New efforts!

[Arcana]

Generally I enjoyed fighting the Nictus spawns, I'd see a cyst and be "OOOOH, lots of things to kill!".  Honestly teams that were bigoted against khelds like that were generally scrubs or noobs, unwilling to learn how to deal with much in the game and generally crying cheap at everything and also being intolerant of other playstyles.

To be fair, there were in fact a lot of casual players of the game that really couldn't deal with cysts, particularly at low levels.  They were a big jump in team difficulty, comparable to trying to level by farming the Vahz.  Strong players could do it with strong characters, even strong players would have difficulty with weak characters, and weak players with anything would be swimming upstream ahead of Niagara Falls.  It was one of the few things the devs refused to tone down even when they toned down difficulty in general.

An analogous problem happened when they released Praetoria.  A lot of veteran players either didn't notice or more likely didn't want to admit they noticed, but Praetoria was actually something like 50-60% more dangerous 1-20, because the low level content was designed by mistake with high level critter design rules.

I still think it was sad to kick a player just for playing a Kheldian or any other archetype, but its the one instance of that where I think its entirely possible that casual teams could be team-wiped for having one unless the players were strong enough to handle them.

[Arcana]

Since it's I23, I don't plan to.  I wouldn't have minded trying pvp 1.0 with a pvp character, but not pvp 2.0.  But only in arena's with friends.  I hated the attitude of zone pvp.

You probably mean PvP 2.0 rather than PvP 3.0, not 1.0 rather than 2.0.  PvP 1.0 when the arenas were first released was nothing short of stupid, although often in humorous ways.  For example, in PvP 1.0 a maximally slotted Regen was literally impossible to kill with pure damage.  There wasn't enough offense in the game to do it.  In fact, it would be difficult to kill one with two suboptimal characters banging away while it just stood there.  The only real way to do it was with the paper to its rock: you could perma-hold.  Once you perma-hold, you take away the ability to recon and then it would be possible to kill the Regen, assuming your controller could perma hold *and* deal enough damage.  If you were a tank, blaster, or defender, you were likely only effective against other tanks, blasters, and defenders.

When it came to teamed PvP, in PvP 1.0 it was all about who had the nastiest bag of tricks: repel, hurricane, confuse, teleport, etc.  In PvP 2.0, it was about which team could coordinate the best spikes and multipliers.  PvP 3.0 was kind of PvP 2.0 slowed down, but it was enough of a cognitive dissonance for the hard core PvPers that it was less that the changed PvP was bad, and more that it was incompatible with the way PvP was played by the people playing it the most.  If PvP 3.0 was the version that was first released back in Issue 3, 99% of the complaints about it would not have existed in context (and it would have been a lot more playable).

Having said that, I do think it was a mistake to change it that dramatically.  The PvP community was not a very large one to begin with, and you don't do that to fragile subcommunities in general without a really good reason, and the changes did not have a compelling enough reason.  The idea was to open up PvP to a larger player population, but there were better ways of doing that than massively disrupting the few PvPers you had in the first place.  The suggestion I made to the devs was to take all the PvP 3.0 changes and implement them as switches in the arena, so players could voluntarily use them.  Then datamine which ones actual players actually wanted to use.  After a year or two, you'd have a much better idea of what might work in zone PvP.  All the players who said "I would PvP if only it had [blank]" could then vote with their participation, rather than hypothetically.  Its obvious in retrospect that a lot of players who said "I would PvP if" either lied or were mistaken about their own desires.  But a datamined arena would have a far better chance of proving what settings would attract more players, by virtue of literally attracting more players.

[AmberOfDzu]

1: Expected easy mode in everything without any buffs/debuffs/crowd control.

2: Expected defenders/controllers/corruptors to do nothing but healing.

3: Hated Peacebringers/warshades cause they didn't want to deal with cysts.

4: Had an excessive fear of knockback, even more-so with one of the above traits.

5: Only cared about experience per second, ESPECIALLY with one of the top two traits.

More fond memories. <3

1. One of the most fun parts of CoH was how well a team could synergize without a hardwired trinity. It didn't take much cooperation to create an easy mode, so it was indeed sad when people didn't do so.

2. I remember a team in Praetoria I joined. They were having some difficulty (fighting resistance mobs, prolly in the sewers). I joined with my arch/kin corrupter, and using both sets actively, the synergy just clicked in for us all. I saw something like this happen pretty often, with other characters and builds. But most of the time you couldn't just say "We need a healer." -- the missing element might be dps, or buffs, or control, or something. Defenders/Controllers/Corrupters were flexible and could usually add something good to any random group.

3. I loved running into Cysts. The PB/WS would usually need ot hide or drop back or something, and the rest of us had something interesting to fight. It made an emergency the rest of us could rise to.

4. I was on a few teams like this, and had to leave them now and again. I used KB, often. It could be done and it could be good. I recall using wormhole to pack enemies on top of each other or into a corner. One could use footstomp on the edge of a group to pile them together, and so on. I recall there was even a Knockback themed superteam that ran now and then on Virtue.

5. Fun per second > experience per second.

[Sinistar]

Cysts were easy to handle, anyone that griped was either lazy or didn't know what they were doing.

[Ironwolf]

Cool, but Iron Wolf, do you mind updating the first post at least once a week.
Make us feel that progress is happening, wheels are turning, back-room deals are being made, animal sacrifaces are being made--well, ok not that last one.

Just I weekly update that says something like, weekly update, the game is not on-line, yet.
That would be very helpful.
Thanks!

A Non-Disclosure Agreement means they can't talk about the deal. I don't know if you are aware but back when the Mask Comes Off thread first was out - it was because someone forced the hand of the team and NCSoft very nearly walked away.

I don't know anything and I am not asking. This is the best chance we have of getting the game back. I do not want to be the one who caused the deal to go south and have to think of that every day. I am reasonably good at reading between the lines - but there is a reason Wacabbit and Downix are not posting now. It is not because they gave up - it is because they are being very careful.

[Sinistar]

Amen, Ironwolf.

We all want the game back, but we all just need to sit back and wait. It's been a long two years, here's hoping it won't be three years :)

[pinballdave]

A Non-Disclosure Agreement means they can't talk about the deal. I don't know if you are aware but back when the Mask Comes Off thread first was out - it was because someone forced the hand of the team and NCSoft very nearly walked away.

I don't know anything and I am not asking. This is the best chance we have of getting the game back. I do not want to be the one who caused the deal to go south and have to think of that every day. I am reasonably good at reading between the lines - but there is a reason Wacabbit and Downix are not posting now. It is not because they gave up - it is because they are being very careful.

Just remember - if negotiations fail, the negotiators would tell us. I am sure they are just detailing and firming up the fine points to the agreement.

[MM3squints]

When it came to teamed PvP, in PvP 1.0 it was all about who had the nastiest bag of tricks: repel, hurricane, confuse, teleport, etc.  In PvP 2.0, it was about which team could coordinate the best spikes and multipliers.  PvP 3.0 was kind of PvP 2.0 slowed down, but it was enough of a cognitive dissonance for the hard core PvPers that it was less that the changed PvP was bad, and more that it was incompatible with the way PvP was played by the people playing it the most.  If PvP 3.0 was the version that was first released back in Issue 3, 99% of the complaints about it would not have existed in context (and it would have been a lot more playable).

I wouldn't know about that if people 99.9% of the complaints would not have mitigated, but then again, but they nuked the entire structure in i3 and people got used to that structure post i13, there is a possibility that people would have "gone with it." Maybe people would have, but after tasting 2.0 pvp then given 3.0, people much ratter prefer 2.0 because it is so much more dynamic. (Like Coke saying here is New Coke, public said this crap sucks because they prefer Coke "Classic")

The problem with pvp 3.0 and 2.0 is not that it "just slows down PvP," it completely changes it how fundamentally PvP was played.  It isn't just about syncing a spike (if it was that easy, the pvp would have been boring) but there was multiple other factors that determines who will win the match

In General:

Mezes: This was the biggest problem and even after they added the arena options, they did not revert this. Old system was you stack holds in order to mez your target. 3.0 is you can throw anything and even if it's for a mini stun, you will mez. This basically made any for a mez protection worthless (CM, Clarity, ID) and detoggled any offensive aura instantly making many PvP builds pretty much gimp.

Movement Speed: This is what made CoX PvP. No other MMO then and even now (including with DCUO and CO) has the trill of PvPing with the type of movement system created by CoX. That why it was really puzzling for the PvP community when Castle decided to "make it better" They essentially took the one thing that made CoX PvP being unique and basically turned CoX PvP into another generic PvP MMO where everyone will eventually run at the same speed.

Also for some reason they made the effects that are actually supposed to –speed nonexistent. So if you attack someone with lingering radiation, shiver, etc, that target will walk around like nothing happened making that form of disruption useless

Diminishing Return: Personally I didn't have any problem with DR (keep in mind I like playing doms a lot where getting perma dom with DR was tricky) and I saw it like ED, where it just makes people rethink how they are going
to make builds for maximum effect. Of course there are people who hated DR

Heal Decay: This one was remedied from the options in arena, but that was after the fact the PvP community dissolved. Not only do you make one of the functions of emp useless with the mez system, who not make them entirely irrelevant by shutting down one of their jobs. In a sense the idea of heal decay is as dumb if they implemented damage decay.

How Roles Got Affected

DPS – as the name states. Normally 2-3 out of 8
Fire/EM. Ice/EM

Role in 2.0
Like the job says DPS, you time the spike and kill, when you are being targeted, you use your counter-measures to survive.

Role in 3.0
Basically the same except now movement speed is gone (basicly the other team just can throw a random attack the stop the movement speed and you just hop around), you can get mezed regardless

Healer – as the name states. Always 2 on out of 8

Emp/It really doesn't Matter, Illi/Emp

Role in 2.0
In general Emps were defenders because they had a higher values, but some teams ran Illi/Emp because they can deploy phantasm (who can deploy a decoy) and decoys) This causes the other team to cycle though more targets before locking on the spike target. In general emp role is to keep the buffs up (keep blasters forted, keep Kin AB, have 2-4 stacks of CM on everyone, coordinate the team to gather for RA in a way the other team won't see and mass tier 9 wipe your team.) and secondary to heal when someone is getting spiked

Role in 3.0
With how the mez proc worked and Heal decay, emps were only good for fort and AB. (If you're an illi/ troller then decoys) Playing an emp no longer had any pressure and relatively was not fun at all. (Not point in gathering for RA, you group up 1 aoe hit and everyone hops around)

Auxiliaries – the most fun job in PvP. Normally 3-4 out of 8

Sonic/Sonic, Kin/Sonic, Kin/Psi, Ice/kin Illi/kin, Rad/Psi, Rad/Sonic, Storm/Psi, Storm/Sonic, Ice/Storm, Illi/Storm and much more

What I believe makes or breaks a 8 man team and the most fun of the whole team function. Normally for auxiliaries teams ran 2 sonics, 1 kin, but depending on the what tactics the team wants to use, the team supplements for others listed above.

Sonics role in 2.0
The swiss army knife of all of the roles. Primarily Sonics job is the keep all buffs (both shields) active on everyone while assisting the emps with mez protection (clarity). Secondary role is to line up the sonic debuff up for a spike. Third role is the most fun because as a sonic it gives you the ability to change the pattern of a match. This role you use the sonic cage you can either use offensively or defensively. Offensively you cage an emps. This will give the other team a heads up someone is about to get spiked, but if the spike is clean, they won't be able to get their counter measures off in time. Defensively when you know when the other team is about to spike (normally people will pop BU+AIM) you cage the DPS foiling a clean kill. To be a bigger disruption, go APP Psychic and apply TK to the enemy's kin (the only one in the crowd that won't have ID so will be affected by repel)

Sonics role in 3.0
Since mez protection is different, clarity is not needed. Shields are still useful. Debuff is the same. Cage was made differently and not as effective.  Again you will just be hopping around with the new mez and movement system

Rads role in 2.0
Normally rads will be defenders because of the unrested debuff, +psi or sonic attack,but occasionally you will see troller Rads. Rads role is similar to sonics where they are the primary debuffer with EF. People still used Rad because the debuff requires no accuracy and for the AM. However, with the versatility of sonics, Rad was less used.

Rads in 3.0
Completely useless. Any mez will detoggle them. Gather for AM, like what happens with RA not worth it

Kin in 2.0
The hardest and most underappreciated job in PvP. Everyone wants SB and ID, but it sucks when you can't have them yourselves. Kin can be used as a supplement DPS with /Psi or /Sonic, but they are better suited as an anti-kin. Anti-Kins are normally ice/kin where your job is not just to give our SB/ID, but prevent the other kin from doing the same. You accomplish this by slowing them harassing them, and try to mess up their rotation. Compound that with others like a Defender with APP Psychic TKing them, the other team will start falling apart due to not having SB/ID. (No SB, Emps/Sonics can't go full buff mode due lack of end. No buffs the team is vulnerable. )

Kins in 3.0
Pretty much useless. From the movement change and the mez change, kins have no place

For the TL:DR pre i13 pvp was all about team work and keeping up the buffs. If your team maintained the buffs you win (makes sense like in War the side that is most supplied will eventually win) Post i13 pvp buffs really didn't matter. There was no need for a team and it turned into whoever can DPS first and most wins.

[Ankhammon]

Just remember - if negotiations fail, the negotiators would tell us. I am sure they are just detailing and firming up the fine points to the agreement.

And finishing up I25 :D

[Paragon Avenger]

A Non-Disclosure Agreement means they can't talk about the deal. I don't know if you are aware but back when the Mask Comes Off thread first was out - it was because someone forced the hand of the team and NCSoft very nearly walked away.

I don't know anything and I am not asking. This is the best chance we have of getting the game back. I do not want to be the one who caused the deal to go south and have to think of that every day. I am reasonably good at reading between the lines - but there is a reason Wacabbit and Downix are not posting now. It is not because they gave up - it is because they are being very careful.

Well, ok.
Just as long as somebody tells us when the game is back on-line.
Thanks!

[Ohioknight]

I don't know if you are aware but back when the Mask Comes Off thread first was out - it was because someone forced the hand of the team and NCSoft very nearly walked away.

How would anybody be aware of that? 

It's certainly the first I've heard of it!  And I don't think that's because I've not been paying close enough attention!  :o

[Aggelakis]

How would anybody be aware of that? 

It's certainly the first I've heard of it!  And I don't think that's because I've not been paying close enough attention!  :o

If you didn't hear about it, you had your head in the sand or you weren't paying attention for several days leading up to Nate's reveal post. :)

Let's not dredge that ill feeling back up. What's past is past.

[Ohioknight]

If you didn't hear about it, you had your head in the sand or you weren't paying attention for several days leading up to Nate's reveal post. :)

Let's not dredge that ill feeling back up. What's past is past.

Well I was on vacation at the beach that week and only intermittently hitting the board... and there was a bunch of junk I skimmed... followed by the gigantic mass dump of posts with the announcements...

So my apologies, apparently I WASN'T paying enough attention

Oh yeah, AND my Father died two days later...

Edited: Oh yeah, I get what you're referring to... Iron Wolf's points about that were not clear to me - either at that time or later...  but I'll take your note as an ask to drop it and not go into it further.

[Tubbius]

Will wait eagerly and hopefully.  :)

[ivanhedgehog]

Generally I enjoyed fighting the Nictus spawns, I'd see a cyst and be "OOOOH, lots of things to kill!".  Honestly teams that were bigoted against khelds like that were generally scrubs or noobs, unwilling to learn how to deal with much in the game and generally crying cheap at everything and also being intolerant of other playstyles.  Usually if a team either;

1: Expected easy mode in everything without any buffs/debuffs/crowd control.

2: Expected defenders/controllers/corruptors to do nothing but healing.

3: Hated Peacebringers/warshades cause they didn't want to deal with cysts.

4: Had an excessive fear of knockback, even more-so with one of the above traits.

5: Only cared about experience per second, ESPECIALLY with one of the top two traits.

Then you had scrubs in the team.  They were unwilling to learn how to deal with anything and were intolerant of anything they couldn't beat at the same time.  They may have claimed to be experts but in reality, their unwillingness to learn the game was usually apparent.  I avoided such teams, I could only remember lots of debt with such players.  Which wasn't particularly fun for me.  Sure, if I die to making a stupid mistake, fine, but dying because teammates of mine were very bad and simultaneously unwilling to learn and expecting others to play exactly like them?  It sucked.

funny thing...khelds had defenses against cycsts.....but many wouldnt  go engage them.. we ran with khelds often and got real good at killing the mobs with the special weapons. my biggest problem was noob pb's that would not use kb properly..with any thought whatsoever. blowing enemies into the next group etc. like the storm that insisted on standing next to the stone tank with hurricane going. in cimmerora. i just let him grab a lot of agro and not taunt..that got rid of hurricane.

[Joshex]

To be fair, there were in fact a lot of casual players of the game that really couldn't deal with cysts, particularly at low levels.  They were a big jump in team difficulty, comparable to trying to level by farming the Vahz.  Strong players could do it with strong characters, even strong players would have difficulty with weak characters, and weak players with anything would be swimming upstream ahead of Niagara Falls.  It was one of the few things the devs refused to tone down even when they toned down difficulty in general.

An analogous problem happened when they released Praetoria.  A lot of veteran players either didn't notice or more likely didn't want to admit they noticed, but Praetoria was actually something like 50-60% more dangerous 1-20, because the low level content was designed by mistake with high level critter design rules.

I still think it was sad to kick a player just for playing a Kheldian or any other archetype, but its the one instance of that where I think its entirely possible that casual teams could be team-wiped for having one unless the players were strong enough to handle them.

the first time I made a praetorian I also ran into that problem, characters that should have been able to hold their own had trouble and the XP was poor. To be truthful it felt like a jail after lv 16 and I started trying to find some way to get around the anti-power-level components of it, I managed to a get a friend who had the valentines pocket D mission got a toga and some other stuff and learned that if I dropped team and got in a killing hit on one of the baddies I'd get loads of XP it was hard though cause I had a narrow time window to do it. walking out of praetoria was like walking out of jail.. none of my friends were in praetoria, there was hardly any content, leveling was tough, there was no AE, half the time it was a ghost town, everything was labelled differently so it was hard to find the difficulty changing person, missions were terrible solo mix with the above mention of a ghost town, and at that time higher level players couldn't exit studio 55. so I ended up just grinding on the streets till I came up with a bad case of the "Someone Please, anyone get me out of here! it's so bland and uninteresting!"

[Battlechimp]

See I didn't run into that problem... the leveling part of Preatoria, not the "I'm stuck in jail feeling". :-)   I always had the problem of figuring out how not to out level all the arcs, especially the moral choice missions.  I did like how the powerlevel of the mobs were higher and things more difficult.  It was a nice change f pace from the other low level content.  My first character through there when it came out was a DP/NRG blaster and I only died a couple times before I left to go blue side.  If you were able to adjust how you played it wasn't that hard.

I always found it funny to run into those players who'd say how badass they were and then suddenly freak out when the team leader picked a mission that wasn't Freakshow, Council or Family, going "I don't want to fight them, they're too hard!" 

I still hold that the really good players are the ones who you can give them a random group of people and builds and they can make it work, compared to the guys who can only take on specific enemies with a very specific team make up

[Joshex]

See I didn't run into that problem... the leveling part of Preatoria, not the "I'm stuck in jail feeling". :-)   I always had the problem of figuring out how not to out level all the arcs, especially the moral choice missions.  I did like how the powerlevel of the mobs were higher and things more difficult.  It was a nice change f pace from the other low level content.  My first character through there when it came out was a DP/NRG blaster and I only died a couple times before I left to go blue side.  If you were able to adjust how you played it wasn't that hard.

I always found it funny to run into those players who'd say how badass they were and then suddenly freak out when the team leader picked a mission that wasn't Freakshow, Council or Family, going "I don't want to fight them, they're too hard!" 

I still hold that the really good players are the ones who you can give them a random group of people and builds and they can make it work, compared to the guys who can only take on specific enemies with a very specific team make up

I suppose it would help to have people to play with lol, protector server had maybe 16 people in praetoria on a good saturday right after a content release, where as with the rest of the time there was like 8 to 10 people and if you weren't on /THE/ team, well.. it meant a 2 person team with an extreme lowbie or going solo. It got to the point where those on the team felt bad for those not on the team and didn't know what to say to them so they just stopped replying.. I mean yeah I wanted to experience the content but, there were never enough people to tackle a mission and playing newbie missions just leveled you past your own content in the end I just wanted out.

[Ankhammon]

Having said that, I do think it was a mistake to change it that dramatically.  The PvP community was not a very large one to begin with, and you don't do that to fragile subcommunities in general without a really good reason, and the changes did not have a compelling enough reason.  The idea was to open up PvP to a larger player population, but there were better ways of doing that than massively disrupting the few PvPers you had in the first place.  The suggestion I made to the devs was to take all the PvP 3.0 changes and implement them as switches in the arena, so players could voluntarily use them.  Then datamine which ones actual players actually wanted to use.  After a year or two, you'd have a much better idea of what might work in zone PvP.  All the players who said "I would PvP if only it had [blank]" could then vote with their participation, rather than hypothetically.  Its obvious in retrospect that a lot of players who said "I would PvP if" either lied or were mistaken about their own desires.  But a datamined arena would have a far better chance of proving what settings would attract more players, by virtue of literally attracting more players.

Was PVP 3.0 release (unleashed?) during the Cryptic reign? I don't actually remember.
I do remember that Cryptic had a much more pointed view of making changes to the game than Paragon.

As far as pvp 3.0 was concerned, even I thought it was too much and I am/was a defenderphile. When someone with an AR blaster can unleash everything he's got on me (I was on a Sonic/Sonic) and 30 seconds later I'm still at 90% health then something isn't right.

[Ankhammon]

See I didn't run into that problem... the leveling part of Preatoria, not the "I'm stuck in jail feeling". :-)   I always had the problem of figuring out how not to out level all the arcs, especially the moral choice missions.  I did like how the powerlevel of the mobs were higher and things more difficult.  It was a nice change f pace from the other low level content.  My first character through there when it came out was a DP/NRG blaster and I only died a couple times before I left to go blue side.  If you were able to adjust how you played it wasn't that hard.

I always found it funny to run into those players who'd say how badass they were and then suddenly freak out when the team leader picked a mission that wasn't Freakshow, Council or Family, going "I don't want to fight them, they're too hard!" 

I still hold that the really good players are the ones who you can give them a random group of people and builds and they can make it work, compared to the guys who can only take on specific enemies with a very specific team make up

I am pretty much in agreement with you Battlechimp.

To me, the difficulty added to the pseudo sci-fi Utopia gone wrong approach to creating Praetoria in the first place. It was a struggle to get out from under the oppressive regime (or to maintain control against battle hardened resistance fighters but I never tried that side).
It was impressive to me how different it felt from the rest of the game. It's something I really want to experience again when/if...

The only thing I didn't like was the lack of player base in the 1-20. I spent most of my time basically playing in a solo zone while going through it. If it wasn't for the chat system it would have seemed like a solo game to me.
Maybe that was mostly because I played on Infinity and most of the regulars there were all Incarnate minded.

Now I think I need to Icon into Praetoria and get all misty-eyed. :)