Hopeling
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Posts
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Joined
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Because this is the game that they wanted? Because it's an upscaled version of Ultimate Alliance, the game they already made? Twice?
It's not at all a substitute for CoH. It's not trying to be. That would be like complaining that comic books don't come with enough blank pages so we can write in our own characters. Writing your own characters is awesome and wonderful, but it's not what they're going for.
I have no idea if it will be any good. Maybe it'll crash or flop, but there's little evidence that an MMO where you create your own superheroes rather than using well-known and popular ones is more likely to avoid that. -
Quote:Would it hamper organized efforts? Yeah, probably, to some degree. Would it stop the things that are already happening, which are already largely organized outside these forums? No, probably not. Would it look really bad, even worse than they've already made themselves look, to shut down the forums prematurely? Yes, definitely. Would it galvanize existing efforts? Yes, definitely.Originally Posted by American_Knight
So it would not hamper any organized efforts if these boards were taken offline? Unbelievable
When the company is trying to shut the game down, sending the message that they are afraid of players talking to each other is not going to make players back down. And unless they shut down the game early too, they won't even have removed the primary method by which players communicate.
Also, I haven't yet seen anything on these forums that poses the slightest credible risk to NCSoft's interests, and certainly nothing that would go away if these boards weren't here. Having the boards up just keeps whatever players are plotting nice and centralized and easy to figure out. -
The badges in the new arc are supposed to give 10% Hybrid XP each, iirc, and with 4 of them that's a pretty significant chunk of extra progress. Not sure if that actually reached beta, though.
Of course, unlocking it on live is preferable. -
Quote:The -hp doesn't directly affect your DPS, but it does improve your ability to kill the target in a manner very similar to -res, because the target has less health and also regenerates less health. A level 54 AV has 30667.2 HP; full stacks of the Degenerative debuff brings that down to 26667.2, with regeneration adjust appropriately. That means you'll bring the target down in ~13% less time than you otherwise would, which is equivalent to dealing ~15% additional damage, which combines multiplicatively with other -res. By comparison, 10% -res means dealing 10% extra damage, and it stacks additively with other -res.Originally Posted by Yogi_Bare
If you're just going for DPS, IMO, the 75% Fire proc chance > 25% Toxic proc chance; so we're back to comparing the Max HP debuff vs the Resistance debuff:
The -Resis will directly affect your DPS (even at marginal benefit); the -Max HP won't. If I were to try to convert the -Max HP into DPS, I could only speculate that it would scale down as the length of the battle increased. (Assuming sustainable max stacking on either)
But a Reactive radial won't be reaching 4 stacks with any consistency anyway, so we need to worry more about comparing the total benefit of (-hp and a little bit of toxic damage) versus (fire damage and a little bit of -res). There's no single analytical answer to which of those is better; a character dealing 100000 DPS would be clearly better off with +15% than with a flat +30 DPS or whatever Reactive is worth, while a character dealing 3 DPS would clearly prefer the flat bonus. -
Palm thrusts like Incinerate and Chain Induction? No, I don't think those would be particularly sensible attacks, without the elemental FX. I know there can be sensible palm attacks, but to me those don't look like them.
As regards Electric Melee: it has Charged Brawl and Havoc Punch as punchy things go, then it has Jacob's Ladder, Lightning Rod, and Thunder Clap that don't strike the target at all, Chain Induction which is a quick touch the target to transmit charge, and Thunder Strike which is far too slow and goofy to look like a plausible maneuver (at least, IMO).
But anyway, I kinda wandered off-topic with this and back to CoH only, rather than as it relates to CO. I personally haven't felt particularly restrained by the absence of elemental melee powers in CO, but I'd probably use them if they were there. -
Five out of eight Dark Melee attacks don't even involve physical contact. You literally do not even touch the enemy at any point, except maybe by accident if they're positioned wrong, during the animations of Dark Consumption, Soul Drain, Touch of Fear, Midnight Grasp, and Siphon Life. (And one of the remaining three is clearly not a normal maneuver.) If it's supposed to look like something other than normal punching plus darkness, I'd say it succeeded. (Although I too have found that particular set to be exceptionally narrow, conceptually speaking.)
Five out of seven Electric Melee animations are more about interacting with the electricity than with the enemy. Kinetic Melee looks like it might be a dance routine, but definitely not something you'd do in a fight. Fiery Melee contains three weapon attacks, one breath attack, two "hold this for a sec" pushes, and only one power that resembles a punch.
If you removed all the special effects, a character using Electric, Kinetic, Fiery, or Dark Melee would look nothing like anyone using remotely sensible fighting techniques. And taking any kind of remotely sensible fighting technique and adding any hand FX you can conceive of would not get you something that looks like Electric, Dark, or Kinetic Melee. -
What are you two disagreeing on, exactly? I'm puzzled by this exchange. You're both asserting the same thing. Yogi said that Reactive is mitigated by AV debuff resistance, which it isn't (because it is mitigated by normal damage resistance), so Garent said that, and Jack said that it is (possibly losing track of what "it's not" was referring to?), then explained how -res is mitigated by normal damage resistance.
Also, the original question wasn't even asking about Reactive's -res, it was asking about Reactive's DoT. So there. -
Quote:Considering things like the Batman Arkham games, and other such games where you play a specific character, I would guess that these players look at the character creator less as "unlimited possibilities, I'm gonna remake Batman" and more as "I just want to play Batman, and then there's ten million extraneous options". And some people do just want to step into their favorite characters' shoes for a while; it happens even in pen-and-paper RPGs. They don't want to create a character like Batman, they just want to play Batman.Originally Posted by Lord_Nightblade
I've always found it interesting, if puzzling, that if you give players a nigh unlimited amount of customization options, there will inevitably be a sizable chunk of people who just try to copy an existing character. You give them the ability to make anything they want, with any name they want, and tell a story where they're the star of the action, and they just go with Ir0n M4n or Wolferine.
I mean, what is that? Is it laziness? Apathy? Is it just too hard for them to put any thought into creating a unique costume?
I mean, that doesn't fit well into most games with such wide-open character creation, but it's an understandable desire.
There is a certain appeal to playing the actual Iron Man, or Hulk, or Punisher, or etc, each with their own considerable character development and history, and a pre-existing emotional attachment from comics and movies. It definitely doesn't look like it will fill the same niche as CoH, but I tremendously enjoyed Ultimate Alliance, and "Ultimate Alliance Online" sounds pretty appealing now that the group I used to play with has scattered to different cities. -
AV resistances don't apply to -res. Interface debuffs aren't specifically flagged to ignore the purple patch, but since they technically grant the target a power which makes the target debuff itself, the level difference is always zero.
But yeah, assuming you can keep 4 stacks up at all times, Degenerative's -hp is better than Reactive's -res for targets with <44k health, which covers pylons and pretty much all AVs. Comparing Degenerative Core to Reactive Radial is trickier; with the 75% proc chance, the Reactive DoT is worth ~30 damage per attack, so whether that's better than Degenerative will depend on the attack chain and how much DPS you already deal. With a t4 Interface, there's also the 25% chance of the other effect to account for. -
Quote:As I said, you can do a patron arc without training up to 35. Just walk up to Arbiter Rein, he'll talk to you without the introduction pop-up.Originally Posted by MisterD
The 'problem' is NOT exactly why you get the respec from the arc. How do I know? Well..look at how it used to be, with the arc unlocking at 40.
You hit 40, train up with more slots..and get your Patron pop up. Then you do the first part of the arc, still at 40, so by the time you hit 41, and can pick a POWER...it is already unlocked.
If the whole point of the arcs was to get a respec (I dont think it is..the point is to open the powers..the respec is a bonus)...why would the arcs have started earlier before? Also, it is rather unfair to a new player (not that it matters now) to expect them to somehow know that CAN see Rein before training, to access the powers. And then expecting them to burn that free, and valuable, respec, if they want to get a PP at 35.
Moreover, yes, that is indeed why the arcs give a respec. Even when the arcs unlocked at 40 and the pools at 41, there's no guarantee that a player will finish the first arc before 41 - they might run a strike force first, they might gain a level while doing the arc, they might just plain not be aware of what a patron pool is, or they might think they get the powers automatically as temps or something rather than having to choose them like normal powers, etc. So they finish the arc, and say "okay, now how do I get these powers? Oh, I have to select them like regular powers? So I can't even use the patron pool I just earned without a respec?!" Thus, the arc gives a respec, so that you can always use the patron pool once you earn it, without jumping through extra hoops to run a respec trial or whatever. If you run the arc ASAP (before reaching 41 under the old system; before training to 35 under the new one), you can save the respec for later, but that's just a perk, not the main reason that the arc gives a respec. -
Quote:I agree that Blasters are a different way of playing the game, and engaging in ways that most ATs are not. But that still does not mean that they don't have problems, nor does it mean that they can't be improved without destroying their defining characteristics.Originally Posted by B_L_Angel
Blasters are a different way of playing this game for me. Playing blasters really pulled me into the game way other ATs did not. They are a very unique experience and most of the things touted as broken, look like defining characteristics from where I sit.
Blasters with Sustain are still glass cannons: if it could kill you in the blink of an eye without Sustain, it'll still kill you in the blink of an eye with Sustain. You are still in danger moment-to-moment, and you get to spend more time in danger and less time recuperating from danger.
Similarly, Blasters with fast snipes and crashless nukes are still offense-is-defense burst damage machines; arguably even more so. If anything, it encourages you to turn up spawn size, increasing risk and reward proportionally.
You didn't specify, so I don't know which defining characteristics you value, but at least from where I sit, the AT's defining characteristics are not lessened, and are in fact enhanced, by the i24 changes.
It's kind of puzzling that we're still having this discussion after even the devs were convinced, designed a whole set of changes, and the changes were discussed for months and made it to beta. I had to double-check the post dates when I first saw this thread because I thought somebody had somehow necro-merged a thread from March, or something. -
[war story]
I was happy with my Paladin back in vanilla WoW. The vanilla Paladin was a horrible mess of a class, and it had all kinds of stupid flaws-as-features, and it lacked flexibility (more than other hybrid classes, even back then), and even the "viable" spec had a much harder time filling its role without support than other comparable classes, and the itemization was mind-bogglingly bad. But I was happy with my Paladin overall, and honestly I was a pretty awesome Paladin and consistently managed to legitimately impress and draw compliments even from players who didn't really know what a mess the Paladin class was. But the class still had a lot of issues, and there were a lot of pointless limitations and idiosyncracies to work around/through to do decently.
A few years and a lot of patches later, many things about Paladins had been changed. I didn't like nor agree with all of those changes, taken individually, but on the whole most of the old problems had been corrected. And I was still happy with my Paladin; I just didn't have to deal with annoying and pointless handicaps to enjoy my character.
[/war story]
Being happy with a character does not mean that character doesn't have problems. It certainly doesn't mean that the archetype as a whole doesn't have problems, even more so in a game like CoH where two different Blasters quite possibly have zero powers in common.
Saying "Blasters aren't broken!" misses the point entirely. Yes, I can log into my Blaster and complete missions. My car can get me just about anywhere I might want to go; it's not broken. My car might still benefit from a tune-up and some new tires. -
You can actually go talk to Arbiter Rein and be introduced to a patron before training up to 35, IIRC. You just don't get the contact pop-up.
But yes, that problem is exactly why the patron arcs give you a respec. -
It actually applies a scaling amount of protection, specifically 1 more than whatever mag is currently affecting you. So it pretty much does what it says: cancels effects currently on you (although the protection then lasts 30 seconds, even if the mez expires before then). There's supposed to be a cap on its magnitude to prevent it from breaking stuff like Sequester, but idk what the cap is or if it's even working, since I can use it while Resting and get mag 101 immob protection.
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The ATO2s are in the Rogues & Vigilantes packs. Converters are helpful if you need a specific piece.
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Quote:They're in the beta store. I haven't been on beta in a while, so I dunno if it's still functioning properly, but they should be zero points like everything else.Originally Posted by MisterD
Hey Hopeling..are those bodysuit cossies just in the editor right away? I saw screenshots for them and was impressed.
And yeah, they're pretty awesome. This was the costume I was planning for my brute Red Vigor:
aaaaaaaaaabs
AFAIK it doesn't stack and isn't supposed to; it has better uptime than Build Up does (especially with the near-guaranteed proc from BoS), especially if you're not talking high-recharge builds, but still, I think there was some room to improve the magnitude of the buff, especially since ALL Blasters have fast-recharging nukes in i24, which automatically favors a large-but-brief damage bonus over a smaller-but-better-uptime damage bonus.Quote:Originally Posted by MisterD
Still not seeing RftL (FTL!) doing much.
Can it stack? Is it even meant to? -
Quote:If the point was just to fix Blasters, it would have been applied to just Blasters. But that wasn't the point. Blast sets in general had issues; snipes were total garbage across the board, not just for Blasters. Addressing that does go a long way towards fixing Blaster problems, but not all the way, hence the additional Blaster-specific changes.Originally Posted by MisterD
Exactly as I said in numerous threads months ago..it is just too good. Wait, back up..too good on NON blasters. Which I always thought was the point..fixing blasters, not 'blasts'.
Arbiter Hawk had the same idea non-sarcastically, and was planning a +50% range buff after sniping as a Blaster-only perk. I don't think that made it into a beta build before the fateful announcement, though.Quote:Originally Posted by MisterD
Let's be sillier..if your heavy hitters can fire at teh normal range for attacking..and we can now fast snipe, lets go ahead and make ALL attacks at snipe range! Perfect fix.
But yeah, there was no compelling reason for t3 blasts to NOT be the same range as other blasts, and it was very annoying and inconvenient when you were actually trying to stay at range for whatever reason. If/when one wants to stay close while blasting, or constantly change distance... well, there's still no reason not to. But sometimes, one wants to not do that, and it's nice to not be hamstrung for it. (The extended range on Water Jet was really weirding me out because I was so not used to it, though.)
Anyway, my favorite thing stuck on beta is possibly the Bodysuit costumes. Man, I wish that had made it live so Red Vigor could go out looking properly ripped. -
I think you're either expressing your idea in a weird way or coming at it from a weird angle; most of what you've said makes me agree that MMO characters tend to be bad at "surviving" in the wilderness for very long, but not that wilderness doesn't exist.
I have, on occasion, gotten that feeling of "I'm alone and way far away from everyone and everything" while playing MMOs. It doesn't happen often, since if nothing else you tend to run across other players pretty regularly, and I find that it mostly happens when I'm doing things outside the normal structure of gameplay, like exploring just for its own sake. Occasionally, in another game, a friend and I would choose a remote and rarely-frequented location and go there just for the hell of it; by nature these tended to be places that there was no real reason to visit, so we didn't get much out of it mechanically, but those trips are some of my favorite memories from that game.
An MMO where characters are more self-reliant would be very different from most MMOs I've played; some kind of post-apocalyptic setting would be well-suited to it, I think. I don't think it would be impossible, but it would have to be structured very differently. Maybe focused more on "quests" in the original sense of the word as long and difficult tasks, rather than the usual MMO sense of quick disposable objectives, so that you wouldn't be "checking in" so very often. I'm not sure if that really would lend itself well to an MMO, though. -
Quote:I played CO at launch, played a month now and again since, and always ended up coming back to CoH, and I still won't "admit" that CO sucks. It doesn't. I think CoH is the superior game, at least to my tastes; CO has its warts, just as every game does (including CoH), but there's still plenty there to enjoy, and the players there legitimately enjoy it more than any other game.Originally Posted by BellaStrega
This is probably 100% wrong.
Also, nobody in any game I have ever played actually cares whether or not you "jumped ship" for a while. The Account Management page has never had an "admit that all other games suck and leaving was a mistake" step for resubscription.
Every MMO's community thinks their game is the best. Having been in a dozen or so, I'm not sure any of them are wrong. They just all have different criteria for "best". -
Quote:I already paid my subscription through and well past Nov 30, because I did the 12+2 holiday deal thingie. If I'm not getting the things I paid for past Aug 31, I should at least expect compensation for my paid time after Aug 31. If the compensation only counts time after Nov 30, that would be pretty shady.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Well getting the stipend is directly linked to paying for a subscription. Since they aren't accepting subscription fees they have no obligation to continue giving out the stipend.
It sucks but it's that simple.
We'll see what form that compensation takes, but I'll also think it's pretty shady if it's just credit towards other NCSoft games, rather than an actual refund, and that would annihilate what little goodwill towards them I still have. Getting my favorite game shut down sucks, but business is business. Getting flatly ripped off in the process? That would put me straight into "never do business with NCSoft again in any way, and warn anyone I know to do the same" territory. That's not even about my personal attachment to the game, or a desire for revenge; it would just be literally stupid to give money to such a company again. And I say that as someone who has been thoroughly enjoying GW2. -
Quote:Pretty much every character will want some source of healing, sooner or later, but there are a ton of different healing abilities. Resurgence, Bionic Shielding, Bountiful Chi Resurgence, Conviction, Lifedrain, Empathic Healing, various power advantages and specializations, etc etc. Some characters do fine with just one heal, some use multiple heals, and different healing abilities are good for different things. The Regeneration slotted passive works too, of course, but it's not the only source of healing.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Also: Healing. People keep saying how important that is, but isn't healing mutually exclusive with something else? Or is this more like, say, Stamina, where everyone pretty much SHOULD take the same power on all characters?
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Quote:I don't think that's a very good analogy, because Fighting and Medicine are severely outclassed by non-pool defensive powers. If I were to offer a counter-analogy, I'd say that it's more like the CO "Blaster" has access to full-strength versions of Moment of Glory, Healing Flames, etc, but I don't want to get too bogged down in the analogy. Point is, you can get some pretty excellent defensive powers even without a defensive passive.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
For the purposes of this discussion, I believe its fair to say that's not that much different from saying you can get pretty durable being a water blast blaster with tough, weave, and aid self. The analog to the defensive set in CoX is the defensive passive in CO. Yes you can get healing in other sets, but that's also true here: you can get healing in Water Blast and the medicine pool as well.
Having a defensive passive on swap is very handy, though.
I'm not disagreeing with what you and Brigandine were saying, I just wanted to add that you can be reasonably survivable in an offensive role too. Offensive passives and roles have gotten A LOT more viable than they were near launch. On my characters with two passives, I usually end up spending most of my time in an offensive role, switching to Hybrid or Tank only for really dangerous fights. -
Quote:The thing about CO's passives is that they are, well, passives - buttons that you press for immediate healing or mitigation or etc are separate. So using a defensive passive is a surefire way to get tougher, and a defensive passive plus some activated defensive powers is even better, but you can be reasonably durable even with an offensive passive and role by adding other defensive powers.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
As Brigandine mentions, the important takeaway is that in CO, defensive passive powers are the equivalent of an entire defensive secondary in CoX.
So for this question:
I guess it depends on what you mean by "approximate a Scrapper". Even with an offensive passive, you can definitely make a character that doesn't have to hide behind a tank all the time. But having a defensive passive and swapping to it in hairy situations is also very useful. Despite my love of CoH scrappers, I've never had a character in CO that I felt was a good approximation for a Scrapper moment-to-moment; in an offensive role you're too squishy, and in Hybrid role you deal significantly less damage. But in a broader sense, switching between those as necessary definitely lets you play a damage-focused melee character that is very self-sufficient (and can even go full tank, in a pinch, which is sometimes handy for Alerts and stuff). Oh, and the way that works isn't specific to melee, so an armored gatling gun guy is workable.Quote:Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, so what I'm getting out of this is that if I want to approximate a Scrapper, I have to go with a defensive passive. -
I dunno about Slaunyeh, but I did roll a human, and still didn't like the armor (never did manage to find even one that looked like it might plausibly be intended as armor). It wasn't the main thing that made me choose to stop after the first month, but it was a factor. I know most of the players over there love the art style, but it wasn't for me.
CO, for all its flaws, is still the game closest in spirit to most of my favorite things about CoH, at least that I've seen. So I'll probably be spending some time there. I had already bought GW2 before the fateful announcement, so I might as well put some extra strain on their servers
and that's where my friends seem to be going. I'm tentatively looking forward to the Marvel Heroes game, but that's still a ways off. Other than that... eh, I dunno. Anybody got some suggestions for very "team-optional" MMOs? I like playing with a group, but I also like being able to do meaningful stuff without a group, and especially without an extensive web of in-game social obligations.
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As the largest shareholder, they quite possibly had *something* to do with the decision, yes. That doesn't mean they were the driving force behind it, or any such thing; for all we know, they could have been on our side (a 14.7% share is still easily a minority).