EvilGeko
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:That's a part of it, but only a small part. The primary reason for the differences in the character creator is that they expect you to earn the majority of costume pieces. There's ups and downs to that approach.Originally Posted by BrandX
To my understanding, a lot of it's limitations come from the fact that they went console/pc, so had to limit lots of things to account for the console players.
The body type issue is primarily because they didn't have time to get in all of what they wanted. Expect that to change.
Lastly, the creator UI is complete crap. Interestingly a much better UI exists the second you get into the game. My only hope is that they eventually allow you to save a specific collection of pieces to a file. Once you can do that, you will in theory have infinite costume slots. -
Quote:You don't know what I would make you do to get that Ultra-rare though!Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
While I'm generally in favour of absolutely breaking the game as much as humanly possible, I just have to go
at this.
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While most players wouldn't necessarily understand this, I would love if the Omega slot increased your base AT modifiers in all respects and removed the HP cap.
So for example a Scrapper has a melee modifier of 1.125 and a defense/resist buff modifier of .75.
Let's say the Common Omega multiplied that by 1.2. Now that Scrapper would have a melee modifier of 1.35. Let's say the Ultra-Rare Omega doubled your modifier. Now that Scrapper would have a 2.25 melee modifier and a 1.5 resist/defense modifier. -
Quote:If there is a bug it should be fixed.Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
Yes dealing with STANDARD ambushes. Not waves and waves of clearly bugged ambushes that don't spawn correctly.
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Quote:You can learn a lot about the game from that. Let's assume you are playing a Stalker. You can learn:Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
You can't learn anything from ambushes that home in, follow you, and ignore stealth. Except maybe how true 'The Computer is a Cheating Gobshite' is.
- How to position yourself and use cover so that the NPCs must close to melee range;
- How to cue up an attack while the NPC is closing to melee range so that you get the Assassination bonus;
- How to kite the mobs so that you don't get overwhelmed with TOO many in melee range;
- Using lucks to allow you to get back into stealth/AS.
There's more but that's off the top of my head. There are things you can do besides just stand there and die. -
Quote:Dealing with ambushes is something to learn as well. Kiting, using cover, manipulating the AI, these are all things you can learn even in a mission on +0/x1.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Thats also a horrible example. The Hollows mobs in the Gulch were invariably purple and heavily Boss laden. If nothing else, they taught you how the hell to stay away out of aggro range.
This is getting spanked about by +0/x1 mobs in a basic instance. There is a whole world of difference there.
I would hope that a new player learns not to just stand there and accept the ambush and instead DOES something about it. -
Quote:The variations in power are too extreme in this game. I don't think there's a problem with large variations, that gives you a place to reward your players. But yes, the ability to build functionally immortal characters able to do obscene damage is a bit much.Originally Posted by Venture
I agree that base difficulty shouldn't be easy mode, but then I argue that we shouldn't be talking about "base difficulty" at all because there shouldn't be any other kind. The game should be balanced and all characters should be playing in the same ball park. The developers chose not to do that; they chose to allow wild variations in character power and to allow players to tailor the environment to their tastes, trusting that they would chose appropriate difficulty settings. The result of that design decision was MA farms.
No, of course, we can. We just need to have appropriate content for those with IOs and purples. Incarnate powers DO have content appropriate for these types of characters. The base difficulty of the BAF, Apex, Tin Mage isn't +0/x1 scaled to the team.Quote:Then we can't have characters with purple sets and Incarnate powers, or even regular sets. We can't have characters that are ten or twenty times more powerful than others (at least; the difference between a build that has to play on standard and one that can handle +4x8 has to be measured in orders of magnitude). SOs were already too much, ED and all. And we both know there is no way to get there from here. The player base won't stand it.
Now you might be right, the playerbase might not even accept that content.
That's a good idea.Quote:Given what the developers have already built it is utterly unreasonable to expect any player with a competent mature build to run around playing at base difficulty. The resultant play experience would be mind-numbingly boring. Implicit in the design of the game we actually have is the assertion that a player will be able to pick an appropriate baseline difficulty for the particular character he is playing. Allowing mission writers to toss out any standard of difficulty contradicts that assertion and is just plain shoddy craftsmanship. If that's the way it's going to be, if mission difficulty is so volatile that players can't rely on being able to play on the setting of their choice, then the ability to change difficulty setting needs to be at the players' fingertips, not in the hands of an NPC that might be on the other side of the zone, or in a different zone altogether.
I guess, I just disagree. I've played at least 10 MMORPGs, many of them you faced a REAL possibility of defeat prior to level ten (on a 50+ level game). Some of that was from the team-centric nature, some because you have to learn. It's not like every encounter needs to be wickedly hard, but there's no problem with a few being that way.Quote:Yes, there is, new players need to win a lot so they have a foundation of successes to build some confidence on. New players forced into Praetoria are likely getting pissed off and quitting if they're not getting advice and support from older players. They're also probably wondering why the game turns into a cakewalk after they leave the starting area. -
Quote:Dude, he wrote a book about WoW! That's an addict. Maybe in recovery, but an addict nonetheless.Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
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It's not that he doesn't like MMOs. He's actually addicted to WoW. He just hates most other MMOs. But there was a video of him playing City of Heroes a while ago where he expressed support for the game.
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Quote:In the switchover to the new forums you had to pick a permanent screen name. The old forums allowed you to change it as you will.Originally Posted by Atomic_Woman
Kind of a tangent, but did they remove the ability to change your screen name? I was going to change mine to my global handle when I resubbed but I can't find an option for it anywhere in my profile - but I KNOW it was there before ('before' being 2+ years ago, though...)
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Quote:Yes, but some players in fact DO share my view that games should have some challenge.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Not in the early game, when you are trying to hook new players, many of whom, surprise surprise, don't share your opinion that everything in life should be a challenge and drive you to excel, even your entertainment.
You every play Super Mario Brothers? How boring would that game have been if you could immediately win every level. Yes, I went there and used the Jack Emmertt gameboy analogy!
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Quote:I never assume you do. I will tell you what I do think. On occasion, I do believe that you get so wrapped up in the math that you don't see the forest for the trees. This DE tip mission issue is a good example.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I never complain about something being hard for me personally.
The sheer gaul of the devs to have something so mechanically unbalanced grates on you I think (Yes, I'm putting words in your mouth, but you are my Queen O' Maths and I claim the right to do that!
) to the extent that you plainly just ignore that unfairly harder or not, it's not really holding SR and other defense sets back in any meaningful way. It's not stopping people from playing defense sets or slowing their reward rate. So who cares that it's completely unfair and the devs are big meanie heads for adding it?
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Quote:It could be. Should you be defeated five times in EVERY mission? No. But sometimes that's acceptable. I find that many players often need 2-3 defeats before they will change their tactics and/or seek additional resources.Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
Define "some" risk. Is "some" risk getting defeated five times in the same mission simply because the ambushes keep coming? Because that's what happened to my Praetorian Defender.
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Quote:My screen name wasn't always EvilGeko. I'll just be upfront. I thought the original powers dev, Geko was an idiot. There were posts he made that literally had my jaw dropping at the amount of stupid.Originally Posted by Bosstone
It was not until this post that I finally realized you guys haven't been talking about EvilGeko.
The fact that he didn't accept PMs from the beginning and seemed impervious to common sense did not endear him to me. It was a wonderful day for this game when Castle took over. -
Quote:But you can't expect that. Take Longbow, which no one has been arguing about. When you start getting bosses in spawns (around x3 or x4 players) then you start having the difficulty ramp up considerably because Wardens have buffs. There are other groups that are similar.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
No, he's saying that once you choose a difficulty setting there shouldn't be such extreme swings in the difficulty of content that you have to keep running back to the NPC to keep adjusting your difficulty for every mission.
Powersets are not balanced around the assumption that any given player will be able to handle +2/x3 to +3/x6 solo. We know that some powersets can do that and more in the hands of a reasonably skilled player. But that's not the expectation. The expectation is that +0/x1 should be a reasonable challenge for a solo player. Castle said at one time that the base difficulty is not intended to be "easy mode." It's intended to be the standard difficulty. There should be SOME risk of defeat at that difficulty level. We all know that in practice, some characters who are well built by their player, are effectively invincible to that setting.
The standard difficulty should offer some risk of defeat. The Praetorian missions offer that. A player with little experience will face defeat and often. There's nothing wrong with that. You don't learn anything from winning all the time, you don't improve. A player tested in the fires of Praetoria is well suited to handle what the game throws at them later. IMO that's a good thing. -
Quote:No it doesn't. That's my point. On the base difficulty, the Praetorian missions aren't too hard and neither are the DE tip missions. You all keep talking about content where you purposefully make it more difficult and then want to make it easier to compensate for your making it harder.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
There are also other people who do, or the difficulty slider wouldn't need to go so high. If the other people who like hard stuff are so few and far between that you can't find seven of them to run a TF with you, then that just proves our point that these difficulty increases are a bad idea.
That's what doesn't make any sense. -
Quote:Nonsense. When I'm on a TF, there are 7 other people who normally wish to complete the content. Plus you can set other challenge goals, like finishing in 30 mins. or so.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Ok, so when you play content that is supposed to be harder (TFs) you deliberately make it easier? Ok you know what, that makes absolutely no sense.
But when people are just looking for some merits and now a Notice, I'm not going to impose my view of difficulty on them. It violates the unwritten rules of behavior, the norms that have developed.
I like Apex and Tin Mage because you don't have a choice, but when you do, it's a group decision. -
Quote:That's the standard difficulty. If any particular mission is too hard for you on that difficulty, then you have a right to complain. But then I don't find the real risk of defeat to be too hard. If you're saying you have some right to be able to play every mission at +1-4/x2-8, then I'll just say I disagree.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Yes, actually you do, because +0/x1 is the default assuming an average player with an average build using SOs. If you are anywhere above that, you should not be playing on +0/x1.
That makes no sense. Some villain groups cause me to lower my difficulty. But then, that's fair and right IMO because other than TFs I play on a higher difficult level than standard. -
If I do a speed run ITF, I'll usually get 2-3 shards, versus a 1.5 hour kill most where I get 7-9 shards. That works about to about the same earning rate, but I also can get in another TFs like a Kahn or a Lady Grey (or all three) and get significant numbers of merits or incarnate component in addition to the shards.
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Quote:Not if you're normally playing beyond +0/x1. If you play on ANY difficulty higher than that, then you have no reasonable expectation that you'll be able to handle any particular mission solo.Originally Posted by Venture
Any mission that requires me to change difficulty is too hard.
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Quote:If it makes you feel any better, EVERY game that I've seen that has an avoidance mechanic has incredible problems balancing it to the satisfaction of the players. Usually, the avoidance characters wind up weaker than characters that rely on damage reduction or healing.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
When you really stop and think about it, geko really really hated defense. In exchange for being able to avoid getting hit, he made sure you were never actually going to avoid getting hit.
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Quote:Frankly, I'd be for allowing that for standard Praetorian content before I would be for reducing the ambushes.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
I agree, it should have a decent level of challenge to all players. Keeping in mind that what any given player considers a "decent level of challenge" is liable to differ from any other given player's notion of the same.
Personally, I still want the ability to adjust the difficulty down as far as it can be adjusted up. Hooray for -2 to -4 missions! -
Quote:I guess for me that doesn't really feel like an appropriate example. Nobody is going to die if SR is 10% less survivable than Invul (Well, unless you go berserk and raid Paragon Studios.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Consider a more concrete example: rollercoasters. Rollercoasters are supposed to be all sorts of things not reducible to equations: scary, thrilling, wild, fun. It takes skill, art, and creativity to come up with a conceptual design for a successful rollercoaster.
Now, who do you want to build it if you or your child is going to ride it? Someone who wings it and will keep building it and tearing it down until it sort of feels right? Or a structural and mechanical engineer? Its a false dichotomy to believe that there exists a creative design process used exclusively for creative things, and a mechanical one for boring things. There's only two kinds of design: the kind that works, and the kind that doesn't. If you find your kind has a tendency to not work, you're practicing the latter kind. Its not because games design is the most complex endeavor on Earth.)
Sure you need to use some baseline math to build your game around, I said that before, but the precision that you claim is necessary, that's what I'm struggling with. Let's say you do get to perfect balance. Say for example all the defensive sets are exactly equal in terms of their ability to mitigate or restore damage. But they all do it in different ways. One set is substantially easier to manage and so gets played more and is valued more. Another requires more micromanagement. But they are equal in their ability to protect the character if played with average skill. Just one happens to be more fun. What do you do?
See I don't quarrel with the proposition that good creative design and good mechanical design are not mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that the are times when good creative design diverges from good mechanical design. Not always and sure there needs to be a sufficient justification for abandoning your mechanical design principles. But likewise, I don't think you can become a slave to the maths.
Would you agree with that? -
Quote:All I have behind me is basic math classes I took in college, so I'm asking not arguing.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Math never leads to the wrong answers unless the people you hire to do the math suck at it. Game design - specifically the underlying mechanics of games - are just an engineering problem. They are solvable by the same mathematics and analytical design methodologies all other engineering problems on earth are solved with. Games are not magic in that respect that they can resist numerical analysis.
If part of your design goal is to: Make the player feel like a superhero, how do you reduce that to a formula? Sure you have to come up with some numbers but how do you get to that precision? It seems that:
That feels right to me. Because honestly, who cares whether the math works out if the end product is super fun?Quote:Iterative design is the right way to do things, because it allows you to take a reasonable guess, test it and see how close you were, and then adjust.
Again, I'm asking. I'm honestly curious for how you would apply math to that problem. -
Quote:Excellent post.Originally Posted by UberGuy
This gets into territory that I've seen be touchy on the forums in the past. If you crank up your encounters enough, and you are operating on the envelope of what can defeat you, CoH does have an element of skill that can determine success or failure. It's not as complex as an FPS, but it's actually surprisingly similar. I honestly believe that a nascent sense that this part of game was out there was one of the things that kept me interested in it - CoH was my first MMO - before it I only played FPSes.
Let me give an example. I play Regen characters a fair bit, having four in total. Regen is very click-happy. In the heat of a fight that's tough enough to kill you, you might die for not having reacted quickly enough. Regen is sort of the poster child example of a handful of powersets that really brings to the forefront how a combat is a race to see who runs out of HP first. When I jump in a pile of stuff on a Regen, I'm calculating where I will target to try and AoE the most foes. As each target gets low on health, I start thinking about which other target I can see might be a better target for my next big attack. I have to pay attention to what the spawn is composed of, because certain debuffs can speed my defeat, and must be eliminated early. I am constantly moving, prioritizing targets, switching powers, watching my health, etc. I only have to play with that intensity because I play on elevated difficulties, but because I play on such settings, I do demand that I play using rapid, tactically wise "in the moment" choices. If I aim a cone in the wrong direction, use a heal too early, or leave the wrong target for last, I can end up dead. (I can also end up dead if the RNG blesses me with too many misses, which usually leaves me grumpy.)
Not everyone enjoys playing like this. In fact, the near requirement that Regen be played this way to survive under stress is something that keeps some players away from it. Other players enjoy that aspect of the powerset, and enjoyment of that aspect is why I have four Regens.
BAH!Quote:Just my opinion, but I do think there is value in adding content that makes it worthwhile to play the way I do, and based on something hopefully much more solid than my opinion, apparently the devs do too, or we wouldn't be getting the kind of end-game we are. I don't think that the early game is the right place to make that playstyle the default. 