Dysmal

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Yep. And why didn't people believe the Devs when they said that ED would diversify things?

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Because Inventions did that?

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Also, because we could see through what, at the time, was little more than a euphemism.

This is really awesome. I hope you're collecting these posts and will consider putting them together as a guide and posting it in the guide forum so it doesn't get eaten during board purges.

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Ah well. I'm happy to know that the devs understand what we've been saying and would do it if it was possible. It validates my opinion that Castle really knows what he's doing.

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What I really hope is the MUO guys figured this all out before implementing their engine.

You guys know who you are: you *really* do not want me finding these same problems in the MUO engine. You really, really don't.

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Well, you'll probably just find new and different problems. Its not like there won't be any.

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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.

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Lord help us, they'd do it if they could!

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Sure! Then Weave could give 15% Defense, and Combat Jumping could give 25% Defense (or whatever) and combined, they'd give 30% instead of 40%. When the local FF Defender buffed the character, instead of the normal 25% for the FF, it'd be 5% for 35% defense.*

Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.

* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.

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Err, wouldn't such a system essentially be going back to the Pre-ED "no one really needs buffs" situation that ED and the GDN were partially intended to fix?

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GDN and ED were intended to make buffs USEFUL, not necessary. And they would remain so.

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And they still aren't necessary, they're just much more usefu thanl in the past. -Regen debuffs are currently required for AV battles in many cases, but thats a result of boring, unimaginative AV design that seems to be summed up by Challenge=Giant Sack of HP.

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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.

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Lord help us, they'd do it if they could!

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Sure! Then Weave could give 15% Defense, and Combat Jumping could give 25% Defense (or whatever) and combined, they'd give 30% instead of 40%. When the local FF Defender buffed the character, instead of the normal 25% for the FF, it'd be 5% for 35% defense.*

Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.

* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.

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Err, wouldn't such a system essentially be going back to the Pre-ED "no one really needs buffs" situation that ED and the GDN were partially intended to fix?

They pretty much have said that the level cap will never be raised, as it just raises the problem of "theres nothing to do at level 60"

This is a solution in search of a problem.

Its going to be searching a long time.

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Get over the villain EATs ... They're most likely (not for sure, but most likely), never going to be done. Posi said that they simply are more work than they're worth, and have been pushed each issue since I4.

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If we're talking Coralax Hybrids or Blood of the Black Stream then sure, those are probably pipe dreams. Villainside Nictus however, is just a port of certain Kheld sets and it could probably use the Warshade graphics. I'm gonna go and say it: this would be very EASY for them to do!

Yes, I have hidden knowledge about how easy it is to port existing sets.

Hehe... well, it seemed pretty easy when they ported Dark Melee and Armor to Stalkers. I expect it's "as simple" to do the same with Kheld sets.

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Yes, but the issue is not the sets themselves. Its the villain content that goes along with the kheld sets that would be complicated. To give the villains that khelds without content would cause an uproar, since that would be unfair since the heroes get all those kheld arcs.

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IIRC those Kheld-specific arcs were added later. Did they debut the same time as the Kheldian AT itself?

As far as Villain Khelds having little appeal, I see this as a low hanging fruit, that would appeal to some people, and they could then say that both Heroes and Villains have an EAT. After all thet talk about Coralax, Incarnates, the now-defunct Avilans, and BotBS, it's the least they can do!

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The level 1-15 Kheld arcs debued with Khelds in I3, and the rest came in I4.

And frankly, that was a big mistake, since it took them until I4 to get Khelds semi balanced, and meant that people who started with the AT early were locked out of AT specific content if they'd outlevelled any of the arcs that were added in I4.

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On a serious note I'm glad to see more content coming, but I hope there are some new Scrapper and Tanker powersets at least...sometime this year.

That should definitely be a dev goal, new powersets on a yearly basis.

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And of course, they could satisfy some of this demand by sharing more existing powersets between ATs. Its gotta be a lot less work then making whole new ones.

A lot of folks seem to feel that theres a content gap in the late 30s in CoH.

I've never encountered it myself though.

But yeah, end game is where content focus needs to be for CoH. CoV could use some of the seperate paths to take that CoH already has. The Hollows-Faultline-Striga-Croatoa chain kind of thing.

Some NPCs like that have lines they only say when people are standing around. I think the "Like.. Hi!" is her response to being clicked. NPCs like her, the Activist, Newsie, etc, have other lines, but they don't spit them out from being clicked unfortunately.

At least on test, she says something like "Save the Sorority, Save the University"

You might want to start printing "Arcana Was Right" t-shirts.

Procs are definitely a big one to look at. I'm sure its a bug, but right now, Shiver takes Targeted AoE and Slow Sets. That means I could slot the Procs from Positron's Blast and Impeded Swiftness in it. Which would be sort of absurd.

Siren's Song+Call of The Sandman's Chance to Heal proc seems like it might be a wee bit broken as well.

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did his feet explode?

did his exposed brain get infected?

was it a horrible rubix cube accident?

you be the judge!

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Busy. Inventing.

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Also, pining for the fjords.

I think maybe the idea was to have five rewards, so that people doing the mission five times to get Tooth Breaker(Defeat Snaptooth Five Times) would have some reward for each mission.

I don't think it was a *good* idea, but that may be what it was.

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Need More Winter Lords!!!

Winter Lord Explosion!

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Replace the winter lord with gigantic winged babies?

I think the closed testing is probably a good idea, assuming there's a closed forum to go with it for testing results. CoV's beta forums during the first few waves (1st wave myself), were pretty good as regards the testing:ranting ratio.

I found the event rather boring. It was a straight up rehash of last year's event, and frankly, I'm sick of facing overgrown garden gnomes in these events.

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"Exclusives" are all well and good.

Official site first, please. Or just close it and let the other sites do the work.

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I don't even bookmark the official site. The forums are a better source of news, and invariably have links to articles and news about CoH on other sites posted by players before the community relations staff get them up.

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Heck, if the maths in this game weren't so secretive and screwy, there wouldn't be any need for people like Arcana and myself on these forums.

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I've never understood why Statesman doesn't understand this.

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Artistic ego?

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Ill bet Castle is wishing he had never said anything on this post at all.

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Not at all!

Samurai: It was a player, not an NPC. I know, since I was playing him! He is a Spines/Regen scrapper.

The power: What you are seeing is actually a graphics bug created by the demo-record/playback process we use to take screenshots.

And now you know!

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And now we know...The mystery was so much better.

So how is it all the other spines aren't showing? Another graphics glitch?

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He already said. They demorecorded the battle and used the demo to take the screenshots. There's a glitch that doesn't show the body spines in the demorecord. I assume its similar to the Kheldian form glitch that happens when you do the same thing.

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Maybe I misunderstood. I thought what he meant by "what you are seeing" is referencing the spear like blade extending from the player's hand.

I guess the graphics bug:

1) Creates a spear like blade, and

2) Removes all other spine accoutrements?

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The blades out of the arms is a normal part of Spines.

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It could also just be a change in animations for a claws or spines power.

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Or it could be the Nemesis Staff seen from a strange angle.

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Okay, fine. It's not the Nemesis Staff.

It is *not* a new powerset or a re-do of spines or any other powerset. Sorry to disappoint.

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So, what is it then? Temp Power? Retouched screen shots? Using a mod on the internal server to disable the body spines?

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The armor just covers the other spines, clam down.

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Well, I just tried making a Spines scrapper with the full Samurai outfit on Test, and there are all sorts of spines coming through the armor.

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It could also just be a change in animations for a claws or spines power.

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Or it could be the Nemesis Staff seen from a strange angle.

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ha castle is wrong, nem staff is not that shape or color

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Yeah, of all the things that looks like, Nemesis Staff is not it.

Note the knob on the end of the staff.

_Castle_, if you guys let a revamp of Spine Graphics out of the bag with the screenshots, you guys might as well say so.