Two things here for me:

1. The overall difficulty level increase is nice and I enjoy that it is a bit harder to kill mobs.

2. The fact that they didn't correct the respec prices on launch day makes me angry.

Originally posted by lnwlfx44

City of Villains FTW. Did you know their dev team has tripled or more since NCSoft acquired it? Power customization is in it now, too.

You should check out the SUper Sidekicking  feature of i16 that makes teaming so much easier and less stressful, and thus fun :D

Super Sidekicking is what CO has already.  No need to wait or anything!

Originally posted by remyburke

Two things here for me:

 

1. The overall difficulty level increase is nice and I enjoy that it is a bit harder to kill mobs.

2. The fact that they didn't correct the respec prices on launch day makes me angry.

 #2 is the only thing thats got me concerned.

 Yeah it was too easy, but if you do so much at once, at least give a free respec so you can adjust to the changes.

From what I heard, there were alot fo lvl 38-40 before the end of the Head Start program. I know I saw several level 35, level 38 around MC.

I think the issue isn't the nerf/buff changes as much as people who paid extra for something special (head-start) feel like they've lost out a bit because without the free-respec, which is generally accepted in the mmo-verse where applicable when major changes occur, they feel the head-start was a waste of time.

Fortunately, I've learned my lesson the hard way previously: Never pre-order, don't waste money on collector's editions, don't play til the game is 6 months old, and don't play a game without a free-trial.

Launching an MMO is just too much of a massive undertaking to be a part of unless you've got money and time to waste AND you don't care that you've wasted time and money.

Originally posted by dhayes68

I think the issue isn't the nerf/buff changes as much as people who paid extra for something special (head-start)...

Head-start access came with pre-ordering the game, which costs nothing.

Who paid extra for the head-start?

Originally posted by Dameonk

Originally posted by dhayes68

I think the issue isn't the nerf/buff changes as much as people who paid extra for something special (head-start)...

Head-start access came with pre-ordering the game, which costs nothing.

Who paid extra for the head-start?

Well they went out of their way to pre-order. The point is the same. These people went out of their way to get something and because of the way the patch was handled, feel like they've lost out on what they went out of their way to get.

All I'll say is that I made a themed character and stuck to that theme when choosing my powers.

I logged in today and every single power I had was nerfed to hell and back. Some took cuts of up to 66%, rendering them effectively useless.

I have "dps" powers that now deal less damage than my endurance builder
My passive defense dropped from 50% mitigation to less than 30%
My active defense has no measurable effect.
My travel power is slow.
Pet AI is still completely broken
No respec possible

I was going to pick up my pre-order from Gamestop today. I called and canceled instead.

Originally posted by dhayes68

Originally posted by Dameonk

Originally posted by dhayes68

I think the issue isn't the nerf/buff changes as much as people who paid extra for something special (head-start)...

Head-start access came with pre-ordering the game, which costs nothing.

Who paid extra for the head-start?

 

Well they went out of their way to pre-order. The point is the same. These people went out of their way to get something and because of the way the patch was handled, feel like they've lost out on what they went out of their way to get.

 

Not everyone who pre-ordered went out of their way.  And anyone who did play in the head start, no matter how bad they feel their character got nerfed, got to enjoy 4 extra days of playing. 

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Originally posted by Shadin
 I really think people see this as a much bigger deal than it is.. I myself am playing and I have to say some of the nerfs were really needed.. As another dev stated (sorry, I really can't cba looking up the post, if you're interested I'm sure you can find it on their forums) people having certain powers or powersets took on TWICE the amount of mobs intended and just mowed through the game.

---

I was in beta for six months and during that time they were constantly messing with mob difficulty. (I expect that to continue ad nauseum.) Beta testing was two days a week, except for on two occasions where they left the servers up all weekend. I've played hundreds of different power combinations and completed most of the content. (By the way, the Nemesis content is largely untested and buggy.)

Power balancing should have occurred a month or more ago, but Cryptic has only been concerned about rushing the game out so they can get more money to sink into the development of STO. They kept transferring people away from CO development to STO development leaving CO with a skeleton crew of devs to try and get it 'passable' for launch.

What really impresses me (*Sarcasm*) is that they already have a planned expansion in the works. I can only imagine that it'll be the Moon zone we were told about early on, but never saw the light of day, and a couple of costume pieces and that's about it. Don't expect anything free to be added this game, it's not going to be like CoH where you get a free issue upgrade every couple months.

Even a casual gamer can get to max level in 2 weeks, then what? The Omega system? LOL!

After STO comes out Cryptic won't waste development staff on CO, but by that time nobody will be playing it anyway.

that which they have nerfed they will buff in a few weeks or months.

it takes time to balance everything out.

Originally posted by xaldraxius

 

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Originally posted by Shadin
 I really think people see this as a much bigger deal than it is.. I myself am playing and I have to say some of the nerfs were really needed.. As another dev stated (sorry, I really can't cba looking up the post, if you're interested I'm sure you can find it on their forums) people having certain powers or powersets took on TWICE the amount of mobs intended and just mowed through the game.

---

 

I was in beta for six months and during that time they were constantly messing with mob difficulty. (I expect that to continue ad nauseum.) Beta testing was two days a week, except for on two occasions where they left the servers up all weekend. I've played hundreds of different power combinations and completed most of the content. (By the way, the Nemesis content is largely untested and buggy.)

Power balancing should have occurred a month or more ago, but Cryptic has only been concerned about rushing the game out so they can get more money to sink into the development of STO. They kept transferring people away from CO development to STO development leaving CO with a skeleton crew of devs to try and get it 'passable' for launch.

What really impresses me (*Sarcasm*) is that they already have a planned expansion in the works. I can only imagine that it'll be the Moon zone we were told about early on, but never saw the light of day, and a couple of costume pieces and that's about it. Don't expect anything free to be added this game, it's not going to be like CoH where you get a free issue upgrade every couple months.

Even a casual gamer can get to max level in 2 weeks, then what? The Omega system? LOL!

After STO comes out Cryptic won't waste development staff on CO, but by that time nobody will be playing it anyway.

 

Its not the Moon (space) content.

Its called Blood Moon and from what I'm seeing its something for Halloween (btw its a Free Update).

www.champions-online.com/promo/bloodmoon/bloodmoon.html

 * Explore the new Celestial Powerset. Use the power of the Seraphim to heal and strengthen your allies, or release the fury of the Nephilim in a battle against evil.

* Beware the Zombie Apocalypse rising in Canada! Battle against zombies in PVP, but no matter what, do not fall there. Should you die, you shall return as one of the undead horde, bound to fight in Takofanes’ name.

* Fight off ravenous werewolf packs, but be careful lest you get bitten and infected with their dark magic.

* Stand against undead heroes who once fought in the Battle of Detroit, and do your best to free their souls from Takofanes’ necromancy.

* Challenge Takofanes to drive him from our land, but beware – you must fight the dark sorcerers who serve him before you have any chance of facing the Undying Lord.

 I like how their community team member Daeke told everyone basically 'I know your pissed off, play the game anyway.'

I simply don't understand why they throw these last minute changes in. They could have easily tested them in beta. Oh well, I didn't bother with the game anyway. 

Originally posted by xaldraxius

After STO comes out Cryptic won't waste development staff on CO, but by that time nobody will be playing it anyway.

 

The way Cryptic has been going lately, players wont waste their time on STO.

Personally I tried CO and thought it was pretty shitty, it just totally lacks the fun that coh/v had. The combat was boring as hell not long after playing. The game also ran like crap on my fairly decent pc, not to mention for the ob, it took me 24 hours just to get the patch to get in cuz cryptik screwed up the actual installer and made it place files in the wrong places. Eventully they fixed it but the damage was done, and many people cancelled their pre-orders. I planned to buy CO till I actually played it and relized how bad the game was. Now I am glad I saved my money since it seems cryptic still doesn't have their act together.

You have to pay to respec your character? what type of joke game is this, i already pay a monthly fee and the box cost. It seems they can change the pwers so much and then people will have to pay a respec cost to compensate for the nerf. I wont play this game past the free month

Those are the exact changes that need to happen. Almost all of the passive defense abilities and regeneration abilities where way to stacked to make OP toons. Solid changes for the game, most people will agree with them if the tried the pvp portion of the game

Originally posted by solareus

Those are the exact changes that need to happen. Almost all of the passive defense abilities and regeneration abilities where way to stacked to make OP toons. Solid changes for the game, most people will agree with them if the tried the pvp portion of the game

This is what ticks me off. Why make a massive change like this to a game which is mainly a PvE game? I could care less about the PvPers and their constant whining about how OP powerset X/Y/Z is.

They didn't just change the Passive Defense Abilities (which I have none so I could care less), they upped the damage across the board for all mobs and nerfed most attack powers. Powers that didn't have cooldowns now have between 10 to 25 seconds cooldowns...this for a game that was supposed to have almost ZERO Powers with cooldowns.

My biggest complaint is the loose UI. I couldn't seem to keep any kind of control over the camera, and I couldn't find any way in the options to reduce the sensitivity of the controls. When I'm in the game, it feels like I'm skating on greased teflon =(

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Originally posted by ABRaquel

Its not the Moon (space) content.
Its called Blood Moon and from what I'm seeing its something for Halloween (btw its a Free Update).
www.champions-online.com/promo/bloodmoon/bloodmoon.html
 
 * Explore the new Celestial Powerset. Use the power of the Seraphim to heal and strengthen your allies, or release the fury of the Nephilim in a battle against evil.

* Beware the Zombie Apocalypse rising in Canada! Battle against zombies in PVP, but no matter what, do not fall there. Should you die, you shall return as one of the undead horde, bound to fight in Takofanes’ name.

* Fight off ravenous werewolf packs, but be careful lest you get bitten and infected with their dark magic.

* Stand against undead heroes who once fought in the Battle of Detroit, and do your best to free their souls from Takofanes’ necromancy.

* Challenge Takofanes to drive him from our land, but beware – you must fight the dark sorcerers who serve him before you have any chance of facing the Undying Lord.

---

Oh I see it's an event not necessarily an expansion. When I heard someone refer to it as an expansion I just assumed it was a content expansion.

So they are finally adding a healing centric set? Not bad. I still hate the gameplay and have nothing positive to say about it, but maybe they will straighten it out eventually.

Not to wise to pull something like that on game launch. I would say they just defeted themselves. I wont lift a penny to the game now. too bad. First it was an early cut off to lifetime subs which i was considering but Soooooooooooo Thankfull they cut it off before I paid. All down hill from here.

Open Beta, headstart, 6-month subscriber. I'm seeing a lot of moaning, but seriously I'm not that bothered. I'm still enjoying the game, I just die a bit more often

It always amuses me how much rage there are on forums for a game, such as Age of Conan at launch, whereas the people in the game are quite happy. I'm very very bored of all moaning I'm seeing, some it's justified, but most of it isn't

Originally posted by xaldraxius

LOL... Jack and his nerf bat. Champions is running into a problem they should have foreseen from the start; You can't balance power sets when you give players the option to pick and choose.

Sure, a lot of games go through cycles where one class seems better than the others and the players, the ones not playing said class, complain until the devs nerf it. But here we are faced with a problem; How do you keep individual powers balanced, yet unique at the same time? Without just making all powers in a given tier exactly the same with a different skin to them, which would make the whole 'classless' idea a joke since it'd be basically limiting you to a single class, it's a technical impossibility to keep the playing field level.

With a class system you can, somewhat, keep classes balanced by advantages and disadvantages. Heavy damage dealers generally have less hit points, tanks can survive a long time but do little damage, healers suffer from both disadvantages but make up for it by being able to keep themselves and their team alive... with of course hybrids of each.

...

 

"Balanced" systems for skill based systems have been developed. The problem lies in the design of the systems themselves. What you are describing is the same basic problem several other games had.  If the developers are going to for a tank, melee dps, ranged dps, etc type setup then enough skills must be required to fill individual roles without allowing access to other role skills. Enough skills needs to be required so the someone cannot get everything, at least not everything important. Skill unlocking is also often used. It isn't a bad setup. It allows the rigid traditional extremes, the traditional classes, and the hybrids which are the shades of grey. Then the balancing act becomes one of making sure the grey areas are still attractive (which there are many ways of accomplishing this such as opening up unique desirable skills for them).

broad defense nerf because some said the game was too easy? Not every class was too easy..might toon I have at level 20 eas too easy..dual blades toon level 17 dies constantly with heal and fully leveled defense buff..now he is very frustrating to even play. Believe this to be a clumsy fix to just do a sweeping change to entire game at realease instead of fine tunning certain builds or powers. I like the game..but feel I will to wait and come back to it.

Originally posted by cyberkitten0

Open Beta, headstart, 6-month subscriber. I'm seeing a lot of moaning, but seriously I'm not that bothered. I'm still enjoying the game, I just die a bit more often

It always amuses me how much rage there are on forums for a game, such as Age of Conan at launch, whereas the people in the game are quite happy. I'm very very bored of all moaning I'm seeing, some it's justified, but most of it isn't

This.

The bleating of angry nerds and gloating forum-crawlers hasn't done anything to diminish my enjoyment of the game so far. But then this was never going to be a game I sink my whole life into (none are) so I find it's a lot easier and less stressful not to have an aneurism every time the devs rebalance a game.

Of all the MMOs out there, it was pretty obvious from the start that this one more than most was going to go through a helluva lot of tweaking and nerfing for the first few months as they try to find balance with such a huge amount of options. If that ruins your day, just don't play the game. Simple.

I thought about pre-ordering this game, but then changed my mind at the last minute.  Gonna wait to see what happens.

I went to the forum and saw 96 pages of people complaining about the patch.  WOW

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