Judgement_Dave

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Which 'general game enhancements' have made it easier to kill mobs? I honestly can't think of one.

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Not sure if you'd count this as a 'general' enhancement as it is AT specific, but I'd say that defiance v2.0 made it easier for blasters to kill mobs as:
1. they aren't mezzed into total inaction every 5 min.
2. they gain +dmg buffs pretty much from the end of the 1st attack.

In a similar manner the set bonuses may be small, but SIO bonuses can make a fair old difference. Admittedly, it may be more knowledgeable players who put the most thought into their builds and bonuses - but that just means that there's a double whammy of experienced players finding it easier due to their experience and due to their better-planned builds.

There's enough set bonuses to decrease mez duration, increase damage/recharge/defense etc... The individual effects may be small, but the overall, cumulative effect can make the game noticeably easier.

And anecdotally, teams (even PuGs) seem to plough through enemies quite easily and virtually without pausing. I'm pretty sure it never used to be this way - though admittedly in virtually any team of 8 you'll probably get 50%+ who have played for months if not years.

The game should be pretty much the same for new players still learning the ropes.
It won't be much different for many experienced soloers (and possibly duos) if they haven't spent lots of time on a great IO'd build (partly due to each AT having weak points).
But get a few experienced players and it can quickly become too easy at the hardest level.

Or at the very least, for some players it can quickly start to feel too easy...

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Yeah - I'm like 5 feet 5 and a half/five feet 6, but I had to make my avatar over 6 feet just to look normal in this land of giants

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My 1st character, Judgement Dave, was made about 6' tall - since he was heavily based on my real look (though I tend to teleport less in RL).

Quickly realised in the hollows caves that I kept losing track of him whilst fighting in big teams... mainly because everyone else was so tall.

Virtually all characters made since are at maximum height. The main exceptions being 2 service-androids made at minimum height...

Most of my characters (including mains on bothsides) are split:

Heroes on Union;
Villains on Defiant.

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The game became easier if people use inventions. Player character potential power increased whilst enemy strength hasn't been altered (as one of the loading screen tips reminds us).

I must have joined around the same time as the OP (I played a few months before I came to the forums) and so missed ED, but (from all accounts I've seen) Inventions appears to be the counterbalance to ED. Given that pre-ED characters sound like they were super-powered (using super in it's proper sense, meaning over) then it's no surprise that experienced players will find the game easier now that inventions allow characters to approach pre-ED performance once more.

I may be a masochist, or maybe I just like a challenge without feeling I'm intentionally self-nerfing, but I still don't really like the level of reduction in debt cap and the hollows being revamped in cotton wool. Couple these with SG travel temps and it sometimes seems like players don't need to learn about aggro distances anymore and don't have any in-game reason to avoid defeat...

I actually don't like games having heavy defeat penalties, but don't mind games where you're playing under a slight penalty for 5 min or so. This is very different to CoX where, if teamed, it's not unusual for debt to be worked off before the spawn that caused the defeat is itself defeated. This strikes me as too low a penalty.

Although, as Ravenswing pointed out, it isn't really the difficulty that's changed when debt changes. But inventions certainly has changed the difficulty.

Whether it's down to experience or improved slotting options, it's a shame if the game can't still provide challenges for teams of players (teams as solo is easier to provide challenges for).

It'd be good if the devs changed the difficulty system to effectively add spawn sizes and level difference to the TF/flashback options and let us use this interface to control difficulty to a finer degree than is now possible. Keep the existing 5 settings as shortcuts to difficulty presets for new players (and those not bothering to fine tune).

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I need one server for each of my toons, because what we have now is unfair.

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1 server per character (or is it 1 character per server) could be interesting...

Could the number of threads complaining about lack of teaming increase?

Would the number of replies to threads-complaining-about-lack-of-teaming pointing out that teams are easily found decrease?

The message 'may' be the same in the EU as US and as such this evening may be up to 05:00-08:00 GMT


Ok I'm being kind, but if it's a single message for EU and US then we may need to remember that the US states are somewhat behind us...

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Now someone's gonna shout "GR SAID NOT TO DISCUSS IT!" but this is a why it's low, and somebody will shout "IT'S NOT LOW!" but compare it to other MMOs and you see why. End of story, I don't want to start a arguement/flame war about it.

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Do you not realise that this is almost the same as putting 'agree with me or else' on a thread??

You are, by virtue of the (alleged) 'content' of the opening post, starting an argument/flame war.
Frankly I'm surprised that the thread has lasted as long as it has. But then I'm also surprised that you're still allowed to post such absolute drivel when it's so often routed in the furthest recesses of your imagination rather than the tangible world.

I have no problem with eejits posting drivel, but I have an issue with eejits posting drivel and hiding behind some weak clause stating 'agree or keep silent'.

If you have a valid point to make, then make it.

If you do not, then please feel free to make these posts in your own diary rather than in a place where the public (myself included) are subject to stumbling upon the half-formed bastardisations of rational thought.

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I've never seen the round one on the bottom right, or the one to the left of it, but the two further left are quite common in-game ones.

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Given all the earlier talk of norks, this post just made my head go all funny... so Sister Psyche has a round one on the right, two on the left and another inbetween???

I'm just glad that GG did all the hard research on this...

Hmm noodlebag... not sure about you....

Afaik, the original design for the game had you able to pick any powers (i.e not restricted by poiwersets/ATs) for your character. But it was far too powerful.

The reason it was originally designed is partly as the designers liked Champions P&P RPG which has a similar power-picking system, with asssociated drawbacks - i.e. pick especially great powers and get drawbacks alongside them.

Given that this is (I think) your 1st post, I need to ask: You aren't actually a paid-up member of Cryptic studios trying to get interest in the CO system are you???!!!???!!!

Please - I didn't see the patch notes stating that this had been changed,but please, please, please revert back to the CoH terra volta respec trial reactor-bubbles that do not resize.

It wasn't something that I ever heard people complain about, but seeing Kheldians change to dwarf-form after recieving the protective bubble in nova form and ending up with a swimming-trunk-sized bubble always brought a small smile to my face...

The (I believe) recent change to a dynamic-size-changing protective bubble is something that, afaik, the player populace never asked for nor appreciate. Whereas the previous fixed-size bubble brought joy to literally countless millions of players... (pretty sure that's not meaningless hyperbole)

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I pretty sure real valkyries were only women anyway

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I believe so - though in myth, not reality.

But: the only picture I've seen of the CoX Valkyrie outfit appears to be a male model to my eyes - and that's why I put waiter/waitress.

It's political correctness gone mad.

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Valkyrie

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And that wiki tells us that:
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In Valhalla the valkyries also “serve drink and look after the tableware and drinking vessels”

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So we're basically getting a winged, deific waiter/waitress costume?

Not quite so funky looked at that way...

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Well that just aint fair....


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You know, if you're going to go through life thinking that it's FAIR, you're going to have a REALLY miserable 60 years or so...

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That just demonstartes the total lack of fairness - some people get 100+ years and you're giving this poor sap a mere 60 just because of a little whining.


btw - I'm starting to get worried that lots of Mac users dressed as valkyries may be the Coming Storm.

It was quickly apparent that only the last place to logout was counting. Not quite what the devs said, but hey: it's a freebie - they didn't need to award any retrospective time.

Can't help but think that if Hess was the 1st TF that people encountered then they'd be really let down when they realised that few other TFs match it.

iirc a couple of years ago (before ITF/STF/LGTF) Hess was named as being a favourite of at least some of the devs - and quite rightly so at the time. But it's partly because of the much higher quality of Hess/katie/ITF/STF/LGTF that some of the older TFs seem poor - with Posi and SSTF1 (1?) really sticking out as the poorest of the bunch.

It's just a real shame that Posi is the first you can do.. and so the first that many do do.

I'd be tempted to leave Positron pretty much as is - just some minor tweaking - mainly to not devalue the efforts of those hardy souls who have persisted through it already. And because it is part of an accolade that grants a reasonable bonus.

But I'd only leave it if another low level TF that was more like Katie or Hess got added... And I'd suggest that any new low-level TF got a mention from contacts - i.e actively steer people towards it rather than hoping players stumble upon it before Posi.

After much consideration for the TF Omega challenge earlier this year I went with a kin defender.

I've now got another on another account which was for a regular TF team.

If you can cope with (or control) shouts of SB please then I'd normally rather have a kin than a rad.

The -regen from transfusion is more than enough to quickly take down AVs when you throw in FS/siphon power... throw in a liberal dose of the leadership pool and the added damage buffs that your team have (and at an increased attack rate) more than make up for any -resistance.

Since transfusion is being spammed, melee becomes a pretty safe place to be... and the slow from siphon speed can be very noticeable.

Oh and leadership will help make sure that those targetted heals/transference/siphons hit pretty much all the time (in PvE).

I love my TF-loving kin defenders

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That's hardly a reason to block the idea. They can compensate the merge by giving a player extra slots you know.

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And if you have more than 36 characters on a single account between Union and Defiant then you..?
And the name resolution is what..?


BTW - don't think they've ever stated that a server merge would be impossible, it's just a really, really bad idea for the message it sends out. I thought that this thread was trying to speculate upon what the previously-'impossible' thing was that we were going to get.

Have you ever got it to not complain about an invalid powerset name?

Though I can see now that an oddly named (i.e. unnamed) powerset is created, and it can be selected by the relevant AT (e.g. corruptor secondary) it still throws up errors.

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You can go in and edit every single power if you want to.

Some people on US made an unofficial update to Mid's pre-
I12 so people could plan their VEATs to some degree...


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And that's why the db editor was added - so people could edit the darn things. It's not like hacking windows at all.

After 45 min trying to coax pain domination in in various ways, I have to give up... I suspect you may have found a bug in Mids. Which wouldn't really surprise me as Mids may use a seperate input method and I'd guess that the powerset editor gets very, very little use/testing by anyone other than Mids.

Sorry I can't help other than confirm you don't seem to be missing anything obvious and you're most definitely not trying to do something that the software doesn't support.

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Oh, and be a bit careful if choosing between such Veteran Powers as, say, Sands of Mu or Ghost Slaying Axe, as you will only get to pick one of them on each character. So choose wisely.

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If you're unsure of which vet power to pick when given a choice it can be worthwhile rolling a couple of new alts just to try each out (as new characters will get the vet rewards).

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If a team can set a name, I'd say it'd be needed to be able to search for said teamnames.


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And surely that (and maybe seeing teamname when sent an invite) would actually help filter out the odd team...

I probably wouldn't join the team if sent an invite to '1337 n00b-pwnzors gods of ubern3ss'... but an un-named team or a team showing a good sense of humour would be a different matter.

And I could see this being useful/fun to some people (regular teams, SG teams, RPers) so I'm all for it.

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Otherwise, what's the point other then npc dialoge that'd no doubt become much more bulky codewise if they have to add an 'if then, else' check in there.


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Nah - no 'if then else' everywhere...

Could use an internal team_name variable that sets to:
* character name when solo;
* "Team teamname" for named teams
* something generic for unnanmed teams (e.g. "all of you")

And write the dialogue to accomodate all 3 possibilities.

So "Thanks for saving me, [team_name]!" could become :
* "Thanks for saving me, Judgement Dave!"
* "Thanks for saving me, team Redemption!"
* "Thanks for saving me, all of you!"

You'd cut down the number of conditional control structures needed to something like setting the internal team_name when joining/leaving/creating teams and upon team name changes. The actual dialog code could remain about as complex as it is now to allow character names to be used (or automatic team names in TF/SFs).

We still don't know exactly what form the MA that hit's live (or even beta) will take - so it may even end up allowing TF/SFs from the start.

Not sure why a TF/SF would be better than just doing an arc...

TF/SFs are special partly for:
* the odd ones with unique maps/AVs and the badges/rewards.
* the inability to do any other missions nor to invite new team members whilst in a TF/SF

I wouldn't think we'll be getting the extent of customisation to allow us to create the extra-special feeling of a good dev-designed TF/SF. I'd guess that any customisation will be available to us in all missions/arcs.

Whilst I'd love to have editing tools for player created TF/SFs that feel like TFs/SFs I'm not holding out much hope (for MA v1.0 at least..)

I really would have thought that (if available) player created TF/SFs would give similar rewards to any other player created arcs - just to avoid any potential abuse.

If we can't create the special behaviours/maps/enemies, and player TFs didn't have special rewards, then that leaves the inability to do other missions or to invite team members mid-TF... The two potentially annoying/irritating parts of TFs!

I can maybe see where you're going - and if we could have the same level of customisation as dev-created TFs then a big Yes please!

But I'm pretty sure that we won't and I'd hate them to implement a way to call an arc a TF and get the TF/SF restrictions but without the benefits.

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You knew it wasn't directed at you, but instead you reply with a comment that suggest my comment needs editing when any 3 year old can recognise I wasn't pointing at you.

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I know it isn't at me. People scanning the thread may not. And given that the discussion keeps turning somewhat negative/doomy I don't want people scanning to mistakenly believe the quote to be from me. I don't think it's too late and I resent the misattribution of quote.

Now I think I asked quite nicely, and I'm pretty sure that to attribute the quote you're probably only looking at 10 to 20 keystrokes...

So is it too much to ask you to correctly attribute the quote rather than enter into this dialogue regarding the post (which is the one thing that is derailing the thread)?

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Good enough for you?

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No. Not when the edit window will still be open for you but rather than attribute the quote you'd rather post a poorly written response (then you are not being directed at).

Illusion Master - sort out your quote attribution please.

I don't really want to be associated to the quote I think its too late. Sorry. just because you use QR and can't be bothered to state who you're quoting.