Comicsluvr

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This has always sounded to me like a stealth nerf to aggro to hamper herding. The problem I have with this is, if I've got a group of enemies on me (which I usually do being a scrapper) there are two number that dictacte how many foes I can fight...

...my aggro cap

...and the limit on each of my powers (in this case, it's 10 across the board)

There is and should never be a reason for a Boss to run from me unless it's part of the story. Certainly not while i'm well within my aggro limit. If you want to make weakling LTs and Minions run then so be it, but a Boss is a Boss and should go down fighting.

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I agree completely. This should be doubly-true of EBs and AVs. Villains typically respect only strength. How is a bad guy going to maintain his rep if he turns his 2-ton suit of armor and runs like a girl the first time I whack him?

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are you guys afraid of a challenge or something? Yeah alot of them run away when they're close to bein defeated, but that just adds to the game. Think if they really exsisted they would just stand there and let you pound on them? No they wouldn't. If you start to lose do you just sit there and take it? Maybe if you're a noob or somethin, but generally no you try to do other things to stay alive.

There's this lil button on your keyboard that has you follow the enemy...press "F" and then your next attack and as soon as you get in range, cause you're faster (unless you're usin hover), you'll do the attack

I say keep it, it adds to the game. I like the challenge and the fact that the victory's not just handed to you. I like earning what I get, my levels and my respect.

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Something that you need to understand is that tedium does NOT = challenge. As I said in my last post defesting the AV in question was never in doubt...IF he held still and IF AVs were not nigh unholdable by a single character. If he had stood and fought, or even used hit and run tactics, then that would have been a challenge. But the fact that he ran even after the map had been cleared and I had done less than 100 Health to him was asinine.

A Challenge is something that makes us strive to accomplish some goal or achieve some victory.

Tedium is having to do some dull task over and over again.

Look them up and perhaps you'll understand the difference. Or perhaps you run at a low enough Diff that you only fight EBs which are MUCH more tractable...

Either way if you don't understand then you haven't done it enough.

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Yet, first impressions are the most important. MA arcs are not like regular game content. We have more of a choice about whether we do them. Game content we have to do, if we want what follows. I can't count how many times I've rescued Fusionette in the Faultline arc, because that arc is a good way to get the Ouroboros badge before you're high enough to just go to Ouroboros. If we could START with the actual time travel mission, I'm sure a lot of people would.

But we don't have that option.

In MA we do. If we don't like the mission, we can bail and do something else. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm actually a fairly tolerant person. In my example above, I probably wouldn't skip Fusionette because I don't think she's as bad as most people seem to. I think that mission is a nice little challenge to complete successfully. I think the same about Lady Grey.

So when I talk about bailing when I smell effluent, I'm talking about a ripe, reeking, STENCH of effluent. I'm talking about a mission that is OBVIOUSLY a 55 gallon drum of sewage, not just a little bit poorly done. And once I'm sure of that, I should not have to waste my time struggling through any more of it before I can give it the rating I consider appropriate.

If the creator of that barrel of sewage wants people to persevere, then they have to give it a better first impression. It's called good writing.

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I agree with this totally. As a writer by trade I have seen real drek published...but it seldom gets purchased because customers read a few pages and put it back. That writer doesn't see much ink after that and either improves his art or goes back to washing cars or whatever.

I agree that the idea of griefing is important and should be prevented at all costs. But one thing that we should all remember is that some of the MAs created will DESERVE to sink into ranking obscurity. I'm more concerned with MA trash remaining on life support because of a few friends then I am getting my own Arcs griefed.

There will be enough checks and balances in place to keep real junk off the top lists I think. The effort to get something bad to rank high and stay that way is equivalent to the JFK assassination conspiracy. Likewise the ratings records on the low end, if datamined correctly, will prevent all but the most determined griefers from lasting too long. Who wants to risk censure just to grief another player?

I completely agree that there should be a Comments section, even for good MAs. Something as simple as 'Great plot but if you hate CoT stay out of this one!' would be fine for me. Now I know that I should not bring certain characters/ATs/Powersets in solo but the plot is good so it's probably worth teaming it.

My single biggest concern right now (other than not being in the Beta after sending the Devs that case of Scotch...) is that there will be so much attention paid to the ratings and rewards that the fun might get squeezed out of what could be a really great system.

Am I the only one that didn't like the video? I actually found it difficult to watch all the way through.

Someone has to swim against the stream I suppose...

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I want Arachnos minions. Or something along those lines.

Tier 1: Wolf Spider with its standard single pistol. Equip would give it dual with a downgraded Empty Clips from the thugs MM primary. Upgrade would turn them into Wolf Spider Tac Ops. With their mace blast and poison -def and -recharge attack.

Tier 2: Fortunata Seer's with mental blast, psionic lance. Equip would give them Subdue, and their version of tactics. Mind link I believe. Upgrade would make them Fortunata Mistresses. Changing costume while giving Psychic Scream, and Will Domination, their single target sleep.

Tier 3: Bane Spider Executioner with Bash, Pulverize, Crowd Control. Equip would give their Holds and Immobilize, Web Gernade and Cacoon. Upgrade would give their two blasts and Whirling Mace.


I'd put some slow recharges for the Bane Spider and damage would be downed for the Fortunata on its psi attacks. But otherwise I would see it as a really fun primary for Master Minds.

Keep in mind that this is only the pets. Not the attacks that go with it. No idea what those would be.
Thoughts?

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Every time I do the lowbie 'Clear out the Snakes' mish where you get like 4 Arachnos minions following me around I always think of this. The graphics and Powers for the pets are already done so little work there. The Tier 1s should be Arachnos Soldiers, the Tier 2s could be Fortunatas and the Tier 3 could be a Hunter Boss. On the flip side with VEATs they now have animations for all of the Arachnos Spiders as well so that would also be cool...

Saw it again yesterday. Fighting Dr Quextrian (sure I've botched the name...redside AV in the Black Scorpion Patron Arc) yesterday. I TAPPED him with an attack and he turns and flees the length of the warehouse map. Once I noticed that he was running past other spawns I slowed down, dealt with those spawns and then tapped him again when he returned. Again he fled after taking about 100 points of his many thousands of health.

I finally finished the mission by inviting several friends and cornering him at the far end of the warehouse. I could have defeated him solo if he were able to be slowed/held/immobilized or if he would stand still after getting a boo boo.

I also discovered that mobs will run when they are reduced to 0 End for whatever reason. Not run away until they get some End and can attack but run away and HIDE on occasion. Isn't this particularly bad for those that have End draining Powers? I was under the impression that draining their End was damage mitigation but now if I try it everyone says 'Don't drop their End to zero or they'll scatter!'

So now our tactics are being dictated on stupid AI code? Please!

Ok, just my opinions:

1) I've never seen patch Notes come out before a patch. Heck, sometimes they don't come out the DAY of the patch. Bad planning IMHO but hey, it's an established practice by now so leave that alone.

2) The Devs changing their minds about how something works when it's WAI is NOT, never has been and never should be an exploit. Tankers being able to aggro a whole map was not an exploit....they built the game that way. Instant Regen being a Toggle was not an exploit...they built it that way. Converting Salvage to Brainstorms for badge credit was NOT an exploit...they designed it that way. Therefore technically speaking 'fixing' it, whether by stealth or no, is a nerf. Case closed on this point IMHO.

3) Jesus Thundering Christ in a taxicab it's just a freaking BADGE! It has NO bearing on combat, grants so particularly awe-inspiring Powers, and was not even KNOWN by some who 'exploited' it!

If the Devs want to own up that they did something wrong (and they do but not often enough IMHO) then fine but when the problem has a finite limit (as the Base Salvage had...since it stopped dropping) then suck up the mistake, let a few lucky players get the badge and MOVE ON. Man but I'm tired of wasting Dev time running down PERCEIVED problems when they could be chasing REAL ones! How much meeting and coding time was wasted figuring out that

A) Crafting is suddenly on the rise.
B) The most likely cause is that we forgot that Salvage conversion counted towards Crafting Badges.
C) This is WAI but we still screwed up and now it HAS to be fixed or heaven forbid more players will have *GASP!* Crafting Badges!
D) Ok ladies and gentlemen, we have the problem nailed down so how do we fix it?
E) Implementing, testing, debugging and finally going live with the fix.

If the Crafting Badges gave some powerful Accolade like +5% Health and End or something then I'd be worried too. But what can you get with the Crafting Badges? More Salvage slote? maybe a portable crafting Table? SO WHAT?

Had I been there the solution would have been simple:

A) Ok, WAI but not really. How many pieces of Base Salvage are in the system as of right now? Fourteen million (way guessing here)? Ok, divide that by the number needed to get the top Crafting badge...10k is it? Alright...so taken on an average 1400 more characters are going to have the top Crafting Badge. That's out of some million and a half characters right (again, guessing)? So less than 1% will actually be affected to any real degree and most won't be affected at all?

B) Ok sounds like the problem is resolved who wants doughnuts?


Seriously people when a perceived problem is going to have a finite and probably very short duration let it go and do something useful with your time like giving us more Team Window Options or an AT or Powersets or maybe even...I pray for this every night before bed...NEW MISSION MAPS!

Washing the dishes is a waste of time when the house is burning down...

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My 6yo son and i have been playing COH for about 6 months now, and he really loves it. A lot of the stuff from sister flame, i can see a lot of similarities.

He loves playing w/ my friends, but I know he can be a bt annoying. (Stop to do emotes mid-battle, etc. etc.)

Maybe we need a parent/child only SG, so we would all understand what's going on, and what to expect from the kids.

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We do this for fun (well I do at least). As long as he's having fun and not disrupting other people's fun it's all good. Some players forget it's a game.

And btw every one of my characters has a Battle Cry and some have emotes to go with them. I also use in-team Macros because I'm a lousy typist. It's a kick...something I do for fun...

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It's annoying in the same way that the old stun bug was. A mob could still run away at full speed even if they were stunned simply because if you hit them while they were in motion their movement didn't supress.

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Got news for you, that old stun bug STILL exists. It's esp bad on DE and Warwolves, both of whome seem to actually stagger faster than they run.

When we get stunned our move is capped at like 3 mph stagger speed...I see no reason why our Stuns can't include the same thing. Forget about balance...watching a creature stagger faster than I can Sprint is insanely stupid.

Almost anything that adds variety will get a /sign from me.

Since not everyone does the respec trials though this may be a long time coming...

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Wait, what?

Ok guys, I normally stick up for you when people get upset about bugs in new issues and patches. I maintain servers for a living, and I also develop software, so I know that these things take time to track down and get fixed, and sometimes issues crop up when it goes live that didn't happen during test.

This isn't one of them. Seriously, does anyone even read the training room boards? Lately it seems like a large portion of the problems brought up there end up going live without being fixed. Not little things that we can live with, but issues that adversely affect a large segment of the player base, or make you look bad when you have to tell people to ignore the problem.

Why is it that when the patch went live, it was (at least) two incremental builds ahead of what's on test? Whatever changed in those somehow caused things that were fixed on test to regress, not to mention new and exciting bugs popping up. Bugs in things that were thoroughly tested and found to not be a problem.

Seriously, what's the point of a test server if what's been tested isn't actually what goes live? I know you have an internal test and QA department, but they can't possibly replicate the conditions of actual gameplay from around the globe, and all the edge and corner cases that it can expose.

Anyway, I feel better now that I've had my mini-rant. Just please try to remember that a lot of the people who are being critical love this game and only complain because they care about it. It's frustrating when bad things happen that should be preventable.

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As I have exclaimed since the first time I heard what the Regen rate was on AVs 27 months ago...

...right after it was tested and the testers screamed that it was too high.

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Yesterday I played an ITF and had Romulus run away.

It was on the third lag-hell of a mission. The Romulus Phalanx computer was destroyed. Requiem was successfully pulled and killed, along with half a dozen soldiers perhaps. Then Romulus was successfully pulled...

He jumped down to the cleared space where the control computer used to be...looked at the gathered bunch of blasters, controllers and whatnot... and turned tail and ran!

This is getting [censored] STUPID!

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Our ITF team once had to chase him back up the ramps...all the way to the top...aggroing everything along the way.

I can see it if some uber-goober Av gets down to 1/4 health and the damage suddenly pierced his egocentric brain and tells him to run. But running from the first hit of a team? Please...

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I don't know about all servers but there have been a lot more complaints of lag on Virtue since the update went live.

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Noticed this last night in a Scanner mission on Virtue as well.

My lvl 43 Hero can currently summon Snow Beasts, Clockwork and all manner of other things...why NOT Zombies? LOL!

/signed

Solution for the whole Midas' golden GM thing:

He's had his Goldbrickers (obviously a Tech group) capture and reprogram one of the giant Clockwork critters (forget the name) and then he turned it a golden color!

There...see how easy that was?

Way cool idea! You obviously put tons of work into this.

My suggestions (because you asked...):

1) Open it up all the way to 50.

2) I would add story arcs for each enemy type just to really flesh things out. Not every one needs to be a huge production but I can see prequils to the SFs in story arcs.

3) I would add the Vahz as an enemy to this just because Lord Vahz has an interest in ANYTHING having to do with raising the dead. He doesn't like the competiton you see...

Otherwise I love this idea.

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1) Disable the auto complete function. This would prevent people from "syncing up" their story arcs to get more merits than the system is intended to allow.

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Sorry, but no. Definitely not. Auto complete is great. If I have a mission that's too hard for me to do solo, and someone else is doing it in a team, I can join the team and get credit that way.

Now, if you want to say "no merit award when a mission is auto completed" (or when dropped), I can agree with that. But turning off this great feature just to ensure that someone somewhere isn't *OMG* getting more merits than they should get, that's the same sort of paranoia and bad choice that the developers have been doing, that have nerfed Katie to the point where few people want to do this fun TF because now it's all about the reward.

I do like the idea of merits for successful mayhems or safeguards, those are reasonably challenging and fun--and gives a reason for groups doing paper missions to actually keep going.

One thing, I don't see your solution doing, though, is fixing the problem you talk about, the market dying. It just is about getting more merits to avoid the market.

So, here's my suggestion...every time a TF or SF or trial is finished, a random roll recipe is added to the appropriate market. So people finish a Positron, a recipe is added to Wentworths from the 10-14 pool. It's priced at what a vendor would pay for the recipe. Level of the recipe is the top of the TF range.

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IMHO the whole problem lies in the TFs/SFs themselves and the way Merit rewards are calculated. I have never been on a TF where missions weren't ghosted, the content sped through or shortcuts taken. I've never been on a TF where a mission to defeat X critters didn't come up and the team leader said 'great we can find greys in Y zone', So off we go to waste 5-10 minutes and gain no exp defeating 40 greys we wouldn't normally waste our time on.

My proposed solution is simple and (IMHO) fair to everyone:

1) Rework the TFs/SFs to remove all of the Talking To missions and Hunt X portions. Any game content/story line that would be lost can be added as a Clue or as briefing/debriefing along the way. This way new players to the TF can read the background and experienced one can click OK and move on. This would speed up ALL of the TFs and make playing them more palatable and less tedious.

2) Reward Merits based on the number of foes defeated in the TF. This one is tougher because in some cases you're fighting hundreds of enemies and in some cases (Quarterfield) I would guess the number goes into the thousands. I can't think of anyone who would want to stay through ALL of those baddies but those that wish to can do so and get more Merits for their time. Those that wish to ghost through the TF (and who are likely the ones who blow the curve/datamine of 'average time spent') can continue to do so but will receive fewer Merits in doing so.

In order to do this Merits would be awarded at the end of the TF based on how many foes were defeated by the team. Each Minion would be worth (these numbers are completely pulled out of the air and just for example) 0.1 Merits, Lts 0.2 Merits and bosses 0.5 Merits each. Thus if the team plows through a total of 100 Minions, 25 Lts and 10 Bosses they get 20 merits.

If they chose the Devs could work it on a sliding scale where the team's levels could play a factor since an 8-man team of lvl 15s will take longer to defeat a typical spawn than an 8-man team of 35s.

Despite what others may say this is not some form of punishment for speeders...merely a way by which the Devs can finally balance the rewards given for ALL of the TFs. I don't want any of the content nerfed but if the players continue to farm Merits by speeding through content then the Devs may feel compelled to do so. Katie and Eden are prime examples.

I do NOT make this suggestion because I think that every mission in every TF should be a kill-all. But how on earth can the Devs ever come up with a average benchmark for how long it takes a team to complete anything, and thus a fair number of Merits to award, when there is simply no way to calculate how many players are going to ghost the content?

IMHO the only way to balance things is based on accomplishment, not time.

Me like!

@Model Nine primarily on Triumph and Champion but I can make toons anywhere for building purposes

Being in a ST with lots of Electric we see most mobs with floored End. Boy do they like to take off! But without a Troller to lock them down even a Tank has trouble keeping them around and then they scatter. Kinda defeats the purpose of draining their End doesn't it?

My suggestion is to give every Mob their Brawl attack at 0 End cost so they always have at least something to attack with. Otherwise some Powers require special support to work and now we're back to having to spec-build a team.

Thus far my only complaint regarding the new powersets is that the Status Protection for Shields is a click Power (Super Reflexes has it too...not fond of it there either). Never understood this because it can seriously leave a hole in the set's defenses if the character is hit with enough Slow to open a recharge window. To me this defeats the purpose of a defensive set.

However, on the plus side the options for the Shield grapics are way cool, the other powers are good (Shield Rush is gonna be fun when I get it...) and Pain Dom is a MM's dream.

Merits and How I Learned to Love Positron's TF.

Objective: A general poll of the players pre-I13 would probably reveal that many did no TFs for whatever reason, some did a few when they could, some did them as often as possible and a few players farmed the heck out of them. Before Inventions this meant little since the rewards were Inf, Prestige and Exps. Then I firmly believe that the Devs decided to get a bit more mileage out of all that content with Inventions and begin dropping Recipes at the end of the TFs. Thus the Speed Katie was born.

Now, new for I13, the Speed Posi! I have friends and have seen postings on the board that reveal that Posi's can be done in under 2 hours solo. This nets a whopping 60 Merits. One clever soul managed to glean a total of 800+ Merits since I13 went live and traded them all in for Rare drops and the result was staggering. Piles of junk but also much of the loot that only drops through intense farming of just the right foes.

So now it looks like Positron's TF, possibly one of the worst in the game, is seeing tons of action. So...what now the Devs need to bribe us to play ill-used content?

When Merits was first released I was pleased because it meant that casual players like me (seldom play TFs for a number of reasons) could just play the arcs and get the occasional shiney. Then I discovered how many Merits you needed to get anything. Yeah...ok...I see how this works. Notsomuch.

I've read that all drop systems have to have 'junk' drops and I still fail to see why. This relates to the Merit system because many players feel that the number of junk drops means that they have to farm TFs to be able to either narrow the band to the Rare Recipes or just out and out pick what they want.

If the junk recipes were not so crappy then perhaps players might settle for the random roll and the Merit prices might not seem so steep.

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Subjective Feedback: I'll chime in my agreement with giving the "naughty" spawns the Rikti code, and giving them a small percentage of dropping candy canes.

Subjective Feedback: Next year, add a couple more "Baby New Year" missions, just to spice things up. I love the suggestion somebody up there had regarding holding a "Mission Creator" contest for best Winter Holiday themed mission, and making the top 3-5 "official" next year.

Subjective Feedback: I know this is a minor and silly thing ... but couldn't you switch the "nice" vs. "naughty" message in CoV? My villain's a baddie! He should be getting presents for being naughty, not for being nice!

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What he said! I was going to chime in but this covers it for me.

PS: Oh, I do have one other suggestion: Everyone who goes to the Chalet Zone gets the Snowball temp power ONLY while in that zone. This means that the Snowball temp power purchased/earned will work anywhere.

I just like the thought of everyone in the Chalet being able to join in a huge snowball fight and not having to worry about the Power. We had a couple in Cap Au on Triumph recently and they were a blast!

Name: JUSTUS

Currently Recruiting: Any and all but with a deffinate eye towards MasterMinds.

RP Level: RP-friendly. Some do, some don't, your call.

Theme/Concept: "You will never find a greater hive of scum and villany." These are not good guys who are too aggressive. These are not displaced vigilantes trying to get back to the Blue side. These are the kind of people who kidnap homeless for scientists to experiment on...and keep a few around to play with! Ignore the straps on the beds in the infirmary...our resident doctor doesn't like his patients to get away you see.

Activity: We have the founder (myself) who is on way too much and several other active and friendly members. For a while we ran MasterMind Mondays but had to drop that due to RL issues. We're now trying to rekindle that again but we're open to new plans and ideas.

Requirements for membership: We ask that you be in SG mode until lvl 34 but after that it's optional. Other than that be helpful and courteous to other players and generally try to have fun. Oh, a really evil costume, name and background are cool too lol!

Leadership: Total Violence, Doc Zombie, Draegul

In-Game Contact: @Model Nine

I have 2 regrets:

1) I don't have half enough Inf to compete.

2) Smurphy was hiding behind my couch when I mentioned to a friend my idea to have one half of a level pact join a PL/Farm and level both of them.

He just took my idea one step further.