Plasma

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There has been a lot of talk about video games causing violence by people like Jack Thompson. Some people agree with his views and some people do not...I for one do not. Personal opinions aside, a documentary is being made called "Moral Combat" talking about the gaming industry's effect on society. Penny Arcade listed this link . Within this trailer they have a few screenshots of Statesman, as well as shots from other games. I'm not trying to start a flamewar about video game violence, but what I do ask is this: Do you think the CoX universe really falls under the same category as the rest of the games shown in 'Moral Combat'? Is there really a reason to put a game like ours under fire? Hope this makes sense, and thanks for reading my early morning rambling.

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It's completely irrelevent what Thompson thinks, or what Congress thinks. Video games are protected expression under the first amendment. Even if the game-hating nuts got the law they wanted - say the FCC rating games and selling a certain rating or higher was a felony and a huge fine - it would have a minimal impact on the game industry. Like movies, games would either skirt the line to get the rating they needed for their demographic (PG-13) or just market to adults (R+) and kids who can get their parents to buy it for them.

There's a few things Jack Thompson and his ilk like to ignore:

* Most of these games are played by adults far more than children, much like R rated movies
* They don't have the constitutional authority to regulate what adults view and play.
* Congress are not our parents. They are our servants. I don't need some moralistic legislator deciding what's right for me. (Or my children for that matter, and I say that as one of the 1% of parents who, for example, won't let my 5 yr old drink soda) I'd like them to deal with profiteering oil companies, a ridiculously high deficit, a bad war, out of control inefficient healthcare, rampant corruption, and so on.

As for Jack Thompson, himself, he's best ignored. Maybe he'll finally go away.

Very nice. As a frequent blapping participant in Siren's and occasionally other places, I can say for certain there is one toon and one toon only who adds to my rate of bounty accumulation, and that is an empath. There is simply nothing like a competent empath, and I've occasionally paired up with a highly skilled one, either emp/* or even ill/emp, and butched whole zones full of villains. Fully buffed with a good emp who can heal me and still survive, I've literally blapped my way through villains so nonstop that the one I started with was back to die again by the time I ran out of villains to kill, as they hurled themselves futilely against the unstoppable force I became with the emp as a wingman. Absolutely amazing. In other words, while the builds may be somewhat different, an empath is quite possibly even MORE useful in PvP than they are in PvE, and that itself is considerable.

dual 7900 GTXs (although SLI is off right now)
latest drivers as of early nov
2GB high perf ram
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ overclocked to 2.5Ghz

I'm mostly fine, but I'm occasionally getting weird lag bursts. I *think* they're tied to fire effects. Last night we were running the defeat Chimera, and we had 7. Everything was fine, smooth. A fire tank joined. Ugh. Lag bursts - it seemed like they were timed at first with his pulses of Blazing Aura. This is the second time I've thought: hmm, it seems like the fire power caused this, but the other was last week, so I've forgotten exactly what happened last week.

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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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Does cryptic HAVE a third project, or does that mean MUO? I don't like Cryptic being cryptic.

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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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Mwahaha, my evil plan has worked, and Positron has finally commented on my thread.

Hey, thanks for the update.

Keep in mind, it isn't just about how many issues you roll out, but what's in them.

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I havent read the thread yet with the exception of the OP so I apologize if this perspective has already been discussed. I personally look at it from an average standpoint;

Game release = April 28, 2004 to Nov 28, 2006 = 31 months

8 Issues give us an average of an issue just less then every four months and that doesnt seem all too bad to me. Granted, if the next two issues hit the six month mark then we will obviously see that average grow but I am not personally ready to start the signal fires of discontent and doom (for lack of a better word).

I absolutely do look forward to new content but, considering both games and what they currently offer as well as my own possibly slower play style, maybe im not quite the model player but for what its worth. Im happy.

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It isn't just the issues, but what is contained. See the OP, and compare what comes in them.

Also, it really isn't fair to call I6 an issue, since it didn't actually really add anything. Heck, even the CoV costume options were added after the fact, mostly.

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/Agreed. I'd rather have smaller mini-updates closer together. Though from a programming point of view I can see how having larger one time updates would make it easier to find bugs and such.

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Some incremental changes can roll out without extensive testing, but I promise you there's a whole process that gears up to test an "issue" update, and splitting it up into smaller pieces might well increase the resources required significantly.

I'm fine with longer times if there's more content; but looking at I8, it feels less significant by far than I2 or I3, despite taking twice as long. Skills feels like a system significant enough that it might require a longer delay, and if it is "mostly done" already and I9 is on us quickly (I'm thinking like a 2-month or less delay like I5), then it will feel much better - since the average of I8+I9 will decline to 4 months. But I think 3 months is a very smart schedule...

(1) Month 1: you're playing with goodies
(2) Month 2: you're perhaps growing bored with goodies, but some of them are fun, and you're starting to hear about the next update
(3) Month 3: with nothing on the horizon, the short-attention-span crowd has let their sub lapse. However, on the 3-month schedule, the next issue is rolling onto the test server, and they keep it.
(4) Repeat

Let me add that I'm not in this crowd; I'm an annual sub. I'm also just a big cheerleader for the game, and I hope the devs realize how much the update schedule impacts interest... although I'm not sure it's one of those things that can undo damage done. That is, I think updates KEEP players, but they don't necessarily get them back. I know lots of people who played CoH nonstop through about I4, then quite because the updates got anemic. They returned for CoV, and a lot of them didn't even come back for I7 because it took so long. Another subset returned for I7, but only for a month. Basically, they moved on. And realistically, there's not a lot of room in our lives for more than 1 MMO for most of us. If you like this one, you'll stay until you don't; when you leave, you probably won't come back unless you're only leaving to "try" another and it is disappointing. (I know a lot of people took brief breaks from CoX to try WoW, AA, or DDO, and returned because they found them lacking; I did, although my sub was active even when I was away)

I was waiting to get home to look these up, but I wanted to chip in with subscriber numbers:

Month :: Highest Concurrent :: Paying subscribers
09/04 :: 26870 :: 163053
12/04 :: 15741 :: 124435 (Ah, WoW, I feel thy sting)
03/05 :: 21283 :: 140481 (Euro launch)
06/05 :: 20911 :: 162922
09/05 :: 22340 :: 150058
12/05 :: 23730 :: 194000
03/06 :: 23699 :: 171951
06/06 :: 22274 :: 171000
09/06 :: 21500 :: 172420

Two comments:

(1) Someone (Jack? Jeremy?) commented that they needed 100,000 users to turn a profit. City of has always exceeded that, so if anything, one would expect the resources available to satisfy the larger playerbase would be MORE, not LESS than originally budgeted.

(2) City of remains only about 10-15% off its PEAK subscriber counts. In addition to subscriber fees and box sales, a lot of the maniacs, myself included, slavishly soak up any "GvE in-game packs" and such which come out.

Additionally, NCSoft's investor reports indicate that they have upped their guidance for City of, from $21M sales to $26M for Full year 2006. (This is compared to $34M revenues in 05), likely due to the much higher level of box sales in '05, thanks to CoV and the Euro CoH launch.

The nice thing about a game as varied as CoH is that the patch robustness creates exponential excitement. For example, many of us have at least a dozen alts... so inventions won't just be about inventing thigngs for ONE character, it will be about inventing things for *12* characters. So I agree in the most part, and it's one reason I posted - I hope the devs feel that dedicating more resources to speeding up the rate and/or returning the size of patches to I2/I3 levels is "worth' it. CoH certainly still looks great, and the interface, character creator, and feel all do not make it feel at ALL 2 years old. (In fact, the way it continues to beat up my graphics cards despite upgrades can be irritating ) So there's certainly no reason now to give up on it. It should have legs to run. Given how much gets added and things like inventions going in, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to build up subs rather than lose them.

Release: 4/27/04
Issue #1: Through the Looking Glass (June 29, 2004)
Issue #2: Shadows of the Past (September 16, 2004)
Issue #3: A Council of War (January 4, 2005)
Issue #4: Colosseum (May 4, 2005)
Issue #5: Forest of Dread (August 31, 2005)
Issue #6: Along Came a Spider (October 27, 2005)
(City of Villains (released October 31, 2005))
Issue #7: Destiny Manifest (June 6, 2006)
Issue 8 - late Nov/Early Dec.

I wonder if this is the face of things to come? Updates were pretty consistent, pre-CoV. Despite massive rebalancing, power fixing, powerset changes, and so on, Issues rolled out every 3 months. Occasionally slightly longer, sometimes faster. (It's hard to call issue 6 an update, per se, since it really didn't add anything that wasn't part of the CoV boxed retail game, so whether the sub-2-month-window from I5 to I6 should be counted is open to debate.)

Assuming you disqualify I6 as an issue, since it was really nothing more than a "merge" of the Hero side with the boxed CoV game, heroes went about 10 months from I5 to I7, and now I8 is looking like its final time will be 6 months. It's disappointing, I'd say. Why could it be happening?

* CoX staff reductions to concentrate efforts more on newer titles (ie, the Marvel game)
* Increased game complexity (that is, issues contain features for both Heroes and Villains; also may include bugs caused by enhancing engine features, such as PhysX support and advanced graphics)
* Larger issues. (Although I'd say the issues have gotten smaller, not larger, saving the villain content of I7)
* Less "precoded" - that is, I have the feeling a lot of features, and perhaps even areas, were half-baked into the game and cut from the release scheduled and rolled into areas. For example, I'd bet that the Hollows and possibly the Shadow Shard were being worked on at least in part pre-release. Obviously PI and the RCS were. Of course capes were a work in progress even pre-release

Let's look at what we've gotten. One of my favorite issues was I3. From the CoX history page on wikipedia:

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Issue #3: A Council of War (January 4, 2005) - Epic Archetypes (Kheldians, split into Peacebringer and Warshade archetypes), the 5th Column enemy group is replaced by the Council, Ancillary Power Pools, new zone (Striga Isle), global chat (Completed in March 16, 2005), new task forces, new zone events (Giant Octopus, Ghost Ship, Clockwork Paladin), mission difficulty settings, and new "toxic" and "Quantum" damage types. Kheldians are particularly vulnerable to Quantum damage.

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Several events, mission difficulties, Kheldians, Striga, several zone events, and global chat. Looking back, that's a monster issue.

Or I2 - added badges, respecs, *six* new zones, capes, auras, exemping.

I guess the really pertinent question, though, looking at the history is: where do we go from here? I hope the devs understand how appealing the fairly significant, regular updates were in making people into fans of the game. We've replaced the regular issues, it seems, with periodic discussions with devs about long term plans - like Positron's letter. And while I love hearing about stuff coming, near or far, it seems clear to me that the rate of change has slowed dramatically. Given that the content isn't "doubled" - that is, it isn't like heroes and villains are EACH getting a zone in I8 - one has to wonder why the early, rapid update pace has slacked off so much.

Did anyone playing when I3 came out suspect we wouldn't see a single new epic AT two years later? And now it sounds like when we DO see one, it will be Kheldians rerolled for Villains. And I love Kheldians - I was around since launch, and Kheldians have done nothing but grow on me since they were released. I think they're a fabulous work of design on the devs part...

I suspect we'll never know. This qualifies largely as a rant, since I don't really expect devs to post about their staffing configurations or comment on this. I mean, it's obviously been cause for concern since I7 went really, really long... and yet, about the only comment was, "8 months? I sure hope it isn't that long" from a dev regarding I8.

Anyhow, I don't want to sound completely unhappy. I continue to enjoy the game a lot. Given the hours I spend playing, the $24/month for the two accounts is a blip. But there is this vague feeling of staleness that creeps over it when the updates take so long (I7, I8) or feel anemically lacking on content (I4, for example; which was pretty much only PvP, which quickly manifested so many problems that took a while to fix that it didn't even feel to me like it added anything, even though today I *like* PvP quite a bit). I guess I just want to know what happened to the robust feeling of the updates from the first 9 months or so. Did CoV cause the slow up? And if so, does abandoning plans for more boxed expansions mean the update schedule will begin to look like it's robust former self, or after all the years of development and the 2.5 years of being live, is Cryptic just starting to siphon off resources from the game to plan for End-of-Lifing it in favor of future projects?

None of the above?

The feeling that I'm "playing through a comic book". Story line, costumes, bases, all contribute. PvP is sort of also-neat-but-separate, since the PvP is less about immersion and more about competition, for me. It's more like a mini-game within the game than part of the game.

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If you do not have Leadership, especially Tactics, then you are a sitting duck for whatever Stalkers happen to be running around. And there is NO guarantee that your teammates will be paying enough attention to catch the Stalker that *they* can see and *YOU* cannot. Or, for that matter, the invisible Scrapper or Blaster doing their best imitation of a Stalker.


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It is a great deal harder to hit a leaper than a flier. If you leap, and they fly, you can target them, hit follow, and attack; you will connect. Circle-hopping melee toons are much more difficult to deal with.

Even semi unpredictable motion is an infallible defense against assassination. You can still be hit, but with CJ, SS, Acrobatics, and self-heal/regen aura, plus phase shift, it's going to be tough to actually KILL you.

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Their purpose is to not have one apparently.

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The purpose... the purpose of life is to end, Mister Anderson.

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I have to agree with Taser in this case. I don't believe it will kill CoH/CoV any more than WoW killed all the other fantasy MMO's (arguable I admit). Anytime a new MMO comes out, no matter what type, some players leave. But with Cryptic supporting both, I think we will see some innovations come as a result.

And as much as I love The Council/5th Reich, Rikti makes a better case for itself. There are so many dangling and loose ends in terms of story advancement there. Why did the Rikti originally attack? What happened to Hero 1? Etc, etc. Plus, as pervasive as they are in terms of story (Lost, Rikti, RCS, invasion, etc.) there are no AV's for them yet.

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WoW probably took more players from CoH than a Marvel MMO would. I like comic books, but I'm here as a fan of the game. I tried WoW, and if it had been better (for me), then I'd have stuck with that and probably dropped CoH.

Notably absent things I really want to hear about for upcoming issues:

* New zones (ie, space/underwater/whatever won that poll)
* New ATs (probably EATs, in particular Incarnates)
* Legend System
* Flashback system. (You really, really need a way for our core characters to go back and redo stuff they missed; it will NOT kill altitis)

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This may have been covered already, but any idea when the Hero side version of the LR TF will be implemented instead of the Hami hunt? I8 maybe?

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This is a feature of I9

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You mean Heroes get that -AND- Hami? So they get two sources of Hami's then. That is gonna spark issues.

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Speculation. Things can change between now and I9.

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It's really sort of irrelevent. Hami raids are tough to organize now, with hami as tough as he is. At least on Virtue, where raids used to be daily and are now once a week and not always successful. And most of the heroes have long since loaded up; I think I have 150 HOs among my heroes, and I wasn't even among the most active raiders on Virtue. Still don't have a SHOE tho.

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Dominators are getting a buff that should make them more desireable on LRSF in I8 as well.

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How about Masterminds, Stalkers, and Brutes other than stone?

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We are constantly datamining PvP, seeing which side is winning more. The results are not what you expect. One side wins, then the other side, then the balance shifts back, and then back again.

I had 2 PM's in my box, back to back. The first was "Stalkers are useless in PvP" and the next was "Stalkers are overpowered in PvP". The grass is always greener they say...


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WRT data mining, if this is in pvp zones, are you looking at how many people are active? Or how many people contribute to the death of a character? What I see is that usually, whoever has numbers wins. That's not really unexpected, and one might say that is as it should be. After all, if you consistently saw larger groups lose, it would imply imbalance, no? Otherwise, skill will sway it, but it shouldn't be constrained.

Certain ATs, however, can just solo kill. Blasters (/em and /el blappers especially) and stalkers are deadly. 2-3 hits from the blapper, 2 from the stalker, and it's death. And among them, the Stalker has a huge advantage against anyone he can see that cannot see him.

Stalkers are pretty simply. If they can see you and you can't see them, they are deadly. What I don't like is that they make a lot of the fighting dynamic impossible. A drawn out fight between a brute and a scrapper is more likely to end with an assassination strike taking the last 50% of the scrappers hp than anything else. Siren's is set up as a battle for the zone, but if you try to fight the villains, you end up assassinated while rooted in an attack against Arachnos guys. (And, if you happened to be at full health, you probably end up dying and getting debt, at least before these new patches coming)

On the other hand, those who can SEE stalkers can make life very rough for them. I have a fire/dev blaster I play in Siren's. He can kill anyone given time and luck, thanks to trip mine and tp foe - but he's deadly to stalkers. Caltrops, web grenade, and targeting drone+tactics means he can see most of them, lock down most of them, and fire does pretty decent damage. But I'm by FAR the exception rather than the rule. Most people don't have even sufficient perception to spot a stalker with stealth on. Even my fire/dev needs a clear mind or something to spot a stalker who has hide+invis (or the goggles, but I haven't seen heroes have control of Siren's for like a month).

You let my ice/en have 2 seconds with a stalker, they're dead. But I don't ususally get the chance because my ice/en has no +perc power. When I have a pocket emp, I'm stupidly strong.

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Our lead programmer has been doing nothing but fixing bugs since I7 was released. He mentioned to me the other day that he hadn't written one line of code that was only in I8. We -are- trying to get the major issues fixed, but eventually the new issue has to come out, and that gobbles up the Training Room server, and we have to button down new fixes until that Issue goes to Live.

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How'd all those bugs get there in the first place? Makes me wonder if he was cheating at TopCoder.

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And yes, all of this bug fixing has pushed out I8 beyond the original "September" estimate I gave back in May.

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Is the Nictus epic AT still in I8?

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Also, updates aren't really "part of your $15 a month". All your $15 a month buys you is access to the game in whatever condition it may be in. Nowhere is it stated or even implied that it buys you anything further. Yes, fixing the bugs is sensible business practice, but your statement is pretty much the equivalent of shouting at a judge "I PAY YOUR SALARY!".

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Actually, Cryptic/NCSoft have always advertised content updates as part of the $15 a month. It also used to include a paper comic. The people who pay the $15/mo do so on the assumption that the devs work hard to produce content updates. If they said, "Hey, we're not going to do any more updates, price is the same", you'd see much higher attrition.

Also, Judges are not a consumer choice. The government comes up with tax rates via elected representatives, who take money from the population involuntarily, and the government decides how to spend it - like on judges. That's entirely different from CoH, which is a person choosing directly to spend their money on the game. Saying, "We pay your salary" is still not quite the case, but if we drop all the drama, it's reasonable for paying customers to express that they want a certain thing, and not getting it might impact their willingness to pay the monthly fee. Very few services offer so public a forum for people to vent on the perceived shortcomings of the service, of course.

I can say one reason I have paid for annual subscriptions to CoH on 2 accounts since Beta is the content updates, and without them, I certainly would have cancelled. In fact, there was a time when I wasn't really into the game and without the paper comic showing up and making me want to play, I'd have likely cancelled.

I'm starting to get bitter about SHOEs and HOs. HOs = Hami buffed many times, heroes nerfed many times, and consequently, we need 110 people to hold him and not suffer a mito-spawn wipeout. That's too damn many people to have to get together for a raid.

SHOEs - too hard to form a team to do this. The specificity of character types required means even a casual player WITH a "good" build (read: corruptor or stone brute) can't get a team with any ease. And I thought forming a TF was hard - sheesh.

Both the HOs and SHOEs leads to a haves/have-nots feel to the whole thing, and it's a turnoff.

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* Ability to drop missions. Coming soon!(TM) I know this will make a lot of players happy that they don't need to contact Customer Service just to continue thier story arcs.

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Love the game, but good choice here.

Thanks for the info, Clint. I do recall that I was not playing much for the first part of the event, which is probably WHY my perception is skewed. Not sure if it was work, or I got wrapped up with an NWN mod, or what.

I do remember that monsters got changed after this. Was the "X levels from median party level" change one of these? I don't actually remember that going into patch notes, but there have been stretches where I didn't play for a month or two.

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Yeah. And frankly, the WL event was hugely popular.

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Frankly, the WL event got a hugely mixed reaction, especially towards the beginning and the end of the two week event. You're having a nostagia fever.

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I'm not saying everyone LIKED what was happening. When I say popular, I mean: the servers were busy like I have not since since launch. Admittedly, the opinion on the event was mixed. I only "winterlorded" one character myself, and ended up deleting him (although it was a fun experiment).

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I didn't like all the cluebies with no idea how to use their powers, but frankly, that's just the most accessible of 20 different exploits you could PL someone with.

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WL levelling put every other powerleveling trick or tactic to shame. You can't even put it into the same country as old Dreck farming or classic bridging. There's been two or three xp-earning restrictions put into place due solely because of the WL event, making it a situation that could never be recreated, barring a bug.

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I never tried WLing with a character in the 40s, but I did one to 22, and it seemed to be falling off rapidly, because the WL xp was a specific fixed number. 10,000 xp is a HUGE number to a L1 (and still great at L20), but my share of a WL as a 50 was about what I'd get from killing a minion. I concluded, therefore, that a traditional PL technique like farming Dreck, wolves, or the GF mission would be far better at high levels. So "WLing" was most effective for one thing: PLing alts up to 22 or so. (I was getting a VERY good share of xp as a decked out fire blaster, and it took me about 1 hour to get someone from 1-22)

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But I remember how crowded the servers were, every night, night after night.

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Well, it did come right after I3 which introduced Striga Isle and the new Kheldian AT. I'm sure that had nothing to do with it.


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Maybe. But I3 was came out in late '04, right? And I don't think the WLs made their appearance until just into '05? And I don't remember seeing the big load spike until the WLs debuted... in fact, a bit after they debuted. *shrug* Especially given HOW LONG it lasted, I think the WL event was a hugely popular (in terms of usage increase) event.

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Respectfully, I just think you're overselling the whole WL event, in the same way people tend to oversell the end-of-beta events.

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The end of beta event I missed... can't remember why. I had been playing for a while, but I think I Was out of town. But I remember for a month straight, there were swarms of heroes buzzing around the WL spots, the servers had a notably higher load throughout the event, and when it ended, there was a high level of noise about rollbacks, deletions, bugs, and so on. There was a lasting effect of "WL characters" who didn't know how to use their powers.

I don't have a shining view of the WL events - I don't think it was an ideal way to dole out extra xp by any stretch. But whereas reaction to the double xp plan seems mixed, it certainly seemed to me from the WL event that getting lots of xp fast is a very popular activity.

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MMORPGs are the perfect example of being able to please some of the people some of the time, but never being able to please all of the people all of the time.

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lol, yeah. I'm not really mad that i'm missing out on double XP. The more i get to play my mains, the happier i am. What made me mad was the notion that this is going to be our compensation for the Global problems.

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Anything they picked as compensation would anger someone.

If it were a free respec, people who still have their I7 freespec would be mad.

If it were just the ability to change your global name again, people who have the global they want and don't need to change would feel ripped off.

If it were just another jingle jet temp power, the same people who complained that it was useless to them during the Holiday Event would complain.

So they are between a rock and a hard place no matter what they do here. Double XP has been something other MMOs have done and is something a lot of people have asked for in the two plus years this game has been live.

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Yeah. And frankly, the WL event was hugely popular. I didn't like all the cluebies with no idea how to use their powers, but frankly, that's just the most accessible of 20 different exploits you could PL someone with. But I remember how crowded the servers were, every night, night after night.

We'll see the same thing now.

I'm damn happy about it. I only wish there was some way I could do it longer... I have about 20 alts I'd like to try, and frankly, I don't want to do them all the hard way.

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well i cant see what else you would call "nerfing" burn

posi might not remember it but its one of those powers that we "use" to use

since hes not nerfing things..maybe he can tell us when he plans on fixing the power he messed up then?

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I would call Burn's change many things:

Power alteration
Reduced in effectiveness
Strength modification
Debuff to the power
etc.

Just because I don't use the word "nerf" does not mean things will never be adjusted in a downward direction.

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It's all political correctness. If it looks like a nerf, and smells like a nerf, it's a nerf. Burn was nerfed. Was burn too strong? Perhaps. But as has happened a few times, the devs went berserk and nerfed it six ways from Sunday all at once, at the same time as a hundred other changes were being made. It helped drown the outrage over it. Recharge increased, a lot. Damage reduced, a lot. And of course, the power killer - the 'fear' effect. You took one of the strongest powers in the game, and reduced it to one of the weakest powers in the game, in one fell swoop.

So it doesn't really matter WHAT term you use. It's a great power reduced basically to uselessness. And I, probably like many others, have a fire tank sitting at 45 that I'll probably never play again. He's just a reminder of how bad things can suck when the devs toss off a vicious nerf and don't stop to consider how bad things are.

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2) Chain Induction. I am guessing that this power will not be able to stay the way it is. But the XP-leeching has GOT to go.

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We have a bug report in engineerings queue to do something about this, but there is no ETA on a change, and it is possible they tell us nothing can be done. In that case, we either redesign the power, or leave it as is and add the "Warning: May cause XP loss" into the help text. Obviously, a code fix is the best case solution.

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Heh. "XP General's Warning: Using Chain Induction may result in loss of XP. Brutes close to level, and those with high fury bars should not use. There is no such thing as a safe Chain Induction."

It's very cool sounding as a power, but xp loss sucks. Also, if your engineers can't fix it, you should get some better engineers.