And the mask comes off.

[Teikiatsu]

Im still flabbergasted that with the IO system wherein you can easily shore up weaknesses and become extremely overpowered AND the Incarnate abililties..

people are still talking about ED like it just happened.. just mindblowing to me..

It's more of the way it was presented and promoted that still brings this topic up.

We all know ED was a while back and we moved on.  Emmert's migration helped.

[Rejolt]

Anyway... It's my opinion that post Invention System the game's enhancement system was pretty close to ideal in how it worked, although if i was doing a remake i'd probably make TOs, DOs and SOs function more like IOs and just make it so they never get completely outleveled. No matter how far above the enhancement's level a character is it still provides the minimum boost instead of zeroing out.

I can see that. You could change it so no enhancement works worse than -3 levels.

[LaughingAlex]

It's more of the way it was presented and promoted that still brings this topic up.

We all know ED was a while back and we moved on.  Emmert's migration helped.

A lot of people couldn't ever accept the change and adapt.  It's a trait I frown on actually, because times and things change quite a bit.  I run into people like that in CO at times, or used to, and it was always the same story, they'd go on how badass invincible they were, how much everything was useless to them but healing and the damage buff from fulcrum shift ect.  Then they admit to never ever playing the game with IO's effectively, so I end up drawing the conclusion that they never adapted.  They broke.  And it seems some people still can't seem to go on about it.

I won't be surprised if some people demand ED removed should we get the game back, and I won't be surprised if those people don't at all think about the consequences of such an action in a post IO post incarnate game world.  Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if some suggest such a change without ever even touching the IO system or even seeing ionic judgement in action.

What really amazes me is, as people said, how popular the game was following ED and Emmerts moving on.  In fact, Emmert was and has shown more support for CoX than he has CO, after his departure.  It was his first mmorpg and possibly his most successful.  At least until STO came around but thats debatable I suppose.  Not sure if he was directly involved in STO's development like he was with CO.

In fact alot of people told me, CoX benefited from ED more than actually hurt from it, because things like IOs wouldn't have been doable without ED, the options began to actually matter.  ED to me in many ways, it's like the Skyrim Redone mod for Skyrim, you have had some nerfs(big ones) but you also had so many new styles of play being supported, ultimately in the end.

And lets think about when ED happened, year 2 effectively yes?  And the game lasted for 8 and throughout those 6 it had far, far more players than CO ever had, ever.  Think about that.

[Kaos Arcanna]

I tended to only use the IOs that dropped or got some generics off the AH.

Why?

Because I had a limited number of free hours in the day and I didn't want to spend those hours figuring out builds in Mids or searching for just the right IO in Wentworth's. I'm not saying that's a bad thing-- I understand that different people get their entertainment in different ways-- but for me that sort of thing was not how I wanted to spend my time.

[adarict]

The only part of ED I understood the griping about, was how it was communicated. I started just before Issue 3. When ED hit, neither myself nor my wife really felt any effect. To me, even when it first happened, it seemed that the only people seriously impacted, were min/max players. With the exception of during my first month, all of my characters were already using ED slotting. When ED happened, it had no perceptible impact on me or my playing. For people who were slotting everything for damage, I'm sure it was a shock to lose so much power, but I personally don't see how much fun it could have been before. Most of the game must have been like playing on easy mode. I can see how that would be fun once I  a while, but to me, it would just get monotonous.

To each their own I guess. One of the best things to come out of ED, was the hilarity of the forums. It kept me endlessly entertained. 😊the fact that it still engenders such strong feelings in people this long after it all happened, shows how invested people were in the game.

[Jorge Firebomb]

Well after ED, some people claimed they no longer felt like superheroes. I personally don't think the overall power of the characters was changed that much, just that they were powerful in slightly different ways.

To those that say that other people being immensely overpowered didn't affect other people's gameplay, that really wasn't true. The min/maxers would often refuse to group with people that didn't also min/max, or just refuse to group in general because they didn't need the help. With a limited number of spawns in the world, that often meant that if you weren't one of the min/max farmers, there wasn't anything to fight outside of missions. I personally enjoy missions a lot more than farming random villains in a zone, but variety of options is good.

The advent of the Architect missions moved all of the zone farmers into the specifically designed farm missions in Architect, so that you could actually fight outdoor enemies even if there were no ED, because all the min/maxers would be in the min/maxed Architect farming missions instead. I'd hate to see ED undone, though, because the IO sets really add a lot of neat options to the game, and without ED there probably would be little incentive to use most of the sets (I admit to possibly being wrong about this, some of those sets have fantastic bonuses).

Just off the top of my head, can you imagine how ridiculous Willpower would be as a tanker primary without ED and with regular IOs available?

[JennSpace]

The only part of ED I understood the griping about, was how it was communicated. I started just before Issue 3. When ED hit, neither myself nor my wife really felt any effect. To me, even when it first happened, it seemed that the only people seriously impacted, were min/max players. With the exception of during my first month, all of my characters were already using ED slotting. When ED happened, it had no perceptible impact on me or my playing. For people who were slotting everything for damage, I'm sure it was a shock to lose so much power, but I personally don't see how much fun it could have been before. Most of the game must have been like playing on easy mode. I can see how that would be fun once I  a while, but to me, it would just get monotonous.

To each their own I guess. One of the best things to come out of ED, was the hilarity of the forums. It kept me endlessly entertained. 😊the fact that it still engenders such strong feelings in people this long after it all happened, shows how invested people were in the game.

For me, City of Heroes was the superheroine life I can't have in real life because if I try to jump a cliff tonight and fly like Jenn Space ...that probably will be my last message on this board! XDDDD That's why I'm so attached so it and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one feeling that way. Deep down inside, we're all still kids in the heart and playing CoX was bringing us back to that time when we dreamed of being heroes, being adults just give us the vehicle to accomplish our aspirations!

[LaughingAlex]

To those that say that other people being immensely overpowered didn't affect other people's gameplay, that really wasn't true. The min/maxers would often refuse to group with people that didn't also min/max, or just refuse to group in general because they didn't need the help. With a limited number of spawns in the world, that often meant that if you weren't one of the min/max farmers, there wasn't anything to fight outside of missions. I personally enjoy missions a lot more than farming random villains in a zone, but variety of options is good.

The advent of the Architect missions moved all of the zone farmers into the specifically designed farm missions in Architect, so that you could actually fight outdoor enemies even if there were no ED, because all the min/maxers would be in the min/maxed Architect farming missions instead. I'd hate to see ED undone, though, because the IO sets really add a lot of neat options to the game, and without ED there probably would be little incentive to use most of the sets (I admit to possibly being wrong about this, some of those sets have fantastic bonuses).

The first paragraph, I can see why they would behave that way.  See a fair number of min/maxers are stop having fun guys.  They adamantly believe their way to play is the only way the game is "supposed to be played" as its to them the highest level of play.  They seriously hate anyone who doesn't, they despise them.  A stop having fun guy in any game is always like that, they have a level of disdain towards "inferior players" and have a belief that if they were as good as they, those "inferior players" would only play exactly as they do.  This also overlaps the complacent gamer syndrome of generally only using the "best tactics" but also encourages them to try and force others to play exclusively as they do.

We even saw this kind of behavior, slightly, in the incarnate trials, some players would try to keep others out of leagues based on how high their level shift was.  Even in incarnate trials that certainly didn't need everyone to be +3 including the BAF and LAMBDA trials.  It did't get wide spread, thank god, but if it did, CoH would have really been doomed for it, because it creates the destructive catch 22 of "can't get +3 because everyone wants me to have +3 to do the things that need to be done to get +3 in the first place".

That'd also tie into the second paragraph, in that many stop having fun guys would definitely get angry with anyone not playing and exploiting AE.  They'd hate any arch that wasn't a farm arch, because they are just taking the game to seriously to have fun with it.  They would take full advantage of a lack of ED to encourage people to only use the "Best" tactics and exclude anyone not doing so, which would damage the game horribly, with imbalances caused by a lack of ED only further encouraging a wide spread complacent gamer syndrome among most gamers getting into the game, leaving everyone who likes to experiment out in the cold, freezing rain with duct tape on their mouths(Can't encourage experimenting when the game is horribly imbalanced, afterall).

And yes, on that last sentence(didn't quote it), I wouldn't imagine how ridiculous some sets would be without ED with IOs, and i'm sure some people would find the "best powerset to max out with IOs" and then demand everyone exclusively play that.  Imagine max defense/resistance sets vs everything, any powerset buffing things like that would as a support be utterly ignored as by rules of complacent gamer syndrome, including almost every support set save kinetics and empathy...

.....just as the tools I met in CO who quit CoX over ED admitted to exclusively inviting at the exclusion of all other defender/troller sets.

[Harpospoke]

Put me down as another one who didn't get hurt by ED.   I was just too ignorant about how the game worked to even know things like "1 acc + 5 dam ftw!".   So ED didn't feel any different to me.

I did know about the way Jack handled it though and noticed the game changed in a more positive direction (for me) after he left.   He was horrible at communicating with the players and I never cared for his attitude of "a right way to play the game" based upon some story he told about being on an airplane or something.

[LaughingAlex]

Put me down as another one who didn't get hurt by ED.   I was just too ignorant about how the game worked to even know things like "1 acc + 5 dam ftw!".   So ED didn't feel any different to me.

I did know about the way Jack handled it though and noticed the game changed in a more positive direction (for me) after he left.   He was horrible at communicating with the players and I never cared for his attitude of "a right way to play the game" based upon some story he told about being on an airplane or something.

I feel sorry for him in many ways, as it was like many decisions good intended, but I agree it was the communication of it that messed things up.  Something similar has happened again to CO(but this time it wasn't Emmert in charge of it, an entirely different studio), and it's actually hitting them far harder now than ED ever had hit CoX I feel.  One guy feels he'd been scammed out of 600 dollars.  He was making a wiki for the game and was doing alot, and now this one change in CO that cryptic north had implemented is making him cancel the project in outright fury.  In fact I swear his post has been far more hostile than anything I posted in those forums, and I admit, I'm no angel there.

Admittedly CO improved a little with Emmert leaving it to someone else to, but it was temporary.  He just has poor communication skills I feel.  Had good intentions but, didn't communicate and consequently caused a lot of problems for CoX and later CO.  It's a shame that the devs of CO now did not learn from his mistakes.

[Ironwolf]

ED was by far more damaging to my Blasters. The 1 ACC + 5 Damage really helped you survive. What people seem to be forgetting is that the IO system was to replace the 1x5 style of slotting.

Not having the new system in place when you axed the other system and then to tell people - oh nothing is different - this helps you! Was a load of codswallop. We can do math and the affect on tanks and blasters was very apparent.

[Minotaur]

ED was by far more damaging to my Blasters. The 1 ACC + 5 Damage really helped you survive. What people seem to be forgetting is that the IO system was to replace the 1x5 style of slotting.

Not having the new system in place when you axed the other system and then to tell people - oh nothing is different - this helps you! Was a load of codswallop. We can do math and the affect on tanks and blasters was very apparent.

Actually many blasters then were targeting drone and 6 damage.

[Lupur]

Eh, I haven't looked at these forums for almost a week now.

Just after my last post, I had a dream. A very vivid dream that almost had me call in sick / put in for holidays for a week or more...

You see, the dream I had was that the game was suddenly live; and it all made sense the way it had been done too..

The test the new team was put was to sucesfully run a i23 image server with login authentication under stress.

Since then, all the time has been on developing a in game store and dotting i's and dashing t's...

*sigh* Even in my dreams i'm trying to justify why the game should be up and running already   

its been a sad week in the lup hut   

[blacksly]

ED was by far more damaging to my Blasters. The 1 ACC + 5 Damage really helped you survive. What people seem to be forgetting is that the IO system was to replace the 1x5 style of slotting.

Not having the new system in place when you axed the other system and then to tell people - oh nothing is different - this helps you! Was a load of codswallop. We can do math and the affect on tanks and blasters was very apparent.

To be fair, I think that's really not because of ED itself, nor did the Devs communicate poorly with the players because they thought that ED was BETTER.

You see, ED WAS better in terms of long-term DPS. It was probably also better in DPE. And it gave more room for +Damage buffs since you weren't slotted that highly for +Damage. So, it was better, right?

Well, what happened, I think, we can see in multiple Issues afterwards. Arbiter Hawk seemed to be the first Dev that understood Blaster problems, and that Blasters did not depend on DPS... they depended on DP10 (Damage per 10 seconds at the start of the fight), if not DP5. So a change that improved their DPS, but lowered their alpha strike, helped their long-term damage but hurt their survivability. And the DPS of a dead Blaster is 0. So the Devs thought that Blasters were more of a sustained-damage AT, but the best way to play it was with front-loaded damage as an alpha-strike specialist. From their point of view, changing the damage around so that it was less front-loaded but better in a sustained situation, was not really a nerf. From the point of view of players who depended on the alpha strike damage, it was a great nerf.

The Devs then threw around idea after idea, fix after fix, for Blasters, but I don't think that they ever got it. Maybe the solution is insoluble... maybe an AT that can put out large AoE damage, and do so safely if properly supported on teams, cannot be properly balanced for situations when it's not properly supported. I think that the problem is solvable, but it would have required some slightly different design of the powersets, and I don't know if it was solvable AFTER the game came out. Basically, if Blasters had some attacks that were lower DPS, pretty slow-activating, but helped their survival a lot, both AoE and ST, then they would have the option of using those and lowering their DPS (but surviving), or using their better attacks if properly supported on teams. But after the powersets were designed, it may have been a bit hard to do that.

Of course, it could have been done. For example, change Full Auto to Suppressive Fire, an attack that makes the mobs keep their heads down. The damage is lower because you're not aiming carefully for weak spots, but it lowers the opponent Accuracy and Damage for a good amount while the shooting is active, and for half the amount for a few more seconds. Plus it has a chance to knockdown every second while shooting. Change an attack or two in each powerset like this, and Blasters could have played better without support.

They did not, and good Blaster players figured out (especially before IO sets with their Ranged Defense bonuses) that Blaster Defense is synonymous with dead mobs. In other words, Build up/Aim, Dead Mobs before they get to shoot back is a good defense.

[kierthos]

I didn't mind ED hitting at all.

My first character was a Dark/Dark Defender (the original iteration of "The Sundown Man"), and in the blast set, I was typically running something like this:

TO: 2 Accuracy, 1 End Reduction, 3 Damage
DO and SO: 1 Accuracy, 1 End Reduction, 4 Damage

And I swear, I lost track of how many times I was told I was 'doing it wrong'. Yeah... because I hadn't super-optimized my build by doing the same exact cookie-cutter plan that other people did, how dare I have fun? No, no one actually said the last bit, but a few pick-up groups I was in seemed to be full of full-of-themself-asshats who took great offense at the fact that we didn't mow through a group of bad guys that second or two quicker than we would have if I had "optimized". Of course, I was the sole healer in the group, and when I threatened to leave, they shut up really quickly.

Needless to say, I loved ED and IOs.

[Jorge Firebomb]

Yeah with ED you probably have a lot more build options that are all reasonably equivalent in effectiveness, just with a little different flavor. I do remember a lot of blasters running around with that targeting drone thing going, which apparently let them ignore slotting accuracy into powers at all. However only one secondary set had that power, and since it was "necessary" for an optimized blaster build, there were amazing amounts of completely ignored power sets amongst the min/max people. What's the point of having a dozen or whatever secondary blaster power sets, if the "one true way to play" only lets you use one of them?

I think it's much better to have the system as it existed at shutdown, with ED and IOs and IO sets all coming together to allow multiple paths to high end success. Sure there are still combinations that are better than others, but there are a lot more around that are effective.

Dev communication was the only weakness of early CoH, I think that it got better later though? I didn't pay a lot of attention to the official forums back then, honestly.

[darkgob]

Dev communication was the only weakness of early CoH, I think that it got better later though? I didn't pay a lot of attention to the official forums back then, honestly.

Much better.

[Drauger9]

We even saw this kind of behavior, slightly, in the incarnate trials, some players would try to keep others out of leagues based on how high their level shift was.  Even in incarnate trials that certainly didn't need everyone to be +3 including the BAF and LAMBDA trials.  It did't get wide spread, thank god, but if it did, CoH would have really been doomed for it, because it creates the destructive catch 22 of "can't get +3 because everyone wants me to have +3 to do the things that need to be done to get +3 in the first place".

This happened on Infinity, I can't remember their name but there was someone on there "blacklisting" people if they didn't do good enough in Incarnate trials .That and there was an active pvp community on Freedom. Is the reason why my small group of friends and me left the server.

I asked around before I left and apparently they was with the "in crowd" on Infinity. So they had the ability to blacklist people apparently.

I never considered myself a min/maxer but I was a hardcore farmer. Though I had separate alts for separate things. I had my farming characters that I'd farm with. Then all my other characters I'd team with. Then I had my GM characters that I'd farm GMs with. My TF characters that I'd solo TFs with ect....

Thank God I never got into the mind set of my way is the best way.

[LaughingAlex]

This happened on Infinity, I can't remember their name but there was someone on there "blacklisting" people if they didn't do good enough in Incarnate trials .That and there was an active pvp community on Freedom. Is the reason why my small group of friends and me left the server.

I asked around before I left and apparently they was with the "in crowd" on Infinity. So they had the ability to blacklist people apparently.

I never considered myself a min/maxer but I was a hardcore farmer. Though I had separate alts for separate things. I had my farming characters that I'd farm with. Then all my other characters I'd team with. Then I had my GM characters that I'd farm GMs with. My TF characters that I'd solo TFs with ect....

Thank God I never got into the mind set of my way is the best way.

Yeah, I saw elitism imposing catch 22 in guild wars alot.  This was done with all forms of pvp, and I ended up not willing to play for it.  Around that time some friends of mine got me into CoX, I had no regrets moving on from GW.  Ironically they moved on to CO but I think they must have moved on shortly, they had been burned out of enjoying CoX much, at around that time I ended up with new friends.  It was a happy time for me in the end.

[Sinistar]

This happened on Infinity, I can't remember their name but there was someone on there "blacklisting" people if they didn't do good enough in Incarnate trials .That and there was an active pvp community on Freedom. Is the reason why my small group of friends and me left the server.

I asked around before I left and apparently they was with the "in crowd" on Infinity. So they had the ability to blacklist people apparently.

I never considered myself a min/maxer but I was a hardcore farmer. Though I had separate alts for separate things. I had my farming characters that I'd farm with. Then all my other characters I'd team with. Then I had my GM characters that I'd farm GMs with. My TF characters that I'd solo TFs with ect....

Thank God I never got into the mind set of my way is the best way.

I think I know of whom you speak regarding Infinity and blacklisting, there was also an arrogant fool like like that on Pinnacle and Protector. 

The best way to play is the one that you enjoy. Your characters are yours and should be built to your preferences, be it name, costume, powers, slotting, etc.  You pay the account fees so YOU are the one that gets to decide what characters to build and how.  If someone wants to offer you advice that one's thing, but the whole  "You will build and play your characters MY WAY or I SHALL BLACKLIST YOU" is the kind of attitude that should be a bannable offense.