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Champions Online Launch Day Nerf? o_O;
Champions Online Launch Day Nerf? o_O;
#1
I am not posting this as a schadenfreude thing.
Really. I'm not. I wanted Champions Online to do well.
But holy heck, this is...this is...
See the general Champions Online forums. Notice how it's full of angry threads bitching about a patch, demanding it be rolled back - or, alternatively, full of threads grumbling about how other threads are being modded or locked.
The longest existing thread is here, by the way - 146 pages after two days.
So what's going on? Well, Cryptic put in a global nerf to passive powers, unannounced, without proper patch notes, on launch day (Tuesday, Sept. 1st).
From what I gather - I'm not familiar with the Champions combat engine, so this is just my ballpark understanding...the nerf went in because defensive passives were too powerful, making some builds all but invulnerable to enemy damage.
The player complaint, though, is that by nerfing all passive powers (including, apparently, offensive/support ones), it's a nuclear bomb of a nerf that whacks pretty much everyone. (EDIT: it seems passive powers are the main means of self-defense in Champions. So the whole game's much harder for everyone, and where some players were apparently taking on three-to-five enemies at a time, they now can die one-on-one. Stuff like that.)
Some folks are saying their characters are literally unplayable now. Which may well be true, since from what I can gather, no free respecs were given out.
So let's recap, right - Cryptic didn't give any warning this change was coming. The changes weren't properly documented. The main result of the nerf is that players are much less powerful (which, to a CoH player, has shades of purple patch and ED thinking right there). Players weren't given respecs.
And this was on launch day.
Why's that a problem? Well, the game officially launched on Tuesday, yeah. But many folks have been already playing since Open Beta and pre-order headstart. Mind, I can sorta sympathise with a company nerfing their game after launch, given, y'know, with increased player numbers comes increased datamining, but...
Nerf on launch day has gotta be some kinda new record, especially since it punishes the people who preordered the game and have already been playing for a few days. Indeed it's kinda worse, since many folks are claiming they're of sufficient level, after the headstart weekend, to have basically borked their own characters under the new patch, but not of high enough level to afford respecs.
Annnyway, so now Cryptic's saying there will be a test server in the future, and all patches will go on there before they hit live.
Uh...yeaaaaah...what the hell, Cryptic? Seriously? What the hell?
I want to cry, because they're the people developing Star Trek Online, and I want to play that game. =P
Oh well...

EDIT: Apparently CO's respec function was broken throughout headstart. It now works with the post-launch patches, but you still need to pay for each power choice you rollback. Ain't free, and very expensive to completely rebuild a character.
-- Acyl
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#2
... They didn't have a test server? They didn't have a damn test server ready to go? The HELL?
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#3
..This smells like Jack, It smells like something I just flushed down the toilete. That officialy puts the nail in the coffin for any desire I may have had to
even try the game.
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#4
O.O

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH

Sorry, sorry....I didn't really...mean tha..

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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#5
I'm not qualified to comment on whether the nerfs are justified or not. From a brief scan of the reactions, there's a significant number of folks who think the new game balance is fine.
At the same time, others are noting that while everyone is affected, some builds are harder-hit than others.
Whatever the case, though...validity of the nerfs isn't the question. It's pretty easy to sit here and accuse Jack Emmert and company of liberally applying the nerf stick. However, all MMOs have nerfs. That's a fact of life.
From a certain point of view, it's best to get the new game balance out on day one - if they nerfed stuff a month or two after release, well...
But this was handled really really badly. It doesn't take a genius to point out what went wrong here. I was looking at a dev post to the effect of, well, them trying to determine why players are upset...and I mean, seriously? Can't you tell? They totally screwed up in the way they did this.
I realise that most of the Champions team aren't folks who worked on City of Heroes, and Jack Emmert isn't involved in day-to-day operations of CO. Nonetheless, one would expect that Cryptic as a company would have learnt from their CoH experience and, y'know, know how to relate to their players.
EDIT: I find it mildly interesting that the Star Trek Online forums have absolutely zilch, zero, nada mention of the CO launch nerf controversy. I'd have expected something. So either the moderators have censorship phasers on 'kill', or most prospective STO players do not care.
-- Acyl
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#6
... Okay.

Quote:the reality is, about a third of all the powers in the live build are either buggy, broken, or just plain suck.

... Why was this game considered ready to launch again?

-Morgan.
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#7
*Casts Summon Jurassik, hands Jurassik giant Nerf club with 'Jack Emmert' on it* I'll just have Mr. J here on standby for the next time they pull
an ED or Purple patch level nerf on CO Smile
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#8
Morganni Wrote:... Okay.
Quote:the reality is, about a third of all the powers in the live build are either buggy, broken, or just plain suck.
... Why was this game considered ready to launch again? 
  
Seriously? Bear in mind that the CO launch was already delayed once. Delaying it again would have probably ticked off both a) fans, and b) shareholders.
-- Acyl
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#9
I'm... horribly amused by all this, actually.

Champions has never really been on my radar. It's one of those things that I said "Eh, if a free trial comes my way I'll take a look, but
otherwise, meh." Kinda like EVE Online. (Fear! Loathing!)

So I toddle on over to the forums just to see for myself what all the FLAMES AND CHAOS are about... and I swear -- I swear! -- I thought I'd clicked
incorrectly and wound up in the City of Heroes forums!

^_^

Now, I showed up on the CoX scene just before the Invention system was introduced, so I missed the epic Armageddon that was ED's introduction. But
still... this is bringing back memories.

I won't say it's Emmert. I won't. Though the given *reasons* for the nerf sound suspiciously like his infamous quote about heroes and dumpsters.

CO will survive, I'm sure. It's got enough backing to keep it alive for a year, at least. But I'm SO DAMN GLAD we have *our* devs, that the
apparent morons went with Jack while the smart guys stuck with NCSoft. Because, yeah, I could see our devs pulling a stunt like this?

But they've proven that they have the balls to admit it and *fix* it. Quickly. Smile

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
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#10
*Idly wanders over to check out the madness.* Huh, the game and site are down for emergency maintenance. This will lead to yelling and grumpiness Tongue
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#11
I....I'm just....boggled.

Boggled.

It's not a schadenfreude moment. I'm not happy that CoH's competition fumbled the ball. I have no real emotional investment in this situation....except for one.

I'm utterly boggled at the scope of this. It's like the guy that robs an ATM with a hardhat with his name and workplace on it to avoid being seen by the camera. It's like any number of incredibly massive ways of fumbling the ball to the point that you can't help but think they should be given an award for screwing it up so badly. I'm still processing the extent to which they screwed up.

I'm sure I'll laugh hysterically when I finally work my way through it all. But for now.....boggle.
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."
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#12
Some of the nerfs they hit with I was okay with. The slowing down of XP was reasonable, considering in the previous state I could miss massive amounts of
content (not a bad thing) in my meteoric rise (bad thing) to 40.

The reduction of some of the defense levels I do agree with. I ran into builds that could go up against Super Villains (basically an EB) and IDLE without being
particularly threatened.

However, as is usual for Jack, he went way overboard, and it won't be until Cryptic is pushed out of management of the MMO that things get back to being
fun.
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#13
Mind you, there's at least one fellow on Cryptic's forums who claims he's a long-time CoH player...and is crossing over to their new titles because he likes Jack Emmert, and liked CoH before NCsoft took over.
-- Acyl
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#14
Good for him, take care, don't let the door hit you, blah blah etc Tongue

Seriously though, this is the worst thing that could have happened with CO's launch. It's not the death knell for the game or anything so dramatic.
I'm sure that sales of the game won't be too badly effected by this, if they are at all. What's so bad about it is that it sets the scene for the
players expectations, and in a game based around a long term financial plan like MMO's are, that's critical.

In terms of public relations, Champions Online has always been crippled from the word go, because of Jack Emmert. Now, regardless of what he's done right
or wrong in the past, the man has a reputation among CoH players, and it's not a good one. Lots of people that play MMO's can find this out all too
easily, and that makes them worry about the game they're expected to pay rent on every month. Now, like it or not, this game has started to get a similar
status applied to it, regardless of if it was simply a lapse in judgment or the classic Emmert 'play my way or not at all!'

... Screwing up and killing the game for about twenty four hours was ALSO a dumbass stunt :lol
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#15
Well, in the interests of fairness...
...it should be stressed that the only people affected by the changes are folks who've been playing since open beta and the official headstart. Everyone who started playing the game on launch day wouldn't have experienced how the game was like before.
Unfortunately, those headstart folks are also likely to be the most vocal and most hardcore players...otherwise they wouldn't have been there before launch.
Of course, not everyone is unhappy with the nerfs - many folks are saying they are justified, and the game was too easy before...as JPub pointed out, in fact.
But any sweeping nerf, no matter how legitimate, is gonna cause bad publicity.
Even if I were to buy the game now and log in...I'm gonna see the official forums and in-game chat filled with unhappy players. Doesn't matter that I never played the game before, and ain't personally affected by the nerf. I'll know the game was nerfed, and I'll also know that many players are unhappy.
Cryptic has just issued a full respec (or a full retcon, in their game terminology) for all characters created before the launch patch.
But they should have done that from day one. It's nice that they responded to player demands for free respecs in a reasonably quick fashion, but folks shouldn't have had to demand respecs at all. Even a couple days later is still a couple days too late
And it only addresses one complaint - the claim that 'my character was screwed up by this change, and I can't fix it'. Well, now folks can fix it. But they were still screwed up. It was a screwup that also came without any warning or consultation. No matter how you swing it, players are gonna be miffed about such things.
-- Acyl
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#16
Exactly. Bad publicity is not what an MMO needs in its first week of operation. It's a competitive market these days.
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#17
Mm-hm.

Still, it's too early to determine the fallout from this. Indeed, since nerf happened at launch for Champions, we'll never be able to determine how
much the game's success (or failure) was affected by this incident. It'll be hidden by all the other factors.

's personally vexing for me because, while I have no interest in Champions, I do want to play Star Trek Online when that comes out. I have no issue with
Cryptic's competence with regards to game design - but their public relations and community management continues to be Epic Fail.
-- Acyl
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#18
Yeah. I was honestly hoping that it would do well specifically so that the competition would encourage improvement in CoH... this is really disappointing.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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#19
It may still do well; likely the continued influx of new people - it is still a fresh MMO - will outweigh the ZOMG RAGEQUIT. But I dunno. We'll see.
This stuff...is not a death knell, as Matrix Dragon rightly pointed out.
But it isn't a good sign.
-- Acyl
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#20
This thread about pointing out COs failure caused me to check CoH's boards to see if the hate/run on AE has lost it's luster yet. Yeah that's a no.

ON TOPIC: Our Devs/management is a bit quicker on the ball than COs seem to be.
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#21
Acyl Wrote:Seriously? Bear in mind that the CO launch was already delayed once. Delaying it again would have probably ticked off both a) fans, and b) shareholders.

Maybe they'd have been better off.

You know, my thoughts when I considered CO was "What experience is this going to offer me that another game doesn't already?"

This isn't a good answer...

-Morgan.
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#22
As I said to a friend while snarky:

"I'll hold off on any free trial of the game until they work out what they want their game to be."
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A method to their madness?
#23
It's been said never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but I think you might be underestimating malice here. Or
sneakiness, at any rate. Was the whole 'oh, we're all out of lifetime memberships' thing a horrible oversight, or was it a calculated publicity
stunt? I don't know, but I do know people who bought the lifetime membership when it was brought back who'd had no plans to do so before they 'ran
out' briefly.

So, a possible scenario:

Open Beta; defenses are overpowered, XP and loot rewards are set too high. Result? People playing the game think it's easier (or they're better at
playing it) than is actually going to be the case. Makes pre-order customers more likely to plunk down some money on a six month or lifetime membership,
especially given the discounts.

Opening day; survivability and the rate of advancement both take a hit, making the game much grindier (I henceforth declare grindier a word) and more in
keeping with Jack Emmet's idea of how hard the game should be. The people who bought lifetime or six-month subscriptions are already locked in. Anybody who
wasn't there for the pre-order/open beta probably won't care about the furor. MMOs are always being tweaked, and the tweaks always annoy people.

This annoys me. But when it comes right down to it, I would rather have them make drastic changes early, before I invest time in the game. I never even got to
the point where I had the uber-powerful passive defenses, so I really can't work up much outrage about the whole thing. The I6 tanker nerf? Still not cool.
The irony that Jack Emmet is responsible for both is not lost on me, I assure you.

It's been my opinion in the past that the competition between City of Heroes and Champions Online would likely make both of them better games than they
would be otherwise. I still think that's the case. But this did remind me that Jack Emmet being at the helm was one of my big reservations about Champions.
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