Dysmal

This is interesting. I'm having crazy images of MM's using Provoke.

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CoX will be a better place with EM adjusted.

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It would also be better if all Controler and defender toggles required per hit chances rather then being Automatic like so much of Rad is.

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All toggle debuffs are like that. Toggle debuffs are trivially easy to break though, since you can just move 300 ft and they drop.

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I agree with the exception of Snowstorm. An automatic, almost universially unresisted debuff to speed and flight. If you aren't a SJ user, this power is pretty ugly. Note that this is not a request for nerfage (there are lots of ugly powers); I'm just pointing it out as an obvious outlier.

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Sure, it makes it harder to move, thats the whole point of Snow Storm. I would think TP users could escape just as handily as SJ users though. Unlike most toggle debuffs, Snowstorm doesnt reduce either enemy accuracy or damage, so I think its balanced compared to the others. Snowstorm doesnt effect the enemies ability to use a mez effect on the person running the power either.

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CoX will be a better place with EM adjusted.

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It would also be better if all Controler and defender toggles required per hit chances rather then being Automatic like so much of Rad is.

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All toggle debuffs are like that. Toggle debuffs are trivially easy to break though, since you can just move 300 ft and they drop.

Hmm, time to stick my To Hit Debuffing characters on the shelf until I7 comes out.

Which is why I dont even bother bringing my defenders to PvP zones other than to grab badges or missions. If I played buffers I might hang out and buff, but I play Dark and Storm because I dont want to buff.

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I wonder who's ahead: doms or defenders.

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I'd guess perhaps defs, with their ability to use +Dam or -Res to boost their damage. Though as I said in a thread about something being better than Trick Arrow, being faster than a three legged dog isn't anything to get excited about.

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There's a difference.

This isn't anyone's job. There are two community reps: Cuppa and Awry. No one else has to come here and tell us squat.

That they do rocks. That they don't get it right sucks. That they have promised to get it right and not done so sucks. I want it to get better, bad and right now. But it just ain't their damn job.

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Whether or not communicating accurate information about the game to the players is techincally part of the job description of the developers is not really relevant IMO.

Producing the patch notes must be part of someone at Cryptic's job (as opposed to NCSoft where Cuppa and Awry work) since they make the changes. And I think its pretty clear that the person or person's responsible has not been doing a good job of keeping accurate, informative patch notes ever since the game went live. States has acknowledged that Cryptic, specifically, must improve in this regard, and yet nothing has changed. Significant changes have continued to go to test in an undocumented or poorly explained fashion.

How many years does it take to learn how to do this task compentently? How much community good-will is Cryptic willing to continue to squander by letting this sorry state of affairs continue? Jack and the other developers will have to answer those questions for themselves.

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I dunno ... how many years does it take for you to do your job competently? You NEVER screw up? How many people are involved in the process that is "your job" - 1, 5, 10, 100?

How many of them have different processes which are required for them to do their job? 10, 50, 100? I'll bet dollars to donuts - that even at your jobs most complicated - it's 1/100th as easy a task than getting even one release of this software out the door. And in that relatively uncomplicated job -- that you probably have common mistakes and fall behind on like we all do Not saying you dont' do your job well - just saying your human like the rest of us, prone to mistakes, and even on your best day ever - they happen.

I've been in software development for some of the largest software manufacturers out there - even worked for the people who build the largest and best selling test and software process software. Let me tell you - NO ONE gets it right every time.

Software development - on it's best days - hitting the target and getting all the elements in place, on time and accurately - is hit and miss at best. And that's when you have all the money, tools, manpower you can ask for.

IBM has over 12 products I know they charge over $30k for - none of which have accurate documentation. Microsoft? Oracle? Sun? Apple? Let's not go there... I'd be laughing too hard. RedHat? Oh Puh-Leaze!! It Hurts!!

Now, if the leading software manufacturers out there - with roughly over 100 times the employees and man power (in some cases) that Cryptic has - can't get it perfect - and in some cases not even close to perfect ... cut them some slack.

I don't know the process between Cryptic and NC - but I'm willing to bet good money - that the exchange of communications is no different than anywhere else. When a product has bugs - and there's a fix process, a rollout process and a new code development process all going on simultaneously with an extremely short turn around cycle between development, Q&A and drop -- amazingly enough - the degree accuracy of the patch notes are the least of the worries in getting it out the door.

Be glad you get them at all.

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Implying that my job is somehow less complex than the poor old software developer is pretty clearly a veiled insult at all non-developers on your part. Maybe since you work in the industry, you're feeling a tribal need to defend people in your occupation. Thats OK, but don't fool yourself into thinking you're somehow any better, smarter, or working at a more difficult occupation than people in other occupations.

This isn't about me, or what I do for a living. Its about a company failing to live up to a publically made comittment to improve.

I would also point out that there's a difference between making the occasional mistake, and consistantly producing error riddled work that reflects poorly on your employer in public. The patch notes have been a problem since day one, when the first patch to the live servers went up without documentation at all. This was prior to the existance of the Training Room. Were there just an occasional mistake, most people wouldnt be too upset. Thats not the reality of the situation here though.

As I've said elsewhere, just because the industry standard for communication is crap, that doesnt mean we shouldn't ask for and demand better from Cryptic.

Requisite "OMG Castle is nerfing EM" omgbbq response.

I figure I should get it out of the way before someone who would actually be serious about taking that from your post does it.

However, it does raise an interesting issue. Will there be changes made to bring the performance of other blaster secondaries up to EM in PvP, or EM down to the others, or EM down a bit and the others up a bit? And when you look at how much EM helps blaster kill counts in PvP, do you factor in the popularity of EM as the FoTM PvP blaster secondary before you make changes?

One comment about Traps and Teleport. Its handy to know that Acid Mortar can be moved with Recall Friend, as can FF Gen. You wouldnt really need to move FF gen too often, but it is doable. Being able to port Acid Mortar around is nice, so you can bring it from spawn to spawn with you.

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He must've spent all day digging for it.

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Not really. All you have to do is keep going until you hit the last page of the forum, and its assured to be a thread with a dev post in it.

Congrats to all the winners. It's kind of cool to see a character I've seen in-game (Bayani, in Siren's Call on virtue) in the comic.

In regards to the mistakes in math and so on from someone like States, I think the issue is that other than the laudable example set by Castle, the folks who work directly with the powers, and work first hand with the numbers on a day to day basis don't deign to speak to us more than once in a blue moon.

Were Geko to step up and explain power changes in detail when they are made, I think there would be less errors in the numbers and explantions we get, since he is the man in charge of powers. We're he to do that kind of thing, some nice player might even send him cookies as happened once in the past.

Well, it will be interesting to see how the toggle dropping reduction jives with his statement that melee characters should bring break frees and be prepared to fight without their defenses sometimes.

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Exiting Arena or Mission

If you are stuck and can't use your exit button for any reason, try this command:

/requestexitmission 1


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Just a note, but this command only lets you exit completed missions. If used in an uncompleted mission, you will receive an error message. /leaveteam will let you out of an uncompleted mission, but also quits your team.

NOTE: Consolidating replies to several people into one post.
Uber Guy
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Dysmal, I agree with you. I was specifically answering MonkeyB's commentary on how doing the same would result in loss of a job. Well, I don't think the two rally can compare.


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Agreed.

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Should they do this right? Yes. However, complaining for people to lose jobs when they're doing something they don't have to do at all is just stupid and does us no damn good. IMO. They could just not bother much. They could make all the patch notes completely abstract. They wouldn't be the first people to do so.

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Abstract like "rebalanced the kora fruit"?

Personamorpher
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From everything I've learned about Cryptic, they seem to me to be currently understaffed. This means that a lot of people working on this game are pulling more than their fair share. It also means that a lot more mistakes are bound to crawl into the woodwork that with a fully staffed team. The effort these guys are putting forth it's a wonder that the game has turned out to be as good as it has. You really should be praising them instead of berating them. Sure, call them on their mistakes and keep them focused, but stop ripping into them when something slip by them that would have slipped by anyone working in their situation.


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The staffing situation at Cryptic is not something we can know about one way or the other. Regardless, after two plus years of running CoH, one would hope the management types would have figured out their staffing needs. After expanding CoH from North America to Europe, Launching CoV and expanding to Asia, I am somewhat dubious that Cryptic is understaffed due to anything other than choice by management. If Cryptic is running understaffed due to their own choice, and that lack of staff is resulting in poor communication to the customers, then criticism is, I think, more than fair.

As for praise, I'll praise them when, and if, its warranted. I praised Statesman for acknowledging that the situation with patch notes was not acceptable. That was a ballsy move on Jack's part, admitting an error and making a comittment to improve.

As for "ripping them when anyone in their situation would make the same mistake", we don't know their situation. Unless there are live webcams of the Cryptic office's, we can't know what their situation is in respect to work hours, staffing levels, etc. As such, its not reasonable to expect players to cut them slack based on something we simply don't know.


Futurias:
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I think the "fact" that the *live* notes are deplorable is highly subjective. Most of the missed notes on patches have been to test, which I find as acceptable as that's part of the test process.


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If I recall correctly recently we've seen a few instances of errors being reported in the test patch notes, those errors pointed out on the forums, and no change being made in the notes for live release.

I also think the patch notes for the Test Server are just as important as the Live Notes, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, without accurate, informative, and complete patch notes, it makes it much more difficult for players to know what to test, and if they are seeing the correct results. Indeed, without reliable patch notes, if a player encounters something that seems wrong on the Test server, we cannot know if that something wrong is an intentional change, bug, or something else. This can't help the test process. Nor is the time spent by CuppaJo communicating with the folks at Cryptic trying to get to the bottom of undocumented or poorly documented changes a good use of her or the people at Cryptic's time.

It seems to me that instead of involving multiple people at NCSoft and Cryptic to eventually get an accurate and complete patch note for each patch, it would be much more efficient if Cryptic just produced quality notes at the start. It would be better for "community" as well.

Community perception of the development team and "goodwill" as it were, towards Cryptic suffers everytime a patch doesnt get properly documented. We ask ourselves, why aren't things documented properly? Lack of attention to detail? An attempt to hide something? A simple copy and paste error?

Imagine, if you will, a forum where the word's "Stealth Nerf" is a thing of the past due to the detailed, complete, and accurate communication about changes from Cryptic to the playerbase. I think thats something worth striving toward.

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There's a difference.

This isn't anyone's job. There are two community reps: Cuppa and Awry. No one else has to come here and tell us squat.

That they do rocks. That they don't get it right sucks. That they have promised to get it right and not done so sucks. I want it to get better, bad and right now. But it just ain't their damn job.

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Whether or not communicating accurate information about the game to the players is techincally part of the job description of the developers is not really relevant IMO.

Producing the patch notes must be part of someone at Cryptic's job (as opposed to NCSoft where Cuppa and Awry work) since they make the changes. And I think its pretty clear that the person or person's responsible has not been doing a good job of keeping accurate, informative patch notes ever since the game went live. States has acknowledged that Cryptic, specifically, must improve in this regard, and yet nothing has changed. Significant changes have continued to go to test in an undocumented or poorly explained fashion.

How many years does it take to learn how to do this task compentently? How much community good-will is Cryptic willing to continue to squander by letting this sorry state of affairs continue? Jack and the other developers will have to answer those questions for themselves.

It's already been announced that toggle dropping will be "dramatically reigned in" or words to that effect in I7.

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Twighlight Grasp debuffs Damage and Regeneration, not Accuracy or ToHit.

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Twilight Grasp also debuffs toHit. It is a strong effect - I notice it often.


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According to Ladioss_Sopp's old DM guide, TG is around a 20% To Hit Debuff.

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In addition, higher ranks have an inherent resistance to To Hit Debuffs (.1 for Lts., .2 for Bosses, .3 for AVs).

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Why, Statesman? Why nerf us even more?


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I think its pretty clear. They didn't nerf To Hit Debuffs in the Global Defense Reduction, which in their eyes has resulted in To Hit Debuffs being "overpowered" relative to other defensive powers (+Def or +Res buffs, etc.). Thus, they throw in this nerf.

Statesman, has it ever occured to the folks at Cryptic that you would save CuppaJo and the other forum mods a lot of trouble if you guys bothered to take the time to thoroughly document and explain changes as or before they go to the Test Server? I mean, your line about "Cryptic must improve" in regards to patch notes is looking like nothing more than lip-service at this point. I applauded you for making that statement, but there has been no visible improvement to the accuracy or completeness of the patch notes since then.

Good news that you arent done sprucing the set up. Thanks for keeping us informed.

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All MMs were told they would receive a slight buff with i7, aimed at PVP but useful in PVE also. Does anyone on test know what this buff is?

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Actually, it's not aimed at PvP -- it's a general change. Useful equally everywhere.

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<Shakes magic dev ball harder>

Mind telling us what the change is?

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Ew. Doms mostly suck in PVP, how would that help at ALL?

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More HP means you live longer. You are aware MM's have lower HP than those ATs I mentioned?

<shakes magic Dev ball>

I forsee a.... HP bump to Defender/Controller/Dominator levels.

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This all comes off as "too little, too late." Positron said if Trick Arrow was underperforming on Live, it would be fixed. The fixes listed are either very minor, or bug fixes. When is TA going to get a significant buff?

And the Archery fixes are kind of "meh." Rain of Arrows will be a lot better, but I never had a problem with Fistful of Arrows' animation. Blazing Arrow is my biggest animation problem.

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I tend to agree. While its nice that the bugs are getting fixed, that doesnt address the fundamental flaws in the design of the set.

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EDIT: Additionally, this change was mostly aimed at the Bloody Bay and Siren's Call levels where Stalkers are so far above any other AT in Kill Count vs Death Count that it isn't even funny. In higher level PvP zones, players have plenty of options of dealing with Stalkers, which *should* force Stalkers to Team more.

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Nerf Teleport. Add in a bunch of -Jump and -Teleport powers. Then kill count to death count will balance out.

I've never seen a Stalker that has *only* Fly or Super Speed.

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TP doesnt suppress after an attack does it?