Starsman

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like Issue1 Rage version of Superstrength.

[/ QUOTE ]

It used to have a persistent self debuff?

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

As for Hard Coding, depending what you are doing hard coding can mean different things. Some one that writes a script that gets stored into a file may consider this "hard coded" because the engine cant modify it in real time, while the programer that writes the engine would consider it dynamic and data-driven as it does not require recompiles.

However even then a change in hue of a power required a PIGG recompile even if not a .exe recompile. When BABs says the hue was hard coded he meant it in the way I just stated: there was no way for the game to change it on the fly.

Not to mention, even if it indeed was there the server now needs to send additional data tied to the character definition.

[ QUOTE ]
A group of individuals can write code in their sleep. It's all about the engine, in this matter;

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm curious what was the game of that massively customizable mmo you made again?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Conceptually, its not that rare when tough guy tanks go in blind rages and become much more vulnerable but devastating offensively (compared to their norm) something Rage sort of mimics for Super Strength. I'm not sure why the devs never gave Rage a persistent survivability debuff, though.

[/ QUOTE ]

We have that, it's called Fury.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not really the same, Fury is like the hulk, it just gets stronger and stronger as it goes.

The blinding rage that leaves you open to everything is a bit different, it does not increase with time, it has a maximum and it tends to be all or nothing. It tends to be accompanied with the death of the hero in question just as he lands the last blow, though.

[ QUOTE ]
No, that sounds about right. Divert funding and staff to MUO, put all the "most requested" features in that game, and cut the staff for CoX down to 15. Yep, sounds accurate.

[/ QUOTE ]

My tinfoil hat was for the part where I hint at Cryptic actually intending the failure of CoH once MUO was out the doors.

[ QUOTE ]
I laughed a little, it's funny that since Champions Online, CoH is officially stealing pages, nay whole books from them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is it? It has been desired to do this for ages but always dimmed too hard for upper management to want it. Same upper management that took money and resources away from CoH to develop MUO with those same features.

It's funny how those features got into development the moment they parted ways. It's almost as if "we know players want this, if we give it to them in CoH why would they buy MUO? Lets make sure they never get it and sabotage CoH, we will get more out of the MUO deal than the NCSoft one"

/em polishes tinfoil hat

[ QUOTE ]
I can't say its a bad thing, but if we have to wait for another upcoming MMO to experience the same content, then epic fail for the Devs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Conspiracy theories aside, it was indeed Cryptic that didn't allow this game to invest resources in power customization. You can bet this did not start yesterday, I bet its been in development since the week after CoH became NCSoft's property. I actually would worry more about CO. If you play that and find yourself wanting a killer feature, brace yourself as it will be noted as the key feature for their NEXT game, not as an upgrade for CO.

[ QUOTE ]
Color palettes are the easiest thing to do in any game. You can ask any developer, it's been done on weaker engines , like the NES or SNES.

[/ QUOTE ]

Been discussed many times, it is NOT an easy thing to do given the way the game was implemented. The problem was not the engine.

But you know, any good programer will tell you you can run the .exe through a decompiler and then do some code changes around yourself. It was very lazy of you to not do that. It's NES easy.

[ QUOTE ]
Especially since people have been modding CoH for a while now.

[/ QUOTE ]

They have been repainting textures. That alone shows how fixed the game is handling this. If the game supported dynamic tinting changes via those mods would do nothing other than change transparency and opacity.

[ QUOTE ]

Which still doesn't sound like a bad penalty to me. It'll be perfectly fine both solo and teamed, especially considering Tankers have better AoE mitigation tools as part of their secondaries, as well as buffs on a team, while still being able to manage aggro like a champ.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I recall in that post (it was long i just scratched my memory here) noting secondary effect and taunt shutdown while in the offensive mode.

[ QUOTE ]

Probably the biggest reason why people don't play Kheldians as full replacements for Tankers or Blasters is the limited, non-progressing number of attacks. They get what they get and that's it, when it comes to those modes.

[/ QUOTE ]

They get enough to do full attack chains.

[ QUOTE ]
Lastly, and ultimately (for me), I don't think going ape-[censored] offensive (but not quite Scrapper) with less defence than a Scrapper says "Tanker" to me at all. You'd have to change the name of the AT while you're at it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually it does double way. Many MMOs tanks have the mode precisely due to the mutli-tank issues, so mechanically it makes sense.

Conceptually, its not that rare when tough guy tanks go in blind rages and become much more vulnerable but devastating offensively (compared to their norm) something Rage sort of mimics for Super Strength. I'm not sure why the devs never gave Rage a persistent survivability debuff, though.

The thing is not that its "bad" to have 4 tankers, the thing is just what you do if there is nothing but tanks looking.

Blasters, duh.
Scrappers, duh.
Kheledians, duh.
Controllers can bring much more damgae than tankers to teams. Each additional controller makes the team safer than the first, albeit you may find the point where its redundant its due to lack of stronger challenges.
Defenders? Depends. The only one that can't boost damage in some way is Force Fields and Empaths can only boost 2 team-mates reliably, other than that all defenders can boost damage to a point where the more the better. Each additional defender makes the team safer than the first, albeit you may find the point where its redundant its due to lack of stronger challenges.

Tankers? Well, they can hold their own, may require a bit less babysitting than scrappers and dish between 64% to 70% of the scrapper/blaster damage, which will get the job done, although nowhere near as well as multiples of any other AT.

Also although one tanker makes the team safe, the second tanker rarely is needed to make the team safer. Stronger challenges wont make the second tanker more useful, unless taking over after one tank falls is considered useful.

Bigger spawns may make multiple tankers useful but there is no reason to fight larger groups due to target caps. It's easier and much more efficient to pursue harder content than more numerous content. Even if you pursue larger spawns the spawns required to justify a third may cause too splash damage for non-tankers to handle unless they happen to be scrappers and kheledians.

So yes, the second tank "works", there are situations where you may be able to split the teams but its very map dependent. Ambushes are not used enough but when they are they may make a second (although not a third) tank shine.

In every situation its better to get more of the other AT than more tanks UNLESS the player behind the keyboards of the other ATs plainly sucks, but thats another topic and not one AT balance is subject to as the same can be said about taking a tanker at all if he plainly sucks.

[ QUOTE ]
For those who have this gawd awful power let me ask this, does domination boost it at all?

[/ QUOTE ]

Domination does nothing for Shifting.

Enhancements can work on one or the other: duration or magnitude, not on both.
Due to how you can not stack shift on a target, the devs decided to go for magnitude slotting.

OK, who wants a used iPhone?

[ QUOTE ]
If you get one highly adaptable melee AT that can 80-90%

[/ QUOTE ]

And about 75% of the scrapper survivability.

[ QUOTE ]

Again, the only solution would have been to have only 1 melee AT that could switch roles via stances, but that's a decision past 5 years ago.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not really, it is something that could be added on top of the AT without disrupting its current feel, it would just be an addition on top. Again, main reason I'd not go that way is because Kheledians already do that. ALL of that. They can be blasters now and Tankers 2 seconds later. Funny thing, people still play blasters and tankers despite having unlocked kheledians!

[ QUOTE ]
As for your calculations, can you explain them a bit more? How does a Scrapper at 1.181 ds go to 0.68, then to 100%, whereas a Tanker goes from 0.8 go to 0.3 go to 30%? If 0.68 is 100%, shouldn't the Tanker at 0.3 be 0.44?

[/ QUOTE ]

I messed things up a bit by attempting to use .5 as the "true lowest damage", but that lowest is so conditional that we all know it's not real (controllers without containment and without pets and without secondary help, may as well include with the planets aligned)

True min should be .65 (defenders) and was what I was going to use and what I started calculating from, seems I missed a few corrections.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, is that truly taking into account the fact that many control powers have very little damage associated with them

[/ QUOTE ]

It's very hard to fully describe controller damgage in few lines. Immobs do are balanced as real attacks although their end is 50% higher than normal (paying up for the immob I guess.)

If so chosen controllers have access to 3 melee attacks quickly though (if they are bold to do so)

Fighting Boxing+Kick
Any Travel Pool of choice's Attack.

These are at .5 but also affected by containment to bring them to 1, if you start the ST Chain with an immobilize. Yea "pool powers should not be counted bla bla" but they are there and they have access to them and the modifiers apply to them.

And off course, there is pet damage. Again: controller offensive is hard to talk about in few lines but I am sure (from experience) that if I was to do an in deep analysis numbers would prove I been understating the modifiers (unless I'm on my plant's.... that flytrap sucks)

[ QUOTE ]
If we're going to go with the 5-year old descriptions of the ATs, then Blaster's HP should be lowered

[/ QUOTE ]

I was not quoting 5 year old text.
http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_inf...rchetypes.html

You can turn it off????

*bangs at the glassy touchscreen*

[ QUOTE ]
Invisibe is a bad idea because not all mobs can get shifted based on how the person slots the power.

[/ QUOTE ]

1000 Stealth to target if target if PhaseShifted after a .5 second dellay

[ QUOTE ]
Agreed, ranged attacks are their own form of defense. Adding them to an archetype that already possesses superior defense is overkill and invalidates the other archetypes in the game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nerf Hurl and Epic pools!!!

Darn that was pointed on the first reply and I missed it, too late to edit!!!

That should teach me to stop posting from my iphone, whoever designed it's spellchecker and autocomplete should be shot.

[ QUOTE ]
which I'm against because it diminishes the distinction between ATs

[/ QUOTE ]

This may get the text changed before the AT but still:

[ QUOTE ]
The Tanker is an irresistible force combined with an immovable object. This Archetype can take and dish out all sorts of damage.

The Tanker is not totally invulnerable, but his skills allow the other Archetypes to play their parts, too. The Tanker is a devastating hand to hand combatant, and ranks second only to the Scrapper in sheer melee power. He possesses some ranged abilities, though far below those of the Blaster or the Defender.

Tankers proudly stand in the front lines of battle in order to protect their comrades and, of course, the innocent.

Hit Points: High
Damage: Medium
Primary Power Category - Defense
Secondary Power Category - Melee

[/ QUOTE ]

Note that ranged thing? But where is the range? Odd no? Been there 5 years and I personally never seen people ask where the range is at unless they roll SS and take Epics.

Not that range will do anything to improve the AT but still odd.

Now do not the damage.

The highest damage in game are scrappers (modifier wise) with about 1.181 ds with crits against minnions.
The lowest is defenders with .65 (doms may go lower but there is containment to pump them up)

Now, this means .5 is the low end, or zero.
This would make tanker's .8 a .3 and scrappers a .68
Relatively speaking:

Defender: 15%
Controller: 0% (without pets, without containment)
Controller: 50% (without pets, with containment)
Tanker: 30%
Scrapper/Blaster (ranged): 100%

Seems a Petless controller is the true medium damage and tanker is Low. That's not even getting into complexities of controller secondaries and pets, off course.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The only way I think this argument would ever be resolved would be to introduce stances as a Tank only inherent (I think Stars came up with the idea once, though borrowed from WOW).

Defensive: Everything is as we have it now.

Offensive: Scale the damage modifier to just below scrapper levels, lower Res and Def cap to balance the increased Offensive ability. Adds Critical hits that scale a bit below a Scrapper.

Switching can be done on the fly, but shares a similar long animation to a self teleport and detoggles you.

This would let you pick your role based on the needs of the team. It would also boost the solo capability of tank.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why play a Scrapper when Tankers can turn into Scrappers?

[/ QUOTE ]

My full proposal for mode switching fills it with penalties, like not being able to switch really on the fly, it being a click that forces you into the mode for a predefined period of time that may be longer than desired, not being able to switch mid fight and scrapper mode being severely weaker than scrapper in survivability but and do no criticals, just the equivalent of 1.05 melee damage (scrappers doing 1.125 without criticals.)

So the scrapper would still be superior but the tanker gets to adapt to an offensive role if needed. I had reactions that ranged from "Why play a scrapper?" to "Why bother with that and not just roll a scrapper?" that made me think the penalties were just right.

[ QUOTE ]
The only way I think this argument would ever be resolved would be to introduce stances as a Tank only inherent (I think Stars came up with the idea once, though borrowed from WOW).

[/ QUOTE ]

It's an idea that has been proposed many times and it's used on more than just WoW. Final Fantasy XI has it. Heck they have it on a sub job system meaning anyone can have the stance by having warrior as a sub job. No one bothers with defensive, though, not even the tank (they need damage to do aggro not good to loose damage.)

Although I'm fond of the concept, though, I always noted it may step on the Kheledian's ground.

[ QUOTE ]
You know JB, if tankers were to deal even more dmg than they already do now, the recharge for their attacks would need to be multiplied by like 10 to make sure they cant have any attack chain.

[/ QUOTE ]

Untrue. As much as I disagree with JB there certainly is enough room to pump tanker damage while retaining balance if that is what the devs determine they want to do to the AT to "improve" it

There are tanker issues, I listed them above, there are many ways tankers can go from there though. General ideas that can work are:


<ul type="square">[*]Endurance discounts or increase (to make the AT more durable not only in HP but also in how long it can actually keep up fighting)[*]Tanfendering via Leadership-like buffs to make multiple tanks more desirable in teams[*]Tankfendering via Reverse-Bodyguard mechanic[*]Tanktrolling by making taunt inherent and replacing it with a control power (or damage for the sets like Ice Melee and Stone that already got AoE control)[*]And off course, plainly more damage while making sure it does not step into scrapper territory[/list]
Tankers have issues, after all, nothing is perfect, but the issues are not insignificant. They are not AT breakers either, though.

<ul type="square">[*]Tankers face an impending hurdle with the upcoming expansion as their role gets stepped uppon by two different Archetypes that may do just as well.[*]Tankers face team stack-ability issues, they are the worst stackers this game has to offer in teams. Other than extreme situational cases, second tankers are just slowdown.[*]In solo play tanker face a complexity of issues that may be subtle and hard to percieve, specially if you don't play multiple ATs. My attempt at summarizing them:
-Low damage modifier means they kill slower.
-Off course, killing so much slower is never fun.
-Slower killing means they fight the same foe longer but is not given the endurance to fight longer
-Some sets (this is very set specific) may have high recharge powers with great DPAS that allows them to build for high offense but this also means they are burning endurance even faster. An "offensive" tanker is extremely handicapped in the endurance department.
-Even if "offensive building" was looked at, this is at the set level and not AT wide.[/list]
This issues are not made up, it's not something I came up because I had nothing better to do or because I want god mode. These are real issues that may be why the AT is at the bottom of the popularity numbers.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I've never found this to truly be the case. Yes, a team might not Want the second tanker, but frequently the second tanker IS valuable. There are many many rooms with several groups easily aggrod but not close enough to keep taunted easily. The second tank is very useful there.

[/ QUOTE ]
Definitely. Multiple Tanks can also pull those groups together to wipe them out with AoEs even quicker. Or you can split up the team to speed up a defeat all mission.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't agree with these tactics being possible on most of the missions, although they can work.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know what to tell you. I've seen it, many times. Tankers are often more reliable than controllers for mob positioning and aggro management.

[/ QUOTE ]

Im not saying the tanker can not do that, but its very very rare that I see a situation like this where one single tank would not had been able to handle the aggro management on his own.

[ QUOTE ]
Regarding adding a third tank, I mostly don't want 3 of any AT on my teams. But I'd rather have 3 tanks than multiple fire/kins who don't remember to speed boost the team and mostly worry about FSing their imps.

[/ QUOTE ]

Off course, i also would rather have 3 players that know how to do their job than 3 players that don't, but thats not the point. We talking about having decent or good players behind those keyboards. Player skill is irrelevant as the idiot can be behind the keyboard of the tanker or the troller. In fact, relying on a bad tanker can be way more dangerous than relying on a bad controller.

[ QUOTE ]
For those still with us (all of you who haven't already canceled your accounts due to impending nerfs related to your choice of power colors)...

[blink]THIS WHOLE THREAD IS A JOKE[/blink]

[/ QUOTE ]

First you misslead them about the right color and now you say their feedback in this thread is a joke?!

Bad BABs, just bad!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Since changing you colors will be -20% damage how many of the non-carebears will actually do this?

[/ QUOTE ]

That 20% is a maximum value. Remember, it scales depending on how far you deviate from the correct color.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are misleading them with this statement, you forgot to tell them the correct color is NOT the base one all start with and they have to guess what the correct color is. Imagine my surprise while playing mega-closed-beta and find that the "correct color" for dark melee was bright pink.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I know someone who's not getting into any more mega-closed-beta-tests, Mr. NDA breaker!

[/ QUOTE ]

DOH!

[ QUOTE ]
I threw out an idea similar to this in another thread awhile a go. I didn't call it "fury-lite" but "single target fury (STF)".

The idea would be that the longer you fight against a single target that you're "fury" would build until that target was defeated. That way you would slowly unleash the full might of your "tankdom" against only the biggest foes. You're first foe would become a pseudo anchor for your STF. If you switched to another target you wouldn't get the fury on the new one until the "anchor" was defeated. That way you wouldn't penalize you for punchvoking or taunting the surrounding targets to hold aggro. It would force you to make sure you attacked the biggest and baddest foe right off the bat so that you're STF would be on them, but it certainly would be a pain if that target ran, just like it does with other anchors.

I'm certainly not thinking it would be brute fury level of damage bonus, but a little probably wouldn't hurt. Once you're original target/foe was done, the STF would drop waiting for the next big target to build it up. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Mind you, that idea had about as much of a positive response as asking all your friends to help you move.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmmm.....

Like the root of the idea but not the full presentation. First: stop noting fury at all.

Here is what I take off this that i like: Gauntlet. why is it called Gauntlet? It's called so in the sense of "throwing down the gauntlet" in a duel.

Not sure if this works, mechanically but here it goes:
Make taunt activate a hidden inherent anchor on the target. This anchor does little less than just put a dynamic flag on the target that goes something like "Myname_Challenge"

Now, you have to redesign all tanker powers to do extra damage towards the entity that has this personal challenge flag up, even AoE attacks will do this extra bit of damage against the foe but regular damage against everyone else.

The cool idea here is that it would motivate more of a tough guy fight feel.

YOU AND ME, NOW! Would require the player to have taunt to use, though.

There would be a tiny thing about two tankers challenging the same foe getting the bonus damage without getting the shared aggro.

A fun restriction is that it may be keept for tough foes because taunt does recharge and you can't taunt again until it's recharged. People may think it's better to just use this on bosses or lts but not on EBs.

Additionally the bonus damage can be controlled based on target. You may be much more focused against AVs than against Bosses and more against bosses than Lts and minions.