Steampunkette

Because the day before, this was posted.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=229407&

-Rachel-

I actually once did the math on this... Let's see if it still holds up.

Let's assume that, in total, there are about 120,000 players on CoH.

Let's split those up evenly among the various archetypes, and with a bit of rounding we get 8,571 players on each archetype at a given time.

Let's also split that number by server, and we wind up with 779 players on Virtue (for example) playing one archetype.

Now let's divide each archetype by the number of primary powersets and discard all the ones which don't have a "Fire" primary.

Blasters: 78
Brutes: 70
Controllers: 97
Corruptors: 78
Dominators: 111
Scrappers: 78
Tankers: 111

So! That's 623 players using a Fire power for their primary. Out of 10,906 players on Virtue.

Let's assume that fully 10% of players using a fire primary decide on the name "Blaze" with no other alterations or additions. That's 62 players with a fire character named Blaze.

Let's divide it further! Those 62 players aren't all going to be in the same time zone, after all. So breaking it down by 24 hours (one per time zone) we wind up with almost 3 players using the name "Blaze" in a given time zone! So if you're online during a given one hour period you have a 3 in 455 chance of meeting a guy named Blaze (Once we divide that 10,906 by 24, of course)

But wait! Further divide that total by 12. The number of character slots a person will have, automatically, on Virtue! That's .25 out of 455 or 1 in 1820 that you'll meet someone named "Blaze" on Virtue in a given hour!

Of course, ALL of my numbers are off, since we know Virtue and Freedom are the two most populated servers. So you'd likely as not see a higher instance of "Blaze" characters running around. But you'd also see a higher number of people NOT named "Blaze" running around, as well. Since the total population would grow as well as the various "Blaze" characters...

So yes. I am in favor of non-unique names.

And to those who comment on the Champions method being ugly (Blaze@Winnebago34) please note that Champs has an option in the game menu to turn off globals over people's heads or in chat windows. So such a system is already in place to continue avoiding immersion breaking.

While you might meet 12 "Rogue Angels of Satan" in Atlas Park during Peak Hours because someone thought it would be funny... do you ever take them seriously, anyway?

-Rachel-

New Travel Power Pools!


Fire Flight

Tier 1: Scorching Strike: As Air Superiority, but remove the KD and change the damage to Fire.

Tier 2: Hover: As Hover, but with a slightly higher base speed and air friction similar to Fly.

Tier 3: Fire Flight: As Fly, with a Flaming Aura animation, slightly higher speed, and far less air friction.

Tier 4: Burn Patch: 5ft AoE "Drop" power. Creates a flaming pet power at the user's feet which mimics a LOW damage "Burn" power with less ticks and lower damage. Pet does not have Fly. Pet casts a small immob protection power on user.


Ice Slide Power Pool

Frozen Strike: Single Target smashing/cold attack, minor slow power.

Icy Blood: Auto power, resist slow effects slightly

Ice Slide: As "VIP Jetpack" with a higher forward movement speed, low air friction, and a constant jump height bonus roughly equivalent to SuperJump. The speed of this power should cap somewhere between flight and Superjump, probably around 64-65 MPH. The animation should be as the Prestige Power Slide" upper body position with a blue/white cloud at the feet trailed by a blue and white "Superspeed" trail.

Northern Wind: PBAoE Toggle, similar to Whirlwind with a self -Speed and a Kd and Slow effect rather than KB

-Rachel-

Personally I'd like to see the PB and WS ATs get a scalar buff.

VEATs have a damage scalar of 1.0 for melee and ranged, the HEATs wind up with .85 and .80. Sure, HEATs get higher Buff/Debuff/Heal values, but VEATs get a higher defensive scale (Tanker scale compared to scrapper) and no Self-Heal.

To make the gulf appear even larger, the new "Damage per End" scaling has taken away a lot of strength from the HEATs who used a lower end-cost on similar powers to other ATs in order to make up for an inherent lack of "Room" for Stamina.

I propose that Humanform HEATs have their damage scale raised to 1, to match the VEATs and bring them back into competition as a valuable AT to a given team. I'd like to note that I think both Dwarf and Nova form are well-balanced based on their design, already. And need neither a buff or nerf.

That would make HEATs and VEATs a bit more "Equal" in my opinion.

-Rachel-

To respond to the "Trivializing the Game's Difficulty" argument.

The people who are consistently capable of soloing 8-man missions with level 54 and 55 enemies and are currently shouting about how super-easy the game will be with Fitness as an inherent are NOT wrong.

The people who rebuke that statement are also 100% right.

Ultimately the game is made "Easy" for the former group of players because they go out of their way to MAKE the game easy on themselves. They min-max their builds, hit softcap with IOs, get their recharge rates down or whatever is required to make their builds "Teh Uber" which, in turn, makes everything seem trivial to their IOed out min-maxed build.

Is it -wrong- to gather as much power as is possible (much less, feasible) in a game? No. It isn't wrong. Is it wrong to assume that the game will be developed around using IOs when the Devs have stated that it would never be balanced against such an easily overpowered metric? Yes.

Get back to using SOs and HOs and try running the 8 man +4 mission. Is it more difficult? Of course. Is it impossible? For some builds, yes. Does that mean the game is too hard? No.

Ultimately the difficulty of the game is entirely based on a player's perception. If you're looking for a real challenge roll up a Thugs/Poison petless mastermind and use only SOs or "standard" IOs.

-Rachel-

I'm gonna go out on a limb and call i20 for Christmas.

If it enters closed beta next week it should be -possible- if not probable that it'll hit before New Years. If it manages that herculean task, 2010 will go down in the annals of MMO history as the best year ever for CoH.

-Rachel-

The issue is that Ambushes are spawned at specific locations and granted high amounts of aggro in order to ensure they go -towards- the people they're ambushing.

Since they're aggroed, Stealth is useless.

You could, conceivably set ambush spawns to run from point a on a map to point b on a map, but then you have to worry about players not being between point A and B, which means the ambush just ran off in some random direction in relation to the players on the map.

The only suggestion I can think of is making ambushes into invisible map critters that, when aggroed, spawn a group of allies around them, much like the Seers of Praetoria. Though that would allow stealthed players to avoid ambushes completely and renders some missions uncompleteable -unless- the player unstealths to trigger an invisible entity's aggro, which completely negates the point of -having- stealth, since the entity would summon the ambush in it's immediate vicinity... Right next to the stealthy character who just detoggled their stealth power.

As you can see: There is no way to set up ambushes which go to the group yet do not ignore stealth.

-Rachel-

Actually my Superstrength characters LOVE Sands of Mu and the Nemmy Staff.

Both "Temporary" powers are unaffected by damage buffs. So when you're up high on Rage, dishing out big hits for a minute or two of +80% damage they don't get the buff.

But when rage Crashes and your damage hits -9999% they are also unaffected, allowing the Superstrength character to continue dishing out damage during that 10 second crash and burn period...

I also find the nemesis staff incredibly useful on pretty much any and all "Squishy" characters, who use it as a powerful single target KB power, then fight at range...

And let's not forget the utility of an AoE ToHit debuff on multiple enemies in melee combat or, if you go with the Ghost Slaying axe, a 2-shot kill on Spectral Demons in the CoT (one of the most annoying entities in the game with their enormous and quick to stack ToHit debuff and high smashing/lethal resistance)

And they're all incredibly useful when you've had your recharge speed reduced to next to nothing. Just a "Filler" attack until your regular powers recharge.

Ultimately I find all of the powers very useful except for the Blackwand, in most case. But that's because the Nemesis staff is Steampunked out >.>

-Rachel-

How about a compromise?

"Extend Duration" Enhancements. Usable only in specific targetted buff powers. They do not drop, but must be purchased from DO or SO trainers.

-Rachel-

Mr. Lucas can kiss my grits. >.>

Force Control.

Tier 1: Headshot: By launching a tiny force orb at incredibly high speed you can temporarily stun your target. Single Target minor damage mag 2 stun with a chance to apply an additional magnitude.

Tier 2: Encapsulate: Single Target moderate damage Hold power. Grants the previously described hold animation!

Tier 3: Force Crash: Targeted AoE KD power with 3 ticks of recurring .67 KB, once every 1.5 seconds.

Tier 4: Spheres: Toggle +Special You create a trio of spheres which hover about your character. The activation method is a 30 second period, during which you get 10 seconds of stun effectiveness boost, 10 seconds of hold effectiveness boost, and 10 seconds of +KB and Damage. After 30 seconds it cycles back to the first 10 second period. This doesn't add Magnitude to Stuns or Hold, but duration.

Tier 5: Bubble Bowling: Narrow Cone (5-10 foot wide and 40 feet long) bubble blast which has a 40% chance of applying a mag 2 hold on any target it hits. This hold functions like Bubble Blast's hold. It also has an 80% chance to apply a .67 KB effect. Moderate damage

Tier 6: Ricochets: Targeted AoE "Headshot" power with each ricochet having a chance to chain.

Tier 7: Encapsulating Field: Ground target AoE Hold field Pulsing damage with multiple mag 1 hold hits.

Tier 8: Force Bomb: PBAoE KB+Stun

Tier 9: Force Orb: Pet Generation. A Short Lived pet power with several high damage melee attacks, all of which have a chance to apply a hold or stun and animate as the orb slamming into the target from above, straight forward, or in an uppercutting motion.

How's that one?

-Rachel-

Having tinkered around on another game which must never be named, I've come to the conclusion that, as nice as Energy is, we need some nice force effect sets.

Kinetic Melee is a great set, I love it, you love it, lots of people love it. But it's not solid -force- and is, instead, another smashing/energy set.

No.. By force I'm referring to Force Fields! Force Blast, Force Control, Force Melee, and Force Defense. We've already got Force Fields for support, so I'll skip that one (for now)

Let's start with Force Blast, shall we? It'd be a Smashing Damage set, meaning highly resisted at all levels of play. And as such should have a neat and fun gimmick to make it more useful, or a straight higher than average damage per end usage. Currently I've got my mind more or less set on it being a "Control" styled set, making it capable of capturing targets or knocking them around. In which case it's damage would be unmodified (not increased to make up for the high resistances) and it would function as a control-equivalent Rad or Dark's "Debuff Blast" functionality.

Tier 1: Force Bolt: As the Defender power of the same name with a slightly higher damage value and a slightly lower KB value.

Tier 2: Force Blast: Single target moderate smashing damage, 50% chance of .67 KB, 25% chance of 1.67 KB

Tier 3: Bubble Blast: Targeted AoE attack in which a force bubble is hurled at the target. Main target has a 15% chance of an 8second mag 2 hold which animates as the target being encapsulated and lifted off the ground, flailing inside the bubble. All targets have an 80% chance of .67 KB and 10% chance of 1.67 KB. Moderate Damage

Tier 4: Build Up: Standard Blaster Build Up

Tier 5: Bubble Bowling: Narrow Cone (5-10 foot wide and 40 feet long) bubble blast which has a 20% chance of applying a mag 2 hold on any target it hits. This hold functions like Bubble Blast's hold. It also has an 80% chance to apply a .67 KB effect. Moderate damage

Tier 6: Encapsulate: Single Target Foe Hold, High damage, short range (30 feet or less). Applies a mag 2 hold with a 10% chance for an additional mag 1.

Tier 7: Bubble Burst: Toggle power. Self +Special. While this power is active you automatically cancel the hold effect of your force blast powers in exchange for additional damage. Any time a power would capture a target with a hold effect it instead applies an additional 75% of the power's base damage. This damage ignores enhancements or effects.

Tier 8: Force Push: PBAoE moderate damage with a Mag 3 KB. 20% chance to apply a mag 1 hold.

Tier 9: Bomb Blast: Ground targeted AoE, Superior Damage. All enemies in the area take Superior smashing damage from the massive force orb you hurl at them. This power has a 50% chance to apply a mag 2 hold on any foe struck by it.

What do you think? Is this a Viable set? Should I continue on into more fully describing the other three sets?

-Rachel-

Unless there are any other suggestions for alteration, I'm going to go ahead and copy-paste this into Lady Jade's.

Thank you for your help, everyone!

-Rachel-

Positron, in a Dev Q&A, recently stated that cross-faction supergroup functionality is on the docket.

*squeaks at being cold-wet-nose-poked and falls off of the other side of the bed in a tangle of blankets and limbs*

Good morning, puppy... *groans*

-Rachel-