BellaStrega

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Hey, it's like the old saying goes...

"Tragedy is when I get an enhancement I don't need. Comedy is when Statesman nerfs your brains out."

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Mel Brooks said that?

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Mel Brooks is hardcore like that.

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I like that time Mel Brooks portrayed Requiem.

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Sweet! Now I can make my Burt Reynolds/Deliverance Bow Blaster and run around Croatoa pretending all the Tuatha de Dannan are inbred banjo players!!!

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There's some Celtic blood in the hill folk.

Really.

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You get 5 contacts at 40, one for each group of villains you fight - Rikti, Malta, Carnies, Crey, and Portals/Random.

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At 40, you immediately get contacts for Malta, Carnies, Crey, Portals, and Nemesis. After doing missions for one of your contacts, you then get the Rikti contact.

At 45, you get four contacts total.

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Here's the thing, though:

Statesman only said the stores in Talos and IP.

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There's another quote about making Ghost Falcon a chalk outline... I think he used them as examples.

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I exaggerated a little to demonstrate my point on how much I dislike how people tell newbies they NEED Hasten in order to function at all. All it does is create cookie-cutters.

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That's not how it works.

A friend of mine got into the game, had fun, got frustrated with downtime, and asked me how to mitigate it. I told him the best low-level character for downtime purposes was a regen scrapper - quick recovery would keep him from waiting for end to recover between fights - and he had a great time. He asked how people deal with it throughout the game, and I told him honestly that they don't, they get and slot Stamina. Did I tell him he needed it? No, but it mitigates his biggest problem with the game. I don't think he's unique.

As for perma-hasten, well, I think people get it and find out that it speeds up play. I think the idea that there's a huge consensus that you need it really isn't true.

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It's not going to happen at this point, though.

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Oh why the hell not?

I am tired of the "We are to far in the game" crap. If they are going to ruin the quality of life for our characters to "fix" a bad system I say drastic steps should be taken to put in a new one.

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I agree with you, but I expect the devs will not. If there's no time for wings...

Removing the stores would not drastically change the game, though. Changing enhancements into a point-based system you could upgrade at contacts would be very nice, but require a redesign that the devs are unlikely to commit to.

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Not if they add more Ghost Falcon-like contacts in the game. You can sell at him and General Hammond, not to mention the level 30 SO stores.

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Which is a reasonable assumption, but the information isn't indicative of this so far.

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Simply put: this sounds like something he WANTS to do, but can't. The wording of it "If he had a chance, etc" sounds like he hates stores, but other devs or people in power don't want him to touch it.

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Hold on to your seats folks, he HATES the stores in Talos and IP. As soon as he is able he will get rid of them. I don’t know the man, I didn’t even meet him but through the whole con I never saw a look of utter disgust on his face except when he was talking about the stores. I think he wants a purely contact enhancement purchase system.

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But even if the stores do disappear, it's not like we don't have Power 10 issues even with them. The Power 10 system needs to be done away with and the drop system would need to be revised. And its the very fact that so much would have to change if those stores were deleted from the game that I think is keeping Statesman from doing it.

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Well, I hope you're right. What he's reported as saying sounds like it's something that he intends to make happen, rather than something that he thinks would be nice to do.

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In other words: Statesman might hate the stores. But that doesn't mean Geko, Positron, Pohsyb, or another dev hasn't stepped up and smacked him for suggesting they remove them. So please don't call doom until we get a final redname response or it's up on test.

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Again, I hope you're right. From this, the statement about flashback, and comments about stamina, it sounds like Statesman is becoming increasingly against quality of life being a design consideration.

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All I was really getting at was, this is again, another blow to the casual gamer while mearly an annoyance to the "powergamer" (i use that term loosly, cause its really anyone with a lot of inf.).

Powergamers will find away around it and continue to fund and pamper their alts (nothing wrong with that, please don't take it that way!) while the casual will be scrounging for drops and scrapping together inf at the inflated contact prices.

It hurts nobody but the casual player...as usual.

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Yes, I agree with that. I was just adding a point I forgot to make.

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At this point I am inclined to say that, if I had my choice, I would do away with enhancements alltogether. I would replace it with a points system of sorts.

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but then what would we do with all of our influence? bases?
charity? rebuild boomtown? send cookie bribes to geko to lay off our tankers?
as it is now. enhancements (while amusing) are simply the only influence sink we have. and the only way of modifying our powers in any direction whatsoever.
i do like the ability to change it up from time to time though. playing golf with hellions in Atlas has taught me that much.

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I honestly would not mind giving up enhancements entirely and just getting the ability to go to an NPC to arrange my power focus, even if it cost influence. Just make it scale upward as you spend more, to a point, and slots determine how much potential. It'd be more flexible, remove the loot aspect entirely, and remove the granularity of going from training to DO to SO.

It's not going to happen at this point, though.

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Yeah this seriously goes against the whole "No Loot!" concept this game had for awhile.

Hell, its a huge backlash, moreso cause theres no player economy to suppliment the drops.

So, you know what's going to happen?

Anyone with a high level is simply going to find the contact they can buy the right level enhancements from and mule them to their lowbie. I sure as hell will. I don't care how tedious it is, it's still better then running higher level missions with DOs and trainings cause you can't get the right SOs.

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Forgot, combine this stuff with the cost for building and renting a base...

Maybe I should start exemping my upper level characters to hit a billion influence before things get crazy. I know I can buy all origins of enhancements in all level ranges on my main, after all.

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indeed. having to rely on contacts for enhancements would be a nightmare, especially considering they charge more for them to boot.

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Also, currently, you can't sell to contacts.

So you pay more for your enhancements, and you get less influence over time.

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If you are forced to go to contacts then you will need to clear them ASAP. Sadly teams are built on a rather self centered basis. Most pick up groups have a leader that insist on only doing their own missions. Even if you team with friends who divide things fairly, chances are that the contact doesn't sell to you quick enough. You can gain XP suprisingly fast even from a halfway decent team.

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My last three characters were teamed regularly with several other players. I think one of them unlocked one contact in one level range that could sell non-power 10 SOs. I don't think any of the other players did much better. We'd also need a better sense of which contacts sell what, which we currently do not have. I can usually guess on my main by calling them, but even so.

I don't know, this just strikes me as a horrible idea.

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Yeah.. All in all it sounds like Statesman wants to make make enhancments "special", but all he will succede in doing is making them annoy as hell.

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Well, it worked. I'm already annoyed. Enhancements as they stand now are a pain to deal with. At lower levels, it's trying to get all of them you need. At upper levels, it's replacing them all every five levels early on, and if you really care that much, upgrading them every level in the late 30s/40s.

It's not doom, but it sounds like some serious reduction in quality of life. Perhaps it'd be better to drop them entirely and find some other way to handle this mechanic. All this stuff will do is emphasize enhancements as loot.

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Thanks for the Notes Butler! Some interesting stuff there, but like many of the other posters, I don't understand the hate towards the NPC shops. They serve a purpose and they work pretty well to me.

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<shrug>

Sounds vaguely like other comments States has made, most recently at GenCon -- where he's alluded to his belief that higher-end enhancements (read: SOs) are substantially more widely available than originally intended.

What really are the alternatives for players?

1) Increased dependence on drops
2) Increased trading -- anyone remember early Request?
3) Greater reliance on Contacts for enhancements, consistent with general trends towards encouraging storyarc- and mission-oriented play.

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4) More reliance on loot, less bothering with the game for me.

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Ahem...

YOU DO NOT NEED STAMINA. The "requirement" of Stamina is simply in your head. The Necessity of Stamina has been greatly exagerated.

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I don't agree with this. Some builds need it to actually be able to function - Dark Armor, Regeneration, Ice Armor all come immediately to mind. You can run without it, but you'll be slotting more end redux than other enhancements.

Also, I think that endurance costs are manageable, but onerous. If they want to nerf stamina, they really need to reduce end costs practically across the board.

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They only avoid them because the shadow shard is so poorly designed, I mean really there is no reason to go there unless you're a tourist or want to do insanely long task forces.

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Also, people avoid the tougher villains when easier villains are available.

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He's getting rid of the Talos stores? Can he also get rid of training enchancement drops post level 20!?

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Great Idea!

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If we're supposed to buy everything from contacts at this level, it's going to screw with regular teaming, as people will find themselves relatively unable to unlock their enhancements unless they're very careful. I don't think it'll be a major problem, but I'm not sure it's a good idea.

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This game caters to new MMO players (roughly 40% of the player base is new to MMOrpgers).

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I hope i'm just reading that wrong...or something was lost in translation.....I'm reading that as: don't expect much 50+ content, because we're catering to the young'uns. Replay as a new AT !!! It's fun to kill Frostfire 15 times while doing your main character, then starting over again with BRAND NEW powers and killing Frostfire another random 17 times.


....*coughs*


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This amuses me because I think in terms of killing Dr. Vahzilok 17 times, and Frostfire is a new thing to do.

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Funny how they mention non of the nerfs they do every issue... I keep hearing about tanks getting nerfed all over the place.

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Gah! Couldn't resist responding!

So anyway... the devs have said nothing about nerfing tanks, only that they would be looked at. You probably keep hearing about nerfing tanks frome paranoid players who believe the devs to be on a nerfing spree to wreck the playerbase... Or that they're on a nerfing spree out of incompetence and a mistaken view of what the players want or need.

*breathe* Okay. I feel better now. Go on, back to your discussion.

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Also, Statesman has said that tankers are extremely powerful, and indicated that the strongest defense sets will be reduced along with the weaker sets getting boosted. This also applies to scrappers.

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The combination that tends to "overshadow" scrappers in teams is tank(s) + AoE blaster(s). If the AoE-capable heroes are free to fire ranged AoEs without fear of aggro because of a tank holding aggro, then a melee attack class is going to tend to be left out in the cold.

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On teams, I've felt overshadowed (as a scrapper, in terms of damage output) by:

Energy - Energy could (and usually did) knock things away from me and kill them, leaving me with little to do.

Electric - Energy-vulnerable villains seem to be more common than smashing/lethal-resistant villains. They certainly seem more common than negative-vulnerable villains. Also, AoE.

AR - AoE and good single-target damage. Yes, it uses lethal mostly, but that simply puts that aspect on equal footing with scrapper damage, not behind scrappers. Add in a level 32 power that can be used every fight and a cone that does fire damage, and it's pretty easy to not keep up well.

Ice - Attacks animate quickly and hit hard. Generally speaking, when duoing with an ice blaster, the blaster took bosses out much faster than I could. In addition, said blaster could fight bosses much more safely thanks to bitter freeze ray and freeze ray.

Fire - AoE, with a secondary effect of more damage.

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I'm not sure that is fixable, nor am I sure that's actually "broken" in the first place. For example, in a team with a good tank and a couple ranged AoE shooters, even my ill/rad controller can get effectively trumped. Everything can be dead before I can get toggle debuffs deployed, and my pets will lag behind unless I teleport myself directly into the spawns. What I tend to find myself doing is EMPing an adjacent spawn and then letting the pets whittle them down a bit before the group destroys the rest, or sometimes try to race the tank to a group and cast the PA into it for fun.

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I didn't say it was broken, though. I said that blasters can already overshadow scrappers when it comes to damage.

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Even in those kinds of teams, though, my scrappers and my controller, and heck even often my energy blaster, will realize the minions and LTs are worm-food in seconds, and target the boss(es). Bosses do not go down in the AoE alpha-strike in most teams that I've seen, and I can at least start wearing them down prior to or during the alpha strikes.

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True, but then scrappers are meant to be boss-killers, so this is working as intended.

I don't think scrappers are doing too much damage in relation to blasters. I think that blasters tend to exaggerate how much damage scrappers do and underrate their own damage when it comes to complaints about damage output. Nerfing scrapper damage won't fix blasters.

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I have a potential idea for maybe "solving" the alpha strike problem. If I think it through, I'll Suggestions and Ideas it.

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Cool. Other solutions have not worked so well - increased hit points, for example.

BTW, just to be clear, I still agree blasters have problems. I don't think scrapper damage is the source of those problems. I still say I'm all for a boost to blaster damage (10% or so) or a reduction to scrapper damage (to 90% or so), but an alteration so that blasters do significantly more damage compared to scrappers than they do now? That's just one step in making scrappers the solo AT not because they're better at soloing, but because no one with any sense will want them on teams.

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Well, they were argueing about soloing anyway. I just felt that it was starting to stray the conversation away from the main point of the thread. Which was: What is the blaster role in teams?

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It was, although I think blaster soloability is something for consideration in all this.

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Scrappers are the natural soloists, but they are not implemented to match their AT class description. They should have no range, their defenses should be less effective than tanks under normal, not extreme circumstances, and they should be significantly outdamaged by blasters.

Right now I'm of the opinion that blasters probably do more damage than scrappers, but the problem is that its not *blatantly so* which makes it impossible for blasters to fulfill one of our original "roles" - to overshadow scrappers in the damage department while the tank is overshadowing the scrapper in the defense department.

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Earlier today, I was on a team with:

1 level 40 D3 (me)
1 level 43 Fire/Kinetics controller
1 level 42 Fire/Energy blaster
1 level 40 or 41 (not sure) BS/SR scrapper
1 level 41 FF/Psy defender
1 level 29 Fire/Fire tanker (sidekicked)
1 level 20 Ice/Ice tanker (sidekicked)

The blaster and both defenders used our nukes - the blaster every single time it came up, me whenever I got hit with fulcrum shift and it was up, and the FF/Psy seemed to be somewhere in between. Otherwise, the main damage came from the fire blaster, who used ball + breath. She never benefited much from Fulcrum Shift because she didn't want to run into melee range. She did benefit from my tar patch, when I was able to lay it before everything died.

After a couple of fights, the scrapper started charging into every spawn ahead of the rest of us, and after a full mission, she switched to her AR/Dev blaster. She said that she was running ahead so she could get a few attacks before everything was completely wiped out, and just got tired of not being very decisive compared to the blaster on the team and switched to her blaster.

I relate this because this is how things go pretty much every time I play a scrapper on a team with blasters. Even my spines scrapper experiences this. Overshadowed? The only time I feel my damage actually contributes is when we're fighting single hard targets - bosses at the minimum, up to AVs and maybe monsters.

I tend to find, having played a tanker, defender, peacebringer, and two scrappers into the mid-late game, that blasters do the damage on teams. Spines comes closest with its AoEs, but its overall damage is lower to compensate for both its range and its AoE.

I dunno, I could agree with you on this point if I believed there was actually a point to having non-blaster primary damage dealers on a team with blasters.

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It's also possible to go a completly Machen route with it, where the fae folk of old legend were driven into hiding and, bereft of sunlight and the other good things of the surface world, degenerated into things of unspeakable awfulness. Or, depending on the story, were always things of awfulness that mankind intentionally forgot by masking them with tales of glory.

Or they could just be taking major liberties with it.


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Yes, but I must ask...

Could it be *worse* than White Wolf's Changeling? *grins*

"Look, shiny happy fluffy friendly Pookas!"

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Half the problem with Changeling was that the game tried to do silly things like link scientific progress with a lack of imagination. The other half of the problem with the game was the fans, and that some of them got to essentially write fanfic for it on White Wolf's dime. Pookas were too cute in the game, but Redcaps still ate people.

Here is the entire population of Steel Canyon.

They don't know how not to be seen.

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Croatoa... a place where myth and fantasy still live...

So does this mean we might get a few more European mythological costume options, huh huh does it

devil's advocate -Pogo

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The only thing I want is the whiches hat. Come on, we need those...realy.

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Yeah, we really do...

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This proposal gets a thumbs up from Bella Strega.