Lots of debate lately about past Issue releases and why so many long-time CoHers are jaded toward patches. These folks are wary of the new releases, as if they expect a crazy Cryptic developer to jump outta the bushes and whack them with the much-feared Nerf Bat.

A large portion of the current CoH/CoV player base is relatively new to the game, having started with CoV or a few months before with the advent of PvP in I4. So the changes in I4 and since really haven't hit them that hard, and while I'd argue that 90% of the changes and nerfs have been good for the game as a whole, I do find it easy to sympathize with the Issue X naysayers.

So consider this a Journey Into CoH History from Old Man Hero, a veteran of CoH beta. Come aboard. We're expecting you...

City of Heroes Goes Live!

"Dude, those tights are a little, ummmmm, tight. I can tell what religion you are, if you get my drift."

CoH launch went off without a hitch, and it wasn't just the genre that was new to the MMO community. It was also the first major MMO release to be based in a world much like our own. The first seven zones are impressive cityscapes, and the hazard zones help define the game's backstory.

Oh, and you got to feel kinda heroic from Day One. No fighting rats and bats for 10 levels in CoH. It's zombies, robots, and gang members right from the jump, and people really dug it.

Given the game's quick pace with no down time or time sinks, powergamers gobbled up the first 40 levels in no time. But the majority moved through the content as intended and generally loved it, making CoH a critical and commercial success right out of the gate.

Then, before anyone knew what hit them...


Issue 1: Through the Looking Glass

"What? Already? I still can't tell a bind from a macro."

Issue 1 hit the live servers a couple months after launch, which was faster than anyone anticipated. They raised the level cap to 50 and added plenty of content to get you there. New zones (Peregrine Island, Rikti Crash Site), new villain groups (Carnival/Praetorians/Malta), the Sewer Trial, instanced outdoor missions, and Icon opened its doors, allowing for multiple costumes. As far as content patches go, this one was perfect.

And that it came so damn fast and was free to boot? Cryptic was setting the MMO world on fire with its commitment to ongoing development and unsurpassed communication with its players.


Issue 2: A Shadow of the Past

"Look, I only created this female toon to watch her butt all day, and now you want me to cover it with a cape? Blasphemy!"

September 16th, 2004. Less than 6 months after the game's launch, another major content patch hit the live servers. People remember it as the Capes & Auras patch, but there was a lot more to it than that.

First of all, the Terra Volta Trial opened the door for character respecification. I don't think I need to elaborate on the impact of the Respec Trial. Suffice it to say that prior to this patch, if you made mistakes or glaring omissions in your build, you were outta luck.

Secondly, yes, the capes and auras. More visual customization to the best character creation in the industry was just icing on the cake. Auras got (and still get) mixed reviews because of the perceived redundancy when stacked with toggles that already have visual effects of their own that can't be turned off. But capes were rendered amazingly and went over very well with the player community.

Third, even more new zones. Sometimes people forget that I2 was the birthplace of The Hollows and The Shadowshard (with 4 expansive subzones), which added a ton of new content at both ends of the level spectrum.

Badges and Accolades also showed up in I2, as well as new chat features, the Exemplar option, new villains (Igneous/Rularuu), The Eden Trial, The Cavern of Transcendence Trial, and the LFT system. And the real kicker for I2 is that Cryptic was so confident about its stability (a little overconfident as it turned out) that they released I2 and started a major server-wide event on the same day (The Rularuu Invasion).

So how cool was Issue 2? Is "perfecter" a word?


Issue 3: A Council of War

"Get this straightjacket off me! I'm not crazy! I REALLY SAW FLYING SQUIDS! I SWEAR!"

The big additions in I3 were Kheldians, Epic Power Pools, and Striga Island, but let's not forget the big one. That's right, folks. I3 was the I-Can-Now-Hit-Fleeing-Enemies-Without-Chasing-Them-All-Over-The-Damn-Map patch.

More important than that, however, was the genius of the development cycle up to that point. By I3, powergamers had already hit 50 at least once, if not three times. Cryptic never expressed any intentions of raising the cap, instead focusing on adding more content throughout the game to give a player something new to experience on their next trek to 50.

The first two patches embraced that concept, and though there wasn't as much new content in I3, the introduction of Kheldians allowed for an entirely different 1-to-50 experience. Peacebringers and Warshades could be built literally hundreds of different ways and still be viable, and the added bonus of a Level 1 travel power along with more overall powers to choose from, gave the 50-cappers enough to keep them interested.

There were content additions aside from Striga, however. The Ghost Ship, Lusca, and Paladin were added as random zone events, and The 5th Column was majorly revamped into The Council. I2 also saw the introduction of the Mission Difficulty system, Elite Bosses, and a new supergroup window. Global Chat was pushed back some, but was considered part of the I3 development.

Cryptic chose again to chase an Issue release with a server-wide event, but this one introduced its share of problems. The Winter Event spawned Winter Lord giants in nearly every zone, and with the I3 changes to how monsters worked (everyone can fight a monster regardless of level), you could participate in Winter Lord fights at level 1 and easily reach level 20 in a couple of hours because they yielded thousands in experience per kill. I'm not sure why it took them so long to remove this from the live servers, but it was a huge distraction from what was otherwise a great patch (can you tell I hate powerlevelling?).

So new Issues were still coming fast and furious (I3 debuted about 14 weeks after I2) and were packed with new goodies. Cryptic was still kicking butts and taking names.


Issue 4: Colosseum

"You take the good, you take the bad, you take 'em both and there you have a boatload of nerfs and an empty Arena."

This is where the wheels came off the bus. I'm not going to get into the whole nerf debate because it's all subjective.

So let's stick to the simple truth about I4: The Arena was a bust.

There, I said it. It just didn't work. 2 weeks after I4 went live, the Arenas were mostly deserted. I can't explain why it didn't work because, again, it's subjective. You either like PvP or you don't, and even if you do it's gotta be challenging and entertaining. Personally, I didn't find Arena PvP to be either of those things. Maybe others loved it, but they certainly weren't frequenting the Arena for whatever reason.

I4 introduced a lot in the way of nerfs, and most of it was geared toward PvP balance. The advent of PvP would make the sacrifice worth it. But if PvP is a bust, if no one's using the Arenas, then all you're left with is the nerfs. Now, given their future plans for CoV and PvP zones, this was a growing pain that eventually had to happen. Like I said up front, I think the balance they've achieved now is really terrific.

At the time of I4, however, it sucked. It felt like nerfs for the sake of nerfs. There was no payoff.

I4 wasn't all bad, but what it lacked was content. The new costumes, body scaling, and coalition chat features were outstanding, but there was nothing new to do if you're not a PvP fan or didn't like the Arena.

So now they had a problem. It'd been 4 months since the last Issue release, the Winter Lord situation saw hundreds of characters skyrocket through the first 20 or 30 levels of content without leaving Atlas Park or Galaxy City (including the new Kheldian toons), and Striga content wasn't enough to keep everyone interested. CoH isn't Everquest, so without the immersive time sinks it's all about devouring new content, and all I4 delivered was nerfs and PvP.

People started leaving the game. I was part of one of Pinnacle's largest supergroups, and prior to I4 we had 5 SGs going to hold all of our players and alts, along with a few themed groups for giggles. After the debut of I4 up to the first few weeks of I5, our supergroup, a group that made Pinnacle's Top 5 during the 1st Anniversary polls, had all but folded. Most moved back to games they'd played before, and others moved on to WoW.

It's hard to look back and see the virtue in I4, but it was there. Like I said, it wasn't all bad, and I definitely admire the effort Cryptic put into developing it because you know that was a ton of work. That a large portion of it fizzled is unfortunate, and I can certainly see why so many people didn't like it.


Issue 5: Forest of Dread

"Hey, new powers! And look, a new zone! Wait... Where did everyone go?"

Things got back on track with I5, but not so you'd notice. There were some more nerfs, but I think by then it was far more clear what Cryptic's vision was when it came to balance. So while there was a lot of moaning and groaning, the I5 changes were mostly good ones in terms of overall balance. Still, no one likes a nerf. Better to never have something at all than to have it for well over a year and have someone come along and take it away.

The new Sonic and Archery powersets were nice, but really didn't offer much in the way of new gameplay. An Archery Blaster, for example, didn't feel all that different than an Assault Rifle Blaster. Nice to have more power choices and new animations, but it didn't really amount to much when it came to keeping long-time players interested.

Croatoa, on the other hand, was booster shot of content that put us in mind of the first few Issues. New villains, some interesting missions, and a fun task force was just what the doctor ordered. New mission types, zone events, and an updated debt system didn't hurt either.

Unfortunately, it was a clearly a case of too little, too late. The damage had been done. The population (at least on the servers I play on) had dropped quite a bit, and with CoV in the offing, it seemed as though many players were just biding time until the new game debuted.

Issue 5 was the swan song for CoH content patches up to now. I6 and I7 haven't done a whole lot for CoH except opening up the PvP window to CoV. And while I do enjoy CoV quite a bit, I still prefer the hero side.

It's hard to get a feel for how large the player base is now because it's so spread out. The number of people playing heroes has dropped dramatically, to the point where if you're on an even-level team it's likely that you guys are half of the heroes that level online at that time. Not as bad on the villain side, but I can't say that I've been impressed with the numbers there, either.

A server consolidation is a can of worms they'll likely never open (the name issues alone would cause a riot), so I hope Cryptic keeps chugging along to keep the game viable for new players. I'd like to see an option to switch servers so that players can elect to move to one with a larger population, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Well, there it is, gang. CoH History through the eyes of a long-winded long-time player. If you're getting frustrated with all the naysayers on the boards crying about this, that, and the other thing, keep in mind that it's not entirely unreasonable to be a little jaded if you've been around a while.

CoH is still a fantastic game, and I'm looking forward to I7. But I drink entirely too much, so what the hell do I know?


Jags
The JagPot

Quite frankly, most people who have "problems" with the Issue releases are full of crap.
So far (I have experienced every Issue release)

They are not willing to make changes to how they play. Yes, there have been arch type changes. I have played many of the arch types, before and after all of the changes. The one thing I have experienced? Better game play EVERY time. Archtypes don't get "narfed". Players do. -and the constant whining is annoying.

If you don't like the game (not directed at the poster of the original message) then don't play it. Go away. Play WoW. Play EQ. Play DDO... Just shut the f**k up about how your favorite character is no longer playable. (It is playable, you just can't freaking adapt to the changes, which makes you a twit).

Sorry for the rant. But Not once have I seen a conclusive, constructive arguement about any of the Issue releases being bad.

Amen. Yeah.. noit an Arena fan.. but it's MY issue, not the game's.

Thank you for your enlightened, even-handed take on what was clearly an over-the-top rant which utterly lacked any balance and was only whining...

Oh wait. The other way around.

Go back to the forums until you learn basic courtesy, troll-bob.

And they still have not recovered. All servers, across the board, even CoV - still very laggy. I believe something in the arena code caused it, because I NEVER had lag before I4.

Sorry for the rant. But Not once have I seen a conclusive, constructive arguement about any of the Issue releases being bad.

Then you obviously don't read much.

Well I must disagree with you there on some level.
Granted, I agree that every powerset is playable, every character (as long as you make the proper adjustments when required) is playable. However there are TONS of people on the forums who have had problems with the Issue releases, and their player base is not full of crap or there would be no more CoH. Perhaps you should read their often valid complaints that usually lead to the devs changing things further before making such remarks.
Yes, the players have to adapt as i have. But too many changes that make players uncomfortable means more people leaving the game, which means less money goes to Cryptic, which means no more CoX.
If everyone decided they didn't like the game except for you, then you'd be the only one left, and there would be no one to play with, and no game to play on.
Secondly, learn some tact, some taste, learn how to be polite, you could have very easily ignored this post which was designed to show people the changes in the game, not the problems they have with it, or made a polite response without the swearing and ranting.
Like all MMOs, you need many players to truly enjoy the game, so cussing out to everyone doesn't make people want to play with you. Keep that in mind.

As for the poster, I thought this was well thought out and constructed. i remember all hose updates (except the first cause i joined in I1). I too dislike power-leveling. Thanks for your good post about the history of CoH.
I just hope that the player base grows more than it shrinks. They better think of some good new material for CoH (as opposed to just CoV) soon or there will only be villains left!

I2 also goes down in the books as "crashtastic," as it was the most bug-ridden issue released to date and the reason why the devs refuse to release things to Test, much less Live, until they feel it's solid.

I remember that sorta-fondly - the Rularuu invasion was pretty heavily lagged - one moment you're withering under the painful rays of giant floating eyes, then you're not, then you're dead, then you're mapservered.

Still, had a hell of a lot of fun with that. :)

This analysis expresses it perfectly: one month after I4 came out, parts of the game had begun to resemble a wasteland. The subscription numbers that were being touted did not match up with our experience.

Part of this, and something you overlooked, was that along with I3, we lost two servers' worth of subscribers, as the European servers all opened up. This improved the performance for them, but I noticed a severe drop in population at the same time, and a lot of the players were the most amusing and fun players I had known, especially the French supergroup on Freedom that played exaggerated stereotypes of various europeans, but did it in a funny way. And they only spoke french, not from arrogance but because their english wasn't that good.

Mind, the WinterLord PL-fests did attract a lot of transient people to the game. I'm not convinced that very many stuck around - having missed out on the beginning content, a lot of them were bad-mouthing the game as boring and without content.

The other problem: World of Warcraft debuted in Nov 2004, and was good enough that it could draw away people who became impatient with the nerfing (which we were already seeing on the test server) and the test strategy of 'bait and switch' had already begun to really annoy the more sophisticated gamers.

When I4 hit (May 4, 2005), it was more than just the tragedy of the arenas, and the nerfs to make PVP workable. That did cause some people to leave. The problem was that there was a long long time between May 4th 2005 and August 31st, 2005, which was when I5 was released. There wasn't a lot in the way of global events, or anything just-plain-fun to keep people's attention. On the other hand, Blizzard launched Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch in late June 2005, which sucked away players, especially any interested in PVP, from all the other games.

I5 and I6 (which I personally consider to be a two-step release of the same content) were viewed, on the side of the hero players who had no real interest in being villains, as a single new zone worth of really good content, a bunch of FAKE inherent powers to make up for the stuff we were seeing in CoV that really worked there, and a handful of new powersets that were generally good. Oh yeah, and a metric asston of nerfs, including a nerf to powers that happened in the wake of being told that there would be no more changing powers. All these nerfs actually were justified, for one reason or another, and the game is generally more playable.

First, they got rid of some of the more obnoxious abuses caused by poor programming/game design back in I2/3. Second, they adjusted the hero side to use the same power design framework as the villains, with inherent powers and such. Third, they made PVP possible and actually interesting, though of course they couldn't remove the asshattishness of a number of the PVP fiends.

The cost of these nerfs was twofold. First, by introducing ED after saying there would be no more changes to powers, Statesman lost the confidence of a large part of his playerbase. Many of us still consider that to have been spin doctoring and lying, or gross incompetence. Second, it became much much more difficult to make 'AT-bending' characters, and as a consequence, some ATs now have more builds that can no longer solo missions reasonably. It's now mandatory that you team up for a lot of stuff that wasn't, and that wouldn't be so much of a problem except that the servers really ARE a lot more sparsely populated than they were before, with half the players on the villain side.

/agree

First, by introducing ED after saying there would be no more changes to powers, Statesman lost the confidence of a large part of his playerbase. Many of us still consider that to have been spin doctoring and lying, or gross incompetence.

QFE

I was here for launch and i1, forced to take a 6 month break which meant I missed i2 and the launch of i3, and then have been back since mid i3, through issues 4, 5, and 6. Ehancement 'Diversification' still leaves a sour taste in my mouth. This, coupled with a few other statements and the perceived attitude of Jack Emmert means that I no longer trust Statesman or anything he say about the game. I have faith in the devs as a whole that they are trying their best to make the best game they can, but when it cone to Jack, I am of the opinion that either he's lying, or he somehow managed to create a great game at launch despite his best efforts.

You'll see a lot of long-time players being bitter about 'Fun' too, which is another Statesmanism.

I remain to be convinced that a few dozen forum drama queens are a large proportion of the playerbase. Actually talking to the playerbase in game suggests most people don't give a damn.

Frankly, at this point, I would care less about incontrovertible evidence that Emmert brought Nixon back from the dead to ask his advice on lying than I do about never having to read another "Statesman lied about ED! Wah! And he strangled my kitten!" whine.

This seems like a good place to ask...

What was the "infamous purple patch" that I've heard mentioned a few times?

*giggle* i wasn't around for it, but i've heard ALL about it... hopefully someone with far more knowledge about it can shed a little light for you... (and hopefully it will make you giggle too...having not to have lived through it >.>)

Once upon a time, your powers either hit, or they missed. There was a scale of how much damage you would do based on your level relative to mob level, but it seemed to be a linear progression. This meant a level 20 team, with good slotting, could take out level 30 enemies with relative ease and gain a crapload of experience very quickly.

The Purple Patch came and changed all that. Your powers would now work the same on relatively close level enemies, but as they higher level then you, you'd rapidly begin to function at a fraction of your effectiveness. At +5 levels to you, your powers worked at 1% effectiveness.

Yes. 1% effectiveness on powers to a +5 enemy.

The playerbase revolted. The only thing that saw a louder and more hate-filled response from the player base was the first hasten nerf, which had people calling for the resignation of Geko.

The dev team quickly backpedaled and changed the system to what we have today. We still have the diminishing scale, but we don't bottom out until +8 levels now.

thank you for that, as some one relativly new to the game. i came to heros round about the time they were releasing villains (heroes was cheap in hmv) i found this very interesting and informative.

And this is where we start to see a difference based on power sets. I've played a Martial Arts/Regeneration scrapper since launch. I don't see the various issues anymore based on what new content they've put out. I see the various issues based on how badly they fucked over my secondary.

Oh, tosh. Right now my MA/Regen feels like an unstoppable force of nature half the time. If it was more powerful before it was overpowered.

Every other scrapper secondary's a useful defense, not a free ticket to immortality. Regen just have to get used to being like that too.

I have a level 30 spines/regen that I rolled Jan 2005 (I3?). He just got instant healing recently so I never experienced him with it as a toggle.

My thoughts: regen has constant healing, constant end recovery, a click heal, dull pain, one of the best mez protections in the game and a really beefcake healing rate increase. With some combination of dull pain, instant healing and reconstruction, I tanked Maestro and Burkholder. I just did a mission yesterday and tanked a red Red Cap boss, two orange lts and a bunch of yellow minions. Not only can I tank them, but I can take them down quickly, which a tank would have trouble doing. I don't have any other characters that could do that easily. My kin/energy couldn't even take down one orange Red Cap lt + two yellow minions, but he doesn't have fulcrum shift yet. My rad/rad might be to survive the same encounters, but I wouldn't be able to mow them down as easily.

I'm not trying to start anything here, but I wanted to point out that not everyone feels underpowered with /regen.

I think on the EU servers though, Arena fights got used much more often, even if only it was because they ran the mightily fun S4 competition. Which was more fun than a can of badgers.

And you forgot about the new stuff with I6 (Destiny manifest) - grinding PvP missions is great XP and some nifty stuff you can pull out of it too.

Side note: I7 = Destiny Manifest. I6 = Along Came a Spider. :)

I really don't have much to add because everyone else has said pretty much what I've been thinking. Personally, I've been excited about each and every update, even if I didn't get a chance to see some of it.

You look at the game now, and man, there's a lot of content to go through. You've got the dreaded Hollows for low levelers. You've got PvP zones, some kind of monster showing up in nearly every zone, etc.

I think the devs could afford to remove the arenas now, as they were essentially a way to test PvP to make way for CoV.

There are some things that I believe should be added:
1) A low level task force in the Atlas/Galaxy City area. Hell, Galaxy City's only use is badges and the arena. Put the Task Force in there. Make it level 6-10 or something like that.

2) Trenchcoats, but that's been asked since the beginning.

3) Some way to continue to reward those at level 50. Without the XP, is there really much motivation for these people to do things like the Shadowshard stuff?

4) A task force for Brickstown using the prison. Or a trial or something. Come on, you've got that massively HUGE building right there. A prison break attempt. A hostage situation. Something where we can see the prison. They've got the designs for a prison with the opening of CoV.

Now, I've loved this game ever since it was announced. I've played the beta and been casually playing it ever since. So casually, in fact, that I have yet to get a single player up to level 50 in two years. That's because I'll take breaks from the game, and when I do play, I love just playing the actual content.

.... what he said. (seriously, would so love a Zig TF)

I've had characters 'nerfed' the only one I even put on hold due to changes was Raye Gunn, and that's only because I knew the changes were going to be rolled back (sorta. change is still there, but another change balances it out so it is as good or better in some cases than before) in i7, but even there, I caved and played her anyway, and it wasn't so bad. If I didn't know the changes were going to be reversed, I would have just kept playing her. Have done it before, you find ways of dealing, and it never ends up being as big a deal as the forum drama queens will have you believe....

and hey, i7, lots of buffs going around! even if some of it is patching up problms caused by past nerfs... Bodyguard, improved animations, defense scaling (my Ice tan take on hazard zone spawn +3's!), End draining is viable on bosses again, etc. a couple 'nerfs' but relatively minor.

I loved the post. Great outlook on the game's history for a relatively new player like me.

I'd been interested in CoH when I first heard about it, but was still very skeptical of MMOs. I caught a PC gaming magazine's features about City of Villains, and how they were offering a 30-day trial, last September, and thats where it all began for me. I got started not long after I5 hit, but I became a suscriber asap. I'd have to say CoV really lured me in, and I've put in a good number of hours in that - so much, that in the future, my CoV time may totally eclipse my CoH time, but having just got to 50 and playing with Kheldian's, I can't see myself leaving the game anytime soon. I LOVE the CoX community, compared to others like WoW, Guild Wars, and EQ, and more or less, its the people that I play with everyday that I find myself coming back for. I cannot complain about the content really, because this is the first MMO I've suscribed to and I eat up everything thrown at me, even ED.

I can't deny that there are a lot less people though. I lost practically an entire SG of players who became so angered or afraid of what they came to understand about ED. I pay attention to the pessimists, but I don't often let that sway my opinion on the game today and where it could be going.

So, having tried out I7, I'm looking foward to it greatly.

Look again. "That isn't the quote that had everyone pissed of though." Reading comprehension could be your friend, if you were to meet.

I freely admit that I might be wrong, but my memory says that post took a while to come out after the initial presentation of ED. I recall more than one rah-rah post by a red-name on the Forums, telling us how In The New Glorious Future Of ED, All Animals Will Be Equal.
It was revealed that ED had been on the internal test servers for six months. Meanwhile what we were testing on the player test server was incomplete and our testing was irrelevant. We had been told outright that the changes we'd seen on the test server were the end of the major changes to powers. Why I don't trust Emmert to tell me the truth: ED was a major change to powers. He knew it was there, it had been there for six months on their server, and he said there wouldn't be further changes, while preparing the spin on the next power change. Oh, but changes to enhancements aren't changes to powers? Really? And the result of changing them is that powers work differently? Really? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

I don't trust Emmert to tell the truth any more.
THAT is what I said at the outset, before you went off on your self-triggered censorious rant about how horrible "TEHWHINEREZ" are.

I never 'pretended' that it said Build Diversification. What Emmert and company said was that they found in datamining that there were a handful of builds that predominated for every AT, and that hardly anyone was using the secondary enhancements. (They didn't give any real hard numbers, of course, which is one reason I have trouble taking them at face value.) By removing the reward for those optimized builds, there would be a lot of different builds because people could use different enhancements. Well, the secondary enhancements seldom had enough effect to make them worthwhile. So, forcing people to slot stuff that doesn't do anything significant? Cosmetic. Does painting your car red or blue or green change how it performs?

Now as for your bullshit slam about arguing a strawman, "Build" is defined as "powers taken plus slots assigned and populated." That's what you get when you ask someone for their build here, and what you get when you ask for one on the CoX forums. So don't even try the mealie-mouthed "it really means something else" when trying to justify the results of ED.
Using up different tokens in different places is meaningless unless taken in the context of the character build. When you 'diversify' your stock portfolio, you get a lot of different stocks in it, but bottom line: if the additional stocks don't contribute a significant amount to the value of the portfolio they don't provide diversity.

Originally, people could slot ACC/5xDAM in a damage power, because they could get the effect of ACC/EndRed/Rech across ALL their powers, and 5xDAM had high returns.

Taking away the benefit of those last 2xDAM, reducing the Hasten benefit (2xRech or better, no longer can be permanent0), reducing the Stamina benefit (2xEndRed or better, now reduced to less than half that), and the new optimized, universal, everyone-gets-it allocation is now your vaunted ACC/EndRed/Rech/3xDAM slotting. Wow. It's all so ... diverse. All the grey blobs are now puce blobs.

I am an altoholic. I've tried a variety of different AT's. I keep trying to slot in secondary effect modifiers and finding that they don't have a noticeable effect. This doesn't encourage diversity, it encourages me to play something else.

The actual purpose of the change was to REBALANCE the enhancements, to make up for design errors and bad design fixes. Calling it Diversification is spin. Enhancement Rebalancing (it took me 30 seconds to come up with that name when I was asked what I would call it instead) would have led to lots of complaining about the need for Balance and the 'Balance Vision' - which happened anyway. I would have lost less respect for Emmert, although the up-front lie about making no changes was the major thing for me. Spin-doctoring the enhancement change was just the insult added to the injury.

So, it didn't bug you... Do you or did you spend a lot of time on the test server? That easily-dismissed minority of players who posted mostly-trash-talk were also the ones who would go on the test server every time a new issue was released, who would aggressively test everything, and who would report on the forum what they found.

Clearly not everyone who went to the test server posted, but just as clearly, the several hundred people who did so were the ones who felt invested in the game, who felt that they were part of the process. A handful of those were very detailed and very opinionated, but a few of that handful also had figures to back up their point.

A good part of their frustration and "whining" came from their discovery that they were not, in fact, a part of the process - that the things they found were being routinely ignored and sometimes even denied in the face of their tested figures.

I haven't bothered to go on test this time through because I don't think that anything I do there will matter in the least. I doubt that I will ever use it to do anything but test out a respec before I commit to it.

Moving on...
You're talking a lot about 50s. How often do you run lower level characters, I mean NEW toons?

My highest is at 43. I've got a LOT of toons in the under-20 range, and a handful in the late 20s to early 30s.

So you know, except for my deliberate attempt to make my DM/Rg scrapper as disgusting a killing machine as possible, I have always slotted 'diversely' and chosen powers in order to fit concept over optimization.

My Elec/Elec blaster is a simulated shocker, in the under-20 or just-past-20 range, and I deliberately slotted for end drain. I have yet to see Lightning Field take down a brick at the rate that a shocker's lightning field takes down my stone tanker. I have yet to see it drain a Tsoo below 2/3 endurance. I have yet to see Charged Bolts drop a foe by much at all, whereas the same attack by a Cog or a (fill in the blank) Knight will take 1/5 of my endurance per swat for anyone except a stone tanker with the right armors running. I took Circuit Breaker ... and yes, it sometimes knocks my foes to 1/2 endurance, but it seems never any lower, and they can still attack even without any endurance showing in their bar. I very seldom do PVP but I've been told that it has next to no effect there.

I still see a lot of 'the same thing' running around - the standard emp/psi "healer", the now-standard stone/stone tank, the standard X/Regen scrapper, the standard AR/* or Eng/Eng blaster. I still get told that I am slotting my characters wrong, even when I make it clear up front that I am playing cross-AT and have chosen powers and slots accordingly.

You might want to ask crack_city about never slotting until SO's - she's the most vocal proponent of that philosophy I've seen - but here's the thing - even asking on channel what people prefer to slot for an unfamiliar AT, I'm uniformly told "Don't bother with slotting damage until after 16 or so, because it won't be worth it. Slot accuracy instead."
I'm uniformly told, "sure, put a TO in to boost that secondary effect, but just make it a placeholder, don't bother trying to keep it green, it won't give enough effect to notice until SO's."

You want 'better' examples? I had to respec my D/D defender to bring in all the 'team healing and rezzing' powers instead of the 'solo supporting' powers when I found that, after ED, he could no longer provide reasonable support to the team and his offenses were no longer doing much damage.
I had to respec my rad/rad offender to drop all the Fighting Pool powers that were rendered laughable, and to re-order a lot of other powers so I could slot them better.

Now, starting out a Rad/Rad offender again, I'm following a cookie cutter build, but this time with the much-welcomed addition of Air Superiority to the attack chain. I still have to take fitness pool to get Stamina, and I still have slotting issues. If I were to seriously slot the character for survivability solo and so he could level more quickly, I'd be six-slotting two attacks, and would have to respec as soon as possible. That IS proactive - but instead I'll stick to concept and probably still end up needing a respec.

You're talking a lot about 50s. How often do you run lower level characters, I mean NEW toons?

Most of the time. 1 to 35 or so is my favorite part of the game. I have 9 heroes on Pinnacle, and among them are a lvl 8 Defender, 14 Scrapper, 15 Defender, 25 Controller, 26 Tanker, 27 Peacebringer, and 39 Controller.

I have yet to see Lightning Field take down a brick at the rate that a shocker's lightning field takes down my stone tanker.

That's because Lightning Field sucks. High endurance cost for a power that does a piddly amount of damage and drain per tick. As for your other endurance drain complaints, it's been made clear that end drain was nerfed and is being fixed in I7.

Prior to the nerf, only powers that were designed to primarily drain endurance (Short Circuit, Power Sink, Thunderous Blast) were worth slotting for End Mod. Once fixed, SC will go back to being a power that can wipe even-level minions, and higher than that when coupled with Power Sink. Slotting your attacks for endurance drain isn't worth it. As they are, they're good for keeping a sapped foe sapped. They won't help you drain endurance in a noticable way because that's not what they're for.

"sure, put a TO in to boost that secondary effect, but just make it a placeholder, don't bother trying to keep it green, it won't give enough effect to notice until SO's."

As a blaster, there's little practical benefit in slotting for secondary effects unless you're an Ice blaster. With Electricity, your best bet is using one slot for recharge. If that's not your style, range and endurance reduction will give you more of a payoff than slotting for endurance mod.