Liquid

WARNING: I'm a giant, idealistic cranky-pants who wants a superhero game that also happens to be an MMO.

I loved that this game didn't really have loot. I've gone over that before, so I won't rehash it beyond saying that I don't like seeing all my teammates paying more attention to the junk they are finding than the truth and justice they are supposedly upholding. That being said, the me of 2003-- before I felt freed by the relatively lootless game that was CoH-- would have loved the loot system you've provided (minus drop balance issues like the five level 53 Sniper sets as compared to two level 53 melee and ranged sets).

I wasn't excited about any of the shineys but the costume pieces (which you have already said are too rare).

Wentworth's should be a research lab, or something else that superheroes might actually spend a lot of time at in their quest to keep the world safe. The "fine consignments" thing is horrible. It feels like you didn't even try to come up with something that fit the superhero genre. I'd think that people like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would be offended at the idea of superheroes buying and selling stuff on some kind of warehouse floor like this. If you're reading this, Statesman, did you ask Stan or Bendis about what they thought of their world having such a thing? If so, I'd like to hear what their response was, positive or negative.

The Black Market is great in concept for villains.

The Statesman TF is a blast. However, I have two minor complaints:

1) it felt like a slap in the face to have our final showdown with Recluse begin with him yakking about the mighty Statesman, who is idly standing on some boat back in Independence Port, while we are standing right there, ready to give him a run for his money. Please remember that we might like to be considered real heroes, and not bit players. He should be worried about stopping us.

2) I thought we'd be getting to wreck doomsday devices, turrets and cannons, and Arachnos assault vehicles. We did get to fight the Arachnos Flier, which is neat, but as for the rest... we got to wreck giant cables. That was a little disappointing after reading the preview, which compared it to Mayhem missions. I was expecting more interesting destructable targets.

Again, despite these two disappointments, the TF is a blast.

I haven't tried the new Hamidon, but I really, really appreciate the attempt to make it more interesting, and less laggy.

I agree that the tutorial needed to cover sets and set bonuses.

Overall, I9 has given me more headaches than renewed interest, though I know I'm in the minority. My SG's activity shot way up as a result of I9, though a couple of the people who were already active have complained about feeling like merchants instead of superheroes.

I look forward to Issue 10, and the new content that has been hinted at.

Thank you for compiling that list, Pax.

I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for posting the poll at all. Yes, it could have been done better, but it's nice that you're not flat-out assuming what is best for us.

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In short, unless the Powerset Classes that are *truly* bereft of choices currently have new Powersets in the works, there should be no attention paid to Classes that have a wide variety of Powersets, such as Melee and Defense.


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I would agree with this if Tankers and Scrappers shared more powersets than just Invulnerability. However, in lumping all the Melee sets together as if there was a single Melee AT across both sides is distorting. Scrappers and Tankers don't share a single Melee powerset, and Heroes don't even have access to Electric Melee. It is impossible to make a Super Strength/Super Reflexes (Spider-man, Wonder Woman) character.

That being said, I'd gladly trade the proposed new sets for full (or near-full) crossover for all appropriate (or as many as possible) ATs, if that's a trade that can be made. Make the most of your development time. Save your art and animation department expenses by adding Dark Assault, Electric Assault, Storm Corruptors, Radiation Blasters, */Traps Controllers, and the like (no, I don't mean Regen Blasters or Assault Rifle Tankers). And I want a Super Strength Scrapper (tone down Knockout Blow and/or Rage for them, sure).

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Hold Magnitude: 100

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So *that* is why I couldn't break out of it even with Unstoppable running and two medium break-free inspirations.

That's just stupid.

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The game should give you a prompt if you try to 4 slot for damage or something.

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You mean like this?

(credit to whatever poster it was that originally posted that. It's not mine, but the only place I could find it was in an old repost of my own)

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Some days, keeping the encyclopedia of CoH knowledge in my head to feel like I'm not screwing up feels more like work than fun.

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Exactly what I was thinking.

Thanks for your work on this, Brad, and thanks to the Devs for reorganizing the salvage drops as well.

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What I really hope is the MUO guys figured this all out before implementing their engine.

You guys know who you are: you *really* do not want me finding these same problems in the MUO engine. You really, really don't.

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Don't GOOOOooooo! *hangs on to Arcana's leg*

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* Disclaimer: All numbers used illustratively and do not indicate any relation to what said values or formulae would actually be if we were ever to implement a system such as this, which I doubt.

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The numbers don't matter*, I'm convinced you should go do this now.

Heck, I'll send you booze.

* Okay, they do in as much as everything should be effective.

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I don't condone booze.

So, I will send delicious pizza if this is implemented.

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Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.


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I wish you could do this. I wish it so much. I hope, for your sake and the sake of its players, that you're doing it for MUO. Sadly, I'd rather not play in the Marvel Universe, and I'd rather not leave this game.

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I'll bet you money that they won't make the same mistakes with MUO that they did here.

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They'll make all new, all different ones!

And repeat some things that I consider to be mistakes but they consider hunky-dory like travel suppression. I'm sure Quicksliver won't be subject to it, though. :P

Honestly. I don't mean to suck up, and maybe I'm off base since I don't know how things work internally at Cryptic, but I think Castle becoming powers lead is the best thing that's happened to this game since Issue 3. He's not the powers lead in MUO.

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Basically, additional buffs would always be helpful, but the base level abilities could be made better and more useful across the board.


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I wish you could do this. I wish it so much. I hope, for your sake and the sake of its players, that you're doing it for MUO. Sadly, I'd rather not play in the Marvel Universe, and I'd rather not leave this game.

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Would it be fairly obvious to say that it ill be levels 50-55?

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I'll go ahead and squash that one now. Level cap is NOT going up in I10!

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Duh. 35-40. That's been the sparsest range since release.

P.S. WOOHOO! I've been saving two characters at level 40 (one on each side) for like 3 months now in anticipation of I10 having 35-40 content.

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Now, before the uproar starts, I have to say that unless we find a satisfactory solution for the last item on the list, these IO's have a high probability of being cut before reaching the live servers. Even if that problem is solved, it is still unlikely that you will be able to slot all 4 versions in a single character -- either that, or the stealth aspect will be reduced greatly.

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I want to voice my support behind the "hostages exude perception aura that benefits the enemies" idea. That may not be possible, but I think it's the best idea in theory. Hostages will call out for help, while rescuees will be bumbling, hapless citizens that will make stealth unreliable for the hero.

If that can't be done, I'm for travel sets with +stealth IOs being unslottable in Swift, Hurdle, Quickness, or Lightning Reflexes.

If neither can be done, it will be disappointing not to get them (or to get them at a value that won't serve my purposes), but no worse than what is currently on live (obviously). I am hoping to have a way to have the same amount of -perception on the Stealth power without the white ghost-like aura, so I hope a solution is found.

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Venture has a good point, but I see it working like this:

1- Level 50 Venture decides he wants to acquire and sell a level 30 special IO. Venture values this IO at 100 million inf, because he hates exemping down, and even exemped, he'd have to run 100 Story Arcs to get a rare Story Arc IO to drop (assuming a 1% drop rate for rares).

2- Venture pops into WentPrime for a look. None are available at the moment. He puts in a buy order...but for how much? The last 10 went for a paltry 100k, but what if another 50 gets the same idea, or there are already other buy orders in? He puts in an order for 30 million to seal the deal. Way above what a level 30 is going to offer, well below his actual limit. He's happy.

3- Clueless Kitsune9tails wanders into WentPrime and puts up the IO for sale right quick in between adventures. Seeing that the item is going for arond 100k, she sets her price at 80k to make sure it sells. Boom! It goes for 30 million! She is set for life and very happy. She runs off to start a costume contest.

4- Venture is notified of his buy, a steal at 30 million. He turns around and sells it to Taser for 200 million. Now he, Taser, and Kitsune9tails are all happy.

Now I do see the point that level 30s are never going to be able to buy this level 30 IO at this rate. But they are rare, so it's not like you can count on ever seeing one anyway. Instead, level 30s who find any rare that any 50 wants are going to be rich beyone their wildest dreams.

I can deal with that trade off.

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There's one flaw in that: Taser gets it right away, Venture never is involved, because Taser would have the highest buy order. You should probably change the 200 million inf to another rare IO that is traded for in that second market. That would fix it.

That's totally not a situation I have a problem with. I have a problem with this situation (which I outlined earlier, but have now added a step for completion):

<ul type="square">[*]Taser puts up a 200 mil buy order for Numina's Convalescence.[*]Venture puts up a 30 mil buy order for the same[*]Kitsune puts up a Numina's Convalescence for sale for 100k, Taser gets it[*]Captain Fantastic puts up a Numina's Convalescence for 35 million[*]Richie McRich buys it for 35 million (or some value near it because he made gradually increasing offers as much as is allowed by the system)[/list]
You've got a situation where two people offered IOs and two people were looking to buy them, and those four people *could* have been matched up, but instead the cheapest IO went to the highest bidder, thus allowing Richie McRich to come in and buy the IO that rightfully should have gone to Venture.

That's the problem I have with the current system. My problem with this specific system has little to do with the actual prices of things. However, I was trying to point out that Venture is right that lower selling prices doesn't mean jack for the good stuff, because you won't have a shot at them-- the people with 1 billion inf (they exist) will be placing buy orders that will be way out of your price range. If that's not a problem to you, that's fine, but it's a problem to those of us who don't want to inf farm all day for a month just to have a shot at an IO that gives +15% recovery rate.

I think this will be necessary because buy orders will become the actual means of obtaining the rare items via Wentworth's (if they are on there at all), and you will need to beat them. Meanwhile, people can farm 30 million inf in less than a week, so you better be doing so too if you want to compete for the good items. That's a problem with the ease of obtaining influence if you want it, but the ease of missing it if you want to help your SG with the base or play low level alts. The discrepancy is far too large, and the existing and planned money sinks aren't enough to prevent inflation from driving buy order prices for set IOs into the hundreds of millions unless they aren't very rare at all.

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Thanks for reminding me of that, I'll have to remember to place buy orders for everything I want on the day it goes live.

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And I'll remember to only sell my items in Prime Time, so a good healthy backlog of LTB orders are up and I'll get the juiciest!

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Is that the way it's working? Priority to the highest value on the buy order, or is it the earliest order that meets the requested value that gets priority?

If it's priority to the highest value order, then again, Venture is right about the good stuff going to the richest people.

That's a good point. Buy orders will likely make it so that the good stuff is never even listed at Wentworth's. If it is, it will immediately fill a buy order unless it's priced higher than them.

Thanks for reminding me of that, I'll have to remember to place buy orders for everything I want on the day it goes live.

I think that it's possible that Kitsune and Leech are talking about stuff you wouldn't consider to be worth having-- standard IOs, common salvage. They may be looking at it as "I can pay 50k to not have to farm x, y, and z to make an IO that otherwise costs me only 11k to make."

However, if they think they are going to get Numina's Convelescence or possibly even costume parts for a level 30 character through Wentworth's for a few hundred thousand inf, well... yeah. Good luck with that.

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Player A1 puts up a Level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Player B1 puts up the same Level 12 TO for 1,000 inf.

Player A2 (trying to transfer funds) offers to buy that level 12 TO for 5,000,000 inf.

Since player B1 wants less, and is obviously trying to move his items faster, his "for sale" is processed first, so he ends up with 5,000,000 inf (minus fees).

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I think that this system is sub-optimal if you want to get as many people using Wentworth's as possible. Here is why:

Players A and B have a level 50 recipe they wish to sell. A wants 5 million for it, B wants 100k.

Players C and D want that recipe. C is willing to play 5 million for it, D is willing to pay 100k.

Instead of creating a situation that attempts to hook A up with C and B up with D, resulting in 4 happy players, you create one that hooks B up with C and results in 2 happy ones and 2 unsatisfied ones.

I suggest that if Player A tries to buy something for 5 million influence, it should pick the *highest* option that can be purchased for 5 million or less. This will result in more transactions in total, and Wentworth's will be more successful.

But, if you want to hamper Wentworth's in order to prevent cross server inf transfers (which currently happen anyway through the server forums), that's obviously your choice to make.

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I think most people's visions of their characters is something in between "I'm from outer space and punch things" and "I evade sixty-two point seven percent of the punches thrown at me." Its often a "I envision my character being able to stand toe to toe with her opponents and hit them way more often than she gets hit back" sort of thing.

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Yeah, that's in-between, but I think it's closer to the former than it is to things like Marathon, Forever Young, Offender, all-passive Invuln, or "Man" builds.

I'd love to have different words for the two approaches to clarify things. It's one thing to slot tons of end reducers and take Stamina because you are playing Zenon the Everlasting, it's another to build "a toon" around the most efficient use of endurance possible. What's the difference? The latter one is built with specific attention to the game mechanics, while the former may be built by a casual gamer that 4 slots endurance reducers because "every little bit helps", not knowing any better.

You might find this to be a subtle and unimportant distinction. I don't, because I've played with both types of people, and their views of the game are diametrically opposed.

I just wanted to point that out, since you were using Marathon builds as your example of "concept" when you said, "Honestly: the devs original design for this game was not to encourage building for concept." I think that the game's original design *was* intended to encourage building for concept, but a different type of concept than you were putting forth. They just failed. I think they believed that their text descriptions of powers would be enough to have people know whether they wanted them or not.

I suppose that's really a nitpick, though, because in the end, if they fix things for one type of concept so they don't need to pay attention to the numbers, they fix things for the other type too.

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I remember reading once a long time ago where Buffy (of the Scrapper/Tanker guides) said that her original vision was a Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) like character, which sounded Reflex-like. But in retrospect, her vision was actually more Invuln-like when she saw how the sets played. That's a case of the numbers and mechanics not connecting with the mental concept, which has nothing directly to do with mechanics, but much more visual/conceptual (but perhaps less abstract) character vision.

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Buffy is a great example of someone outside of CoH canon for whom CoH Invulnerability's mechanics work. She dodges a lot, she can take hits, and has some self-healing ability. I think the set should have been called Mind over Body or something like that, and there should have been an all Res/Maxhealth set called Invulnerability. But I think you know that already.

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Honestly: the devs original design for this game was not to encourage building for concept. It was actually to be forced to explore the powers system. In effect, the game wasn't designed around you eventually building exactly what you wanted, it was designed around you getting bitten by a radioactive spider, and not knowing if that was going to allow you to walk on walls, or grow eight legs. You were not *supposed* to know what you were going to become.

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I think you are talking about concept mechanics wise, while the post you are responding to meant concept as in, "I am an alien from the planet XYZ, and being in Earth's atmosphere gives me superhuman strength and resilience" or "I was trained from birth as a cage fighter, I know martial arts and have incredible reflexes". Marathon builds and the like are a different kind of concept that I don't think people like Statesman and Positron even think about. I do think they wanted people to build characters based upon the other kind of concept.

I think that set design is at odds with this, however. I play with a lot of people that make characters based on non-mechanical concept and ignore numbers completely. One guy, when he reached level 35, looked at Evasion and asked "should I take this defense power and dodge more, or another attack?" He actually had no idea that Evasion only works against specific attack types (AoE)-- he thought it was "more defense".

Is that his own fault for not reading the power descriptions? I suppose, but I believe this thought process is actually what Statesman wanted to see, while Geko designed the system in a way that works against this type of player by requiring an understanding of how attacks break up into melee, ranged, and AoE, how frequent and how dangerous each type typically is, and how toggles are over twice as good as passives. You can say it's my friend's fault, but when the man in charge of the "vision" during beta and at release wanted this kind of ignorance to be commonplace, the system should have been designed around it. That's what balance is all about, in my opinion: allowing someone to say "I want Captain Archaic to use a mace, and he'd totally be able to Clobber people!" and not be penalized relative to his buddy The Amazing Dynamo who can create energy fields around his hands, and has no interest in Stunning people.

If all the SR toggles provided an equal (but multiplicitive instead of additive) amount of defense, and all the passives provided an equivalent amount of surviviability via the "near-miss" capability as you describe, people who ignore the numbers would get much better performance, and those who pay attention to them would have a much smaller advantage. Someone who thinks "I'm about 2/3 as good at dodging as him because I took 4 out of the 6 defensive powers available to me, while he took all 6" would actually be pretty accurate.

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I don't like it.

Not because of the AT balance, that's nice.

Not because of Oranbega, I like that place.

But because the Statesman Task Force, the grand be-all-end-all of missions, is against Arachnos.

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I still like it overall, but I agree with you on this last point.

I think Arachnos, and Lord Recluse in particular, are lame. I far prefer Nemesis as the "big bad" of the game, and I feel that they've been marginalizing him and putting Lord Recluse in his place as the ultimate threat ever since CoV came out.

Nemesis is deeply embedded into the history of CoH, and set up to be the ultimate villain. He's been plaguing the world for almost 150 years, and is responsible for Statesman indirectly causing the Rikti War, yet nothing has yet to come of that incredible and horrible realization.

I knew it would be Arachnos we'd be facing in this, but I had the faintest glimmer of a hope that we'd be sent to stop some awesomely complex plot, and at the end we would face the new, improved, super powerful Prussian Prince himself, complete with some never-before seen creations to assist him.

And by that I mean he wouldn't be the incredible pushover he is in our personal missions.

Edit: I'm making a quasi-New-Year's resolution to include more positive comments in my posts. I generally only get motivated to post when I'm not happy about something.

So. I'm still excited about this TF, and I hope maybe the devs will one day implement one like I suggested!

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Here we had a chance to have some “mayhem mission” type action, with your team of Heroes causing havoc in the WebFac, destroying vital pieces to the array in Grandville. This was something that players asked for when we introduced Safeguard missions.

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Woohoo!

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They wanted to go to the Rogue Isle and bust stuff up. Now they get to bust stuff up, but with a purpose.

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I just want to point out that I think we always wanted a purpose. I don't recall anyone wanting heroes to go over there and destroy innocent civilians' property. I know I wanted to bust up dangerous villainous property like weapons, factories, and research labs used for nefarious purposes.

It was particularly frustrating to me that the dev response seemed to assume that we just wanted to trash the streets of the Rogue Isles.

Anyway, I am glad that you are adding something that has exactly what I think most of the pro-smash heroes wanted in the first place.

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Every mission leads up to the ultimate confrontation where, upon success, players will be able to stand in Atlas Park and proudly display to all onlookers that they have Saved the World. Isn’t that what being a hero is all about?

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Yes. Yes, it is.

Thanks, I'm really looking forward to this.

Oh, and hey, thanks for the apology. I appreciate it, and it's rare on the forums. I also understand the rant. I do those myself rather often.

Right, I know that certain builds can solo them, and than insps allow others to, and temp powers allow others, etc. I also know that we always vastly outperform their voiced expectations.

The reason I brought "the devs don't want us soloing AVs" up is that this is one of the reasons people suggest PvP temp powers stay in PvP only. They've said they don't want people soloing AVs, Ultimus posts threads about soloing *every AV in the game*, and people fear one of the following:

<ul type="square">[*]Their characters getting reduced in power because the Devs make adjustments to them instead of the temp powers[*]the PvP temp powers getting adjusted down to the point that they are worthless. (Yes, I know you think that making them PvP-only does just that, but I know PvPers who want them to be PvP-only, because they think they *are* good in PvP right now, and don't think Shivans will be worth a crap as LTs in it)[*]AVs being dramatically increased in power to the point that it makes them annoying to impossible even in large, good teams (see the original AV regen changes)[*]Kali's Law[/list]
People then make suggestions in hopes that the Devs will try them instead: one suggestion being to make them PvP only.

Again, ALL of this may be (and is for the near future, given Castle's recent statement) paranoia, but that's the reasoning behind the suggestion.

I am not saying that AVs are not soloable, nor am I saying they will ever be guaranteed to be unsolable. I'm saying that the devs have been vocal about wanting them to be unsoloable (but not that they will go to the ends of the Earth to do so), combined with adjustments to them *and* us in an attempt to make them so, and this creates fear in the mind of some readers of threads like this.