Patch Notes: September 2, 2009

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I've posted the patch notes for tonight's patch here:

http://www.champions-online.com/node/488414

Enjoy!

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No way! But *gasps* everyone said you weren't ever going to work on the respec issue and that you were ignoring us and and and -

Thanks for the hard work mates!

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Swee! Thanks. I'm normally opposed to patches so close together (band width while deployed sucks and takes me forgever to donload), but this is something that everyone has been asking for. Good job. **hopes it's not TOO big of a patch**

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* Chained Kunai and Iron Lariat's pulls now have diminishing returns on them as they are used.


Is this true of enemy attacks as well? I would VERY much like to see diminishing returns on cowboy lariats and Gadroon gravity-yoinks.

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Thx for the work :o

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Thanks!

I still think the full retcon is a bad idea, but it's not something I'm going to cry over. Unlike many people that isn't my style. I'm a lifer and you guys know what you are doing., so bring it on.

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Is this true of enemy attacks as well? I would VERY much like to see diminishing returns on cowboy lariats and Gadroon gravity-yoinks.

I would like to see some DR on the tap version of Force blast. The littlel KB animation it makes you do when your hit. Closest thing to a shield breaker and its damn annoying in pvp.

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Is this true of enemy attacks as well? I would VERY much like to see diminishing returns on cowboy lariats and Gadroon gravity-yoinks.

I personally would like to see the Gadroon civilization destroyed and their leaders driven before me.

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Nicely done Cryptic, I'm happy with that change to Retcon.

I'd rolled a Power Armour toon and since STR was one of the 12pointers at creation I took it as a super stat thinking it must be good... y'know, first toon, eager to make some progression without spending hours searching/reading through forum posts of theory (it's a game afterall). Anyhoos, once I did some reading it seems +STR is only useful for PA if you're playing Knight/melee and that's not what I want for that toon... I'll roll a dual wielder for my melee char.

Anyhoos, all's I'm saying is that I'm happy to be able to 'fix' that char rather than roll another PA for my main who'd never get the OB/ES perks.

Cheers ;-)

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What will make or break this game is the attention the devs give to it.

Moar and moar content is what I crave.

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What about Field Surge?



You broke it, when will you fix it?

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*reads patch notes* Hmm.... needs more sorcery...

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Their Patch Notes are always light. Though any rebalancing I would not expect for a few days. That said, nice work with the respecs, I know a friend of mine that will literally love this.

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No way! But *gasps* everyone said you weren't ever going to work on the respec issue and that you were ignoring us and and and -

Thanks for the hard work mates!

I believe thier lack of commitment was the issue, no one would REALLY say anythhing concrete. Heck we got a post recently that just said they would be nerfing things and that ws it, no reason no thing :P

Course, this is a step in the rigth direction I'll have to respec my characters from invul and go ranged since this destroys the melee builds I've got >.> levl 20 ish characters too that'll be expensive...since I was only getting 1 resourece a kill until recently.

Maybe they'll let us purchase globals at their store to compensate u.u Microtransactions are the wave of the future..

-C.A.

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I personally would like to see the Gadroon civilization destroyed and their leaders driven before me.

Which reminds me, the Gadroons' Dark Rift ability has become MUCH too strong lately. You pretty much have to block the entire duration or it'll yank you mercilessly and deal massive damage. I could see it if it either A: had a gentle pull that you could walk away from while still firing but did massive damage if you got caught, or B: if it had a massive pull but did light damage, but the combination of the two is devastating, especially for a standard LT to have when surrounded by minions.

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hmmm nothing about Acrobatics? Boo

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Oh, yay. Respeccing. Now I can continue to suck horribly and be slaughtered by henchmen, but with a couple of different powers.

Yeah, let me know when you FIX THE GAME, guys.

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Oh, yay. Respeccing. Now I can continue to suck horribly and be slaughtered by henchmen, but with a couple of different powers.

Yeah, let me know when you FIX THE GAME, guys.

Sounds like a personal problem to me, maybe try using equipment or the block button?

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Yay retcons! :D

Great to see this change.

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Sounds like a personal problem to me, maybe try using equipment or the block button?

Oh, yes, thank you. I'm a complete idiot and have no idea how to play the game. Or maybe I'm a melee Might character who's defenses got so badly nerfed that henchmen are doing around 3x as much damage to me as they were last night, but I was holding out hope that they would FIX this tonight and tomorrow morning I'd be able to play again. Nope! Looks like those free 30 days will keep on ticking away until they make the game playable for me again.

Ah well. Just because I was so impressed with the open beta and head start that I was trying to convince people to buy the game, and then on launch day they completely wrecked the balance and made the character I pumped a weekend's worth of effort into completely worthless, thus making me feel like I've been completely hoodwinked and ripped off, is no reason for me to be upset. I'll just suck it up and learn to play. That's the spirit. After all, what's $50 in this economy?

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Sounds like a personal problem to me, maybe try using equipment or the block button?

Wow two people threw a punch at each other and totally missed :P

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Or maybe I'm a melee Might character who's defenses got so badly nerfed that henchmen are doing around 3x as much


im a melee might character. I am still easily taking on not AS many as before but certainly enough. The most i took on today was 4 henchmen and a super villian and i came out of it fine with some creative use of block and some CC abilities like roomsweeper.


I think its not perfect where its at but its not bad either.

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Mmmm yummy yummy retcon! I'll hold my praise until I see what Cryptic thinks is a 'relatively inexpensive' cost for the first four abilities, but kudos for listening.

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Oh, yay. Respeccing. Now I can continue to suck horribly and be slaughtered by henchmen, but with a couple of different powers.

Yeah, let me know when you FIX THE GAME, guys.

Not very likely. But I totally agree with you.

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im a melee might character. I am still easily taking on not AS many as before but certainly enough. The most i took on today was 4 henchmen and a super villian and i came out of it fine with some creative use of block and some CC abilities like roomsweeper.

I think its not perfect where its at but its not bad either.

Must be nice because I'm barely able to take 2-3 down at once and they are just 1 level above me and that's as might in protector mode stacking con/str. If I do anything else they chew me up so fast it doesn't matter.

Yesterday I solo'd the same quest with my power suit character, now I can't finish it with my might and he's 2 levels higher. Anything inside a private instance is a major pain to do and takes 4 times as long because I die 90% more than I did before unless the thugs are all green. The outside stuff isn't so bad depending on where I am but some of that is not any better either.

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nice update thx Cryptic.

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* Chained Kunai and Iron Lariat's pulls now have diminishing returns on them as they are used.

What does this mean exactly? If using powers few times in a row, they don't pull anymore? If so, how long should they be on hold until they work again? Is damage affected also by this? I am interested because Iron Lariat is my number one power to get enemies close to me.

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question is can we choose what were respeccing or do we still have to go down the line to reach things? I often want to change my advantages but nothing else since the use of advantages often changes when I take new powers.

PS: I am slaughtering henchmen still with all my chars...I really dont know what others are doing different, Im not even using powergamed builds, I play flavor builds exclusively

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I believe thier lack of commitment was the issue, no one would REALLY say anythhing concrete.
I find this funny. People would like them to respond to every single thread, post, and question, but that's just not feasible. They appear to be doing all they can to iron this stuff out, (and I believe they are) instead of trolling their own forums. *shrugs* Difference of opinion I suppose...

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Must be nice because I'm barely able to take 2-3 down at once and they are just 1 level above me and that's as might in protector mode stacking con/str. If I do anything else they chew me up so fast it doesn't matter.

Yesterday I solo'd the same quest with my power suit character, now I can't finish it with my might and he's 2 levels higher. Anything inside a private instance is a major pain to do and takes 4 times as long because I die 90% more than I did before unless the thugs are all green. The outside stuff isn't so bad depending on where I am but some of that is not any better either.

Today, no matter how much blocking I did, my Might character couldn't take down a Super Villain of the same level with 2 henchman. Hell, I could hardly dent his life before I was defeated and he was back to full health.

I'm sure it's something they will be looking at. Such a drastic nerf is counter intuitive to their whole "this is a game that really takes into account the solo player" argument.

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So, nothing actually important was changed?

I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that since nothing that was broken yesterday was fixed today, this patch was already in the pipeline.

I'd really like to see a resolution to the other issues, though.

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So, nothing actually important was changed?

I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that since nothing that was broken yesterday was fixed today, this patch was already in the pipeline.

I'd really like to see a resolution to the other issues, though.

Baby steps, my friend. Baby steps. The retcon change is going to go a long way to alleviating many players fears of "ruining" their Heroes. I'm sure more is to come. They just can't fix everything right now. It's just going to cause more bugs.

Patience is a virtue. And heroes are all about virtues. :cool:

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I personally would like to see the Gadroon civilization destroyed and their leaders driven before me.

Crush your enemies!

Crush your enemies!

And see them driven before you!

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I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, their dev team may not be experiance in how thigns are suppose to be working or we might be in the wrong mindset, it's opening day, ect, but they better start doing soemthign and be a bit more "transparanet" as they claim to, and soon, otherwise they might start losing the COX refugee, with Positron's move on GR here coming up.

Their compitition is solid in their power sets and are adding what CO has, sidekicking globally and power set diversification, ect, it's a game of give and take right now and CO's got the shiney Costume creator, but that will onyl float their boat for so long.

Only time will tell.

-C.A.

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No way! But *gasps* everyone said you weren't ever going to work on the respec issue and that you were ignoring us and and and -

Thanks for the hard work mates!

yay! now about that whole free respec for the head start people thing, oh wait, your working on that with the powers that be...

Thanks? (feels awakward, but pleasant)

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You guys going to do anything to help out people who actually busted their humps to retcon at your ridiculous prices? I spent 12 G to get rid of two powers b/c you guys never said you'd even consider letting a full respec go live. So now I'm out of 12G. I'm really getting frustrated at feeling bent over.

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I sat on the sidelines and read a few posts about the respec issue. I had my own ideas on how to fix it, but I figured the devs would come up with one just as good or even better. And they did!

I like the new respec. It's costly to go back and respec down to the very beginning, like it should be.

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You guys going to do anything to help out people who actually busted their humps to retcon at your ridiculous prices? I spent 12 G to get rid of two powers b/c you guys never said you'd even consider letting a full respec go live. So now I'm out of 12G. I'm really getting frustrated at feeling bent over.

Somehow, I doubt it. But it would be nice wouldn't i? I realized I needed to huddle down and wait for the price changes so i rolled alts and picked their pwoers better this time..

Would be nice though..

-C.A.

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So yeah any kind of word back to us the community on this whole Live dataming on the difficulty and the defenses thing?
I jumped in tonight and I officially can't fight a villian and two lowly henchmen of my level with out dying. And I have a passive defense.
Anyways, I'd personally like to see some more info on that sometime cause I'm curious as to when I can expect to not be a paper super hero :p lol

The retcon bit was surprising though.
I'd been saying for a long time you'd never see full retcons except for in Microtransactions, so I'm surprised to see them in game like that :)

Edit: oh and I get the whole datamining balancing pendulum back and forth thing, but as is, I've been discovering that I can only fight enemies that are a number of levels below me and it be of a real and good challenge, as in not suicidal or beat me like a red headed step child.

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Which reminds me, the Gadroons' Dark Rift ability has become MUCH too strong lately. You pretty much have to block the entire duration or it'll yank you mercilessly and deal massive damage. I could see it if it either A: had a gentle pull that you could walk away from while still firing but did massive damage if you got caught, or B: if it had a massive pull but did light damage, but the combination of the two is devastating, especially for a standard LT to have when surrounded by minions.

Ugh yes. And worse: if they have a gravitic henchman with them, and the henchman decides to hold you at the same time the lancer smacks you with a rift? It doesn't matter what powers you have or what role you're in. You're dead. You can't break that hold fast enough to block the rift.

A single henchman plus a single villain should not have a sure-kill ability.

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Chained Kunai and Iron Lariat's pulls now have diminishing returns on them as they are used.


Clarification please? Duration of cool down for the returns? How does the return diminish? (ie: magnitude, distance, cost, etc.)

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Full retcons = best announcement so far in this game.

I understand some other things still need fixed, or more attention place on them. But I am so happy you guys decided to allow full respecs, especially this soon.

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What does this mean exactly? If using powers few times in a row, they don't pull anymore? If so, how long should they be on hold until they work again? Is damage affected also by this? I am interested because Iron Lariat is my number one power to get enemies close to me.

Typically this means that when you use it on an enemy, they get a temporary buff that makes them resistant to it, so it will work less or not at all after a few times, on that enemy. You should still be able to use it on multiple enemies within a given period of time. I assume that the goal is to prevent players from repeatedly knocking their enemies down with this.

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Some good changes :)

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aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssss soooooooooomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

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Costs will still increase the further back you go, however the cost progression has changed, meaning that the first four powers or so will be relatively inexpensive, while anything beyond that will slowly get more expensive.

Thats perfect for me (ofcourse if the theese four will be really cheap). It will be good for choosing powers and testing it in pvp. If somebody really messed up his/her character and need to change far more powers thats just their in-game money and their problem :rolleyes:

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It's nice to hear that we can now do full respec, and I hoped them to cost a LOT, but right now, I'm level 20 and I still can't afford the 3 most recent updates in my powers so getting to the bottom of my list is just a dream right now.

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Server is up, and the full retcons are still WAY too expensive. At level 30, it will cost around 2,500G to do a full retcon, and as a player who hasn't spent any currency on anything aside from two costume changes at level 15, I only have around 30G from all the missions I've done and all the loot I've sold. So the full retcon costs 100 times what you should have at that level...

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Well, server is up and retcon prices have been about halved for the first power. Its still far too expensive to be used for fun, but now its possible to undo a bad power choice .

I will not be able to afford to do this very often and dont even think about retconning back beyond maybe two choices.

Numbers? Trying to be constructive here.
Well. Level 16. I have 1 gold 40 silver. Thats what i have earned so far in my heroing career, level 1 to 16.
1st power - 42 silver
2nd power - 55 silver
3rd power - 84 silver
4th power - 1 gold 41 silver

Even the first power is a serious drain on my resources. Cryptic, the power house is very limited for testing your powers. Unless you go out in the world and try it you don't know if its usefull or not.

I can retcon two powers at this point. Having the option to retcon further back is just... meaningless. In theory i can retcon all the way back to level 1 but thats never going to happen.
The problem is i have no real way of earning that money back. Money is a side-effect of doing quests and getting levels. If i choose to retcon those two powers that means im stuck with whatever i choose in those slots. I can't imaging getting to level 40 and then grinding the insane amounts of money it will take to change powers that far back. I have no desire to reroll, thats pretty much a game-killer for me.

I really wish you would bring back open beta style retcons Cryptic. That way was fun. Really, i promise! It was fun!

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Thanks I believe full retcon is a good idea, if nothing else because people can end up with characters that are not what they imagined them to be.

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a) You still should give a free respec to people from the head start. I simply don't want to play with some of the skills I have.

b) My characters can't afford crap. My level 9 character hasn't done anything to spend money and can't buy one retcon. My others can afford one or two and then be broke. This is definitely less useless than it was, but not by much.

c) All of the people who are so happy to be able to take a full respec now... how the heck are you making money to pay for that? Does anyone want to lend me a couple thousand gold so I can respec my character, since they've been silent, silent, silent on the subject of a free respec?

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Server is up, and the full retcons are still WAY too expensive. At level 30, it will cost around 2,500G to do a full retcon, and as a player who hasn't spent any currency on anything aside from two costume changes at level 15, I only have around 30G from all the missions I've done and all the loot I've sold. So the full retcon costs 100 times what you should have at that level...

Full respecs should cost a lot. If they wasnt you would change frameworks frequently without making a new char with diffrent powerset. This would make low lvl areas empty and ofcourse in the end it could kill the game itself.
Although they need to give one and only one free respec for every character.

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I agree that a full respec should cost a lot, but thousands of gold when I don't even have hundreds? Granted, I do craft a lot on my highest-leveled character, so that does affect my money pool. Even if I somehow convinced all my friends to give me their money, I still couldn't do a full respec. "Prohibitively expensive" is not the same thing as "impossibly expensive," which is a very important point.

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I really appreciate the Retcon revamp, and I really didn't care for yestarday's power nerf, but as an headstart player I think you owe us a full respec, because you changed a lot of powers in a dramatic way, so as some of the "Cryptic Staff" sayd in another thread, we deserve a respec because you drastcally changed a lot of powers in every build.
Anyway keep up the good work!

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I agree that a full respec should cost a lot, but thousands of gold when I don't even have hundreds? Granted, I do craft a lot on my highest-leveled character, so that does affect my money pool. Even if I somehow convinced all my friends to give me their money, I still couldn't do a full respec. "Prohibitively expensive" is not the same thing as "impossibly expensive," which is a very important point.

I agree completely with this, I also think that the price should scale with the level in a fashion that is more lenient to the mistakes people make in picking power early on.

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I really appreciate the Retcon revamp, and I really didn't care for yestarday's power nerf, but as an headstart player I think you owe us a full respec, because you changed a lot of powers in a dramatic way, so as some of the "Cryptic Staff" sayd in another thread, we deserve a respec because you drastcally changed a lot of powers in every build.
Anyway keep up the good work!

I also believe at this point a retcon is needed for players to compensate for the sudden changes. But I believe this issue needs to be addressed separately. The retcon system in general is in need of balancing and adjustment but this is unrelated the to the need to preform a retcon due to the changes that were made. While in many cases I think people are overreacting to the changes, there are still valid reasons to need to retcon, and I believe many people over looked CC or other methods to heal/improve survivability when they decide to make a power house that relied solely on their defense passive and damage to keep them standing. A opportunity to adjust and compensate for the changes is needed, but this is needed in ADDITION to the need for a balanced retcon system in the long run.

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Thanks Daeke for posting this.

However, are we going to start getting full patch notes? It feels a bit dishonest based on yesterday's brevity of the notes vs the impact of the changes. I realize sometimes things get missed, but more info would still be very helpful.

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Wow, all aboard HMS Cryptic, Captain Roper at the helm... what's that, an iceberg on the horizon? No matter, full steam ahead!

These guys rotated happily up big time, bad word of mouth is going to have people abandoning their subscriptions like rats fleing a sinking ship, particularly when toward end of the month their free month runs up, and **** shows up grab another bunch of prospective mmo players.

Even a rollback wont patch the feeling that the game is being run by people who really dont know what the heck they are doing

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Now if I could just afford to respec... Honestly guys I played one character thru the headstart weekend. it was fun, I loved my concept but with yesterdays patch he is now so broken I HATE playing him. I can adapt him but I can't afford to because retcon costs are so astronomical that I can only make changes to about 4 of my choices before completely running out of funds AND, unfortunately, the problem areas of my build are all the way back at the beginning...


So what should I do, delete the character and lose the only character I have perks on for the event? We desperately need a free retcon given to the characters that played headstart weekend. You broke some of us and you broke us BAD. With the changes yesterday I can barely take on 3 henchmen and survive.

Now I want a fight and I want a challenge but I'm tired of getting handed my butt for stupid reasons - e.g. my major healing power now, field drones, basically tickles wounds to no effect, assuming it isnt busy doing whatever the heck else it is that it wants to do (which half the time is sitting stuck a long ways away from me or hovering above me ignoring the fact that either I or my bots are taking damage).

Field drones healing should scale by level and not stay at what is a pittance for characters at higher levels. In their current state field my field drones, enhanced to level II, give me 30ish HP/tick at level 26. And yet I have almost 4K health, the field drones have 1800, and the bots have well over 1K. My pets can barely take damage before getting killed which means what was my major damage power for a PvE character is questionable at best. At that level of healing power how do you expect field drones to even provide any value?

PLEASE give us a retcon for these characters. Also with yesterdays patch should the costs now be 'normal' for characters that started during headstart? I know that in general yesterday that they are lower for new characters but I really dont see a change for my headstart char.

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I'm not sure I get the retcon changes. Somehow it just looks like the way it was in closed beta, I was under the impression from the patch notes that you'd be able to be more surgical about it now. Misunderstanding I guess.
It's still too expensive though and the cost doesn't seem to scale specifically for certain types of thing like super stats, like the patch notes suggest, it just gets progressively more expensive. I have an advtange quite a bit back in the tree I'd like to change for something else, I'd have to pay hundres upon hundres of G for that. I have 4 G after crafting sucked away most of my resources.

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I've posted the patch notes for tonight's patch here:

http://www.champions-online.com/node/488414

Enjoy!

This solves none of the glaring problems broken by the last patch. Good job!

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let's hope there's no more stealth nerfs..

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fixed nothing, still costs to much to cover the bruises left by the nerf bat, and did they fix the fact that I can't take on 3-4 henchmen, since there are no solo mobs, ANYWHERE, of course not, idjits. Someone call me when they get it right...

/sigh

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is great u can now see all the skills you choose to retcon but now i need 420 g to unlearn eye beam as its rubbish now :'(

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For those that are still complaining about the defense passive and mob updates...learn some tactics! Try taking a protector roll, retcon a few skills, whatever...but give it a try instead of logging in for five minutes with the exact same toon and then coming on here screaming!
My power armor with lvl 2 invulnerability and field drones can still take on 7-8 henchmen her lvl and survive...its a very tough fight with use of some creative tactics but possible. Play with different tactics and try new things before complaining that you can't mow down every single thing that gets in your way without lifting a finger.


/two cents

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fixed nothing, still costs to much to cover the bruises left by the nerf bat

Or the broken bones in some cases.

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Oh, yes, thank you. I'm a complete idiot and have no idea how to play the game. Or maybe I'm a melee Might character who's defenses got so badly nerfed that henchmen are doing around 3x as much damage to me as they were last night, but I was holding out hope that they would FIX this tonight and tomorrow morning I'd be able to play again. Nope! Looks like those free 30 days will keep on ticking away until they make the game playable for me again.

Ah well. Just because I was so impressed with the open beta and head start that I was trying to convince people to buy the game, and then on launch day they completely wrecked the balance and made the character I pumped a weekend's worth of effort into completely worthless, thus making me feel like I've been completely hoodwinked and ripped off, is no reason for me to be upset. I'll just suck it up and learn to play. That's the spirit. After all, what's $50 in this economy?

I am with you, I ran my regen guy...not too bad yea I am a little weaker than before but still able to handle myself..so I thought they must not have nerfed them as bad as I thought...then I got on my invulnerability character and could not handle three henchmen and was like what the heck....wish they would lower the aggro of the mobs...

I hope they increase the strength of Invulnerability.......

I am just curious if they did not realize that tons of people were going to try and make TANK/MAGES??? with a system so wide open on taking powers.....how could you not think you would have tons of people seeing that they could have massive dmg output with the defenses of a TANK....

I am having a hard time seeing the reason for having melee powers at all???
Could someone please tell me how to build a good up the gut fighter for this game or give me a good reason outside of concept character why anyone would play a up the gut fighter?

I like being surrounded by tons of bad guys and standing up long enough to defeat them all...but heck now if I let more than 2 henchmen around me ( this was with Invulnerability) I get whacked.

All night I have been trying to think of ideas to spit out that could help them do something to make melee fighting viable and some way to make them capable of standing....without gimping anything.

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Nice start on the respecs, but you need to take Michael Bolton off specifying the costs. ;)

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For those that are still complaining about the defense passive and mob updates...learn some tactics!

Dude, the best tactic means nothing, if the skills are BROKEN. Take FIELD SURGE for example.

that is a vital skill for the Force Frameset. As you know, Force Users are not the DPS beasts, they rely on defence.

Unfortunatly FIELD SURGE does *nothing* right now, it has no ingame effect ater the patc!. It only consumes the power for... nothing.

People are less coimplaining about defense powers nerfed, but they are righteously complaining about totally broken powers now, that are most likely not going to become fixed.

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For those that are still complaining about the defense passive and mob updates...learn some tactics! Try taking a protector roll, retcon a few skills, whatever...but give it a try instead of logging in for five minutes with the exact same toon and then coming on here screaming!
My power armor with lvl 2 invulnerability and field drones can still take on 7-8 henchmen her lvl and survive...its a very tough fight with use of some creative tactics but possible. Play with different tactics and try new things before complaining that you can't mow down every single thing that gets in your way without lifting a finger.


/two cents
Good for you! my lvl 10 Might with defiance can barely handle 3 henchmen, no matter how many different ways I try to tackle the problem. If there is a villain there, then forget about it, I have to run, because no matter how much I block, they are too much for what is supposed to pass for a tanker build.

I, nor should anyone, want to treat every single mob like some massive riddle. It's one thing if it's for a mission that requires some clever thinking to work through, but I don't want to be caught off guard by a random mob, and feel powerless because they happen to have a villain with them.

You people need to quit treating blunders like it's all ok. I like and respect the Devs and Cryptic as a whole, but it's the job of the player base to tell them when they've steered in the wrong direction, and in this case they have. But when people get complacent, then problems don't get solved. Don't indulge mistakes. Clearly they are very much are attuned to the policy of "the squeaky wheel gets the grease," so we need to keep squeaking.

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I like how people still have no faith in them, even after they rushed this respec in on the basis of community outrage, and they probably implemented the Test server because of them as well.

Have faith, peons.

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I like how people still have no faith in them,

Have you experienced right from the beginning the Hellgate London, Flagship catastrophy?

Well i let you in on something: Bill "Flagship" Roper is *again* telling us, how he is sailing... and i fear that he will sink another Flagship.

"You have been Flagshipped".

That's why i did not buy this time a LTA. One time bucks for Billy down the drain is enough. And it looks like i was right on here.

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Oh, yay. Respeccing. Now I can continue to suck horribly and be slaughtered by henchmen, but with a couple of different powers.

Yeah, let me know when you FIX THE GAME, guys.

lol learn to play, the game was too easy

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Can we get a patch where all the resource rewards for kills and missions are increased by 10x or maybe even 100x? Or maybe reduce the cost of everything to 1/10 or 1/100 of it's current cost. Even a couple of minor changes to a costume are out of reach for the average level 10 - 15 player, let alone retconning a couple of powers (even with the new pricing). I tried to change a couple of colors on a level 8 last night and it was going to take 3/4 of the money I had. That was after doing all the quests I had access to, selling everything I didn't need and never having bought anything.

I understand not wanting people to just be able to make a whole new character out of their current one, but the current costs to rewards ratio is one of the worst I've seen in a MMO.

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lol learn to play, the game was too easy

Yeah, teach me how to make SURGE FIELD working, Hero. SInce it has no ingame effect right now. Come, teach me!

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Oh, yay. Respeccing. Now I can continue to suck horribly and be slaughtered by henchmen, but with a couple of different powers.

Yeah, let me know when you FIX THE GAME, guys.

Some people are just never satisfied...

Anyone who has actually played an MMO knows that game balance is constantly being tweaked, particularly in the first few months after launch.

And even then, you'll always have people who will complain about something, usually in the most sarcastic way possible, since that is all their minds can grasp.

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Yeah, teach me how to make SURGE FIELD working, Hero. SInce it has no ingame effect right now. Come, teach me!

Step 1) Breathe

Step 2) Select character slot 2 and create a new character

Step 3) Play said character and have fun till you power is fixed

Step 4) Once the said power is fixed jump back on your other character


Seriously folks I'm doubting that all these people crying have never played any other MMO ever. The game was released YESTERDAY and you guys are crying about some bug here and there. Yes, some of them may be game breaking for some builds, but it's not like they don't know they are there and are not working on them.


Have patience stuff will be fixed, stuff will be broken, but life will go on eventually.

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The inner workings of Retcon have been revamped\! Now, players can Retcon as far back as they'd like in their character's history, regardless of their level. Additionally, we've rebalanced costs based on the "potency" of what it is you're changing (along with how far back in your tree you're going). That is, Characteristic Focuses and Innate Talents are the most expensive changes to make, followed by Powers, then Talents and Travel Powers, and lastly Advantages and Energy Builders. Costs will still increase the further back you go, however the cost progression has changed, meaning that the first four powers or so will be relatively inexpensive, while anything beyond that will slowly get more expensive.

Great! Thank you for listening to the forums about this. I think it will really make the game enjoyable for more people.

+1 to Cryptic...

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Step 1) Breathe
doing...

Step 2) Select character slot 2 and create a new character
did that saturday already, unfortunatly that toon is ruined also. he was using eyebeam and field surge.

Step 3) Play said character and have fun till you power is fixed
play that character untill that one is nerfed and ruined too?

Step 4) Once the said power is fixed jump back on your other character
jump back to one of the other formerly ruined characters?


I tell you something: I play online games since 1989. Recently i noticed a trend within this industry to break things and never come back and leave them broken. I am tired of that. Another point i have to make:
I only say Bill Roper. He ruined Hellgate already with stuff like this. Hellgate suffered from massive balancing problems as well. It is a very similiar story.
Thats why i did not buy a LTA this time. Not going to feed Mr. Roper a second time.

I wrote inside the quotation

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Step 1) Breathe

Step 2) Select character slot 2 and create a new character

Step 3) Play said character and have fun till you power is fixed

Step 4) Once the said power is fixed jump back on your other character


Seriously folks I'm doubting that all these people crying have never played any other MMO ever. The game was released YESTERDAY and you guys are crying about some bug here and there. Yes, some of them may be game breaking for some builds, but it's not like they don't know they are there and are not working on them.


Have patience stuff will be fixed, stuff will be broken, but life will go on eventually.

While I do agree that people can be far more aggressive to the problems they see then is necessary, the way problems get fixed is through enough people getting the point across to the Devs. Whether it's this ******** balance issue or a power that got nerfed so bad that it doesn't even work anymore, the Dev's have clearly adopted the whole "squeaky wheel gets the grease" mentality. The PvPers (all 1% of the playerbase) made a stink about the game being "too easy", and the Dev's responded.

It's our duty, as active members of the community to voice our concerns, albeit civilly, which again, I agree, can be done a lot better on our part.

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Some people are just never satisfied...

Anyone who has actually played an MMO knows that game balance is constantly being tweaked, particularly in the first few months after launch.

And even then, you'll always have people who will complain about something, usually in the most sarcastic way possible, since that is all their minds can grasp.

If you're satisfied, you're satisfied. If you're dissatisfied, you're dissatisfied. It really doesn't mean anything beyond that, much less a reflection of mental capacity or a grasp of rhetoric. So long as people have opinions about something, they're going to have a complaint or conflict. I'm not sure what you were trying to get at other than being inflammatory.

[Archived Post]

The inner workings of Retcon have been revamped\! Now, players can Retcon as far back as they'd like in their character's history, regardless of their level. Additionally, we've rebalanced costs based on the "potency" of what it is you're changing (along with how far back in your tree you're going). That is, Characteristic Focuses and Innate Talents are the most expensive changes to make, followed by Powers, then Talents and Travel Powers, and lastly Advantages and Energy Builders. Costs will still increase the further back you go, however the cost progression has changed, meaning that the first four powers or so will be relatively inexpensive, while anything beyond that will slowly get more expensive.!

Just loged in thinking wow maybe I can fix my main enough to play again. Sorry but you didn't fix a whole lot.
yes you can go back all the way but you can't pick and chose you still got to to strip the 1st one then the 2nd etc etc.

Prices are still out of this world. The last thing I got is 59 silver -sorry not sure what to call it after the base resources- after that it jumps up to 1 gold and some silver for the next witch is drones. so to respect drones I would be out of close to 3 G.

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I wrote inside the quotation

Funny I have been playing just as long and I have noticed a trend in games as well: People bitter about other games and high up game officials instantly criticizing a game for not being perfect out the gate. Defensive passives got nerfed, yes, but your in the same damn boat with EVERYONE that took those abilities.

I have a melee/regen build that is unplayable at the moment due to regen no longer critting nor scaling. The respec costs are too much for me to fix him back to square one, but you know what? It took me two days to get him to 15, so starting over is not an issue. Everyone hits 40 at some point, so there is no point in racing.

As for the Bill Roper thing, get over it. Yes, he jacked up Hellgate, but I personally have faith that the people that made CoH a great game will assist in this one being as great as well. Give the game time, it will take a lot of balancing back and forth to equallibrium the game from beta to stable production. All games go through this and frankly this game is a hell of a lot better at the moment then 90% of MMO releases.

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Aren't the retcon costs a little bit high? with 11g I can make 3 steps.. uff.

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No way! But *gasps* everyone said you weren't ever going to work on the respec issue and that you were ignoring us and and and -

Thanks for the hard work mates!

um..the prices are still ******** as ever. they need to bump up resource drops if they are gonna continue on this path. also, we still have not heard of a free full respec for the headstart people..

[Archived Post]

The inner workings of Retcon have been revamped! Now, players can Retcon as far back as they'd like in their character's history, regardless of their level. Additionally, we've rebalanced costs based on the "potency" of what it is you're changing (along with how far back in your tree you're going). That is, Characteristic Focuses and Innate Talents are the most expensive changes to make, followed by Powers, then Talents and Travel Powers, and lastly Advantages and Energy Builders. Costs will still increase the further back you go, however the cost progression has changed, meaning that the first four powers or so will be relatively inexpensive, while anything beyond that will slowly get more expensive.
The idea that anyone could defend these retcon costs as reasonable boggles my mind. It's as if the sky is blue, and you guys are standing there telling us that it's purple with pink polka-dots. Simply ridiculous.

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For those that are still complaining about the defense passive and mob updates...learn some tactics! Try taking a protector roll, retcon a few skills, whatever...but give it a try instead of logging in for five minutes with the exact same toon and then coming on here screaming!

Actually I played my character for at least four hours yesterday. I can't speak for the rest of the forums but I have pretty good idea about what is broken in my build. I would LOVE to fix it however retcon prices are so out of reach that I am basically stuck.

Tactics are great, however they can only get you so far when the powers you depend on to deploy those tactics are visibly broken.

My power armor with lvl 2 invulnerability and field drones can still take on 7-8 henchmen her lvl and survive...its a very tough fight with use of some creative tactics but possible.

Yes, your power armor with level 2 invulnerability and field drones can possibly take on 7 mobs and survive but I dont see a lot of people complaining about this change that have that particular power combo. Invulnerability works on a completely different concept than PFF does. It reduces all damage whereas all I have is a thin wall protecting me until the mobs whittle it down.

I do see a lot of folks upset who have a similar build to mine, Force Field/Field Surge and I can tell you that its painful. Mobs are doing more damage and blowing thru my defenses likey they are tissue paper and my 'passive' healing power is over in the corner talking to itself apparently not even aware that it should be healing.

Add to this the fact that my nemesis minions tend to show up out of the blue with their own team of five to battle me, and TYPICALLY it is happening right when I am fighting for my life in a situation where I did use tactics and strategy and perhaps you can understand why I'm a bit perturbed about this change.


Play with different tactics and try new things before complaining that you can't mow down every single thing that gets in your way without lifting a finger.


I never asked for the game to be 'easy' I like a hard battle and a challenge but as things stand right now the game is ganking me. Blocking is letting more damage thru, I cant stop blocking to heal my pets and my pets that are supposed to be doing healing are over in the corner in a huddle hugging themselves because they got scratched. On top of this when they do heal they are doing no more than sticking a bandaid on a wound with a punctured artery while blood sprays all over the place. They can't keep up so yes I would like it fixed please :)

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Defensive passives got nerfed, yes, but your in the same damn boat with EVERYONE that took those abilities.

No, i am NOT in the same boat. Since Regen/Invul/Lightning Reflex don't have not to suffer like a TOTALLY broken skill called "SURGE FIELD".
And no, i am not in the same boat like everyone else, since the Force Users are the most fragile ones now. Because we have not only been nerfed to hell regarding our defensive skill "PFF", no... but additionally they have taken away SURGE FIELD from us, leaving us naked. It has no ingame effect anymore since patchday, only consumes power.

And no official is even acknowledging this bug.

I have a melee/regen build that is unplayable at the moment due to regen no longer critting nor scaling. The respec costs are too much for me to fix him back to square one, but you know what?

At least regen does still something, while SURGE FIELD does nothing for now.

It took me two days to get him to 15, so starting over is not an issue. Everyone hits 40 at some point, so there is no point in racing.

I'm tired of re-rolling, this would be my 4th toon since start then.

As for the Bill Roper thing, get over it. Yes, he jacked up Hellgate,[...]

Thats enough said already. He is good going to ruin CO as well. He's on that already and doing quite fine.

I mean, cmon: "Sailing, taking a starboard..." Bleh, don't get me even started.
This smells Flagshipped (TM).

FInal note: What makes it worse is not the change itslf: It is the broken skills (SURGE FIELD) and the fact, that they did it way after Beta. At Release DAy.

[Archived Post]

No, i am NOT in the same boat. Since Regen/Invul/Lightning Reflex don't have not to suffer like a TOTALLY broken skill called "SURGE FIELD".
And no, i am not in the same boat like everyone else, since the Force Users are the most fragile ones now. Because we have not only been nerfed to hell regarding our defensive skill "PFF", no... but additionally they have taken away SURGE FIELD from us, leaving us naked. It has no ingame effect anymore since patchday, only consumes power.

And no official is even acknowledging this bug.



At least regen does still something, while SURGE FIELD does nothing for now.



I'm tired of re-rolling, this would be my 4th toon since start then.



Thats enough said already. He is good going to ruin CO as well. He's on that already and doing quite fine.

I mean, cmon: "Sailing, taking a starboard..." Bleh, don't get me even started.
This smells Flagshipped (TM).

FInal note: What makes it worse is not the change itslf: It is the broken skills (SURGE FIELD) and the fact, that they did it way after Beta. At Release DAy.

It sounds like you're accusing them of breaking "Field Surge" on purpose. Seriously?

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The respec thing is great, but why ANOTHER power nerf? Hasn't enough damage already been done?

And what ISN'T in these patch notes?

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When the hell are the prices actually going to drop!? Just to go back 3 powers would cost me about 3 gold and I've never seen that much money. If they're basing their prices that people are BUYING off the AH they're damn crazy I've had costume unlock peices upthere for days and its never sold. They need to improve the drop rate on cash because right now its frigging Crappy and impossible to retcon, shop for supplies, and craft.

Plus where the hell is a free respec? I'd like to undo my super stats since they changed how my powers work without noting it during creation time.

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Personally I don't mind the high prices, because now we can respec all the way back after we max our toons to fix any mistakes. The high prices before were bad because we were on the clock, outlevelling the ability to respec them. We couldn't respec while we played, and later we'd be locked out.

Now we won't be locked out, and while it might be a drag to wait til later to spec out early powers, at least we can without having to reroll. Besides the game has been live days so we're all going to be really poor. This will change, too, and then pricier respecs will probably be a good thing so people don't switch builds on a daily basis. Plus it'll be a decent gold sink at that.

So, I'm satisfied. It's just a bit inconvenient in the short term but hopefully Daeke will pull through and get all of us a freespec.

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Respec change is huge. I love that it is now at least theoretically possible to rebuld from scratch. I say 'theoretically' because my current 'main' PC at level 15 has amassed 87 things that I'll call game currency for lack of knowledge of the correct terms for those 3 denominations. This allows a respec of the last 3 slotted skills. I'd need several of the big money things (about 10 or so, I think) in order to rebuild the level 15 character from scratch.

btw, could really use a mouse-over tooltip for the currency names wherever in-game curerncy is displayed in the UI. I don't want to call it 'gold' or 'things' when there almost certainly exists some proper name for the three denominations of...things.

Separately, I tried to take screenshots of the respec UI so I could tally up the full list of respec slot options and associated costs. I noticed prntscr takes the shots, and found them in the screen shot folder - but for some reason not a single UI element or frame appears in those shots (I wasn't hiding the UI with the F12 key combo). The UI - in particular the respec UI wasn't visible in the shots, but was visible in the game. What did I do wrong?

[Adding: @Eniko - I agree, I'm ok with the pricing long-term, I suppose. Time will tell. Short-term, a free respec for headstart would alleviate my immediate issues with the 3 characters I kicked off with. I'd sing praises of the designers and devs involved pushing the change through if a free respec came out this week.]

[Archived Post]

Respec change is huge. I love that it is now at least theoretically possible to rebuld from scratch. I say 'theoretically' because my current 'main' PC at level 15 has amassed 87 things that I'll call game currency for lack of knowledge of the correct terms for those 3 denominations. This allows a respec of the last 3 slotted skills. I'd need several of the big money things (about 10 or so, I think) in order to rebuild the level 15 character from scratch.

btw, could really use a mouse-over tooltip for the currency names wherever in-game curerncy is displayed in the UI. I don't want to call it 'gold' or 'things' when there almost certainly exists some proper name for the three denominations of...things.

Separately, I tried to take screenshots of the respec UI so I could tally up the full list of respec slot options and associated costs. I noticed prntscr takes the shots, and found them in the screen shot folder - but for some reason not a single UI element or frame appears in those shots (I wasn't hiding the UI with the F12 key combo). The UI - in particular the respec UI wasn't visible in the shots, but was visible in the game. What did I do wrong?

Use /screenshot_ui_jpg to grab the UI

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Use /screenshot_ui instead of the printscreen key.

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Use /screenshot_ui_jpg to grab the UI

Thanks! I need to find a reference for all the chat commands. I saw one during beta, but haven't found it since.

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http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Console_Command_List

Or use /cmdlist ingame.

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Thanks! I need to find a reference for all the chat commands. I saw one during beta, but haven't found it since.

I tend to use the trial-and-popup method as a reference ;)

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It sounds like you're accusing them of breaking "Field Surge" on purpose. Seriously?

That's funny, it doesn't sound like anything to me. It actually reads perfectly fine with no room for misinterpretation and taking into account the many things they did yesterday without making a slight keystroke in the patch notes in regards to the recognition or existence of such changes. I am inclined to believe that yes they did it on purpose or they fired their staff and replaced them with monkeys to do the programming.

I guess Roper wants to be the next MMO project lead to get a trip to space! So excited he must be, he has decided to get a head start with working side by side with NASA's non human finest!

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From the multiple posts, it looks like Cryptic have returned to previous form from City of Heroes. And no, I'm not talking about nerfs, but lack of patch notes

For the love of $deity please can Cryptic get some decent changelogs involved in their Patch Notes. Its been obvious to players that powers like Sonic Device, and Field Drones have been changed over the last couple of days but with zero mention of them in the patch notes.

CoX had this issue under Cryptic - players having to test everything after each patch to see whats wrong although Paragon Studios still have the occassional slip up they're much improved.

Come on Cryptic, pull up the socks and give us detailed lists of powers that have been rebalanced, when they are.

[Archived Post]

I've posted the patch notes for tonight's patch here:

http://www.champions-online.com/node/488414

Enjoy!

Well alright then... I can ejoy more goodness Saturday Night.. and not even have to put on the
Bay City Rollers..... or be uptight...

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The retcon prices are still way too high. Either Cryptic doesn't know HOW to fix it or this is actually what they want (and will be introducing respecs in the online store soon).

Honestly, I would prefer how it was in Open Beta: we could only respec our last 10 choices BUT it was so reasonably priced you could respec all 10 without going broke. That seems like a good balance.

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Just supporting the respec people. I am just short of being able to afford my third down the list power (which is the one I need to fix). Problem is, if I keep earning money, I will keep earning xp and level and not catch up with it. SO what to do? Level up a toon just for the purpose of sending money to this toon? Its a silly system.

And why do I still need to remove the powers I want to keep? I like my last two picks, just not the third from the top one...

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And why do I still need to remove the powers I want to keep? I like my last two picks, just not the third from the top one...

Powers depend on powers, advantages depend on powers...if they were to allow you to remove anything at any time, it would have to check an enormously complex dependency tree and you'd probably end up not being able to remove what you wanted anyway.

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Cryptic, What the hell are you doing, that's all I need to say. I was going to pick up my pre-order yesterday but didn't after playing the game yesterday, and now i think after seeing that you FAIL at fixing one little thing the respec costs. And all the countless nerfs without so much as some patch notes so I know what to expect. I don't think i will be picking up my pre-order i don't feel like paying to be lied to. Maybe I'll check this game out in a month or two but right now you need to pull you heads out. When I pre-ordered and my friends bought your six-month subs we thought we were paying for a finished game not funding your development, so long and thanks for all the lies...

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What I think the Respec system is still missing is Catergorisation. What I mean, they said the price scaling now depends on what you are touching. But some things level up seperately from others. Innates with Characteristic focus can be one. Making them pricey from the get go (except the last one for a few levels will still be a little pricey, just not uber priced, but after 2-3 level ups even respeccing your last super stat would be uber pricey). Talents can be a separate category. Actually they should be. Many times you realise you need to change your build of stats, esspecially when the devs ups the End cost of Pyre, you now probably want to pick up more End and Int. Wjy go unspeccing your powers to get to them?

Obviously Powers are their own too. Going in reverse order you got them. This is pretty basic. But it would be nice you respec your powers without going between all the inbetween talents you took too which you are not interested in respeccing. Advantages is the only one I can not think how to fit into it. Honestly I want this to be free form. Making the last ones you took cheaper but not needing to go all the way through all of them to get back to them. Obviously Rank 3 will need to be undone before Rank 2, but that should be the only sequence you need to take care of. The other problem is they are linked to Powers, the solution here, if you have not unspecced the advantages you can not unspec the powers attached to them. So you still need to unspec your advantages off before you can keep going down your power list. But aside from this, I want to be able to just unspec the talent I took at 10 without doing all them first. You can still have the price of something that far back to be heafty (still not the worst since it is the advantages).

I realise this is even a more resignificant retooling of the Retcon system. Since you are already working on making the different categories cost differently, it should not be out of the question to do this either. I know this will take some time and not expect this for months if you do make it this way. But it is something to consider, to do the retcons this way.

[Archived Post]

From the multiple posts, it looks like Cryptic have returned to previous form from City of Heroes. And no, I'm not talking about nerfs, but lack of patch notes

For the love of $deity please can Cryptic get some decent changelogs involved in their Patch Notes. Its been obvious to players that powers like Sonic Device, and Field Drones have been changed over the last couple of days but with zero mention of them in the patch notes.

CoX had this issue under Cryptic - players having to test everything after each patch to see whats wrong although Paragon Studios still have the occassional slip up they're much improved.

Come on Cryptic, pull up the socks and give us detailed lists of powers that have been rebalanced, when they are.
Yeah seriously. I just found out that they stealth nerfed Sonic Device's AoE damage. It was due a nerf but could you please start listing this stuff in the patch notes already!?

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Yeah seriously. I just found out that they stealth nerfed Sonic Device's AoE damage. It was due a nerf but could you please start listing this stuff in the patch notes already!?

I have to say I agree. If you make a change that is not an exploit, I think we should be notified. If it was an exploit then I can understand not broadcasting it.

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Good for you! my lvl 10 Might with defiance can barely handle 3 henchmen, no matter how many different ways I try to tackle the problem. If there is a villain there, then forget about it, I have to run, because no matter how much I block, they are too much for what is supposed to pass for a tanker build.

I, nor should anyone, want to treat every single mob like some massive riddle. It's one thing if it's for a mission that requires some clever thinking to work through, but I don't want to be caught off guard by a random mob, and feel powerless because they happen to have a villain with them.


I also have a low level might guy with defiance. I hit 13 with him last night. All might, no mix-and-match, defiance as the passive. And he's not gimp. I'm not indestructible, and it's easy to get in trouble, but the character isn't completely useless and broken. I take on groups of henchmen, villains, etc. and make it out the other side. I managed to solo the 2-man mission to destroy the Eel Soldier Lab yesterday, although I did have to use a healing patch and work the terrain and knock backs carefully to keep the MV/V split up and unable to burn me down.

I'm not saying your experience isn't true, I'm just not clear on why our impressions of the post-patch world are so different.

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lol I still can't afford even the first one.

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I expect the retcon prices to get higher and higher the further back you go and the higher level you get so to discurouage the whole flavor of the month rebuild but this is really unreasonable according to the amount of resources that drop adn are given by missions. If missions and drops gave more ALOT more it might be reasonable to be able to get maybe one full retcon maybe once every few weeks or months. Right now you might earn one full respect per year or maybe two years of playing 3 - 5 hours a day.

Right now as it stands resource farmers (gold farmers) will be making a killing off this game.

If they're expecting us to make a decent amount off their economy system through crafting I'm laughin my ass off right now since its pretty obvious how little its used early on in any game not to mention because the game is so alt friendly you can easily make 1 alt for each crafting class and never need to buy anything other than components which thanks to the low spawn rate of component nodes is possible NOT possible since well I dont think alot of people KNOW where the AH Is there arent' exactly quests that show you to the bank or the AH like their probably should be in this game.

If your going to swing the nerf bat mercilessly and not telling anyone and not give any sort of indication taht its a temporary test change you should give us a full free respec even frigging WoW and WAR do that (though WoW more so then WAR). Right now I've managed through gear to temporarily fixed my fire user (since your own Creation system doesn't LIST the changes made to fire thanks alot my super stats are worthless guys) but due to my super stats being fubar'd (Jerks) I wouldn't dare dream of jumping into PVP and soloing takes alot more tactical challenge which is FINE but still it'd be nice not to be fubar'd.

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Powers depend on powers, advantages depend on powers...if they were to allow you to remove anything at any time, it would have to check an enormously complex dependency tree and you'd probably end up not being able to remove what you wanted anyway.

The dependency is not that complicated for everything. Talents and Innates and Characteristic Focus are not interdependent to anything. Travel powers are only dependent on the advantage if it was taken, Advantages are only dependent to the power they are assigned too. Except Rank 3 which is dependent on Rank 2. Aside from the Rank 3 and 2 thing, none of the other advantages are dependent on each other.

The only thing that is highly dependent is the powers. Since of the whole have x of frame or y of total to be able to take it. Effectively creating level requirements for your powers, with the added complexity of the actual level changing for the inframe requirement. So yes, that is complicated and probably can only be handled by the reverse retcon system they use here. But only that is.

I can invision a system that lets you respec Innate, Characteristic Focus, and Talents in any sequance. You can still make the older ones more pricey, but it can still be done out of sequence (making the respeced one now the newer one). Advantages can also be respecced in any order, except for Rank 2 if you have Rank 3. Then you have to do Rank 3 first before Rank 2, not that hard really, and aside from that the others are not linked to each other. Actually half the time they are the first thing that needs to go before you can do a power. Again, you can just make the further back you go the pricier it gets, but without needed to go undo all in reverse order.

Powers will be the only one that will stay in the current reverse Retcon system for the reasons I said before. You have to unbuy them in reverse order of how you got them. Rolling back step by step. The only limit is that if you have a power with an advantage bought it becomes locked in until you undo its advantages first. Effectively stopping your retcon progression until you do. Other than that, as long as no Advantages got attached to it, you can just proceed in reverse sequence without needing to retcon other things (talents and the such).

Only down side, the powers WILL have to renain in the reverse order system, as I said before. It might suck if you just want to change something 3 powers back, but it is the only way to maintain the dependency tree the powers are based on.

This categorisation of Retcon would be awesome. I also know it will take time. So I do not expect anything close to this for months. Still be nice if this is what they do in the long run.

[Archived Post]

Wow, all aboard HMS Cryptic, Captain Roper at the helm... what's that, an iceberg on the horizon? No matter, full steam ahead!

These guys rotated happily up big time, bad word of mouth is going to have people abandoning their subscriptions like rats fleing a sinking ship, particularly when toward end of the month their free month runs up, and **** shows up grab another bunch of prospective mmo players.

Even a rollback wont patch the feeling that the game is being run by people who really dont know what the heck they are doing

Yep - go play the other games which AFTER A YEAR, aren't as balanced or bug free as this game on day one; please go try Age of Conan and WarHammer Online ;) <--- Both Dev Teams of these games have really shown they "know what they're doing"; um, yep :D;)

As for ****, even my core guild that's heavily it to world PvP say, "meh, I give the game two months." From all reports, looks like NCSoft has another Tabula Rasa and or Auto Assault Online.

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I expect the retcon prices to get higher and higher the further back you go and the higher level you get so to discurouage the whole flavor of the month rebuild but this is really unreasonable according to the amount of resources that drop adn are given by missions. If missions and drops gave more ALOT more it might be reasonable to be able to get maybe one full retcon maybe once every few weeks or months. Right now you might earn one full respect per year or maybe two years of playing 3 - 5 hours a day.

Right now as it stands resource farmers (gold farmers) will be making a killing off this game.

If they're expecting us to make a decent amount off their economy system through crafting I'm laughin my ass off right now since its pretty obvious how little its used early on in any game not to mention because the game is so alt friendly you can easily make 1 alt for each crafting class and never need to buy anything other than components which thanks to the low spawn rate of component nodes is possible NOT possible since well I dont think alot of people KNOW where the AH Is there arent' exactly quests that show you to the bank or the AH like their probably should be in this game.

If your going to swing the nerf bat mercilessly and not telling anyone and not give any sort of indication taht its a temporary test change you should give us a full free respec even frigging WoW and WAR do that (though WoW more so then WAR). Right now I've managed through gear to temporarily fixed my fire user (since your own Creation system doesn't LIST the changes made to fire thanks alot my super stats are worthless guys) but due to my super stats being fubar'd (Jerks) I wouldn't dare dream of jumping into PVP and soloing takes alot more tactical challenge which is FINE but still it'd be nice not to be fubar'd.

Please try to separate your thoughts into separate sentences...reading a whole paragraph in one swoop takes effort even with my attention span. Please also elaborate how your super stats are "fubar'd".

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Still prohibitively expensive.

And in order to respec ONE power, you have to respec every choice you've made since taking that power. And since you can't afford to actually respec as you level up, that means you can't respec. Bogus options are bogus...

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glad to see the full retcon option .. glad to hear feedback actually worked

but yes still way to expensive. we need more resources for missions and killing mobs

and increase xp slighty more from misisons and mobs

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Remember inflation. What you think is too expensive now, give it 2 weeks and it'll probably be pennies. I remember in CoH when I thought 10000 infl. was a lot. Not long later, 1 million infl. was like starting equipment.

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Yep - go play the other games which AFTER A YEAR, aren't as balanced or bug free as this game on day one; please go try Age of Conan and WarHammer Online ;) <--- Both Dev Teams of these games have really shown they "know what they're doing"; um, yep :D;)

As for ****, even my core guild that's heavily it to world PvP say, "meh, I give the game two months." From all reports, looks like NCSoft has another Tabula Rasa and or Auto Assault Online.

Well the thing is, Warhammer was very balanced at launch, it had some issues but these were more RvR related and didn't completely make or break a match. I burned out on that game extremely fast because it lacked content and RvR was too much of the same deal throughout the levels. Age of Conan, I haven't touched it since Warhammer came out, but that game was seriously missing content so I will agree with you there.

Warhammer failed to please it's fans with good updates and patches post launch, they tried but the foul taste was already in our mouths. As far as CO goes, it could be made of gold and have no bugs, but if the nerfing is too harsh or too much at once, and it isn't working out, then we could have a fine example of Warhammer Online 2.0. Cryptic being a good team, but failing to please a large portion of their player base.

Lets say those who feel it's too hard make up only 25% of the player base. Like the plague they will spread the word of their disdain for this game like AIDS in Africa. It will create a ripple effect that will slow down new adopters of this MMO and these people won't even come back after their issues are resolved, because it took too long. And they will continue to spread the word.

What I am getting at here is, we have a great development team that I have faith in, but the comparisons all hold true to the fact that bad PR en mass is bad PR.

Second **** will suck, it's too WoWish in both theme and gameplay. It won't hold anyone's interest for long period of time, CO has one good thing going for it here, the theme is wonderful, the art is wonderful, character creation is much more advanced than ****. But **** being the next big sandbox fantasy themed MMO this year, will hurt CO's adoptive rate or even current subscription base if they can't keep a decent harmony within the community on the current state of the game.

You get what I am saying here?

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Dear Daeke,

Not sure if you are still reading this far into your post but just in case: thanks for the update, but also I am curious what caused this seeming 180 degree shift on the retcon issue. I can't say I am not pleased with the matter, but that doesn't satiate my curiosity!

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Dear Daeke,

Not sure if you are still reading this far into your post but just in case: thanks for the update, but also I am curious what caused this seeming 180 degree shift on the retcon issue. I can't say I am not pleased with the matter, but that doesn't satiate my curiosity!

Coincidentally I can answer this for you, by steering you towards THIS (http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=48753) thread.

[Archived Post]

I posted previously that I'm jazzed to see the possibility of full respec... I may even start saying retcon - whatever that stands for. This was the biggest hurdle, imo, towards getting the respec system to be valuable and useful to me.

Anyway, I also mentioned that my L15 Power Armor guy can manage the first 3 skills, and I'm completely satisified that the full respec process requires an increasing cost. I'm hoping to see the numbers tweaked (actually, quite a bit I suppose) either directly by reducing the cost or flattening the increasing cost curve a bit and/or increasing opportunities in game to generate the funds required to meet the cost requirements.

Here's my current situation, and it looks like a full respec...retcon... of the character will not happen. I thought I'd go grind MOBs for a day or two to generate the funds, but I'm actually concerned that I would level up the character faster than I could generate the funds to clear the next slot in the chain.

The screenshot shows current funds for the L15 Power Armor character in question. The screen shot is edited to combine two screen shots in one, as the list of slots was too long to fit inside the respec UI.

The screenshot (http://hdimage.org/images/6xbw38w3tv9c6xwi3rp.png)

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At level 19 my character has 2 G 69 N 71 L . This is enough to do the first 4 changes out of 20. Am I supposed to have more money than this because I don't see how I can even do the last 10 changes at this rate.

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Hmm the one character I leveled up a ton in open beta had over 50G at level 23. Did they decrease quest reward money or something?

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I would like to see some DR on the tap version of Force blast. The littlel KB animation it makes you do when your hit. Closest thing to a shield breaker and its damn annoying in pvp.


PVE FTW, IF YOU WANT THIS, JUST MAKE THIS EFFECTIVE ONLY IN PVP.

Down with PVP. Long live PVE!!

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Hmm the one character I leveled up a ton in open beta had over 50G at level 23. Did they decrease quest reward money or something?


Yes, they decreased everything, even your defenses.

[Archived Post]

I encourage anyone who feels this cursed defense nerf is the wrong direction the Devs are trying to take it.

We all are paying customers, you have a voice, if you keep silent this game will continue to deteriorate into a game that is nothing like the Champions online we all envision it to be.

So please speak out and post as much as we all can to express our displeasure regarding this nerf.

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Oh, yes, thank you. I'm a complete idiot and have no idea how to play the game. Or maybe I'm a melee Might character who's defenses got so badly nerfed that henchmen are doing around 3x as much damage to me as they were last night, but I was holding out hope that they would FIX this tonight and tomorrow morning I'd be able to play again. Nope! Looks like those free 30 days will keep on ticking away until they make the game playable for me again.

Ah well. Just because I was so impressed with the open beta and head start that I was trying to convince people to buy the game, and then on launch day they completely wrecked the balance and made the character I pumped a weekend's worth of effort into completely worthless, thus making me feel like I've been completely hoodwinked and ripped off, is no reason for me to be upset. I'll just suck it up and learn to play. That's the spirit. After all, what's $50 in this economy?

QFT

words emphasized

CRYPTIC you can't do this to your player base. You can't make over all changes and not look at skills individual to make the game a success. What pumps your game is fun and word of mouth. I know it's been said before but Guild Wars is the best example to follow here with community involvement. They post every single change to every single skill. They give full explanations on what they do and why they do it. Your actions the past week or so has been simply described as CHAOTIC. Your game changes from "fun" to un fun at a whim. You need to not care if people get to 40 real fast and just concern yourself with making the game fun (yes that means being near invincible to trash mobs, since you are a SUPER HERO) and growing both content and story once the players reach 40.

I subscribed to this game because I want to play a SUPER HERO, not just a HERO. I'm not super at all when mobs kill me off at the slightest mistake. Bullets don't bounce off me they slaughter me. I have little defense and they have stronger offense. I am one they are many. If I were my SUPER HERO I would retire early and say enough of that crap I'll work for Mc Donalds. IF the current state of the game does not change soon I'm afraid you will loose potential new customers as people tell their friends don't bother with this game, the DEV's don't know what they are doing since they tend to balance at extremes and not look at individual builds or power sets.

I get your intentions with the defensive passives for example.
Invulnerable Steady % of damage reduction good for any situation.
Defiance Less effective vs. Spike damage more effective vs. steady damage becomes more effective over long battles when taking continuous damage.
PFF Good vs. Spike damage however less effective vs. steady damage becomes less effective over long battles of continuous damage on the shields.

You need to go back over the purpose of each defensive passive and keep them in line with their original intent. Otherwise the game becomes bland colorless and tasteless. Players should still feel SUPER compared to trash mobs. As of now most players don't.

One last thing.... Your skill descriptions simply do not inform the player what the skill does. Whoever is responsible for skill descriptions needs to be more precise with explanations of terminology. For example with Ego Surge, you need to be more clear with what Ego Surge means.

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I know that the retcon system gets more expensive the further you go back and that the reason has something to do with the power becoming part of you. I don't beleive this is necessarily a bad thing. I was wondering what the reasoning would be for example if i'm 20 and i want to change the 3rd power i chose, why i couldn't just change that one power instead of removing everything i had learned after that? Obviously the 3rd power would have to have been available at the time when i only had the two powers before that but this could be calculated on the fly. It would still be more expensive than changing the 6th power i chose so adding this feature would retain the sense of the power becoming part of you. It still is more expensive if you make drastic changes. If anything it promotes not making drastic changes if you only intended on changing that one power in the first place. If you have to retcon every power back to the target power you weren't happy with, you are more likely to change other powers while you have them all free in the power house and you get to play around.

Anyway... food for though. I don't know if Cryptic considered this option or not. It makes more sense that what i read about the changes. I'll just have to wait and see how it turns out. The way it stands, i rerolled once. I was 23 and now i have a 19 which plays much like my previous build. They both have PFF only on the 19 i chose it much earlier. Since the nerf i've been thinking of trying other options such as the lingering block which from what i understand is far far better than passive defenses now. However since i made the decision to take PFF as the 3rd choice (lvl 5) i beleive i am being penalized.

I read that there had been talk about allowing changes to powers that had significant changes to them. Was this going to happen or not? If it doesn't happen soon i suppose i'll have to dig around the forums and confirm if this was actually officially commented on and make a judgement call about this whole situation.

One thing is for sure is that there is definately a limit to the number of times i can stand re-rolling. I am excited about seeing higher level content and hope to get there soon. If i do not think my build is optimal i am going to start thinking about my options which before this patch tonight is rerolling. Hopefully after it will be a reasonably priced retconn.

[Archived Post]

Another titanic waste of time, the respec costs are still around 10x more than they should be. Massive number of stealth nerfs and crafting still shot to pieces. To fully respec (earning an average 1G per 10 mins) i'd need to play for 1.7 months 24/7.

Unity missions still pointless, quantum upgrade things still missing. Level 37 "low" craftables still superior to the "epic" craftables etc.

So this is the fourth time you've "fixed" the respecs. Failed, and accidentally nerfed everything else. Jebus, I feel sorry for people that are at a firing range with you guys.

I thought i'd give it a bit and see how things fair, but by the time I get back it'll be renamed to "slightly above average people online". I feel even worse for people that have to level post these changes.

[Archived Post]

Oh, yes, thank you. I'm a complete idiot and have no idea how to play the game. Or maybe I'm a melee Might character who's defenses got so badly nerfed that henchmen are doing around 3x as much damage to me as they were last night, but I was holding out hope that they would FIX this tonight and tomorrow morning I'd be able to play again. Nope! Looks like those free 30 days will keep on ticking away until they make the game playable for me again.

Ah well. Just because I was so impressed with the open beta and head start that I was trying to convince people to buy the game, and then on launch day they completely wrecked the balance and made the character I pumped a weekend's worth of effort into completely worthless, thus making me feel like I've been completely hoodwinked and ripped off, is no reason for me to be upset. I'll just suck it up and learn to play. That's the spirit. After all, what's $50 in this economy?



I'm a might tank, and i used to solo everything, even group mobs, with 2 field drones. And now, i'm not invincible. boohoo.... atleast now i'm having fun having to actually 'tank' oh, and as a TANK i'm not OWNING in pvp anymore, i'm actually getting killed here and there.... and that is actually FUN, :oD

[Archived Post]

Please try to separate your thoughts into separate sentences...reading a whole paragraph in one swoop takes effort even with my attention span. Please also elaborate how your super stats are "fubar'd".

Please try to learn to read there are clear spaces between the paragraphs. Go ..TO H E double hockey sticks.

[Archived Post]

The respec change is nice and all, but it would be even nicer to be able to select what power we want to respec, rather than having to respect the last one, and than go from there.
If I have ten powers, for example, and I want to respec power six, it would be great to simply be able to respec power six, and not have to respec power ten, nine, eight, and seven first. That really makes no sense to me, and can be quite expensive.
At least I think it still works like this, anyway... I haven't tried respecing since the update.

Also, any chance that the cape front and back will get fixed soon? We still can't have a different pattern, color or material for the front and back of our capes.
We can't have different materials for our gloves, either. Both the left and right gloves are always the same material no matter what you select...

[Archived Post]

I'm a might tank, and i used to solo everything, even group mobs, with 2 field drones. And now, i'm not invincible. boohoo.... atleast now i'm having fun having to actually 'tank' oh, and as a TANK i'm not OWNING in pvp anymore, i'm actually getting killed here and there.... and that is actually FUN, :oD

Yay, then there is those of us who aren't tanks and aren't exactly long range combat. It's not just the tanks they nerfed, they really hurt those of us who wanted to make a unique multi skill based Super Hero, now I'm going to need to subscribe to the "This is how I built my survivable build." threads and make a character based on them...

Which puts me back at square one, a MMO that pigeon holes skill sets to fit specific roles, besides the awesome character creation and flight travel options, I am starting to see the line between this comic like Super Hero MMO and typical theme park Fantasy themed MMOs every so thinning.

You do realize that they broke more than just Defense skills, they fubared healing drones as well, with active block I can't even survive because my healing drones are too busy making robo sexy shooting their green goo all over each other, because one of them got a boo boo....

I'm so glad that your pure tank build works still... Not everyone wants to play a boring tank build though... I am satisfied with the Defense nerfs if they just reversed or seriously tuned down the buffing of the mobs. I want a challenge not to feel like a butterfly getting hit by a giant fly swatter every time I "buzz" over a group of 3 mobs...

I have faith in Cryptic and those who are trash talking them over this **** me off, but those who aren't affected by this nerf in a serious way must take into account that the classless skill tree system that this game uses had offered a wide variety of combinations and the chances that your build that is facing a mediocre challenge may be the best build out there right now vs. some of us hybrid fighters.

I was enjoying my character, she was fun, and in PvP she still is... So it's PvP only until I can either solo my non instanced quests or find a group of poor fellas in the same boat as me with the same quests...

By the way, do you mind grabbing that flap over there, yea the one on the lower part of my characters back that's hanging off. My drones felt that their chrome finish was more important, and it hurts too much for me to reach over and grab it.

Thanks a lot.

[Archived Post]

I even stopped playing for today, a new mmorpg after 2 weeks and aim too frustrated to play my chars. The good part in CO was that you could solo many things, I enjoyed soloing the Public Quests.
As long as you can't solo Grond at his own lvl I don't think anything is really broken.

PS: If something needs an upgrade then its menton even after the patch I could kill him alone thinking he was Just a henchmen of the real one, make him a Cosmic enemy but not normal mobs.

[Archived Post]

Yay, then there is those of us who aren't tanks and aren't exactly long range combat. It's not just the tanks they nerfed, they really hurt those of us who wanted to make a unique multi skill based Super Hero, now I'm going to need to subscribe to the "This is how I built my survivable build." threads and make a character based on them...

Which puts me back at square one, a MMO that pigeon holes skill sets to fit specific roles, besides the awesome character creation and flight travel options, I am starting to see the line between this comic like Super Hero MMO and typical theme park Fantasy themed MMOs every so thinning.

You do realize that they broke more than just Defense skills, they fubared healing drones as well, with active block I can't even survive because my healing drones are too busy making robo sexy shooting their green goo all over each other, because one of them got a boo boo....

I'm so glad that your pure tank build works still... Not everyone wants to play a boring tank build though... I am satisfied with the Defense nerfs if they just reversed or seriously tuned down the buffing of the mobs. I want a challenge not to feel like a butterfly getting hit by a giant fly swatter every time I "buzz" over a group of 3 mobs...

I have faith in Cryptic and those who are trash talking them over this **** me off, but those who aren't affected by this nerf in a serious way must take into account that the classless skill tree system that this game uses had offered a wide variety of combinations and the chances that your build that is facing a mediocre challenge may be the best build out there right now vs. some of us hybrid fighters.

I was enjoying my character, she was fun, and in PvP she still is... So it's PvP only until I can either solo my non instanced quests or find a group of poor fellas in the same boat as me with the same quests...

By the way, do you mind grabbing that flap over there, yea the one on the lower part of my characters back that's hanging off. My drones felt that their chrome finish was more important, and it hurts too much for me to reach over and grab it.

Thanks a lot.

Well put, part of the reason this game drew my attention was the flexibility of the power system. With such a drastic nerf of so many powers in addition to the major buffs of minor henchmen (I'm all for buffing the hell out of master/super villians, I want a challenge there) the build I had been looking forward to playing since I heard about this game is really no longer any fun for me. BTW, I'm still getting my tights handed to me by the standard groups of henchmen with a villain or two but I'm not having much of a problem with the Master Villains (haven't tried to take on any of the Super Villains).

[Archived Post]

Puleeez, make it like it was before, or at least get it closer to that then it is now. I was really really enjoying myself, now its become quite depressing....

maybe make a beta server and a final server...

[Archived Post]

In my point of view it should be like that:

Henchmen: Just nice graph so that you are satisfied killing something quick and easy(henchmen shouldn't be able to take you down)
Villains: the real enemies 1-3 of them should be a fun encounter but not very challenging
Master Villains: 1 should be like 3 villains, 2 hard to beat and 3 nearly impossible alone
Super villains: one should be defeat able alone but very hard
Legendary: Boss for at least 2-3 Players
Cosmic: a whole group of Players or more

Tough enemies of course make everything harder so it should be alright like that.

maybe make a beta server and a final server...
*Thumbs up* if only..... if only my friend....

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Do people on the forums ever stop crying? I for one welcome the new challenge in the game, I personally dont want to play a game that i run through and roflstomp everything with no challenge, if you want that...go back to wow, for the people with a little strategem and tactics. Keep playing its fun for the whiners go somewhere else.

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Do people on the forums ever stop crying? I for one welcome the new challenge in the game, I personally dont want to play a game that i run through and roflstomp everything with no challenge, if you want that...go back to wow, for the people with a little strategem and tactics. Keep playing its fun for the whiners go somewhere else.

Have you ever played a superhero mmorpg like CoX???
At the end of Cox you fought alone against hordes of enemies at least 2-3 level over your own, and there were still challenges.
There can be challenges in a game where you are able to take down more than Just 2 or 3adveseris like in WoW.

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Do people on the forums ever stop crying? I for one welcome the new challenge in the game, I personally dont want to play a game that i run through and roflstomp everything with no challenge, if you want that...go back to wow, for the people with a little strategem and tactics. Keep playing its fun for the whiners go somewhere else.


This is no longer the same game we bought, it no longer features majority of the features that were announced.
Yes it was too easy, I'll admit to that, but this isn't a challenge, this is a massacre.
Either weakening passive defense -or- upping mob damage would have been fine, yes some people would still be *****ing, but majority of those of us currently *****ing, would not.
We realize that the game was too easy
We have no problem with -that- statement
What we -do- have a problem with is that they nerfed the hell out of passive defense, passive offense, various attacks -AND- upped mob damage.
All at the same time.

[Archived Post]

Do people on the forums ever stop crying? I for one welcome the new challenge in the game, I personally dont want to play a game that i run through and roflstomp everything with no challenge, if you want that...go back to wow, for the people with a little strategem and tactics. Keep playing its fun for the whiners go somewhere else.

I have played MMOs for 10 years, started in EQ1. I dealt with hard scenarios to gain experience, I have dealt with the need to use strategy. And most importantly, I dealt with it in a game where there is a lack of questing content and levels were usually done in organized groups with specific amounts of each class load balancing responsibilities.

Right now I can't play my character using any of the abilities I have used time and time again since my early years of EQ. I refuse to rebuild my character to some generic template making this just ANOTHER MMO. I don't want easy, I want playability.

Your key points in your post obviously were "roflstomp" and "go back to wow". Good points, for making yourself look like your Trolling. It's cool though, the more we get trolled the worse it will look to new prospective players who see those of us who were ruined by this patch giving legitimate reasons and those who were "roflstomping" our conversations and they will not touch this game or at least think twice.

So keep it up, your making our jobs easier. And FYI I bought WoW and played it a total of 20 hours give or take since it's launch, most was with an ex-girlfriend and her family back when I was 21. I found it to be utterly boring, the questing system really depressed me, yes it was easy but it was not in the same quality or format that the PvE has taken form of in CO.

I just want to be able to play my character, I don't want to win easily, I even felt it was too easy before, but I was more than content and satisfied with the game's open ended approach to character development. Now that has been hindered leaving this pile of regret and lack of content, my character, one I built off of my own needs and what I thought would be fun (and it was), is now ruined and I never even stepped foot on the forums for "best build" advice and never looked for over powered abilities. To be honest besides henchmen I had to actively block hits from Villians and up on my character before the patch (until I added my healing drones) then it become too easy. Now I can't get anything done with the full kitten caboodle.

But once again, keep on trolling us, keep this thread alive, we need this resolved and when it is we will then thank the devs for their hard work. No one said turn back the clock completely, some would rather have that then the trash we have now (myself included), but I don't want the past to be a permanent solution for the present.

Kapisch?

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Puleeez, make it like it was before, or at least get it closer to that then it is now. I was really really enjoying myself, now its become quite depressing....

maybe make a beta server and a final server...

Honestly it was too easy before. This is closer to where it needs to be, but they need to scale it back a bit. I was able to take on super villains 2+ levels above me, multiple master villains and villains before without even getting close to dying. Now it's just too much but it should still be challenging.

[Archived Post]

I agree, this game went from fun and addicting, I pretty much played non stop since I got into beta, to something that just makes me want to go play another game. And to all the people saying the patch didn't affect them:

You

are

lying.

_All_ defensive passives and offensive passives were nerfed to the tune of 50%

_All_ NPCs do 25% more damage.

It affected you. It may not have made you unplayable, but it did affect you, there is no way it could not have, unless you're not actually playing.

Take your WoW strategy and expectations back over there with you, and we'll get on with trying to play a game of superheroes over here. I quit WoW after 4 years cause I got tired of not accomplishing anything without a group of people. I want a game where I _can_ wade into a group of 5-6 henchmen and steamroller them.... they're henchmen, basically, they're flavor text, the guys you see flying in every direction as a panel or two prepares for the hero to confront the actual villian.

Cryptic could have fixed things by simply pumping up Villian+ level mobs, and still left us feeling pretty darn heroic when fighting the faceless masses of VIPER agents, etc. Instead, I feel like I'm one of the faceless masses.

Really, the only excuse I see for this, despite them claiming otherwise, is PvP balance. PvE balance could have been fixed without ripping the heart out of that many powers, with simple NPC tweaks.

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"Think about how stupid the average person is... now realize half of them are dumber than that."
-George Carlin

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Look, they changed the mechanism....deal with it, I like it the way it is, it makes me feel like ive accompliashed something after i do a mission, and for villians, I can actually work with other people on it, this is an mmo for crying out loud, if you want solo content, go play a single player game. I like this game, im sticking with it. This developmental base is nice because they actually try to listen to the player base, but we are also seeing why all the other games dont....endless crying about nerfs and things not be "easy" enough, and never being able to make people happy. This is a prime example of why every MMO development team ignores you.

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Look, they changed the mechanism....deal with it, I like it the way it is, it makes me feel like ive accompliashed something after i do a mission, and for villians, I can actually work with other people on it, this is an mmo for crying out loud, if you want solo content, go play a single player game. I like this game, im sticking with it. This developmental base is nice because they actually try to listen to the player base, but we are also seeing why all the other games dont....endless crying about nerfs and things not be "easy" enough, and never being able to make people happy. This is a prime example of why every MMO development team ignores you.

First of all I hope we aren't in an mmo in which the devs just ignore the Community and go on with their works jest because they get through with it and second this is a SUPERHERO MMO no Fantasy "I need my big guild to accomplish something" game, that's not easy it's just the genre. So if you want a challenge there are super villains, legendary and cosmic enemies.

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Look, they changed the mechanism....deal with it, I like it the way it is, it makes me feel like ive accompliashed something after i do a mission, and for villians, I can actually work with other people on it, this is an mmo for crying out loud, if you want solo content, go play a single player game. I like this game, im sticking with it. This developmental base is nice because they actually try to listen to the player base, but we are also seeing why all the other games dont....endless crying about nerfs and things not be "easy" enough, and never being able to make people happy. This is a prime example of why every MMO development team ignores you.

Wonderful for you, once again providing perfect logic and facts as to why we are 100% in the wrong.

I can't understand why tuning it down a few notches under what is today but above what it was prior to the patch is such a bad thing for you?

You still will have a challenge, and those of us who don't wish to respec our unique character builds into some pigeon holed setup that is cliche of other MMO classes, can have something to enjoy and actually play as well.

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Just to put in my 2 cents the retcon prices are still way to high. during beta the prices that were there were fantastic AND a major reasons a friend and I decided to play. All through beta they remained low so there was no warning that you would drastically change an integral part of playing a character. It is obvious that you want this to become a grind-fest as that is pretty much the only way to get resources. A pathetic attempt to quiet down the folks who think the costs are too high. The outrageous prices yesterday were better overall compared to the new ones today. Yesterday i saw only a few yellow numbers in the prices today i see nothing but. :mad:

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Look, they changed the mechanism....deal with it, I like it the way it is, it makes me feel like ive accompliashed something

At the end of the day, Its a game, and sorry to burst your bubble, but you haven't "accomplished" anything.

When I spend all day working I don't come home and sit in front of my computer to "WORK" more... All I want to "accomplish" is having a little fun in my down time...

So if you want to "Accomplish" something, go out and try doing something important with your life, instead of spending countless hours in front of a game trying to fool yourself into thinking you are accomplishing something, because your not fooling any of us...

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Do people on the forums ever stop crying? I for one welcome the new challenge in the game, I personally dont want to play a game that i run through and roflstomp everything with no challenge, if you want that...go back to wow, for the people with a little strategem and tactics. Keep playing its fun for the whiners go somewhere else.

stfu - Ignored

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This is no longer the same game we bought, it no longer features majority of the features that were announced.
Yes it was too easy, I'll admit to that, but this isn't a challenge, this is a massacre.
Either weakening passive defense -or- upping mob damage would have been fine, yes some people would still be *****ing, but majority of those of us currently *****ing, would not.
We realize that the game was too easy
We have no problem with -that- statement
What we -do- have a problem with is that they nerfed the hell out of passive defense, passive offense, various attacks -AND- upped mob damage.
All at the same time.

yup, Bait and Switch, more fraudulent activities.

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That Server better be down because they're raising the defenses back up and rolling back all those absurd unwarranted not to mention unnecessary nerf patch.

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At the end of the day, Its a game, and sorry to burst your bubble, but you haven't "accomplished" anything.

When I spend all day working I don't come home and sit in front of my computer to "WORK" more... All I want to "accomplish" is having a little fun in my down time...

So if you want to "Accomplish" something, go out and try doing something important with your life, instead of spending countless hours in front of a game trying to fool yourself into thinking you are accomplishing something, because your not fooling any of us...

Hah, you know nothing about me, Ive said my piece and the fact that you try to attack me personally with no knowledge on the matter is laudable, Enjoy the game for what its meant to be, a challenge. If you cant handle a little adversity... I feel sorry for you.

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Cryptic!! If anyone in your staff ever mentions nerfing or reducing player attributes, as in powers , skills, etc. you all need to take a long pause smack that idiot behind the back of the neck, and proceed to have them explain in great detail why the nerf is good, and have them prove it through the test servers, and place them on probationary suspension with no pay for a month, and if he insists that its the right move, and you go ahead with it, make his moronic arse the scapegoat and fire his/her out of the job along with whoever agreed with it to make you all put it on the live servers.

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Hah, you know nothing about me, Ive said my piece and the fact that you try to attack me personally with no knowledge on the matter is laudable, Enjoy the game for what its meant to be, a challenge. If you cant handle a little adversity... I feel sorry for you.

Where is it stated that this game will be a challenge for every level of player, veteran and newbie alike. Where does it also state how much of a challenge the game should be? Where is it stated that the Developers are satisfied with this level of a challenge and are content to the point that they don't feel the need to tweak their patch (a practice even the best developers need to do from time to time).

I would like to know where you get your developer based information from, that way I can stop beating this dead horse in hopes of having a more casual experience on top of a hardcore MMO that I am subscribed to.

Thanks in advance.

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Whats that? huh, hmm is someone talking? How's that working for ya? lol must be a lowlife troller i stuck in the ignore list.. stfu Troller

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Hah, you know nothing about me, Ive said my piece and the fact that you try to attack me personally with no knowledge on the matter is laudable, Enjoy the game for what its meant to be, a challenge. If you cant handle a little adversity... I feel sorry for you.

Sorry video games are not adversity. There is nothing challenging about pushing keys on a keyboard or controller, you are not a genius unique snowflake because you can powerlevel or game the system. Games should be fun; if the game isn't fun quitting is not only not avoiding adversity it is the only sane choice. Otherwise your just wasting precious minutes of your life not having fun in an environment where there is absolutely nothing to show for it being challenging.

You want challenging? Grow your own tomatoes without pesticides. Or compete in a triathalon. Or go visit your relatives.

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Sorry video games are not adversity. There is nothing challenging about pushing keys on a keyboard or controller, you are not a genius unique snowflake because you can powerlevel or game the system. Games should be fun; if the game isn't fun quitting is not only not avoiding adversity it is the only sane choice. Otherwise your just wasting precious minutes of your life not having fun in an environment where there is absolutely nothing to show for it being challenging.

You want challenging? Grow your own tomatoes without pesticides. Or compete in a triathalon. Or go visit your relatives.

Lmao!!........hahaha, yeah fool, grow a tomato!

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Sorry video games are not adversity. There is nothing challenging about pushing keys on a keyboard or controller, you are not a genius unique snowflake because you can powerlevel or game the system. Games should be fun; if the game isn't fun quitting is not only not avoiding adversity it is the only sane choice. Otherwise your just wasting precious minutes of your life not having fun in an environment where there is absolutely nothing to show for it being challenging.

You want challenging? Grow your own tomatoes without pesticides. Or compete in a triathalon. Or go visit your relatives.

Keep whining until you get your nerf undone im gonna go enjoy the game, enjoy your little smoke and mirrors crusade to Pnu, some people.

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Ahh hahahaha lmao, go run a triathlon! lol Nerf lover!

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Ahh hahahaha lmao, go run a triathlon! lol Nerf lover!

wow you really are like 6 years old arent you. Explains a lot

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Hah, you know nothing about me, Ive said my piece and the fact that you try to attack me personally with no knowledge on the matter is laudable, Enjoy the game for what its meant to be, a challenge. If you cant handle a little adversity... I feel sorry for you.

I think you totally missed the point FightingMongoose was making. This will help explain it.

From the dictionary:

game 1 Pronunciation (g - aim)
n.
1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime

work Pronunciation (wûrk)
n.
1. Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something.

chal·lenge Pronunciation (chlnj)
n.
1. A call to engage in a contest, fight, or competition


No one is attacking you personally, you did quite well on your own. For most people- this is a game. You are looking for a challenge. We don't want to confuse "game" and "work". We didn't pay for "work".

I have a job where I am paid to work ; I pay for entertainment and amusement, usually that is a "game".

EQ1 = "work". Except it doesn't pay.
CO post-patch = work, again it doesn't pay.

I pay to game, but expect to be paid for work.

That's the reason many folks are unhappy with that patch. It goes against the whole concept and dictionary definition of "game". Not to mention that the game was advertised as "solo-friendly", meaning folks could drop in, blow off some steam, have some fun and kill a couple hours in downtime. Those of us with serious jobs like to have light-hearted fun in games, we won't pay to work a second job. At least, that's how I feel about it, and many of my friends.

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Ahhh hahahahaha, man I love the Ignore feature!!

[Archived Post]

I think you totally missed the point FightingMongoose was making. This will help explain it.

From the dictionary:

game 1 Pronunciation (g - aim)
n.
1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime

work Pronunciation (wûrk)
n.
1. Physical or mental effort or activity directed toward the production or accomplishment of something.

chal·lenge Pronunciation (chlnj)
n.
1. A call to engage in a contest, fight, or competition


No one is attacking you personally, you did quite well on your own. For most people- this is a game. You are looking for a challenge. We don't want to confuse "game" and "work". We didn't pay for "work".

I have a job where I am paid to work ; I pay for entertainment and amusement, usually that is a "game".

EQ1 = "work". Except it doesn't pay.
CO post-patch = work, again it doesn't pay.

I pay to game, but expect to be paid for work.

That's the reason many folks are unhappy with that patch. It goes against the whole concept and dictionary definition of "game". Not to mention that the game was advertised as "solo-friendly", meaning folks could drop in, blow off some steam, have some fun and kill a couple hours in downtime. Those of us with serious jobs like to have light-hearted fun in games, we won't pay to work a second job. At least, that's how I feel about it, and many of my friends.

I support this statement.. woot

[Archived Post]

I can still mow down on-level henchman without sweating. Usually. There are some MOBs flagged as Henchman that appear to be stronger and I don't know why - but it's immediately apparent when I run into those exceptions because my first alpha strike on them doesn't fold them in half like it would on 'normal' Henchman. When I see 3 of those, I'm running now. Two is dicey - if I have a UI problem (e.g, hit a wrong key/sequence, tab to the wrong target and take too long getting my auto-attack power going again) I may be in trouble. I can still typically take down one of them plus a henchman or two or three if they're bunched together for an AoE.

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Okay guys nice update pretty much everything is good only thing i have to say is that please make the henchmen not as strong anymore, didn't you guys say almost exact quote, "They're henchmen, and your a super-hero, you will be able to take on like six of them at a time." Okay that is impossible I cant even take on 3 and one villain without getting mauled and utterly destroyed, and I almost died with five on me, which should have not been any problem at all. And also respec is great only thing is they are still a little too pricey, would be great if the cost were lowered!!! And BTW I liked feeling like a true super-hero that could take on many, many enemies at a time thats why I loved champions, but anyways other than those changes and stuff this patch helped and was pretty nice!!!

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I haven't read this whole thread - so if this was answered earlier sorry. I am confused as to the whole "lowered retcon cost" part of the patch notes. The first power I can remove is 70s, the next one is 1g - go 3 or 4 in and its 15g. This is absurd, at this point in the game I have 3 g total.

With the changes to the abilities, my toon is less playable and I need to get a different combination of abilities. But with these prices, its impossible.

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Daeke - I'm not sure if this has already been suggested/thought of, but when you're feeding back our concerns on the respec costs to the devs could you maybe ask them to double check that the cash flow on their internal test server(s) is equivalent to the cash flow we've been experiencing on the live server? This may seem an odd request, so I'll elaborate:

I played/tested in the last 2-3 weeks of closed beta, and the couple weeks of open beta, and for almost all of that time the cash flow, both from kills/quests and from selling loot, was *much* higher than it was after the xp balancing that came in right at the end. Such that the character I levelled to 26 in beta had something like 150G accumulated (including money spent on crafting) whereas the character I've levelled to 26 during live/retail has a bit over 14G accumulated. Quite a difference.

Now, the respec costs in the context of a level 26 with 14G to his name are ridiculously high. It's blindingly obvious to anyone playing that it's outright impossible (barring gifts from higher levels) to afford to respec back more than a handful of choices. Not "oh, that's a bit expensive, I don't want to spend that much", but "There's no way I could ever make that much cash short of levelling to 40 first then farming for 6 months". This level 26 can afford to respec back to his last power choice. To go back to say, his 3rd or 4th last power choice would require 5-10 times his total wealth (and generating that would also generate xp, levelling him, and pushing the cost up further before he could afford it). You've seen this argument many times in the last couple of days.

However, in the context of a level 26 with 150G, these costs start to look a bit more reasonable. I could easily afford to respec back to my last power choice fairly often - letting me test powers in the field to get a real feel for whether I want to stick with them (the power house is ok as far as it goes, but it's not a true reflection of actual combat). And I'd be able to afford the aforementioned 3rd or 4th last power choices - it'd use up a sizeable chunk (probably the majority) of my funds, making it a tough decision to make, but it'd at least be possible where currently it's not.


Given how ridiculous the current costs seem with the current income rates, coupled with the devs apparent resistance to cutting them by the necessary amounts, it leaves me wondering if they are working with the same income rates we are or if perhaps they still have beta values for resources dropped, loot sell prices, etc. This may seem unlikely, but there is precedent for this kind of thing - during Cryptic's tenure at City of Heroes there was one occasion where they made some bafflingly harsh nerfs and then seemed surprised at player reaction to it. After discussion with the community they came to the realisation that their internal test server did not include code present on the live server which affected how powerful enemies became when their level raised relative to the players; a character on their test server could comfortably defeat 8 man spawns of enemies 10 levels above them, whereas the exact same character trying accomplish the same feat on live would be quickly annihilated.

If something like this has happened again it would go a *long* way towards explaining why the devs idea of high-but-reasonable respec costs is so out of sync with the player's expectation (way beyond what could be explained by players just wanting things to be easy for them).

[Archived Post]

If this game keeps changing, I would like to know if I can get my money back spent on the six months offer. I may decide not to stay.

[Archived Post]

If this game keeps changing, I would like to know if I can get my money back spent on the six months offer. I may decide not to stay.

If you call them, they will refund 6 month and lifetime subscriptions, I don't know the number though.

[Archived Post]

No one's posting in here already, is every one alright with the game at this moment and the changes of this patch ?????

[Archived Post]

No one's posting in here already, is every one alright with the game at this moment and the changes of this patch ?????

Hardly. :mad:

[Archived Post]

Regen has been fixed...thank you Cryptic :)

[Archived Post]

Regen has been fixed...thank you Cryptic :)

Really, is there a new patch, was that sarcasm, could it be your a pvp only player or just want to get wiped by one villain 3 times in a row like me with my current rpg build.

In a game like this every single power set build should have enough survivability to finish of one villain and 2 henchmen alone.
And that's NOT the case now, right now the game is broken, because only certain builds are powerful.


Hardly. :mad:

Right you are brother.

[Archived Post]

Even in the tutorial, experience has been lessened. I used to be able to finish the tutorial at level 6, after doing all available missions. It was crucial to start the Crysis at level 6 before the @#$% patch. I honestly don't know how the players get through the Crysis now without grouping, unless I'm not aware of the uber power set some keep mentioning.

I've been with CO since March, and this is a sad day, not just for me, but I think about all the new players who are struggling with this new game. It has been a horrendous experience for them starting a new game. What must they think. I invited guild friends to join and now I hear the fallout.

[Archived Post]

Even in the tutorial, experience has been lessened. I used to be able to finish the tutorial at level 6, after doing all available missions. It was crucial to start the Crysis at level 6 before the @#$% patch.

It's always been intended to finish the crisis just above level 5.

[Archived Post]

I ran thru the tutorial, and did ALL of the missions last night. That ususally makes me level 5 by the time I enter the HQ. Last night I was only 4, and then 5 entering the Crysis. So you can see how much the experience was nerfed across the board. About 20%. There aren't enough missions in the Crysis, so after a couple levels it gets damn hard.

[Archived Post]

I ran thru the tutorial, and did ALL of the missions last night. That ususally makes me level 5 by the time I enter the HQ. Last night I was only 4, and then 5 entering the Crysis. So you can see how much the experience was nerfed across the board. About 20%. There aren't enough missions in the Crysis, so after a couple levels it gets damn hard.

In my experience that has a lot more to do with how you do in the open mission more than any thing else. If I join the mission at the start I can expect to be lvl6 by the end of the tutorial, if not I tend to be some way into lvl5.

[Archived Post]

I wouldn't mind a drop in XP rate if it didn't also come with a package deal of nerfing the players' abilities and survivability.

See, if I still felt "super" while fighting, and it took me twice as many bad guys to get a level, at least I'd still be having combat satisfaction getting there.

But to lower XP rate AND make players jog back to mission sites from respawn points every 5 minutes? Nope, that's what I call an unbalanced game dynamic.

[Archived Post]

An XP nerf around the end of open beta resulted in exiting the tutorial instance at level 4, unless you went a bit out of your way to kill random MOBs during the Tutorial (and if you missed the semi-hidden quests in the tutorial, you may have ended up at level 3.

That lasted a day or two and afaik, it seemed like it was re-adjusted again at the start of the head start weekend - where the 3 characters I created during head start weekend all came out of the Tutorial at either level 5 or level 6. It's *slightly* less than what it was before the earlier XP nerf as far as the tutorial. But I'm completely ok with exiting the tutorial at level 5. Level 6 is ok too, but doesn't feel ike it would be completely necessary in order to start the next phase. I was able to slot the level 5 end tutorial rewards when I was taking the helicopter to the desert or Canada and that's all I wanted to be able to do.

[Archived Post]

I think the XP rate is alright Cryptic wants to lengthen the game for financial purpose which is understandable, but lengthen the game is one thing making it into a never ending torment for a not power gamed multi power set build is just sadistic.

Ok iam overreacting a bit, but i really hope this patch is something like a test and they see that the major part of the community dislikes it. I play with 5 friends CO and iam the only one posting here because they are just not accustomed to forums in general. What I want to say is that this 180+ thread and the other one in general discussion 1700+ posts are just the tip of the iceberg.

[Archived Post]

This last patch lowered experience even in the tutorial. I have found all the hidden missions. I can see it necessary to not only do the open mission now, but the full open mission, avoiding joining during last part.

The reason I want to start the Canada Crysis at level 6 is because some of those missions are so hard, and even harder now. I avoid Desert Crysis because the end radiation vault mission is too hard.

I see so many different opinions in forum posts now, about the last patch. I don't feel like a hero now, so I'm wondering why players are preferring this experience etc. nerf. I'm NOT having fun anymore.