Kitsune9tails

Do you think the Devs should be barred from creating content that includes a battle where a team of 8 level 50s have an even toe to toe fight with a lone character?

I think that such content should exist: there should be fights that go like the X-Men vs Magneto, where he has enough Mez Protection/Defense that 8 Controllers can't permahold him and 8 Blasters/Scrappers can't shred him faster than a certain speed, for instance.

A related issue might be: How long should it take the average PUG of 8 level 50s to take down an epic encounter? 1 minute? 10 minutes? 100 minutes? Keep in mind that if a PUG can do it in 10, a Superteam like Buffer Overrun will be able to do it in 1 or so.

My understanding is that he objects to the whole 'scale down to EB/up to AV' mechanic, and that if a character is written in such a way as to imply EB status, they should always be that status, excluding plot related buffs.

I think he has kind of a point (not that the game to date should be rewritten to accomodate it). I can see a use for separating team-intended content from solo-intended content (though not necessarily barring any player or team from any content).

However, he and I disagree on what is necessary to indicate a character 'should be' an AV, story-fluff-wise, and on whether Signature Characters should be 'allowed' to be AVs.

Still, I think it's potentially a fun discussion.

For instance, Hamidon is basically a somewhat weaker Galactus or Unicron, while Rularuu is a scaled-UP version.

I see Statesman as going toe-to-toe with Superman/Thor, or Thanos/Darkseid, with players topping out around X-Men/Titans or Mutant Brotherhood/Brotherhood of Evil. I don't feel the need to be as powerful as a flagship character, although I don't object to J_B wanting that level of power.

I'm just curious about how others feel about how future content should be written.

Unless I am misinterpreting him, Johnny_Butane feels that the Signature characters (Statesman, Lord Recluse, etc) should be EBs, and that AV status should be reserved for 'plot device' characters or raid characters only.

In a case where a team of players encounters a Signature character, he thinks the system should generate an AV helper, or a team of EB helpers, or the story should include a plot device that makes it clear that the signature character's elevation to AV status is plot-related and temporary.

He feels that this change should be made to keep signature characters from overshadowing players.

Agree or Disagree (and why)?

EDIT: Speeling...

Just a little thought I have...

CoH's system is licensed from Cryptic. Yes: licensed from the direct competition which has been belittling them publicly.

Of course, no way Paragon Studios could admit to it, but I would not be surprised if they were working on an all-new modern game engine, just to stave of the possiblity of Cryptic yanking the one they have.

...nothing to see here. Move along...

Actually, I can read it just fine. Well phrased.

If the Devs are currently working on Power Customization, then it essentially follows that they cannot say when it will be in game, because they probably don't know: it may not be at a stage of development where they can say "We can do this for sure" let alone "It's this many months away".

On the other hand, if they are NOT working on it, they can certainly say they are not, if they wish.

I'd rather be pleasantly suprised than have it turn into another City Vault or even Cathedral of Pain.

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hmmm, learning a lot here. First.. I was all proud of my hot door trick, till I found out some people hate it....

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Some people will love it, others will hate it.

Just try to put enough warning in the intro text or description so that people who hate that sort of theing have a chance to avoid the mission.

If you cut out everythig someone dislikes, you'll end up with no missions at all. Every mission/story has an audience: try to find and advertise to that audience, and warn everyone else away.

TL;DR version:
If further nerfs are necessary to prevent farming, I'd rather have a solution like the OPs instead of random nerfs that reportedly 'only hurt the casual player and do not do their job'.

I think the principle of the OPs Idea is a good one; just don't get hung up on the specific numbers.

It's this simple:

1: Either there is a speed of rewards acquisition that is simply 'too fast', or there is not.

Risk/reward is not a factor; either it's perfectly fine for everyone in the game to constantly replay a non-exploitative mission that gives them enough tickets to level to 50 and purple out in a day (if it is indeed possible to create such a mission, and it may be), or it is not.

2: If it is not fine for everyone to max out in a day, then either the controls on farming are sufficient to that task or they are not.

If they are sufficient, then we will never see any speed-related nerfs and the OP is harmless. If they are not sufficient, then means that are sufficient WILL be put in place (the Devs have to or eventually wake up one day to find the game hopelessly broken) and it's just a matter of choosing your preferred flavor of nerf. In any case, datamining will tell.

3: The numbers don't matter.

If there is some speed of rewards gain that is simply too fast, the Devs should hopefullly know what it is by now. Bill Z may be over that limit, and if so his style of play is simply an outlier (but we knew that ). However, that doesn't matter: either his advancement is within the allowable limits to the game such that absolutely everyone should be able to advance that fast (if they had the skillz) or it is simply too fast; too bad, too sad.

CONCLUSION: If there is an advancement 'speed limit' that is necessary for the game, and IF the current code does not adequately address it, then code like the OPs suggestion not only should be put into place, but also NEEDs to be put into place. This is because if it is not, then OTHER code that will likely be a less intuitive, more intrusive solution will be put into place instead.

If a speed limit were ever imposed, I am sure it could be so high that a casual player who simply plays a lot would never know it had been implemented, and it would be low enough to tell the fastest currently possible farming maps to "Slow down, son!"

There is nothing wrong with farming...
unless the activity itself hurts the game...
...or the Dev's reactions to it hurt the game.

However, the Devs are not going to "just get over it" any more than the farmers are going to "just slow down."

Another time travel short story I like involves a character who travels to the future and comes back looking shocked, worried and confused.

When the scientists ask him what he saw, he replies, "All I can remember is someone in the future asking me whether I wanted to remember what I had seen when I went back."

Glad you liked it.

Seen or read any other time travel stories that you like? My standards aren't as strict as yours, but I do enjoy a good tale of time travel.

I remember, in fact, a short story that had fun with the whole 'time travel' is cheap and easy in the future' premise: a time traveller travels back to witness an important event, but he can't get a hotel room because all the hotels are full of other time travellers who have gone back to witness the same event.

ooh oooh ooooh! *waves*

Please please please review "Kiss Hello Goodbye" in black and white with film grain. Please!

I guess he would prefer the answer, "Currently slated for Issue 36, but it could slip."

I like how they handle this in the movie Primer.

I can say without spoilering too much (be careful reading the Wiki article if you want to avoid spoilers) that one of the basic rules of time travel adhered to in the movie is that you cannot travel back to a time period prior to when the specific time machine you use was first turned on. So no matter how advanced Time Travel gets in the future, if that rule remains extant, you can never travel back to 'today' with a time machine that isn't already here and running somewhere.

The movie is all about how a couple of average modern engineers would handle time travel, and I think you might enjoy it.

Thank you very much for trying out my arc!

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why is the contact name dame best but she introduces herself as dame eden lake?


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My bad. Eden Lake is her real name; she's just calling herself Best because that's Ligeia's real name.

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oops, got some level 29 family in a lvl 36 mission. this would be due to a bug and vaying group levels available to villains and heroes.

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D'oh! I guess I need to take the Family out, then.

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does this narrator assume you are male? just wondering because the dialogue of gorilla g assumes so...


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It's not the intent to assume the character is male. Although the text should lean that way, it should not state it outright.

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her description kind of gives away stuff before you rescue her.

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That is intended as kind of a non-vital extra clue for those who read descriptions.

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why is this mission arc set to nuetral if it assumes i have a heroing license?


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I should probably change that.

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both the sample and the cure were in the first room, is this intentional?

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It's fine; it's intended that they be in the same room as each other, but which is not intended to be important.

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what was his original name? i am sure he was not always old fossil

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Probably a story for another time

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the two rescues were oddly set up. they were set up as a free captive but they behaved like a rescue ally. they were both set on follow and had lost/found texts. but leading them out was not essential to mission.

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They were set up as allies. Ligeia is available as extra help in case you are having trouble with Goon (and so you have a chance to see her powers in action), and the other girl just follows you around because he feels safer that way.

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i did not notice until too late that she was running away, she barely escaped. i have a feeling that by missing her i missed an essential clue. while i like having open ended stories, failing a possible critical element is a pet peeve. yes i finished the arc, but i feel like i failed overall if she had the hinted original. is it really necessary for her to run away?

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This is intentional; it is also considered an 'optional' story element; as close as I could get to a branching path in the story. If you avoid her completely, you can feel that you got the drug and saved the day. But if you choose to encounter her, you find and extra level to the story and have a chance to feel extra smart by thwarting her subtle ploy. Her running away, besides being in-character, is intended to give you a chance to feel extra good by succeeding at a failable goal. Of course, that comes at the price of possibly not stopping her in time.

As you may have noticed, I have a tendedcy to be somewhat experimental with my stories

Thanks for the help; I will see about hunting down those nasty typos and putting on another coat of polish.

So the question becomes, from a storytelling point of view, "Why didn't they?"

Now, the author doesn't have to answer that question explicity within every Time Travel story written in that universe, but there should be an answer. And there should be a reason within each story as to why infinitely recursing yourself is NOT the answer.

Quite often, that takes the form of limitations on the Time Travel itself, such as: where are you going to get 1.21 jiggawatts of power in THIS time period to go Back to the Future in the first place?

Sad to hear your computer exploded. Get Well Soon

You have some good thoughts here.

I like the idea of some kind of non-combat advancement; I can see where it being based on dynamic puzzles being frustrating for a lot of people. I was hoping the Midnight Squad collection 'puzzle' was something like that.

I am not so much into the idea of having the eternally upscaling endgame, though. The idea that you need better and better loot to take on tougher and tougher enemies as the game progresses so long as the elite are the only ones who want it or care. However, it also leads to cheating and grinding as the not-so-skillful, the lazy, or the impatient try to get the shineys also.

There was some thought of being able to slot your powersets themselves as well as individual powers at one point, but I think that idea got rolled into 'set IOs'.

I definitely want to see more non-instanced 'dungeons' and tougher Hazard Zones with more theme and purpose. Like always-open Trials, similar to the PvP zones with their minigames.

I don't think reverting powers to PvE functionality is a good idea; there is a lot that can be leveraged by having it work differently, especially with Dual Build tech. I don;t think all of the differences in how PvP and PvE need to work can e shored up with loot; especially as regards newbies to PvP.

I don't think ALL coop zones need to be PvP; there should be variety here as well: some are, some aren't. More choices, not fewer.

Thanks for posting these ideas again.

It depends on what you define as 'winning'.

Is robbing the bank and escaping with the loot winning?
Is corrupting an innocent NPC winning?
Is getting away with murder winning?

These are things you get to do all of the time.

Is it only winning if you get your face plastered over Lord Recluse's on all of the posters and video screens?

Is it only winning if you level all of Paragon City and it looks that way on everyone else's computer? And stays that way so long as you are subscribed to the game?

These are things you can never do outside of an instance; or if you could do them it would be meaningless because there would be 200 guys lined up behind you to take their turn at 'Taking over Arachnos once and for all!'

I think the problem with villainy in this game is that there needs to be some kind of 'hatch plot' system, with escalating, dynamic, acheivable goals that you can work toward over a period of weeks.

In the meantime, I'd be happy with them using 'dialogue branch' tech to make Contacts and other NPCs speak to me with fear and respect in their attitudes based on what badges I have or something.

What do you want to see, Kruunch?

Personally, I want to see more tilesets and branching missions, off the top of my head. Also a form of PvP where players can enter instant missions and compete over the same or conflicting goals.

Are those the sorts of things you are referring to?

Especially, what would you like to see out of the alignment system?

Makes sense to me.

Even if we accept the premise that Nemesis' tech is all 'steam powered':

That doesn't mean that everything uses a brass boiler with a lump of coal.

Nemesis has apparently found and utilizes a power source that is nonmagical, smaller than the average Internal Combustion engine, and puts out enough energy to propel a (brass looking, but highly modern) musket ball through a half inch of titanium. As can be clearly seen in the case of the Nemesis Staff (as previously mentioned) he uses this power source to create electricity (likely by boiling water into steam which then drives turbines), which he can then use to power force fields and mind control devices.

Why does he use steam to convert the power source into electricity? Because he's Nemesis!

Technically, it would be equally accurate to say Nemesis Tech is powered by 'chemical reactions' 'electricity' or "nuclear power' as to say it is powered by steam.

By the way: dollars to donuts that the power source at the heart of all this is Ghost Rock.

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The easiest thing first is to not have the 3rd teir villains bad mouth you at 50. Sure the Patrons look down on you at first, but you yeah them and the big man himself. Why are you recieving lip from sidekicks like Barracuda and Ice Mistral? Oh they don't have to fear my red side 50, but treat me like the threat Im supposed to be.


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I agree with this whole post, but especially this part.

The other villains in the Rogue Isles may be smack-talking jerks, but you should earn their respect or fear at some point. At some point the game could offer you Contacts, but call them 'lackeys' or 'servants' and have them act accordingly (including attempting to backstab and betray you while smiling to your face).

Evil cannot ultimately triumph in an ongoing game, because once it does, the game is over; roll the credits.

"I conquered the world and eliminated everyone who could possibly challenge my might! Bored now."

Basically, if you look at the bio of most evil characters (if you can find one with a bio) they fall into a couple of categories:
1) A mercenary, basically ready to do any job so long as you keep me in booze and women. The game fully supports this guy.
2) Doctor Doom/Lex Luthor/Lord Recluse: this guy can never win, because for him to win means plunging the entire world into eternal post apocalyptic chaos, or a 1984-style police state.

But evil should be allowed to make advances, win property, and alter the face of things for the worse, up to a point. I'd love it if you could 'take over' a certain % of the spawn points in an open zone so that your custom critters spawned there, for instance.

But at least now via the MA you can write the arc where your villain wins at last.

I disagree; I find the discussion amusing.

Some of the Rikti dialogue when you encounter them on the streets indicate they can at least sense your thoughts.

It is possible to have a 'send to target only' based mental network, so what you say is possible.

But regardless, a Rikti automaton that can fool Rikti would still have to be able to project thoughts that another Rikti could comprehend and find normal, not to mention receive telepathic communication from Rikti in order to respond to them correctly.

So the Automaton has to be able to formulate (or choose from a script), send, and receive Rikti telepathy, unless we assume that the Rikti use conventional speech except in circumstances a Rikti automaton could avoid.