Along those lines, the xp change crippled the players like me. In closed and open beta, I never reached the cap. Even now, I am level 36 and cant see getting to 40 with the current content.

It is funny, on the offical forums, if you mention a “content gap” there will be several people agree with and then there will be the people that say “no there isnt, did you use the crime computer? I bet you missed alot of missions, go back and do them, then you wont have a problem.” My issue with that statement, is I should not be forced to use an outside source to find content (do I want it spoonfed to me? no, do I want guidance like..”You should go see so and so they might have some work for you”…yes)

My Character is currently doing content that is 2-3 levels higher then me as I have exhausted all the content of my current level. In my opinion, there should always be more then enough missions (that are the same level as you) to get you to the next level without being forced to do missions that are 2-3 levels above you. Besides, by forcing you to do missions that are 2-3 levels above you, you are just perpetuating (delaying) the lack of content. I am scared for when I reach level 38 and 39…I can forsee a TON of grinding mobs to get to 40. By changing the xp it screwed up any chance I have of getting to 40 in a “reasonable” amount of time (different for each person, for me it is a period of time, where if I play regularly it doesnt feel like I am “working” to gain my next level, I want to be shocked and amazed that I leveled up not looking at my xp bar “oh did it move? no…dang…back to killing for another 1M xp”).

I realize you cant have a game where people are at the level cap within a week of release. Yet there will always be those players that dedicate the time and effort to be the “first” to reach the cap. They will always be the ones that take the best powers not care if they are from across the spectrum…they want that high level to show off and say “look what I have done.”

But reading Roper’s comments makes me angry, he is trivializing all the heavy handed things that Cryptic has done. Do I expect him to come out and throw the company he is working for under the bus? No, of course not, I am not naive enough to think that. But Cryptic and Roper should take a little more responsibility for what they do.

Trivially easy? I don’t think it was. At the high end the game was still challenging in a fun way aside from a few builds that were significantly OP. When they “rebalanced” the content you pretty much needed to min/max to handle the high level content with some exceptions. The way the game is now builds for fun and not DPS just aren’t fun to play. I would have played more of the game with more alts. I finished playing with two chars at 40 and two more that I stopped in the 20s due to content gaps. It was also frustrating to have to reroll constantly due to “balancing”. Rarely a week went by without a patch “balancing” one or more major abilities on one or more of my characters.

Patch necessary for long term health? Possibly, but the way they put it in the game is what pissed off everyone I know. It went in without any notice or announcement, it buffed mobs by 20%, decreased player damage by that much maybe more and cut the XP substantially all at one time. The game felt completely different from one day to the next.

What is frustrating is that Roper trivializes the negativity on the forums while conveniently pointing to the forums as to why they made the changes they made. He really should be a politician with those rose colored glasses he is wearing.

Only time will tell if they ultimately made the right decision or not, but I can speak for at least a dozen players who won’t be playing CO again or STO thanks to the CO decisions made along the way.

I used to be a keen RuneScape player for a while. I enjoyed the game, but ultimately it was the creators’ hubris that made me leave. Jagex simply refused to deal with certain issues and dragged their heals needlessly, improving things that weren’t broken and breaking things that worked fine, whilst leaving the economy pretty much borked for a long time.

I had hoped CO would be a breath of fresh air. It was at first, but in the end it was just repeating the same content over and over. It was fun at first, but then it just became a chore. Furthermore, the inability of Cryptic to listen to the beta testers is just a joke. The beta testers have pointed out flaws and lack areas repeatedly, but their observations have fallen largely on deaf ears.

If this game is still around in 6-12 months, which isn’t all that certain given the game’s current state, it’ll probably lose a lot of players to SWTOR. In the meantime, since my best mate in real life quit CO, I’ll be joining him in LOTRO. It’s not quite the same as bashing keys in CO, but I have managed to get it working perfectly with a 360 controller via xpadder. That’s one thing CO did get right until one of their more recent patches: the ability to use the 360 controller was just fantastic…until they messed around with the function of B/start and messed it up!

There are more than enough suggestions to fix the powers in the suggestions forums, but there are lots of simple ones Cryptic should heed:

(1) Make NO power useless. If there’s a better power you can take over another, you’ll take the better one. If it’s a matter of different uses, then that’s another story, but some moves are simply unusably weak. The inability to use grasping shadows in combat, for example, makes it useless for most players. Many players feel forced to take ego hold.

(2) Give every single power set an amazing offensive passive AND a defensive passive. Regeneration gets so much use because there aren’t any decent alternatives (whilst levelling to 40 in PvE) for most character types. Others need to be made good from level 5+ rather than level 30+.

(3) Splitting ego and dexterity annoys so many players. I can understand your reasons behind it, but there are good reasons why other MMOs don’t do this. You’d be wise to learn from them.

Other than that, stop being arrogant. If you make a mistake, own up. Players are customers and will vote with their feet. You need to show them respect or they’ll walk. If you talk bull, they won’t put up with it.

Also, sounds like he chalked up the Nerf BFG to exaggeration, right after he said they listened intently to the forums in the other interview…