IanTheM1

I don't recall there ever being a movie poster for Broken Column, just the marquee was changed.

If you think the Numina TF needs to be revamped, you don't understand the point of it.

Except there's a big difference between "we had/have plans for the Shadow Shard" and "we've been sitting on already-completed work for 5 or so years". Keep in mind that even during the days of the Freem 15 we were getting stuff like Faultline. If they actually had more parts of the Shadow Shard completed, I can't see why they'd just ignore them, especially if it would only save them some of the workload.

And let's keep in mind that the Shard comes from an era where the lead designer hinted at epic ATs that barely ever made it towards development, if at all.

My point continues to be that whatever's unreleased from the Shadow Shard is largely if not purely excerpts from the Story Bible and the design document. I think I'm basically done arguing about it, since I doubt we'll get an official answer on it.

...

Why yes, yes it is. Thanks for noticing...?

GR will be crammed full of content to play through. That'll certainly take some time.

I suppose if someone pre-purchased GR solely for the end-game system, they might be a bit disappointed..

And again, if they actually had something tangible produced, they wouldn't withhold it, I don't think. Especially considering the Shadow Shard came out back in I2. That's a long time to sit on workable content. Plus no evidence of any further Shard stuff has been found in the game's files, which is another decent tell.

Of course, if they really have been hiding already-developed content, I'd really love to hear why it was never released.

Difficult =/= tedious and/or painfully dull.

I seriously doubt the devs have just been sitting on new Shadow Shard content this whole time. It's much more likely that the one-sixth figure meant "what's in game is one-sixth of what's in the story bible/design document". (Admittedly this just might be an issue of ambiguous tone.)

Quarterfield should never be required for anything. Ever. Unless it got revamped.

This was what I was going to say, pretty much.

We need more goofy mad science in City of Heroes.

Think of it this way: I19 is is the I1 (or the I7) of Going Rogue. (Also, are you planning on blowing through GR, content-wise? Who cares if the endgame system isn't entirely finished if your newly minted Praetorian is only level 1? Also also, it means they can test the waters with Incarnate Level 1 and adjust the other 9 based on player feedback and datamining before unleashing a massive can of worms.)

As for the other stuff - because it's an excellent promotional gimmick. If Dual Pistols is ready to go, why sit on it when you can turn it into an incentive to pre-purchase? And why gate graphical upgrades when they'd make a swell bullet point for a free release?

Either Mids' is wrong, I'm misinterpreting something, or you might be incorrect. Comparing Regen and WP on Scrappers: FH + Integration just about equals HPT + FH + RttC with a single enemy in range.

I think what most people forget for some strange reason is that despite their relative prevalence, if you want to simply avoid defense debuffs altogether...you can.

Rikti, for instance, have no defense debuffs to speak of, IIRC. At worst, the Mentalists can avoid positional defense with their Mind Control abilities.

And as was touched upon above, I also think that people also tend to forget that every single character in the game gets access to a basic resistance (or rarely, defense) toggle. Not to mention potentially having access to heals, the benefit of mezzes, to-hit debuffs, etc etc etc.

I think it has more to do with the fact that both places where this tends to happen (Midnight Club and the Vanguard HQ) have allied combat-ready NPCs spawning in. Whatever handles spawning them in treats them no different than enemies, and so when they appear they have the same chance of producing a Void like any other mob.

Because a clearly for-fun power shouldn't become a $10 "avoid all risk and debt" button, 30 minute recharge time or not.

I wouldn't be opposed to bumping up its accuracy slightly in order to better facilitate it as a last-ditch time bomb, however.

While I've never heard anything to that extent, I'll just point out that my Willpower Scrapper has more health sans TF Commander than my Stone Brute does with all of the health-boosting accolades. And that's on top of Willpower potentially having better regen than Regen at least some of the time.

If anything, due to Brutes and Tanks being more focused on taking burst damage, I wouldn't be surprised if Regen for them was underpowered. I'd also probably switch Moment of Glory and Instant Healing around in the set and tweak them appropriately.

It's not about "easy" it's about "acceptable difficulty" or rather "acceptable tedium". I'm willing to work for the set, but neither of the current options is attractive, and it's pretty clear that grinding for them is meant to be that way, which is a poor design choice in what's supposed to be a casual-friendly game.

Yes, because "too slow to run the game" == "lags during a high player density event". I get fine performance everywhere else, thanks.

And what exactly are these "rules of the game"??

Which is precisely why I said that while I dislike ship raids, I outright despise Borea missions.

No thanks. The same amount of lag as a ship raid, but with normal merit drop rates. A terrible combination.

That's still a miserable ratio, though admittedly I'm unclear as to how quickly you're doing these missions. I also think that if I have to mess around with my difficulty settings much at all, there's a design flaw involved. Just because there are ways to farm for Vmerits a little more effectively doesn't stop the farming from being tedious and stupid.

Plenty of people can type fast. But others, not so much.

In certain high-intensity situations it can cause trouble. Rare, I'll admit, but that's why it just perplexes me rather than enrages.

I think it used to say "Technology (Natural)" but I must've edited that out. In RP terms he's definitely tech, and since VV is for RP characters...

Except that I don't post like ship raids don't exist, especially when even if I did, people would harp on me exactly like this (and they do anyway). Unless you're going to seriously count my first post in this thread which was a glib comment and nothing more, not a serious argument.

A little strange that you're apparently up on how often I speak out about this, but you don't actually know anything about my complaints.

My playing time tends to be constrained for a variety of reasons, so yes, realistically speaking it would take a lot of time. Literally months? I'm not sure, but I'm not about to go torture myself to find out either. I was echoing the OP's words, and it apparently took them months to gather all the Vanguard goodies, so..

And raising the difficulty is hardly a reliable solution if I want to get more Vmerits on, say, my Empathy Defender. And, naturally, teaming usually results in fewer drops rather than more so that's not a great idea either.

Regular merits are far more balanced. Let me repeat my usual anecdote: I played through the entirety of the War Zone arcs, on Solo/Malicious, and got about 200-250 merits total.

That's a whole five arcs (with boosted Vmerit numbers due to the difficulty slider) to approximately equal the general minimum Vmerit rewards of a single ship raid. The difference in time costs is massive. Story arcs versus TFs for regular merits is nowhere near that bad. And to think all this is (mostly) for costume pieces, rather than rare IOs that actually affect gameplay.

My point has always been and continues to be that the choice between grinding and ship raids is illusory for the average player, and a complete no-sell for the casual player. It's not so much that I don't like ship raids so much that I hate Borea missions even more. And at least some of my proposed changes are, AFAIK, a matter of tweaking a spreadsheet.

I've been saying this sort of stuff for a while.

Ways to fix Vanguard merits:

1) Up the drop rate.
2) Give merit bonuses for the RWZ story arcs.
3) Give a merit bonus to the Lady Grey TF.
4) Severely reduce the price of the Vanguard costume parts. (IT COSTS 200 FOR PANTS PEOPLE, 100 FOR A GUN)
5) Allow characters of any level to earn merits.
6) Find some way to allow players to use unlockable costume parts at creation. Account-wide unlocks, redeemable tokens (sort of like Vet rewards), or make the unlocks recipe-based.

There's no damn good reason for rewarding a pittance of Vanguard merits for doing the actual content versus tons for a raid that I find both incredibly boring and a pain to even attempt due to performance issues.

I don't like Hamidon raids either. Which is one of the reasons why I like doing the STF. Why can't a similar compromise can't be done with, say, the Lady Grey TF?