Review of i28 P2 on Massively

[TheMoneyMaker]

7 hours ago, Ruin Mage said:

Trashing Bree here on the forums, a place she likely reads, is real small pp behavior. She has a view/opinion, that's all. Similar with the article author.

The opening line about inheriting from PStudios is...rough though.

To be fair, she could have discussed the changes here with the people here, but instead she rushed to go publish an article somewhere else about her view/opinion and that's kind of small pp behavior, too.

[Vanden]

You guys realize that all this hullabaloo is about Seeds of Confusion, right? Just Seeds. That's the only true nerf in the patch on Open Beta. One power in one power set used by two archetypes, that nearly everybody acknowledges is too powerful. My God, I remember the apocalyptic shitstorm that ED and issue 5 caused, and yet the game continued on, it was still CoH and still fun. I thought people could have matured in the 20 years since, maybe gained some perspective, but if anything they've gotten worse.

 

Virtually everyone who doesn't just want to preserve the game in amber will express the sentiment that the under-performers should be brought up and the over-performers should be brought down a little, yet every single time Homecoming tries to do the latter it causes an enormous uproar.

Edited Saturday at 07:07 PM by Vanden

[Faultline]

49 minutes ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

To be fair, she could have discussed the changes here with the people here, but instead she rushed to go publish an article somewhere else about her view/opinion and that's kind of small pp behavior, too.

 

You might want to double check the author of the article.

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, TheMoneyMaker said:

They lost me at "the game revolves around speed."

 

Damage is, and always has been, king.

Damage is the symptom - speed is the disease.  That is, optimization for damage (and secondarily for safety) doesn't exist in a vacuum, there's an underlying reason.

[Wavicle]

Why in the world WOULDN’T you try to maximize damage, recharge, etc? THAT’S the game! This was always true! Kinetics was always great, destroying things fast was always the best safety (also true in most other games).

 

 It’s an accurate description, to say that people try to maximize enemies defeated per minute, but to position that description as a problem makes zero sense…because that’s the game!

[ZamuelNow]

4 hours ago, Faultline said:

• What parts do you think are completely wrong?

 

My thing is, Massively has been covering CoH since the retail days.  Why is this review basing things off the very first build of Open Beta?  There's a level of "you should know better".  I also feel that the new story arcs (which, I haven't played all of them) lean towards smaller teams for how story heavy they are, as opposed to speed runs.

[tidge]

10 hours ago, srmalloy said:

 In all of my time on Homecoming, I have not once had the team agree that it was worth the time to take out the doors for progress on the Doorbuster badge, with a 'genteel' rejection being "You can get those on your own, don't hold up the TF".

 

Here is a new reason to reject the idea of trudging everyone to the cell block on a TF just to fight "doors"... the number of doors in a cell block is only a fraction of what is needed for the Doorbuster badge.

[MoonSheep]

i would say the need for speed genre the game has become is a result of two things:

 

1. people are simply better at understanding the game and its mechanics. once you’ve experienced the 1-50 journey multiple times you know what activities are most fruitful

 

2. the IO system broke the game and wasn’t right for CoH. all the minor tweaks for ‘balance’ are irrelevant in the face of IOs offering players a barrel of cheap high fructose corn syrup

 

without IOs, archetypes become relevant again: defenders are needed for their buffs and debuffs, controllers are needed for their mez to reduce the chaos, tanks are needed for their sturdy nature

 

IOs have created a game where every AT is the same

 

added to this is the ability to juice up anytime on powerful inspirations by typing /ah (which i do with much frequency) 

 

as a result, the only priority is to deal damage. enemies pose no threat and the only variable is my ability to mash the keyboard until the enemy is defeated

[Seed22]

4 hours ago, Faultline said:

It's probably a bit late to try to steer the thread in a positive direction, but I'll try anyway:

• What parts of the article do you agree with?
• What parts do you think are completely wrong?
• What parts are you unsure about, and would like to clarify how you're taking that information?

As I've said many times before, I'm not a powers dev, so a proper discussion about the contents of the article would be helpful.

None of it is wrong in my eyes because it's what I've been saying for 5 years. They need to have an idea of who this is balanced for and they clearly dont. 

 

The part I most agree with is it's asinine to nerf a control set at all in the current meta. CC is already nerfed by being almost utterly useless at endgame.

 

 

Im not too unsure about anything in the article but like the GM asked me in the discord, why is the takeaway and sentiment I am almost 100% sure is shared between y'all this false dichotomy of keep everything the same or keep doing new things instead of the much more feasible do something new and actually sensible with a design goal?

[Darmian]

Hmm, I'm not sure what to make of the article.  I'll explain.  I and my tiny gang of IRL compatriots who play regularly, (COH helped get us all through Lockdown) couldn't tell you what a meta is if you paid us.  And frankly that might be true of most of players. We play for companionship, story, Gits and Shiggles, and so on.  None of my lot post here.  I don't think they have logged on to the forum since they created their accounts several years ago!  I only ended up coming here when I got interested in writing AEs and started looking for advice.

 

So while the article is interesting, for people like us it tells us absolutely nothing about the new release.  If you're going to review something I expect a review, not whatever that was. Now that coupled with a review might have me thinking "yeah, they have a point"  or "No, that's BS".  But I didn't even get that. Will there be things we like?  Probably.  Will there be things we don't like?  Probably.  Will some things have us scratching our head and wondering?  Again, probably. But after reading this article several times I know nothing about any of the things me and my gang are interested in.  What's the zone feel like live? What are the new enemies like?  The arcs?  Any comedic quirks or wackiness?  I didn't get any of that. Yes, we could hop on Open Beta and have a looksee, but would you believe that there's a nice chunk of the population that DOESN'T want to spoiler things and so an in depth review sans spoilers would have been nice.  

 

It is what it is.

[Octogoat]

Who?

[Excraft]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

Why in the world WOULDN’T you try to maximize damage, recharge, etc?

 

To actually interact with the game?  From my experience, most players aren't looking to go nuts with proc builds to instavape mobs.  They actually want to enjoy interacting with the game and feeling super.  Think of it like going to a restaurant and ordering an expensive meal.  Most people want to enjoy savoring the meal, not swallowing the entire thing in one bite.

 

Personally, I do speed runs mostly, but will hop on the KM team every so often when the mood strikes.  You can do both here and that's a good thing.

 

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

 It’s an accurate description, to say that people try to maximize enemies defeated per minute, but to position that description as a problem makes zero sense…because that’s the game!

 

I think it's a problem if that's the expected behavior.  I've been on quite a few non-speed TFs advertised as such, only to have a couple of players wanting to speed objectives.  There is also the problem this creates in that DPS and DPS only is king, so every other AT besides Blasters becomes irrelevant.  Join a Hamikaze run sometime.  There's like 1 tank, a couple of buffers and the other 99% of the league is all blasters. 

 

I'm not saying the author of the article is right.  Far from it.  Just that I can understand where they are coming from in one regard.

[TheMoneyMaker]

4 hours ago, Faultline said:

 

You might want to double check the author of the article.

I said the article lost me at the speed thing. No going back for me.

[Seed22]

1 minute ago, Excraft said:

feeling super.

This is kind of a nothing burger statement on both sides.

 

My version of feeling super is not being slow as malassis clearing a mission and not playing on +0 anything, but others may be -1×1. 

 

And I feel it's only a problem again because most probably even here in this thread dont form their own teams. Literally it'll be a solution seeking a problem to adjust it to be slow again. 

 

Simply form your own teams and actually have some guts and tell your team what the deal is. KM, speed, etc...

 

And of course dont join what you don't like to do. 

 

I will say I'm not a child anymore. If I'm running anything in CoH in a team exceedingly rarely as it is in the first place I don't want it taking an hr to do, so I prefer speed and damage stacking. This also isn't my only game, and there's a list I want to get to. So if this activity takes longer than expected then thats time missed from something else I'd want to play in that same day.

 

Not to even mention personal IRL things that demand my time.

 

Speed is a lifesaver for even getting me to engage with team content in this game at all.

[JasperStone]

It is an interesting read. But did focus on some niche elements.

The changes to Seeds has been a long time coming. Complaining about this one power change in particular does seem unwarranted.

The author is Eliot Lefebvre and not Bree. (She is very vocal in the comments.)

 

I will agree and yet disagree with what Eliot wrote.

There is ALOT of speed requests in the game. However, we have more of a Three-Body Problem 🙂

1. Speed  - yup as stated. This ties into Badges because these requests are often for the WST, and I want the badge for helping.
2. Km(kill most) - I see just as many of those types of requests.
3. Badges - especially Master of badge runs with. 
4. Bonus - All XX archtype runs

Having just done my first four-star ITF in a long time last weekend, it was not slow—hardly a speed. 

Ran with another group that tried to clear everything on a Sutter TF ... everything. Not fast. We gave up for time's sake as some needed to leave.

 

Speed exists for sure, but it hits more than just the Controllers. A /Traps gets hit hard on a speed run, but you find a way to manage. Any AT that has stationary elements is challenged in a speed run. But again, you find a way to manage.

 

The comment section is where they lay waste to Homecoming and our community.

Reads as everyone hating the state of our game and then patting themselves on the back for saying so.

Direct and harsh criticism. 

They like how things were on live ... so go play Rebirth.

I was tempted to post, but it seemed like a toxic and unfriendly place for that.

If you don't like things here, there are other places to go. Other servers offer some interesting features.

 

OR get the code and run the game the way you want

 

OR volunteer

 

Edited Saturday at 01:32 PM by JasperStone
Edited formatting

[JasperStone]

22 minutes ago, Darmian said:

Hmm, I'm not sure what to make of the article.  I'll explain.  I and my tiny gang of IRL compatriots who play regularly, (COH helped get us all through Lockdown) couldn't tell you what a meta is if you paid us.  And frankly that might be true of most of players. We play for companionship, story, Gits and Shiggles, and so on.  None of my lot post here.  I don't think they have logged on to the forum since they created their accounts several years ago!  I only ended up coming here when I got interested in writing AEs and started looking for advice.

 

So while the article is interesting, for people like us it tells us absolutely nothing about the new release.  If you're going to review something I expect a review, not whatever that was. Now that coupled with a review might have me thinking "yeah, they have a point"  or "No, that's BS".  But I didn't even get that. Will there be things we like?  Probably.  Will there be things we don't like?  Probably.  Will some things have us scratching our head and wondering?  Again, probably. But after reading this article several times I know nothing about any of the things me and my gang are interested in.  What's the zone feel like live? What are the new enemies like?  The arcs?  Any comedic quirks or wackiness?  I didn't get any of that. Yes, we could hop on Open Beta and have a looksee, but would you believe that there's a nice chunk of the population that DOESN'T want to spoiler things and so an in depth review sans spoilers would have been nice.  

 

It is what it is.

 

I truly appreciate your post. I highlighted what hit home.

 

[ShardWarrior]

52 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

2. the IO system broke the game and wasn’t right for CoH. all the minor tweaks for ‘balance’ are irrelevant in the face of IOs offering players a barrel of cheap high fructose corn syrup

 

IOs and Incarnates are not the problem.  The problem is that there is very little content designed and balanced for characters taking full advantage of them.  4 Star Hardmode TFs were a step in the right direction.  The new Kallisti Wharf content is leaning toward that as well.

 

31 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

This is kind of a nothing burger statement on both sides.

 

My version of feeling super is not being slow as malassis clearing a mission and not playing on +0 anything, but others may be -1×1. 

 

It is not a "nothing burger" to have a different view than you.  Speeding and doing maximum DPS is how you define feeling "super".  That is not universally true for others.  Some people do enjoy interacting with the game and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

[Octogoat]

Ok, I'll bite. I disagree with Elliot and Bree but I play on the RP server where people are more apt to take things slow. Maybe their problem is they chose a more power focused server? Wrong time of week/day? Just didn't research enough? But I have never had a problem getting a slow or fast team.

 

It just feels like lazy reporting. But I'm just speaking from my own personal experience of the game, just like they are, I just don't have their readership or influence and really I'd hold myself more responsible for my critique if I did.

[ZamuelNow]

1 hour ago, Darmian said:

So while the article is interesting, for people like us it tells us absolutely nothing about the new release.  If you're going to review something I expect a review, not whatever that was. Now that coupled with a review might have me thinking "yeah, they have a point"  or "No, that's BS".  But I didn't even get that.

 

In the end, I think this is the crux of the issue.  As a review, this is simply a poor review.  Disliking individual things is fine and there's space for opinion pieces but this does their readership a disservice in the space of being an actual review.

[Seed22]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

IOs and Incarnates are not the problem.  The problem is that there is very little content designed and balanced for characters taking full advantage of them.  4 Star Hardmode TFs were a step in the right direction.  The new Kallisti Wharf content is leaning toward that as well.

 

 

It is not a "nothing burger" to have a different view than you.  Speeding and doing maximum DPS is how you define feeling "super".  That is not universally true for others.  Some people do enjoy interacting with the game and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

So then you're agreeing with me to an extent.

 

I didnt say it exactly like that but thats pretty much what I was getting at hence the statement is a nothing burger to use in an argument.

 

"Feeling super" is akin to how businesses will use action statements or buzz words in their marketing that pretty much mean nothing because of how vague they are.

 

No one can really define it. That was my main disagreement with its' initial use to try and argue the users' point.

 

Also interacting with the game? Lmao are you serious with this shit? Do yall not realize logging in is interacting with the game? What the hell IS it with this community and these meaningless goal post for what is playing vs not playing the game. Shit's downright dumb at this point 

Edited Saturday at 02:33 PM by Seed22

[skoryy]

6 hours ago, Faultline said:

It's probably a bit late to try to steer the thread in a positive direction, but I'll try anyway:

• What parts of the article do you agree with?
• What parts do you think are completely wrong?
• What parts are you unsure about, and would like to clarify how you're taking that information?

As I've said many times before, I'm not a powers dev, so a proper discussion about the contents of the article would be helpful.

 

Good idea.  I'll start with this line:

 

"a complete failure to understand or establish whom the game is being balanced for, much less why"

 

While I think he's off on this one, and I'll explain later, it does bring to mind one thing that has come to mind reading the forums as of late. The latest patch notes do have explanations for some changes, what I think is missing is what the guiding philosophy for all the changes are. What are y'all balancing towards? A mission statement of "this is what we're doing and what we'll be building in future issues and pages" might go a long way towards helping make things clearer.

 

Then again, it took years for the word 'manifesto' to finally fade off in Guild Wars 2 discussions, so I'm not entirely gonna blame y'all for not going down that route.

 

"Rushing through content, killing enemies in a targeted sequence, and building enough defense that you require minimal healing is not just doable but preferable. This means archetypes that facilitate that are ascendant, and those that don’t lag behind, especially at endgame. Moreover, it means that there’s a strong emphasis on mechanics that justify that speed or benefit from it"

 

Yeah, he's right here, and this is a crux of a lot of forum discourse, buuuuuuuuuuuut...

 

"Controllers are supposed to have an advantage whereby they are fairly safe thanks to hard control, and that’s balanced by lower damage, except with this patch, that’s been undone; they’re no longer as safe."

 

I'm really not sure where he's getting at with this one, especially as he links to the inherent controller changes. How does more containment and keeping controller pets under control make you less safe?

 

"A lot of the powers that are getting various downgrades are not meta picks anyway."

 

The tanker inherent and rad armor changes are some real meta nerfing!

 

"If no one has a comprehensive picture of what the game’s balance is supposed to look like, and the end result is an MMORPG that feels as if the fun is slowly seeping out with each balance pass."

 

I'm not entirely sure I do agree, but a picture of what balance is supposed to look like might not be a bad idea. But again, 'manifesto'. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[Captain Fabulous]

41 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

So then you're agreeing with me to an extent.

 

I didnt say it exactly like that but thats pretty much what I was getting at hence the statement is a nothing burger to use in an argument.

 

"Feeling super" is akin to how businesses will use action statements or buzz words in their marketing that pretty much mean nothing because of how vague they are.

 

No one can really define it. That was my main disagreement with its' initial use to try and argue the users' point.

 

Also interacting with the game? Lmao are you serious with this shit? Do yall not realize logging in is interacting with the game? What the hell IS it with this community and these meaningless goal post for what is playing vs not playing the game. Shit's downright dumb at this point 

Bro, can you take it down maybe 100-150 notches and stop insulting everyone who disagrees with you? Mmmkay, thanks.

[tidge]

Some of us have to speed through content to get back to costume creating and base building!

 

I don't think Controllers are getting nerfed... obviously Seeds of Confusion was a massive outlier, it was pretty absurd to have THIS level of AoE control at level 8. I wasn't expecting the changes to Carrion Creepers... sure I see the explanation, but I rather liked being able to turn this power into a sort of 'nuke', given that the Fly Trap has always been somewhat meh.

 

Tankers... they get nerfed in a much more meta way (i.e. all tankers are affected by a common set of changes), but this looks to be a dialing back as a result of other recent changes. I don't see how the Tanker changes upcoming in i28p2 are going to make the game go faster. Without testing (on my part) the Tanker changes look to have done more 'turning down' of the AT than I would have expected (less self-buff, less debuff, less damage dealt, etc.) It remains to be seen how this plays out on x8, on x1 there will probably be only a limited amount of content that it will be noticeable.

[ZamuelNow]

Y'know...what make the "review" even more off in tone is that Massively gave a positive spotlight on the recent base building contest.  I wonder if they're playing on shards or times that don't reflect their own tastes and it's skewing their views on the rest of the game.

[Clave Dark 5]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

IOs and Incarnates are not the problem.  The problem is that there is very little content designed and balanced for characters taking full advantage of them.

Seeing how the IOs and Incarnates came after, that would seem to suggest that logically they are the problem.  The problem didn't exist until them.