[Share your Puns/amusing Character Names]

There was someone at launch in 2004 who played a Spines/SR scrapper named "Clown of Thorns."

[Share your Puns/amusing Character Names]

I had a Pistols/Traps corruptor named Gun Molly during the City of Villains beta.

[Enhancement Diversification]

Teleport in CO was pretty clever although it was not cool that mobs in dungeons could attack and defeat you while you were phased out while using it.

 

Also, anyone remember how fun the one week open beta before launch was, or how much defenses were nerfed in the day one patch?

[Best dark/dark AT?]

I've played dark/dark scrappers, defenders, brutes, and controllers, and I think I'm still down with brutes and controllers. I love dark as a secondary for corruptors and masterminds, however.

[Enhancement Diversification]

The only problem with ED was that it was introduced before inventions. It should have been implemented alongside them. The period between ED and inventions was when I stopped playing coh. Once inventions rolled around I came back and it was good to go since. Removing ED is a non-starter and requests for it should cease imo.

ED was a bandaid that needed to be ripped off sooner rather than later. We played without ED for a year and a half, and people still gripe about it to this day. How much worse do you think it would’ve been if the game had had no ED for four years?

 

It would have been better if inventions had been implemented, but you're right that it needed to be done.

[Enhancement Diversification]

oh hey if we're pointing out logical fallacies now

 

reminder that it is a logical fallacy to imply that, because an argument contains a logical fallacy, it is therefore invalid

 

How about implying that I don't want to talk to someone who keeps changing the argument?

 

Although it would be interesting to see someone slowly defeat a +10 mob while working with a 97% reduction to everything (accuracy, damage, duration, debuff strength, etc).

[Enhancement Diversification]

Except nerfing it as hard as they did brought it in line with the majority of other defensive sets. Yeah, the test build they used gave an exaggerated figure over how powerful it actually was, but it was still pretty damn broken. Hence when it was brought down to reasonable levels, people felt it was useless. But wasn't anywhere near useless. I don't think the final nerf was based off that test build. It just needed a harder hit than people are willing to admit and they're using that flub to say it was over nerfed.

 

It was perhaps brought in line with pre-stacking Dark Armor. Invulnerability and Super Reflexes still outclassed it post-nerf. Even after the GDR, they outclassed regen. It wasn't useless, but you're either drastically misrepresenting the scope of the changes or you don't actually remember how deep those cuts were. Either way, you've been shifting the goalposts in this exchange and I don't see any point to engaging you further.

[Any people from Champion?]

Just played a Dark/Dark scrapper from 2004 until 2012.

 

And thanks to CuppaJo made the Forum Cartel official.

[Say a thanks? Share a memory!]

Thank you for bringing this back.

 

The last character I created for the live game was a Beam Rifle/Corruptor, but I didn't level her much as the game's shutdown was announced the next day and I didn't have much taste for continuing to play with the sword of Damocles over everyone's head.

[Enhancement Diversification]

 

Okay, true. THings could have been handled differently. And people who wanted to were still soloing group content. But they had to work to get their build to a point where this was possible. It wasn't just "okay, slot standard enhancements in this way (same way everyone else is) and you're immortal." You had to actually plan your build out to pull it off. And while cascading defense failure was a thing, it (mostly) wasn't as bad as you make it out to be. Sure many enemy groups have an attack which can debuff defense. And yet, this wasn't really an issue since those attacks were more likely then not going to miss. And if the first one hit, the 2nd one would probably miss. Thus there wasn't an issue. Enemies with +To-Hit and who could drop an auto hit def debuff aoe were a bigger threat, but still manageable. I found it vary rare that my defenses would collapse due to trash mobs plinking at me with ranged or melee attacks. It was always things which had a to-hit buff or dropped quicksand (I think) that I struggled with. But even then it just meant "priority target" or "get out of the aoe NOW", not "automatic lose".

 

Things could have been handled better, maybe. But the problems were so entrenched that I'm not sure if it was possible to do so without any backlash from those affected. But we did also in general panic and cry DOOM without even testing to see how bad the changes were going to be.

 

I used to play an ice armor tank on eight person teams from issues 2-4. I think I have a good idea of how often cascading defense failure would happen under those conditions.

 

I never cried doom on ED. I knew it wasn't that bad when it was announced. I also knew the impact on player morale caused by the fifth issue in a row with something that was or appeared to be a significant nerf.

 

I think Jack could have handled things much better and in ways that were significantly more honest. The dishonesty is what really pissed off a lot of people. "Concern = small tweak." "Mobs can't crit." "Scrappers can beat a full spawn of +10 mobs." Uneven balance changes to powersets that impacted some more harshly than others. I know you say that everyone you knew was grateful for the nerfs, but I didn't know many people at all who were positive about any of the nerfs. People were less concerned about whether tankers were herding entire maps than they were about whether their characters would continue to be functional. And this wasn't because of ED or GDR or the regen nerf or any one particular thing. It was the sense that every issue would bring dramatic nerfs undermining people's trust that the game they were playing would continue to be fun or if more and more stuff would be taken away to meet Jack's ideal of "one hero = three equal level minions." There was also a tendency to apply multiple reductions to a single problem when any one of those adjustments would be sufficient, as well as a general unwillingness to revisit such changes after they turned out to be less than ideal for player experience and quality of life.

 

It's easy to take one single event (ED) outside of the context and history in which it occurred and talk about how necessary it was, and I won't disagree with you. But I would also ask that the history and context be kept in mind, and that people were not strictly upset because they wanted to be overpowered, but because they did not trust that the dev team wouldn't cut the legs out from underneath whatever they were playing.

 

This is why people reacted so badly to ED, and why some even hold grudges about it now.

 

[Enhancement Diversification]

True, the aggro/target cap didn't stop them from soloing 8 man content. But it did stop them from gathering up every enemy on the map THEN aoeing them to death. And losing the ability to self cap their own defense/resistance outside of an 'oh shit' power caused even that to grind to a halt. Suddenly they realized "Oh, I do need the team if I want to face these odds." And this was a good thing if you ask  me, and the majority of other players at the time. The only ones truly upset at losing this 'play style' were the people who were abusing it.

 

This is a longer restatement of what I said. And, no many didn't need a team to face those odds, they just couldn't tank and kill an entire map all at once.

 

Plus not all tankers were equal. Invulnerability and Stone Armor tankers could more easily handle these things, Fiery Aura tankers could kill things extremely fast with burn patches before that was changed. Ice Armor was fairly vulnerable to -def debuffs, which a ton of enemy groups had. And when the nerfs hit, some powersets were hit far harder than others, especially def-based sets because of the aforementioned debuffs. That was really only resolved with defense debuff resistance and, again, inventions.

 

The issue here that I'm trying to get across isn't that adjustments weren't needed, but rather that they were unevenly applied. Or more accurately, the same adjustments were applied to everyone, whether the defenses they had or provided were strictly def, def+resist, or strictly resist. Some powersets were, as a result, hit much harder than others.

 

The rest of us were panicked because we thought our defenses were getting gutted and we were going to do nothing but die in missions, even solo missions. But teams being needed for group content? This was a good thing, and something most of us praised.

 

Oh sure, we'd still try to solo group content. But this was for the personal challenge of doing so. For the bragging rights of being able to say "I soloed this Giant Monster" or "I beat this Archvillain all on my own". And those of us pulling such feats off acknowledged that we were the outliers, not the standard to be embraced. Even so, the devs didn't like it happening so took steps to try stopping it from happening.

 

Not sure if outliers. A lot of group content was still fairly soloable. There's a reason scrapper dps is measured against Rikti Pylons, for example. Different ATs and different builds and powers within each AT couldn't all handle the same level of challenge, but soloing team content esp after inventions was fairly routine. The only reason my dark/dark defender couldn't solo AVs is that dark blast isn't a great set for damage or endurance management. I could last indefinitely against them, however. Without anything but SOs and a few HOs.

 

What I'm trying to say is that the goals weren't all achieved, the nerfs hit some harder than others and that wasn't in terms of who was actually the most or least powerful. Reducing defenses so melee ATs needed buffing to more easily hit caps was good, and enhancement diversification was ultimately good. I'm not going to argue that things weren't out of hand, but I certainly argue that it could have been handled it better, and presenting it this way I think elides this.

[Enhancement Diversification]

You still had people farming 8-person missions solo, they just had to deal with aoe limits and the aggro cap, which forced a more active playstyle. Especially post-inventions.

[Calling all Scrapper Board Folks!]

Welcome back all scrapper board frequenting friends! This has been the longest rez ever amirite?

 

This is the last time I ever use soul transfer.

[Enhancement Diversification]

Then a dev recorded a demo of a something/regen scrapper handily defeating +10 enemies, which was frankly impossible on live servers

 

I remember my MA/Regen scrapper on live. I could plant myself in front of a +10 Rikti Lt, go AFK for half an hour, and come back to find myself still at full health while it wailed on me. I may not have been able to "handily" defeat it, but the difficulty would be the tedium of whittling it down with the severe hit and damage penalties, not the risk of losing. That was absolutely overpowered, sorry.

 

Uh huh.

 

The dev demo had multiple +10 mobs taken down at once. And regen was still not as powerful as Invulnerability. I'm not sure what you think I was arguing, but it wasn't that regen wasn't overpowered. Just that the devs' justification for nerfing it as hard as they did was actually dishonest.

 

Point of Fact, the Defense Reduction patch didn't lower the caps. Scrappers were still capable of hitting 75% resistance. Tankers could still hit 90% resistance. And I think other classes still had 50% as their cap. The defense hard cap didn't change either. What changed was how easy it was to achieve those levels. As I recall, a /invuln scrapper in issue 1 was capable of capping their smash/lethal resistance without Unstoppable. And in fact they could achive a large percentage of said cap before ever slotting a single  SO enhancement. Tankers could cap their resistances and defense with ease, especially invulnerability tankers. After the patch, nobody was capable of reaching the cap on their own. With inspirations or outside buffs, sure. But not just by slotting their powers.

 

My mistake, damage resistance for scrappers, blasters, controllers, defenders, and Kheldians were reduced in issue 3.

 

Tankers could hit 90%, Kheldians could hit 85%, and everyone else could hit 75%. Later on, Brutes got 90%, Arachnos ATs got 85%, and everyone else got 75%. I do not know what the Sentinel resist cap is, though.

 

This is beside the point. ED is good and people need to let it go. It happened 14 years ago.

 

Addendum: Tl;dr my other post: Devs had reduced several powers and powersets from issue 2 to issue 6, and when ED hit in 6, people were tired of all the bad news and not knowing how their characters would play with a later patch. That's one reason why people are still mad about it.

[Enhancement Diversification]

I'm all for ED, and I really like the invention system. Just to be clear.

 

People were super angry at the time ED happened because it was the culmination of an unfortunate series of events: Jack expressed that there was concern about regeneration being too powerful, which he later (dishonestly) clarified to mean "small tweak." Then a dev recorded a demo of a something/regen scrapper handily defeating +10 enemies, which was frankly impossible on live servers, and when it came out that the test was mistakenly done on a build that doesn't penalize for level differences, this didn't really change Cryptic's course. After that, we got the global defense reduction: Lower resist caps for every AT but tankers, plus a reduction to every defensive power in the game. I think this was also when AOE caps and aggro caps were added (although the "aggro cap" was not exactly what it claimed to be, it worked out fairly well).

 

After all this, we get the City of Villains beta. Partway through the beta, devs announced ED, and misrepresented the nature of the adjustment (as pointed out earlier - it's not diminishing returns, it's a cliff). I predicted at the time that the practical loss in effectiveness would not ultimately make life harder for most players, but that the psychological impact of ED coming only a few months after the global defense reduction was going to have an impact on many players for quite some time. This information also spread outside the beta despite NDA, and ultimately didn't help.

 

There was also Jack's infamous formula that one hero should equal three equal level minions, and that an equal level boss should equal 1.5 heroes, and that the adjustments made to the game (discounting clear errors like smoke grenade) were intended to bring the game in line with that formula.

 

There were also several other elements that were obfuscated: Purple inspirations claimed to be twice as effective as they really were (fortunately no longer the case), it wasn't clear that different types of defense would stack against attacks that did two types of damage, making Rikti guardians very powerful against dark scrappers, energy blasters, just to name one example.

 

That said, we also got a lot of good stuff in the first couple of years - scrapper criticals, inherent AOE taunt in tanker attacks, Kheldians, and City of Villains itself.

 

Overall, ED is fine, the defense reduction is fine. Inventions are great, and Incarnate powers are better. There's not really much reason to complain about anything that happened as far back as 2005 at this point.