, a new patch dealt with most of the discrepancies and we've been informed that the next few patches will deal with the rest.

The Community Rep and a Developer and the animator were all reading and responding to our posts over this. As much as I've been critical of the development and QA process in the past, this round of changes and patches had exemplary responsiveness from NCSoft and Cryptic.

I am well pleased. I wished the development and QA of all the patches and issues went like this.

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This sums up my own point of view as well. I've been critical about the devs' processes before but they've been communicative and responsive over these particular issues and I'm very happy to see it. I offer them virtual cookies in gratitude!

I also want to throw my support behind unrooting Inertial Reduction. It's basically an AoE click version of super jump. Unrooting it will only make it work better as a travel power, it's obvious and primary purpose. I can't see any reason in favor of keeping it rooted apart from consistency -- but the game already has a number of powers that are excepted from rules.

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The only thing I can say is the mobs must be doing an aggro check of every player in range and the AI is splitting the aggro among the whole team so one player is not the main focus of the whole spawns aggression.

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That's correct. It has been this way since release, I believe -- I remember being aggro'd while running Invisibility back in beta. In a nutshell, the entire team is put on the awareness/aggro list, not just the person who initiated the combat. It's not quite that simple, since there are a number of extenuating circumstances that can happen, but in general it is correct.

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I always wondered if this wasn't the case, being in situations like a hidden Stalker who hadn't attacked and being pegged (ruining hide).

It'd sure be nice if they only split aggro among people who didn't have stealth powers going. I imagine that's a non-trivial change though.

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Even if it's not a trivial change, they should do it. It makes no sense for a hidden character that hasn't engaged in combat to get attacked (outside obvious things like an AoE attack that catches them). It's especially annoying for stalkers, where being hidden is a fundamental part of the AT.

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On the 0/5 levels (10, 15, etc) you have a chance to do either the lower Safeguard or the higher Safeguard.

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Also true. I'm not sure when/how the game will give you one over the other.

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At level 10, the Safeguard missions start taking place in Kings Row, so what you experienced was normal (unless the mission you accepted specifically said you'd be protecting the Atlas Park bank).

Safeguards will generally deposit you in the same zone you took them in.

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Really? I never had a safeguard drop me in the same zone in which I took it. Not a single time. But I've only run about 8-10 safeguards - from characters leveled 7 up to 46, just not many of them. Maybe I've just had a bad streak with the PRNG.

RagManX

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No, I goofed up by describing a different aspect of safeguards, namely how the SWAT van you enter is typically in the zone where you pick up the safeguard mission, but the mission instance may be set elsewhere. For example, tonight I ran one with a PuG. The SWAT van was in PI but the safeguard mission was actually in Founders' Falls. On the test server, you often had to cross zones just to get to the SWAT van.

At level 10, the Safeguard missions start taking place in Kings Row, so what you experienced was normal (unless the mission you accepted specifically said you'd be protecting the Atlas Park bank).

Safeguards will generally deposit you in the same zone you took them in.

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When I click on the veteran reward for the staff/wand, it doesn't give me a choice. It says I received it, but doesn't give me either of them. This has happened on two characters so far. The one for the mu/axe works fine though.

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The Nemesis staff and blackwand are 33 month Vet Rewards and aren't available yet. If they are showing up for you, it may be a glitch in the way the Vet Rewards are displayed. I believe people who have had accounts since launch will hit the 33 month mark later this month.

Ran my first SG mission tonight with my level 6 illusion/kin controller and my friend's level 6 stone/war mace tanker.

We began working our way to the bank, took out the Hellions that were in our path along the way. In the bank, some judicious use of Deceive reduced incoming fire and we managed to stop Rosethorn and pals without much trouble.

We took out a few sets of vandals after, one time arriving long before the vandals did. I was almost thinking it was bugged but the Vahzilok eventually showed up.

We never suffered any time penalties, although a few objects got trashed thanks to the rather obnoxious super-aggro range of the Hellions.

We defeated the Eidolon and mortificator for the one side mission -- stop the jailbreak. Freed two PPD and took out the would-be escapee. Shortly after that we got swarmed by Vahzilok and exited the mission rather than faceplant.

Overall, it went pretty smoothly, especially against the dreaded Vahzilok. The temp jetpack is very nice, of course, but the whole design of the mission -- "Go here! Go there! Do this now! Do that now!" -- isn't one I find especially engaging. I wish the devs would ease up on the heroes = reactive, villains = proactive stuff. I much prefer the more freeform style of mayhem missions, but that's just me.

After running a few missions with my level 43 mind/psi dominator, the build-up time of domination is noticeably faster, whether solo or teamed. This is a nice improvement. In one mission I decided to fire off domination whenever it came up. Just moments after it had drained away, I entered a room in a Council cave mission to find an Ascendant Archon boss waiting for me. Figures. :P As others have said, this is one of the problems (or features, if you prefer) of playing a Jekyll and Hyde character. Sometimes the Hyde side isn't there when you want it.

Personamorpher, dominators aren't broken but they could stand some tweaks outside of boosting domination. My 43 did not start to feel strong until he got his level 38 attack. That's a long way to play while doing so-so damage.

I don't want dominators to become controllers with blaster-strength attacks, but I do feel the assault sets could use some minor boosts to their damage output or perhaps secondary effects could be made more prominent.

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* Players may experience respec issues with a Kheldian character while slotting energy flight, rest, or sprint. If you would like to slot any of these powers we highly suggest you hold on to your respec for the time being.

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Does this bug apply to Energy Flight? Kheldians cannot slot any other version of flight, so I assume it does, but shouldn't the known bugs file refeer to the power properly?

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It says "energy flight" in the part you quoted.

Pep Cat, it may be that new pieces are "bumping" existing pieces in the database, so if you have one of the bumped pieces, it's suddenly switched to whatever was next in the list, even if it wasn't actually changed. My guess, anyhoo.

I suspect the tokens will be per slot, as they have been in the past. The intent of the tokens is to allow players to fix up costumes that have been altered due to changes in the costume editor. Since those changes can carry across all of a player's costumes, it makes sense to award one token per slot.

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Cuts at NCsoft? No cuts at Cryptic at all? (Where's Geko, for example? I remember this being asked before, I think the answer was he's on another NCSoft game)

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Geko is on another Cryptic project.

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uh huh.....welocme to maintenence mode people. Marvel is the new money maker and we were the test bed

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This seems an ironic thing to say the same day a new issue goes live (and with inventions coming in the next issue).

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Inventions are an IF and a very big if.....hell i can code inventions to be exactly like Titan So's....right no one knows about those because they truly suck. ED was balanced around the fact that we would get new enhancment types....except we suffered ED and havent seen but a glimpse of inventions.......
Inventions were also scheduled way back when, i4 i think but got put off because of the not fun factor......which is Dev speak for "we couldnt make them suck time out of you guys".....conjecture was because the dev team couldnt make them suck enough to be worthless and take up timesink hours for people to try and get them.

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You seem to be mixing up the abandoned skills system with inventions. They are not the same thing.

If you are not happy with the game, I'd recommend taking a break or quitting. In the end, it is only a game and it's everyone's choice to play or not. I honestly do not understand how people can appear so bitter and cynical and yet still play. Maybe complaining releases endorphins or something.

Known Issue: The Known Issues page has not been updated for Issue 8.

Joking aside, can we get an updated version? This is a good idea for a thread because it will let players cite minor issues that aren't likely to make an official list but that everyone would appreciate knowing, nonetheless.

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Cuts at NCsoft? No cuts at Cryptic at all? (Where's Geko, for example? I remember this being asked before, I think the answer was he's on another NCSoft game)

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Geko is on another Cryptic project.

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uh huh.....welocme to maintenence mode people. Marvel is the new money maker and we were the test bed

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This seems an ironic thing to say the same day a new issue goes live (and with inventions coming in the next issue).

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Hey guys, our plan is to get you new Issues three times a year. Issue 7 was bigger than originally planned (Mayhem Missions got thrown into the issue at the last possible second) and that, coupled with other delays, screwed up the schedule for 2006, thus only 2 free content expansions on the Live servers this year.

2007 has three Issues planned for it, one near Q1/Q2, one for the summer, and one for the end of the year. I can't give more exact dates than that because everything is subject to change.

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Thanks for the update Positron. This is the sort of information that players love to get.

What exactly does Q1/Q2 mean? I only know the term in reference to financial years or whatever. Q1/Q2 = March/April?

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In this case, I think Q1/Q2 simply refers to the calendar year, pegging Issue 9 somewhere in the January to June 2007 timeframe.

And to those wondering about Geko, a recent post from Castle suggests that he is still looking over aspects of CoH/CoV but it's believed that he has mainly shifted over to Cryptic's work on Marvel Universe Online.

I don't have a problem with I8 being a bit late, but going from a hoped-for September date to one nearly in December is more than a bit late.

But there's nothing we can do about it, really, except to voice our concerns and hope the devs can deliver new updates in a more timely manner once I8 is out.

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Would not adding more diversity to the 35+ content perhaps encourage more people to play through the higher end of the game more often?

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I think that might help, but mostly for the people who already have characters in or near the level range.

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I do hope Cryptic isn't simply looking at the level ranges of characters people are playing and not thinking critically about the possible reasons behind those numbers.

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The greater issue may be leveling speed vs. rewards/carrots. The pace in the 30s slows significantly. Couple that with new powers (one of the biggest carrots the game offers) switching to once every three levels and I suspect a lot of players simply run out of gas and abandon alts once they pass the 20s.

The 30s could use more content and a flattened leveling curve similar to the 40s.

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I should note that I, personally, have never run out of missions in the 30-40 gap that some have enountered. But I recognize that its a problem for some folks.

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I was fine in CoH but my dominator, running in a duo at the Vicious difficulty completely exhausted all contact missions at level 38. I was quite surprised when it happened, actually.

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I guess I look at it as the game goes and grows the complexity makes it harder and harder to add meaningful content.

Which got me thinking: If the game were frozen, never to change, how many would stay and play anyway? Besides me.

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I would be in for a few more months, but then I will have seen what there is to see and move on. With no anger mind you, I'd just be done. MMOs simply cannot reach a point where they are stagnant or people can and will leave.

I do wish the devs had made their September launch of Issue 8. This makes me fear we won't see Issue 9 until at least May. I'm resigned to the fact that we will get our anniversary respec with Issue 9's launch.

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I think a ballpark figure of May 2007 for Issue 9 is reasonable. It introduces new tech into the game - Inventions - and both Issue 7 and Issue 8 seem to have suffered long delays because of new tech.

I have a level 42 villain, I'm eager to see what awaits 42-50. I have some lowbie alts I'm having fun with. I want to take a hero through the new Faultline and the vet rewards add a nice combo of utility and fluff, so I won't be heading off from the game soon. But once I've exhausted those things and if I9 is still looking to be months away, it may give me pause.

Six months or more between updates is just too long, especially if Cryptic wants to retain longterm players. I'd be happy to see smaller updates if it meant we'd see them on a more timely basis.

Still, I'm here and still having fun. For now.