Kruunch

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<pokes head in thread> Anything new....... </pulls head back out>

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Yeah Ace. Positron popped in to say that since the same damn topic has been coming up every week for three years that they're going to actually do something about it instead of ignoring it and wishing it goes away.

And then my alarm went off, I woke up, took a shower and had my coffee.


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When you always have the same poster throw the thread off topic and push to that same topic for three years ranting and raving without any evidence at all, I doubt they will listen.

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In J_B's defense, he does bring alot of evidence to the discussion, but it's just almost entirely anecdotal.

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How can evidence be anecdotal? Don't we call those ... opinions?

*ducks the sarcasm bat*

You sound like a Geico commercial.

I'd never recommend taking the Leadership pool on any Tanker except if you're just making a taunt-bot.

Jeb runs a solid DA/DM Tanker ... his input would probably be of value.

You've spent more on your BS Scrapper then I've spent on all my toons combined

Ah I see and I agree on your reasoning about the CJ/Hover vs AS although one could make the debate the since WP lacks in Defense, getting it anywhere you can is a large boon. My WP Tanker has around 20% positional defenses and that ends up being huge part of his survivability. Would the extra 3%(ish) Defense from CJ or Hover make a huge difference? Probably not, but I think it ends up making more of a difference then AS on a mature character (vs. a developing character). But you're right ... when you absolutely need that KD mitigation, AS rocks.

Power pool attacks I generally take off my hotbar by the time I'm in my mid 30s, as I usually have an attack chain built up where including them would actually worsen my DPS (although I do slot power pool attacks for the set bonuses when I can). If you're not running Hasten I could see relying a bit more on them. If that is the case, then I see why you took Kick vs Boxing here ... very smart.

Slotting knockback into your attacks won't keep them down longer, but will knock them all over the place (away from you). This in itself could be considered "longer" and combined with Chilling Embraces aura effects would certainly be a great mitigator.

However AOE based classes will absolutely loathe you

As for Axe I suggest slotting Kinetic Combat into your melee attacks (4) which will give you health and pretty decent smash/lethal defense to layer on top of Ice's typed defenses.

Since the Ice primary is really good on endurance due to Energy Absorbtions (and if you can afford it) I suggest slotting Obliterations (6/6) into your PBAOE attacks (I think Axe gets 2 or 3 PBAOE rated attacks). While the big defense bonus at the end is positional you still get half that in typed defense and that's usually Ice's problem (getting typed defenses to the soft cap of 45%).

Pacing of the Turtle has a -recharge proc IO which is fairly cheap and Impeded Swiftness has a chance for damage proc, both of which fit quite nicely into Chilling Embrace.

If you get Icicles a neat trick there is to put 3 slots aside for the Eradication, Obliteration and Scirroco's Dervish proc IOs (energy, smashing, lethal respecitively).

I generally find the Ice primary fun to slot because there are a lot of ways to be inventive and not much concern for endurance issues.

What he/she said

I've been modslapped!

Sorry Mod08 ... I'll try to play nicer in the sandbox

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Please disregard people who imply that you are selfish / negligent of teammates / incompetent because you don't have Taunt.

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YEAH F THE TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!































































(was just a joke )

I agree ... I have an Eng/Reg Stalker and an Ice/Eng Tanker and find both fine to play.

The longish animation times are annoying to be sure but hardly unplayable.

Also keep in mind your build is *very* expensive.

I'm not a big fan of Tanker builds without Hasten.

And I wouldn't want to lose the Defense from Hover for Air Superiority (granted, the order you took your attacks in doesn't leave a lot for pre-24 attack chains).

Also why take Kick over Boxing? It would just knock a mob out of your aura no?

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While I agree in spirit I'd like to point out that DAoC was released with six core programmers and was considered one of the most solid releases of an MMO to date.

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Nevermind they licensed the Morrowind game engine (Gamebryo Element's NetImmerse) and still needed 6 guys to develop custom game systems on top of this already fully developed engine.

Cryptic's Engine is home grown and think one of the reasons why we still see their logo in this game despite CoH now being purely NCSoft's Property.

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That has little to do with it. Most graphic engines in MMOs today are licensed.

Way to miss the point.

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I think you took my programming in their sleep comment too literal or yout being obnoxious about it, either way it was a cheap way to insult me.

Secondly, you clearly havent heard of Insomniac studios which started with four programmers, their first game was a playstation success called Disruptor and then later Spyro followed by the acclaimed Ratchet and Clank series. FOUR programmers.... developed an ENTIRE first person shooter, with levels and all. Programming code is primarily easy to those IN THE FIELD. Dont act oblivious just to try and disprove me.

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Wow did this one rub me the wrong way.

There is a HUGE difference between writing a relatively simple FPS with a static map system, than writing an MMO that requires everything the FPS had, plus dynamic characters, maps, classes, terrain, and levels... combined with some rock solid network code, a system for modifying game details going forward to handle inevitable balance issues, scalable server code, not to mention tools for both your own design team and your users... and you also have to be cognizant enough going forward that any minor time saving (or slightly less forward thinking than anyone would've thought you needed) design decision you make is going to be scrutinized for years (as is happening right now)... and that's JUST the programming side, saying nothing of your art assets.

I wrote a simple FPS in college 7 or so years ago with 1 other friend. Trying to write an MMO with 2 people would take so long that you would be obsolete before you even got to the first milestone.

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While I agree in spirit I'd like to point out that DAoC was released with six core programmers and was considered one of the most solid releases of an MMO to date.

I'm not sure how many Cryptic had at release, but I never got the sense that it was that much more (this is not including skinners, data entry guys, support staff, etc ...).

Aid Other, Aid Self and Conserve Power on a WP Tanker?

I'd drop those in favor of Pyre or Earth APPs for a solo build, and Tough/Weave for a tanking build (WP Tankers without Tough/Weave in full group scenarios are squishier then Fire Tankers).

Also having the Numina rare is a tad overkill (expensive overkill), especially since you have two PS: Chance for End slotted into the build.

6 slotting RTTC with Dark Watcher's Despair I think is a huge mistake as RTTC provides the largest portion of your mitigation in the form of regen.

I think this build is from the pov of a soloer and/or AE built toon. Full group missions and TFs will shock the player of this build at how tissue papery their WP Tanker starts feeling.

Apparently Grant Cover takes on a greater importance later on if/when you go up against mobs that debuff defense, stacking its Defense Debuff resistance with Active Defense and Deflection.

I haven't compared it yet to see what the realistic differences are but other Shield Tankers seem to swear by it.

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Taunt is never strictly necessary, except perhaps for the Willpower tanker.

It is valuable for AV fights, but that's a small percentage of what you do anyways, and your ambitions may not lie that way. You seem to have plenty of AoE and offense to gather the attention of lesser mobs.

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Not even for the WP Tanker ... I run ITFs on my WP Tanker and rarely need to hit Taunt (basically only to get ambushes headed in the right direction).

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BTW BackAlleyBrawler's comments about the "pipeline" to the powers are entirely non-sensical. Soft coding *means* dynamic (as opposed to hard coding where values are placed directly). Sort of reminds me of that 90 year old senator who was trying to describe the Internet by saying it wasn't a dump truck (boggle).

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I've always used the term 'hard coded' to refer to anything that's explicitly defined in the source code and compiled into the executable. Most of the assets used by the various systems (powers, animation, VFX) we work with are not 'hard coded' but are what I've always called 'soft coded', in that they reference scripts and data outside of the compiled code. That jives with the wikipedia definition of soft-coding, take that as you will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softcoding

You might see this as still being hard coded, but as a developer I can change most of this data in real time, while the game is running, by modifying an external script...which is about as dynamic as it can be. Not really much difference between modifying a script or modifying a chunk of data saved on the character database through...say...the costume editor.

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This was my point ... the values you are talking about are not hard coded (Starsman's point) but rather are passed by reference from an exterior source and are dynamic. The confusion here I think was that in your summary post you indicated that the value exchange was inflexible:

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Power defs are softcoded, but they can't be changed on the fly or vary between one player and another ...

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http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....ue#Post10351446

Which seems to reference that your point of view was from a client side exchange. If player preferences (i.e. power color choices, effect type, animation, etc ...) are chosen from a finite pool and stored at the server level, then I assume the "hardship" is from a time consumption standpoint of testing all the various combinations. Would that be correct?

I was just trying to point out the difference between programatically "hard" (e.g. writing a production worthy 3D graphics engine from scratch would be "hard" for me as that isn't my day to day specialty) and programatically time consuming, which is what my assumption here is (and based on your summary post).

*EDIT* I just noticed your sig, which pretty much says it all

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A script file, for all intents and purposes is just a flat text file with values.

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But what happens when the script gets "compiled" into a binary format that is basically just byte code the game engine interprets? Not much different from the OS executing application code.

As you say: the devil is in the details and my real point was to note that it indeed is hard coded.

Other than that, I don't think I used the "hard" word in a difficulty context, the other points I listed were simply to note the challenges that had to be overcome before things were able to be put into place and perhaps those changes had to be fully implemented before the PFX modification could get started at all or run the risk of being forced to do the full PFX modifications all over again for some new engine requirement.

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Scripts are generally compiled at run-time in memory (or temp binary). That's the definition of a programming script.

Without knowing more specifics about the PFX and engine structure I can't comment intelligently. My remarks were only based on BAB's information.

A script file, for all intents and purposes is just a flat text file with values.

What those values mean to the processes that handle them is what makes it a script. In this sense, the processes (or engine if you will) doesn't care where the values are coming from, whether read from a text file, database, a compiled binary or data in memory.

The advantages of doing it in memory is that the same object can be shared by the caster and castee (to your point) and that is the solution to both sides of the equation (to BAB's point). This can also be handled a number of different ways.

Having said that, the devil's in the details and I'm sure it would be more time consuming then simply swapping a process but agian, tedium and not "hard".

When it comes right down to it, it's just a matter of expending the developer(s) and financial resources into making it happen ... a harder decision to be made with a dev team that is primarily maintaining to be sure.

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Kruunch, the guy think it's so easy it can be done by sleeping programmers.

As for Hard Coding, depending what you are doing hard coding can mean different things. Some one that writes a script that gets stored into a file may consider this "hard coded" because the engine cant modify it in real time, while the programer that writes the engine would consider it dynamic and data-driven as it does not require recompiles.

However even then a change in hue of a power required a PIGG recompile even if not a .exe recompile. When BABs says the hue was hard coded he meant it in the way I just stated: there was no way for the game to change it on the fly.

Not to mention, even if it indeed was there the server now needs to send additional data tied to the character definition.

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Ooooo I get to be the geek for once!

Hard coding in programming means only one thing and one thing specifically ... a definitive value for a variable or equation.

Example:

Hard Coded: myInvinceColor = "red"

Soft Coded: myInvinceColor = getColor(invulnPFX)

Dynamic: myInvinceColor = getColor(colorOptionChosen)

The *only* difference between soft coded and dynamic is the source of the data which in itself can always be maleable from a programatic standpoint.

For instance, according to BABs they are plucking values out of a PFX file (think config file). That file (apparently) is static. There are a number of ways of changing this mode which, as I pointed out above, is easy (as in not hard programatically) but can be tedious depending on the amount of systems using said file.

Here are a few alternatives to their system:

1) All data is stored in a database and the current systems that point to the PFX file get changed to point to a process (middleware) that retrieves the data from the database. (expensive in terms of licensing and possible hardware overhead to mitigate the amount of real time transactions against the database(s) but overall the best comprehensive solution for scalability and flexibility (this falls under the axiom of all data should be normalized)).

2) Build a process that generates the PFX files per request. (cheapest solution assuming the current hardware/network can handle the processing of thousand of files per second (not a large assumption as I currently work on systems that do this but an assumption just the same since I don't know CoH's back end)).

3) Build a process that stores the PFX values in memory as a temp/semi-temp object and point your existing systems to that process rather than the PFX files themselves. (best option performance wise and second best (possibly) expense wise (this would possibly increase RAM and/or server cluster size) with the caveat that memory/object management can be a bit tricky on large scales).

The question then becomes, how much time do they have to rewrite the current systems in place to point to the new process and write the new process itself.

Easy (even a sleeping Dev 1 programmer could think this stuff up) but probably very time consuming as major adjustments to an enterprise level production system tend to be (even for the "simple" changes).

Awesome, thanks for the insight.

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I laughed a little, it's funny that since Champions Online, CoH is officially stealing pages, nay whole books from them. I can't say its a bad thing, but if we have to wait for another upcoming MMO to experience the same content, then epic fail for the Devs. I'm happy that we finally get to change our "red pom pom's of doom, or the rainbow invul, but taking 4+ years to do so was very lazy. I understand they didn't expect the franchise to get as big as it is, but cmon. Color palettes are the easiest thing to do in any game. You can ask any developer, it's been done on weaker engines , like the NES or SNES. It's no secret its standard programming, why It took this long is pretty sad. Especially since people have been modding CoH for a while now.

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Also the easiest thing to do? Criticizing with little to no knowledge about the subject matter. Not for lack of information out there either. It's pretty sad. Especially since people have been discussing the issue for a while now.

But hey, it's not like the developers didn't have plenty of staff to work on something as basic (but difficult to implement), especially post CoV, after Cryptic diverted a lot of money and staff away from CoX to work on MUO (later ChampO)

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I think people are confusing "hard" and "hardship".

Changing the hues of the effects isn't "hard", physically or intellectually in the same way that something like overhauling the entire combat system would be "hard" and in that regard Lacrymosa is very correct.

However there is "hardship" which is to mean a certain amount of tedium because changing the hues in a production environment MMO isn't as simple as stating a different value.

For instance, someone mentioned Invicibility's cage effect. If you changed the hue of that to green for example, it would make the player seemed to be inside a translucent green tube. You'd have to go through each power to acertain the effect of each hue you are going to allow.

Which brings us to the point of how many hues can you allow (and test for, and tweak) within a finite amount of resources (XXX amount of developers who can spend only XXX amount of time on this feature).

So by "hard" what we really mean is time consuming.

BTW BackAlleyBrawler's comments about the "pipeline" to the powers are entirely non-sensical. Soft coding *means* dynamic (as opposed to hard coding where values are placed directly). Sort of reminds me of that 90 year old senator who was trying to describe the Internet by saying it wasn't a dump truck (boggle).

What he may have been referring to is that the PFX file that is read in from may be static, in which case then the values are hard coded from a round about perspective (and is an incredibly silly design if that's the case). Of course there are literally dozens of ways around this road block as well in the programming universe, but any path taken here would be similar to the subject of changing the colors of the powers ... every system that it touched would need to be tested and tweaked per PFX file (which means per power and animation cycle that they touch in this case).

Again, hardship .... not hard though.

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I laughed a little, it's funny that since Champions Online, CoH is officially stealing pages, nay whole books from them. I can't say its a bad thing, but if we have to wait for another upcoming MMO to experience the same content, then epic fail for the Devs. I'm happy that we finally get to change our "red pom pom's of doom, or the rainbow invul, but taking 4+ years to do so was very lazy. I understand they didn't expect the franchise to get as big as it is, but cmon. Color palettes are the easiest thing to do in any game. You can ask any developer, it's been done on weaker engines , like the NES or SNES. It's no secret its standard programming, why It took this long is pretty sad. Especially since people have been modding CoH for a while now.

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Actually most of the innovations/additions from an MMO come from competing/stealing from rival MMOs.

WoW is almost 100% ripped off from other MMOs, with each list of new additions being conveniently added in just before the release of another MMO with the same features.