|
Torterra is the best grass starter and I won't hear any arguments. 
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 02:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 12:11 |
|
|
Red Metal posted:Between Geodude & Onix's piss-poor Special stats and their lack of Ground/Rock moves at that level, beating Brock with Charmander really wasn't that much harder than with Squirtle/Bulbasaur. And then you go in with that mentality in FR/LG and get destroyed by Rock Tomb spam because you can't quite get enough hits with Metal Claw or Confusion
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 02:40
|
|
|
lightace posted:Torterra is the best grass starter and I won't hear any arguments. Counterargument: It is not Bulbasaur. Other than that, though, your argument is quite reasonable.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 02:48
|
|
|
Torterra and Venusaur are both kaiju-esque dinosaur monsters with stuff growing out of their backs, they can respect each other's flair.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 02:52
|
|
|
I feel like Chesnaught doesn't get nearly enough props just because Greninja and Delphox got so much hype during Gen VI, but Chesnaught owns pretty hard, too, and Decidueye is pretty fantastic. The two most recent generations have been really on-point with their starters in general, they're some of the best in the entire franchise.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 03:22
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:I feel like Chesnaught doesn't get nearly enough props just because Greninja and Delphox got so much hype during Gen VI, but Chesnaught owns pretty hard, too, and Decidueye is pretty fantastic. The two most recent generations have been really on-point with their starters in general, they're some of the best in the entire franchise. Agreed. I'm a huge bird nerd, so I'm very much biased, but Decidueye is cool as heck and easily my favorite Grass starter ever.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 03:30
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:Decidueye is pretty fantastic. He's the first grass starter I ever picked, since the other two starters looked bad.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 03:39
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:I feel like Chesnaught doesn't get nearly enough props just because Greninja and Delphox got so much hype during Gen VI, but Chesnaught owns pretty hard, too, and Decidueye is pretty fantastic. The two most recent generations have been really on-point with their starters in general, they're some of the best in the entire franchise. I feel like the starters of each generation is slowly getting away from "kaiju"-like to more like taking design cues from Dungeons and Dragons character classes. This is especially noticeable with the Gen VI and VII starters: Chesnaught and Incineroar are bulky fighters (one is a Knight, the other a Wrestler), Delphox and Primarina are waif-like mages (Delphox is a witch and Primarina is a songstress) and Greninja and Decidueye are thieves (a ninja and archer respectively). I really hope Gen VIII continues this trend and bring along a grass mage, a fire thief and a water fighter.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 03:45
|
|
|
Zuzie posted:I feel like the starters of each generation is slowly getting away from "kaiju"-like to more like taking design cues from Dungeons and Dragons character classes. This is especially noticeable with the Gen VI and VII starters: Chesnaught and Incineroar are bulky fighters (one is a Knight, the other a Wrestler), Delphox and Primarina are waif-like mages (Delphox is a witch and Primarina is a songstress) and Greninja and Decidueye are thieves (a ninja and archer respectively). Gen VI was intentionally made as the warrior/mage/rogue trio. There's an interview somewhere talking about it. Gen VII seems more to be based on types of entertainers, a singer, a wrestler, and a trick archer.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 03:53
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:I feel like Chesnaught doesn't get nearly enough props just because Greninja and Delphox got so much hype during Gen VI, but Chesnaught owns pretty hard, too, and Decidueye is pretty fantastic. The two most recent generations have been really on-point with their starters in general, they're some of the best in the entire franchise. I agree with this. I've been picking Grass for a while now, despite being a big Fire-type fan, Grass-type starters have been great lately. Honestly, I like Decidueye a lot more than the other two, so I'm conflicted on what I'll pick in USUM. Then again, I'll probably go for some gimmick run so that'll decide it for me.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 04:03
|
|
|
I know Pokemon LP threads have been notorious for derails, but I found the FFXII/Wildstar train of conversation fascinating. I didn't know that there were developers that hate players that much. What's the absolute worst starter final evolution? It's gotta be hard to top Meganium. Tank stats for HP and Spec. Def. and Grass types don't mix. Zuzie posted:I feel like the starters of each generation is slowly getting away from "kaiju"-like to more like taking design cues from Dungeons and Dragons character classes. This is especially noticeable with the Gen VI and VII starters: Chesnaught and Incineroar are bulky fighters (one is a Knight, the other a Wrestler), Delphox and Primarina are waif-like mages (Delphox is a witch and Primarina is a songstress) and Greninja and Decidueye are thieves (a ninja and archer respectively). get that OUT of my face fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Jul 6, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 04:34
|
|
|
get that OUT of my face posted:I know Pokemon LP threads have been notorious for derails, but I found the FFXII/Wildstar train of conversation fascinating. I didn't know that there were developers that hate players that much. In its own generation, I'd say Feraligatr. A physical-oriented water type from before the existence of physical water moves with no particularly good physical moves it can learn, relegating it to "Yet another mediocre water type" in the fine company of Seaking, Dewgong, Poliwrath, Mantine, Blastoise, Gyarados (at the time), and more.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 04:40
|
|
|
I didn't like Incineroar in SuMo. Litten and Torracat were both cute and good, but the sudden change into a noodle-limbed fire luchador was just too drastic for the third evolution. Mind you, I'm judging solely by appearance, not utility.
Malachite_Dragon fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jul 6, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 05:09
|
|
|
get that OUT of my face posted:What's the absolute worst starter final evolution? It's gotta be hard to top Meganium. Tank stats for HP and Spec. Def. and Grass types don't mix. Design-wise? I honestly don't hate any of them, but probably Meganium(I loathe that shade of green compared to what Chikorita and Bayleef had) or Typhlosion(boooring).
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 05:13
|
|
|
I didn't like Snivy much, for overconfident/cocky grass types I though Treecko was more charming.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 05:16
|
|
|
get that OUT of my face posted:I know Pokemon LP threads have been notorious for derails, but I found the FFXII/Wildstar train of conversation fascinating. I didn't know that there were developers that hate players that much. There are plenty of them, but they typically show up on smaller projects and fan works rather than AAA games.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 05:25
|
|
|
Like this one!
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 06:06
|
|
|
senrath posted:There are plenty of them, but they typically show up on smaller projects and fan works rather than AAA games.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 06:46
|
|
|
Yeah, larger teams are usually better about saying "No, that's stupid. We're trying to make money here, not piss off everyone who might pay us."
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 07:07
|
|
|
get that OUT of my face posted:I should have specified "big developers" instead of just leaving it open-ended. Contempt for the player tends to not come to the surface when you're working with a big group of people, at least not in the "this boss has only one way to beat it and gently caress you if you don't adhere to my vision" sense. senrath posted:Yeah, larger teams are usually better about saying "No, that's stupid. We're trying to make money here, not piss off everyone who might pay us."  On the topic of the actual game being LP'd, so far this has been... an experience. Yes, certainly an experience. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 08:21
|
|
|
Yapping Eevee posted:Oh boy, I should tell you folks some stories about Warframe and its devs sometime. Or better yet, let me get Malachite in here again. He'll provide a more appropriate amount of bile to the telling. I play Warframe. I'm aware of the stupid poo poo they pull off. Hence the usually.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 08:37
|
|
|
I love Absolute Virtue derails, they always make me nostalgic for the...not quite so malicious but still 'what is wrong with the devs' Hamidon.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 08:49
|
|
|
Yapping Eevee posted:Oh boy, I should tell you folks some stories about Warframe and its devs sometime. Or better yet, let me get Malachite in here again. He'll provide a more appropriate amount of bile to the telling. I don't exactly have an encyclopedic knowledge of the poo poo that DE (and DE_Steve in particular) have done, but I can recount some of the bigger moments of assholery. Warframe, for those of you not in the know, is essentially Anime: The Game. My avatar is from it; you play as a titular Warframe, a space ninja bouncing around the solar system cutting a huge swath through hordes of mobs and exploding the occasional Fomorian space battleship. Sounds like it should be awesome, right? Well, it is, for the most part, but that's in spite of their devs, not because of them. About the only thing they've done that is absolutely beyond reproach is their sheer dedication to making sure the game is as optimized as possible; my previous computer was an incredible piece of poo poo that had a Radeon HD 5450 and 4 gig of ram, and I could *still* play this game on High settings. And it is a very pretty game, y'all. To start with, DE_Steve is a manchild. I mean he has had actual shitfits on livestreams when people call him out on things- the most often talked about example, and my personal favorite, being when syndicate weapons were first introduced. For whatever reason, he hitched his wagon to the Rakta Ballistica. Thing about the Rakta Ballistica is, it sucks. Really, really hard. Steve went on to passionately defend it- for all of thirty seconds before DE_Rebecca, the community manager (and also the only member of the Dev team who actually plays their own loving game) shut him down.  : "I think you're being unfair. If you take into account the status proc-" : "The Synoid Gammacor* has a proc, too, and it can actually kill things."Steve proceeded to sulk for pretty much the rest of the stream. Three days later, the Rakta's damage was buffed by 3x, and the Gammacor's damage and ammo consumption were nerfed by about the same amount. Surely, the most innocent of coincidences! *Also a syndicate weapon, introduced at the same time. The Rakta still sucks incredibly hard even after the buff. Then there was the debacle with Vacuum. Vacuum is a more-or-less required Quality Of Life mod for your sentinel, that hoovers in nearby items for you to collect because the default pick-up range is really, really goddamn tiny. The issue at the time was that Vacuum could only be used by one sentinel, Carrier- which led to DE scratching their heads at 99% of the playerbase using only that sentinel ever, only switching to new ones to level them for mastery and then swapping right back. We'd been begging them to make Vacuum a universal mod for years- so, hey, let's do that! Except not- let's split it into three mods, one for ammo, one for items, and one for energy/health orbs! The, uh... the players didn't react well to that. So they nixed that, and made it universal- but it would have like half the range. Again, the players were less than pleased. Fine! Universal! Every Sentinel can use it, you unpleasable bastards!... Except someone did the math and instead of the range being 11 meters, it's 10.5. Steve just could not let it come to pass without the pettiest of nerfs.  Speaking of doing the math, DE_Steve also hates Datamining. Oooo, he hates it. He went on a screaming fit on the forums the first few times it happened, claiming it was theft. How dare we look at the files they put on our computers! What do you mean 'just don't put upcoming files into the game if it's not out yet', away with you and your logic. This came to a head recently when DE actually served the most prolific dataminer a Cease & Desist and demanded he take down his accumulated information- information that he had used to let them know about bugs in the past, and about drop rates that were wrong... y'know, poo poo they couldn't be trusted to do themselves. They're still getting chewed out by the forums for it, last I checked, and they ended up having to publicly release their drop tables anyway to stay in accordance with some Chinese gaming law. I'm probably forgetting a few things, it's 3 in the morning, but that's the gist of it. DE_Steve is a pettiness elemental. E: Oh yeah, I forgot one thing. From time to time they introduce weapons that you have to Research in the clan dojo; the most recent example is the Hema that was introduced with the Nidus Warframe. Well, someone fat-fingered the number, and the research demands 500,000 Mutagen Samples. "So go grinding", you're thinking, right? Well, on a really good day, you're lucky to get 50 Mutagen Samples from a single run. Now, the Goon clan is a Moon clan, the largest size they can be- and between all our active members, we still didn't have enough to set the research going. It's currently sitting somewhere around 240,000 samples yet to go. That's after tens of players who had been sitting on mountains of samples accumulated from *years* of playing had donated every single one they had. DE's response was: "We don't want to reduce it, as that would be unfair to the clans who have already managed to research it  "See, smaller clan sizes don't have to gather as much resources to research- I believe it's a straight 10x the base amount for Moon clans. The problem is, this isn't the first time they've hosed up a resource number, and they were more than happy to reverse it before; this is just them not wanting to write another refund script  E E: I've also been told I forgot one of the things the datamining revealed: that one of their more hyped up additions, a new melee stance for Machete-type weapons, did not drop at all. It'd been in for a month and not a single player had managed to get a copy yet. Similarly, Health Orbs have not dropped in the game almost since the start. Energy orbs drop just fine, but Health orbs have never dropped- and DE seemed genuinely surprised when they were told they weren't dropping. They still haven't fixed that, either. Malachite_Dragon fucked around with this message at 12:05 on Jul 6, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 09:03
|
|
|
Lobsterman posted:I love Absolute Virtue derails, they always make me nostalgic for the...not quite so malicious but still 'what is wrong with the devs' Hamidon. Whoa whoa whoa, what's this about Hamidon? I was one of the most prolific City of players back in the day, and while I heard the occasional grumbling about the enhancements it dropped, I didn't hear many complaints about Hamidon itself. If anything, the main thing I heard about was that nobody cared about it. Much of the player base for City of was always more interested in basically every other kind of content, or even just faffing about (I'd cite this as both the reason City of remains the only MMO I'd actually call an unqualified "good game", and also the reason it ultimately wound up financially insolvent). I recall a number of players joking along the lines of "What's a Hamidon?" I'm interested in your perspective, since I'm guessing you were one of the few people that actually did the Hamidon raid on the reg.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 10:38
|
|
|
These derails about crappy devs are genuinely really entertaining. I'm really enjoying this LP, I mean it, but I'm also really happy about the larger conversation re: crappy/misguided/outright malicious devs it spawns. In a way, it's ... comforting? ... to see that bigger, supposedly more professional developers don't gain magical protection from the kind of stupidity that we usually see in fan projects. It's like ... sometimes, those nerds truly never grow up. More money and more clout on their own haven't made them mature or good or nice. You'd think that with an actual reputation and budget on the line, they'd pay more attention to what they say and do, but some of them still won't. It's fascinating in a very strange way.
Ritznit fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Jul 6, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 11:09
|
|
|
DE in general is a company without meaningful checks at basically every stage of development. For a long time they actually had next to no documentation, and the only reason that changed was because they hired a new guy that was really good about documenting everything he did, which basically shamed the rest of them into at least trying a little bit. Though even now version control is poor and poo poo will get into the live build that shouldn't, or don't get in when they should, or some bug fixes will accidentally be rolled back, etc Steve btw is the head of development and one of the two largest individual shareholders in the company, the other being one of his best friends. He keeps a hilarious amount of alcohol in his office, bottles and bottles you can see everywhere during pretty much any video of him. They also drink during their weekly live streams. How Warframe hasn't shat itself and died is difficult to explain. Denzine fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Jul 6, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 12:45
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:Whoa whoa whoa, what's this about Hamidon? I was one of the most prolific City of players back in the day, and while I heard the occasional grumbling about the enhancements it dropped, I didn't hear many complaints about Hamidon itself. If anything, the main thing I heard about was that nobody cared about it. Much of the player base for City of was always more interested in basically every other kind of content, or even just faffing about (I'd cite this as both the reason City of remains the only MMO I'd actually call an unqualified "good game", and also the reason it ultimately wound up financially insolvent). I recall a number of players joking along the lines of "What's a Hamidon?" I'm interested in your perspective, since I'm guessing you were one of the few people that actually did the Hamidon raid on the reg. So, I can't find a lot of actual info on the fucker anymore, so this is mostly gonna go from memory. I apologize for any errors/bullshit that I inadvertently pass along. So, for those of you who never had the fortune to play CoH, Hamidon was this enigmatic megaboss. It was the only raid content in the game and far and away the most powerful thing the game had to throw at you. And for a long time, nobody could figure out how to kill the blobby bastard. To my recollection, there were a number of strategies attempted, and there was a similar to AV process of 'every time something seems to work, Cryptic goes NO NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT and changes the fight'. Now, the guy in charge was Jack Emmert, a manchild who inserted his super special better than everyone character from the Champions tabletop RPG into the game as the mascot. He also had a stated thing of not wanting player characters to feel too powerful. So, keeping Hamidon unkillable to preserve his fantasies and The Vision is entirely in keeping with his character. Eventually, Hamidon became killable. I don't know how close this was to when Emmert left the game, but it's hard not to want to speculate that there's a connection. And now, a funny story about the new, mortal Hamidon. So, Hamidon wasn't in an instance or anything, so killing it was a public event. There were a number of players who got kinda dictatorial and tried to be 'the guy' who lead the raids, which did require a certain amount of coordination but were pretty easy if you had enough of the right people. Obviously, the goons playing the game didn't care for this and mocked the proceedings as much as possible, but one day someone got the idea of a larger scale prank on the extremely routine raids. So, the idea was that WE were going to lead the raid, using a secret, faster more efficient method that was all the rage in Korea. The entire joke being to string everyone along with the absurd and lengthy preparations and then...trick them into losing a game of rock paper scissors en masse. It was very childish and petty but hey, we were bored and it seemed like a good idea at the time. So they humored us and played along, not seeming to fully believe us, because, you know, goons in MMOs. The prank ended, we declared victory, and through ourselves into Hamidon, dying instantly. And that's when it got hilarious. Because THE SERVER CRASHED. With some testing, some members of the supergroup figured it out. At that time, if you died, you could just pop a self-rez consumable at any time and get right back up. But Hamidon would INSTANTLY kill you before you'd even finished the animation. What happens if you have a LOT of them and spam them? Well the server doesn't know what the gently caress to do and goes down. So for a good while, the more griefing oriented goons had the means to crash the server literally anytime Hamidon was up. (which from my recollection was approximately a half hour after the servers came up or it'd been killed) And they abused the hell out of this, until one day they patched the rez items (I believe they added a cooldown). But we never forgot about the Korean Method.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 12:51
|
|
|
Malachite_Dragon posted:Similarly, Health Orbs have not dropped in the game almost since the start. Energy orbs drop just fine, but Health orbs have never dropped- and DE seemed genuinely surprised when they were told they weren't dropping. Wait, what the gently caress? I thought them only coming from lockers and Nekros was intentional. Good lord. Ritznit posted:These derails about crappy devs are genuinely really entertaining. I'm really enjoying this LP, I mean it, but I'm also really happy about the larger conversation re: crappy/misguided/outright malicious devs it spawns. I agree. The LP is great on its own, but the side conversations about all this stuff between updates is just fascinating. Rainuwastaken fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Jul 6, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 19:08
|
|
|
get that OUT of my face posted:What's the absolute worst starter final evolution?  One of these is Charizard and one of these is Typhlosion.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 21:06
|
|
|
PoptartsNinja posted:
I know! I know! The left one is Charizard because it mentions the Special stat! Seriously, though, the Gen 2 starters are kind of boring in terms of pretty much everything. I don't know much about how good they are competitively, but I can definitely agree that Typhlosion's moveset is awful, having used one in HGSS.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 21:23
|
|
|
Epicmissingno posted:I know! I know! The left one is Charizard because it mentions the Special stat! I remember Typhlosion being solid enough in GSC, but HG/SS is a totally different game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 22:10
|
|
|
Epicmissingno posted:I know! I know! The left one is Charizard because it mentions the Special stat! Typhlosion has a... niche with Eruption now. Now a good niche, but its something. Meganium is just kinda generically bad. Feraligatr is easily the best since it got a great HA, has Dragon Dance and the physical/special split helped it rather than hurt it lile Typhlosion. Its still not great, but its a solid physical water type.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2017 22:27
|
|
|
Lobsterman posted:So, I can't find a lot of actual info on the fucker anymore, so this is mostly gonna go from memory. I apologize for any errors/bullshit that I inadvertently pass along. So, for those of you who never had the fortune to play CoH, Hamidon was this enigmatic megaboss. It was the only raid content in the game and far and away the most powerful thing the game had to throw at you. And for a long time, nobody could figure out how to kill the blobby bastard. To my recollection, there were a number of strategies attempted, and there was a similar to AV process of 'every time something seems to work, Cryptic goes NO NO YOU CAN'T DO THAT and changes the fight'. Now, the guy in charge was Jack Emmert, a manchild who inserted his super special better than everyone character from the Champions tabletop RPG into the game as the mascot. He also had I can't speak for the super-early days, but by the time I was old enough to punch Hamidon, which was about the time of the first or second expansion, it was down to a somewhat boring science. Hamidon was a big cell with several organelles. Yellows shot area blasts and needed to be punched, teals shot single blasts and needed to be shot, and greens healed other things and took almost no damage until they were CC'd, and to those of you with experience with other MMOs, City of Heroes had Hold and Stun, which were both disabling CCs and neither broke on damage, so it was pretty easy to crack greens open. The Hamidon nucleus dealt mostly a special damage type that couldn't be resisted. So basically how it worked was you'd get a couple of illusion controllers to drop some decoys to absorb the initial volley of pain, a tank or two with strong maximum HP buffs, usually a stone tank, and enough healers to keep them topped up to hang around and get blasted by the nucleus, and then everybody else would assist-target one organelle at a time. When they were all dead, then everybody moved in out of the blast radius of the tank to pound on Hamidon. The thing about Original Hamidon was that he started with like 6 of each organelle but at 50% and 25% life he'd create one yellow one directly on top of everyone who was in there fighting him. I suppose it was intended that nearly everybody got clear of the place aside from a few people delivering the taps to get him there, but in practice if that happened you were basically doomed. Couldn't possibly get in to punch the yellows without eating a brazillion area shots. So what you did was you put a Hold on Hamidon. Now, Hamidon was coded to be resistant to Holds, but basically how resistance works is it's a number and every simultaneous Hold adds its power together. If it gets over the number the Hold applies, and I think in order for Holds to actually be registered at all that number was limited. So if enough people stacked them up he was Held all the same, and by the time I got there, everybody got access to another pool of powers between 40 and 50 that included a Hold if it wasn't in their power set already. So once all the organelles went down it was more or less a matter of time until Hami dropped, as long as you didn't lag out badly enough that people couldn't queue up more holds fast enough. And after he popped, he spawned a tiny bud for everybody who was in there fighting him, with a handful of hit points and no meaningful damage capacity. Hitting those buds got you in on the chance of getting a Hamidon enhancement, which was basically two enhancements stuck together. Enhancements (in brief) were things you put into a power to increase one of its effects (recharge, damage, accuracy, cost reduction) by about a third, and each power could hold six, though you only had a certain number of total slots to spread across your character. So instead of having one bit of a power at 200% you could have two bits, or whatever. Several things happened after that to change the fight. First (chronologically), enhancements were soft-capped at a 100% boost, so tanks and healers with crazy high health and restoration were a bit of a thing of the past, as were controllers with extremely long single-target CCs. In the Hamidon game this changed things for the worse. In the non-Hamidon game this was kind of welcomed, as it came alongside a downgrade in enemy power and boost in enemy rewards. So basically instead of maxing out your tank/damage/heals and pushing the edge of the math envelope against enemies as blood-red as you could find, you could actually have appreciable attacks and defenses at the same time and fight content closer to on-level for the same payout. Second, the raid itself was drastically overhauled. Hamidon got the same randomly pulsing CC immunity that other big targets got, meaning it was pretty much a guarantee that he'd get his 50% and 25% spawns off, but the spawns themselves were nerfed down to just respawning his initial complement in their proper spaces. It was almost guaranteed you'd be able to get enough people out in order to regroup and start again, though it also meant you basically had to do the same exact fight about three times. Everybody who participated in the raid got exactly one Hamidon Enhancement and then went on a lockout timer for 20 hours. Third, but really simultaneously, the game introduced craftable enhancements which could come in a variety of double or triple buffs. Hamidon Enhancements were still more powerful than anything you could make, but the enhancements you could make also had set bonuses. After that it was just a matter of game creep until Hamidon was obsoleted, especially when Incarnate Trials dropped and you could get together less people to do more fun stuff for better rewards. Even before then there was a task force with a weakened Hamidon mid-boss fight that was pretty much a 1x (as opposed to 3x) Hamidon fight tuned for a team of 8. And that's how, at the end of the game's lifespan, pretty much everybody was fighting Hamidon maybe once for the cheevo. Glazius fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jul 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 03:49
|
|
|
To my understanding, CoH died, essentially, because the endgame content was just horrifically mismanaged in general.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 04:28
|
|
|
Glazius posted:Several things happened after that to change the fight. First (chronologically), enhancements were soft-capped at a 100% boost, so tanks and healers with crazy high health and restoration were a bit of a thing of the past, as were controllers with extremely long single-target CCs. In the Hamidon game this changed things for the worse. In the non-Hamidon game this was kind of welcomed, as it came alongside a downgrade in enemy power and boost in enemy rewards. So basically instead of maxing out your tank/damage/heals and pushing the edge of the math envelope against enemies as blood-red as you could find, you could actually have appreciable attacks and defenses at the same time and fight content closer to on-level for the same payout. I don't know who you spoke to, but "Enhancement Diversification" (yes, the puerile ED jokes were on full display with that name) was initially met on the official forums with a fury I had not seen since the massive Regeneration nerf around, I think, Issue 3. That it was paired with massive nerfs to both Controllers and Tankers didn't help. And the enemy adjustments didn't drop until months after Issue 5 (where said nerfs and ED were introduced), possibly Issue 6 or even the launch of City of Villains, and weren't publicized nearly as much as they should have been. That's the story of pretty much every major nerf up until Jack Emmert left. The nerf was more-or-less justified, but they presented them in the absolute worst possible light. Mark Miller taking over was the best thing that happened to the game, even though it eventually died. PMush Perfect posted:To my understanding, CoH died, essentially, because the endgame content was just horrifically mismanaged in general. This is mostly true, most of the "hardcore" players who had been around for years were basically using it as a very fancy chatroom where you could occasionally go out and punch some dudes in costumes, and there just weren't enough of them to sustain things. It's a drat shame, too, I mean, all the non-endgame content was fantastic (despite the PR issues of the dev team), but it just couldn't retain the sort of players that made WoW a success, and those are the people you need to get if you want long-term financial viability in an MMO, especially after it went F2P (with the subscription model, you had scores of people who just kept their subscription up despite never actually playing, because they would always say "Oh, I'll definitely play some more soon").
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 04:51
|
|
|
EclecticTastes posted:most of the "hardcore" players who had been around for years were basically using it as a very fancy chatroom where you could occasionally go out and punch some dudes in costumes (This is also because NCSoft has never released the server code, but eh, details.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 05:19
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:Case in point, the most popular CoH "revival" is basically just a 3D chatroom using the assets from your CoX install. This is true, people liked just making their characters and costumes, writing backstories, and whatever else more than the actual game (even though it was a pretty solid game, all told). Like, being honest, had they not gone F2P and had that been a viable business model, I'd have continued paying that subscription all the way to right now just for the mere option of going in to see my characters and revel in my creative agency, so they clearly did something right, it's just that "something" wasn't "make money". (Also, the lack of server code didn't stop some people, prior to drama causing it to implode, someone used to run a private CoH/V server, though it was just begging for a C&D.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 05:55
|
|
|
Glazius has played a video game?!
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 06:43
|
|
|
alcharagia posted:Glazius has played a video game?! It was a different age, my friend. An age before Let's Play. EclecticTastes posted:I don't know who you spoke to, but "Enhancement Diversification" (yes, the puerile ED jokes were on full display with that name) was initially met on the official forums with a fury I had not seen since the massive Regeneration nerf around, I think, Issue 3. That it was paired with massive nerfs to both Controllers and Tankers didn't help. And the enemy adjustments didn't drop until months after Issue 5 (where said nerfs and ED were introduced), possibly Issue 6 or even the launch of City of Villains, and weren't publicized nearly as much as they should have been. That's the story of pretty much every major nerf up until Jack Emmert left. The nerf was more-or-less justified, but they presented them in the absolute worst possible light. Mark Miller taking over was the best thing that happened to the game, even though it eventually died. Complaining about ED did start a long time before Issue 6, yes. A decent proportion of the people who were big enough maniacs to post on the official game forums were also big enough maniacs to jump on the public test server, where the changes were released. But the boost to enemy rewards showed up at the same time, before they both went live. It's just that, y'know, absolute worst possible light, right? They got pretty much no promotion or explanation next to all the maths they had to drop on people so ED didn't blindside them. (white is the new orange, orange is the new purple, putting a team together to do regular ol' instanced content is the new putting a team together to jump on purples in hazard zones)
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2017 13:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 12:11 |
|
|
Glazius posted:Complaining about ED did start a long time before Issue 6, yes. A decent proportion of the people who were big enough maniacs to post on the official game forums were also big enough maniacs to jump on the public test server, where the changes were released. But the boost to enemy rewards showed up at the same time, before they both went live. It's just that, y'know, absolute worst possible light, right? They got pretty much no promotion or explanation next to all the maths they had to drop on people so ED didn't blindside them. (white is the new orange, orange is the new purple, putting a team together to do regular ol' instanced content is the new putting a team together to jump on purples in hazard zones) On the one hand, I don't think the game got that much harder, but on the other, I basically stopped seriously playing any character except my Masterminds from the moment I got my CoV beta invite (which coincided with ED, as I recall), and Masterminds were consistently the game's easy mode from their introduction right until the very end.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2017 00:01
|
|