Mental_Giant

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For those who are "less than happy" with the look of the Dual Blade screenshots released, please keep in mind that it's still early in the release process with time to polish up features and you don't know all the features included in Issue 11 yet. As we move into October more details will be coming out so hang on to your hats (or blades, or whatever )

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How about passing on the concept of being able to chose your blades? Future, Relic, Mystical, Sammy, ect from the option menu? I bet that would quell alot of problems. I know Posi once said that the powers origin for blasts points and colors were "hard baked" but why not rework the new sets? Then see if you can backwards engineer it

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I liked what you've done here. You went from "how about Power Customization?" when we've been told time and time again why we won't see that in the near future, to equating changing the colors of blasts (which is the easiest part of the thing that will take dev-years to do) to changing weapon models, which I imagine is even more complicated.

Suffice it to say this is not going to happen. I agree with the poster above that what we see now is pretty much what we're going to get.

You don't have to like it, but realize that the workaround suggested is not going to happen for I11.

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Okay, time to ask an incredibly stupid question. I had a name for one of my characters, then stopped playing for about a year due to various reasons. Came back, and had to get a new name. If this frees up my old name (assuming it does), how would I go get it back?

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You would purchase a rename token, or credit and apply it to your account. When you do this you may then try to capture the name you lost supposing it is available.

Ex

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Why do you have to purchase the rename token before finding out if the name is available?

If I paid $10 because I wanted to change my name to Dorkfish and then found it was taken and I didn't want any other name other than Dorkfish or my original, why am I being charged $10 when I make no change?

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How hard it is it add Dorkfish to your friends list to see if it already exists?

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But level six, regardless of data is just useless.

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How can you even say this? 99.9% of the names people want could be locked up in these toons. You don't know because you don't have the data.

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That would mean some guy, three years ago that has a name I want to use got to level 7 in about 5 hours and now I'm hopelessly screwed.

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A slanted hypothetical doesn't prove your point.

They can always raise the cap later, but the fact remains that with this many people in the game, everyone is not going to get their first name choice for every toon they roll on every server.

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And I think I'll go with the folks (the devs) that have ACTUAL DATA about how many trail accounts and names aren't used.

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QFT

Also, Ex already mentioned that Trial accounts are a different animal and they can free up those names at will, because they were actually paying accounts.

The Devs did datamining to come up with the lvl cutoff. I bet a bunch of names are freed up the first time around.

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Cirque de Sogay

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I just wanted to say that this is the best Supergroup name in the history of the world.

I am confused. I think I soloed the first Mayhem on all my characters without much trouble. Are you running at a diff higher than Villainous?

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The people of a city decide how something's pronounced, not its founders. That's why we say "Tuh-ronna" instead of Toronto, and why Tah-lohs is right, not Tay-los.

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Agreed.

What's next?

Day-rk Ay-storia?
Peereegreen Izlaynd?
Aytlays Payrk?
Bumtown?
Skiwaah?

Tail-os FTL

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I used to get together with some friends once a week at a local Chili's to discuss our results/plans for the turn of Middle Earth Play by Mail wargame we were on. Imagine a couple guys in suits and ties, and a couple guys in T-shirts & shorts, all with briefcases sitting around eating chips, and discussing how best to assassinate the Witch-King of Angmar and mobilize troops to protect the southern flank of the Greenwood from the Dog Lords heavy cavalary.

I think we got the best looks when we pulled out the full size grid maps of middle earth and began putting pins and markers out to plot troop movements.

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Pics or it didn't happen!

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Castle is so badass he doesn't need proof.

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6) The question is a "when" question. We rarely answer these, because even when we put disclaimers on it, our answer becomes taken as gospel, and if we fail to deliver, we look bad.

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I take this to mean we are definitely getting two new EATs in Issue 10, together with the long-awaited Crossover system.

Thanks for clearing this up, Poz!

Thanks for the Birthday Post, Cricket!

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Those jerks... Cold, heartless, jerks. I'm quitting.

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Might I acquire those pieces of paraphernalia in your possession?



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I just realized, once I9 hits, "Can I have your stuff?" will actually have meaning!

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the earliest version of Neverwinter Nights came out six years before that!

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What game is that? NwN isn't that old

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Ain't no school like the Old School!

Six bucks AN HOUR, baby!

Most. Evil. Necro.

EVAR!

Kinda.

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For what it's worth I'm personally not opposed to this idea in principle and I do think it probably should have been this way from the start.

However I'm not in favour of it being changed to this now as I don't think the increase in fun it would bring - whether directly or in the form of superior future content design - are proportionate with the resources required to make the change at this stage. (Course, as a humble player I realise I actually have no idea what the resources required are, but as a forum dweller I'm still gonna have that opinion )

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I think three years in, there's no chance they'll do this. It rips out the powers systems and puts a new one in, in a lot of ways.

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Stranger things have happened with larger MMOs based on "can't miss" IP, so I wouldn't be suprised if we saw a "New Game Experience"-like revamp when CoX is in its death throes.

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2. They can't make well-balanced high-end teamed content, that doesn't involve totally negating highly stacked protections, because highly stacked protections are extreme enough to trivialize high end content.

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But I *want* to be able to go crazy, get 8 buffers and/or debuffers, and trivialize all content, when possible. One of the biggest joys I get from the game is happening to get on a team that can streamroll anything because of insane stacking.

Will the changes take away my overkill? Dont take away my overkill. Mikey likes it.

Lewis

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Most honest post in this thread.

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But in the end it all comes down to the fun factor. For all the flack Statseman has taken for his gameboy analogy and deciding what "fun" is for the players, the devs are obligated to try to make the game fun for the majority of their customers.

Can they please everyone? Definitely not.

Should they try to please as many as possible? Yes.

Logically, I agree with Arcanaville. In my gut, however, I feel that stackable buffs/debuffs are the glue that allow a wide variety of teams to do well in this game. Got a Healer™ and a bunch of Blasters? Probably don't need a tank. Got a bunch of buffing/debuffing Defenders? Don't need damage dealers. Got a really good Tank? Probably don't need a 'troller.

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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.

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That's not exactly how it would play out. Healing would have to be brought in line though that's true. But then, wouldn't the anti-healor forces love that?

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I question whether Heals would be brought in line. Even if they were, would the playerbase understand what that meant? I think one of the main consequences of a change like this is everyone would stock up on self-buff Power Pools and eschew any Defender but a Heal0r.

The more I look at Arcanville's arguments, the more I am convinced that it is a good idea, but I fear what the players would do with this kind of system.

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Keep in mind that it's not just +res and +def. Heals would have to be treated in the same fashion, for this to be fair. Heals would always heal x% of the damage you've taken, otherwise you will have a problem.

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No one has said this, and it's one of the reasons I don't like the idea.

I like being quoted by Rednames, but not like this...

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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.

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Lord help us, they'd do it if they could!

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My first question is why would you want buffs to be less effective on the hardest missions? It makes no sense.

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I have a theory. If you make buffs (and debuffs, by extension) less effective, then you bring us back to the Holy Trinity of MMOs: DPS/Tank/Heal™.

This way, the game will be fun for everyone: Damage Dealers (Blasters, Scrappers), Tanks (Tankers), and Healers (Defenders, Controllers).

Currently, Healers are confused because if they team up, they can do something that they shouldn't be able to do, as Healers: deal damage. If we remove the temptation, they can return to the role that God intended for them: non-stop Healing.

This would be an extreme solution so something that isn't really a problem.

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Get over the villain EATs ... They're most likely (not for sure, but most likely), never going to be done. Posi said that they simply are more work than they're worth, and have been pushed each issue since I4.

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If we're talking Coralax Hybrids or Blood of the Black Stream then sure, those are probably pipe dreams. Villainside Nictus however, is just a port of certain Kheld sets and it could probably use the Warshade graphics. I'm gonna go and say it: this would be very EASY for them to do!

Yes, I have hidden knowledge about how easy it is to port existing sets.

Hehe... well, it seemed pretty easy when they ported Dark Melee and Armor to Stalkers. I expect it's "as simple" to do the same with Kheld sets.

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Yes, but the issue is not the sets themselves. Its the villain content that goes along with the kheld sets that would be complicated. To give the villains that khelds without content would cause an uproar, since that would be unfair since the heroes get all those kheld arcs.

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IIRC those Kheld-specific arcs were added later. Did they debut the same time as the Kheldian AT itself?

As far as Villain Khelds having little appeal, I see this as a low hanging fruit, that would appeal to some people, and they could then say that both Heroes and Villains have an EAT. After all thet talk about Coralax, Incarnates, the now-defunct Avilans, and BotBS, it's the least they can do!

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Get over the villain EATs ... They're most likely (not for sure, but most likely), never going to be done. Posi said that they simply are more work than they're worth, and have been pushed each issue since I4.

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If we're talking Coralax Hybrids or Blood of the Black Stream then sure, those are probably pipe dreams. Villainside Nictus however, is just a port of certain Kheld sets and it could probably use the Warshade graphics. I'm gonna go and say it: this would be very EASY for them to do!

Yes, I have hidden knowledge about how easy it is to port existing sets.

Hehe... well, it seemed pretty easy when they ported Dark Melee and Armor to Stalkers. I expect it's "as simple" to do the same with Kheld sets.