Arcanaville
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:The problem of stealth suppression was brought up earlier, and I mentioned it specifically to Arbiter Hawk to consider. The gameplay-critical issue is escort missions.Originally Posted by NoiseBlind
Gonna try something here, 'cause I think the OP had some valid points which were obscured by her tendency to overstate things.
What I think she meant to say:
Blasters need the i24 survivability buffs to avoid being underpowered.
I agree with this one
For my /Dev Blaster, this means I must take Cloaking Device or remain underpowered.
This one too.
I especially dislike the transparency effect, because it obscures my costume.
I sorta agree with this one.
I work hard on my costumes, they are a fundamental part of my enjoyment of this game. If I can't see them, that character is 'broken' for me.
I sorta agree with this one. I often solo just so I can clearly see my costume without layers of team buffs all over it.
The power's other effects are not strong enough to make up for the costume issue, as the defense buff is too small when suppressed, and stealth isn't needed for my playstyle.
Don't necessarily agree with this one.
I think it's wrong for the devs to add the needed survivability buffs to a power that is a) not that great to begin with and More importantly b) that obscures my character's costume.
I dunno if this discussion is salvageable, but I think it's worth having. -
Quote:1. It will have a shorter recharge than conserve power does now, and probably similar to or possibly shorter than melee Energize.Originally Posted by ChaosAngelGeno
What do we know about Energize for /Nrg Blasters? Does it heal? Is it enhanceable?
2. It will most likely have a higher +regen than melee Energize. This +regen will be perma-able and almost certainly not stackable.
3. It will most likely have a lower heal than melee Energize.
4. It will have an endurance discount comparable to melee Energize.
5. As with most +regen in blaster sustain powers, it will likely be half-enhanceable.
6. Its unclear whether the heal will be fully or half enhanceable, although my bet is that it will end up being half-enhanceable also. -
Quote:I actually have a real list.Originally Posted by Starsman
... Are you saying you made up your extremely long SR nerf list?
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Quote:The irony here is that the Faustian bargain the writers seem to be making is that they seem unwilling to take the easy way out: to say that conventional magic such as what a player character might wield is simply one kind of magic, and not the most powerful magic in the universe, while the Well is a different kind of magic that is far more powerful. In other fictional universes, there is the notion that there is invocational magic that people can tap by drawing power from some magical source - such as a magical deity or supernatural power - and non-invocational magic that either utilizes some raw magical energy within the universe or is sourced directly from the caster. But they want magic to be this all-encompassing supernatural origin for player concept, but this small oddly-limited thing for the purposes of canon. That's selling the soul of your canonical consistency for the illusion of numinosity.Originally Posted by Venture
What I have been pointing out ever since we were saddled with the Well/Incarnate storyline is that when it comes to whether or not the Well is magical, it fails the duck test. It behaves in every meaningful way like an evil deity offering Faustian bargains. Slapping a Not Magic label on it doesn't make it so.
There can be different kinds of magic from the worship-powered magic of the Discworld gods to the invocational magic Dr. Strange used to wield before wielding the raw magic he wielded as a chaos sorcerer to whatever the heck he's wielding now. And it can be hierarchical. But for some reason they seem to want the Well(s) to go beyond that, but lack the literary dexterity to properly construct it. -
Quote:That's one kind of balance: a game with three moves in which none of the legal moves is intrinsically superior to the other two in terms of the probability of victory.Originally Posted by Agent White
True balance = rock paper scissors.
The problem in a game like City of Heroes is that if you define "legal move" too expansively true balance is an intractable goal. At every moment in time we are allowed to do a wide variety of things from moving to activating powers. We can't design the game so that every single move has intrinsically equal value.
We can, however, decide which moves must be equal, and which moves are allowed to have variable value, such that its the responsibility of the player to decide which of them to best use. And in a game like CoH, those moves should be the immutable character creation moves. In other words, archetype choice, primary powerset choice, secondary powerset choice, and origin choice. All other moves are either not directly relevant to gameplay or mutable and thus reversible. No archetype choice should incur a higher disadvantage over the others, and neither should any powerset combination, within the context of what we intend core gameplay to be in this game. Namely, leveling, playing the core content, and having the opportunity (but not requirement) to leverage character progression systems.
That's achievable, and achievable without radical upheaval. -
Quote:I thought I was the one suggesting the Well was magical for six years.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes tends to use non-standard terminology. For instance, "the power of the divine" is canonically entirely separate from "magic." I'm not sure if it even has an origin, but if it did, I'd suspect it would be Natural.
As such, I don't think the word "cosmic" here parses as "from the cosmos" literally, so much as something closer to the power of the divine - a "higher" power that exists outside the framework of the origins system.
What Venture has been doing for the last, god... Six years? Has been presenting the power of the Well as "magical" based on the fact that it doesn't fit any of the other origins and that it behaves like magic, in the sense that "there are no rules, a wizard did it." That might be magical in the same sense falling into a vat of chemicals and mutating would make the source of your power mutation, but just as in City of Heroes that would instead be Science, so the power of the well may act like magic, but isn't Magic in origin. "Magic" actually has a very narrow meaning in this game, rather than the "anything we can't explain" meaning that it tends to have in colloquial English. I don't think even "the power of the supernatural" is necessarily Magic.
I actually recall a funny exchange between Venture and myself back when I still read his posts. I insisted ghosts were Natural as that's just what naturally happens when a person dies. He responded that "there's nothing natural about ghosts," which he said to mean that they're supernatural so they're magic. What I took out of it is that... No, ghosts AREN'T natural, since souls are supposed to move on into the afterlife, thus if a ghost exists, something UNnatural happened, thus why a different origin is needed. Once that's taken into account, Magic is indeed the only thing that makes sense.
Basically what I'm saying is that just because something looks like magic and acts like magic and we can't explain it, it doesn't mean that it's Magic and thus changing the Origin of your character. Neither the divine nor the supernatural nor souls no the afterlife are strictly Magic because "Magic" isn't just "anything that doesn't fit into any of the others."
The point though is that the devs want to have it both ways, and they are not allowed to. They want origins to be vague and basically meaningless so the players can reinterpret them any way they want. And they want to use them in the story in a kind-of-sort-of-specific way.
That's just wrong. In a game about superheroes, you have to allow for some hand waving and some miracle exceptions, but at some point you have to call foul. Technology isn't Science? Okay. Mutation isn't Science or Natural? I guess. There's an origin that is not magic and not science? Wait a minute. So what's magic then if its not "that which is beyond Science?" That origin is a Well that has supernatural power that is not the supernatural power that magic is? Full stop. This non-magical supernatural force created the five origins? I said Full Stop, now you have to back up because I'm not kidding. This non-magical supernatural force is superceded by another non-magical supernatural force that is a third kind of supernatural non-magical force? Don't take this personally, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to remove you from your vehicle and run you over with it.
You yourself have said that you would rather the game have expansive definitions for things to allow for more freedom with character concepts. But you're saying that what the game calls "magic" involves only a very limited - and not fully specified - subset of the supernatural. Do you honor that when you make magical origin characters? Do you consider whether your characters actually fall within the boundaries of "Magic" or whether they actually fall outside the boundaries of City of Heroes magic? It would be inconsistent to interpret CoH magic as strictly and narrowly as possible for the purposes of canon, but as widely expansive as possible when it comes to character concept. -
Quote:A watched postcount never increments.Originally Posted by AngelicaVenger
OMG, this is too much like work.
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Quote:For some reason a lot of players have an extremely poor memory when it comes to buffs and nerfs. In particular, a lot of people seem to remember more nerfing for their favorite powersets than has actually occurred. I would think that if someone was going to type "powerset X has been nerfed tons of times" that before they hit enter they would actually stop to see if they could actually remember a list of them first.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
I was going to address this earlier, but didn't have a chance to.
Devices has been nerfed exactly TWICE.
-Once was ED, which screwed everyone. Saying Devices was the target of ED is just.....wrong.
-The second was actually a fix. Smoke Grenade had a decimal point in the wrong place and was giving everything it hit a 50% to-hit debuff. Blasters having ONE power that effectively gave them more defense than an SR Scrapper's entire secondary with no non-positional/psionic hole was more than a little overpowered.
That is the entirety of the "nerfs" to Devices. One was a global nerf that affected everyone, the other was a fix to an accidentally broken as all hell power.
But maybe that's just me, self-nerfing my posts with the facts. -
Quote:Averaged over time, not compressed into the window. Otherwise I would have to bifurcate my spreadsheet into "Invuln with DP heal" and "Invuln without DP heal" and its already insane.Originally Posted by Starsman
Arcanaville,
Cant see your chart since you post it on flicker and most photo sharing sites are blocked at my workplace but will look at it once I'm home.
A question about how you are treating heal powers in that chart:
Are you averaging out over eternity, or over the time window?
In other words, for the 60s window, do you consider Dull Pain is healing you in those 60 second's for it's full strenght, or at a heal/recharge * 60?
In fact I'm considering writing a program to literally recreate the spreadsheet every time I change something, just because it would be easier than actually editing the spreadsheet itself. -
Do I think Willpower is stronger than Invuln? In general, yes. But I don't think its perfectly clear cut how much stronger it is, particularly for Tankers.
My mitigation spreadsheet still makes google docs barf, so these are my numbers for Invuln and Willpower for tankers, broken down by damage type and with a composite score that presumes s/l is about 2/3rds the total damage. In terms of sustainable damage, Willpower is far ahead of Invuln. But when it comes to taking burst damage, such as that which a tanker needs to be able to survive to have a sustainable lifespan, the situation changes. At the 60 second burst mark they are almost even, and that 60 seconds represents the bulk of the burst damage you're likely to sustain from a single large spawn. At the 30 second burst mark Invuln overtakes Willpower on composite score due to its strong smash/lethal performance and the fact that it catches up on energy and elemental damage (Willpower retains its advantage on psionics everywhere).
Its the nature of regeneration that if we made Willpower and Invuln equal on sustained damage, Invuln would be better overall. The question is where do we aim for the compromise balance point. My general feeling is that point is somewhere between 180 and 60 seconds in general, and in that range the two are much closer in performance than the sustainable numbers would imply. The closer to 60 the balance mark gets, the closer the two already are in performance in general. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Fixed...
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Quote:Maybe if they released Staff correctly then over all of them would have been Staff Fighting.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Yes, they botched Staff Fighting so badly that over half the brutes & scrappers I've teamed with this past month have been Staff.
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Quote:I'm sure there is.Originally Posted by Mad Grim
Well, is there an ETA on Bio Armor?
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Quote:So from the point of view of the Kheldians, we're all cosmic origin.Originally Posted by Xzero45
It's intended origin was supposed to be "Cosmic", if I remember what one of the devs mentioned right. Something that's otherworldly and hard to put a label on.
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Quote:The thing about the implied messages that offend you is that you should direct your offense at the originator of those messages.Originally Posted by DarkGob
What I take issue with is the implied message, that acknowledging the absence of a character because the actor died is somehow classless. I feel like Nolan never really wanted to reference the Joker (considering he carried the entire movie last time, which I doubt was the intention) and this is just a convenient excuse to settle down the fanboys.
And again, he's not even being consistent. If he wants to ignore it, okay, but then saying in interviews "they executed him", that's the really disgusting thing. That is disrespectful.
EDIT: Come to think of it, did Ledger even get a dedication on TDKR? (Did he even get one on TDK? I don't recall.) He was the reason the previous movie was so popular, after all. -
Quote:When you've worked as hard as I have to improve this or any game, much less the game developers themselves, you earn the right to judge work ethic. You are rapidly catapulting yourself into the realm of stakeless kibitzer.Originally Posted by Rakeeb
So now because true balance is "impossible", ie folks don't want to work that hard, we're trying to compromise with "fair"?
I didn't realize that Arbiter Hawk and Synapse were actually Castle.
No compromises. Fix the game. It's not hard; it simply requires commitment. -
Quote:Given that for you, ignorance is not bliss, I'm not encouraged.Originally Posted by Candy_Heart
I wonder how long the fun will last for my alts.
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Quote:Its easy to judge the way people handle tragedies. Nolan's actions and his reasoning are entirely reasonable. If they don't measure up to your standards, that's just unfortunate.Originally Posted by DarkGob
So he thinks it would be inappropriate to reference it in the context of the film, but he's perfectly chill with saying "yeah the Joker was put to death" during interviews.
That's just asinine. As I said above, completely ignoring the character that won Ledger a posthumous Oscar is truly disrespectful. Plenty of TV shows have acknowledged the passing of their actors by killing off the character off-screen, is Nolan saying that all of those stories were also disrespectful? He's full of it, frankly. -
Quote:That's true, but there's lots of angles to play with there. Take Dreadful Wail. Its a PBAoE nuke with a guaranteed mag 3 stun. Power Boost obviously helps there, so a Sonic/Energy Blaster will gain a slightly better nuke than Sonic/Ice would, say, because Energy can powerboost the stun. But on the other hand, Ice will have much higher PBAoE survivability with Ice Patch and Frigid Embrace. That will mean Sonic/Ice will have the opportunity to put more targets within Dreadful Wail's PBAoE radius. Which is better: longer stun, or hitting more targets?Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Why not ask what needs to be true in order to make adding a the same tenth attack be of equal benefit all secondaries. If you think about it, it is nearly impossible have an attack that will be of equal benefit to all secondaries.
The simplest way to see this is to just consider the types of attacks. If the tenth attack is a cone /mental will gain less than other secondaries because if you want an extra cone you can now select it from the primary. If it is a melee attack secondaries with good melee capability gain less than those that aren't quite good at melee, and so on.
Now if you go to a direct comparison of three secondaries, and picking these to most dramatically demonstrated the point. Consider /Energy Manipulation, /Fire and /Dev and adding the tenth power of an AoE high damage mag 3 Stun. At minimum Energy gains a power that works better than the other 2 secondaries. Energy VS Fire the power simply works longer. Energy vs /Dev, The new power works longer and does more damage.
Another way to look at the question is to ask "Do /Energy manipulation combos gain more if the primary has a power boostable nuke than those that don't". The obvious comparison there would be is the new crashless nukes greater benefit for Energy/Energy or Psi/Energy ?
And what if you're Sonic/Fire and you can now stack that nuke with FSC? You will now have a 5.75 chain that can reliably kill LTs with just regular damage slotting and Aim. Anything that can be stunned with mag 3 will now be dead with Sonic/Fire.
Now that the nukes won't crash, it seems to me that its reasonable to suggest that there are three distinct synergy elements that come into play with more frequent nuke use. First: things that can make the nuke easier to deploy. Range boosting nukes that actually have range, for example, would be one thing. Providing PBAoE damage mitigation for PBAoE nukes would be another. The second would be AoE chaining with nukes: whereas before that was difficult, now it will be much easier. This would tend to favor secondaries with more AoE potential, and particularly AoE potential that was similar to the mechanics of some of the crashing nukes. /Fire has PBAoEs which would stack more readily on PBAoE nukes. Mental has a cone which would tend to be easier to stack onto ranged nukes. The third would be synergy things that can increase the effectiveness of the nuke itself, or allow the nuke to increase the effectiveness of something else. Powerboost for the most part, that can increase the mez strength (and drain strength) of nukes. But thunderous blast could make it a lot easier to saturate Soul Drain.
I don't think all of those tactical synergies in particular have been fully thought through. -
Quote:Last I recall it had to hit enemies, but its sustain benefit was designed to last long enough relative to its recharge to make it only necessary to use once every so often (something like a minute or so). But if that changed in a stream or something I haven't seen every minute of those.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
I was under the impression it didn't have to hit any enemies.
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Quote:What the devs do when they are doing the things most people including the devs call "balancing" is not the same set of things they do when they do the things they ordinarily describe as improving "fairness."Originally Posted by EvilGeko
They are to me. I don't think of 'balance' as equality, but equity or in other words fairness. I don't care if one set or one AT is numerically superior to another, but I do care that it doesn't seem like a sucker bet to pick one set over another.
In either case, I don't think "fairness" requires a complete overhaul of the game and can be achieved to a high enough degree to enter the debatable range** through incremental evolution.
** "Ideal fairness" is a difficult goal to achieve, but there is a more reasonable target where the game fairness becomes close enough that the players cannot generally agree upon where the imbalances are. Analogous to the uncertainty principle, its impossible to achieve any better level of fairness than that which the players will also agree is fair. -
Quote:The Rikti apparently continue to fall victim to one of the classic blunders: never get involved in a land war in Rhode Island.Originally Posted by cursedsorcerer
As I said before, I suspect the coordinator of this invasion is the infamous (and surprisingly still alive) Napo'Leon Bon'Parte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia -
Quote:As with the Lord of the Rings itself, the question is always how much time you choose to spend showing what the book tells us.Originally Posted by Demobot
Story here.
Not sure what to think about this. I was a bit surprised when it was announced that The Hobbit would be two movies long, but three? I'll still watch all three movies, as I think Peter Jackson did a great job with the LOTR trilogy and winning 11 Oscars with a threequel is quite an achievement, but how the heck do you stretch The Hobbit over three films, even with the Appendix material? -
Quote:Ah. The problem was actually thinking about it in those terms. Its not a question of too much or too little. The way I would do it is that I would presume first that outside of strong tohit buffs Defense was basically fine in PvP: players were mostly used to the performance already. What I would have done is taken a fraction of the defensive strength of each defensive set and converted it into Elu such that the net result was a defensive set that had exactly the same strength. So outside of tohit buffs, everything was exactly the same. But in situations with tohit buffs, those tohit buffs would be reduced in strength. Reduced, but not nullified.Originally Posted by Starsman
Finally Elu... as you say, it was just used as a magic wand, and apparently without understanding it well to booth. Too much Elu and tohit would not pierce armor and people whine that they are not hitting at all in PvP. Too little and you do nothing. Elu may had help alleviate extreme ToHit piercing in PvP, but the problems with PvP in this game is mainly one of travel powers. I don't think PvP will ever work well in this game.
The cosmic level mistake the devs made was introducing DR for tohit and defense *and then* introducing Elusivity on top when DR seemed to be not working as intended. That's illogical: Elusivity doesn't work in the presence of tohit and defensive DR. DR changes the relationship between the two in a way that makes Elusivity pouring gasoline on a campfire.
Elusivity is designed to address a problem in PvP that DR makes unrecognizable. Although technically speaking, Elu was designed to address a problem in PvE that also had the side effect of being useful in PvP. In fact, Elu is explicitly designed to deal with the twin problems of squishy use of defensive pools and the stacking issue of dispersion bubble in FF. Dealing with SR was actually a variation of the FF issue and PvP was a special case of the power pool stacking issue. -
Quote:Here's a question to ponder. If Malta and the Skyraiders subsist on stolen technology, what to you think the guys that pay full price are packing?Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
I got a good laugh out of that. It does raise the question (hey, suddenly we're back on topic!) as to what shape the American military is in and, by extension, that of the rest of the world?