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So, to take advantage of the sales for Circle of Thorns and Carnival of Light bundles, I went to go buy them. However, I cannot buy them, and the game gives me the following reason:
"Your purchase cannot be processed. You may already have purchased the item, or the product is not available in the quantities you specified."
However, I have bought neither of these costume sets, and I am only buying 1 of each pack. Now, my question is this: Is anyone else having an issue like this? Or if there is some obscure mistake I have made, is there any way to remedy it? -
That is definitely something that is true about this game (OP). A lot of the games have this problem for several reasons:
#1: Required class system. I hear sometimes in will stand around forever while waiting for a "healer" to join so they can go. Or a tank, or something like that. CoH is quite flexible in that respect.
#2: Level restrictions. CoH has the sidekick system and has lower limits on certain content, but otherwise it is come one come all.
#3: Equipment requirements. CoH is based around SOs, which basically means that you can play through it without uber optimizing with particular IO sets and 1337 building skills.
And so finding a team is really easy. Of course, there is the discussion going on about team leaders. This is something that I noticed, and actually a habit I developed through life. In school, all the way back to elementary school, whenever there was some group project where the team needed to decide on a project or a name or something, they would all turn to me with the dumbest look on their face, pleading "Save us, Blood!" in their eyes. I'd ask them what they think, and then silence. I'd ask for ideas, and silence. If I said nothing, the entire time would be filled with awkward glances at each other while we waited for someone to say something. That someone would, of course, turn out to be me, because I cared about my grades a bit and no one else was going to.
And this translated into the same thing in the game. I'm a frequent trial leader not because I excel at it, but because I don't like waiting around for someone else to start a trial. Ditto with TFs/SFs, and even once or twice Mothership and Hammi raids. And there really isn't a more grand explanation than that. I learned that if you want something done, you've got to do it yourself. Players in the game do have this timidness about them that makes them not want to lead anything. It's like videogames carried the spectator effect over from real life into them. So, for content that I am not familiar with to content that I am well versed in, I give it the good ole' college try. Usually it works out.
Something that I do hear a lot from players is this: "But I don't know how to lead a group!". This truly is the burden of the wise. The fact is that there isn't any special class or secret instruction that lets you lead a group. What leadership is, at it's best, is just using common sense to resolve an issue, then telling other people what to do. It's problem solving where you tell other people how to solve the problem as well, and deal with the people who refuse to listen. So, to make a short list on how to lead a group...
Step #1: Know what happens. If you don't know, then find out somehow (google it, youtube it, do it once while not leading, ect).
Step #2: Know what to do when stuff happens. If you don't know, then find out somehow. If you can't find anything, then you'll have to problem solve.
Step #3: Take initiative to start whatever it is you want to lead.
Step #4: Tell other people what happens.
Step #5: Tell other people what to do.
And that is basically it. There are some minor details to handle as you go on, but those are essentially all that is needed when you are leading a group. Probably the hardest part of being a leader is when something goes wrong. Then, you have to do the whole "what happened, what should I do, tell the group" thing rather quickly. That, or fail and then learn from the mistake for the next time. After awhile, from seeing other people do things to doing things yourself, you start to develop that leadership skill. -
As far as some of the escher girls I've seen, Penny isn't too bad. Something that I find is missed is that a lot these poses aren't to be "held" at all. If anything they are pictures that capture a split second of action. Penny's pose, in particular, is a strike that is lurched back and about to release. In real life this position is held for a tenth of a second, since it is subsequently followed through with the strike. Now, it isn't exactly a proper form for a true punch, since anyone who reels back to launch a haymaker like that is usually defeated by a quick jab to their exposed face, but nonetheless I've seen many man-slap fights pull those pose for a half second.
My biggest issue is that Penny yin just doesn't look good at all. Her outfit tries to be everywhere at once, and it reminds me of something my graphics artist teacher taught me: If you try to throw too much into something, you just end up drawing attention away. People will take one look at it and just go "Ugh!". Like when a woman puts on way too makeup, or when a guy wears a raindbow colored shirt and pants.
As far as the actual poses go, I do have a tolerance for how disproportionate someone can look, and that tolerance is quite... high. I just don't see half of this stuff unless someone points it out to me. I suppose that is the advantage to just kind of taking things as they are. But on occasion I will see something that breaks my sense of geometry. Call it shallow, but I like the side boobs + butt look. -
I always did find it annoying how I can't make a good swimwear for my male characters like I can the females. For women you have several bikini bottoms along with slit mini skirts and other "tinY" bottoms. I can make a standard one piece, a bordeaux look or however that word is spelled, a rather decorative two piece, ect. But for guys, you either have the booty shorts or if you are subscribing for long enough the boxing shorts.
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That was a theory I came up with a long time ago, long before trials were released. They may have changed a bit... But regardless that is my attempt to explain something that essentially makes no sense. I mean, that's how you'd do it: You find what else is different between the servers other than performance, and extrapolate if that is what may be the cause.
Of course, you also paint a very different picture of Virtue trials than the one I am familiar with. As far as my experience goes, failing a trial on virtue is quite rare, sans UG and to a lesser degree MoM. This was, however, before the Magi was released so that track record may have changed. Also, I still see recruits for trials asking people to have +3 with IO sets frequently. -
That is also something I found perplexing about Freedom. It's like, over there they talk about builds and maxing and power choices and stuff all day and yet they are worse at the game at virtue.
I have a theory. The unofficial RP server has players who play through the stories and get levels slower, and thus learn how to play their toons more effectively through time. Freedom is a lot more prone to farms and power leveling, where a player really doesn't get a feel for their character at all. Because of this, people on virtue with their RP and erping and all that, are much more capable at combat because they are more aware of what their characters can do and the weaknesses in them. -
It seems like a simple fix. Just make it so the taunt effects of the enemy have a much longer recharge than they do now. That way, after a second of confusion, you settle on only one enemy.
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I vote for whomever entertains me. Since they both entertain me, I vote for both.
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I always supported the idea of underwater fighting. But the issue is that it'll be really hard to do.
First you have to make an AoE based auto-power that acts like flight while in water, except with a different animation. Then you have to tweak various animations that are already in game from their flight stance to their underwater stance (at least those that don't fit already). Then you have to come up with an explanation as to why it is your toons can hold their breath for hours.
Though if they're willing to do all this I won't stop them. -
Glad Toonami is back.
That last episode of Deadman Wonderland disturbed me a bit. Gunfire I can get, pendulums I can get, but when it gets to the point where people are dissolving to death in a corrosive gas... squick.
But at least the shows have teeth now. The death and gore is done as a serious part of the show, instead of the wanton gore that occupied the other shows for comedy. That stuff just isn't funny to me, but at least it sets the tone of the show. Though if every episode is going to be like that I may find myself just tuning out. -
In loving memory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY
Normally I don't care when celebrities die, but this one I do. It's weird. -
I... really don't get it either. It seems too random, and I have a very hard time finding something to be funny when there's no link between the two things.
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It was a misunderstanding. It happens. No need to point fingers and go "who said what" all over the place.
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Quote:I believe the term was "biggest cost". I would content that 3.8% of quarterly expenditure is not "biggest cost". Though I believe programmers and game designers are budgeted with a salary and not paid per content or code, so the only way to diminish costs from the workers would be to fire them or impose draconian salary cuts on a regular basis. If you are saying that, after the game is made nothing else is done on it and a company basically absolves sans royalties and regular payoffs from the income of the game (sub maintenance and customer service), then the bandwidth would indeed be the most expensive part of managing an MMO. It would basically be the only expense.1) You and I just have huge differences in opinion on what "large portion" is. When you look at this cost on just the few games that NCSoft has active compared to the amount it has working on other projects, it IS huge.
Quote:2) As you suggested, newer games manage data better, but CoH isn't a new game. Its 8 years old, and its always very challenging to change the underlying systems without damaging something. They go unchanged unless absolutely essential.
Quote:3) The context of that post was demonstrating that there are costs associated with customers (support & bandwidth being the two hilighted), some kinds of customers are more expensive than others, and some kinds of platforms are better at managing these than others. Those that aren't built to minimize these risks need to target their marketing differently to mitigate them.
Quote:The are you disputed was the statement that bandwidth plays a role.
In essence, a game with a lighter bandwidth (and related) load can afford a rather scattershot advertising campaign, because if his costs for all the 'free' players that won't buy ANYTHING is low. A game with higher costs needs to try for more targeted advertising, going after the market segment with a greater likelihood of paying out.
I stuck with bandwidth because it IS directly scalable with the users (and user activity) so it can be more directly applied to the costs of attracting new players. (and... well, half my post was eaten by hitting the 'back' button.)
That is just a theory, however. It could be many other things, such as a target audience (I notice many of these free MMOs appeal to younger demographics with large cartoony appearances), or a bad marketing department in case the former isn't true. Most of my job experience has been in banking and education so I don't have first hand knowledge, but wouldn't the marketing department attempt to go for better and more frequent focused adds with a larger budget than a scattershot one?
Quote:You mention labor costs, and yes, they're huge. They also differ dramatically between the game types. A 2D browser based game can simply produce more, faster, with fewer people, so it'll have this at much lower costs as well. This cost doesn't scale well, though, and there's not a direct-consumption-cost to it, so it didn't contribute to the section on "targeted advertising."
It IS a huge portion of the cost, agreed, but since it isn't directly scalable to the playerbase-- more free players doesn't suddenly mean more payroll expenses, so it didn't contribute to the conversation.
Note, though, that you are kinda wrong in "There is no point where the company goes to it's programmers and writers and says "O.K. you're done. You can go home now"." There very much is, as many that work in the industry will tell you. The months leading up to a launch will often see a surge in payroll expenditures as the production team scales into the hundreds, while maintaining a title may take a few dozen. Historically, even a 2-team system (1 working on expansions, 1 working on maintenance) has been dwarfed by a full-production team. NCNC's "reinvestment" in CoH after it was acquired is more the happy exception, rather than the norm. -
Side rant: I hate my computer's auto-correct. I'm not sure how to turn it off, but I am tired of words like "for" becoming "form". If I misspell or mistype a word, just give me the squiggly lines underneath so I can go back to correct my mistake instead of replacing the misspelled word with the incorrect one. Now, to deal with the topic at hand:
Quote:Nevertheless it is a percentage of the total expenditures for bandwidth for... every single server for every game they manage for the entire network of high graphics and fast streaming action, along with all websites and downloads and services. I am not sure where 6.9% comes from, since it is 3.8% of their total expenditures. Of course, the labor costs for the game developers don't drastically rise and fall with whatever is going to be released soon. Developers aren't hired on the basis that they will have to find a project to work on or be fired, and likewise developers aren't fired immediately after the game is released. To say that the costs of the bandwidth for the game would extrapolate to be a huge fraction of the game once development stops ignores the fact that development never stops. The games are being improved upon, given weekly maintenance, and new game content is being made, and new games are being made, and new projects are being underwent. There is no point where the company goes to it's programmers and writers and says "O.K. you're done. You can go home now".That actually IS a decent amount, relatively speaking. $3.9 million us dollars isn't anything to sneeze at. A 2d browser based multiplayer game might have 1% of that bandwith cost.
Look at it another way:
their total bandwidth costs was 6.9% of their total labor cost, which I assume would include the labor costs of all wholly-owned studios. IIRC, two of those are in late-stage development, and part of Paragon Studios has another project too, so a LOT of that staff represent projects using very little bandwidth.
That means that if you could actually extrapolate the costs of bandwith with the cost of labor for those already-launched titles, you'd see that its a painfully sizable chunk of their budget... one that can directly correlate to staffing availability.
(admittedly, there is a a personal bias here: Where I work (not a game company) our coders finally started to minify all code before release, reducing a batch of files from 500kb to 42kb. This savings in bandwidth costs alone let us budget in another graphic designer for the year. )
I have seen the financial reports of NCsoft spanning over two years into the past, and the same story can be said of the financial expenditures for that entire time. If you can find an example in NCsoft's history where they weren't working on any project and thus their bandwidth expenditures made up a large portion of their costs, let me know. I would say that NCsoft isn't too worried about the costs of bandwidth, since their newest launch title isn't going to have a subscription fee (Guild Wars 2).
There is a proportional growth with bandwidth costs. Smaller companies will make cheaper games that will take less bandwidth, so they'll be a small expense. Bigger companies will make bigger games that take more bandwidth, so they'll be a small expense. In the past when MMOs were new, bandwidth costs might have been quite large, but with how much data is maximized nowadays the actual cost of hosting an MMO is no longer a large portion of the costs of an MMO. -
Other people have pointed out how J_B's reasons don't quite make sense. It's like, you want to play a toon that looks like a brute and behaves like a brute but it can't be a brute... Anyway:
Quote:I have bad memory, but are there any examples of red ATs being "leveld off"? I honestly can't think of any other than the changes to brutes awhile ago and the more recent stalker changes.The two ATs will have to coexist, the issue is that Brutes along with a few other Villain archetypes were moderately over powered from the beginning (Corrs vs Def's also for example), probably in part to entice players since you had to play the new red side "expansionalone" to level them.
Since proliferation, efforts have been made to both enhance standard blue side ATs and level off formally red side only alternates, but with Brutes they still have not gotten there.
Quote:Brutes have had their max resistance and damage reduced slightly to not much blow back on the boards not that long ago, definitely not even in the same galaxy as the avalanche of anger to any negative changes made to Scrappers or Tanks in the last five years, which there haven't been many but nerfs to EM and SM come to mind.
At the end of the day at their max Brutes step on both Scrappers and Tankers, so do you increase all melee to the quickly uninteresting yawn level of Godmode some dribble about endlessly, nigh unkillable with oneshot nuclear napalm blasting from every orifice?
Likely, no.
So some slight adjustment likely to both Tanks and Brutes has to be made or nothing will be done.
Combine this with many of the other suggestions for tankers and we could have something to work with. -
The biggest issue with storytelling in the game is that the game design is so adverse to story telling. The only way to get everything out of an arc is if you are soloing it. The contacts that give information on the missions before and after the mission are nearly impossible to read unless you are the team leader. The clues given in mission require you to stop everything and read them to get the story. The in-mission contacts are a race to finish the dialogue, but not too quickly or else the contact will go away and no one else can talk to them. Souvenirs are a nice way of wrapping things up, but those break immersion and aren't truly effective methods of conveying the story since to get the story you have to slog through the missions with no idea what you are doing. Even then, some souvenirs contain information that wasn't actually covered in the mission, such as the praetorian souvenir that gives the history of the destroyers.
This is also one of the biggest issues I encountered while making AE arcs. During the few playthroughs of my first arc, I would get players who would admit they have no idea what is going on, even though I had clearly spelled out that information in the mission text and clues. Being built for a team, the sad part is that most of the players aren't going to get the full story since they won't stop and read the clues, the mission text, and the descriptions for custom characters.
The devs are doing better, though. With cutscenes and public chat bubbles, it is now possible for players in a team to take part in the story without having to abruptly hold up everyone so they can read a clue or race to the story contact. Though what I think is the most effective and yet underutilized tool for story telling in the game is the gameplay itself. The maps, the enemies, and the enemy's strength themselves can be an effective tool for conveying emotion in the game's content. -
Quote:
The big expense for most MMO's is hosting & bandwidth. You control these by making a product that doesn't require much traffic, memory, or CPU time to deliver the experience.
This actually isn't true. Bandwidth costs for modern MMOs make up only 3% to 4% of their actual expenditures. If you take a look at NCsoft's expenditures for their 2011 4th quarter:
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/p...8-4CF93D33B397
particularly the 8th page, it lists the 4th quarter expenditures on bandwidth to be 4618 KRW in MN (I have no idea what that unit stands form). The total expenditures for that quarter are 122,317 KRW in MN, meaning that bandwidth made up only 3.8% rounded of the expenses for that quarter. -
Currently I don't play the game for rewards. I play the game for other things. The closest I can come to playing the game for rewards is when I want to try and accomplish something on a toon and for some reason I don't have the wealth or resources on me to actually do so. Then I'll play the game for some of the rewards... for a few days at most. Then I have what I want, and I can continue playing the game as I want.
What I generally play the game for is exploration and experimentation. The only time there would truly be nothing left for me to gain is after I have gone through every mission in the game and played every powerset in the game.
But if we were to assume that happens, then there are a couple of things I would probably do. First, I'd make more AE arcs. Second, I'd give RPing a try. Third, I'd see how far I could push my toons regarding in-game content. Fourth, I'd go badging. Fifth, I'd still probably play through a lot of the game with other players since the gameplay is good enough. -
Quote:That I am not so sure about. The AA and TR thing I doubt, but I'm talking about there being no benefit.
But NCSoft, there is no befit to them in promoting CoH with GW2, because if someone starts playing CoH then they are less likely to play GW2. NCSoft have never been averse to shutting down CoH if they have something else in it's place; it only exists now because Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa flopped.
CoH and GW2 have very different payment plans. GW2 is currently set to launch as a buy-then-play game where you don't need to pay a subscription fee to play the game. The microtransaction market for GW2 is also surprisingly light on stuff that you would want to get, with everything in that market being obtainable in-game. A very large focus in GW2 gaming is around PVP elements where you are given the levels, stats, and equipment to play. Essentially it is a "jump into PVP whenever you feel like it" kind of game.
CoH however is a hybrid but mostly subscription based game that is focused on PVE elements and is a lot more easy going than GW2 will be. With the two different payment methods each of the games occupy a different space in each person's wallet, and don't have that natural mental confliction that subs vs. subs and purchase vs. purchase has. Since the profits from GW2 come from players merely purchasing the game, they really don't care what you do after you buy the disk. Play it or don't, they've made money. The atmospheres of the games are also completely different. The only thing that these games really have in common are that they are MMOs and they're owned by the same parent company... that would profit from you playing both. -
Something isn't sitting quite right in my head:
Why is it that tankers would be the ones that have high damage and high durability, instead of just having brutes fill that role? If the issue is that you want an AT to be like another AT, then shouldn't you just go with that other AT?
O.K., with that out of my system... I have been kicking around an idea for a bit. Something I noticed is that, when IOing out, there are really only very few things you can build for to get peak performance: Defense, Recharge, and healing/regen to stretch it. Sure there are other things like accuracy and status duration, but no one really builds towards those to achieve incredibly strong toons. The damage boosts given out in all of the IO sets themselves are pretty darn pathetic. Soulbound Allegiance, for example, gives a 4% damage bonus; the maximum that you can get out of any set bonus, and only 3 very unrelated sets give that 4% bonus. From there, all the bonuses are 1%, 2.5%, 2%, and so on. If you slot enough +damage into your build, you might hit around 25% damage boost, which is the equivalent of one small red inspiration.
Defenses and recharge can give so much more bang for their buck. Slotting for damage boosts seem insane, especially given that those boosts will most likely end up on top of the regular enhancement slotting (which will get you a little over 90% for a total of 190% damage) along with build up or aim, as well as Assault or any other boosts you may get from teammates. It just isn't worth it. But what if... it was worth it? What if the damage bonuses were large enough that slotting for bonuses would meaningfully contribute to how quickly you killed enemies?
I imagine that if we were to roughly triple or double the damage boosts that IO sets can give, then this would allow us to create a new stat that we can build for: damage. It'll allow us greater customization in our toons: instead of building just to be durable, you can build toons you think are tough enough to do more damage, thus putting them on par with other AT's in that respect. You could make a stalker or a blaster really have high output in sacrifice for making them a lot less durable or have low recharge so their attacks aren't on rapid fire. The most important part would be how you could take a tanker, then give them something like a permanent 45% damage boost, giving them greater offensive power.
The biggest issue I guess would be that damage bonuses could overlap with the others, letting you build up to a toon that has both a 45% defenses and damage boost. I haven't given this a masters level depth of research yet, but a quick ctrl+f search reveals that nearly all of the damage bonuses are alongside of some kind of defense bonus. That might be worked around, or it might be that there's a much more effective way to balance IO slotting than just making the damage boosts higher.
Something I've noticed while playing my tanker is that he is pretty darn indestructible. My other melee toons, IOed out and everything, don't even come close to what my tanker can pull off on a regular basis. As to what is necessary really depends on what my team is currently made up of, as well as the current difficulty level of the content. Though a lot of teams don't need a tank to hold aggro, through the sheer randomness of the game plenty of teams do need a tanker to hold aggro. There have been occasions where I will end up on a team that has a few blasters, a mastermind, and a stalker, and a defender. There have been cases where I would end up on a team where almost no on has a direct form of mezz protection. There are also cases where it is a long mission and the best way to beat it is to split up; a tactic which needs great aggro management since you now are working with only half the team. In these cases, it is great to have a tanker on board. I also think we are looking at end game a little too much. A lot of players will wait until the later levels to IO out their toons due to IO set choice limitations, higher bonuses, and availability of slots to put sets in. With SOs or basic IOs being prominent until endgame, the innate survivability of tankers is of great importance in lower level content. I will also frequently see brutes who are in a squishy phase where they are built mostly for damage and don't have IO defenses to save them.
Granted, I do think that tankers could do with some improvement. They are very durable, but they also lack the flair that other ATs have. They are also not the best at aggro management. I also think that brutes can do a little too much, having a higher damage output with similar caps to tankers. Though it makes more sense on a spreadsheet to nerf brutes a bit, the community backlash would be quite fierce over that. I would just like to think outside of the box and try to find a way to improve tankers in a manner that isn't just making them more like brutes. -
I would say we went past missing and have gone full on "missed". To advertise that facet of City of Heroes after it has been touted as part of GW2 would come off as a smaller MMO going "but I have that too!". Right now, I suppose the best we could do is, while NCsoft is talking about GW2, see if they can sneak in a mention about how GW2 has some elements that were experimented with in City of Heroes; another NCsoft game. Whether or not NCsoft will due that is a whole other ballgame.
I have always myself encountered problems whenever I try to advertise this game by word of mouth. It seems like everyone I talk to is doing their best to try and find a reason not to play this game. I've heard things like the following:
#1: "Wait, isn't that game old? I don't want to play an old MMO." Yeah, this doesn't make sense, but it does to whomever says it.
#2: "They've already made a newer one. I'll go play that".
#3: "You play a super hero? So you don't fight dragons and stuff?"
#4: "You only have spells? How are you supposed to fight stuff without an auto-attack?"
#5: "I don't want to play a game where I can't play as Wolverine."
#6: "You can play the game as any AT? Well, then what's the point of playing anything then if you aren't important?". This one... infuriates me.
#7: "I'm not going to play a game without skills/stats I can train and level up".
#8: "Why can't I websling?"
And so on. Of course, you try arguing with them but it is mostly pointless since their mind is made up beforehand. That, or they just circle back to one of the other numbers on the list. I'm certain that this game would be a lot more popular if more people would give it a shot. But all of the newcomers I see play the game just looking for a reason to abandon it.
EDIT: Addendum on #6: Players will also complain that there is no set race in the game in a similar vein. -
I suppose one of the reasons why I want some harder material and turn up the difficulty on all of my runs in the game is because the death penalty in this game is so low. The game I'm playing right now is runescape, and if CoX had a punishment similar to RS (lose all of your enhancements), then I would put the game at -1/x1 and never move from that difficulty setting. Even RS is loosening it's death penalties significantly, because they have eventually discovered that in an economy based off of extremely rare takes-months-to-afford items having those items be easily lost due to the unforgiving random number generator or shoddy servers is a horrible game model.
The closest thing that CoX has to that are Purple and PVP IOs, and even then it doesn't take months to earn the cash needed to buy them. Why, with a few trial runs you can get enough astrals in a day to buy several in-demand sets to give yourself several hundred mil so you can buy a purple IO enhancement or two, and the benefits of these enhancements are only marginally better than the lower tiers. Most of the wealth that I earn in the game is happenstance earnings since the gameplay isn't based upon wealth.
The difficulty itself isn't too punishing, either. In worst case scenarios where you come across a merger of 3 groups with annoying things like sappers or S.W.A.T., you can buy a couple of inspirations (4 purples, for example) that will let you become all but invincible for half a minute. A few more, and your damage output increases greatly. Should things be too hard you can lower the difficulty and restart the mission, or continue on afterward if you are in a TF/SF. There are very few moments in the game where you are truly stuck where you are at that cannot be solved without better coordination or planning, and most of the content can be accomplished by a team consisting of any ATs and Powersets given that the player isn't incompetent with slotting SO's or higher. -
I definitely want to spend more time in the overworld doing stuff. I wrote a couple of very lengthy posts about this subject in prior topics:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...6&postcount=10
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=115
They're kind of huge, though. -
It is likely that the dev's haven't figured out a good tanker change yet. Can't announce what isn't there to announce.