Steampunkette

*sneaks in, plops into a leather comfy-chair, and sighs, rubbing grease and sweat from her forehead*

Working on an MMO is tough... Especially when you're hundreds of miles away from your nearest co-worker.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. the Punkette is back.

=-3
-Rachel-

OK so... After the Bugbear attack CoX raged and gained strength and con, took a few hits but they were just to the Temporary hit points, then backhanded a couple of whining goblins...

Hang on a second. City of Heroes -gained- HP mid fight?! WTF?! How did that happen? I think they broke the game system when they combined the Vampiric Touch spell weapon channeled and Improved Critical: Goliath Greathammer

This analogy has been brought to you by Dungeons and Dragons. 30 years of making sense to a small portion of the world.

-Rachel-

And they pwn the Council in every possible way.

They're better fighters, they look cooler, and they're Nazis.

If I walked up to someone on the street and asked "Who would you rather beat the tar out of: Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler?" what would their answer be?

Nazis are great for kicking!

-Rachel-

Here are four of mine. As you can see I tend to make my trays fairly identical.

Attacks in tray 1, defenses or debuffs in tray 2, and "other" in tray 3. Tray 4 has got my temp and inherent and on tray 1 slots 9 and 10 are almost always rest and sprint.

Organization ftw! =-3



-Rachel-

*edit* Bonus points if you can guess Powersets, Archetypes, and Location! Each of the four characters is in a different zone. Though for the last character it's better to answer what zones she -isn't- in!

From Twitter at around midnight-1am:

1.
Christopher Bruce
CoHBABsTried to log into the training room, and realized that I haven't been invited yet. To hell with 60+ month vets, I'm a dev and not in yet!


From the "Loyal through thick and thin announcement:

Keep Your Account Active, Be Rewarded!

All City of Heroes® and City of Villains® players who maintain an active account for the time period beginning August 15, 2009 and ending November 15, 2009 will receive a set of special rewards for their loyalty to Paragon City™ and The Rogue Isles™:

• Closed Beta access* for City of Heroes Going Rogue™
• Exclusive loyalty badges**: "Vigilant" for Heroes and "Determined" for Villains

* Going Rogue Closed Beta Access will be granted using a three-tier system:

o Tier One: City of Heroes Veterans with 60+ months of paid time.
o Tier Two: Loyalty Program players
o Tier Three: Players who Pre-Order Going Rogue (Preorder details to be announced at a later date)

**Badges will be enabled within one week after the promotional period has ended.


Emphasis mine.

Speculation begin..... NOW!
-Rachel-

The combat mishaps/jams into solid objects are one good reason not to allow players Ragdoll physics. Allow me to express a second.

Ever been fighting enemies on the side of a hill, and pull a KB attack on one that sends him sliding all the way to the bottom? If you've got ranged attacks you can keep attacking him while he slides down for some pretty massive damage.

Now envision enemies performing the same maneuver on you. Knocking you down on the side of a hill and beating on your limp, sliding body all the way to the bottom of the hill.

You think Knockback is annoying -now-?! How many people buy KB Resistance IOs for any non-melee character they create? Has to be a lot 'cause those IOs sell for a bundle on the market, Right?

It's a feature that would take a while to create, an indefinitely long time to test, an even longer time to re-test it on every map created between now and the end of the game's run, and most people either wouldn't use it at all OR would use it once or twice and then never again.

So no. I think this is a bad idea.

-Rachel-

From Posi

Number Three is... Well it's not -good- but it's fairly decent and I don't mind it that much.

The only issue I have with it is ambushes that wind up attacking AFK people that you just booted out of the mission.

The others.... Ummmmm... Gonna have to go with "Not supported"

-Rachel-

The only issue I have with taking the E-mails away from RMTers is that it'll go back to zone-wide spam and tells, again. So the broadcast channel will be filled with -more- useless drivel than normal (no that odd) and people will randomly get tells amounting to "You are a crazy sexy hero and stuff. You should, like, totally buy some influence from me. All the sexy people do it."

For those who don't catch the reference, do a search on the Whitest Kids You Know Opus. Or WKUK Everest. NSFW! >_<

-Rachel-

Mine have always come not only on the day of the reward, but also around the time I paid for my account, as well. I once forgot to pay my account while at work and didn't get the chance to update it until 10pm that night. So now all my vet rewards apply some time near or after 10pm. But I have to log out and log back in to get them.

-Rachel-

I couldn't read the whole thread before I got too annoyed and decided to post. So here goes.

This is a bad idea.

Oh, not the first part, really, except that with the even-con system a level 49 would get XP from Hellions who are basically balanced to fight a level 1-10 character when the 49 has a hugely more evolved set of abilities, SOs or IOs, and possible accolade powers. (I.E. No challenge, Free XP)

But the outdoor instancing? Horrible idea, and I'll tell you why.

Instancing is something that sets CoH apart from other MMOs with their open world "Go Hunt 5 womplebottoms, then come back. Now hunt 12 applegators" rigmarole. To remove instancing would make it incredibly hard to develop the instanced missions (Even the "outdoors" ones!)

Let's say you're supposed to take down a particular boss on a mission you've never played before. How about fighting Shadowhunter the Praetorian Woodsman in the instanced Perez Park map. What happens if, before you're even a quarter of the way through the war-wolves he keeps as pets throughout the mission, someone else kills Shadowhunter?

Not a member of your team, mind you. Just some random person running around Perez Park looking for Kraken. He sees Shadowhnter, checks his "Soloed AV" list, then drops into the fight, kills your boss, and then leaves.

Now you're never going to get to fight Shadowhunter and what you're left with is a crappy "Hunt Warwolves" mission.

How about some Lowbies are hunting Circle of Thorns in Perez when your mission to fight Shadowhunter starts. Do all the non-Praetorian enemies in that massive area despawn, only to be replaced by Wolves? What if a team is in the middle of a Mez-fest with 3 Madness Mages? Do the mages Despawn leaving a full group of angry Warwolves to pound on the poor, mezzed lowbie?

It's a really poor idea that basically strips CoH of most of it's lure (not chasing down rarespawns or hunting womplebottoms for gizz-bladders to turn in to your contact)

As for the PvP option. Never. In a million years.

Many (not most, not all, not a great majority, just many) players would never run a mayhem mission or safeguard again. For fear of having PvPers invade their PvE experience. Many villains and heroes would grab the mish, start the timer, then leave the mish to let the timer count down. When you fail a mayhem you still get a contact.

What happens when 8 level 50 heroes invade a 6-man AP bank run with 5 level 7 villains? Do they just whompa-stomp the villains who get sent to the PPD jail in AP to await the timer counting down or Quit the mish? What about when the heroes head into the jail and wait just outside the cell doors so they can keep beating on lowbie villains?

You've got the villains trapped in a situation that makes them feel powerless. More than a few would ragequit and many would never touch a mayhem or safeguard again. It would be a breeding ground for griefers.

There's my opinion and predictions. Take 'em as they are or ignore them.

-Rachel-

Ohhhh... *feels stupid*

-Rachel-

If you're not spaming attacks, your characters do perform dodge animations.

But the attack animation takes priority.

-Rachel-

Mostly worked on CS and played CoH...

Hired on a Graphic Artist (on Speculation) to work on the game's UI. And he's the one that offered up the beautiful logo in my signature.

-Rachel-

Left...?

-Rachel-

ZOMG!

That would be fantastic! What else would you like to draw?

-Rachel-

He wants the Purple Patch Removed.

He wants it so that damage from higher level enemies is not buffed and attacks against them are not debuffed in both accuracy and damage.

He wants the game to, essentially, go back to the way it was.

-Rachel-

Sometimes I make sense even when I don't think I'll be able to.... O.O

Seriously. I was half-awake when I wrote that.

-Rachel-

I don't think this is a terribly good idea.

As it is the game can be trivially easy if you're aware of your team's strengths and weaknesses. And you can already use cover to avoid -additional- incoming attacks, if not dodge the ones coming at you.

One of my favorite things to do in City is lay traps. Whether it's trip-mines and caltrops with a time bomb in the middle or a tar patch, or the Earth Controller's plethora of Ground Target AoEs. I love dropping the powers and grabbing some cover, forcing enemies that are aggroed on me to run up to gain line of sight. They hit the patch and voila! Either they're blown up and slowed, debuffed and slowed, or debuffed, slowed, -and- held!

Part of why I love my new Dark Defender so very much. Drop Darkest Night on a Lieutenant, then pull back around a corner to drop the tar patch. Wait'll the enemies get -near- the corner (in the middle of the tar patch) and then give the signal for the whole team to tear them apart. Meanwhile AVs can't even land a hit!

But putting the "Dodge" mechanic into the game would delay the damage function on ranged attacks until the animation loanded a hit. Think of Psi Blast's slow-moving volleys. How many players would die waiting for that thing to land, for one. And if the AI was reprogrammed to take advantage of it (I.E Duck for Cover) fights would be more realistic, but less -fun-!

Seriously! Think of a giant 8-man spawn of Council Soldiers. Lean, mean, and many. Now, before you can land a fireball, the group scatters to avoid the AoE. Single target gameplay becomes king of pretty much everything, and a perfectly valid and fun way to play (AoE based characters) are slighted for it.

And it would only further add to PvP imbalance. Think of the handful of ranged attacks a tanker or scrapper gets. Short-ranged (comparatively) and slow-moving projectiles. Blasters would become even more horrendously broken...

So yeah. While I understand the idea, in effect it's not a good thing.

-Rachel-

Also port over the rusty katana model to Broadsword.

I just -really- want to have a big bad broadsword wielder swinging around a hunk of rusty metal. Don't worry about tetanus. *evil grin*

-Rachel-