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A game engine is the core programming code of a game, more or less. Instead of having to code everything from scratch every time you want to add something, you use shortcuts provided by the game engine to make it happen. This is a very simple way of looking at it, it's a lot more complicated than that, but it's the basic idea.
The standard features of a game engine is, well, the stuff you need to make a game. It handles levels, lighting, physics, character models, texturing, shaders, sound, network connectivity, controls, and anything else I might have forgotten. It's part of why the Unreal Engine is popular, it pretty much has it all in a fairly simple to use way.
As for if artstyle and game engine are locked, the answer is no, with a but. Using the Unreal Engine, again, I'm sure you know the bulky, shaved, kind of shiny space marine type. Part of the reason that's popular with Unreal is that it's very good at making that look. The Unreal Engine is not great at making flowing hair, so if you want that, you have to make it yourself. It's very good at making metals and skin due to its wide variety of shader options. So you get armored bald guys, because the engine lets you do that with less efforts.
As for upgrading the engine, it's not easy. If you just want to add a feature, like the mentioned flowing hair, it's "simply" a matter of adding that piece of code to the library. If you want to change anything fundamental of the engine, though, you're in for a lot of work. You will more or less have to rewrite that part of the engine. City of Heroes getting ragdolls and Ultra Mode is an okay example of changing a game engine. Power Customization was also added at a fairly low level, as the powers part of the CoH engine had colors baked into powers, so that part had to be changed. At least that's what the devs said when they did it.
I hope this clears it up a bit. -
No, #1 is a mechanical issue, and Tankers are fine, but not great, mechanically. I'm talking about a gimmick or something similar that is uniquely the Tankers' and not something any other AT can do.
Maybe adding a symbol over the head of the enemies you've taunted would be enough, but something mundane, yet flavorful would be nice to get for Tankers, too.
It's a feel thing, not a mechanical thing. So, not #1. -
Quote:Heh, yeah, I figured that in a thread about Offenders, a shoutout to the crazy people in the Repeat Offenders was in order. Even if I don't think I've teamed with you guys, at least not any more than on a pickup team with one or two of you, you make a wonderful example to follow when I'm feeling down about the power of any of my own Defenders.*shameless plug*
Lukewarmdog posts the Repeat Offender schedule on the general discussion boards pretty much daily. RO now encompasses a lot of things beyond just offenders, there are supergroups for tanks, scrappers, and many other synergies (across Freedom, Virtue, and Justice). We do run "Retro RO" teams on thursday nights, which lately has been "Faithful Fans of Fallout" (Radiation Emission defenders, corruptors, and controllers with a focus on leveraging fallout and vengeance). Check out our forums at www.repeat-offenders.net!
*/end shameless plug*
For me, personally, "Offendering" is now more of a mindset of being more aggressive on a defender/corruptor/controller. It's about letting go of "I'm here to keep the team upright by healing and buffing everyone" and stepping into "I'm here to keep the team upright by killing stuff and doing my thing (which may depend on the buff/debuff set) and I ain't afraid of nothing".
So, yeah. Got a little sappy there, maybe. But I do appreciate that something like RO exists to basically run the game on its edges. A Brute tearing its way throw large spawns is kind of standard now. Doing the same with only Corruptors, Defenders and Controllers, though, now that's awesome. I kind of want to see how Trick plays, I had my doubts on my Trick Archer several times, but she's actually gotten pretty powerful. -
4. Tankers have, with IOs, lost the title as the most survivable thing in CoH by far. They can still outlive Brutes, but it's not as clear cut anymore. A small, but useful addition could give the Tanker its uniqueness back, or if that isn't possible, give it a new one.
Yeah, mechanically, Tankers are slightly behind, maybe, but nothing as bad as Stalkers were. But much like Defenders who were okay, but threatened on their turf by Corruptors, Tankers could go with a few changes like Defenders got Vigilance to increase solo damage, and save End on teams.
It's basically a problem of uniqueness and the fact that CoH has four melee archetypes that are perhaps a little too close to each other. -
Quote:The not-so-imagined scenario here is a Tanker on an 8-man team in a +2-3 Nemesis mission. He, for some reason, uses Taunt while standing among the squishies. The Nemesis troops all fire their grenades. Half the team is now dead. I've seen something like that happen a little too often. I mean, sure, the solution is "be more mindful of taunting", but sometimes the team just runs after you, even if they shouldn't.What is the bottom limit on -Range for enemies? IE, if we gave Tankers a PBAoE aura that could floor enemy Range when stacking from a couple Tankers, would that help?
Or we could give them a Targeted AoE, that if teammates stand in it (but not the caster), they get Absorb for some damage? That way Tankers can direct where enemies face, and also direct where they want teammates to be standing (and reward the ones who move there).
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The dirty solution is to have an +AoE defense aura on the Tanker by default, or as part of some power. Just like Stalkers get way over capped AoE Defense when Hidden, a Tanker could provide modest AoE Defense in the 5-10 feet around him. The example, again, is Superman taking a missile to the chest, leaving Batman behind him unharmed. In CoH, Batman would have been blasted. If a Tanker could radiate, I don't know... 15% AoE Defense to everyone else, it might work. It'd also solve the question of why you want more Tankers. Because 30% or 45% AoE defense is nicer than 15%.
It's a dirty hack, and one that could throw balance out of... balance, potentially. It'd need to be thoroughly tested in a beta, I'd say. Try out different powers, an inherent power, an offensive power, a defensive power. See if it fits anywhere. Also, try out the numbers, 15% might be too much or too little. Probably not too little. We don't want Tankers to steal the work of dedicated buffers, after all. Also, Shield Defense would end up being better at this due to Grant Cover, which basically does this, but to all Defense but Psi. But that Shield is better at defending allies? I'm okay with that, seems thematic enough. -
Quote:Well, if we go both with the cap increase and something else, I think the something else should look at any weaknesses the Tanker has when tanking for a team. As far as I can think of, the big team killing weaknesses a Tanker can have is enemy AoE damage when close to a softer target. This can be mitigated by playing carefully, of course, just get away from the squishies and preferably turn the enemies around so cones go the other way. However, it's still a little too easy to accidentally get someone killed against AoE happy foes.Indeed. But I also acknowledge that some people have said that's not enough for them to differentiate Tankers from Brutes and that they wont notice a cap change alone if they're not SS, Shield or KM, so I'm open to hearing suggestions for a new Tanker mechanic in addition to fixing the cap.
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Mechanically, this is a nasty problem to solve. I mean, a reverse Bodyguard has merit, but it has the downside of making AoEs a lot more dangerous to a Tanker than a Brute, and we want Tankers to, in all situations, builds being similar, to survive significantly longer, and with more foes attacking them. That's the Tanker's schtick, after all. Now, something that reduces the radius of AoEs would be nice, but I am not sure the game can even do that. And, well, a change is much more likely to happen if it's not overly complicated.
So, yeah, it's tricky. I mean, the damage cap is for extreme cases of +Damage buffs, which is nice and all, but for Tankers to get their identity back, they kind of need something mundanely useful, too. Something that works with all powerset combinations and doesn't overpower the strong sets too much, yet gives the weaker sets a boost. Preferably something that boosts crowd control or team survivability, as most Tankers pretty much can take most of what the game throws at them. The trick is to extend the same to the rest of the team, simply by being a Tanker who knows his job well enough.
Tough guy in melee with a touch of Defender is what I'd go for. Let the Tankers become force multipliers, even if it's just a tertiary concern. The Brute is all about itself, the Tanker should be able to empower the team, too. Like how when Superman, Thor, Captain America, or similar arrive on the scene, you know the bad guys are in trouble. It's a morale boost to Team Good, and a shock to Team Evil. And then we're back to square one again. How to do that? -
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Same as the one on Test. So it's the Panther bug fix.
Yeah, I see why that one might take a while, actually. The Panther bug could make characters inaccessible. I'm sure there are worse categories of bugs, but I'd imagine this one is very high priority since it corrupts player characters. I'd imagine only emergency security fixes and issues that can take down the server are higher.
So I would not be surprised if this update is both a client patch for us, and a script of some kind run on the character database to do whatever magic is needed to make affected characters accessible again. So, four and a half hours seems pretty reasonable to me. When running scripts on the character database, you really, really want to make absolutely sure that you have a proper backup, that the script has enough time to run, and that it did what it needed to, and ONLY what it needed to.
If I'm right, then doing this is just four and a half hours is actually kind of impressive. -
Quote:Pretty much this, yeah. Offender is an old term, and kind of obsoleted in most cases these days.there are some sets that more easily lend themselves to an offender build than others, but the line isn't so much sets, but actual builds.
I really don't see this divide much anymore but back in the day there was a real divde among defenders.
On one hand you had defenders taking only a couple attacks in their secondary and built their toons around team support. The same group complained how defenders couldn't solo.
On the other hand you had defenders investing in both their primary and secondary like say any of the melee types woulds, and would leverage their primaries in doing damage, this group didn't have any problems soloing( other than maybe lacking mez protection maybe)
It basically means a Defender who does not neglect offense. Radiation and Kinetics are the classics for primaries that lend themselves well to it, but most primary sets aren't that busy that you can't send out some attacks as well.
The classic opposite is the Defender who has all 9 Empathy powers, the entire Leadership pool, and in some extreme cases, the Medicine pool to have another heal. And that one blast they had to take, but didn't want to "waste" any slots on. Healing Aura is, naturally, set to auto. And this isn't hyperbole, by the way, this was a classic Team Only Empath build back then.
If you want to see what Offenders can really do, you could contact the Repeat Offenders, they kind of live the dream here. Because one of the most powerful teams you can get in the game, is a team of Defenders who know how to run both primary powers and secondary powers properly. And that's RO in a nutshell. -
Uhm... Darkseid won that fight. Sure, Superman was all bravado and power, but Darkseid got up and hit Superman with a rather nasty Hold right after that video ended. Superman needs to watch his End use, you really don't want Unyielding to detoggle during an AV fight... (Also, Superman's line should have been "...show you just how super I really am!")
As for Tankers in this game, I wouldn't be opposed to letting each set have a super attack. KO Blow sets the standard. The attack that looks powerful, hits really hard, but isn't available that often. It can be flashy, or it can be subdued, but basically an attack that with okay slotting removes a lieutenant from the fight just like that.
Mechanically, I'd rather play up the crowd control parts of Tankers, though. Longer control duration, bigger debuff values, basically making Tankers a little more Defender like. Force multipliers, more or less. Shield Defense shows that having powers also benefit others is okay for a defense set with Grant Cover. Maybe graft something similar into the other sets?
Basically, I want Tankers to be the absolute kings of aggro control and defending others. There's plenty of damage flying around in the game, and the melee classes are bunched together enough as is. Like Stalkers got to step a bit out of the spectrum with the new Assassin's Strikes and other buffs, let Tankers step the other way, and just become that much better at not dying and keeping the enemies away from everyone else. If I could add a completely new mechanic to Tankers, it'd be that AoEs and cones targeting the Tanker would have a smaller arc or radius on the AoE blast. Like Superman taking a missile to the face right in front of Batman, and all that happens to Batman is his cape fluttering in the blast. That'd be unique and useful to teams. -
Reminds me, there's a Mu in the game with a very unfortunate name.
"Mu'Kau"
Read that out loud, then apply palm to face. -
No. A character's name should be unique. You can copy everything else about a character, costume, powers, build, and so on, but you cannot have the same name. That's how it's always been in CoH, and how it should stay.
However, I would not be opposed to allowing aliases. That awful Name@Global system could be done with a character name and an alias instead. Basically working as a custom title. "Amazingman as Adam Maze". But it'd be purely cosmetic and to send tells and so on, you'd still need to send to Amazingman. -
My cure... well partial cure... was to make sure that the characters I stuck with have some thing "special" or unique that's theirs. My Forcefield/Energy Defender is special in that she's my first character I stuck with. That and she can hit 45% defense buff on everyone else. Neat little trick that.
Got a Ninja Blade Stalker, just because that sound Assassin's Blade makes is funny. A Dual Blade Scrapper because the combos were fun. An Electric/Electric Blaster who was a beast in melee. And, of course, my Trick Archer because dousing enemies in oil and setting them on fire just never gets old.
I've never been able to play a Tanker higher than 30. But I got a new one that has potential, not really because he's anything special build wise. A standard Shield/MA Tanker. But because he wears rocket boots. That he uses to kick people with. It's a silly little hook that does nothing mechanically, it just looks funny when he does it.
And before you say that's a lot of characters, I have to stop you. Those are just my 50s. I have a ton of stranded or deleted characters, but it's a scattershot approach. Try a lot, find those that have something "special", and get those to 50. And, of course, do the Incarnate thing. Got two Incarnates, the forcefielder and the trick archer, both +3. Not playing so much Incarnate content has been my price for making alts. I can live with that price.
There are two characters I wish I could stick with to 50 that I haven't been able to, though. A Warshade and a Storm Summoner Defender. I like both powersets, but I just haven't been able to make a character that clicks with them. Maybe when Water Blast arrives, I can revive the Storm Summoner for a fifth attempt. -
Back when Architect Entertainment was new, I found a mission by Beefcake, a player so into badges that he got a cameo in the official CoH comic book, where he asked Positron for a badge.
The mission was a simple "Defeat Beefcake" mission, where you fought an AE version of him. I beat the mission, and got one of the the AE badges. Beefcake has many badges, but I got one off him. -
Quote:I want an "/em flyposeRainboom"No, a pegasus power pool. It's really just the flight pool with Afterburner replaced with Sonic Rainboom, though.
Or you can just mix and match it. Make a macro that turns on Afterburner and changes to a costume with a rainbow trail aura.
Makes me kind of wonder what powersets you would give the main six ponies from the shows. -
Yeah, the forums were out of order for 3-4 hours yesterday.
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Quote:Yeah, I kind of see this set getting disallowed in quite a few powers, too. Like most placeable powers. Honestly, this thing needed a proper full beta pass before going Live.there is only one IO made that was too powerful for the powers it was slotted in. Instead of fixing the IO, the devs removed the entire IO type from being slotted into the powers that use it a specific way.
Key game show music....
That IO was Triumphant Insult : Chance to Disorient. That one IO changed changed taunt auras to no longer accept IO sets. It is by far the most powerful IO ever made. -
Quote:Yeah, I think I'll go with this stance, too on that IO. Go ahead, abuse it. See what happens. Maybe nothing does, maybe it turns out that the IO is too powerful in some powers, maybe even to the point of breaking something. I kind of hope it does, really. Not quite sure what power it'd be that would get that awesome from this, although I have a kindling of an idea.Welp.
Personally I plan to take full advantage of this proc, hopefully to such effect that the devs notice how broken it is to be able to keep things permanently controlled while also doing farmy-damage to them.
There is an issue with knockback, but this thread isn't the one to deal with that. There's way too much joy of getting break the game in this thread to have any kind of constructive debate on knockback here. -
It's an interesting idea, not all defeats are equal, after all.
However, there are a few reasons why faceplanting is a good pose for defeats in the game, some game design related, some story related.
First of all, flat on the ground is a very easy to recognize pose for being KO'd. There's no real ambiguity here, a character flat on the ground and not moving is out of the fight. Easy to read, easy to understand. A character kneeling is... maybe out of the fight? Can I heal them? Can the enemies still attack them? If they can't attack them, why not? It's an uncertain pose, full of maybes when reading it. For something as important as being defeated, it really can't leave much doubt.
So while I'm not against changing the defeated animation, it still needs to be snap readable for new players, and "on the ground, not moving" is really, really hard to beat for "out of the fight". Now if there was a 5-10 second near-defeat status where you could still be healed, but couldn't act? Yeah, a kneeling animation would be perfect for that. But we don't have that. 0.1 HP is fully active, 0 is instantly defeated. Or Awakens could be changed to use this animation when getting back up. You're back, but weak. It'd be a fitting pose for that. -
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Quote:There's that word again "undesirable".You should sell tickets for this slippery slope of yours. Seriously.
What, exactly, is wrong with creating a method for making previously undesirable powers wanted again? Doing what you suggest would require way more balancing than adding a simple IO, and consequently would have a greater chance of getting screwed up in the process.
And yes, what I'm suggesting will take more time to get done, but it would be a lot better to get it right, rather than this attempt to sweep the problem under the rug. Plus, this IO has the potential to create several new problems on its own, as some of those "undesirable" powers could end up vastly more powerful then intended. So what do you do with outliers like that? Nerf the power or the IO? "Letting it be" is not an option as that makes this IO "required" for those powers, making a rather large disparity between the minimum and maximum potential of that power. Something we've seen over and over to be changed in this game.
Adding this IO to the game has the potential to become a lot more balancing work than just adding another IO. This is the kind of IO that gets powers nerfed. Or alternatively, gets made redundant by power buffs.
This IO will cause more problems than it solves. -
Awww, look. It's Widowshy. I'll now read Ghost Widow's lines in Fluttershy's voice. That could either work really well, or completely rob Ghost Widow of any and all dignity she has left.
I think I'm leaning towards "works a bit too well, actually." -
So, as this thread noted, we're actually lacking a certain type of horns, which considering all the many, many types of horns we have, is fairly impressive, especially considering what kind of horn it is. What I'm asking for, is this:
Unicorn horns!
Just that simple single spike on the forehead. Maybe a long and a stubby version, too.
I could go fetch some images, but I think we all know what these would look like. They should also be available for hats and most kind of helmets, so it could be used for Mecha designs or similar. -
My Little Pony is also a meme. It's also a pretty fun cartoon series, but there are so many meme images, variations of meme images, and crossovers that may or may not be sane. And fan music, of course.
Come to think of it, are there City of Heroes ponies anywhere? I'd assume there would be a Statespony for sure. -
Zwill has posted ponies before, I believe. Then again, he's a fountain of internet memes, so that ponies are there can go either way.