Dr_Mechano

Tend towards building the same sort of characters in CoX as I play in fighting games.

Zangief, Hugo, Birdie, Jack (from the various tekken games) are the sort of characters I play.

Which is odd considering my first character was a bots/FF MM...

Mind you I do love all things mad science!

I was saying one chosen per character.

Though I understand the desire to have all of them (that's a lot of halloween salvage turn-ins!) but I'm not sure if that's balanced. Admittedly this would all be on one character but allowing for it multiple times would also cause Halloween salvage market prices to spike quite considerably as they become in-demand for a whole new reason.

Well halloween is still some time off so getting this idea out there to see what people think (personally not too sure if the devs read the suggestion forums but hey, what are they there for if not to throw around ideas).

Halloween salvage has one use, the additional costume slot.

My proposal is that there be a special effect for turning in a second set of halloween salvage.

You get to pick any of the halloween temp costume powers to be made permanent. This is available all year round from the regular halloween salvage hand-in contacts.

Before people start yelling that this is unfair to those that could make the various Cons (seriously...the nearest one that NCsoft were giving away the costume at to me was Germany if I remember correctly and begin on a budget it's not like I can get out there) this would be a 'per character' deal.

Basically, unlike the Con perma-temps these would be limited to a one costume of choice per character and only that character, you would need to hand in two sets of salvage on another character to get the costume you wanted.

Those who have attended the Cons get the power on each of their characters when created, those who use the halloween salvage would need to either buy or be given the two sets of halloween salvage, go talk to the hand-in person, pick a costume and then (even if they have chosen wrongly...should take your time watching where you clicking buddy) be stuck with that one costume on that character, no other characters on the account get it.

This allows those of us who aren't A) American or B) Well off enough to afford the travel costs to earn one of the costume powers of our choosing.

So any thoughts?

I didn't go into the whole many different classes that can tank and DPS. I also went for the obvious example of Stances because...well as you said...Warriors call them Stances...

Mainly because out of those, I discounted Paladins and Druids because they are true hybrids. They can tank, DPS AND heal, they're not really like anything we have in City of Heroes (unless you count a Tanker or a Scrapper with the medicine pool and six slotted Aid Other to be effective healing).

Even in certain encounters other classes can tank (A mage to tank one of the Ogre bosses in Gronn's Lair since only they can spell steal his special shield which lets them survive. Aggro bouncing hunters for the nature damaging ogre boss in the same encounter using their +Nature resistance aspect buff or a Warlock to tank Illidan in Phase 2 due to being able to soak Shadow damage better than other classes are all examples of non-tanking classes being used for tanks)

That was the general jist of my post though. The classes that can tank do sacrifice their tanking toughness (and require a completely different set of gear) when they switch to DPS effectively but that leads to a problem in CoH...

Both sets can be built for massive typed defense (not Positional, typed defense is defense to specific types of damage ak Smashing/Lethal etc.).

Got an Invuln/SS tanker on the EU servers with softcapped typed defenses (except Psi) and she is nigh-unkillable.

Meanwhile a friend has a WP/SS tanker with the same sort of build and is equally unkillable.

Invuln has a better taunt aura and benefits more from building typed defense since you automatically get a big boost thanks to invincibility.

I would say, as the person above me, Willpower is probably more suited to Brutes and Scrappers, it may lack a self heal and have a taunt aura with a weak taunt (not really needed for Brutes or Scrappers) but it's good all round survivablity and with Quick Recovery combined with Stamina endurance issues aren't much of a problem.

Both of them well built (i.e. decent IO sets slotted) will turn into complete monsters though and can survive pretty much anything thrown at them.

Well I can definitely say most of you have probably had items off of me.

I'm an oddity in that I farm BUT I'm also a gambler...everything gets listed for 1 inf apart from the high price uniques and Purples (I may gamble but I'm not stupid). Some you win, some you lose. I don't craft I just flog the recipes.

No doubt some of you (especially any LotG: Defense since I seem to roll those a lot) have nabbed them off me cheap but eh, ya win some, ya lose some...I've still made 100 million inf in the space of one week just by farming the AE and using ticket rolls (one silver, the rest bronze).

The stances idea comes from WoW.

Warriors have 3 Stances, Battle stance (a balance of offensive and defensive abilties), Defensive Stance (defenses increase at the cost of attack strength) and Beserker Stance (attack strength increases, defenses decrease). There are other bonuses too

Warriors can also spec for Protection (they're like CoH Tankers, they don't hit hard but they can take a ton of punishment), Arms (Built around using two handed weapons, they hit very slowly but very hard) and Fury (more akin to the Brute than a Tanker, focusing on fast hitting quickly but sacrifice protection for greater DPS).

If, with gauntlet, you could switch between offensive and defensive stances, both with their inherent pros and cons (defensive stance is the way tankers are now, offensive stance sacrifices defenses for a higher damage modifier).

Defensive stance = used when in a team, tanking big groups or hard hitting targets like AVs, especially when the Tanker is the main tank.

Offensive stance = used when solo (when the huge damage reductions aren't really needed) or for when there is already one tank on the team.

Now the problem with this is a balancing act needs to be enabled. Too much DPS increase and too much defenses sacrificed and Tankers basically become scrappers without the ability to crit, stepping on Scrappers toes. Too little and nobody would see the point in switching to offensive stance and it doesn't help the Tank any.

I think the main problem with Tankers is that, unlike other MMOs, the normally glass cannon Melee DPS AT (Rogues in WoW being the best example, can be squished almost as easily as Ranged DPS but deal silly high damage due to the risk they take even being in melee) isn't really that much of a glass cannon.

It's a shame they didn't go with their original idea for Tankers, slow hitting but hitting incredibly hard when they did, meaning they hit harder than Scrappers but they also hit a lot slower, keeping the DPS in favor of Scrappers.

Edward pondered for a moment.

"Hmmm...I should probably dispatch a drone to go take a look...Gizmatron, Gigaflux, front and centre"

The two unintelligent drones appeared.

"Head to Paragon City and find out what is going on...engage heroes if you have to but try to keep yourself in shadow..."

The drones folded themselves up, Edward putting them in their airdrop boxes. He pressed a button, teleporting them to his intended location.

Not far from the portal where all the kerfuffle was going on, two loud splashes could be heard as two green boxes teleported into the sewer, dropping from the roof down into the filth which flowed through this mansized tunnels. The metal boxes fell away as the drones unfolded themselves. Unfortunately robots are about as good at stealth as a cat covered in bells, loud clanking, splashing, footsteps came down the tunnel as they moved in on the location the bomb had previously been planted before it's time/space wobbling, portal creating, explosion.

Face twitched for a moment but then she just smiled.

"You get that one free...next time...you get a headbutt...just a friendly warning...you're a bit cheeky and I like that..."

"Still reckon if we called Dad in it would be over and done with...I mean...just because he's a hero turned villain...he could help out if you'd just look the other way for a while.."

While Johnny may be a bit overzealous, he does have a point, bringing a second tank is often not worthwhile, they bring aggro holding (which a single tank is generally sufficient for) and nothing much else, others ATs can do more damage, can provide buffs/debuffs, better controls beyond getting every to simply hit them and nobody else

One additional AT besides at tank adds more to the team, more DPS, more mobs are locked down for longer, more buffs/debuffs make the team tougher/kill faster, all a second tank can do is provide damage that isn't on par with any of the damage dealing ATs and fight for aggro with the main tank.

Aye...the 54 boss farms are more of a challenge, even solo, than the Roman wall farming. Considering the troops on the walls are at most +2 and that it's rare for those groups to contain a boss, normally it's 1-2 lts and the rest minions.

It's a damn sight easier to solo than a boss farm as is behemoth farming or Nemesis farming.

Yet we only here complaints about the AE farming which has significantly more risk to less reward ratio than any of the above infact the above. In a 20 minute roman wall farm I normally walk away with 3 rare magic salvage, a couple of recipes, some of which may or may not sell for lots of inf and the chance for a purple recipe drop, which can't be gotten any other way than playing non-AE content. In one AE map the most you can get is 1500 tickets, which is enough to roll 2 rare salvage and a couple of bronze recipes.

You went in....with a well built team...

That's pretty much the entire reason you didn't find they hit hard.

It's pretty rare, especially villainside, to get a Granite Brute in a farm, yes there is usually atleast one kin on the team but they're usually the only buffer/debuffer.

Now a group of +4 Manaic slammers, try tanking them with say, a fire brute, for taking the alpha, Manaic slammers will be a lot more troublesome to deal with.

You went in with a well built team, good buffs/debuffs and treated it like a TF, optimized for challenge, most farming teams I've been on simply aren't well built, especially with the insistance on needing a 'healer' despite the fact that buffs and debuffs would work better most of the time.

Also keep in mind most farming teams usually consist of people who have done nothing BUT the AE....and we all known the problems we've seen with them...

So, congradulations, you went in with a team that could roflstomp pretty much anything and found 54 bosses absolutely no challenge...a well optimized team can do ANYTHING in this game, it would be like taking in 8 fire/rad corruptors into a boss only farm, nothing would be a challenge to them...

Amy coughed and looked at both Kip and Ellie, taking a giant leap to catch up with them "we could get my dad involved...yeah I know it sounds like a bad idea but...well..you know...nanite technology being used to rebuild neural pathways and the like...oh and cat-like hearing does have it's advantages, could hear you from way over there..."

Amy looked pretty unsure herself of the suggestion but she thought it was worth a shot.

She looked at Kip and sighed, "I'm sorry I nearly pounded your face into the ground...just...don't call me a hippie, it's one of those buttons that you don't want to be pushing with me..."

I personally like the idea of a damage bonus against tougher foes.

As JB said, Minions don't matter, all ATs can easily take care of minions, however a scrapper would still kill more minions, quicker, than a tank could.

A tank having scrapper level damage against an AV, minus the ability to crit or without fury, would still be outpaced by a scrapper or brute but it would go a long way to giving tanks a bit more oomph and make a second tank be viable as a damage dealer on TF teams (where it really matters).

Unfortunately it appeared they came down too heavily in the grey area, there were people that hadn't even touched the AE getting hit for it (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong people, I'm not above being corrected), people who had pacted with a friend so they could level together would suddenly find their toon banned thanks to the other one having gone into the AE farms without the them knowing.

Basically it came across as a blanket ban, however there may have simply been a lot of mistakes, since most of the EU community had decided on the definition of "egigarious(sp) abuse of the AE system" came down to power levelling 2 or more level 50's in the space of 1-2 days. In other words people who seriously went at it to power level as hard as they could using the system to gain multiple level 50s in such a short space of time.

Those that had levelled one character to 50 or levelled one or two to 30, seemed to have been left alone.

I don't think it was they way the ban was enacted but the way Positrons initial outburst came through. Basically Positron verbally threw his toys out of the pram. There was a much better, reworded, second version of the address (one has to wonder if the wordsmith War Witch didn't do some touching up on the wording of the second draft).

It left a bad taste in peoples mouths.

That is a recap of the drama to the best of my memory...

1) Revamp of all the early content (making a good first impression for new players is a must...yes...even with the AE looming over them like a doom bringing doomster of noobish doom) and instead of tacking on a massive number of merits for the awful TFs (namely the Task Force commander ones), rework them completely, lower the merit reward to match (this bringing pariety(sp) with villainside) but make them more enjoyable.

2) Revamp of the underused zones, frankly this has been my deepest bugbear with the way NCsoft are doing things, it's the relentless march of "NEW AND SHINEY!" Issue 16 is a great thing, it opens the floodgates for further customisation down the road. However being told personally by Positron at the EU Q&A on the training server that they would rather keep pushing out new zones and not bother revamping the old ones (which sorely need it IMO they are a waste of space at the moment). Yes I understand new zones are a bigger "NEW AND SHINEY!" thing to attact new subscribers with but Boomtown, Dark Astoria, Creys Folly and Eden are going to make new players (if we do ever get them out of the AEs shadow as some poster would say) "Why on earth is this here, I guess it's some half finished zone that they just forgot about...oh...what's that...another one just like it...are they ever going to get around to finishing it?"

Hazard zones are a relic of a bygone era, keyword being bygone, things have moved on a lot since their invention.

3) Either do the promised "big PvP updates" you mentioned almost a year ago or just get rid of PvP, currently it is really a mess, I enjoy it but it is a complete mess, personally I'd just cut it away that, while I could make the statement that it's draining resources for such a small (if very dedicated and certainly amongst some of the best number crunchers we have) community, currently it doesn't looke like any resources are being put into it at all.

4) Be a bit more open and willing to admit mistakes. This isn't a game update that's need but something towards the devs themselves.

Issue 13 PvP changes is probably the biggest one of these, you dropped the ball, yes Positron feels it's better but Positron doesn't exactly play high end arena tournament matches. Infact I don't think any of the devs engage or watch the PvP tournaments on test with any kind of regularity. You ignored a large portion of what the current community wanted in order to 'fix PvP' for a community that just wasn't interested in it (PvErs). I personally doubt that there will be any admittance on a mistake on this one but it's just a thought.

Seriously people learned that the Vault had been scrapped randomly at the EU Q&A, they weren't told for ages, people were left wondering when on earth it was turning up since the last time they heard anything it was "soon".

Advertising, admit it didn't work out the way you wanted it too and that the first initial advert was a mess (seriously you didn't apply any of the 'filtering' you said you would to it, so it was a bright clean billboard even when in an apocalyptic future), thankfully lessons were learned and there were a few better looking adverts until this feature was ditched in a cold, dark pit somewhere. Just admit that it was a mistake, the backlash that came from the community over it was more hastle than it was worth even if you could turn it off.

Hamidon on the EU servers is deader than a doornail since the changes, prior to the changes it use to be a big, if lag filled, community event with hundreds of heroes turning up, now it's all about being a well oiled machine with a limit of only 50 heroes. There were promises to keep an eye on the changes and whether they were detrimental to the occurances of raids, of course the US having a bigger population do still regularly raid it but it simply made the EU communities voice feel completely unheard in this regard.

5) Custom signature powers, we have an awesome thread on it with lots of good ideas.

6) Enemy costume pieces available, I don't mean ALL of them but things like the Carnival of Shadows masks, the 5th Column faceplate (which the death goggles and death mask in the science booster admittedly do a good job of imitating), the Freakshow chest detail....

And...that's it for now folks, perhaps some controversial opinions now doubt, I'm not even going to go into the whole AE thing...

Using Firefox here since the new forums opened...I just checked the 'remained logged in' box and not had any kind of problem but then I do have my own personal PC which nobody else uses so I can afford the luxury of not having to worry about flat mates coming in and posting random stuff on the forums (he's got his own laptop and XB360).

He's the noob buster.

Damz old name use to be Noobbuster_Damz and he is famous for 'busting noobs' on the EU forums.

You made a noobish mistake of thinking that turning your rep off would result in it becoming less important...it didn't infact because you publically announced you're turning it off...people kept clicking on it and you kept having to deal with the comments.

So you made a noob mistake, he busted you for it, he is the noob buster Damz...

Amy growls and struggles for a moment before the telepathic soothing kicked in, she was naturally unresistant to mental attacks and so the calming waves washed over her mind as she ceased to struggle, letting out a deep breath. He eyes returning back to normal and her muscles returning to their not quite so buldging state.

"Sorry, I'm fine...you can put me down now..."

Her eyes narrowed as she glared at Zero, "you were stupid, reckless and down right idiotic in your actions...seriously, you probably need a damn good smacking just to knock some sense into that helmeted head of yours...and I may just be the one to do it..."

Amy's muscles rippled and buldged, skin pulling taught around them as she moved towards Zero, every footstep kicking up a spray of sand, her eyes turning completely black, "You want a fight, fine, I can give you a fight, hell you might even beat me, I don't care right now but you need to be taught a lesson...my father was right, you humans do need to evolve..."

((For those that know Amy (specifically Ellie) the buldging muscles and black eyes are a clear sign of her beserker rage kicking in...))

Edward chuckled to himself as he talked to nobody after the image had faded.

"Oh they could halt me, if they had the will to kill me, heroes wont, that is what makes them a hero and me the villain, besides without me, what fun would there be in the world, who would bring the chaos which makes being a hero a thrill, break them out of their humdrum little lives..."

"Well excuse me for arriving late, by the time I got here the beastie was already wounded and laying on the beach, from the quick snippets I got from the police band radio was something about a whale, I just assumed the thing had been found beached and needed to have it's backside hauled back into the ocean..."

"You were proving him right, if my information is correct, it believes every single human is a murderer of it's kind, so congradulations, you nearly were a murderer of a sentient being, you're no better than him, what makes you think that he didn't try to save his family when the whaling ships came for them, the same way the people on the beach were saved by us..."

"Oh and if you're spoiling for a fight, you're more than welcome to have a go, if you think you're upto it, nobody calls me a hippie and damn well gets away with it...I don't care about the bad PR my agent would tell me this would be, it'd be worth it to wipe that arrogant smug look off your face..."

Edward didn't look over his shoulder, he was too busy tapping away at a keyboard.

"I don't know how you got in past the security system but welcome to my humble abode...I do suggest keeping your threats to a minimum, it would upset Steve..."

There were dull thuds which echoed down the hallspace of the lab as something large, green and glowing rounded the corner. A Shivan, by the size, a Shivan decimator. Large mechanical protrusions jutted from its green gelatinous body, basic cybernetic enhancements. The cybernetics were not the only thing wrong with the picture, in it's mighty clawed hands was held a small tray, balanced precariously on which was a steaming cup of coffee.

Edward turned slightly to take the coffee, drawing in a small sip and letting out a sigh.

"This would be Steve, if you do have any problems with my plan feel free to take it up with him...or the rest of my heavily armed robotic family..."

Edward chuckled, "now you probably asking yourself, why would I do something like this, infact since you are asking me such a question I can only hazard a guess that you have asked yourself, infact it would have been the first thing you did before arriving here.."

"The simple answer is chaos, in this dimension I bring chaos, unadulterated chaos, the likes of which Paragon city has not seen since the darkest days of the first Rikti war."

Edward stretched with a grunt, continuing to type while talking, "you see, mankind stagnates, it stops evolving, only through a life of chaos can manking truly become free and unfettered to advance both naturally and scientifically, now I could have gone the simple route and simply tried to nuke every major city but there is simply no fun in that, not to mention they are prohibitively expensive...and the ones in Warburg barely dent Statesman, let alone take out an entire city."

"To answer your initial question, as to whether I am foolish or mad, I assure you I am quite, quite mad, for as long as there is even the smallest bit of chaos caused, it makes me happy...now if you excuse me I have the last remaining set of bombs to activate...if there is only one set someone bright young spark could see it as an opportunity to keep it stable and ferry villains out of one Paragon and into another, keeping their identity unknown allowing for a whole new crime spree. We can't have that can we, where is the fun in that...oh and let us hope the universe doesn't implode on us shall we..."

Edward gave a manaical grin and pressed a button, underneath the PPD Precint, with Longbow about to close in on both sides, the remaining set of bombs detonated, renting a whole in time/space.

"Welcome to a new world my friend, a world where the individual, as well as the many, can become a super villain of epic proportions, where a Priest and a Devil battle for mans souls, where chaos is caused at every turn, as the good Lord said, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end...and this...is an entirely new beginning..."

Hopefully seeing your popularity will encourage devs to hire you Samuriko, seriously while the full CGI trailers are all well and good, they're still going to need gameplay trailers and what you do with demo editing is simply astounding.

Petitioning isn't allowed, this isn't a petition, this is a thread stating that you NEED to be hired for the good of all of us.

Mod8 may lock these threads but he can never take away our voice that you, as one of the premier video makers in City of Heroes, need to be involved with the team and paid for your hard work.