Catalyze

The Beta server has never caused ANY change in my video card performance until this set of patch notes has come about. On Live servers my card uses about 10% - 30% resources depending on solo play up to Hamidon raids. On Beta it now uses 45% to 70% of resources anywhere while Live has NOT changed. Other games have not changed it's performance either.... just Beta.

This is a post for Developers. If I could post to them directly, I would. If I could post on a non reply forum, I would but that is not available to me. Game Patch changes should fall into 1 of 3 categories: A. Increasing Game Play Fun for players B. Quality of Life improvements for players C. Repairing game behavior causing player problems If Developers make changes/additions to the game that don’t meet any of the above, they should consider why they are being done: 1. The Developer wants the change and since they run the Circus, it will be done 2. The Developer feels pressure from aggressive/high count forum posters, it will be done 3. The Developer wants to put something into the game that is Shiny and will be noticed I played this game in 04 and 05. I came back to it about 2 ½ years ago and the changes were staggering. Other than the graphics, most of it had changed. I don’t know what was done on Live and what was done on Homecoming but the changes were Wonderful. Quality of Life is so improved that it is amazing. I didn’t experience the “over time” changes, just the Then and Now. I have read every line of the patch notes and see several proposed ideas rolled back or modified. This patch seems to be continuing the Uniformity in All Powers approach. Pool names unified (quality of life) and power types “templated” for uniformity (quality of life? My Circus?), new power sets (Game Play Fun), and damage increase procs canceled by combat (nonsense but it’s Your Circus). Developers have presented new powersets this round. Shiny new sets for the existing players and New Influx of players. A lot of effort for Gameplay Fun. A bit ago, Battle Axe was reworked from what it was into a fantastic powerset. The visuals are spot on and the play is very smooth (single target and aoe). A recent forum poll by Scrappers showed it to be the most preferred attack set. Well done lads! This round, I see mostly tweaks and templating to powers that exist. No Battle Axe magic. Instead of Shiny, why not rework the power sets that are sitting in the attic? The unpopular kid that eats lunch alone. Example: Kinetic Melee. The forums and Help Channel will debate this power set endlessly. It has a gimmick mechanic that you either don’t use (Stalkers are spared from even getting it) since it takes a long activation (and if it misses you could have used 2 – 3 other attacks instead) or you use and hope it a. hits and b. hits often enough to matter. Fix it like you did Battle Axe. Make it a show piece of your ingenuity. Shiny is harder and eats time. Existing Mending is easier and faster. Enough with the shiny new I Phone to add to power set bloat. Fix what you have and make it into Battle Axe type of magic. And to those already pounding replies, I have donated into every monthly finance event since coming back. I don’t intend to leave any time soon.

This post saved me a lot of time. I agree fully with what is reposted above. Newer players are coming from games where specific callouts are common. This won't do anything but continue their familiarity with reward based team compositions.

Just checked out Beta Test (Brainstorm) and the problems seem to have been fixed. Thanks to the IT folks who accomplished this.

Creating a new character on Beta Test tonight at 8pm EST. Logging in took about 3 minutes. Selecting Server took almost 5 minutes. Retrieving characters took 5 minutes. After creating my new character every map change took 2 minutes at least. Picked up the arc from MJ in Peregrine Island and headed to the Portal Corp to defeat Infernal. Clicking the portal to enter the mission map caused a disconnect. I spent the next 15 minutes getting my account logged back in, server selected, character selected and another "mapserver disconnect" as soon as I click the portal to enter Infernal's lair. Defeated mobs in the parking lot for 3 minutes just to see what would happen. They fell over. Didn't want to spend another 15 minutes trying to log in if I touched the portal again. Sleep Well Infernal, I can't get to you tonight. Just a side note: I made a new character on Monday night and ran the entire MJ arc with no problems. This is new for Tuesday.

Here is a build that has worked well for me. It almost soft caps Melee (and does with Agility Alpha) and has capped resists on most damage. It leaves the Toxic hole but has over 50% on Psionic and Negative. You will have double Rage a lot of the time, a long stun time on Rage crash with Handclap, 20 second End replenish, and only a 4 second delay on Energize. The Winter set is expensive and the other Purples aren't cheap. You get Fly as your travel power and you can activate Hover for precise flying control if needed. You also have 2 types of Invisibility; Stealth and Infiltration. Each will give you over 60 rating for nice sneaking and you can run them together for 85 rating. I took Infiltration as a mule but it also has really great movement speed and jumping while sneaking. Just shut off Stealth and haul yourself to the final boss/objective. I found it handy but your mileage may vary. Timing (Super Strength - Electric Armor).mbd

I am really confused with some IO enhancement power percentages listed in their descriptions. They do not match the equipped percentages. Example 1: Energy Manipulator - End Mod - Level Range 10-20 - maxes at 25.6% ...... BUT if you mouse over one in the AH it will say it is Attuned and provides 42.4% of endurance. I bought one to see why the discrepancy. In my inventory the Description says 42.4% endurance and when I equipped it on a Level 50 toon, it provides 25.6% as capping at level 20. Example 2: Kinetic Combat - Melee Accuracy/Damage -Description says 26.5% of each power as viewed by a level 50 toon. Equipped on that character it provides 22.9% of each attribute as if capping at the top of its 20-35 level range. Why are all these descriptions showing level 50 attributes and yet equipping them provides only the crafted range levels? Why aren't the descriptions matching their power level caps? If an enhancement caps at level 35 with 22.9% Accuracy when equipped, why does the mouseover description have a level 50 percentage of 26.5%.

Here I am again because of a set of changes to my fire farmers. After a long period of stasis from Page 3 to 4, the developers are changing things much more rapidly. The Burn changes are what effects my fire farmers most. As per the notes a the start of this topic: 1. Multiple Burn patches - fine with me, never had Burn on auto activate so I probably don't stack enough to matter 2. Burn should "now" hit 5 enemies instead of 4 - Huh? I checked the description on my Brute farmers and Live says it hits 5 now. Maybe it hits 4 on other AT's, don't know, only have Burn on my farmer Brutes so this one is fine if it is buffing other AT's and helping them. 3. Upfront damage radius increased to 15 feet - Don't care one bit. I have packs of mobs so tight against me that I can't see my character half the time. Again, if it helps other AT's or players in their pursuit of mob "arresting" , then great. 4. Procs in Burn - Not affecting me one bit. I don't slot procs in my Burn powers. If it was causing activations in excess of what seems "reasonable" to developers and was out of line with other powers that are similar, then okay ...... I guess. No dog in this fight. 5. Burn should inherit Accuracy - Okay, I don't fully understand this one. I really don't care since mobs fall over without any problems for me as it is now on Live. Whatever I have going on now works just fine. Hope this helps players who are missing hitting mobs. 6. Burn should now gain AT class caps and modifiers - Once again, I don't really care one bit. Mobs fall over just fine for my Brutes with whatever coding is going on now on Live. I hope that this will help other AT players do well and have fun. 7. Cast time lowered - This is a half second buff that I will never notice. No, not once. Just no. Burn has never been on auto so my old eyes and hands do just fine at 2.03 seconds on Live. Once again, I hope that this will help other players achieve fun. For me, that half second activation buff gets destroyed by Change #8. 8. Recharge increased from 25 to 45 seconds - This is the Nerf that concerns me most in my gameplay. Fanboys can argue the semantics but it is a negative impacting change to my fire farmers. After experiencing the mob aggro changes in Page 4, I immediately ran to my copied farmer on Beta and verified the power description numbers for Burn on Live versus Beta. I then went and tested my usual fire farm map. My Live times are from 10 runs with 1 door sitter as are my Beta times. My Base Recharge is 165% and I use T4 Ageless on cooldown. Live: 10 runs - worst time 10m 38s - best time: 10m 20s - average of all runs 10m31s Beta 10 runs - worst time 12m05s - best time: 11m36s - average of all runs 11m52s On Live my Burn recharge time varies from 5.9 seconds with 235% recharge to 6.5 seconds at 175% recharge. Without Ageless it is 6.8 seconds. On Beta my Burn time varies from 10 seconds to 12 seconds (without Ageless). The average that I noticed was 11 seconds for most of Ageless activated. Pretty much double from Live conditions. Add on that "buff" of a 1.47 cast time and it is 2 1/2 seconds from being able to have a constant Burn patch up. On Live it is easy to keep a constant Burn patch up for maximum damage. TLDR: The recharge on BETA Burn is Too Long. Drop the recharge back to Live levels of 25 seconds. TLDR Paranoia: Here we go again with another Nerf to fire farming. You backed off on Page 4 and came at it again through the power set.

I decided that this was a good time to try making a fire farming map. I have based mine on Big Gotter's 19823 tunnel map. I used AA's above mob powerset settings and they work a treat. I can run the entire tunnel solo or with an alt at the door and never have to heal .... and that is the problem. My mob pack sizes run around 12 mobs (2 bosses, 4 lts., and 6 minions). It doesn't seem to vary with our without alt at the door. I am used to 19823's mob packs which spawn around 18 to 20 (sort of hard to count precisely) mobs per pack. Since I am brand new to AE map building, can I increase the pack size in my program editing somewhere? I counted 19823's pack size with an alt and without, and it is way bigger both times. Thanks!!

Read several complaints today in chat about Farsight from the Time powerset not buffing Toxic Defense. I checked on my /Time controller and Farsight is buffing all defenses except Toxic.

I copied my fire farmer to Beta and ran map 19823 which is a tunnel map. I had a friend door sitting to simulate a typical farm for me. I died on the first pull. I came back and went at it again and almost died. My farmer's health dropped in chunks of 1/4 to 1/2 at a time in a very few seconds. That is when I noticed all the packs ranging at me. Not just one or two but most of them. I adjusted my pulls to be smaller by never going beyond the first available pack. I would then pull damage from the pack beyond them and at least one pack to the side beyond them. I healed more per run than I have in a month total on Live. I don't like the change. It seems overdone to me as an attempt to just put difficulty in the game for no other reason than difficulty. 1. I can still farm with my farmer. 2. Farming on that map is not as easy or relaxing as it is now on Live. 3. Another part of the game has become less fun for me. I have not tested any other content than my usual farm map.

I do not like the changes on Beta concerning Vet XP and related changes to Farming. I played in 04 and 05 before quitting due to farming changes. This game encourages alts like no other that I have played. Most games encourage a Main character. This seems to be the way CoH is moving. Grinding out Vet levels without AE option, seems to be requiring me to run team events that are a compromise of my available playing schedule. Incarnate teams and event choices get limited during some hours of the day. I notice it because I am in game during these periods. So your removal of me getting Vet XP easily at my schedule, really hinders thoughts of trying to do it on many alts. I left this game 17 years ago, when fire farming was nerfed into oblivion. It seemed like the Devs were mad that folks were powerleveling and players were not doing other available content. Back then, there wasn't much end game content and now there is content at 50. The Devs seem mad again 17 years later for players not doing content. When I came back last year, I was so impressed by the quality of life changes: Base Portals for everyone, P2W Vendor, AE farming, and Incarnate powers that were not an unpleasant grind to get. Hurting the AE part of the game is familiar history to me. It was important to me then. It is important to me now. Taking away from farming forces me to evaluate the game just like in 05.

I ran AE map 19823 set at +4 X 8 tonight on my farmer. My wife door sat on a character so we had 2 of us in the tunnel. Minions and Lieutenants gave the same amount of influence as Live. Bosses on Beta gave 30,143 influence while Live gave 40,051 influence. I ran the tunnel to completion 3 times. I then ran the same map on Live with my wife door sitting to verify the difference.