Maintenance Wednesday Night, 1/15 10pm PST (Finished)

trailturtle · January 2014

Maintenance this week is going to be Wednesday night, rather than on Thursday morning. This week is just a restart.

Start time: 10pm PST
Estimated duration: 1 - 2 hours

Update 1: (2:50 PM PST) We will be performing account server maintenance during this time as well. This is why we will be performing maintenance tonight instead of the usual time. - Dwight
Update 2: (10:04 PM PST) Maintenance has begun
Update 3: (11:20 PM PST) Maintenance has completed. Welcome back Champions!

ninjapiff · January 2014

Another restart? Darn.

Any idea when we'll get a new 'Storyline' (you know, like the FATAL ERR0R one) or anything like that? I mean, I'm not looking for specific promises, just vague estimations. :rolleyes:

C'mon, give a dog a bone!

Also, what's up with the weird timing? Really quite strange.

cyrone · January 2014

Yet more time going by since bringing to light the issue about PFF. Gentleman Crush has told me it's been passed to CN. This is really starting to cause me to believe that it'll never get fixed.

flyingfinn · January 2014

Maintenance at wednesday????
Are we getting something major Patching at Thursdays' Maintenance???

jonsills · January 2014

flyingfinn wrote: »

Maintenance at wednesday????
Are we getting something major Patching at Thursdays' Maintenance???

Looks like they're just responding to all those folks in Europe who complained that our US patch times were in the middle of their prime playing time. Hopefully, this will work out for everyone.

trailturtle · January 2014

This isn't going to be an ongoing thing, just this particular time it worked out better to have a 10pm maintenance.

mrhinkypunk · January 2014

cyrone wrote: »

Yet more time going by since bringing to light the issue about PFF. Gentleman Crush has told me it's been passed to CN. This is really starting to cause me to believe that it'll never get fixed.

Many other powers are broken, it isn't just PFF. I know you really want it to be fixed but having to read the same feedback about this on everything even if it's nothing to do with the OP it's kinda like "oh this again."

jonsills · January 2014

Hey, it worked for the Telepathy pass, and goatees with half-helms, so...

#FixPFFNow!

:biggrin:

agentnx5 · January 2014

To this topic:

Why the weekly restarts? Is the server code that unstable that it needs it? I mean if it's preventative, that's cool, but I'm honestly curious as to why.

mrhinkypunk wrote: »

cyrone wrote:

Yet more time going by since bringing to light the issue about PFF. Gentleman Crush has told me it's been passed to CN. This is really starting to cause me to believe that it'll never get fixed.

Many other powers are broken, it isn't just PFF. I know you really want it to be fixed but having to read the same feedback about this on everything even if it's nothing to do with the OP it's kinda like "oh this again."

You know... IMP has a point here.

I want it to be fixed too, but it's more than just a bug with PFF. In fact, some specializations have been broken for over a year. Some description are broken, and Telepathic Reverb and Overdrive have broken-ness issues as well. Oh yeah, and Aspect of the Bestial has broken ranks 2 and 3. And that's just the stuff that's bugged, that not to mention things like END being a useless stat, the Auction House GUI being of horrible design quality and glitchy, or even discussion about balances between powers or how Tier 4 "Ultimate" powers (except for Unleashed Rage of course, which works just fine) are so incredibly weak (despite the restrictions on them). Oh yeah, and the server disconnects and lag associated with Cryptic's ISP.

There's a lot of stuff broken which NEEDS to get fixed as much as PFF. Why don't you mention them all equally? Do you remember how Jaybezz / Gamehobo used to complain constantly about #TelepathyNow specifically? Like in almost every post? You're starting to sound like that. PFF has no relation to a topic announcing the reason for the current outage being a basic server restart, you just wanted to hammer it home once more. Yes please, let's get this bug fixed. No really, I've got your back on that. But please please stop just rehashing one small piece of the puzzle when in fact we have several bug issues that need to be addressed.

If it makes you feel any better, it can typically take weeks for them to make changes they view as "non-critical". Which sucks when it affects you directly, I know. I've been there before. Heck there's some bugs that I'm still waiting for a fix on that affect my characters. But over the past two or three years I've very very rarely ever seen Cryptic hustle to get a bug fixed. Not sure if that's really a positive, but I want you to understand that they're not necessarily ignoring you, you might have to wait patiently.

Hey, it worked for the Telepathy pass, and goatees with half-helms, so...

#FixPFFNow!

#FixKnockbackResistFailureBugFirst! :rolleyes:

(i.e.: you can easily juggle somebody with Force Geyser 3 times before the immunity code kicks in, and you can easily get blasted over and over bouncing around by a VIPER power-armor using rockets. Or a NPC with a shotgun. Or an NPC with a grenade. Or an NPC using Iron Cyclone. Etc. Etc. Etc.)

Now to TrailTurtle:

I can, have (as evidenced by my Zen wallet history), and shall continue to support this game financially each time I see bug fixing going on. Auras are cool bells & whistles, but they're not the nuts & bolts that are in need or repair, nor the new innovative content we can run around and explore (read new places, revamped existing zone rewards, new PvP maps and revamped rewards, increased incentives for doing long mission content such as Aftershock, etc.). I kind of needed some more Zen so I could buy keys to sell on the market for globals/gold/resources, but it looks like I'll have to wait another week, again.

circleofpsi · January 2014

No updates?......Move along people

cyrone · January 2014

mrhinkypunk wrote: »

Many other powers are broken, it isn't just PFF. I know you really want it to be fixed but having to read the same feedback about this on everything even if it's nothing to do with the OP it's kinda like "oh this again."

See...that's my issue though. I was pretty much the only driving force to get the power itself brought up to par with other defensives...for almost a year. It got brought up, fixed - if you would, and a recent update to it broke it again.

I've even shared my build with the devs at their request to get some work done with fixing it. Still nothing.

If this were Invuln or any of the other popular defensives or everyone's beloved offensive passives then this would've already been fixed. So, regardless of what anyone says, I will make one mention of it every time there's a maintenance or an update to the PTS but I'm not going to turn into one of those people who brings it up every chance I get.

Edit:

In all honesty, if they roll back whatever change they did to PFF, which was to cause break free effects to damage the shield (which the regen out healed at the time), then it would be fine.

Also, I'm aware of many of the bugs and things not working as intended. Yes, let's get everything fixed. *glares at Teleport slow fall glitch that's been in game since Beta*

theravenforce · January 2014

You know guys, in some instances, persistence does pay off.

I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been as persistent as I was with the August New Telepathy Bugs, most of them would likely still be in game and CoS would likely -not- have an icon or work correctly (it seems to be bugging out again though). (And yes, we are still waiting on SoD and Mind Break to have SFX's and for the new telepathy powers to be linked up to Telepathic Reverberation since a year ago amongst other things.) And I could still be waiting for New Telepathy....

Personal Force Field Passive, was broken with break free generated by self killing off shields, once that was fixed up, this bug appeared, and frankly it is pretty crippling for drawn out battles.

Why this is taking a long time I am not entirely sure, I'm not a developer nor do I work for PWE/Cryptic but I do hope that very soon this bug and others are fixed.

Perhaps they could be set aside for a "BugsplatathonTM" like we had last time which was a great help. Ideally fixing them ASAP would be the best for players, but it does honestly seem like Telepathy and PFF get the short end of the straw so to speak, just an observation.

lordhavelock · January 2014

#FixPFFNow! +1

Thanks.

:redface:

cyrone · January 2014

lordhavelock wrote: »

#FixPFFNow! +1

Thanks.

:redface:

I am not taking responsibility for this. Hashtag statements are silly.

jonsills · January 2014

cyrone wrote: »

I am not taking responsibility for this. Hashtag statements are silly.

Well, yes - that's why I accompanied mine with a :biggrin:.

I take it the smiley wasn't quite big enough, because it looks like someone took me seriously. (That's usually a mistake.

)

cyrone · January 2014

jonsills wrote: »

Well, yes - that's why I accompanied mine with a :biggrin:.

I take it the smiley wasn't quite big enough, because it looks like someone took me seriously. (That's usually a mistake. )

:biggrin: I've learned through our time here not to take you too seriously.

tau41 · January 2014

cyrone wrote: »

If this were Invuln or any of the other popular defensives

I gotta cut you off right there because it wasn't until On Alert came out that Invuln was finally fixed. It's not that the power was broken as is the case with PFF of course, it was just tied to two stats that were not conducive to tanking. Or Power Armor. And then there's Regen, which has been OP or broken every other patch. And actually, while LR has always been decent, they keep fiddling with how dodge works at a fundamental level, which has lead to many cases where LR was fine, but you'd get murdered anyways.

PFF of course has been broken for far longer than that. IMO, it needs a treatment similar to Night Warrior, where taking the passive gives you another power-a PFF heal on a CD. There are lots of people who've wanted to use it, and several who use it anyways. Those dumb things of switching zones to just have your PFF get zeroed out make the situation that much worse (which I don't know if that's still going on). My guess is it's tricky to balance and they have bigger fish to fry. I do hope they fix it, but considering how heavily it's fallen out of favor due to being always broken, I imagine there's a very small slice of people actually using it, which puts it low on the priorities list. It's rapidly falling into Catch 22 territory.

cyrone · January 2014

tau41 wrote: »

I gotta cut you off right there because it wasn't until On Alert came out that Invuln was finally fixed..

Yet, when it was fixed it didn't break again.

theravenforce · January 2014

tau41 wrote: »

I gotta cut you off right there because it wasn't until On Alert came out that Invuln was finally fixed.

Perhaps, but no other passive perhaps besides CoS has had so much trouble with being fixed and staying that way, and even CoS is working and it comes from -Telepathy- of all sets.

PFF of course has been broken for far longer than that. IMO, it needs a treatment similar to Night Warrior, where taking the passive gives you another power-a PFF heal on a CD. There are lots of people who've wanted to use it, and several who use it anyways. Those dumb things of switching zones to just have your PFF get zeroed out make the situation that much worse (which I don't know if that's still going on). My guess is it's tricky to balance and they have bigger fish to fry. I do hope they fix it, but considering how heavily it's fallen out of favor due to being always broken, I imagine there's a very small slice of people actually using it, which puts it low on the priorities list. It's rapidly falling into Catch 22 territory.

I've suggested a Night Warrior Button solution for PFF in the past, nothing came of it yet, although it has been considered.

It was explained that PFF dropping to Zero on Zone switch was intended as apparently, all powers reset when re-zoning, in PFF's case the shielding resets.

It seems that I'm unlucky in this sense then, both the powersets that I favour very much seem to either be lacklustre, broken or simply utilizing a dead mechanic...lol.

tau41 · January 2014

cyrone wrote: »

Yet, when it was fixed it didn't break again.

You're under the impression they ever fixed PFF is the thing. It's been getting improved, but whatever improvements they've done, it hasn't been 'fixed' yet, whatever anyone says to the contrary.

For my money, PFF takes too many powers to be a functional power. If you take PFF, you WILL take Field Surge, and you're likely to bolster it with PF or MR, in addition to whatever self heals you'd normally take. Do force fields still not receive any benefit from your defenses? That's another serious problem.

And yeah Raven, I really think a Night Warrior style solution is the only way to fix the fundamental issue underpinning the entire discussion-to make having a Shield feel super powered, you need to have a way to refill it. In fact, a better way to look at it might be how they did Shields in STO with BOFF abilities which give a spike of healing, improve their regeneration, and sometimes bolster their DR.

Bah. We should be having this chat in the Suggestions forum.

cyrone · January 2014

tau41 wrote: »

For my money, PFF takes too many powers to be a functional power. If you take PFF, you WILL take Field Surge, and you're likely to bolster it with PF or MR, in addition to whatever self heals you'd normally take. Do force fields still not receive any benefit from your defenses? That's another serious problem.

You must know know me well enough to be making statements like this. I rarely, if ever, use Field Surge and will drop the power entirely when the regen gets fixed. I don't use any other shields other than what PFF gives (and the occasional Field Surge), I don't use self heals because my shield hardly ever breaks and yes, PFF itself benefits from Defense/Dodge/Avoid/Absorb. PFF is layered just above HP on the mitigation order.

theravenforce · January 2014

tau41 wrote: »

For my money, PFF takes too many powers to be a functional power. If you take PFF, you WILL take Field Surge, and you're likely to bolster it with PF or MR, in addition to whatever self heals you'd normally take. Do force fields still not receive any benefit from your defenses? That's another serious problem.

PFF, I will admit is a more defend-your-passive power than any other defensive passive. But.

Your misconception here is that you need PF/MR/Field Surge to make PFF work. I rarely use Field Surge on ForceGirl and if I ever do, it's because I have taken a phenomenal amount of damage to my shields.

As I have said before, PFF would benefit from either the button solution, or some form of damage resistance (either in the form of Damage resistance, absorb and flat ignore or deflection). But it would also benefit from having ways to keep it at above 50% almost permanently, I say this because no other defensive passive can be removed in combat, and PFF does not provide any resistance to damage after shield is gone. Once it is gone...it's you by yourself.

My issue is also the amount of weakness PFF is subjected to by the most rampant organization in CO, namely VIPER.

And yeah Raven, I really think a Night Warrior style solution is the only way to fix the fundamental issue underpinning the entire discussion-to make having a Shield feel super powered, you need to have a way to refill it. In fact, a better way to look at it might be how they did Shields in STO with BOFF abilities which give a spike of healing, improve their regeneration, and sometimes bolster their DR.

Bah. We should be having this chat in the Suggestions forum.

I've tossed ideas for PFF around forever now, if CN decide to focus on bettering powers then, I do hope they look at my suggestions, cause really, a number of things need to be looked at, with PFF being one of those things.

Maintenance Wednesday Night, 1/15 10pm PST (Finished)

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