Neiska

Possibly because some might take that and believe that a staff member mocking critics as an implication, or wonder if a staff member can mock such players in a public forum more astute persons might wonder what is then said in a more private setting. Personally though? I had a chuckle.

Not to get too off topic, as this was being discussed in other posts. But the short version of it is, is there are some people whom feel the same group of people who push for some changes seem to get it, while others who do the same do not. I hesitate to use the words favoritism or bias, because A) we only see half the picture and not the whole, B) there are many, many of us, and precious few staff members. So addressing each and every person 1 by 1 would be a full time job, and isn't realistic in expectations. C) Having once been a staff member elsewhere in a similar environment, I will say even if there is no bias there will always be the suspicion and is difficult to disapprove once that atmosphere sets in. In short, after speaking to others there is a part of the community that said it feels to some that the "pro-endgame teaming" folks are the ones who seem to push for change and get it. Not the farmers, not the casuals, not the role-players, not the solo-ists, and not the die hard pvp'ers. Some have said even some ATs seem to be favored over others. I would like to clarify that I am not stating there "is" bias, only the perception of it, and I expect that perception to grow unless it's specifically addressed. And I am not making any of the above claims, I am only reporting what my discussions with others have said or felt about the recent changes. Personally I sort of see it both ways, they need not be exclusive of one another. Some people's opinion certainly seems to carry more weight than others, at least here in the open forums. I cannot speak to the beta or alpha groups, as I am not a part of them. One thing I would like to especially highlight though is that people who are involved in such groups stating "there is no bias" only further show such bias, at least to some peoples view who are not a part of said groups. TLDR - There is a growing perception of "the cool kids table," and the perceived members of the "cool kids table" saying there is not a cool kids table, does little to persuade others otherwise. In fact the supposed "cool kids" saying there is no cool kids, only further confirms it, at least to some people.

Two thoughts. The first, is that more than any other change, how people disagree here, ingame, and the forums has done more to discourage me than any change itself. Now, yes, it is the internet. People are going to people sometimes. But I had hoped that our smaller community might be above that. Alas that doesn't seem to be the case. To me its a mix of various things, being miscommunication, lack of empathy, or just plain ego. Perhaps that last one especially in some cases. "Some" player requests. Most certainly not "all players." And "some" requests seem to be implemented, but the majority have not. I do hasten to add that I think we both agree that it's a good thing that not every request is implemented, as well, it would be quite the circus I expect. But from where I sit, it seems only "one side" of the fence seems to get the changes they want. I mean as an example, what if an argument was made to made to have to earn costume pieces/parts again? Or pay upkeep on bases? Or to actually make farms better instead of worse? I expect half the community would dislike those changes. As with any change. But let's not pretend that every change has been welcomed by the entire community with open arm's shall we? For me, I have liked and disliked the changes about 50/50. I liked some of them, eye rolled at a few others. And a few really had me wonder what the heck they were thinking. And in my view, the server seems to be leading harder and harder in one direction, which I do not consider a good thing. And if history and other games are anything to go by, then I expect it to continue to do so.

@Snarky - My hot take on things. If you are an afk farmer then yes some of the changes make it more difficult, and I suspect this was by design. The AI wont sit and twiddle its thumbs waiting for its turn to be bonked anymore, now if your aggro list is full, they won't ignore you, they will use ranged attacks. So no longer is softcapping DEF and RES enough to afk farm, now you have to put in enough passive regen/ranged def as well if you want to be 100% automated. It's still possible sure but have to build differently. However, for some farming setups, this change in AI actually made farming faster, especially with Mastermind farming where the point is to fight as many things as you can at a time. So if mobs run to your pets more that means you spend less time chasing things down. So the AI change shaved about 20-30 seconds off my farms. The EXP in AE, well, it's been adjusted 2 or 3 times now. (I think?) So if you are comparing what you get now to what we got 2 years ago, it will definitely feel slower. But what I suspect you are experiencing is the "how" exp is awarded. Details fail me (haven't had my morning coffee yet) but I seem to recall that the enemies powers affect the EXP awarded. You can't just load up an AE full of critters with Blargh powers and expect full exp. Now you need to give them actual legit powers. I can't recall seeing this in the patch notes, but this is what those of us farmers were discussing in the super secret forbidden discord that totally doesn't exist. So you may want to remake a map with updated enemies and try again. Again, I can't remember where this information originated from, but the scuttlebutt is that old maps award inferior EXP compared to ones remade after the latest round of rebalancing. Hope this helps hon. Stay Snarky.

With respect, if I was held at gunpoint to my head and was forced to choose, I would sooner have a yeast infection. But not because of anything related to HC, the staff, or any of the testers. But because I have been in a similar circumstance before. Another game, another time, etc. On more than one game I might add. And I am quite well aware of the shenanigans, tom-foolery, drama, and absolute buck-wild "What in Sam Hill" things can run amok there. Seriously, its absolutely nuts what can go on, makes the Wild Wild West look like Mr rogers by comparison. And I want absolutely no part in any of that. If I wanted to be a tester personally, I would have asked about such.

I have to respectfully but whole heartedly disagree. My associates and I even have a name for them. "The Council." If you think I am the only one who believes and feels this way, you are sorely mistaken.

Overall your response is a fair and respectful one, so thank you for that. But this part right here is the crux of the issue. It doesn't matter if they take my "personal" feedback the same as others or not in the grand scheme of things or not. My point is that they have been giving more weight to the same group of people - the alpha testers - I suspect without ever changing such alpha testers. And I think the reaction to the notion of perhaps they change up some of the alpha testers will say far more about them than the alpha/beta process itself. Personally? I expect the pitchforks and torches to be lit. Which is sort of amusing when you think of it, the idea that perhaps they could use other peoples thoughts, views, and opinions instead of the same people they have for several years now would indicate they might care more about their status/inner circle than any notion of free, unbiased testing or ideas.

Whoever said we don't need testers? Certainly not I. But you see, what companies do in the real world, is they swap out or change "testers", just to prevent bias from personal acquaintance and regularity. Being experienced doesn't mean you have good ideas. Or that your math can favor one thing or another.

Here's my unfocused feedback. I too was once a staff member for a private server for nearly 10 years for another game. (Neverwinter nights 2 if anyone is wondering.) Long story short - Over time our Dev team grew an "inner circle" of friends/acquaintances/special people who would form the unofficial "development team." In a sense, it was a group of people they personally knew apart from the unwashed masses whose input on changes carried more weight than anyone else's, simply because they "knew" those making the changes. But what this led to is a small handful of people who were not a part of the staff, having far more influence on server changes. But not just game mechanic changes, but server policies as well. The point to all this is such an environment contributed to my decision to leave. And I believe if we aren't in a similar situation, then it is growing into one. Because if you go back and look through all the changes that have come to pass over 3 years recorded here in the forums, you might notice a pattern. I won't elaborate more than that due to forum policy. But people are certainly free to look for themselves. I do want to highlight that I am not claiming this is the actual situation. Only similarities that I have noticed after spending quite a bit of time after this last Beta and spending a few hours combing the forums and looking for "trends" in "feedback" and the actual changes that have been implemented. TLDR - Not a provable claim, but it is certainly beginning to feel like not everyone's feedback is equally weighed and valued, which can lead to people assuming some very bad things, even if they are utterly untrue. I am not saying this IS the case here, but it certainly is beginning to have the same atmosphere and vibe.

Not an odd combo at all. Demons/Electrical is one of the most durable MMs you can make.

@ScarySai Look, I think you are reading into things that I never stated or said. Not once did I say the pet DPS wasn't enough, or good, or too good. If you go back and read every one of my posts, I have not once looked at the pets themselves. Because as you suggest, I couldn't offer insight either way realistically. Every one of my imputs has been from the building standpoint. Not a performance standpoint. Not once have I mentioned numbers, or specific performance. Every one of my feedback posts, has been what I have access to and knowledge of. I hope you would be fair in agreeing with me there, yes? I have made no claims either way about knowledge I have no access to. However, that said, From a building standpoint, this change does limit options. Not all secondaries have -regen built in. Not everyone plays Cold, Dark, or Traps. In fact most Robot MMs I see are Electric and Time. So from a building standpoint, as in picking powers and what the kit offers, I most certainly can disregard pet damage, as they have nothing to do with it. How much damage a pet does or doesn't do has zero impact on how many powers you can take, or how many slots you have. Which has been my point this entire time. That is to say, they are effectively making personal attacks more required on robot MMs, while at the same time penalizing you if you do not. Penalizing not in respect to damage, but into build and playstyle options when compaired to before. You want -regen? Well, you have to give up Haste, or Tough/Weave, or Tactics/Maneuvers, or Hover/Fly/Group Fly, or Teleport/Fold Space, and so on. And numbers won't change that either way. I do respect you and all the effort you put into this. Truely. But you aren't hearing what I am saying. I have not said anything at all about the pets themselves. You say the -regen is moot with the pet boost in damage. I say it is not, because its not the damage I am addressing, it's the number of powers available in a build, and options. And either way no matter what your numbers say, this will make Robotics which is already the tightest primary, even tighter, with regard to power picks and slotting. And no matter how much damage the pets do now, that isn't going to change. Hope this helps me make my point. In a respectful manner.

And you are talking to someone with over 30 t3 or t4 robot MMs specifically on 3 accounts with over 1000 net vet levels. Your experience doesn't trump mine, sorry. More ever, specifically in the beta forums rules it states not to let it descend into 1 on 1 bickering. You gave your opinion. I am certainly entitled to give mine in kind. Yes, they are. If someone wants to keep the same amount of -regen they had before, for whatever reason, they have to now spend 3 power slots to get it, before anything else. The damage the pets do is irrelevant in this regard. Those are 3 powers they could have spent on leadership pool, or fighting pool, or teleport pool. And not all secondaries have skippable powers either. Ergo, it is now a choice, between keeping the -regen in their toolkit and sacrificing 2-3 power picks elsewhere to keep it or giving up their main AV/GM/Elite Boss feature and take those other powers. So yes. Fewer build options, at least if you want to keep the same toolkit you had before. I don't know how you figure otherwise if people have to take more powers now than before in order to have the same tools they had. That means less options, if you want to keep the same toolkit. I mean, let's compare the MM set upgrades - Mercs - Overall net positive gain, lost nothing. Cooldowns reduced and even a stackable damage buff. Ninjas - Overall gain as well. No real loss. A similar stackable damage buff. Necro - Can now summon many more temp pets, and some enhancement type adjustments. Robots - You now have to pick other powers to keep the same debuffs, which is less optional powers in a build. And the Maintenance drone. Robots are the only one that had this "lateral promotion" if we want to call it that. In effect the set made the easy things easier, and the hard things harder. It increased pet DPS, at the cost of END, EPA, and pet END cost. I do want to add, it isn't all bad. There are some features and changes I like. But just that -regen move is a real punch in the gut to us AV/GM hunters.

And now for some clarity from the "nay" side. 1. The -regen matters to those of us who play on +4/8 on bosses, elite bosses, and it also matters in pvp. For those of us who play with bosses on, that is 99% of our content. 2. Attaching the -regen to MM personal attacks is a crutch to make robot MMs have to actually pick, slot, and use those powers, despite being some of the worst DPA abilities, with an END penalty, with secondaries that may or may not have any END tools to compensate (which are rare in MMs to begin with, only EA, Kin, and Cold offer off the top of my head), or secondaries that might be quite busy to begin with and don't have time to fit in more actions per cycle, especially against the before mentioned AVs and GMs which are what you really want those -regen debuffs on. This isn't even pointing out the MM's inherent low damage/END penalty either which I find amusingly absent in this entire thread. 3. The MM personal attacks are optional, true. But for those that take -regen as a part of their kit find their build options reduced, not enhanced. And for some reason, the "pro-regen" crowd seems to think that is a good thing. And if the powers did "so little in most content" to begin with, why was the move necessary at all? To fluff up how much the set has been changed? I suspect this is in reality a "pro personal attacks" vs "anti-personal attacks" argument at its heart. But either way I will never support having to pay for something that I used to get for free or was inherently built in, even if pet damage was boosted 30% to compensate that would still "break even" which isn't a "buff" by any means.

I am going to respectfully disagree here Shade and have to side with @Bill Z Bubba on this one. The first time I spoke up about a beta change was met with, well, lets call it passionate disagreement, both here and in discord the details of which I will not get into here save that it was bad enough in DMs that a ticket was filed. As far as "beta or get out" - not everyone "can" get into the beta. I can't. But I wanted to be a part of the conversation. I was going to go into the parts that I liked, and the parts I didn't like, and put light on non-performance things. In this example, the robotics' update. I was trying to highlight that by moving the -regen from the t3 robot to the MM personal attacks is a bit harsh, because now not only must you spend END on an already END penalized AT, but you have to spend power and enhancement slots to boot. Which makes it more difficult to get other things expected of you, such as group fly, or fold space. It wasn't all doom and gloom. There were some aspects I really liked. Like the new maintenance drone? Thats awesome for sets like cold or sonic that don't have a heal. Resists moved to Upgrade Robot? Also awesome. True your pets are weaker until you get that power (at like level 6), but by being able to slot it and boost it, its an overall net gain, should you choose to do so. I made zero comment about the pets themselves, because as I said, I wasn't in the Beta, and thus can't fairly comment either way on that. No more KB to KD tax? Wonderful! 3 more slots to use. So I was giving input on the things that I could, that didn't rely on playtesting or numbers. So I would mutually ask that people on both sides keep an open mind here. You don't have full access to the reaction, be it positive or negative. Neither do I. None of us do. But Bill is right. If you disagree or even point out things that may have been overlooked or a different perspective on things, even if those things aren't numbers/damage, well, it was bad enough that I certainly won't participate in beta again. I don't care to be mocked or insulted when I give my opinion, particularly when it was asked for by the staff. If it was "lets agree to disagree," I could live with that. But it wasn't. And I have noticed a pattern - Anytime there is a big change, be it in inf/exp, or power updates/betas, it brought out the worst in the community. And I would call that an indicator of something else as well.

Not everyone is able to get onto the beta server for any number of possible reasons that I will not elaborate here, and I would still like my thoughts to be considered, others seem to disagree. I do concede that actual beta testing and in-game trials would be best, but I don't think that should be the only consideration worthy of note when weighing someone's feedback, especially when it's asked for. Personally I won't be participating in any future beta feedbacks.

Thank you Flea, that does make me feel a bit better. They didn't say anything about the KB to KD being standard now, so that's nice. No more KD tax. But after the aggressive discussion in Discord I am uncertain I even want to elaborate or contribute further.

I am reading the information as its presented. And unless they post the details of pet attacks, then I won't bother setting up a beta. And without that data, taking what is provided, I can honestly say that before, I could solo avs/gms. With this change, I could not. Wouldn't call that a buff by any means. Now to get that -regen power, pretty much the only reason big teams brought robot mms along in the first place, you have to take other powers, 3 of them in fact to get to where you were before, as well as slot them to be able to reliably hit a target that warrants that big of a debuff. And call it a wild and crazy guess that... against such targets, like AVs and GMs, they did not boost pet damage to that degree to compensate. So more or less they made "optional" attacks, more mandatory, at least for those targets, and charged you power picks and slots in the bargain. By what measure or definition is that any kind of a "buff." It's a playstyle adjustment. Not a "buff."

I have never been on beta. So, have to pass there. And moving the -regen from being automatic on the t3 to personal attack is a straight up nerf. Before you had -500 consistently, it was the one thing that made robots good for avs/gms. Now? You can get up to 600%, IF you take all three attacks, and slot them to, well, actually hit anything that warrants having that much -regen. So the way I see it, unless I am missing something, now Robots are even more slot and power taxed, without even the benefit of a Mule power to make up for it.

Mixed feelings about this one. Unless the Maintenance drone can take the pet aura IOs then this is kind of a nerf. Because now if you want the -regen, you have to take the personal attacks, which makes the primary with the tightest slotting, even tighter. Particularly with the KB to KD tax, and then slotting the personal attacks if you want to hit anything. Its hard to really say without seeing the detailed breakdown on the pets. But as this reads it feels like a half nerf/half buff. But if the Drone can be used as a Mule power, then it could be a game changer.

Oh I got it perma. It just panicked to get it up each time because even the smallest of gaps can hurt.

I got her to 50 and t3'd, and she's good, I would call her pretty immortal, but the damage is lackluster. Teams seem happy to have her though so there is that. I just wish PA lasted just a little bit longer, it seems most of my action is recasting pets every 90 seconds or so.

It's not a matter of "just start your own group." It's the nature of the content where I can't play my favorite classes/powersets that I don't even want to play it. You and others may feel differently. And I respect that, truly. But I don't make special characters to just do X activity. I play characters that I actually enjoy playing. If I don't like playing the character, I am not going to "force" myself to in order just to do the content. I am just glad the content is optional. Other games are not like that. And that's one reason why I don't play them, but that's just me. But the moment they tack on special things like accolades or actual character power onto activities like these, I will likely lose interest.

I respectfully disagree. I wouldn't call content where only 5 out of 15 ATs are desired/pugged as a good thing no matter what your logic or reasoning. I do respect that people wanted harder content. Fine. But they could have made things harder without excluding 2/3 out of the builds, or about half of the powersets. Now this is more on the players than the devs I agree, but at the end of the day it's the dev's who design the game mechanics. And I would argue that if they make content that shuns more than half of the ATs, I would ask what's the point.

I'm not "mad". And the game was only "easy" if you played the meta, which not everyone does. But what it does do is re-enforce the "trinity" style of play - that is, Tanker/Brute, healer, dps. (though our trinity is a bit more like a pentagram with buffs/debuffs.) And the "Trinity" is not really a thing that was in CoH, and yet now here we are. If I wanted that style of play, I could pick up any one of the hundreds of other MMOs and go "50 blah blah LFG." To me it was wonderful that there was leeway to make a build as you wanted, to customize not just your costume, powers, but also what powers you take, and how they are enhanced. IMO CoH's game design was way ahead of its time, as there are very few other games that allow customization to that extent even to this very day. And "easy" is entirely subjective. If you think "oh we have it too easy" then go make a Merc/Empathy MM and go join a 4 star ITF and let us know how that goes. Or play any one of the hundreds of other non-optimized builds and go do this content. The only silver lining here is that the activity is entirely optional. There are no special accolades involved or anything of that nature, and thank goodness for that. But I take a pretty dim view of things that try to make CoH like other games, because the fact that its different from others is what made it stand out, at least to me. And I am sure I am not the only one. 👍 So if you want to go full T4, spend a billion on the best min/max build there is, calculating out the best heal/damage/buff/whatever to the nearest .00024% and then go "Games too easy" then you sort of dug your own hole on that one. At least you had the option to do something outside the box. But for those of us that like to experiment, or do new things, different things, or even things just for fun, have no option. At least if we want to do that activity at that difficulty. Now if we want to do it, oh wells, outta luck. Better level up a toon specially made for it huh? Thats just grand. Finally, I really have to eyeroll when they make content that excludes not just MMs, but several ATs entirely and they call it progress or content meant for everyone. Know what I didn't see in your reply though? You offering to take non-meta's either. So kudos on you for that then I guess? You want to play the meta than fine. But don't expect everyone to. In fact most people don't. Some of us even make a point not to. But don't make the meta, then look around and go "Games to easy for us in the top 5% of builds. We need more content" when there was already lots, and lots, of content to be had. IF you didn't play the meta.