Neiska

learn something new every day. and here im sitting on like 7k threads across multiple characters.

My two cents - 1. My biggest pet peeve, is how all the recharge pets from Crabber mind, Controller, etc etc do not benifit from Supports "double bonus for pets", making it expressly unique to masterminds. Wish this feature worked on all pets. Honestly, I wish there were more pet focused incarnate abilites in general, as nearly all pet classes start to fall behind in incarnate content. And your choices of helping them are barrier OR healing. Sort of a rock and a hard place situation. And on top of that, thats assuming you are willing to give up ageless, which many builds require to have a flowing playstyle. 2. Some choices feel obligatory, which makes an illusion that there is any real choice. I can bet that 95% of people use either Agility, Cardio, or Musculature, regardless of build/at. Similar with the degenerative and reactive interface choices. 3. How threads were bound. I have several characters staring at 1000+ threads and no use for them whatsoever. I cant even burn them for things like unslotters. I am not expecting them to be turned into merits, but "some" use for them would be nice. Suggested fixes - 1. Make Support apply to all pet types, or even have more incarnates apply to pets wholesale. 2. Either streamline the "best picks" in each incarnate slot, or make them all more equal. Because to me there are many "junk" incarnates. 3. For threads, make them either account bound, or make a merchant with uses for them. Even buying like, nukes or IOs with them would be welcome. Having no use for them whatsoever #feelsbadman. Just my two cents!

My humble opinion on the topic. Not everyone is going to enjoy the same activities. You could say that about any game. Some people will enjoy story missions. Some will enjoy radio/newspaper. Some enjoy playing the markets. Some enjoy base building. Some enjoy trying multiple builds. Some enjoy farming. Some enjoying roleplay and dont level at all. Some peoples passion is PVP. And you know what? That's normal. I would argue, to be expected. I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys those activities, or other activities that have not been mentioned. I do my thing, and other people do theirs, and we meet in the middle. What I do not support though, is making X activity "required", or what I like to call, "false timesinks", meaning activities with no real purpose aside from making you put time into the game. An example of this would be time-gated reputations on another popular MMO. It should be "optional", not required. As far as what I personally enjoy, well, that is largely a question of investment/risk vs reward. If the gain isn't worth what I value as my personal hobby time, well then I won't do it. If it is, then I will consider it. But I will largely give anything a chance, as long as it has the option for me to go "You know what? This isn't for me. I don't enjoy this. I am going to go do something else ingame." Another thing I don't support, is games forcing/artificially encouraging players into the X, Y, or Z activities, or other players trying to get systems to co-hearse other players into doing what they themselves enjoy. Lets take PVP for example. (full disclosure for clarity, I am not a pvper, as I don't enjoy it. But I have no ill wishes for those that do enjoy it, nor do I make any claim here that they have made any claims. I only use PVP as an activity example.) For argument's sake, lets say that all zones on all servers were suddenly open PVP areas. For those that enjoy PVP, it might be fantastic. But for those people who hate and loathe PVP, it would be hell. And personally rather than put up with any other players imposing grief/playstyle, I would never leave the pocket D, or I would uninstall the game. I dislike PVP that much, and it would be enforced upon me. And I suspect many would feel the same. (again, no one to my knowledge has argued FOR this, or mentioned anywhere. I am only using it as an example.) Just as you enjoy one activity, and dislike say, farming. It would be just as wrong to force farming upon you, when I myself do enjoy farming time to time. It's convenient. I can do it at my own pace. I can help my friends, or help myself get more equipment. But I wouldn't support a system that assumes that everyone is a die hard farmer, far as setting prices/builds/power tweaks and so on. TLDR - I guess to summarize, I just think more OPTIONS are good, so long as they are that, Optional. I would not support or like anything that's "forced" or required, even if it had a carrot on a stick. Just my thoughts on it. I do my thing, you do yours, and we will meet in the middle somewhere. More people doing things that they enjoy is good for everyone. Forcing people to do things they don't want to is bad for everyone. Best wishes to everyone, Heroes and Villians. Stay healthy!

Just wanted to wish all the Men out there well on their day today! 💖

Funny. Between some posts here and what is said ingame, it doesn't feel particularly welcoming. Personally, I go by live and let live. If some rp is going on you aren't into, fine. No one says you have to be a part of it. Long as its not illegal, who cares. It doesn't affect you. But from where I sit there are far too many "Karens" trying to "police" what's going on. For pete sake its a game people. Let people have their escapism and fun in peace.

100% agree. They haven't even posted the actual numbers for the changes they are thinking about, they only posted the idea of change. I mean, if they had posted data with actual numbers for people to browse, fair point. People might have a leg to stand on when saying the change is bad. But there is a silly amount of "REEEEE" here over what is a mere mention of a change. People haven't played it yet, haven't tested it yet, there is no numbers posted yet for the smarty people to run numbers and see how it ends up. Who knows, the change might end up being great for everyone. But this feels more like some are against the idea of change at all, regardless of what that change might be. That or some like being super OP, regardless of the wider impact of having OP sets in games. I would bet if the change was making it stronger, or even more OP, they would be 100% supportive of it. As far as the point of "raising everything to TW's level", I would point to @parabola's last post which I agree with. Moreover, lets play hypothetical and say that everything was raised to TW's level. I suspect the following would occur - 1. Posts saying the game being too easy now, and requests for harder, more difficult content. 2. With "every" damage set being TW's level, there would be very little need to play CC, debuffers, or healers. Why bother if everyone could make brutes or scrappers and just steamroll the content. Even on max difficulty things would be dead very quickly. As it stands even now there are some people saying that's what it feels like to be on a team with Support characters. IE - too much damage, and you don't "need" support on a team. 3. It could turn into an absurd loop of buffs. Another game I wont name did just that. And its quite common to see skills with 15,000% damage or higher, with people capable of dealing billions or trillions of damage. Its a snowball effect where everyone just bats and eye and does such absurd amounts of damage they had to ramp up difficulty just to pose a challenge, and I shudder to think what effect such a thing might have on the PVP here. I'm not saying that's 100% for SURE what would happen here. Only what HAS happened before, on other platforms and in other games. And I would hope that many people would see that as a bad thing. Best wishes

Kay, first off, don't put words in my mouth. I never said that input from players are a bad thing. If you actually take the effort to read the entire discussion, I was reacting to the idea of leaving the development of the game up to the small population that actually use the forums. Which I still say, is a bad idea, for the reasons listed. Secondly, you seem to act like they don't take feedback at all, which would be untrue. All "you" have access to, is the forums. "They" have access to logs, tickets, developer tools, the forums, PMs, discord, and more. In fact it might be argued that there are more "Nerf TW, buff regen" posts than others. (except possibly buff merc posts in the discord.) Rose tinted glasses, the data you see is in fact only a small part of it.

You're right. I don't know what it is. (If I had to guess, I would say that it was Psi Melee.) And that doesn't somehow void my point. That in other games that balanced PVE abilities for PVP reasons, well, it didn't go well for them, and I would like to avoid a similar outcome here. But lets play hypothetical here. Lets say for a moment, the power sets were balanced, updated, and designed around PVP in mind. How do you think that would go? Here's my guess - 1. Dot damage would take a nosedive, burst damage would be king. 2. Tanks/Brutes/Defensive minded characters would also take a dip, just like another game who wont be mentioned where there are 45+ minute cue times to wait for tanks. Keep in mind, that's with a much larger population than ours. I suspect finding tankers for teams/missions here would be much worse. 3. The entire math and values behind CC and Debuffs might have to be redone. 4. Some quality of live changes that the PVE crowd loves, might have to be reverted. An example would be the Mastermind pets. In PVP blocking/hiding behind the pet was a valid strategy, but that also means the Masterminds could block doorways and tunnels all the time. With that change, its a huge boost in play for all masterminds everywhere, but the PVP crowd didn't seem to like it. 5. Some classes are not well built for PVP. Which means they might have to get an entire overhaul to make them "competitive" in the PVP area. And in my experience, retooling a class from PVE to PVP, usually changes its role PVE as well, usually not in a good way. 6. Its likely that healing and buffs would have to be rebalanced as well. All of these changes would greatly affect PVE. Just a few examples off the top of my head. This isn't a PVP game with PVE as bonus content, I would argue its a PVE one with PVP as bonus content. And this is in no way meant to be hating on the PVPers. You guys do what you love. But balancing things around PVP, would break a lot of things PVE, and not in a good way.

Its also broken things before as well. Other games come to mind. Balancing PVE tools around PVP, when PVP is a small part of the game is kind of ridiculous.

To go back on topic, I am fine with TW getting changed, particularly with the unwieldy momentum mechanic that plays like a bathtub on a slip n slide. I just hope they don't overnerf it, with regards to the other ATs that use it (Brutes and Tankers), instead of the bio/TW scrapper combo that seems to be the main issue with it. I have noticed no one has commented yet on Energy Melee, Trick Arrow, or the Blaster changes. The post says there will be more buffs than nerfs, so there is that. And my interest is peaked with the incarnate crafting system changes. (Hoping we might get to do something with excess threads) If we were allowed to wish for other things, personally I would throw recharge pets up for consideration, but that's just me.

Oh, they are using data they didn't create, no arguement there. But it was openly published data, used by others as well. Which in the data world isn't protected data anymore, correct? It would be similar to like, going after wikipedia for something they posted at this point, wouldn't it? Not sure how the legal stuff works there. Its very convoluted .

-Negotiations to become legitimized, according to rumor. I don't follow the latest news in that arena, but last I heard it was a thing. As far as "Stolen" goes, well, the code went public IIRC a bit over a year ago? Not 100% sure on the details that one either, but what I think happened is someone (no idea who) published the code for the game online, and from that sprung homecoming. (Might be 100% wrong here! So if someone knows the skinny feel free post a link or explanation)

1. ...Wow. Stolen? You are aware Homecoming is in discussions with the host company, right? 2. Id say they are the ones being flexible, and its you who isn't? @JayboH - -I would submit SoA for consideration to be put top of the list too please. (hugs crabberpack).

@Captain Yesterday- So, you're a game designer, who doesn't know what a user agreement is? And opposes its use?

You weren't tricked, forced, or coerced into accepting. That's precisely what a User Agreement is. Its the game host saying "we can and will change this at any time. and by you clicking this, you agree and acknowledge it." And I suspect nearly every online game has patches, updates, tweaks, and more. They aren't picking you out personally to nerf what you enjoy most. Because, logically by your argument, if someone else goes "hey this is fantastic I LOVE this change", well, that just nullified your entire case? It's fine to dislike a change. But your personal take on matters is hardly the only qualifier here.

You are missing the point. That's kind of sort of what they did. It even says "Hey this is what we are thinking about doing" on page 1. As far as allowing a sort of "player vote" on something, well, firstly I doubt people would agree on things. Secondly it wouldn't surprise me in the least if people tried to make multiple accounts or something to vote more than once etc. I don't think putting a game in the hands of a community would not go the way you might expect. Or there's personal bias, what "you" may want, "others" wouldnt. (thats fair to say about anyone though really.) And thus "you" would still be in the same place where you are right now. Lastly, the majority of players don't use the forums, its a minority. So you would have only 80% of a minority population deciding on game features. That to me, would be "actual" arbitrary "tyranny". Not ongoing updates you happen to disagree with, which is not "tyrannical" in the slightest. It says right in the user agreement that you sign to login each time "things may change". So this shouldn't be any sort of shock to you.

@ScarySai - Your first point - I don't think either way is lazy. If it is overperforming, then its overperforming. I guess the big question is how long it would take, no? There are heads wiser than mine for that sort of thing, but a nerf isn't necessarily a bad thing. Second point - I agree, we can say "hey this is bad, don't do this". But its important on how its presented. I mean, think about it. If you spent 5 months of free time to fix something to be reacted to like some of the posts here? If it was me, I would think long and hard about doing more changes. I mean it says right on the first page, in bright letters up top - Before we continue, a caveat: Some of the changes and plans mentioned below are either very early in development or still purely conceptual. Some of them will likely not make the cut and either change greatly or be scrapped entirely. Which to me means, "this is not set in stone." Open to further changes. But some people are acting like it's not. And how they are voicing that I find disconcerting. Your third point - I try to avoid mentioning other games in posts, but we were thinking of the same things. But that's my point. I don't want CoH to degrade into that. I don't want our Homecoming staff to get unmotivated so they stop doing changes, or even worse, pull the plug. And we do agree, that people are only passionate because they care. Which is a good thing. But I don't think its unreasonable to expect people to temper that passion when necessary either. To summarize, We agree that we are both thankful for the staff, and their changes. We also agree that not every change is automatically a good thing. But I do think some are being rather passive aggressive or worse when voicing their dislike. And I suspect our Homecoming team isn't very large to begin with. Which makes me concerned. Speaking as someone who has been behind the curtain before, too much negativity does have an impact on morale and motivation. And you are right, "Toxic" was probably a bad way to put it, but I hope it doesn't get to that point here, which is why I made the post to begin with. Best Wishes

Just me thinking aloud here but, 1. I do think its easier via coding and labor to nerf overperforming sets, rather than try to balance the other ones that are underperforming on one AT, much less the same powerset useable across multiple ATs. So there is that. 2. Personally, I am glad to see changes at all in a game this aged. Do I personally agree 100% with every change that comes about? No. But nor do I expect to. I mean, we are lucky that we get changes at all to be blunt. We aren't paying for this game. We are "guests" here. We don't get to make demands. Technically, we aren't even "customers". This is a labor of love, that has been shared with the rest of us. And for that I am grateful. The people putting the time here are doing it of their own free will, when they likely have jobs/lives/etc going on. They aren't getting "paid" to do this. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them actually go out of pocket time to time to keep CoH afloat. 3. I have noticed a bit of a change over time in the community. When it first started, the community seemed more supportive and positive. But after reading some comments here, I can't say its gotten better. Only the Dev's and Moderators know for sure but where I'm sitting, its seemed to have grown more toxic. I do hope its just me seeing that, because if it is getting more toxic, then for me the game is loosing some of what made it stand out to begin with. The people. It wasn't like other games where the community was harsh, sometimes openly hostile to one another. But now, I'm not so sure. And how I see it, that has more to do with people leaving (if they are) than any updates/changes/fixes that have been done. Lastly, I do want to thank everyone on the Homecoming team for their time and effort into keeping things running. Best wishes.

I was referring more to posts like these. Where there are no examples, numbers, or data to draw from. It comes off as a "My way or its wrong" sort of comment. If you want to help change things, think of it as a task to change their minds or opinion, which is entirely possible. I've seen it happen. But these are a bit passive aggressive. If I was a developer, I would read what you wrote and think "well they don't like it" and move onto the next post. If you feel that a change is wrong, then prove it. Post the math, show some data. Take some screenshots and run some statics. If you want change, then I'm afraid the burden of proof is on you. I do appreciate you are so passionate about the game, really, I do. But I don't think posts like these would likely change someone's mind. I mean, put yourself in their shoes, and think about what sort of post or comment would make them stop and go "Hmm, did we overlook something?" They are people too, and people make mistakes. But being polite with data will go much further to make actual impacts on changes than posts about "You're destroying characters. Making people quit. You should spend your free volunteer time doing X, Y, Z." Best wishes.

If I may make a suggestion @Noyjitat, "how" you say something is just as important as "what" you say. You might try to rephrase your opinion to be more constructive. Post hows, whens, and whys. Provide examples, and so on. Not just "This sucks and you guys suck omg this game sucks" is hardly anything to take as constructive. If you want a developer to consider your comments earnestly, you might want to give them something to stand on, metaphorically speaking. No one is saying you cant voice your opinion, I just think how you are phrasing it isn't likely to get any desired result. Conduct goes a long way as far as feedback and criticism goes. Best wishes.

Just my opinion but, balancing powers in a majority PvE game for PvP reasons doesn't seem like a good idea.

With regards to Titan Weapons, I think it only really outperforms or is OP on scrappers, but what about Tanks and Brutes? If they change it too much, then tanks and brutes wont take it either, which might as well be a scrapper only powerset at that point? (I don't know if it is OP on tankers/brutes, but I rarely ever see them. See far more TW scrappers than anything else.) I think if they gave it a recharge penalty instead of a damage penalty, that would be better for all 3 ATs overall wouldn't it? I had my fingers crossed that they were going to look at the epic ATs - Soldiers, Widows, Warshades, and Peacebringers. I see fewer and fewer of any of them now. Compaired to the other ATs, the "epic" ATs really are anything but epic. Pretty sure I'm the only one in my SG still rocking the crabber spiderpack. ☹️ Crabbermind is still fun to play, but its probably the weakest of all my fully geared 50's. Oh well, maybe next time around.

My two cents, for what its worth. Firstly, yes balance is important in any multiplayer game, in both PVE or PVE. However, I would like to highlight that everyone's definition of balance wont align. If PVE balance doesn't matter, then what does anything matter? Why would Purple IOs matter, why would incarnate matter, why would level matter, why would incarnates matter, why would the game matter? I mean, if one AT was so absurdly stronger than any other, why have different classes whatsoever at that point? A lot of people seem to focus on just damage as the "metric" to compare things too. Well, what about defenses? Team support? Buffs/debuffs? CC? It's a tricky balancing act, but I don't think damage should be the main focus that everything is balanced from, particularly in a game like this where a few changes with Powers and Slotting can make a big difference even on the X power/X power AT. Some powersets really only shine at high levels, others require a ton of cooldown reduction to make viable. Some are very expensive while others are cheap. But there is more - One thing that I think people forget about is where the "goalpost" is. What exactly are we using as the finish line to compare ATs? Are we comparing them all on +4/8 difficulty? Are we speaking solo? Or team play? Are we talking AoE? or are we talking single targets? Perhaps some people can sometimes compare apples to oranges when talking about balancing. I mean lets take Mastermind for example. They are still sort of the solo specialists, some being able to kill AVs and more on the regular. I would say the majority of AT's aren't capable of that. But I don't think anyone thinks that Masterminds need to be nerfed. Indeed, sometimes Masterminds are on the lower end of things if we are only talking about "damage" here. It's the Masterminds "total package" that allows it to do that. As far as comparing ATs go, I do feel like every AT sort of has their role and place with regards to each other. Not all will perform as well as others on the same content, same difficulty, or even same team makeup. Basically here's how I see them. I know its a lot more involved than this, because some powerset choices can mean you're a buffer or debuffer and so on, only posting this for a rough idea. - The Tough ATs - Tankers, Brutes, and (some) Masterminds The Damage Doers - Scrappers, blasters, corruptors, stalkers The Control Specalists - Dominators, Controllers, The Buffers/debuffers - Defenders, Sentinels, (some) Masterminds, The Oddballs - SoA's, Widows, Warshades, Peacebringers I mean, not everyone plays on +3 or 4/8. I don't think every build is even capable of that. If it were up to me, I would focus on balancing things around the 2/8 difficulty, and treat higher difficulties as a "bonus" difficulty for people who like to redline builds. With regards to powersets on the same ATs, I feel there are definitely some that outperform others, so that could be looked at perhaps. What's bothered me though as far as ATs and builds are concerned, is that some pools are considered near mandatory for a majority of builds, such as Haste, or Boxing/Tough/Weave from the fighting secondary pool. That's 4 powerslots that are close to must haves for a lot of builds out there. As far as "balancing" goes, I would try to urge people to picture in what scenario would a specific AT be the best at what its meant to do - Heal, AOE damage, Kill a ST quickly, buff, debuff, and so on. Every AT should have its own situation where it shines "more" than the rest. Though this sort of excepts the Warshades and Peacebringers, as they are "stance" based. They can do a lot all in one AT, just not as well as other ATs. But I would think that ability to do different things/roles is sort of a special note in itself, as they can tank, damage, buff and so on, just not all at once. Just my thoughts on it. TLDR - Yes, balance is important. But there's more than just "damage done" to balance around. It also matters on what sort of content as well as difficulty setting to consider.

I would say its more of a "I like to eat out. But I dont like that one resteraunt." To which we are hearing "But not all resteraunts are bad". And I would say "Youre right, they arent all bad, but that doesnt make me like that one resteraunt any better. Comparing this bad resteraunt to another bad resteraunt isnt going to make me suddenly like bad resteraunts."

Speaking purely for myself, I cannot recall any game where the PVP crowd was 100% happy. If there are examples of a healthy, thriving, vibrant PVP community, I would be curious as to what some examples might be. And I always hated games that tweaked PvE mechanics or abilities for PVP reasons, and vice versa. I am not saying they should be seprated or the same in CoH or any other game, there are far wiser heads than mine who could run those numbers. I just hated when they change one aspect of the game for the sake of another, when supposedly they were seperate systems or not related to one another.