Biospark
-
Posts
1439 -
Joined
-
Quote:Bronze.... yesOriginally Posted by plainguy
Lets put the question out here..
Does anyone use the 4k Gold random roll on the AE system on any consistent basis ?
Silver... yes, starting to "warm-up" to this one since I can actually earn a little influence with it
Gold... nope, tried it in the begining, WAY too many tickets for a casual player. But I bet farmers don't notice this cost as much. -
Looking over your power choices, have you considered Conserve Power for those occasional longer battles. I know on my FF characters, endurance issues came up quite often compared to other defenders I have played.
-
Quote:Great Idea ! /signedOriginally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
One thing I was thinking about is the teammate buff bar and how crowded it gets sometimes. Turning off auto-powers helps a bit but even then you can easily get 10+ buffs per teammate which makes it very hard to pick out specific ones.
So, what I think would be useful is a "hide buffs from other players" feature so that your teammates buff bars can be set to only display buffs they are receiving from you along with enemy debuffs (so you can potentially see when someone is mezzed).
The game already keep track of the source of a particular buff so it should be feasible to implement.
What do people think?
Oddly familiar idea too.
-
Not sure why people are not interested in improving the reward system of AE. As it stands now (being a casual player), the best use of my AE tickets is getting salvage.
This may be as intended;
by making tickets more random to
A) encourage people using the system to explore and create unique content,
B) help provide market commodities more than personal commodities.
But personally, I am rather disappointed in the chance of getting something randomly. So much so, that I spend more time in the regular game doing TF, Story Arcs, etc.... to have more control over my rewards. Not only can I control my rewards better in the regular game, I can make MORE influence because of PURPLE recipes.
If this is working as intended, who am I to complain. AE is still a place to make and explore interesting content. And the place I go to get specific salvage.
Two things that would make me enjoy the reward system better is simply having more control over the reward.
1) Let me choose the level of the recipe. I also run story arcs quite often, so its very important to have control over the IO recipe level.
2) Make it less random. Perhaps allow you to pick the IO recipe category like Melee, Defense, Resistance, Healing etc... This has the potential of increasing the ability of farmers to get their hands on specific recipes, but it would also LOWER the cost of those same recipes due to more folks being able to get the recipes on their own.
Seriously 4000 tickets for a CHANCE at LoTG +rech by choosing "Defense". Thats still pretty difficult. Heck, even if you allowed a person to choose specifically by Set Name, Thats a 1 in 6 chance with 4K tickets. How many times on average would you need to click that to get a LoTG +rech ? Thats 16,000 tickets for a 50-50 chance at LoTG +recharge
My suggestion brings the Gold Defense choices up to 15. So for 4K tickets a 1 in 15 chance for LoTG +rech. Thats 44,000 tickets for a 50-50 chance at LotG +Recharge.
This illustrates why I use Merits instead. I simply dont play enough hours in the week to consider "Random" rolls. -
Hello Folks,
Reading another thread brought to mind a question that perhaps someone knows the answer to.
I keep the team buff bars active while playing my Empath to keep track of when buffs are needing to be refreshed. As much as I have tried over the years in this game and other games, I cannot get the timing down mentally, so I rely on the blinking lights.
Question is; Can you set the HUD to display ONLY your buffs ? -
Quote:I totally agree with this assessment.Originally Posted by rsclark
I don't even think healing is the major time problem for Emp. Past a certain point, you aren't going to be healing much at all. Fort causes many more problems for me. Once you have 4 people (or even 5 with enough global) in the fort rotation, you have to stop what you are doing every 20-30 seconds to drop a fort on them. Miss your timing and you get a cascading dead period going through your rotation order until you catch back up.
I'd give anything to have Fort work like SB (even if it did work on fewer people), as buffing everyone in order every 2 minutes and being done is easier than spacing it out every 25 seconds.
If I am in a situation where I start needing to spam heals, its because something has gone terribly wrong. Tank has bit the dust, group managed to pull 3 spawns instead of 1, etc...
This is not to say that I dont use my heals from time to time, because they do get used often enough that I would not want to live without them. Only that by being proactive on the buffs, I can spend ALOT less time healing and MORE time blasting.
Changing the way buffs are staggered (by changing durations) is definitely a QOL that I would sign up for. However, from what I have been told regarding the DEV's standpoint on whether BUFFs are "proactive" or "reactive", Its not likely to happen.
-
Being a player that has always liked Gravity and is hoping for improvements, I have a random thought regarding wormhole;
What if;
It acted more like a pet type power, where you place the entrance to the "wormhole" at a specific location and this "effect" persisted and periodically grabbed anything in the area and TP'ed it to the "exit" location. This could create some interesting tactics, especially if you place the "entrance" and "exit" very close to each other. Mobs could be continually "re-stunned" for the duration of the "pet-like" effect. -
When I feel like teaming, its always my main character (Emp-Elec Defender).
When forced/choosing to solo (I work off shift, so alot of my play time is after midnight PST), then I find myself leaning toward one of my Scrappers or Tankers. Especially Tankers these days, since I have found their added toughness very enjoyable for "winding" down after a long night of work. -
Not trying to criticize anyone here, but I am gonna point out the MAJOR factor that sets this game economy apart from other MMOs and the main reason why I think the developers should not make major changes to the system.
Lets take a look at just ONE special IO. (Luck of the Gambler Def/+Recharge 7.5%)
This IO is a top tier sought after IO. Its as close to a "Raid level" reward from some other MMO. Since I am a casual gamer and dont do "Raiding", if this were a typical MMO, this special IO would be UNAVAILABLE to me. No matter how much I played, I would NEVER get one, unless I joined and participated in a "raiding" Guild.
In THIS GAME, I can do a story arc SOLO and get 33 merits in 2-3 hours of game play. Thats 6 runs of a story arc that is possible SOLO. I repeat SOLO. In about 1 week of casual gameplay, I can purchase a specific, TOP-Tier reward SOLO!!!!.
The economy of the game is better than other games, so for that reason alone, I am hesitant to suggest anything that would drastically alter this aspect of the game. Casual players like me, DO NOT want to lose this aspect of COH.
Sorry, this is just my opinion on the game economy. -
Shields and Dark Armor are the most synergistic.
Both add more damage in AoE (Shield Charge and Death Shroud)
Martial Arts can suffer from situations where smash-resistant foes make it harder to defeat them, so in that instance having a secondary dealing damage other than smashing is a good thing. This would make Fiery Aura and Electric Aura both possibilities worth considering. -
Quote:This is very similar to what I will do on teams, although I do not "hold" back when casting Fort per se, When I first join a team, I will Fort the most obvious choice first and let each battle modify who is on the Fortitude rotation. Afterall, putting Fort on the "fully IOed insert-whatever AT here with Soft-capped defense" does very little for them defensively, so I will move the buff onto someone who seems to be getting more "return-fire" during battle or is having a harder time keeping themselves "in the green".Originally Posted by New Dawn
Because I can't fort the entire team I hold onto one fort for emergencies. Some player, any one of them that I can't fort could be in over their heads. I'd rather find a fort available for them asap than have to stand their and heal them as their bar goes up and down. Doing it this way I do things without losing a buff on anyone else that I am normally buffing, they will be feeling a game play of higher defense and although they should watch their own buffs many don't. People then don't go from 50 mins of higher defense to a what the hell happened there.
To those that think this is ignoring the "offensive" side of the buff, I would disagree. In every case the buff helps both offense AND defense for the character buffed. What is my job as a defender ? Those same folks that may not have a fully IOed build and are getting "smacked around" probably could use the "offensive" boost as well so they can contribute more to the team. -
Quote:This is a great idea, and I would take it even further and consider adding -KB to one lower tier attack for every melee powerset. This would go a long way in lowering the KB "hate" that exists in the game. I love my KB, but when I am trying to beat something down in melee range, I would prefer not chasing it all over the map when the Energy Blaster decides to "let fly".Originally Posted by Umbral
That was me and it was made in conjuction with providing Crane Kick with some high mag KU along with the KB and not giving CAK -KU.
-
Quote:I disagree.Originally Posted by plainguy
You cannot just do this through regular game play is all I am saying.. Well in all fairness you can.. But it would probably take you 8 months of doing missions at level 50 to obtain the cash required for a decent non purple IO build..
In the last 8 months I have levelled Biospark from 1 to 50. Levelled a WP-Fire tank from 1-50, levelled a half dozen other characters into the 20s, spent over 1 billion influence on Biospark's first and second builds(combined). Earned enough influence to have over 700 million on my account and have both his builds nearly done. I dont farm or speed run anything. The best farming that I have been involved with was +1/x5 on my tanker. I also only play on weekends and a hour here and there during the week.
This does not mean that I dont empathise with your position, but it is not really necessary to spend 8 months on one build, unless your play time is very limited. To be honest, once you hit level 50, what else are you going to do? Making it take some amount of time to put together a good build gives you something to work on.
The question is whether the availability of recipes is not satisfactory enough. On this I would tend to agree. Because, I am always analyzing the builds I put together and want to perfect them to handle "delevelled story arcs". When I look at some of the IOs in my build that get "excised" at lower levels simply because the level 25 or level 35 recipes were not for sale, thats when I start getting that "grinding" feeling about my builds. Imagine the annoyance of needing to overwrite an expensive IO with the same IO but lower level so it functions on "such-and-such" TF. Getting recipes COULD be made easier, I just dont know the best way to do it in a balanced way. -
Actually Neon,
IF Merits became more easily acquired (And I am not saying they should be) then the value of Purchased items in the Auction would go down due to the fact that MORE of certain recipes would be available. It does not stand to reason that the Developers would then have to increase the cost of recipes to "prop-up" the market.
I play on Protector which is a lower population server, and I can tell you that the "Market" in general could use an infusion of product, even if that meant the prices went down a little. Choose any recipe and scan thru all the levels and you will not find much available except the recipes that are only used for Franken-slotting. Any recipes in high demand will have very high prices and most likely not for sale.
My feeling is that the game market is "pretty good", and definitely "good enough" to allow even the casual player to "trick-out" their character with all the best IOs. This is a situation that you will not find in other MMOs. However, "pretty good" is not "perfect", so it doesnt hurt to entertain ideas on how to improve the situation. -
I would like to see some changes in the reward systems myself, but to be honest, the current state of affairs is not bad at all. Think about it, in other games the absolute best "gear" can only be obtained if you are a member of a "raiding" group and participate regularly. Often you have to work your way thru a rotation, which means many sessions of "scratching the backs of others" until your name is at the top of the "loot reel".
Salvage : Piece of cake, run some AE missions and use tickets to purchase what you need. The only "random" salvage is the common stuff and at 8 tickets a pop, its nothing to get what you need. When I check the Auctions and see commons going for 100K or some such insanity, what I need is 1 AE arc away.
Influence : Yeah having the influence to buy those nice IO recipes is a concern, but after you hit level 50 and can do level 50 missions with Bosses, you should start seeing "Purple" recipes. You COULD keep them for yourself, or sell them for a big chunk of influence like I do. Even solo, I have made between 100million and 300million doing PI radios over the course of a weekend. I am a casual player, so I am certain that other folks can do even better than this.
Recipes : There are two kinds of recipes in my book; The ridiculously expensive and High demand recipes (LoTG, Miracle +rec, Numina proc, Kinetic Combat etc...) and the low to moderate cost recipes (everything less than about 30million). You use merits to get the ridiculous cost ones, and your Influence to get the moderate and cheap ones.
If you split your time between Merit Story Arcs, AE missions and Level 50 Missions, you will eventually get everything you need, provided you spend the commensurate amount of time doing so. The best part of the whole system is that none of the IO recipes are unavailable to any person. You dont need to be a "hard-core" raider, or farmer to get what you want. You simply need to "chip" away at your build one IO at a time, and eventually you will be done.
What I personally have trouble with is the difficulty of getting anything "Randomly". Those rare moments when something really cool drops are very nice, but they are almost never on your list of "needs". I sell more than 95% of what drops for me, and thats a bit too high IMO. Some ideas that I have thought would be cool are the following;
"SWAP MEET" You take your salvage over to this in-game bazaar and you can trade in 3 of any type of salvage for 1 of an equal value and type. Ex: need a "Luck Charm", trade in 3 common Magic salvage to get 1 Luck Charm. Need a Rare, trade in 3 Rares and choose the specific Rare you want.
"RESEARCH LABORATORY" Much like the Day-jobs, where you camp out for a certain amount of time, you can go to the Research Facility and access their main frame which lists every recipe known to man. You pick ONE and only one recipe to research. As long as you camp out in the Lab at the end of your play session, time will accrue towards the research of the recipe you have chosen. The amount of time will be factored on your level and the level of the recipe as well as it's rarity. Eventually, you will log in and get a message that your recipe has been crafted and you can rush over and pick it up. Then begin again on a new recipe if desired.
"COMMODITY BROKER" How about a straight up purchase of Merits or trade Merits for Influence. I have no clue how much 1 merit should cost, but based on WW pricing it should be between 250K and 500K per Merit. So need merits, bring cash. Need Cash, bring Merits. There would need to be a limit of how many you could trade in a given amount of time since Brokers cannot move "hot" items faster than they can find "buyers" for them. -
Quote:Empathy takes a bit of practice to get into a good rythm, and if you dont play your toon for awhile, you need to get "warmed" up at the start of a team. If you think Empathy is challenging, try Kinetic. I have also heard Thermal is pretty crazy.Originally Posted by SPiNE
First time rolling an Empathy Defender in the past 3-4 years and boy is it tiring. Honestly, it feels more straining than any other powersets
...especially during low levels.
Have to either CM everyone or pay attention to anyone who got mezzed.
Have to keep Fortitude going on several different players.
Have to keep healing most of the times.
Have to gather the team or wait for an opportunity where everyone is grouped up for both RA auras.
This is the most workout I've gotten in a long time. It's fun when I have the energy for it though :] -
One thing I have always wanted to see more of are patrols. And also, non-combat devices like sensors that can alert nearby critters.
Think about a mission where you need to infiltrate a very difficult base and complete an objective like freeing a prisoner or getting a piece of equipment or information. But to do so requires you to learn patrol pathing and time your movements. Destroy sensors, doors, cameras etc.. You could gain influence on how efficient you were at completing the mission. For instance, minimal causalties gets more reward than total carnage. Figuring out how to bypass a security system instead of destroying it. Getting the Prisoner and successfully leaving before a certain amount of time has passed (presumably to get out before backup arrives). The sensors would be multi-spectral devices, to prevent folks from just "stealthing" the whole thing. Stealth/Invis gets you past the living guards, but not the machines.
And for me, MORE AMBUSHES ! MORE Dialogue from NPCS. -
Quote:I have been following this thread, but without much to add to the conversation have not posted so far. However, another thread discussing the merits of Immobilize in Crippling Axe Kick got me thinking about Knockback powers and how "maligned" they are by some folks.Originally Posted by Zamuel
Something that's been going through my head recently is how a number of the more unique powers in the game tend to be labeled as trash. Now, some powers do need revising but I think it's actually a symptom of the game being so focused on kills as opposed to completing tasks. Let's take radial knockback powers. Keeping enemies off you theoretically keeps you safe but slows down kill speed, especially if you are melee. Killing enemies faster seems to almost always take precedent over surviving longer. I'd argue that this alone should be reason for more mission variety but I wonder if it would be in vain. Would more varied missions open the door for more variance in playstyle or would it simply draw the ire of players who want things the same as they've always been?
This is just a random thought, but what if Melee characters (who are usually the first to cry about KB on teams) had some significant amount of -KB added in to one of their primary powers at a fairly early point in their career. You could add Immobilize to the tier 1 attack and with it a hefty -KB. These effects would not be enhanceable, just something to keep melee targets in front of them. -
I never got the impression that Umbral and Arcana were bashing each other either. It seemed more like a spirited debate over CAK for starters and then game balancing overall and each other's opinions of the Devs standpoint.
Frosticus on the other hand, seems to have a chip on his shoulder (still not sure why).
Myself I would be interested in seeing how some of the suggested changes (Umbral's in particular) effect overall survival and DPS of MA compared with current primaries (especially Dark). This would be the real telling factor in whether its reasonable. -
Brilliant Umbral !
100% /signed
even if something like this didn't happen, I will still love Martial Arts, but its always been the last or near last choices for Scrapper primaries. It would be good to see it get some respect, even if it still was the last choice on AoE and ST damage. -
Quote:Considering that Crane Kick, which is arguably the best "special attack" currently in the set (not counting Cobra Strike, since its damage is a joke), can reduce a critters incoming damage by 50% (assuming you dont go chasing after it and wait for it to run back), I dont see a problem with a stacking 50% -speed and -rech on CAK. Wouldn't you reach the "floor" after 2 successful hits ? After that it doesnt really matter how often you hit, all you are doing is refreshing the effect. Even at maximum recharge, would someone deliberately spam this attack at the risk of lower dps? How much could it really affect something like an AV ?Originally Posted by Redlynne
Any -Recharge effect in CAK would need to be ... large ... in order to be even noticeable simply due to the fact that there's nothing else in MA for CAK to synergize with. And because it would have to be a "large" amount of -Recharge, because it's a lonely single target attack with nothing else to back it up or stack with, you wind up with a situation where you're either needing to make allowance for it to stack onto itself ... or ... the effect does not stack from same caster.
If the -Recharge *is* stackable with itself, that basically makes it something where it takes a "wind up" of a repeated attack chain before the -Recharge stack gets deep enough to be "worthwhile" as a means of slowing down ... well ... anything really. On top of that, the -Recharge would need to have a long enough duration (which is NOT increased by Enhancements, btw) so as to be able to self-stack. Which then means you'd need to be fighting targets which could survive a full cycle of attack chains (or few). That means that LTs and Minions are "too wimpy" for CAK to really hit them enough times to slow them down (before they faceplant from sheer damage input). That essentially "reserves" the full -Recharge stackable value for Bosses, EBs and AVs.
If the -Recharge is *not* stackable with itself, then it needs to be "hefty" in order to justify its existence (beyond token joke). Something on the order of -40 or -50 Recharge, if it's meant to be a credible source of damage mitigation and worthy of the "Crippling" in the name of the power. This gives a lot more design leeway, since you don't have to worry about self-stacking.
These are all questions I am too tired to find the answers to really.
-
Quote:What if it was a short duration -speed and -recharge, resistable only by critter innate resistances (like AVs). This would have a similar impact but actually be melee useful.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Outside of PvP, very little. Worse, its almost impossible to know that it ever had an effect, because there's no way to know if your target would have moved if you hadn't immobilized it, and the immobilize doesn't have an obvious visible sign that it even took effect.
Ranged immobilize makes sense for runners. Melee immobilize has some benefit, but as I said a single target melee immobilize that is only mag 2 by default is probably the lowest possible foe effect that can still be called a foe effect. It would be interesting if it was in a PBAoE - it would then paralyze potentially a whole bunch of minions. If it was ranged it would be interesting: it would then be Impale. If it affected mag 3 or 4 it would be, well not exactly interesting but not exactly trivial either (bosses are less likely to run usually anyway). Single target melee ranged mag 2 immobilize is trying to make the worlds weakest mez and succeeding in spades.
I suppose 10% chance for single target melee ranged mag 2 immobilize would be weaker, but I think even Geko had to draw the line somewhere. -
Quote:Yep, thats kinda the point. I love watching things fly across a room, or flop over the edge of a balcony. It still makes me grin from ear to ear, but there are times that I wonder how chasing the thing that I just kicked is helping me defeat a spawn, or if its actually exposing me to more potential damage. Often I find myself using Crane kick as an opener to thin a herd and then switch to another target while its getting up. That or aiming my target at a wall so I dont have to run so far. This whole menagerie of function would go away by changing it to knockdown/up. I will admit that it would cheapen the "fun factor" a tad.Originally Posted by BrandX
Really, I can't agree with turning Crane Kick into a knockdown or knockup. Look at the animation...it's knockback.
That change seems more along the lines of "I don't want to possibly chase a target" than trying to help the set. The knockback is fine. -
I am in complete agreement with Arcanaville on this one.
The damage of the set is just fine but to improve on the secondary effects would be the way to go IMO.
Thunder Kick should be higher chance to stun. 1 shot minion, combined with Cobra should stun Lts and Bosses.
Storm Kick is fine as is, maybe add a small chance to Knockdown.
Crane Kick is fine as is, but changed to Knockdown or Knockup, at least 60% chance.
CAK, should be 100% Immob chance, with a 60% chance to stun Minions and Lts.
Dragon's Tail could stand a higher knockdown chance but seems fine.
EC should be knockdown plus the crit. (I would also like to see the Animation reduced a tad)
Taunt, Focus Chi are fine
So this would give a very consistent Knockdown/Knock-up feel to the set and the ability to double stack stun IF you take Cobra Strike plus either Thunder Kick, CAK or EC (which some min-maxers currently do not take TK or EC). -
Quote:You Know something Dr.Mike, that is brilliant.Originally Posted by DrMike2000
Yeah, its good to check out those powers that conventional wisdom says to ignore.
My problems with Repel stem not so much from the power itself as the failure of the rest of the Kinetics set - namely that a powerset that's all about movement and fast-paced action demands that you stand still next to the enemy so much.
Consider for a moment if Transfusion worked like Twilight Grasp. The Kinetics defender could then risk melee/standing still for the reward of offensive boosts (Fulcrum Shift and extra endurance) but wouldn't be relying on it for their main source of survival.
It would let you act much more like a traditional speedster, or Speedball if you took Repel.
And the opposite seems true for Dark Miasma. That powerset has very little trouble staying in melee range and conceptually "continual darkness" would be a power best used in close proximity. Enemies cannot aim for the middle of what they cannot see... hehe