IanTheM1
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Posts
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Even randomized encounters can get boring. Especially if said encounters were very shallow, which is what this sounds like it could be given the requirements of slotting in so many disparate elements at random. The same problem exists for newspaper missions.
On the flipside, if this randomized encounter concept is incredibly detailed and involved, say goodbye to any chance of a public raid team managing to handle it. -
Mortimer Kal is exactly what you're looking for. Edit: And having just leveled a Power Loyalist through Praetoria, Dr. Hetzfeld is also exactly what you're looking for.
On the whole, it seems like they've really been trying to make up for some of their worst past showings when they can.
Though we'll see what happens with the new zone in I21.. -
This honestly just sounds like a more cumbersome version of Day Jobs.
Also, some kind of in-game benefit messing with my costume? No thank you. -
Add the IDF, period. I'm rather incensed to find that the IDF still hasn't been added two issues after they were introduced.
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Quote:If they can come up with a compelling reason for the IDF to care about the Shadow Shard/Firebase Zulu, I could maybe see it. Though my point was to cut down on zone events in relatively dead zones.Originally Posted by Bookkeeper_Jay
Travel issues (Red Side fairness aside) would be minor if the zone event was centered inside Firebase Zulu. That would also give an incentive to make those Soldiers stop firing blanks at those hallucinations they're always chasing. -
Quote:I figure leaving the Shard out (for now, anyway) is better than trying to support it, due to travel issues as well as helping to maintain some parity between blue and redside in terms of raw number of Incursion points.Originally Posted by Bookkeeper_Jay
Just a little nitpick: Who is to say that Mother Mayhem and Malaise wouldn't make an attempt to control another aspect of Rularuu?
My intention was to have them be random like any other zone event, with a maximum of about an hour between one for each side.Quote:Originally Posted by Evangel
I would also either have the event triggered by a player action (perhaps 3 successful Lambdas sparks an counter incursion?) or have it on a random timer to add to the chaos
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Quote:Same deal here, pretty much. I just got two copies of the pack gifted to me (since I refuse to personally buy it) the other week, since I assumed the sales were over. :/Originally Posted by Megajoule
And of course, I (finally) got this two weeks ago.
Oh well. -
Give SG bases attention, period.
(Also, Suggestions and Ideas is down a board or two.) -
Here's something I thought of as I was brainstorming ways to make the Incarnate trials have a more tangible effect on the gameworld. Unfortunately I don't think this way would work for that goal due to technical restrictions and due to the way the system is already built, but I like the core idea anyway.
So far we've traveled into Praetoria to strike crucial targets in our war with Cole, but aside from a few TFs and a special event, we haven't visibly seen all that much back and forth between the two worlds. Here's something to bring the war a little more into focus.
Within every zone in the game (within reason - the Shadow Shard and some Hazard Zones would be excluded), there would be locations that would be subjected to Praetorian Incursions on a semi-regular basis. Some of these locations already exist - the Fab in Grandville is a good example. Or the Crey facility in the RWZ. Others would have to be added in - the Paragon Times building in Steel Canyon, say.
During these Incursions, players would get a hotspot on their map like other zone events and Siren's Call battles. Praetorians would spill out from portals and threaten whatever their target was. Different kinds of IDF and different waves could spawn, adding to the variety a bit. All Seers or all Warwalkers would be quite the sight.
These IDF would be event-style mobs with no level. And if we're really going all out, there could be slightly different objectives for each event as well.
All participating characters who have the Alpha slot unlocked will earn Threads. There would be badges for helping fight back the Incursions, similar to the WST ones. These badges would work like the Promethean badge and offer a free component of rising rarity assuming the character is level 50. How many Incursions it should take to earn each badge I'm not solid on, but something around 5 / 15 / 30 is a good rough number. Completing each individual Incursion would earn you one Astral merit.
Some notes, to clarify things:
- This would offer a possible solo Incarnate path, but I definitely don't think it should be the only one.
- These zone events would only last for 10-15 minutes at a time at the most, in order to prevent them from being abandoned and thereby lingering in the zone, causing lag and generally being a nuisance. If nobody contests the IDF, they secure their objective and promptly leave.
- Obviously there may be some issue with spawning IDF in low level zones, since they could block mission doors or such. Solution A is to make these event areas empty of mission doors, Solution B is to make the event IDF yellow-reticuled. Either way, they should be tethered if possible.
- Yes, I know this won't be pleasing to those who dislike the ongoing plot or Praetoria in general. Personally for me, I dislike the plot but like fighting the IDF. I'd also rather see the plot at least move somewhere rather than stagnate while the Incarnate Trials are currently the focus.
- Yes, I already know this would be a hell of a lot of work. But I wanna save the Paragon Times building. And actually see it in-game.
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Quote:Point taken. It's definitely a step up from killing 100 Illusionists (remember when it used to be 300? Oh those were the days...) to get a weapon they don't even use.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
But it's still reasonable. Beating up 200 goons of any class (unlike the damn Family Tommygun unlock) works fine and makes sense. Beat up bad guys, take their guns.
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Quote:The core FX are the same as regular Energy Blast (especially noticeable on their version of Energy Torrent), but they get an additional special color/glow/blur effect that completes the look.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
They do energy damage, but they use different animations and sound fx. Pity we can't get sfx customisation for powers, but hey ho.
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A PBAoE where your character leaps off the top of the screen* and then comes crashing back down, shattering the pavement and everyone around him/her would be pretty awesome.
*I have no idea how this would look to an outsider. There's the Ninja Leap costume change emote though, so something of the sort exists. -
Quote:It's actually 200, and technically it unlocks off an invisible badge (the same one required to unlock Viridian).Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
The only reasonable ones IMO are the Council rifles which don't even require a badge; you just punk 100 Council soldiers.
Nice and simple and ties in thematically; why is that not a standard model?
(Although that still wouldn't help Villain side...yay)
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Quote:At that point, they're not really all that temporary, are they?Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Why have the temp powers drop at all? I'd much rather they be pulled from the drop tables and sold at the market or an NPC for a fixed price like jetpacks.
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Quote:I think some of the confusion may be because my position isn't concrete. I'm perfectly willing to concede on some points, and as you have argued and others have chimed in, I've been swayed on some things.Originally Posted by Seldom
I'm just trying to clarify the stance you have here-
Yup. Getting everything hammered out in one go is much preferable to having the set get tweaked to make it a little less painful, but still lacking.Quote:-An overhaul of the powerset is more necessary than small changes
This was slightly due to a mistake on my part, as I had forgotten exactly how much Sonic Siphon did. I just think that something needs to be done about Sonic Siphon. Stackability would be nice in a vacuum, but I equally like adding -DMG or reducing the recharge time (though that may impact its effectiveness) or really anything else to make it more useful in the early levels where Sonic doesn't get much to work with.Quote:-Stackable sonic siphon
Edit: Oh, and reduce its animation time. It just feels really slow and clunky, numbers aside.
Yup. I see where you're coming from regarding defense protecting against debuffs where resistance does not, but I'm not a numbers person, and I'd really want to see exactly how big that gap is before agreeing to comprehensive debuff protection in that fashion.Quote:-Shields staying as-is for the most part
Force Field gets some exotic protections, though I don't really recall why it does, since I'm pretty sure they were added after launch. I wouldn't mind seeing Sonic get a few of its own.
I personally love Sonic Cage (and Detention Field), and have no complaints about them. And I like the idea of making Sonic Repulsion a click power with a much more reasonable endurance cost and a usable recharge time.Quote:-No comment on sonic cage, repulsion
Yup.Quote:-Lower cost for disruption field
I think my ultimate goal would be to change Clarity quite a bit. My current working idea is to turn it into an omni-buff that protects against all debuffs and some psionic damage, but would be closer to Fortitude in terms of recharge/uptime. That way Sonic isn't completely negated by psionic damage, and can work against some debuffs, but can't necessarily protect every single member of the team. It also makes Clarity much more unique and useful outside of making up for any shotcomings of resistance versus defense.Quote:-clarity carrying debuff protections
And with a better uptime. I get the impression it's unfairly penalized for being an AoE hold.Quote:-An altered liquefy, for -dam/res rather than -tohit/-def.
Aside from what I clarified.Quote:Do I have this correct?
Whereas I look at it from the perspective of developer workload. Reducing the endurance cost of Disruption Field is, as I understand it, as simple as tweaking a number on a spreadsheet. Adding entirely new effects, and especially as many as you suggested for Sonic Dispersion for instance (or as many as I suggested for Clarity), would be quite a bit of work. Hence why I think that regardless of what they do with the set, they're probably better off going at it whole-hog.Quote:I've probably run into the ground my stance on protecting from side effects as well as damage, and treating psy damage as most others are. The other things well, I made these suggestions because they seemed in my mind pretty simple, and for the most part had little to upset balance-wise. They are straight-up additions rather than alterations of present values.
When you get into altering powers up and down, it has more ramifications on present characters. Most of the changes I'd suggested follow present functions, or are unalterable, thus more straightforward to balance.
I agree with some of your positions, particularly about liquefy needing to be changed, (Though I'd do it differently) and altered disruption field cost. I just think these are a bit outside the purview of 'quick additions.' Their exclusions are not to communicate that they shouldn't be changed. Rather, I just think those debates would be longer, more crazy. Hence why I thought I'd simply share the faster, simple changes.
I'd bump it down to 20%/15% myself, but yeah, I think it's a fair compromise.Quote:Hm. Actually, the unenhanceable 25% resistance to psy damage (20% for controllers/corrs) I can see. It means set vulnerable are less vulnerable, but still must be careful. The lack of enhanceability means sonics don't all of a sudden need to find new slots, or gain new slots to use +res sets in.
Something else I noted upon rechecking FF versus Sonic, is that Sonic is clearly out of whack compared to FF in terms of raw defense/resistance numbers. Probably due to coming about right when the dev team was terrified of stacked protection, capped protection, and resistance especially. -
Quote:I already did in my first post of the thread, though..Originally Posted by Seldom
As to the rest, I would hope you could address the suggestions as they stand or at least enumerate your position rather than dismissing them as being an hindrance to a hypothetical, broader revamp of unstated scope.
Don't worry, I try not to take things personally.Quote:Please don't take that as a personal affront, I'm just trying to be specific here. 
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Quote:Your point wasn't unclear, my problem was that you were replying to an argument about someone else's post. Your point doesn't really have much to do with ArcticFahx's reasoning or my opposing viewpoint to it.Originally Posted by Seldom
Forgive me for being unclear, then.
As you can see from previous posts, I disagree with the idea that psychic damage has become particularly commonplace.Quote:If anything, it updates the set to a time where many more psychic foes appear than when it was built, and more reliably do what it's meant to do.
I'll admit, I'm more opposed to the amount of Psi resistance than the concept. It might be more agreeable at something closer to what Bookkeeper_Jay suggested, though I would keep it at 5-10% Psi resistance, and unenhanceable.
I'd also fix the problem of Clarity being redundant by adding a lot of the debuff protection you were looking to add to the rest of the set to it instead.
Exactly that. I wouldn't be so firm on that if not for the fact that it's happened several times before. See the history of Energy Aura for a good example.Quote:But those are larger changes than some debuff resistances and unenhanceable side-effects added to a few powers.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'band-aid fixes.' Do you believe small improvements threaten to keep the sets from getting larger adjustments that they need? -
An awesome idea.
Actually, for that matter, how about all of the different departments of the PPD, too? -
Quote:That doesn't logically follow from what I said...Originally Posted by Seldom
Because quite simply it represents for sonic resonance an area in which a protective buff set is incapable of providing protection. Look again at other sets- they do have a weakness to psy damage. But they have lots of mitigative debuffs or heals that can compromise the psy damage dealers.
Sonic Siphon and Disruption Field allow your team to kill things faster. Death is a 100% mez and all that. And while Sonic Repulsion needs a lot of work to make it viable, I'm not really sure how "in harm's way" really accounts for much - in melee, with enemies accounts for a pretty large swath of the game, after all.Quote:Sonic does have mitigation, but limited: - Sonic cage: less mitigation and more damage procrastination
- Sonic repulsion: requires endurance consumption not sustainable, and an ally in harm's way
- Liquefy: has a base 1/10 uptime
Sonic relies a LOT on its shields, because it has such a small toolset for actively taking the bite off of attacks.
But the funny thing is that I don't disagree. I actually feel that Sonic Resonance is a flawed set and needs work. But I'd much rather have a proper overhauling than some band-aid fixes that don't really address the set's core problems.
Yes, that is what a weakness is. Though as said above, it already brings some other things to the table, and should be able bring more.Quote:Having a hole means sonic can suddenly run up against a mobs that will be doing 100% damage and it can't do much about it at present.
This statement scares me, though I'm not exactly sure why. All Defender sets should be reliable, yes, but relied upon...hrm.Quote:This is not a good position for a set meant to be relied on for safety to be in. -
Quote:I'm not sure on the first one, because I'm not sure if Victorias free spawn anywhere. And if they don't, 100 Victorias are pathetically easy to get through just a few BAF trials.Originally Posted by Arilou
Not Amused
Defeat 100 Mark VI "Victoria" type Warworks
Knife Fighter
Defeat 200 knives of Artemis
And I'd lower the second one to just 100 Knives. They do free spawn, but in extremely low numbers and can be a little hard to track down in the first place. Also attach the KoA sword to the badge.
Love both the names, though.
Mine:
Gross
Defeat 100 Hydra Monsters -
Adding more temp powers wouldn't change how often they drop, would it? I assumed they were on their own drop schedule.
/signed, if only so that I don't have to constantly delete 3 hand grenade recipes after every mission and might be convinced to craft something more interesting/useful. -
Quote:There's a big, big, BIG difference between "I need Incarnate powers because I want them" and "I need a respec because my build is so broken it is borderline unplayable". And having to do a trial in order to get the respec, no matter how easy it is, doesn't really sound like "handing it to them".Originally Posted by Kurrent
I'm sorry, just because a player thinks they NEED something doesn't equate to handing it to them. If someone needs Incarnate powers, do we just turn Trapdoor into a lvl 1 minion to let them stomp all over him? Lots of people need incarnate threads or components, but does that mean we nerf the various trials, task forces and strike forces just to make the only difficulty standing around being bored?
I apparently misinterpreted part of it, but my reply remains largely unchanged: If it's possible to raise the difficulty to increase the challenge, and thereby fill up what would normally be down time by having more enemies to fight, why not do that? (Though in hindsight, it's possible the waves cannot be altered by the difficulty slider one way or the other.)Quote:I think the main point of my post was either unclear or you just missed it.
And, like I said, I would not be opposed to a glowie or somesuch that would trigger the next wave. Just as long as it's an option.
Your original post made very little reference to tedium or time investment and instead had a lot of emphasis on the difficulty of the trial. Nor did it mention changing more than the wave timings.Quote:My main point is that the spawn rates of the enemy waves in the reactor core is exceedingly long, removing all challenge from the trial's final mission and replacing it with tedium. I'm not asking for things to be made harder necessarily, just for the spawn rate to be moved closer to what it originally was. Doing so without any other adjustment would indeed increase the challenge, which I'd be okay with, but I understand that some people don't want any increased challenge here. If the Devs don't want to increase the challenge, then they can offset the increase in spawn rate with a reduction in enemy mob size. This should please people who truly don't want to increase the difficulty of the respec while still reducing the tedium that has driven many players away from what is really a neat mini-taskforce.
Assuming the overall challenge of the trial was unchanged, I wouldn't mind one way or another. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Lazarillo
A lot of the low-level Praetorian enemies have accuracy buffs in at least one attack. This tends to be made more painful by the fact that, at low levels, all that cool soft-capping stuff isn't available. IIRC, the newly-diversified high level Devouring Earth enemies also have something like a 1.2-base accuracy as well.The Devouring Earth I think are a special case. At least in so much as they've already caught the attention of Arcana as being ludicrously broken. And they're part of a specific Alignment or Morality mission or somesuch.Quote:Originally Posted by bpphantom
Apparently all of Praetoria. I've not done the testing and math myself but others have and is seems that a praetorian even con minion has a 65% change to hit vs the primal equivalents 50%.
Praetoria in general I wasn't aware of, though. I was only familiar with the Resistance's copious amounts of -Def.
Longbow, I'll admit, I forgot. Though that only applies to 40+. I don't think Arachnos actually have any resistance debuffs? Same with CoT. And Vanguard exist in a single arc, and maybe some tip/alignment missions?Quote:And Longbow, Arachnos, CoT, Vanguard, ... -
Quote:Hardcase was pretty much a Rogue from day one.Originally Posted by Lazarillo
~Hardcase is already basically a hero contact for villains. Seems like he'd get along pretty well with other vigilantes.
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Quote:Both. Defense set bonuses were always out of control, and the Resistance bonuses were never logically balanced against them anyway. 1% Defense = 2% Resistance and all that.Originally Posted by Pampl
I think the solution to this is to make these bonuses more common (for example, they could replace the useless reduced XP debt bonuses) and possibly slightly larger - maybe make a 2.5% bonus to damage a 4% bonus instead, say. Alternately, you could reduce the size and prevalence of recharge and defense buffs from sets but I think that would be less popular. Either way I think the game would benefit from players having a real choice between building for defense or for resistance, and between building for damage or for recharge.
I guess I must have been sleeping or something over the past year. Exactly when and what did they do to nerf Defense recently? At all?Quote:Originally Posted by Noyjitat
With how much they have nerfed defense in the last 3 issues
Outside of Incarnate Trial mobs, which were given a to-hit bonus to begin with (and therefore technically not "buffed"), what enemies got better accuracy or to-hit? I'm not a fan of enemies being given arbitrary advantages, but I'm also not a fan of hyperbole.Quote:and buffed enemy accuracy and to hit
This has always been a huge flaw with the game as a whole, IMO. There's all of two groups in the game that do any major amount of -Resistance (Goldbrickers and Wailers), and they're both more or less sequestered in their own zones, able to be avoided entirely.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
Also, if you think about it, while defense and recharge bonuses are quite prevalent, how often do you face -def and -rech? Vs -res and -dmg?
Comparatively you could tell me that every single enemy group in the game has some form of -Defense and I would believe you without question.