Shadow State

Originally Posted by Dark_Respite

The one thing I can gloat about - I *HAVE* the facepalm emote. Granted, I can only do it via demofile, but I CAN STILL USE IT!

For such great shots as these...



Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Originally Posted by TrueGentleman

I was surprised at how comparatively unpopular Rogues and Vigilantes are:

Switching my main Stalker to a rogue was the first thing on my "to do" list for Going Rogue and Vigilante for my DP Blaster is next (now that I've taken my main MM ). Are Alignment Merits the deciding factor, or is it down to general player preference?

Originally Posted by Thunder Knight

For magic types, a variation of the old Indian Rope Trick immediately comes to mind. You literally anchor the line to nothing, and then swing (instead of climb).

And since highly-advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic, just technobabble up an explanation as to why you can do the same without magic. ("Well you see, Timmy, I've anchored the end of the rope to a specific point in the space-time continuum, which is even better than anchoring it to a solid surface!" "Gee whiz, Mr. Lizard!")

Originally Posted by LegionAlpha

The first thing I know will be nip picking is "We've got seven years of content, lore, " my first words were so. The competition has what? 60 plus years of content/lore they can delve into, plus books,games, animated series etc.

Originally Posted by EU_Damz

Pst, might want to edit your post . . . . . . . . not supposed to know stuff that hasnt been released to the public

Originally Posted by Scene_EU

As Resistance and Defence get capped so easily, having a purple set would be kind of pointless imo. For example there would be no need to 5 slot defence for the 10% rech when 1 LOTG can do just as well, and there are quite a few decent set bonuses on both def & res sets that are close to what a purple set would offer.

Originally Posted by Bionic_Flea

Hmmm . . . either a beast run power that runs on all fours or a new shapeshifting AT like kheldians, but with an animal theme. And this beast is being chased by an alien ship -- perhaps Rikti or the Coming Storm.

Originally Posted by Utopia

What if Shalice's birthday is the earlier date of 1920 and her later Bday is her current host?

Originally Posted by BlueBattler

Eh. I'm just assuming that Praetorian Shalice has been stealing bodies a lot longer than Primal Shalice did.

Originally Posted by BlueBattler

Primal Earth Steve is not a super scientific genius, Praetorian Steve is. That's the dichotomy.
Not that Praetorian Steve is evil, but that he's smarter than his Primal counterpart.

Originally Posted by Pedro Schwartz

Say WHAAT?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Its really the stacking mechanics, not the complexity of the mitigation system, that makes it challenging to balance mitigation across the entire game. With proportional multiplicative stacking, it would be almost trivial (regeneration would still need to be qualitatively balanced).

The system is actually too *simple* for its own good. Its easy for number crunchers to calculate what's going on, but its non-intuitive. I would have made it intuitive, even at the expense of making life more difficult for the number crunchers.


From a mathematical point of view, the mitigation balance issue in CoH can be summarized as being inevitable consequences of three things: attack rate, pace of combat, and linear defense/resistance stacking. You can play games working around the issue, but to actually solve it you would need to break one of those three elements of the current game design: make combat last longer, make attacks shoot faster, or change stacking.

The combination basically means bosses need a level of mitigation guaranteed to reach stacking problem levels, because they have to hit harder than the minions that are already designed to hit pretty hard per attack, because the minions must be able to generate a reasonable amount of damage per attack, because they are not intended to last very long because of the pace of combat. Thus, critters do enough damage to force the players to build enough protection to last against them, which forces the devs to provide those levels of protection, which then allows players to stack to unreasonable levels of protection.

By the way, people comment a lot about why there's so much defense in the game in terms of optional powers and features (power pools, inspirations, etc) and so little resistance, when oddly powersets are almost opposite: there's so much more resistance than defense in primary and secondary mitigation sets.

That's actually a reflection of the problem with stacking. Resistance is so much easier to control and balance for, because its less "bursty." That, combined with healing or regeneration (or a little defense) tends to make a stable, easy to balance powerset. Defensive sets are harder to balance for, because their bursty nature means they don't always behave as the average calculations suggest, and the devs had an initial reluctance to couple defense with healing or regeneration. So there's more resistance sets than defensive ones: they are easier to make.

But if that's the case, why lucks but not (originally) sturdies? Why are lucks stronger? Why so much defense in the invention sets? Answer: because defense has active counters, while resistance doesn't. Defense can be debuffed in a way resistance cannot, unless you make the debuffs unresistable (which the devs do not want to do). Defense can be neutralized by the attacker with tohit buffs that do not need to affect the target to work. Defense can be neutralized by giving the critters higher intrinsic base tohit. The devs can give away defense in the power pools and the invention system because defense is the easiest thing to take away if they need to. And the devs have to be able to counter those buffs, because the stacking rules mean that whenever they add a tiny resistance buff somewhere, they have to assume someone is going to stacking it up and head for the resistance cap, and the value of that tiny amount of resistance can be very high stacked on a high resistance character. Basically, they can let us soft cap, because they can knock us off of the cap easily. They cannot let us easily res cap, because its very hard to knock someone off the res cap without resorting to exotic mechanics.

Summary: defense sets are hard to balance for, because there are so many counters to defense and defense is bursty. So more sets rely on resistance than defense. But for the exact same reason, they don't mind optional powers having more defense than resistance, because those don't need to be explicitly balanced for, they need to be able to be neutralized when needed. This is oversimplifying, but its the main cause of the situation we're in.

People often ask the devs to add more resistance buffs to the invention system, because its "unfair" to "resistance sets." The great irony of that request is that if the devs ever acceded to it, it would probably be at the cost of adding unresistable resistance debuffs to the game to compensate, or worse unresistable damage, in much the same way the defense in the invention system is counterbalanced by the current level of defense counters. And not even that, since we now have the DE in tip missions with 64% base tohit. I don't think players want to start seeing DE in tip missions packing unresistable damage just yet.

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha

And don't try to prevent me pointing out the obvious, like the fact the Devs have specifically said that there are Engine Limitations involved. Y'know, the thing the game runs on?

I'm pretty sure no ones actually addressed that point and instead skirted around it so far

Originally Posted by Toony

It isn't a badge for PVP. Reinforcement is a badge for PVP. Rocket Man and others are badges for doing PVE content the devs short sightedly put in PVP zones because they thought that would somehow spur on PVP.

Originally Posted by Megajoule

This would all be solved if the (current) Devs would accept that no amount of carrot is going to make non-PvPers want or enjoy PvP, and make it possible to get the PvE temp powers they put in those zones available by other means.

Originally Posted by McBoo

Just for the sake of clarification when folks say anchor points are they talking about creating "physical" anchor points that have to be targeted while using the travel power or just having available anchor points in the vicinity that would explain where the terminating swing line is actually anchored?

Obviously having to target your anchor points would make for alot of fun as you would really have to learn "how to drive" but the terminating line version used by Champions Online is sufficiently fun and it also takes a bit of finesse for landings.


^

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

I recall the word "and" being used. In fact I remember when BABs shot down the Underwater Zone Suggestion thinking it was so close to what was said about the Swinging travel power.

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha

Ok, this can be simplified very easily;

-The Devs already know some people want swinglines.
-If we get them, we get them.
-If we don't get them, we don't get them.
-Until we DO get them, there's little point bringing it back up and people kvetching over it, because it's a know request.

Simples, eh?

Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven

Not like it ever was in the first place! If you read the original bios in question, it never states anything explicitly... it's just that dirty sex-deprived gamers read into it and it became the way things were since the bios were never changed.

At least that is how I saw it.

Originally Posted by Schismatrix

You're wasting your breath. It's GG.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

The comcis are still cannon