LordAethar
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Posts
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Joined
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Getting this thread back on course, here's my responses:
- What side do you pick more than others? Mostly Blue, with a dash of Red and a few Greys. I love Gold//Praetoria, but sadly so few people play over there
- What play style do you prefer? I usually prefer teaming, unless I'm running content for it's story. I have no problem creating//leading PUG's, and usually have fun doing it.
As for AT's, I play almost everything, with a slight favoritism towards melee (Tank/Scrappers) and Support (Defenders and Corruptors). - What power set(s) do you favor? I rarely reuse powerset on my characters. I have a soft spot for Dark Miasma (my first L50 Character) and Mercenaries Mastermind (My first L50 Villain).
- What zones do you like the most? Oroboros, Cimmerora, Croatoa, Imperial City, First Ward. Cap au Diablo for the convenience factor.
- Do you usually play as a male or female (word of hatred) ''toon''? Mostly female, as I usually have better inspiration making female costumes than male. I've yet to make a "huge" character, since none of my current character concepts would lend themselves to that kind of body shape.
- Views on Role Playing? I usually have a backstory written up for my characters, and the occasional light RP that may crop-up in teams. Rarely the mood will strike me and I'll do some more-extended RP in Pocket D or similar, but those moods have been few and far between.
- Servers? Exclusively Virtue.
- What side do you pick more than others? Mostly Blue, with a dash of Red and a few Greys. I love Gold//Praetoria, but sadly so few people play over there
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I know of at least one combination of costume parts that are now invalid, that can't be recreated currently. Female: Baggy Shirts + Roman Breastplates. Before, they worked just fine with only minor clipping. I liked this, as it looked like my character was wearing proper cloth padding under her armor.
The options exist still, but *something* is different in that if you try to recreate it now, there is TERRIBLE clipping with the breastplate & the shirt underneath.
She's a Broadsword scrapper, and I want to update her sword with that outfit, but in order to do so, I'd have to switch from Baggy Shirt to Tights. While the difference isn't that big, it's still big-enough IMHO that it doesn't look quite as good. -
Hmm yes, they do remind me of some Phazon creations from years ago. Still, they're quite pretty... I hope they make nice squishing sounds as I kill them.
Remember too, the old Dark Astoria won't disappear entirely - they've already stated it'll be available in a Flashback in Oroboros.
Teleporters: About frakking time. Heroside bases will benefit greatly from this. I'm not sure if I'll rework my Villain Base though, since I could fit all of the teleporters in a single room anyway.
One thought that went through my mind - could this be an indication of dual-alignment teleporters in bases... My Rogue would LOVE to be able to teleport (for instance) to Atlas directly from her VG.
I also wouldn't mind seeing some mechanism to become available to bases so we could access flashback zones (Galaxy City, Dark Astoria). -
What we're playing now I'd consider CoH 1.5. CoH has come a long way since the beginning, but like the OP says, "How much further can the current engine be pushed?" Actually it would be, "Which way would be more cost-effective, rewrite more of the old engine, or develop a new engine?"
A most (all?) of the different MMO sequels have failed over the years mainly because they tried to change the game too much over the original, and what's left is usually a game that's too dumbed-down, and/or has far less content than the original had.
With all of the rough edges with CoH currently, there's still a lot of things that are done right. Thinking of a new City of Heroes games as "City of Heroes, Version 2.0" is better than "City of Heroes II". We don't need to game reinvented. We just need a major overhaul of what exists, overhauls that may drastically change certain aspects of the game (completely redoing the Invention/Salvage system, or Bases/Housing, or even PvP). -
Quote:I too have had the same problem as you Lycantropus. It wasn't long after the novelty of the Invention system wore-off before I noticed the same oddities.Originally Posted by Lycantropus
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What does my Tech character need with a "Luck Charm" in the 10-25 range? What does my Magic character give a damn for a "Scientific Theory" in the 30-40 Range? Yet because of the limitations of the system, they clamor and pay top dollar for each....
I've discussed in the past how I feel the current salvage system needlessly complex, and feels like a random hodgepodge of too many ideas and not-enough thought. It's one area that didn't need all of the detail put into it - more generic salvage types wouldn't have had the danger of impinging on somebody else's roleplay//concept of their characters. Sadly this didn't happen when Incarnate Salvage came around - the same needless complexity introduced, with salvage that makes absolutely no sense to me from any roleplay standpoint of any of my characters. -
My stance on the market I think is worse than the last time a post like this came-up. The current system is too easy to manipulate, which is facilitated by the limited sales history.
Shortly after CoH went F2P, a person I know a little IRL had been playing for a little bit. He had been trying to make some IO's for himself was getting very frustrated with the market. He was just trying to make some standard level 30 IO's he had been saving, but he was having a very difficult time obtaining just some of the common salvage. Being a new player, he was having a hard time spending millions to get all of the salvage he needed (he had some on-hand, but not nearly enough). There were several different pieces he needed - all were expensive but some were blatant monopolies and market manipulations. Some pieces were in very short supply (only about 20 on the market) and were selling for over a million per piece. Again, this for common salvage.
Best I could suggest to him was he'd probably have to do the AE Farming thing, since that was the popular response the last time I tried to debate salvage prices on the forums. I don't think he did it though, since like me he hates mindless farming.
Now that I think about it, I haven't seen him online for a long time... I'll have to ask him, when I see him next, if he's still playing or if he quit. -
What Coulomb2 is probably the best advice that can be followed - ignore the Troll as much as possible and hopefully you can at least reclaim ownership of the SG so you can start the rebuilding process.
I doubt CS will get involved. I've had situations where CS helped me in situations where I wasn't expecting any help (getting a market refund for when I accidentally put something up for 500mil once), but I had a very bad situation a few years ago that shattered my faith and trust with CS that's still not fully recovered (I had some recipes on the market - including a LotG Recharge - that disappeared and CS refused to even look into the situation properly.)
It doesn't hurt to ask, just don't expect much. That if they actually do help, you'll be pleasantly surprised. -
I had a similar situation last week. I was on a team, but wasn't leading it, and I had somebody ask if they could join my team. Well, he had a longish name, and we were in the thick of things, so I told him that, "I'm not in charge, you should ask the leader." Apparently he didn't know about the "/ttl" command, so during brief lull in the fighting a couple minutes later I explained it to him. He still couldn't be bothered to figure it out and wanted me to do all of the footwork for him. Needless to say, I ignored him from that point.
I need to macro that explains the use of the "/ttl" command. While this individual wasn't the first person to not be familiar with the command, he was by far the most irritating person to date. -
Quote:I misspoke a little. I meant to say increase it's AoE, since it's existing radius is a little small (8'). Not a lot, maybe just 10', and decrease it's fire rate to 5s (from 5.5s). As for needing to "up" my difficulty, that is an indication that the power does need to be tweaked at least a little bit to make it a less-situational power.Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
The shell does do AOE. I am okay wth it firing faster, but doesnt really need it. If the average combat only lasts 12 seconds, you need to up your difficulty. My avaerage combat, it is not unsual for me to have 3 mortars out, and 2 is a given.Quote:Originally Posted by LordAetharAcid Mortar - It's not bad as it is, but could be tweaked a little. Increasing it's fire-rate so it fires-off more than a couple times in an average combat, or give the shells a bit of AoE, and/or decrease the recharge on it slightly.
Why do you feel improvements to Triage Beacon aren't needed? As an actual healing tool, it's extremely weak unless you have multiple beacons operational, and even then it takes 3 beacons to get close to the +Regen as a single cast of Empathy's Recovery Aura. I know people that take Triage Beacon just for an extra Healing power just to slot special IO's in.Quote:Sure, why not? Again, probably doesnt need it, but okay.Quote:Originally Posted by LordAetharTriage Beacon - While 2-3 Beacons are pretty good, a solo Beacon isn't all that impressive. I see two ways to improve it. Make it a mobile drone that follows the user around or reduce the recharge time. Also, if possible, greatly ramp-up the +Regen, but make it so it doesn't stack with other Beacons or similar powers (i.e. Tree of Life).
And that is the point Sam is making - the original concept for Trip Mine is very different to how the game plays. The fact that Trip Mine remains useful in today's environment is that drawbacks to using it are just low-enough that people have found ways to use them in unintended ways (toe-bombing). Even though I do like my Trip Mines, they are still a very situational power that can usually be out-performed by other powers of similar levels.Quote:I dont see much wrong with the power really. I am pretty sure it was balanced around the idea that the trapper would set up thier traps, and pull the spawn to you. That is useless on teams, and a very tedious way to play solo. I like having the option, as my traps toon is just about my most versitile toon I have, but it has to be a VERY difficult situation to make me turtle up and set up a death zone.Quote:Originally Posted by LordAetharTrip Mine - Reduce the Cast time, eliminate the Interrupt, increase the Recharge time, and possibly make it's deployment a targeted area on the ground such as how Caltrops work.
There are too many ways I could respond to this comment, but at least you acknowledge that it is a useless power.Quote:I actually like it just the way it is because it is a clear skip power that I dont have to debate at all. It really is a gift from the devs.Quote:Originally Posted by LordAetharTime Bomb - I can't think of a good way to fix it without making it just like Trip Mine, so eliminate it entirely and develop a new power.
That's the general idea. The last power in a set is supposed to be a very desirable power to have, not the worst power of it.Quote:See? I would have a hard time not taking this power. What would I have to give up for it? There isnt much in my build that I want to switch out for something else, because not only is it a power selection, but something I would probably want to slot. Cool idea though.Quote:Originally Posted by LordAetharCluster Mine - Have this replace Time Bomb. It functions much like a cross between Trip Mines and Caltrops. It covers a very wide area with small bomblets. Each individual bomblet is triggered by enemy contact and does less damage than a trip mine. However with the large number of bomblets the overall DPS would be potentially high. -
Most of us agree there's a problem, but how would we go about fixing it? Here's come thoughts on /Traps that come to mind.
Acid Mortar - It's not bad as it is, but could be tweaked a little. Increasing it's fire-rate so it fires-off more than a couple times in an average combat, or give the shells a bit of AoE, and/or decrease the recharge on it slightly.
Triage Beacon - While 2-3 Beacons are pretty good, a solo Beacon isn't all that impressive. I see two ways to improve it. Make it a mobile drone that follows the user around or reduce the recharge time. Also, if possible, greatly ramp-up the +Regen, but make it so it doesn't stack with other Beacons or similar powers (i.e. Tree of Life).
Trip Mine - Reduce the Cast time, eliminate the Interrupt, increase the Recharge time, and possibly make it's deployment a targeted area on the ground such as how Caltrops work.
Time Bomb - I can't think of a good way to fix it without making it just like Trip Mine, so eliminate it entirely and develop a new power.
Cluster Mine - Have this replace Time Bomb. It functions much like a cross between Trip Mines and Caltrops. It covers a very wide area with small bomblets. Each individual bomblet is triggered by enemy contact and does less damage than a trip mine. However with the large number of bomblets the overall DPS would be potentially high. -
Interrupt IO's (and Sniper IO Sets) mostly do that. They doesn't lower the power's actual activation time, just the time it can be interrupted (letting you rifle-off a sniper shot even after taking a hit).
If you have a DoT on you, however, they're worthless. Also, Trip Mine/Time Bomb can't take these IO's. AFAIK, only Sniper powers can use even the regular IO -
I too agree. With the rapid-fire of Incarnate abilities, faster overall gameplay, and the ability for those abilities to be interrupted even I use them, I've use them less and less, even while soloing with those characters. There's a couple instances where Traps still shine, while in other situations they're absolutely worthless. A good case in point are the BAF and Lamda trials. Traps are wonderful for one phase of the Trial (and are fairly useful throughout the rest of it), but in Lambda Sector, Traps are completely worthless and trying to plant a Mine will at best be an exercise in futility.
As I was leveling a new Fire/Therm Corruptor, I was told by several different people to avoid the Sniper attack in general. These days many folks consider them worthless in terms of their DPS and usability. I still like my Sniper attacks (especially on my AR/Dev Blaster), but I certainly understand the rationale, and will likely get rid of it on my L50 Defender whenever I get around to respecing her.
Also recently I was looking for a new Defender /DP build, and briefly considered Traps as a primary. As a whole, the entire set is nearly worthless for a Defender, but the ultimate kicker for me was the extreme recharge time on Time Bomb - and it did even less damage than the Corruptor version (side note: this is the only instance I've seen where a Primary Skill Power is outperformed by a Secondary Skill power). -
I can't think of any other MMO's that are exempt from this, and many that have this problem even worse - like a recently released MMO in a galaxy far-far away has even worse immersion-breaking moments, especially with the light-stick wielding professions.
At least CoX doesn't break immersion nearly as much as that other game. That's why I'm here and not there.
Quote:Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
This is more of the same problem that's plagued the game from day one. There's no sense of power progression, the devs insist making the mundane threatening to high level superheroes and common sense is tossed out.
At level 25 I can stand in front of an anti-aircraft turret and shrug it off, but guys with swords can still cut me up.
At level 50, they pit us against non-powered humans with guns and blue cowboy hats. Getting hit by someone with superhuman strength that's powerful enough to shake the earth by stomping their foot should turn them into a fine red mist with one punch, but we can't even knock them over half of the time.
An Incarnate 'demigod' gets taken out by a rock thrown by some clod.
And so on, and so on.
That is BULL****
The developers are unwilling to design suitable, cosmic scale threats for Incarnates, so they resort to cheating mechanics, uber-powerful guard towers, War Walkers with bloated HP and regeneration and irate grandmas throwing stones. And then they feed us baloney like Director 11 and I'm absolutely sick of it.
Listen, if Praetoria wants to win the war, just take whatever non-targetable, invincible, invisible weapon they have on the guard towers at the BAF, mount it on treads and roll it into Atlas Park.
I'm sorry, but the promise of Incarnates was to deliver us content worthy of demigods, but it's more of the same mentality that sends me against blue cowboys, but this time with added cheating mechanics and dodging of colorful puddles.
That's what I thought the whole point of making us Incarnate demigods, so we would be operating on a grander scale, but I guess the point was a drawn out, pointless 'war' with irate Praetorian citizen/sheep beaning us to death with rocks and running from guard towers instead of smashing them to atoms. -
I personally see it as the closest way the game can represent the power of an angry mob. The engine can't even come close to displaying a true mob of hundreds or even thousands of individuals.
Also, we're in Cole's back yard, at a facility founded by Tilman. There's probably a lot more to those civilians than what meets the eye.
As for power Incarnate Power concepts, I've had no problems conceptualizing any of the incarnate abilities into my 50's. I even have a pretty good idea how my low-level characters will evolve into their Incarnate abilities. Since we're not directly drinking from the Well, there's some handwavium that can be used to explain where our advanced powers are coming from. It's speculated that these powers arecoming indirectly from the Well, but that theory could be wrong. I envision it as tapping into some other source of power, a source further-up the chain than even the Well itself. But since we're bypassing the Well, we're forming our own link with that power, and thus how it's taking us much longer to gain it, whatever it is. -
The NCSoft launcher isn't perfect, but it's come a long ways over the years, and it's considerably better than the old launcher. In the old days, I remember having to bypass the patcher on numerous occasions just to be able to play the game, and even made it a habit after a while because it'd take *forever* to re-verify all of the game files after a crash).
As for your situation Scarlet, if everything checks-out with the software on your computer, it's possible there's a hardware issue with your system. Could be something as simple as a bad memory stick (I've seen that a lot lately), or it could be an unstable Power Supply, or an Hard Drive that's dying. -
I too am waiting for Staff Fighting, and it will likely be the first Power Set I'll actually purchase - StJ and TW didn't interest me conceptually, whilst BR is something I may eventually buy if I ever come-up with a concept that's not too cliche to run with (or if it goes on sale, whatever comes first).
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There's a very similar (and long-standing) issue with the Inspiration window in regards to saving window positions (such as when you use the /wdw_save command). When saving the Window position, it doesn't save the correct Y-Position and I've had to go into my wdw.txt file to manually adjust the window's Y-Position).
Out of curiosity Freitag, are these issues related? -
Yep, the Wisp Aura wasn't available for new characters for a little while - my old characters had it, but not my new characters until just a week or two ago when they apparently fixed that bug.
But what's this about chainmail? Hood & gloves? -
When I make new characters, I rarely use the same power twice. Still, there are power sets I've particularly enjoyed more than others.
My first love was Dark Miasma. It has a very strong heal, has the best rez in the game, controller-like abilities, and plenty of debuffs. And it has Fluffy! My first level 50 is a Dark/Dark/Psi Defender, and still remains one of my favorites today to play.
Traps was a fun power set as well, and meshed surprisingly well with Mercenaries on my Mastermind. Not quite as powerful as some of the healing or buffing secondaries for MM's, but it was fun in it's versatility. The set isn't perfect, and I'd love to see it tweaked a bit someday. Likewise for Devices.
My current love right now is my newish SR/MA tank. I never played a defense-based character before now, and I'm immensely enjoying it. The Tanker version is extremely easy to softcap the defense on, and the tanker's version of MA meshes wonderfully with it. She also marks one of the first times I've reused powers (I used to have a MA/Invuln Scrapper that never got past 30, and I have a DB/SR Stalker I plan to dust-off when the Stalker changes drop). -
Quote:I was a little vague, I admit. Some of the issues are art-related though - broken/missing costume pieces are a long-standing issue. I'm also not happy that there's so many text and naming issues in the game too - especially when dealing with the market and Inventions.Originally Posted by Goliath Bird Eater
Fun fact: game studios have multiple departments. The character artists, VFX artists, animators, and programmers who are responsible for the stuff in this loyalty program are likely not the same people that track down bugs, write new content, and work mostly on under-the-hood stuff. Of course, your post was rather vague, so who knows to what you're specifically referring.
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While the helms are neat, TBH I'm not all that impressed by this deal. As a paying subscriber, I would rater see a lot of usabilities issues fixed and/or updated. There's so many little things broken that the game look like it's in early beta (I have a story about that, but I'll post that in General Discussion later). Tossing new artwork//costume pieces (regardless of how nice they are) makes me think of Praetor Berry and the decaying state of Neutropolis - i.e. he's always looking to build something new, and leaves yesterday project to decay and ruin.
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I don't have too many "bugged" costumes left - I've had to fix them over the years if I've wanted to adjust something else on the character (tweak her powers there, adjust his weapon here). Sadly I have one character with a Roman outfit that I can't adjust at all because the updated version is broken terribly.
Female, Tops/Shirts > Roman Chest details clip TERRIBLY with the shirt now, but used not to. I prefer the shirt underneath the Roman breastplate for the "poofiness" of what would represent the padding underneath the armor.
Some of my characters still have their original outfits. But when I create a character I usually have at least 2-3 different outfits to fit the theme of the character. Some characters I could easily use more than 5 slots (but won't buy the extra slots, they're too much money) and other characters I have to work to get to make all 5 costumes for. -
I received my Transfer token several weeks ago, but none of the rest of my monthly rewards, of which some are now over a month overdue. I'll have to look at my logs to see when my various other rewards were issued, but I'm going to record everything diligently from now on.
I'm paid-up though January. If these issues are not resolved by then, I will likely drop down to Premium and take another year or two off (I only just completed Tier 6, and I doubt I want to rework my characters with just SO's anytime soon). -
From bits and pieces of what I'm seeing, I'm rather looking forward to this. I rather liked DA, but there was so little to do there other than explore, and we'll get that in the flashback.
Level 50+ zone? There's hardly any place in the game that's like that. Small sections of zone, sure, but not an entire zone.
I haven't read anything about what they'll be doing with the storyline. Much the existing BP backstory should read more like mythology rather than historical facts. If they want//need to rewrite it a bit to fit into the current Incarnate backstory, that's perfectly fine. It's just like how Real-Life history works. We have theories of how things "may have been" back in the past, and then we uncover some solid piece of history that forces us to rewrite the history books.
PS
Quote:I agree with GG on that one.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
An interesting definition of the word "most"
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I always thought costume pieces as drops were a cool idea, and I much preferred that as opposed to the old Booster Packs. I think that, more than anything else, is why we didn't see more costume piece recipes put into the game. Why put something in the game for free when the could charge money for it and earn money above and beyond the subscription fee?
Back then, and I was of the option (pre-Freedom) that booster-pack costumes should have some in-game way of obtaining them, like the costume recipes. Buying them for RL cash a) seemed like double-dipping and b) was much more immersion-breaking than any in-game alternative.