BrandX

Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy

just by doing it, and focusing on resistance and regen.That's how I do it. ITF is favorite thing to run on my WP, even brute version. out all sets i've played, had least trouble with WP. although never tried any tf on the stalker as it was a pure solo toon. Solo content can be or I have done it something as squishy as a i6-i8 era AR/fire blaster. So no probs there.

Originally Posted by Vauluur

You sure? I get the feeling that a DP/MC/Mace Blaster will feel very dodgey. Softcap S/L/E and you can blap your heart out. I'll probably be making one, even though I know there will be hundreds of them running around.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

If there is a singular problem that posters like Rakeeb amplify, its the artificial tension between game balance and game entertainment value. A lot of people, even sometimes the devs, believe these are mutually exclusive objectives and in wrongly promoting their preferences as objective balance they just make this fallacy harder to dismiss.

Game balance has nothing to do with entertainment value, because game balance should be judged within the context of the entertainment value you're trying to deliver. Saying its harder to make balanced games entertaining or vice versa is like saying its hard to make blue cars fast, because the faster you make them the more red they have to be.

This game has a certain feel, it delivers a certain gameplay and has a certain entertainment value. Anything that purports to "balance" the game while destroying those things isn't meaningful balance. That's the difference between game design and arithmetic.

Can we balance this game, with ugly mechanics and quirky classes? Yes, we can in theory, and in practice we can keep improving even if we never actually get there. In our game, balance is not about the scale damage of blazing bolt. Its about core content, progressional opportunity, and reward earning. If every archetype/powerset combination choice had approximately the same ability to deal with core content, if they all had a similar if not identical opportunity to use the progressional systems of the game (i.e. inventions, incarnate powers), if they all had a similar ability to earn rewards, then it doesn't matter if someone has 21.6% more AoE damage and someone else takes down pylons 18 seconds quicker. That's arithmetic. Meaningful balance is about the experience the game delivers. Sometimes that involves numerical balancing of specific game effects. But always with an eye to the overall big picture of the gameplay we deliver.

Its ok if we all can only take on three things. Its also ok if we all can take on twelve. Three is not a magic number. Ok, it is a magic number, but not for game balance. What matters is what the game intent is. If we intend players to be far more powerful here than in other MMOs, that's fine. Blasters are not in competition with Jedi Knights or Blood Elfs. They are only in competition with Tankers and Stalkers and Dominators and Masterminds. We decide what is "balanced" for this game in terms of our relative capabilities. And then math takes over and tries to deliver on that decision.

But what we care about most here, what we've always cared about most, is not trivial number crunching. That's just a tool to help with the real game design, which is to offer the players fair choices in archetype and powersets. And fair in this case is what I mentioned above: similar ability to run core content, similar ability to use optional progression systems, similar ability to earn rewards.

Are we there yet? Of course not. We don't need posters like Rakeeb to lecture us on that. But we also don't need posters like Rakeeb to tell us the entire game we play is wrong, and we're all wrong for liking it, and if we weren't so wrong we'd see why we should discard eight years of City of Heroes to make City of Rakeeb.

I like City of Heroes. I like it even though its imperfect and I spend a lot of time trying to improve it. I don't want to trade City of Heroes for City of Rakeeb. I don't think I would like City of Rakeeb, even though in many ways it might implement many of the mechanical changes I've advocated for years. Because City of Rakeeb doesn't care about players, it cares about Rakeeb mechanics. It cares about arithmetic more than gameplay. And as surprising as it might be to some people when I say this, it should not be surprising to people who have read my stuff since 2004. I don't care about arithmetic. Numbers to me are just language. They aren't the game any more than English is the game. Often, number are extremely important to defining and describing the game, but numbers don't *decide* the game.

We do that. We the devs and we the players (moreso the former of course, but we have more input here than anywhere else). So anyone that says they don't care what the players think and what the devs think doesn't care about this game. They care about this other thing in their heads that they wish could replace this game.

Originally Posted by Thunder Knight

I hadn't read that before, so I'm glad you linked to it. But that doesn't make him sound like the "most despicable person" at all. He really did gather up a group of refugees and teach them to survive and even thrive in the DE-dominated wilderness, even though he wasn't anywhere near as kind and benevolent as his official bio made him sound. But... the dog analogy comes up again. As callous as he could be to outsiders, he watched over his pack. (At least, until he found a bigger pack to run with. But even that took ten whole years, and his pack was well-trained to survive without him)

That pretty much solidified my previous impression of him from Lambda sector, where he shows up to keep it safe and kick you invaders out of his house - he's a protector as much as a destroyer. Note that neither "protecting" nor "destroying" are in and of themselves inherently good or evil. Just because I consider him a protector doesn't mean I consider him a hero.

I do think, however, that with Cole's empire destroyed, he's now going to be looking for another pack to run with.

Originally Posted by Kyriani

You're very likely correct on that assessment but consider that what Rakeeb wants is a global nerf on a scope more far reaching that ED/GDN but with nothing "waiting in the wings" to make up for it. His idea is simply to reduce power.

Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy

Have at least three WP tanks, three WP brutes, one claws/WP stalker, not heightened senses and loved it that way and had no issues. More than likely I will continue on building more WP in the future in same manner. a manner that works for me. ---->Keywords: ...That Works For Me<----. and my particular playstyle.

and Spine/WP sounds like a good combo, so does the spines/DA and Spines/electric.

Originally Posted by Warkupo

Oh boy do I remember *that* conversation. Suddenly everyone as a munitions expert, and guns could not, under any circumstance, for any reason, be used at a range of under 15 feet. I really got sick of listening to the forums during that little debate.

Still, I think the Martial set coming out for blaster in addition to all the other fun things Blaster is getting will largely satisfy my "gun-fu" itch.

Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake

you know, im not seeing it now on paragon wiki, but i seem to recall a supplimental backgrounder that disputes the official story of marauder going into the wild, beating down the anarchy and organizing the people to survive that tells of him going intot he wild, scavenging and robbing the people who were too weak to fight back, staying on the run from the hamidon until eventually cole forced him into line. does anyone else remember this? based on this id say he is an unredeemable thug...but im also concluding that im going senile because i cant remember where i saw that.

Originally Posted by John_Printemps

You know, I was thinking about it, does anyone remember when Castle was the one running powers and said (loosely) "If [we] look at Spines, it most likely wont come back out of the operating room like it is now."?

I'm not saying I expect the current team to be in the same mind-set, but Spines is more than likely going get Proliferated, and with it they've said "We've changed some things." So far the only thing mentioned has been casually that they've "improved" Barb Swipe and Lunge, but not really said they had or hadn't reviewed the rest of the set as well. For the most part, change in this game trends towards the better; but that still has me curious if they've gone through and cleaned house a little on all the secondary junk that Spines carries (Slows, Toxics, Immoblize, -Rech).

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU

Yes, this is something that people tend not to realise: one movie < one novel. Or, to put it another way, how many hours worth of content was in a single novel: Game of Thrones? Most movies based on novels cut out a huge amount of content. Novelizations of movies add a lot of extra detail.


Putting that aside, The Hobbit is not really an adaptation of the novel. Peter Jackson doesn't like the novel, which is why he didn't want to do it in the first place. He is only doing because he gets to adapt lot of other bits of Tolkien that he does like (including a more "grown up" account of events of "The quest for Erebor"). He is more interested in following Gandalf than Bilbo.

In this case, the main bit he is doing could be called "The war against the Necromancer". To fit this into two movies you would end up with two full scale battles in the second movie (three if you count the battle against Smaug). This really wouldn't work. Far to much going on. If I'm right, the "extra content" he will be filming is a full scale version of the Battle of Dol Guldur, and it will go in the second movie, which will have the most non-novel content.

Originally Posted by Hopeling

Pretty much.

A Brute, with proper team support, can do pretty much anything a Tanker can do. Tankers really shine when the solid waste hits the oscillating unit and the team is too busy trying to save their own skins to also provide support to a Brute. One of my favorite Tanker moments was a wipe on the last phase of BAF (this was quite some time ago, when BAF failures weren't unheard of), with people coming back from the hospital in a continual trickle and being scythed down as quickly as they could arrive by 9CUs that had ramped way up (not sure how many players are still aware of this, but they get an increasing tohit and damage buff the longer they stay alive). With a few purple inspirations, my Elec Armor energy resists, and a flurry of taunts and punches, I was able to gather most of the horrifically deadly 9CU aggro onto myself and get them bunched up long enough for the league to regroup and wipe them out, and we scraped out a win with less than a minute on the clock.

Such moments are less and less common these days, it seems. Chalk it up to power creep, more people knowing the trials, et cetera. If you really want to tank more than anything else, a Tanker is the way to go. Otherwise, Brutes are your AT.

Originally Posted by Rakeeb

Do it, then. Let's see your analysis that demonstrates that the game is in balance, if not numerically than in relative proportion.

Demonstrate conclusively that the game is closely enough balanced that the obvious break points are not relevant enough to be fixed rapidly and I'll call that a win for you.

EDIT: Of course, I know better than to think you'll do so. Not ONE PERSON has been able to look at what I'm saying and disprove it outright, folks are simply saying that they're alright with it being bad. Since I'm the only one who seems to be bothered by a blatant imbalance, I'll take my leave. Enjoy your ****** game, Junior.

Originally Posted by Kyriani

If you want evidence of how destructive such a broad sweeping nerf to the game can be you need look no further than when ED/GDN happened. It was a blow to the game that I don't think it has ever fully recovered from and that was years ago.

The population today is not what it once was and such a broad sweeping nerf would alienate players who are HAPPY with things as they are. Paragon Studios cannot AFFORD to alienate these people.

The fact that you are still playing the game without the nerfs basically means you're willing to accept the game as is.

The fact that MANY others (as evidenced simply by the hard on for soft capped defenses so many players have) would stop subscribing and stop playing the game because the characters they built in specific ways no longer function as they used to and have no hope of achieving that performance again.

I can't imagine on what basis you think the game's population would not suffer a decline in players but I assure you that, to put it simply, you are wrong.

At this point the devs aren't going to rock the boat in any extreme way that might alienate their player base because that player base is small enough as it is. Doing anything to make it smaller is financial suicide which I honestly believe doesn't seem to be getting through to you. The game would not be better for the nerf. The game would die.

Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn

There's no need to have two Brokers/Detectives in each zone anymore. There wasn't really in the first place, but they wanted to avoid crowding. But really, there should now be just one Detective in each zone, and it should be outside the police building.

Originally Posted by Hejtmane

This is totally Hypothetical I am guessing on what they are going to do with the attacks in spines and going of base damage only (from mids no enhancement)

If barb gets the .83 (they said sub 1s so this makes sense) to put it in line with the other tier 1 attacks like MA, DM, etc it will have a 57.18 dps

If lunge gets changes I expect which would be Cobra strike/crane kick numbers it will have like a 73dps (The MA attacks are very close in activation times and they said everything increased makes the most logical sense based of that statement)

Impale unchanged is 49.13dps and throw spines is 49.70 and ripper is 63.38

So if all the rest stays unchanged the new attack chain will feature Barb, Lunge and Ripper I have not worked out an optimal chain not really my forte maybe one of the dps experts will chime in on my hypothetical changes. My best eyeball guess looks something like this lunge>Barb>Ripper>Barb>lunge or something along that lines wanting lunge and ripper up as often as possible

Originally Posted by DarkGob

That's actually a lot more reasonable than any BS "respect" excuse. I think it's completely wrong, but I would actually believe it.


...Do you mean Talia? It's hard to imagine Joker would have figured heavily into this movie if Ledger had not died. He certainly wouldn't be a stooge to anyone; not Bane, not Talia al Ghul, hell not even if it were Ra's al Ghul himself. Honestly, I think we would have gotten the exact same movie.

Originally Posted by Premonitions

I wear this style as a guy(wear it "bunned" like that at work) and I'd really love this.

Originally Posted by JayboH

So it's exactly like most secondaries.