Stormfront_NA

Hi:

I was playing the old D&D (paper and dice) game last week end, and a player asked to use the reversable effect on cleric spells option. Basically this option allowed to use their heal spells to do damage instead of healing on enemy targets. Some of us were stunned at the request, and went rule "lawyering" and to our surprise it was there! The GM was not crazy about the concept, and compromized indicating that the heal could be used to damage undead monsters.

Of course, since I am always thinking of CoX, I thought, would it not be cool if Defenders and Corruptors could have reversible effect powers, thus a heal would hurt the baddie, and the buff would debuff the baddie as well?

What do you all think of the concept?

I am sure some of the tankers who are used to being babied by the support class, may have an objection to this, but often I been in truly extraordinary good groups, with good AT builds that simply do not require the constant buffing to be very effective; sure they could be even better, but that would be at the expense of reducing the support to buff bot class status (think of the relation between a tank and the kin defender).

In fact my Tankers and Scrappers are built not to require Speed Boost, he performance gained from a speed boost is inconsequential, and in fact I do worse cause I am jetting all over the map when chasing the mobs I have knocked the heck away from me.

I also been in great groups where my emp defender, hardly does any healing at all, the amount of control provided by controllers and dominators is really good and the tankers, scrappers and brutes are very good too. So I find myself with lots of time in my hands to do something else than playing the faithful buff/heal bot.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I tend to agree in spirit with Sigium in the concept of having more challenging TFs is truly needed. But I disagree with the process Sigium proposes. I do not like TFs were the concept of challenge is restricted to specific ATs; for instance once the Romans roar in ITF the controllers have been rendered powerless, thus yeah the "team" is challenged for there is no longer control available to assist in the defeat of the mob group, but it was 100% achieved at the controller's expense, and I truly oppose this practice. Imagine a mob group, after one of them yells, and the entire room with all mobs are immune to melee attacks, and their melee attacks ignore damage resistance; I bet that would be challenging, but grossly unfair to the melee types.

Frankly I want to see challenge that affects all ATs evenly, not just the support classes from the use of excessive status effect spamming for instance.

Making TFs more challenging, actually will be very difficult, because we have a lot of very capable and experienced players, essentially how you challenge a master player?

Lately I been paying closer attention on how our developers have been historically and lately addressing the concept of challenge, and in some instances I am far from impressed. For one I prefer if AVs follow AT rules as a whole. For instance I believe its totally inappropriate for Positron, a Rad Defender, to be empowered with the Scrapper ability of Moment of Glory, that is simply wrong, since Defenders have no ability to resist status effects, should non-melee based AVs be weaker in this department? I am not saying no resistances at all like players have to endure, but perhaps half as strong as the melee types?

When I look at classic AVs to modern AVs there is a huge difference on performance, which leads me to believe their should be a huge variety or differences in rewards for defeating them. For instance take Countess Crey, or any of the Praetorian AVs from Maria Jenkin's thread and compare them to the signature heroes you face at the end of Lord Recluse SF, or good ole Reichman. There is a significant difference, yet the reward is not there to account for such dramatic difference. Yet one might want to agree, by having "over the top" AVs challenge has been increased. Sadly in TFs like LRSF the challenge is really over-burdened by the support class, whose defenses are dependent on their powers that are in great part ineffective against AVs, now imagine 8 AVs at a time, attacking all over the place, sure it strains the Melee, but it really goes much harder on the "squoshies". Once more leading to the un-even challenging I mentioned earlier. Sadly it is easy to pick on the classes that have by design been made extremely vulnerable.

One would think puzzle solving to be a good challenge, and it is, but only the first time. So scrap that one.

I had suggested before, the mission maps, door entry locations, boss or glowy placement is fixed for TFs; making them excessively predictable. Why not use abilities as offered in AE where boss and object placement is random, map type is random, and truly randomize mission entrance, and perhaps even zone entrance. While it may not do much for increase challenge, it does something against the boredom of sheer repetitiveness and predictability.

I would look at missions whose failure has no repercussions, would suggest that should be changed. Say if you fail, you get two more clear all missions to make up for the failure, or something along those lines. Once more this suggestion, does little for increasing challenge in a significant manner.

Because of the nature of ATs and the designed vulnerabilites mainly on the support caste, having missions were players have to divide is not a good idea, for it may result in added team composition requirements, like two tanks, two healer/buffers, etc.

The thought above is also another consideration, we want more challenging TFs, but on the other hand, we do not want to force custom AT and build mixes so the TF can be completed, we want to make sure while its more challenging the average PUG could complete it. Now this consideration makes the effort to add challenge quite a bit tougher.

A thought of challenge that comes into mind, is "time", where you are not so much competing against the mobs themselves, but against yourself. If you complete the TF in less time you get a bonus in merits awarded, which I know contradicts the "longer and dumber" you approach a TF the more merits worth will become. Of course this suggestion comes with baggage of its own, such as all those other players complaining on the other players who can blow through the TF quickly, and stress even more the now 3 way conflict between players who do TFs for the merits, versus those who do it for the badges, versus those who do it to level. three different goals which often results with interplayer conflicts.

The more I think of it, the harder it is for me to think of a way to come-up with fair ways to add complexity to TF/SFs.

Hugs

Stormy

Ya, pretty much the spider bots, and the tarantulas...

Stormy

Thank you very much, can't wait to try them

Hugs

Sue

Hi:

I need some help with how to color chat text and their bubbles, I used to have mine colored but they no longer work, have been broken for sometime...

This is what my original coloring code used to look like:

/bind f9 "local <color white><bgcolor red> Roll Tide"
/bind enter beginchat <color white><bgcolor red>

They used to work, and now they don't, it seems perhaps the rules or symbols may have changed, can someone please tell me how to currently accomplish the 2 samples I made above?

Hugs

Stormy

The skies are turning gray, and the air feels electrified, someone says a storm is coming...

And they are right!

So you better watch out, for Stormfront is coming to town!

Count me as a bidee

Hugs

Stormfront

Hi:

This could be a Quality of Life improvement suggestion of sorts, or just another form of salvage.

The basic concept is that you have a single universal salvage that provides for all the material requirements of a recipe.

My thoughts is that you could have white, yellow, orange, and purple universal salvage which would correspond to the appropriate color recipe. So, for example, if you have a piece of purple salvage and a purple recipe, you can combine both to create the IO, you still would have the influence/infamy cost associated with IO creation.

Maybe this could be done for I17.

Hugs Stormy

Something I would like to see for I17...

Not knowing what "Going Rogue" is going to offer, makes dreaming about I17 a bit sporting...

1. TF/SF maps themselves being random as it can be done in the AE mission designer.
2. TF/SF mission entrances is usually preset by devs, allow them to be truly random.
3. Purple Salvage: A universal single piece, that alone provides for all the materials of a recipe.
4. Costume Change Emotes to be definable via option panel, as opposed to having to write a bind for it.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

At this time at the AE, you can only roll for a random recipe and while you have some very limited choices Bronze, Silver and Gold in which each choice has a set of recipies you could obtain, its not quite upto par with what one would like to receive. For example, I want to get a Regenerative Tissue: +Regen, being level 50, when and if I ever get it will be level 30. Truthfully I want the level 10, so when I do a Positron, Synapse or Sister TF that regen unique will be effective; yet the roll system does not make that choice available. In the case of a Numina Regen/Recov I much rather have the level 30 over the 50 for the same kind of reasons.

Considering that the merit system does allow me to buy any recipe I want at the level I want for a higher cost than a random roll; why not have this capability for the ticket system?

In fact, we can set the prices for recipes based on their Bronze, Silver, Gold already defined roll availability; and say the choice cost you twice the random cost. Thus a Numina Regen/Recov being a gold roll would cost you 9000 tickets, while an Oblireation Acc/Dmg being a silver drop would cost you 1000 tickets, and finally a Steadfast KBP which is a bronze drop would cost you 150 tickets. I did choose double atm, because the most tickets we can hold is 9,999 so a gold choice could not exceed this value. But perhaps the x2 factor could be different for the silver and bronze recipies. Or perhaps the maximum amount of tickets we can hold can be increased to allow gold picks to cost more than 9,999 tickets.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm

I believe a real problem in these forums is the lack of civility from a few posters, and to an extent a bit of closed mindedness. Perhaps these behaviors had reduced the suggestions section to a basically impotent tool for players to "suggest" ideas or concepts to developers.

Frankly there are bad ideas, and terrible ideas; but if we go out of our way to flame those ideas we believe are bad, soon many folks will simply cease to suggest all together, and may become bitter and just become another useless flamer. The danger of lack of civility, is that a person who may suggest 9 out of 10 suggestions being bad, may not make that 1 good one.

I frankly appreciate the fact, that a person is trying to do something to make the game better, they may not do a great job of describing it, the idea may be lame, what not; but the important part is that "they are trying". It becomes even more significant to me, that they post it at the guaranteed fact they are going to get flamed. In a way, I admire their courage.

There are times I wonder, all these flamers going about, how many suggestions they made in the past? How many have been accepted?

Perhaps if we were a bit more civil, and yes nurturing, we could take a bad idea and help the poster understand why the suggestion is a poor one, or perhaps suggest a way to turn a poor suggestion into a reasonable one.

Let me tackle one for you all as an example.

Ice Armor Brutes.

Yes the idea of slowing down mobs is kinda contradicting to sense of building rage. But what if we work with the concept a bit... I know rage is gained by a combination of attacks on me (hit or miss) and my attacks (hit or miss). Why not allow the ice armor brute to build rage from the mobs being affected by the slow? Maybe allow Ice Brutes to have their rage cool down slowed as well, so they could build rage and maintain it. I don't see any laws that says that all brutes must earn and retain rage at the same rate, why not allow for different rates?

My suggestions, may not be perfect; they seldom are. But at least is an attempt to work on something that could be fun and would make a lot of sense for those who build ALTs based on concept.

I know its much easier to criticize, and even use insults to demonstrate, beyond a doubt, how right you are. But don't we all think we can be better than that?

Also I see lots of posters with obvious PHDs in CoX programming and provide ten commandment like judgments. Or simply say, its too much work for the devs, thus its a stupid idea. I much rather see a red name make that decision, and statement.

A lot of us want to see animals, the PHD software flamers say its too much work, so the idea is stupid. Frankly, I don't think its that impossible nor the work to be that astronomic, many other games such as CoX have animals (WoW, DAOC, etc) So it strikes me it can't be that impossible after all, if those "inferior" games have them.

What I am advocating is to be more can do, and those intelligent people who use their powers to flame, perhaps could use their intellect to think of ways to make many ideas workable.

Hugs

Stormy

This is a Quality Of Life Suggestion...

So yes, I can go to outside sources to try to figure in advance how many merits a TF, Oro Arc, or contact mission thread gives.

But as QLI, why not have this information provided with the basic mission information content, such as wehn you click on a contact and it says, "it takes 6 people between levels 40-45 to do this TF, and when you completed you get 32 Merits"

It just makes it easy on us, who may be looking at an Oro arc to gain merits to supplement what we have to get a specific recipe we want, it also assurs us to be correct and up to date, where outside sources may not do this as well, etc.

As I said, its a QLI, if you don't care for this information is or not provided to you as a courtesy, you do not need to comment for this QLI is inconsequential to you.

Stormy

Hi:

All of my 15 level 50 Villains will go blue, so I can use the cheaper prices of recipes and salvage to IO Set Slot them, also Blue side TFs are better at rewarding merits for the effort than red side, and I need the Merits to buy the rare recipies such as Numina that I will be needing. Once my Villains have been fully IO set slotted, they will return to their villanous ways.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I been as of lately designing AE missions and truly enjoying the tools that come with it.

In many of the old TFs, I find that the missions, while at different zones, utilizes the exact same maps over and over. For instance, searching for the boss in room if a council mission, all you have to do is ignore the entire map till you find the pool room. Glowies are predictably in the last floor back room, so I just ignore everything while looking for elevators, and since we always use the same map, I already know where the elevators are at.

I believe if the TF would use the AE mission choice of random maps, it would actually help make the TF feel a little different from pass to pass. By allowing the boss to be in a random location, not always far back, it also helps with the enjoyment of the mission, same with glowies.

Not sure if the entrance to the mission can truly be made random, both in zone and where in zone. It would be nice, if that could be made random, as opposed to developer fixed with little variation at all. For instance when doing Citadel, it seems there are 3 mission order and location templates. You soon find that one template has mercifully missions near the hospital at IP, the others are travel abusive such either left or right of TV. Would be nice, if these locations could be made random.

Portal missions, it strikes me as stupid, that you do a mission in one portal, and for the next you have to go to the next building and use that building's left portal. I would think a portal would have some kind of dial-up tuner and could take you anywhere...

Well, these are some suggestions in trying to make TFs less obviously repetitive

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

The reason for the light damage, is because this is a primary power set, which normally Defenders have no damage producing abilities in the first place, instead they buff/heal friends or debuff enemies with their primaries. On the other hand, the Defender with their secondaries are supposed to be able to do modest damage with. So I would have thought that if the defender could actually do some damage with their primaries while having reasonable secondary effects, and then add the secondary power set to the mix, you would wind-up with a much more offensive "solo" capable Defender while also being a fabulous group asset as well.

For this concept to work, the side effects would have to be considerably strong, and the powers recharging fairly fast, so you could stack quickly on Bosses and better.

I thought about the single target attacks, with more damage, but considering that those needs are covered by the Defender's secondary power set, would increasing the damage output of Alchohol Blast and having single targets instead of AOEs would that not unbalance the AT a bit and make it a bit Blaster like?

I also thought that the AOE effects at low level to actually be part of the Defender's survival mechanism. Considering that Alcohol Defenders have no status effect resistances, poor sustainable defensive mechanisms, and modest resistances; the need for some form of enemy group debuff and control would strike me as critical.

While I named the powers with a bit of humor, I am serious about the concept. I totally agree that renaming the power set to something more appropriate is definetely a good idea. I think Twilight_Snow is in the right track :<)

and OOps, I messed up in the snipe, it was supposed to be a Snipe ranged AOE attack. The idea was to long range aoe snipe a group of mobs, slow them down, then switch to my secondary power pool snipe and beat them up nice and good.

Hugs Stormy

Hi:

I was thinking mainly as a villain, who uses alcohol to impede their victim's actions, but at the end like any weapon, its how it is used that decides if it is good or bad.

When I look at Defenders and Corruptors (to some extent), they are basically designed to be a team support class; either by buffing other ATs or debuffing the baddies and using their meager offensive damage ability to supplement the over all team's DPS.

So this proposal will fall on the debuff or weaken the enemy as opposed to being a buff bot.

Since the primary mission of this primary power set, is to messup the enemy, all approriate powers are ranged target AOEs, do light damage, and have practical side-effects. The real damage for this Defender/Corruptor mainly comes from their secondary power set.

Powers: I am using drinks for alcohol descriptors, but perhaps a more serious name set can be given to them, but for illustration purposes; I like my names:

1. Beer Splash: Ranged Targeted AOE, Light Dmg, -Def, -Res
2. Wine Splash: Ranged Targeted AOE, Light Dmg, -ACC,-Perception
3. Moonshine Splash: Ranged Targeted AOE, Light Dmg, AOE Immobilize
4. Gin Splash: Sniper Ranged, Targeted AOE, Light Dmg, Slow
5. Stirred: Self, +to hit, +dmg
6. Shaken: Self, +Range, +MAG Effect
7. Vodka Splash: Ranged Targeted AOE, Light Dmg, AOE Confuse
8. Whiskey Splash: Ranged Targeted AOE, Light Dmg, AOE Disorient
9. Tequila Splash: Ranged Targeted AOE, Modest Dmg, AOE Hold


What you all think?

Stormy

Ps: Was thinking under stirred to add +status effect resistance since its hard to be mind controlled when semi-drunk, but opted not to recommend that to remain within the built-in vulnerabilites assigned to support classes.

I am not too sure about military history, but I don't think it has much to do with this thread, or so I hope...

I believe the real issue to be:

"Is it appropriate for in-game costume items to come with acquisition restrictions?"

I basically see two camps with regards to this:

1. It is appropriate, for the costume piece is a badge of honor, something one earned.
2. It's inappropriate, all costume pieces should be available to support character concepts; this emotion would be fairly strong among players who roleplay and actually do make alts based on a concept despite that may be handicapping themselves.

Frankly, I can see both sides and believe there can be a happy middle of the road.

The simple truth, all costume pieces and sets should be readily available to any player at any time. But perhaps the introduction of special jewelry (medals for instance) can be earned as opposed to costume clothing pieces. The only exception to this rule, are costume sets one purchased through game upgrades, you got to pay to get them :<)

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I am looking forwards to going Rogue, if the advertisement is true where your Villains can turn to Rogues and then turn to Heroes. I would like to learn more about that process, anyone have any info or can point me out to it thru a thread?

My original thoughts are:

1. Villain side cost for salvage and recipies are way more expensive than blue side.
2. Convert my Villains to Heroes, fully IO set them as heroes
3. Revert back to Villain

That is my basic gameplan for "Going Rogue", if the expansion will not let me do that, I am not sure havig a new origin (Praetorian) with a zone or two to allow me to reach 20 is worth the $50 for the expansion.

Hugs

Stormy