Solarverse

You know that I have not ran the cape mission a single time since they allowed players to have capes straight out of the gate? I used to enjoy running the cape mission, it was rewarding to do so and it came with a sense of accomplishment when you finally got to strap on that cape on your character for the first time. It was a stepping stone in the game that had been reached. Level 14 used to be something to look forward to when you finally unlocked your travel power. It was an accomplishment and it felt good. Level 30 was another stepping stone that was exiting to reach and running that mission at level 30 was difficult because the enemies you fought at level 30 were challenging. I have not ran that mission a single time since the game allowed us to have Auras at level 30...it's no longer a stepping stone in the game, there is no longer a sense of accomplishment associated with getting auras. Telling us to self impose challenges on us and then telling us to go get our shiny after that accomplishment is achieved is straight up not the same and does not come with that same sense of accomplishment, that feeling is just not there when we *know* that we could have had any of those at any given time. I get that you don't understand it and it is impossible to explain if it is something that you are not already aware of and part of. It quite frankly is something that just can't be explained because there are no words in the human language that can explain it. Elitism has absolutely nothing to do with this and I really wish people would get that out of their damn heads. It feels like our point of view on this is just being swept aside and chalked up to elitism. If that was the case, I would not be struggling so damn hard to find a compromise here and I sure as hell would not have suggested that players can have the same thing at the merit vendor. To answer your last question, having gated things in games are part of what makes people want to play them, almost every game you play has this sense of risk vs reward to them....even console games. This is why I did not enjoy playing on the Cake Server, omfg that was just plain stupid...they literally gave you anything and everything straight out of the damn gate. There was absolute zero sense of accomplishment in that game. Would you want to go play on a serer that gives you auto level 50's, fully geared out, with full incarnates, al of the accolades, all of the temp powers and then turned lose? Probably not, right? How would you feel if Homecoming did that, but the difference is, they force it on you. Think about that for a moment...how would you truly feel about that? I am willing to bet that you would go to the forums and be like, "HEY! WTF??? Can we find a way for everybody to be happy and maybe give us something to work for in this game? Having everything handed to us really sucks the fun out of it!" And then people respond to you with, "You have an elitist issue...if you want those things rewarded to you, then simply refuse to use the extra powers, delete your enhancements, do not use your accolades and run the missions like normal...problem solved." How would that make you feel? Defeated I would imagine. Well guess what, that is exactly how I feel right now, just not on that same level of extreme. Hopefully I have put this in a way that helps you understand. If not, I at least tried to calmly explain it to you and I can feel good in knowing that I gave it my best shot.

Just stop...really. I have already explain how comments like that are a spit in the eye to players like us...so just....stop. Then you clearly do not understand why players like myself don't see eye to eye with you.

What was a waste of a post exactly?

No I do not, because I don't see anything wrong with it. In fact, I like it. I just want to see the Collision Mechanics reverted before anything like this is implemented. That is the only thing that I can contribute to this thread.

Until the Collision Mechanics are reverted, I honestly do not want to see any more Melee ATs. I'm sorry, but my Tank and Stalker get pushed around enough in the middle of a Melee Battle, to add more people to jump in that frenzy and cause me to be shoved all over the place on my Tank, or cause my Stalker to have Assassin's Strike interrupted because the collision mechanics pushed me far enough to count for an interupt drives me insane as it stands now. So unless the HC Devs want to revert the Collision Mechanics, I simply do not want more Melee ATs creating even more chaos in the mix.

In a term as plainly as I can possibly put it, the game used to be rewarding, which was (random guess) 25% of the enjoyment of this game. Now, all of the unlocks you once got for completing certain missions are gone, which has taken 25% of the enjoyment of the game away. For example, Capes, Auras, the costume unlocks for Vangaurd and Cimerora, things like that. They did not add these unlocks to every mission or every task force, it was simply special costumes that may not be everyone's cup of tea. Those accomplishments were taken away and given out for free which means there is no more accomplishment rewards for doing those missions anymore, which kind of takes the fun out of it. I would simply like to see a Task Force here and there, maybe two or three that is put out that grants similar rewards and if people do not want to play the content for them, they are welcome to purchase them at a vendor. But even that is apparently asking for too much. So at this point, I feel if we can't even reach a compromise, then there really is nothing to talk about. Nobody wants to compromise, they want things their way and their way only. So at this point I just have to drop the mic and walk off the stage since it is clear no solution can be reached by way of compromise. All I can do is hope the Devs read this and feel that it actually would be a good idea because maybe there are enough players who play who would appreciate this and they add it anyway. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope.

This has been brought up in the talks over on the Beta page. I asked about this myself and somebody said that it is on the list. At this point all I can say is be patient.

I do gotta say thank you to @Vanden, at least I am not the only one who has bravely went to war with this community today and stood my ground. You are my friend in misery today, my man, lol. I spent the whole day arguing with forum posters over on the General forums, so I can feel your pain.

I have been going out of my way to show evidence for my claim...so if you want to cast some dirt on me, the least you could do is...oh, I don't know...prove me wrong? But nah, you go right on ahead and keep throwing dirt on me...if that's the best you've got... P.S. you clearly have not even read the OP since that is just the exact opposite to what he did...but hey dirt slinger, you go right on ahead mighty smiter of dirt singing.

@macskull I am not seeing that nerf to Placate anywhere...but I know for a fact that it happened....hell, I even left the game for a couple months to take a break from it because of that nerf. I know for a fact that it happened, I simply cannot prove it. Is it possible that the nerf came in a patch in between issues? Actually, I can prove it somewhat. You can either watch this video from the start or start watching it from the time stamp and you will see where the placated target had a DoT on him and he still could not target or even see the Stalker....I know this because I knew both of those guys. Now try and do that today and the DoT will break Placate and your target will simply continue to attack you as if you had done nothing at all. They played on Protector server in those days. I used to have a video that showed this issue with DoTs that I made for the Devs to point out what I thought was a bug, that video is long gone now. However, the Dev got back with me and said that it was not a big and it was intended and was a result of the placate nerf. They said that because placate no longer places stalkers in full hide and they can still be seen and that since DoTs will cancel the placate early it allows the placated players under the DoT to ignore Placate and attack the Stalker as if they were never placated at all....all they had to do was simply retarget and it's back to action. I can't be the only person who remembers this?

Travel Power suppression was lifted in PvE though...for the most part. It is nowhere near as severe as it used to be and is barely noticeable. They just didn't revert it fully back to what it was. I'm fairly certain that it is the same in PvP which is why I believe that when using Arena, you have the option to lift the travel power suppression. I could be wrong on that, it's been a good long while since I have done PvP in this game. I used to PvP religiously, however, I just don't have the heart for it like I used to. Mind linking that to me? Or are you speaking of the same one that I pointed out to you? Because if so, I think if you take a look, anything past issue (correction) 10 has absolutely zero nerfs mentioned...and I know powers were nerfed past issue 10, heh.

You may feel that is being disingenuous, but I feel that actually believing that Travel Power suppression had anything to do whatsoever with PvE is naive. There are a LOT of power changes that are not listed on those issue releases. Without having an archive of the original patch notes, that's going to be a hard case to prove. Honestly, I was not even sure if I was going to be able to prove anything at all so I did the best I could with what I could find. However, the nerf to placate is that it used to be a placate that placed you back in full hide which rendered you completely invisible to anyone around you, it was then nerfed and instead placed you in a psudohide state...this came even after Castle (I think it was Castle, might have been Jack Emmert) told us that Stalkers would not be seeing a nerf on the forums. Psudohide (I'm sure you remember the term) was introduced due to PvP at this time. So now instead of placate being a sort of AoE, it became a single target only. The other nerf with Placate was that it was changed to where if a player had a DoT on them, it removed the effects of Placate, which negatively impacted Spines stalkers since Spines had a Dot with almost every attack they had. It rendered Placate near useless. This was also changed due to PvP and still negatively affects Spines Stalkers today in PvE. I never argued that it did not also come with positive changes. Of course it did, I know it did because I was here when it happened, haha. However, my primary point was two things. Energy Transfer was nerfed completely due to PvP and any implication the Devs made that suggests that it was a PvE nerf and not a PvP nerf was a bold faced lie. I believe that if anyone believes otherwise, they are naive and will believe anything. The second point I was making (which is also the truth) was that the Devs told us from the very beginning that they would not nerf PvE due to PvP...they wanted for us to be rest assured that this would not happen. We actually believed that crap too...myself included. Those were the days that I defended the Devs against anything negative people would say about them. However, this was told to us directly by Jack Emmert, and we all know Jack Emmert is a low life liar who has proven himself to be a liar time and again...however, back then, none of us knew any better so we all bought it hook, line and sinker. But yes, there were indeed some good changes that came due to PvP, I will not deny that.

I think this is piss off Solarverse day is what I think it is. But yeah, I agree....this went from a positive thread to a call out thread in 2 seconds flat.

Oh, so power travel power suppression didn't effect PvE? Placate was not nerfed due to PvP? Various power stats were not changed due to PvP? Energy Transfer wasn't a nerf due to PvP? Okay, man. Whatever you all want to say. I'm done with this conversation. Edit: And before any of you have anything else slick to say, let me add this... "Travel powers will no longer be suppressed by toggle powers. Flyspeed of Fly, Speed Buff of Super Speed and JumpHeight/Distance buff of Super Leap will now only suppress if you use a 'click' attack powers (toggles like Enervating Field and Invincibility will no longer cause Suppression). The penalty was too great for players who rely on toggle powers to protect themselves." https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Issue_5

Oh my god, dude. Whatever. I made the point that the Devs said that they would never fricken change any powers due to PvP, they said this when they first announced that they were going to implement PvP and players were worried that PvP would bring changes to the PvE aspect of the game. The Devs said that would not happen and that the game balance would not be dictated by PvP...I showed proof that it was, so get the hell over yourself. Oh, by the way, Energy Transfer was nerfed because of Stalkers in PvP. You know it and I know it.

Here it is. Pigg Viewer Pro.zip

https://cityofheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Issue_4 Powers and AI "Numerous changes have been made to powers specifically for player-vs-player situations, as well as many changes that affect all parts of the game. "

Here is how I look at it. I used to play a game called Heroes Unlimited. Of course later came Villains Unlimited, then came the extra powers books and so forth. It was pretty much D&D with Heroes and Villains instead of Fighters and Mages. You *always* had a chance to miss. That chance to miss however, which yes can get annoying sometimes, is also a 5% chance to hit as well. No matter what, you will always have a 5% chance to hit and I appreciate that. If we lose the %5 chance to miss, you already know somebody somewhere will demand we balance that by losing our 5% chance to hit. Now, if you would rather do some type of scaling based on level, then I am fine with that. Perhaps a 100% chance to hit anything green con or below, 99% chance to hit anything blue con, 98% chance to hit anything white con, 97% chance to hit yellow con, 96% for orange con and then 95% for anything red con or above, I could probably get more on bore with that than I could with being allowed to auto hit everything every single time. This game has been made easy enough. I'm sure you have seen the big ass battle I just fought on the General Forums asking players to just give us a tiny piece of difficulty back...that went to hell in a hang basket....so after fighting tooth and nail for that, I am hard pressed to support something that makes this game even more easier. However, unlike most others who post these forums, I am at least willing to compromise my ideas. I think a scaling chance to hit is the much better solution.

Nobody gave a shit when the majority (since we are going off the players who post the forums) did not want these changes and much like I am having to plead my case against multiple people here, the people who wanted this changed were in the same position that I am in now. So the majority had no say so in those days but now they do I guess. It is what it is....to hell with it. Like I said, I give up, man.

So by that logic we should just remove everything from the merit vendors and give it to the players for free. That logic just makes no sense to me. So it's okay to have to work for some things but not others? I honestly can't wrap my head around that. Is it really the majority though? Or just the most vocal? I remember a time when the seemingly majority of forum posters were against giving everything away for free....they lost that battle obviously. In my experience, the people who post the forums very rarely express what I hear people say in game. You have to remember, most people do not post the forums because they feel that people who post the forums are rude or too analytical. People have said that they avoid forums like the plague because they feel like it takes a certain personality to be a forum poster. This is just some of the reasons I have been given when somebody asks me to post something on their behalf and my response to them is, "Why not just post it yourself?" But I hear ya...I at this point just give up. Clearly there will never be any compromises here. The forum posters sadly are unwilling to compromise and I am too tired and mentally drained to continue on with this debate. I feel I should probably step away before I start letting it get to me.

It's about risk and reward. More risk, more reward. This is just the way MMOs are and it's what pulled players like me to them to begin with. It is simply how I, me personally and other players who are like me enjoy the game. We once had that, but sadly, players took issue with it on the live forums and convinced the Devs to take all of that away. They did not care how that negatively impacted a lot of us in those days, they wanted it their way. They came to a game that was designed a certain way, they did not like how it was designed, started taking issues with the way it was designed and had it changed. All I and people like me want...is a small piece of that back and allowing other players to have optional ways to get it. I mean, my idea already gives these players a way to not have to work to get the same thing. I mean, we gotta meet half way here somewhere. It feels very unfair to take away something we once had and then take the stance that is currently being taken against the idea. To me it's like, "Wow...I never asked for this to be taken away to begin with, I am giving an alternative way for us to get what we want and giving a very easy way to get the same thing without having to work for it and that's still not good enough?" That really does make me feel like I am being kicked while I'm down and honestly makes me feel pretty defeated here. It's like even a small semblance of getting back what we once had is being shot down...how much more defeating can one get.

It's not about shoving anything in anyone's face though...it's about earning something and knowing that you did what it took to earn it. This has been the driving goal of MMORPG's from the very beginning. Even old school (and new) quests have a shiny at the end of them. The "Complete this Quest and you will get the Chest Plate of Arggonn!" type of thing. So this is nothing new and this game had stuff like that by way of costume unlocks, capes, auras...and most notably badges. Having said that, I can most certainly be happy with a higher merit reward for higher difficulty, however, I think people would feel that is also unfair if they aren't the type of player who builds in such a way that can accomplish that kind of goal which puts us right back at square one.

Exactly. It doesn't have to be a grind, this game has never been a grind IMO, even at its most difficult stage it was far from a grind by many MMO standards. The game absolutely does not have to be a grind to be a challenge. I really hope that is not what people are reading in to this. 😞 I'm not saying you, but I am starting to think that they might. The poster above thought that and if that is what people are going to take out of this then my whole point was completely missed and that book I wrote is utterly pointless. 😥

The game was never a grind...at least not by my standards. So yeah, you won't find anybody who would prefer the game a grind. So nobody on the team said anything about how much they used to love the Hollows before they changed the hollows? Nobody said anything about how much more fun the Hollows were before the Power Creep? Hmmmm....maybe it is just the luck of the dice then and I just happen to be getting team after team after team week after week after week pf players who view things similar to the way that I do. It's possible...stranger things have known to happen.

Woah! Not looking for a fight at all...that was simply how I interpreted it. Sorry, that is just the typical response that I am accustomed to getting from people, so I guess I was projecting there. My apologies. Let's get back to our happy voices now. 🙂