Johnny_Butane

I didn't mean to necessarily imply you were one of those people. I'm sorry if it sounded like that.

I was merely saying that every time a "CoH 2" comes up in discussion, there are always people who go "with all the content added, we're already playing CoH 2 (or 1.75 or whatever)!" or "CoH 2 will split the player base because it happened in [insert defunct fantasy MMO here]" or "I don't wanna give up everything I have now in CoH".

Those people don't seem to understand the vast majority of the public doesn't see the game as anything other than an eight year old title no matter what is added, a split playerbase is better than no playerbase and that when the game shuts down, which is an inevitability, they lose all their stuff anyways.


I honestly think 5-6 years down the line to start making a game that should come out 2-3 years after that is way past the point of no return. The writing is on the wall. They're shutting peripheral services down now. We know they're dividing focus internally on another IP and production. If a sequel doesn't happen soon I doubt it is ever going to happen, and that's the end of CoH.


It's all down to opinion, anyways. Nothing a few people on the forum say will influence them to do something they can't or don't want to do.


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This.

Disagree. The best thing for people who want CoH 2 is to get worked up over it, show there's desire and support for a sequel and light a fire under NCSoft/Paragon Studios.

The worst thing they can do is be those whiners who show up in every CoH 2 thread and complain about splitting the playerbase or insist that a sequel isn't needed when theres a lot of things everyone wants that just aren't feasible in the current game but would be in a sequel.

They just pretty much shuttered most EU support for the game. Do people honestly think that's a good sign? If the game doesn't get a fully updated sequel soon, there's not gonna BE a playerbase to split because they'll be shutting the game down unless something drastic is done to attract new blood.

A new expansion didn't do it. F2P conversions didn't do it. Time to get over your sequel phobia if you give a damn about CoH, because the longer they go without starting one, the more likely the future of the IP becomes a very grim one.



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The trial is months over, the jury gone home. The killer is being strapped into the chair as Zombie Man sits in his home, reading about the case he only just found out about that morning. He decides there's enough evidence *for him* as the lights dim and flicker for an instant.

And all is well.



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It's "an exciting new IP". So not CoH 2.



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Fridge logic: The announcement was in English and they didn't translate it?




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Zwill, I appreciate you being as frank as you're allowed to be, but any way you slice it, this isn't good news.

I can understand the challenge with trying to sell super heroes to an audience that may just not be interested in them. However, the success of films like Captain America and Iron Man overseas, including Cap specifically since I would expect him to have very little appeal outside of the USA, shows that Europeans can be receptive.

I'm not a marketing guy, I don't know anything about pushing a product or brand, so the only thing I can say about it not finding an increased audience is what I've observed. And that is that I saw very little promotion of the FP2 switch anywhere outside of a few hardcore MMO sites. None of my gamer friends outside of the game knew about it, even many who were at one point players of CoH. I only ever recall seeing one ad on the web, anywhere, and a a few articles in some gamer rags.

So, I don't know. if I didn't see much of it in the English press, how much did it get in secondary languages and Euro-centric sources? [shrug]


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Me neither, but "lack of growth" and downsizing isn't what I want to hear in all seriousness.


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The same could be said of Dark Astoria and the first 20 levels of Praetoria, for that matter.


That much is fairly obvious. Pure shock value. Too bad it wasn't really shocking and didn't have much value as a storyline.

I think the statement that this was the most interesting thing they could think of to do with these characters was on the money. I feel like the current writers, rather than build on the game's lore and grow characters, would prefer to bulldoze to make room for what they want. It's like in bad fanfiction when a writer has doesn't respect the cannon and just bends it to their use, shipping characters who've shown no real interest in each other, giving people motivation they didn't have before, making people act wildly out of charcter and less competent just so their story can work.

Wade is no surprise, just a symptom. "I stopped the guy with godlike power and several more lifetimes of experience than me without lifting a finger in combat when no one else in 70 years, even the people who know him the best, could".

Uh huh. Well nice work Darrin-Sue.


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I had an idea on how to fix that, perhaps as a future issue or expansion.

Essentially, they give players their own "bottled city of Kandor" to play with; a pocket dimension where supers don't exist and is imperiled by some kind of threat and thus you are their only hope.

Over the course of the storyline your choices and actions determine how that world ends up. Do you go on to become that world's savior or do you seize control and make then tremble under your boot heel or do you set it all on fire and dance on the ashes?

If they could jury-rig the Doppelganger tech, maybe they could even have holographic monuments to you. Add some reasonable customization, the ability to name the place, etc.

I guess this would be taking the long requested "player housing" to the next level, giving villains their own little world/country to conquer and rule over and giving heroes a place they can "be The Guy".
Or maybe it's a dumb idea.


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See, that should have happened. But instead of a scar, it should have cost him an eye. That would have been fitting with Wade knowledge and godhood.


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How many people has Spider-Man murdered by leaving them upside down and unconscious webbed to a lamp post in the middle of the night when his web dissolves about an hour later and they fall 10 feet onto their neck? Probably more than he thinks.


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Fixed.

There is no "shift of focus". My goal is to get Tankers as reasonably close to reflecting their comic counterparts as possible. "Reasonably" means not throwing balance completely in the toilet, regardless of what Arcana accuses me of. "Close" is something I'm willing to negotiate. But the cap issue is where I draw the line at because it is a demonstrable double standard that needs be addressed.

The truth is Tankers hitting the damage cap wasn't something I expected to happen even with Incarnates, partially because I was unaware that the enhancement of powers counted against the damage cap. It's not something that was really shoved in my face until Combat Numbers and even then wasn't something I thought about until Brutes had their last Fury changes. Why would I? I didn't think the devs would give Brutes the same survival caps as Tankers and then let them do way higher damage at the cap. I thought the devs had more sense than that. Until that point I only thought it was a matter of making more damage boosting choices available to Tankers, I didn't know it was a mostly moot point for several sets. Now there *are* several powers like that, Call to Justice for example, that didn't exist until relatively recently, and now I see the problem that I didn't before.

Also now powers like Barrier exist, which let pretty much any melee AT have two godmodes or Rebirth granting a massive heal. When you can get Barrier, and are fighting a level above all the enemies in the game you were fighting against the year before, that along with level shifts mean that Tankers having better survivability out of the box isn't as attractive anymore. Yeah, this only applies to level 50's, but with the increased focus on end game and it being easier than ever to get to 50, it's more relevant.

But it doesn't matter if I post long threads explaining myself in what I think is a reasonable, rational manner or if I post crazy rants about the devs hating Tankers. At least the crazy rants are easier to fit in while off-tanking ITFs.

I'm sure me saying otherwise makes no difference to you. Of course at the same time three other people will pop in with "see, he doesn't even bother denying it!".

But the point is moot because you're not who I have to convince and I've already said I think the devs are beyond trying to reason with. But I never was one to give up on a cause, even when it's probably hopeless.


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Wanna put money on that?

If they brought the Tanker cap in line with Brutes, and didn't you know, go and raise the Brute cap a month later or something, I doubt you'd hear from me on Tankers again. People who've been around long enough should remember I pretty much nagged non stop for Invulnerability to be looked at as much, and when it got fixed I clammed up pretty quick.

But of course to me that bet is still a losing proposition because if I ever complained about anything ever again, you'd point to it as "evidence" that I'm unpleasable, even if you in fact agreed with the complaints. Because you and others really aren't arguing against Tanker offense being fixed, you're arguing against me to create drama.


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So a Tanker missing a large, stationary pylon 80% of the time more than a Brute as an example is supposed to make them less of a joke offensively? "Oh, Magoo, you've done it again!" comes to mind.

Yeah, nice try.


[Edit]
A Praetorian senior citizen can throw a rock at a truck and make it explode.



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Well, I was thinking the 10-14 range they'd start to kick in. Treat them more like a proper tertiary power set and not an afterthought that kicks in when the character is almost finished.


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If that's what you want, sure. I'm not going to spam a bunch of posts disagreeing with you like a dipwad. I would, however, suggest the aforementioned Epic pool improvements (creating more pools, lowering the level they become available and putting in more defensive options for Blasters) would be a more likely suggestion to go through, and one I'd back.


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Yes, "back to super strength" because it's an example of how idiotic the design can be. It makes very little sense to give the super strength powerset to an AT that's not supposed to hit things really hard. They didn't give it to Scrappers. For heroes, Tankers were the only option to have a super strong hero character for years. Yet, you argue that Tankers are not based on, nor intended to reflect those characters. That makes little sense, especially when someone without any real knowledge of the game can easily point to a Claws Regen Scrapper by power sets alone and tell exactly who that's supposed to be:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/12...-of-scrappers/

Indeed, when most people point to examples of Tankers in comics, they don't pick out the Blob, or Butterball, or Mr. Immortal or any other low damage distraction:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/02...se-of-tankers/

"Everybody knows what Tankers are supposed to be" is a bit of hyperbole that's more true than you'd like to admit. The sheer number of super strong bricks flying around Atlas using the Tanker as their AT, the fact of Statesman being a very transparent expy, indicates what is going trough most people's heads.

You can't argue that's not what Tankers are supposed to be about. The zeitgeist of the game obviously disagrees.

All you can argue is that Tankers can't actually be that, because having damage and survivability isn't balanced. Well, Brutes prove that wrong, as they survive just fine, enough to be the best soloing AT in the game (if not tied with Scrappers), enough to have tanked for red side for years and have the same caps as Tankers for survivability while also having great damage and great damage potential. If Brutes can have it both ways when it comes to the caps, so can Tankers. Period. Otherwise, don't hand me a pile of crap and tell me it's balanced and fine for one AT but not another.

Would increasing the Tanker damage cap make them heavy hitters? No, but it would allow them to be. It would give them the same chance to get the most offensively and defensively from buffing as Brutes do, and in the future, if better damage mechanics or buffs came along, they'd be able to use them. Raising the cap is the least disruptive to the status-quo and the least work intensive thing that I can think of the goes towards improving Tankers in a way that makes them truer to their comic counterparts.

If you don't think they should be truer to their comic counterparts, you're free to have your own opinion. I disagree. Strongly, adamantly, belligerently so; because nobody ever got anything changed by folding to opposition.


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This is more down to Epic/Patron pools lacking.
If Scrappers had access to a Firearms Epic pool that wasn't unavailable until the later levels, Deadpool would be a non-issue, as an example.



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No, that is the official description of Tankers, written by the devs and used on the site and all official materials. It doesn't speak of them being melee controllers. It describes them as being tough and powerful, devastating melee fighters.

I see no squirrels in the Beast Mastery set.


Masterminds are an extremely powerful AT. I soloed an AV on a Mastermind before I did on a Tanker.


I'm pretty sure the only people debating if Hulk is a Brute or not are delusional about their Tankers. The Hulk is a massively powerful fighter, therefore he cannot be a Tanker as they exist at present since he's not just a punching bag and decoy.


Using a class based on the idea of a character wearing so much heavy plate armor they can't swing a sword right to balance an archetype from a whole other genre is also silly.


If you look at which archetype they gave super strength to at the start, and was the only AT to have it blue side for the majority of this game's life, how can you say they're not meant to represent those heroes from the comics. Why would you give super strength to someone who is meant to be weak offensively?


As far as I'm concerned, Brutes being allowed to exist with the caps they have when Tankers are not, Fury being hijacked and Tankers being forced into being low damage decoys has been the devs trolling Tankers for years.



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Unless I'm mistaken about what you mean by "other events", I'm sorry, but no thanks.

Melee ATs do two things. They deal damage, and they get a survival power set. That is what they are about. Now, maybe they do each of those things differently, and with a different level of effectiveness, but that's what they do.

To run with the analogy, no I absolutely do not want them to take Tankers off the track team, or make them into some kind of abomination that does gymnastics or juggles while running slowly. Being the wost melee fighters among a group of melee fighters already makes them enough of a joke.

I don't want to see them turned into Wardens or Paladins or whatever class they can dredge up from another fantasy MMO. That's not what CoH Tankers are about. That's not what comic book tankers are about. They fight and take hits. If just taking hits well as they do now isn't doing it for Tankers, or if that makes them a niche that the majority don't find compelling or exciting in a melee AT, making them better fighters is the answer, not making them a pseudo-controller or walking buff/heal dispenser, especially when the official description of the AT and comics says they should be powerful fighters.


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