Starsman

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I don't want the AI to be better at killing me. I want the AI to be more interesting to kill.

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this is a nice summary, Sam.
I agree.

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Here is the thing: The AI has to be better for the devs to do more interesting critters to fight.
Here is the bad thing: There are a lot of critters that were overpowered to compensate for horrible AI.

Mix the improved AI with the overpowered critters and you get issues like these. I think it's one of the reasons they avoided tweaking AI for so long, fear of retroactive buffs to these overcompensated critters. I am not sure how willing Castle will be to go back and fix the outlier cases. IF allowed, I can only foresee him doing so for extreme outliers that people bring up and not as an active pursue where he would be forced to decide what is overpowered.

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I remember reading articles about the processor wars.

Turns out that the PowerPC variant Apple was using was being retired by IBM. To replace it, Apple had 3 choices: Switch to IBM's "pro line" PowerPC's at a much higher unit cost, which would have saved the effort of converting software over; Switch to IBM's new low-cost Cell processor, which would also require software rewrites, and no promises of a standard instruction set; Or switch to Intel, which would also require software rewrites, but only once, as it's been standardized for years.

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Also, Apple had always keept an in-house version of OSX running on Intel CPUs since the jump to that new kernel, since, after all, the original OSX (NextStep) was an x86 OS.

In the keynote when the switch was announced all this was noted, but it had been very well "known" by the die hard mac community that frequented rumor sites since day one of OSX. Heck, when it was still called Rhapsody there were demos done on Intel machines, at that point rumors of dual CPU support were strong and the Intel version even behaved windows-like (menus on windows instead of top of screen.)

So truth is, there was no rewrite needed at all to just go Intel, it would just kill Classic mode.

PumBumbler: your avatar is extremely disturbing.

Wormhole is indeed a darn fun power an the reason I rolled my Grav/Energy (besides having a fun concept for her.)

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I love the /Ice users complaining about end use when only the aoe on /ice was changed.

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This. Everyone is complaining about end use issues even if their endurance was never changed at all. Some had end changes but overall everyone that was no perma-dom had endurance efficiency boosts.

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but now the secondaries suck so much endurance that youre constantly resting while the rest of the group moves on

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What secondary?
What level range?

The only real endurance efficiency "nerf" was to a couple of AoE powers (Fire's and Psi to be precise)

Other than that everyone should be performing way better in endurance consumption, unless you have a set with increased recharge times and are filling new gaps with endurance heavy controls or using AoE attacks against few targets.

You may also be running out of endurance if you wasting heavy hitting attacks on foes with little HP left. That's part of why tier 1 powers were kept at low recharge/damage/end levels.

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My individual experience isn't necessarily a useful data point. Neither is yours, to be frank.

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Yes, but I think it would be relatively easy (where is Starsman when you need him ?) to show objectively that fire/ is a faster solo set than gravity/. I am surprised you are even arguing the point, to be honest, as you seem fairly level-headed in most of your other posts.

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Gravity has some Ranged ST attacks but they are only useful to Doms with secondaries that lack ranged attacks and want to stick to range. Lift is an OK attack but no better than any optimized dom would use unless they wanted to go purely ranged.

Gravity's secondary effect is -speed, not -recharge. This means next to nothing as you already can immob in st or AoE.

Fire's secondary effect is bonus damage, that.... deals more damage. Ironically, Fire's ST immob is a better attack than Lift if you can get over the DoT aspect due to speed and bonus damage.

At high enough levels, Imp do indeed a lot of damage. It matters little if they focus on one foe or not as long as they don't fall asleep on the job. Before the Dom buff, my imps would do more damage than I would out of Domination.

I use Flashfire quite often even while soloing, but Wormhole is roughly equivalent. Only Wormhole is a bit less effective due to the drastically smaller radius. Would be nice if it did more damage to compensate. I don't think the positioning is enough compensation. Not to mention Wormhole comes so late... it would be nice if it got switched with Dimension Shift in order, but this is not a "buff Grav" thread.

Point is: I personally think Fire is a better damage set IF you feel you must fall back on your primary to do damage. Then again, Plant is even better than either (until you get pets.) However, other than pets, doms rarely need to fall into their primary for damage, again: unless they want to stick to range and have a range-light secondary.

Hitchhiking hotspots.

I like the buss idea in general. Hate waiting though (love CoV just geting into the ferries), would be nicer if you just click the buss stop and select what suburb to go to.

It would be very useful for lowbies, make IP way less painful to navigate and it would not negate travel powers because you would still be dropped by the suburb marker, you still got to move.

Not to mention, MA already does worse at entirely removing travel time. Right now, travel powers are only enforced if you want a form of quickly move inside of a mission map or want to stay the heck out of the MA.

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Adding an animation of a bus (could be problematic since it'd have to materialize out of nowhere)

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I would instead make a buss only you can see show up and you do an animation going inside it then fade to black and show at your destination.

The MA shows the game can display things that only you can see, in the case of the MA, it's contacts.

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While I agree in spirit I'd like to point out that DAoC was released with six core programmers and was considered one of the most solid releases of an MMO to date.

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Nevermind they licensed the Morrowind game engine (Gamebryo Element's NetImmerse) and still needed 6 guys to develop custom game systems on top of this already fully developed engine.

Cryptic's Engine is home grown and think one of the reasons why we still see their logo in this game despite CoH now being purely NCSoft's Property.

And editing for clarity: the topic here is about small teams making games from the ground up so games made out of licensed engines are irrelevant to the topic.

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I think you took my programming in their sleep comment too literal or yout being obnoxious about it, either way it was a cheap way to insult me.

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We did not take it literal, we took it as your extremely cheap way to insult the developers.

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Secondly, you clearly havent heard of Insomniac studios which started with four programmers, their first game was a playstation success called Disruptor and then later Spyro followed by the acclaimed Ratchet and Clank series. FOUR programmers.... developed an ENTIRE first person shooter, with levels and all. Programming code is primarily easy to those IN THE FIELD. Dont act oblivious just to try and disprove me.

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Doom was made by one guy too all by himself. Unfortunately, we are no longer in such an easy era. A simplistic 3D square 3D world and sprite enemies were indeed easy to make. That game is a tiny spec in the universe compared to the size and complexity of the simplest of today's MMOs. Heck, I bet there are bucket loads of Xbox Arcade games that rival the game's complexity.

You are pretending building a skyscraper is easy just because some dudes put together a shack by themselves.

I'm not sure if you ever seen a line of code in your life, but programming is NEVER as simple as it sounds at first and you can bet that the complexity of the tasks, especially in the game industry, only get more complex every passing year.

I a programmer, I have seen code behind real games, and I have seen code behind engines like Disruptor. Heck, Disruptor engine are things you end up doing when you are done with reading beginner books like the classic Black Book To 3D Game Programming. My analogy of comparing building a shack vs. a skyscraper is not hyperbole.

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Yeah, I understand the idea. What I don't agree with is that it warrants in-game rewards for choosing a specific path,

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Unless we talking just about badges. The post made it sound as if the extra slots were one of such loyalty rewards.

Not to mention it won't work. If you start purely neutral, no one starts on the hero or villain side so its meaningless.

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I really did miss you posting more often.

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Must mean he was unlocked out of his cage, may mean his work with power customization is complete and I16 will be here a month after 15 hits live.

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Every time some of us pointed out the detailed plans laid out in the August survey, many of you were quick to say "Hey that was just marketing folks regurgitating all our wish lists. No way all that stuff is planned!" Let's do a little review:

MA: Check.
Side switching in Going Rogue: Check.
Power customization in i16: Check.

But I'm sure we'll never see a Spy archetype or universal enhancement slots, right? If only they had put items on that survey that the devs were actually planning on implementing!

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It would be a big mistake to take that marketing survey as a roadmap for future content. I can think of at least 2 things that were on there that were either radically changed or outright cut, and a bunch of stuff that's not on there, but are being worked on right now.

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This translates to:

Everything in that list was planned at the time for reals BUT at least 2 things we changed our minds on. He just confirmed, at the time of posting, this was not just marketing, this WAS all planned to happen. Like everything that is unnanounced, though, things change. But its interesting to finally see some one directly say that all in that list was indeed on the designers' table an not just at marketing's heads.

My bed on the removed features:

A) 2.) Characters that do not wish to change sides are rewarded by becoming exemplary heroes or villains, and earning rewards not available any other way I bet this one as it would be a penalty for players that take a path just due to roleplaying reasons, something I bet the devs would not keep up once thought about for long.


B) 8.) New Spy Archetype, Power Sets & Costumes As cool as it sounds at first, a non-combat AT will be issolated from the rest of the community, there will no be a role for it on almost any team. This eventually would be an issue.

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I'm coming from a position of being constantly attacked and opposed for what I say, including by you. I'm called a liar, a child, an idiot and a villain.

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Because you tend to treat others in similar way and refuse objectiveness. You often go to extremes in your statements and tend to be armed with little more backup than "but comic book tankers..." which even the devs have noted is not a valid statement.

You say people that don't agree with you are blind or make smart statements as pitting them for enjoying the game. Heck even I expect it when some people slash at me due to my posts and tone. You really should not be shocked at the way people treat you seeing how you treat everyone else.

If you were a bit more civil to others, and more objective (like realizing this is not a comic book and balance is required and try to stay within the parameters) people would not troll you so bad.

I was being sarcastic. I was sure all you wanted was for me to give you some more ammo.

YOU want to dismiss a statement about tanker underperforming on a level range because of an unlinked source?

Anyways, the link is gone but City of Data has it here

Minor correction to my statement is that at least at the time, the sets with issues were not dimmed anywhere near the true horrendously worst performers. But this was before Stalker buffs, Kheledian buffs, Blaster buffs and Dominator buffs.

It's almost a 2 year old quote now, though. Things likely have changed a lot since, but other than buffs to almost everyone else, little has come to tankers other than Invuln.

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Datamining shows that, at level 50, no Tanker powerset performs below average when compared to all AT powersets. Only at very low levels do Tankers perform sub par, and even then, Invulnerability is not the worst performer.

So, while there are definitely issues with various Tanker powers and power sets, they aren't anywhere near the ones which need attention most.

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Like I said, one of the main issues with Tankers is that it's dull in the low levels.

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I did not say dull, I noted the devs admit there are performance issues with Low level tankers, not fun factor issues, just "they level too slow at that range compared to everyone else". And not only tanking but doing solo or teaming.

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As for the statistic, I'm referring to the numbers that were provided a long while ago by one of the devs. Tankers were doing fine.

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I been trying to get those again, they were purged from the forums. Know some one that has them but not available right now. Tankers were at the bottom of the hero side ATs in those numbers, though. They were not doing fine. Well, to be fair, they tied up with Defenders, both did rather bad in those numbers (note those were popularity numbers, not performance numbers.)

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I think Arcana's number crunching also showed that the progression of Tankers

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Her crunching, that was also purged by now, attempted assume AT migration based on creation/played ratios among other stuff. What she noted about tankers, if i recall right, was that players that make tankers tend to stick around more often than players that make other ATs. She ended up noting that the numbers were not enough to guess trends, though.

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what's Footstomp without the knockdown?

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A high damage AoE with high reach?

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Stun without...stun?

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Stun's stun is not a secondary effect. It's the primary effect. Same goes for the Fear in Dark Melee. The heal is a secondary effect, though.

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I'd have a problem with dropping secondary effects and Gauntlet switching to offensive stance.

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Meaning the penalties are real and not trivially ignored!

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Oh, and they simplified Masterminds over time.

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No, they complicated them with Bodyguard. They been fixing AI but you still have to handle those critters to provide you with bodyguard.

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If there was a way to redesign Kheldians to be simpler without redoing the entire AT, I think it'd get done.

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I highly doubt it. The AT has been buffed but complexity was never touched even if it was possible to do so.

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All for...boosting damage to an AT that statistically, though low population, has an historically excellent level progression rate.

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I would love to see your source of statistics. What I recall seeing from devs was that the AT levels slow but not the worst performers in the game and definitively not outside of the "must rebalance because they suck" bounds.

With the MA removing travel time from leveling and putting much more emphasis on mission combat, I ponder how that has changed, though...

Anyways, they also noted that tankers actually DO fall in the red zone at the low levels, think something between 5 and 18. I'd be curious if the average data-mining makes them better after 18 due to how many just gave up eliminating them from future level data-mining.

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The point was that I don't think Kheldians step on other ATs toes because of their limitations. They can emulate other ATs to a very limited point, but those modes in-and-of-themselves don't rival those other ATs.

A stancing Tanker would come a lot closer to Scrappers than a Dwarf comes to a Tanker or Nova to Blaster, simply due to having entire powersets at their disposal.

From what Starsman is saying about his proposal, though there would be ways to "make it work," it seems a bit too complicated, given the way this game generally seems to strive to simplify.

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Other than cast time there is no recharge between shape shifting. I see quite a few shades switch shape to human and back only to add more attacks. The time out of dwarf is so short it tends to not be deadly. This way they can sustain constant offensive.

Now, as for the idea, it would be way easier to implements than it sounds, as for simplicity, this game does not strive towards it that badly. Look how Mastermind Bodyguard works, it's not a "simple" mechanic, nor is Kheledian shape shifting.

The way I portray stances the Tank would be less than a threat to scrappers than brutes or stalkers. I don't even think it's impossible for it to happen, it almost happened for blasters. Castle actually proposed it for them but they complained it was too big of a swtich from what blasters are and they needed that buff.

It's not that different from what tankers do, though specially if you play stone, you are already used to "stances" if you do.

Can't tell about the PFX right now, but I can tell you the "Power Scripts" that tell the Power Engine what to do are indeed compiled to binary and get to our computers in binary format. They are not compiled in real time.

Would not be amazed if the PFX scripts are the same way.

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A script file, for all intents and purposes is just a flat text file with values.

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But what happens when the script gets "compiled" into a binary format that is basically just byte code the game engine interprets? Not much different from the OS executing application code.

As you say: the devil is in the details and my real point was to note that it indeed is hard coded.

Other than that, I don't think I used the "hard" word in a difficulty context, the other points I listed were simply to note the challenges that had to be overcome before things were able to be put into place and perhaps those changes had to be fully implemented before the PFX modification could get started at all or run the risk of being forced to do the full PFX modifications all over again for some new engine requirement.

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Build a process that stores the PFX values in memory as a temp/semi-temp object and point your existing systems to that process rather than the PFX files themselves.

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The problem here is you assume that the PFX is just a list of values, or config file, while in truth it's a script file the game engine executes.

Once you realize the PFX is working as a script, and the engine is just reacting to it, you will realize that Hard Coding is the right term to use.

The system has always been able to take values into this that come from the player. Instead of scritping the PFX to read:

Render Particle In Red

to

Render particle in CostumeColorVector43,

Thats the hard coding that had to be changed and was noted would had been time consuming.

The part that was a true hurdle, though, was not this but the "effect on target". The effect playing on the target would read CostumeColorVector43 from the target, not from the caster. That was the biggest change that would had require reprogramming. At first sounds simple but the system also had no way of knowing the source of the script being played on the entity. As far as the engine knows, the script is for the entity's damage aura, fire shield, or the web grenade that was tossed on it. All look the same for the engine and there was no simple way to make the engine know the web grenade came from a different entity.

At that point you may realize the change is not as simple as it seemed at first, specially when you have to make sure performance is not affected. First thing that comes to mind is change the code to have the script trigger include caster IDs but not seeing their code I am not sure how much code would have to change due to intermediate pipelines.

/em looks up

Darn and I wanted to keep this one short....

No actually now that you say that I think you are right, it did stun and it was "unfair" to sets without status protection (then fire) and entirely over-wirable. The detogling cmae from the stun if you were not running status protection (I think.)

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So far, I am only expecting them to allow us to pick one color tint for all of your primary and another for all of your secondary. I doubt there will be much more detail. I doubt you will be able to customize every single power's color individually. I doubt you will be able to change the particle types and i doubt you will be able to hide particles. I also doubt we would get to customize epic pool tints.

If any of that becomes possible, the delivery will exceed my hype. If just uniform tinting of prmary and secondary becomes possible, the delivery will match my hype. So for me at least, it's impossible for the devs to disappoint me.

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^^^

I'd also like to add, some speculation has people believing we're getting full power customization in the forms of animations and such as well. Anyone believing this is setting themselves up for disappointment.

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I ironically think animation customization may be easier than tint. Right now the game supports a priority system for animations, if an animation is set to higher priority it will animate instead of whatever else you are doing.

The current fly animations work this way, they are higher priority than the standard fly animation. This allows you to activate the custom fly emote and your new emote overrides the default.

In theory, the devs can do some heavy interface tweaking where you can "edit" the power icons as if they were maccros. Imagine in theory that the icon for the power Punch simply executes the command /power_name Punch

Well, if you were to edit the text you may be able to set it to:

/power_name Punch
/emote slap

Now, the interface would not show you that but instead a list of possible attack emotes you would be able to use instead of the default punch.

Now here is the tricky, you got to make sure that the power only allow you to pick from animations that are just equally long as the attack's animation or shorter. If you decide to use a shorter animation you still would be forced to endure a pause after attacking.

As far as I know, things like glowy hands are attached to the skeleton themselves, and so are blast sources, so even if you changed the animation a fire ball would still come off your hand even if you changed it to a wave animation that puts your arm up. This last part is a bit of educated speculation, though.

This is all theoretically possible, but not sure how time consuming, i also doubt it will be part of I16 at all.

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Kruunch, the guy think it's so easy it can be done by sleeping programmers.

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I do most of my good programming in my sleep!

PS: Stars, can you change the title, "comming" is driving my english-inclined side crazy.

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Too late to edit, trying to do my best to correct it on every post i do but people keep replying to the OP or other posts in the thread and keeping it coming back!!!