Monkey_King

Amalgamate still has four. Heck, I even went and figured out the scalar damage on the Rock. Nasty little projectile, as it turns out; about as damaging as an unslotted medium Blaster attack.

I really hope this next winter that the snowballs are more widely available. I really wanted to have a snowball fight in one of the PvP zones... then mix in a rock. I'm a cheating scoundrel, I am.

Trick or treating was great fun, but I hope there's some Halloween-themed missions this time around. Camping the doors was kinda boring.

Stalker snipes are going to need to be toned down a little, methinks. If my math is right, a Stalker's Build-Up + crit snipe won't be as powerful as a Blaster's Aim + Buildup snipe, but it'll be awfully close. Suddenly, Stalker sniper squadrons are a thing to truly be feared; 8 of them could just about wipe a whole team, Tankers included.

Well, the good news: I was able to enter my newspaper mission without crashing this time! The zone crashing appears to be cleared up, at least on my end.

The bad news: The memory leaks are so bad the game is unplayable. Severe stuttering inside my mission, and the game fell to a slideshow outdoots. I kept unavoidably straying near gun turrents on account of the game lag, and everytime I took fire, the game had to stop for about 15 seconds to try and wrench some memory free to render the attack. I blundered into another one while on autofly, and sat there for over a minute until the game finally rendered my suddenly dead body on the ground.

I would really like to help make further tests, but the memory leaks make it impossible. The game is at full-on unplayable status at the moment.

Side-note, the game also refused to shut down properly. After quitting to desktop, I had to force it to close to make the program completely go away. Was playing in windowed mode, if that might be the culprit.

Played another mayhem mission the other day. Really only a few things to comment on:

1. After finishing up the smash and grab side mission, exiting through the door sent me out of the mayhem mission entirely, back to Port Oakes. The mission didn't reset, but it was kind of jarring. Additionally, the mission never appeared to "end". The yellow point remained on my map.

2. I also found a clue for an imprisoned villain. The "free the villain" side trips are totally not worth it. It takes a while to fight your way down to the basement, and then tangle with the boss, especially if the Longbow ambush arrives at the same time. Battering down those reinforced doors is no trivial matter too. Extra time really needs to be awarded for springing the villain.

3. The stalker Echidna only ever seemed to use Impale. I'm sure she had other attacks, but all I ever got out of her was the big wind-up attack. Also, she was classified as a boss, not a pet. Is this intentional?

4. Mastermind henches have severe issues with large metal containers. They run all around the things, apparently unsure of where the actual 'target' is. They also have a bad habit of trying to attack the invisible thing that generates the anti-teleport fields in the PPD jail cells.

Also, many many thanks for making that Raptor Pack the reward for the Atlas Park mission! Jetpacks for lowbies is possibly the best reward in the game.

Dollymistress, to save you some trouble, I can confirm that Raider is not required for Megalomanic. Apis Queen doesn't have it. Crystal Keeper is probably the only missing badge, which is unfortuante since that last mission is kind of a pain.

Dunno if anybody else has commented on this yet. I'm not really thrilled that most of Grandville's music seems to recycled from other zones. I hope the recycled music is just being used as a placeholder until the final music tracks are put in?

I'm noticing in other threads that the SFX for Fulcrum Shift, visual FX for Force Fields, and at least one costume option appear to have come down the pipe corrupt. I'm hoping that's the real reason the pistol sound effects are so weak. The gunshot just doesn't sound right for any sort of pistol, much less those big giant ones.

Shut up, guys. Positron is going easy on us. This really isn't anywhere as bad as I thought it would be. The guy is a regular spawn, even (I think?) It's not like a giant monster, where you have to watch the zone for three hours.

As for the mean villains issue, it just means that the badge hunters are going to have to cooperate. The obvious answer is to hold the tram in between spawns, and if there's more than one team doing this, whack the guy in shifts. It's going to take a while, but I think we expected that. We can make a regular weekend event out of it.

Or just wait three months after launch to get it out of your system, THEN start hunting the guy. The villains are bound to get tired of camping the tram eventually.

In order to fit into Project Destiny (and thus seamlessly integrate themselves into the Rogue Isles along with all the 'native' villains), fallen heroes will have to wind up in the Zig at some point during the trial. While they're there, evil heroes can grab Jail Bird. Redeemed villains can acquire Isolator in RV as normal. Problem solved.

Heck, to save yourself time, redeemed villain badge hunters can wait and pick up Isolator BEFORE changing sides. This being the only way to obtain the badge, there shouldn't be any shortage of villain hunting teams... competing with the oldbie hero hunting teams...

Wow, is Recluse's Victory going to be full of anger.

Just an observation. The TV really needs to require a different badge. Nobody is going to have the King Midas badge. In CoH, my Blaster got his 2nd influence badge naturally sometime around level 40, and he'd been earning full influence rewards his whole career. Bling is hard enough to get for Doc Buzzsaw; this is flat out penalizing people for being members of a SG.

Just to chime in, I also think the pistol sound needs fixing. It doesn't sound right at all, especially with the size of the hammers I'm toting around. They should at least sound like the handguns used by those Longbow Guardians.

The Punks seem to be awfully slow, but I think that's a symptom of the lag out in Mercy Island. When the server gets laggy, you tend to lose your pets.

Former Robots MMs take note: when in melee range, the Punks will alternate between their pistol attacks and their brawl, unlike Robots who will use their brawl exclusively. They prefer ranged combat, but if you think you can prop them up, you've got the option of running everyone into melee combat too.

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Refrence for MMs:
Web Envelope
-Foe: Hold
-Range: 80 (Explosion)
-Endurance: 12.74
-Recharge Rate: 20 seconds

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I thought Web Envelope was supposed to be an AoE immobilize power? Giving us the numbers doesn't help much if the power descriptions are typoed as the dickens.

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After testing: Bodyguard is infinitely helpful in PvE.

But, as I predicted, it's easily bypassed by players in PvP.

TP foe easily removes the MM from Supremacy (and therefore Bodyguard) range into mines/stalkers/blappers, etc for an easy kill.

This will become a critical issue in PvP.

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Yes, but that happens to everybody. A BRUTE teleported away from his team stands a good chance of getting slaughtered by the teleporter's team if caught by surprise. Better to say that Bodyguard doesn't insulate a Mastermind any better than everyone else.

Echoing what everyone else is saying here: pet AI needs to be adjusted so that they attack when the MM is attacked, hit or miss, not just when the MM takes damage.

Additionally, the default 'Follow' macro needs to be switched to Follow + Defensive. The Follow + Aggressive was a stupid macro to begin with, and newbies who don't want to fumble with building new macros should have a one-touch Bodyguard button at their disposal.

What enhancements does the pet summon accept? Does it function like a Mastermind pet (need to slot for its damage and accuracy) or could you three slot the thing for recharge reduction? It approaches tolerable if you can get the pet down to about 4 minutes of downtime, although that's still awfully long.

Do the Spiderlings stealth when the Stalker owner stealths?

I would have put the portal someplace else, myself. Don't the devs already acknowledge that Atlas Park is way too crowded as it is?

I thought Back Alley Brawler was retired? CoV says he's only a threat to level 30-40 villains anyway. Citadel would have been a much better candidate if they needed a Tanker out there.

At least the whole time travel thing makes a little more sense now, with the idea of using temporal anchors to "overwrite" the real future with this alternate future. That of course spawns a lot more questions about this alternate timeline, but that's quantam physics for you.

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Many have complained that this hinders creativity and roleplaying. After all, not everyone wants to be a villain that works for Arachnos. Certainly, a large strength of the City franchise has always been its customizability. To a degree, the Patron powers somewhat inhibit this by compelling people into “working” for certain Arachnos agents. The powers also do not dovetail perfectly into current power sets.

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It was never a problem for ME, but I think I see what other people are griping about: you've spoiled everyone with all this freedom! CoH and CoV up until now have offered such broad customization and freedom of character concept, that it's kind of jarring when a frankly standard level of MMO concept restriction is suddenly introduced.

Also, the fact that darkness powers and red Mu lightning don't mesh too well with every single character concept is a legit complaint no matter what. Even if you're okay with the idea of being gifted powers from a patron, ghost sharks just aren't going to work with every character. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with my Stalker.

Also, tell your powers guys that we liked it better as Chum Spray! Some Blasters are still calling their level 49 power Foce of Nature; you can change the power name, but we're still gonna call it Chum Spray whether you like it or not.

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So, do you actually "pledge loyalty" to the patrons in game, plot-wise? Or did you write it in a way that Player Characters can see it as lip-service?

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This would probably fix a lot of complaints people have about the whole affair. If the patron relationship is explained in a way that you can possibly consider it little more than a business arrangement, with payment in the form of powers instead of money, it would make some people a lot happier.

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Sure. I think, compared to many other self heals, Aid Self is over-powered. Mainly, this is due to how Interrupt powers work, and a scale that is slightly too high, so it would not be an easy change to make. It would also be very unpopular, and, in the end, it isn't strictly necessary. So, it stays as is.

Of course, that means every AT that has a self heal can now complain that it isn't as effective as Aid Self, and what are they getting to make this fair? Not much, I'm afraid. The only thing I can really say is that taking Aid Self in addition to their normal Self Heal will increase their survivability.

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That's why I always felt guilty about taking Aid Self, back before everyone knew how awesome it is. >_>

On one hand, it's not always that easy to just squeeze off in the middle of a fight, though, especially with multiple foes shooting at you and stacking up DoT. Zeus Titans sure don't make it easy on me. And, you DO essentially have to waste a whole power slot to get at your awesome self heal, whereas people with their own self heals don't have to stretch themselves at all.

On the other hand, I do think it was a mistake to shorten the activation time. 2 seconds of interruptability is what really kept the thing from being abusable. You could always push for the old activation time to come back. I've managed to squeeze in a heal in between DoT ticks before.

I thought the whole reason for the Taunt limit was so that one Tanker can only hold on to so many enemies in a spawn, thus possibly requiring more than one on a big team?

Ooh, I like. You give up quite a bit, but your henchmen don't just stand there doing nothing while acting as your meat shields, either. I honestly think I'll be able to safely wander out into PvP now; all 6 robots guarding me should easily give me enough time to dose a foe up with all my debuffs before ordering the attack.

However, I'm not quite sure I see where Personal Force Field would be abusive here. Given that Supremacy shuts off like most other external powers, you can't be guarded by your henchmen while in the bubble. And rapidly toggling the thing on and off is no more abusing with Bodyguard than it was before. Why the nerf, then?

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- Hand-Eye Coordination
- Muscle Control
- Foresight
- Extensive Imagination

These are things needed to draw WELL. Anyone can learn to draw, sure... but there ARE certain things that people are born with to a much higher degree than others. Given the same amount of time, someone with the inherent ability to draw well will always draw better than the person who couldn't draw well in the first place.

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I completely disagree. There is no such thing as the inherent ability to 'draw well'. Nobody just picks up a pencil and knows how to draw hands correctly, even the good artists.

Simply put, everyone starts off at crayon drawings. A few kids might be a bit more coherent in what they draw with crayons, but from a practical standpoint nobody starts out ahead. There's no magic gene that lets someone immediately draw the Virtuvian. Someone with "lots of talent" still has to start from scratch and learn the basics of anatomy the hard way; they start at 0 the same as non-artists.

The kids you knew in school who were better at drawing were so because they wanted to draw, and had tons of drawings back at home to show for it. If any talent is involved, it's only in realizing how much you suck at X, and having the drive to improve yourself until you are really good at X.

Wow, blast from the past.

The +1 enemies were/are a bug? Huh. Considering that difficulty levels 2 and 4 take the higher level spawns into account, I guess that bug has turned into a feature. -_o

I thought Placate worked in PvP the same way it did in PvE, and only stealthed you against the target of your Placate. >_>

Well, if Stalkers are dumb enough to be hassling entire teams while solo, they really deserve to get creamed. You're lucky to get the Assassin Strike off in the first place and not be spotted on your approach.

My only disappointment is how bland the Mastermind powers are. Apart from the armor, there's nothing in there that really screams "must have". A second hold is sure nice to have, but an AoE immobilize seems of questionable use, and a second AoE attack is right out unless it's packing some serious firepower.

PvP in Recluse's Victory is going to be really interesting, though, with all the villains bringing a backup army for support.

Also, I spy a typo. The trend here seems to be for Dominators to get the best pet, a boss class enemy, and Corruptors getting a lieutenant class pet. However, I note that it says Corruptors get a Coralax Red Hybrid (the bosses), while Doms get the Blue Hybrids. I think they got it backwards.

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Kronos Won.

His blasts have a -regen component, plus babbage wasted a lot of time summoning cogs that were promptly one-shotted by the Kronos footstomp

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Ahahaha. Is this what you guys do after hours? Spawn giant monsters on your internal servers and make them fight? That is awesome.

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As for changing secondaries, when I was interviewing for this position over a year ago, this was the thing I mentioned I wanted to 'fix.' It's still something I want to do, but there are a couple technical and design philosophy problems to overcome. The design philosphy isn't easy to change, but it's hardly in the realm of impossibility. The tech side, though, is very much non-trivial. Since I've no control over programming schedules (for good reason, I might add) it is something I cannot do much of anything about.

FYI: my first COH character on Live was (is) a Fire/Fire Blaster.

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What design philosophy are you talking about? About the only type of power that doesn't appear in the Blaster secondaries anywhere are defensive powers, and the APPs render that a bit moot. There's even a couple debuffs in there of sorts. If it's the whole melee bit, I don't think most people want to see melee vanish entirely from the secondaries; blapping should be just as much an option as playing an Offender.

Still, glad to hear you guys are at least aware of the problems and looking at it, even if you admit that they're not easy problems and will probably take a while to deal with.

I still want Greater Fire Sword, though. C'mon, I promise nobody'll miss Blazing Aura.