Johnny_Butane

Yeah, sounds like thats a combination of a mechanic called Movement Suppression and the forced root time of attacks while they animate. Movement Suppression kicks in if you're using Flight, Super Speed or Super Jump and you attack. It slows you to a crawl for a few seconds, even after the attack is done animating.

Both of those are things that a lot of players hate, but have grown to put up with and aren't expected to ever change.


That's Training level origin enhancements. By design they're really weak and are (pretty much) your only option in the lower levels. By level 12 you can graduate to Dual Origin enhancements which are much more effective, and then at level 22 graduate again to Single Origin enhancements which are even better. This is something that's open to all free players.


That's a loaded question around here. Seriously. The short of it is, who is your favorite super hero, the bat orphan or the flying strongman?

Some people want to be challenged by a bunch of thugs with knives and pistols. Some people want to punch out 50' tall robots and toss cars around. The game doesn't always serve both as well is it could, and IMO, tends to favor the first group and neglect the second.
Your mileage may vary.



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As the most level-headed and one of the brightest shining examples of the best in CoH's little forum community, I welcome and thank you for the review, and by extension, exposure for the game.



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I first looked for a bust of Shakespeare, or even Francis Bacon all things considered.
Mmmm. Bacon.



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Probably through buying it in the Paragon Market.


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Complete the Incarnate trials up to at least TPN and then talk to Prometheus. He's a font of knowledge.

Basically, every sentient species has their own Well, and that's where their super powers come from. The Battalion has theirs, and they've got a habit of going around and killing other races' Wells and claiming their power for their own. Kheldians had/have their own Well too, but ours apparently still gives them power for living on Earth and doing Incarnate trials for an unexplained reason.

So, under this lore, the Lady of the Lake is just another 'agent' of the Well. Hero 1's sword is just like the MacGuffin we get from Trapdoor in Ramiel's arc that unlocks our Incarnate potential.

Prometheus alludes that the Wells are merely conduits to some greater force, a supreme being perhaps? But he doesn't go into it further.


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But really, people trying this game aren't going to do any research.

They're likely going to walk away with the same or similar misconceptions as the reviewer. If we want to get and keep new people, we (or rather the devs) should be concerned with getting people the correct facts and better educating them in the tutorial and early content.

Things I took away from this review that could be improved upon:

-Getting some non-city/non-urban environments in, especially in the lower levels, for variety's sake.

-He responded well to giant monsters. Again, this is something CoH does well and also something that can be expanded upon. More giant monsters and zone events is something I can get down with.

-A lot of the music and SFX in the game is forgettable. Remember how Going Rogue was professionally scored? Yeah, I rarely remember even hearing any of that. Personally, it's a non-issue for me; I mostly listen to my own music or internet radio when I play.

-Whatever error message the old launcher gives should probably be changed to point people in the right direction, somehow. But, if it's out of date how can they do that? It's kind of a catch 22 and there's really nothing that can be done aside from people using their own brain and asking on the forums. A flashing "Common Beginners Problems" button on the website is the best you could do.

-The misconception that Origins somehow limit your powers in some way persists, so maybe we could add something to that page of creator that says otherwise.

-Auto attacks, recharge and accuracy. I believe combat could stand to change for the better in this game, but that's a topic I should, and probably will, take to it's own thread.

-Manticore's mansion could use a 'tell' for that secret passage.

-Loot. I presume this just doesn't drop for free players? New players may not even know they're missing out on stuff. I almost think they should get drops and recipes as a tease, but have them grayed out and be non-usable except for selling to them trash vendors for inf.

-The games community is, and always has been, it's strength. Honestly,

-The communication and SG joining issue seems to be a big hang up for this guy's free experience. Maybe a reevaluation is necessary, maybe not. I do know the second anything changes, the gold spammers WILL jump on it. Any inch given, they'll take.

-If possible, consider letting free players try the Guest Author arcs in AE at the very least. Or possibly let them try AE with no rewards of any kind.


We should learn from new people and their experiences as much as we can. They'll tell us about problems we don't even think about, and since they have no real investment in the game, usually they're being genuine and aren't pushing an agenda. But, sometimes they are.


[As a snarky aside, the fact that he remade his main from WoW, and used Dual Blades to do it only validates my long standing allegation that's the only real reason we have so many weapon sets (sword based sets and DB in particular) and that's what people usually do with them. ]




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The first spawn of guards was the lone one watching the door. Widow went ahead and finished the map while Hogan was still struggling with the first mob.

That's spot on accurate as far as I'm concerned.



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More like how pepper spray is an 'irritating agent'. The Incarnate system is just as inflaming.




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You mean when it was 'the Box' and not 'the Well'?

Because the well in the novel, the Fountain of Zeus/Well of the Furies, whatever you want to call it, was just a side effect of the Box artifact.


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Honestly, I agree with the reviewer.

Compared to many modern games that have more of an action slant, CoH plays at a snails pace. Movement suppression and long animations slows things down a lot.

But, and this is a huge but: our characters are also a bit more forgiving defensively, and we tend to deal in larger groups of enemies.

In our distinguished competition for example, more than four enemies can jack you up in a hurry in the low levels. Even two can be deadly. Four-five even con minions aren't that much of a deal in our game.


The question is, if you could, would you cut the HP of our enemies in half (effectively doubling our killing speed) if we also took a 50% hit to survivability? If it meant we could also ditch movement suppression and shorten some animations?

Tough call. The fact we're playing this game and not another tells me how most of the community feels.


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Really. The "free" in F2P is there to give people a full taste of the game in the hopes they'll sub. Do freebers really think the devs are just providing them the game to give them something to do out of the goodness of their hearts with nothing expected in return?

If they want to chat with people in CoH badly enough it's a deal breaker when they can't, surely that means it's important enough to them to pay a sub for, or buy access to it ala carte for a premium.

If they can't afford to, well then they really have nothing to complain about and they're not in a position to give anything back to support the game. "But I might be in a position to buy something in the future" is the standard reply. "How will I know there's anything I'd want to pay for if I can't even chat and experience the game?"

Um hello? There's your first purchase right there and it's clearly something you want/need badly.



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I'm sure if you wanted to hard enough, you could imagine a connection between the Knives of Artemis and the Furies.

They've got a thing for death dealing women-only cults:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Talons_of_Vengeance

It's not hard to imagine them as a spiritual counterparts to the Knives. Where as the Knives embody the cold, detached, professional side of killing, the Talons are the flip side: passion, murderous hatred and bloodlust.

In other words, the blade versus the talon.



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Except for, you know, the parts that are not.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/1...ly-to-divorce/

And all the little things.

The guy still pays for the date. There are still people who go out of their way to hold doors open for women. Women almost never have to pay for a drink if they don't want to. Women are more likely to get out of a ticket. Custody battles still heavily favor the mother, even when she's not the primary caregiver. Studies have shown women are perceived as more trustworthy when given the same script to read as males to convince someone to reveal something embarrassing about themselves. Women in the service industry tend to get better tips.

You're right. Society still doesn't treat women equally. But women aren't so fast to complain at the stuff that works in their favor.



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See I thought, I was hoping at least, the attack on Lambda was to get the standard IDF out of the way so Tyrant could deploy the Olympian Guard and up the ante. Instead of fighting level 54 enemy groups made of IDF lieutenants and bosses, we'd move on to level 54 groups with increasing Olympian support.

Instead, the IDF are still there, level shifted 54+1 AND so are the Olympian EBs, introduced with zero fanfare or explanation, also level shifted. Which is why I think mechanically, the UG trial is too much of a jump in difficulty. They should have just added a some Olympians to the mix because them with the level shifts was overkill.

Especially since the devs are holding back the remaining slots. If they're not going to let us become more powerful, why should we tackle harder content? Most people seem to agree because they're sticking with the BAF and Lambda because those trials seem to be balanced for the slots we have, as opposed to the UG and everything after which seem to be balanced for stuff they wont let us have yet.


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That mission was, frankly, a lie to get us to buy into the Incarnate system.

There's more than a couple of things that make me say this:

-The developers have said that since they started the system, the remaining 5 slots have changed from what they were originally based on seeing what we did with the first 5.

-The devs have said the remaining boosts will probably not be about pushing more raw stats, but would be more along the lines of Lore, in other words, gimmick power additions.

-Crystal Titan and some others from that mission are really GMs and were downgraded into AVs just for that mission. No amount of level shifts in the world will help you against a GM. So, if we're not getting more raw stats (and most ATs would need much more of them to fight the *real* Crystal Titan solo with such ease) and level shifts are moot, there's really no way everyone can ever get to the power level depicted in that mission.

The developers will justify the bait and switch by saying "Oh, well by going back in time you changed things so you never get THAT powerful but that's a good thing because of <insert BS story rationale>".

When we've got our Omega slot and we're still fighting IDF, only they're now 54+8, even those nameless IDF could smoke all those AVs on Ramiel's arc 1v1.


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For that matter, we shouldn't even be facing level shifted versions of the same enemies we've been fighting all this time. Again, this is a case of our regression and nobody-enemies attaining higher levels of power for no reason. We go from fighting IDF who are level 54 to fighting the same enemies who are the equivalent to level 55 and 56, but at this point WE never grow beyond the equivalent of level 53 in the trials. They've gained more ground than we do, but it's supposed to be about us gaining godlike power.

How dare they say we've grown in power when, relatively, we've fallen way behind to enemies we're supposed to be fighting and used to con even to. Relative to the enemies we're facing in the story, the Incarnate content makes us weaker than we ever were. That includes getting effed up by small rocks post Atlas Park.

What's worse, the level shifted IDF makes no sense story wise considering we shut down Lambda before this. Meaning, the IDF troops shouldn't be stronger or more well armed, if they were still around at all.

Instead of level shifting the IDF, this is when they should have rotated in new and different enemies who had reason to be more powerful. That's NOT civilians with ROCKS. All the devs have demonstrated is our actions have no impact and they put zero thought into story and progression. I'll wager there will still be Seers in the trials that take place after MoM, and they too will be more powerful than ever when the opposite should be true.


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We're half way up the Incarnate tree.
So when we get all the currently designed Incarnate powers to Omega and we're still getting effed up by rocks, will that be any better? I say 'no'.



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Nothing will make sticks and stones maiming demigods more palatable to me. No more excuses. No more justifications. The devs promised cosmic level threats, it's time they made good on them. The TPN should be heavily reworked and the rock throwing citizens tossed on the garbage idea pile along with Maelstrom and kill-anything cheat bullets.


@ GG
The Incarnate content is supposed to be designed for Incarnates, in other words, beings of godlike power. Citizens armed with rocks should never even enter into the picture. We should be operating on a grander stage than that larger than what we have been 1-50. We're NOT. Half way though the Incarnate system, it's the same old crap just with more cheating mechanics added.

The Incarnate content is where the line should be drawn. There the rest of the content may have to provide for heroes of varied powers levels, the Incarnate content should assume you're a demigod. If your character is Billy Street Level who's just a normal guy with a bat who fights muggers, don't send him on Ramiel's arc and have him become an Incarnate. If you don't think of your character as a demigod, you shouldn't be running the Incarnate content.



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Every player created hero or villain can shrug off multiple shotgun blasts at point blank at level 1. Sticks and stones really shouldn't even be entering into the picture.


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