TheMESS

I have a fire/stone brute who is pretty speedy using a combination of kinetic combat and Gift of the ancients he can move about at ruffly sprint speed while using Rooted but if i stick granite on along with it its back to a crawl.

its called a closed beta that means not every one can see whats going on for all we know the devs are having a question and answer session going on the closed beta board s right now and we just cant see it.

Or maybe there noting down all the bugs and suggestion and busy implementing them.

It makes sense to play things close to there chest stops the competition nicking the idea

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Instead we should encourage the Devs to forge on with there changes and politely point out things that don't work.

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Forge on wasting resources and turn this epic fail into an even more refined and diverse epic fail, that no one is going to be interested in, good plan that.

I can see it now, not only will the zones be empty, but you will be able to play capture the [censored] flag in an empty zone too.

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Yes forge on when they nerfed regen and then nerfed it some more people moaned and screamed and called the Dev's all sorts and predicted the end of regen scrappers. Oh look there still here and still dam good hell most people now accept that they were far to good pre Nerf

Or hows about ED it was gonna kill the game no one was going to play it after it hit they didn't want to be weak look there still playing

and at the time they said that they needed to do it to make way for a new system people didn't believe them said that nothing would come but oh look the invention system arrived.

So yes forge ahead its a work in progress.

You do realise there's a closed beta on right now so people could no that there are changes to PvP in i14.

That is unless your in the beta and no for sure that there's not?

Thanks for the reply Techbot gave me stuff to think about.

Now soem questions

dose build up and placate not make you draw the mace. If they don't they'll definitely be in there.

Is pummel a good enuf power to warrant 6 slots i never took any of the melee powers on my road to 24 so have no experience of them.

been think of doing a pure soldier build as I'm already working my way thru a crab/bane duel build and miss playing my standard Soldier and what with Architect on the way and the ability to lvl up just doing architect content i figured that the perfect excuse for a new toon.

This is the build im aiming for i did originally have Web Cocoon in it but then thought that probablu uses the mace anc i dont want to use the mace

Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Level 50 Natural Arachnos Soldier
Primary Power Set: Bane Spider Soldier
Secondary Power Set: Bane Spider Training
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leaping

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Single Shot -- Mael'Fry-Acc/Dmg(A), Mael'Fry-Dmg/EndRdx(50), Mael'Fry-Dmg/Rchg(50)
Level 1: Wolf Spider Armor -- RctvArm-ResDam(A), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx(3), RctvArm-ResDam/Rchg(3), RctvArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(13)
Level 2: Burst -- Dev'n-Acc/Dmg(A), Dev'n-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Dev'n-Dmg/Rchg(36), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), Dev'n-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(36), Dev'n-Hold%(37)
Level 4: Combat Training: Defensive -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(5), DefBuff-I(5)
Level 6: Combat Training: Offensive -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(7), Acc-I(7)
Level 8: Heavy Burst -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(9), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(9), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(13), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(17)
Level 10: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- S'dpty-Def(A), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(11), S'dpty-Def/Rchg(11), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(37), S'dpty-EndRdx(39)
Level 12: Venom Grenade -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(39)
Level 14: Bane Spider Armor Upgrade -- Aegis-ResDam(A), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(15), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(15), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(43), Aegis-Psi/Status(43)
Level 16: Tactical Training: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 18: Frag Grenade -- Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(A), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(19), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(19), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(34), Det'tn-Dmg/Rng(34)
Level 20: Tactical Training: Leadership -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(21), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(21), GSFC-Build%(23), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(23), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(27)
Level 22: Mental Training -- Run-I(A)
Level 24: Cloaking Device -- S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(A), S'dpty-Def/Rchg(25), S'dpty-Def(25), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27), S'dpty-EndRdx(45)
Level 26: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 28: Surveillance -- ShldBrk-DefDeb(A), ShldBrk-Acc/DefDeb(29), ShldBrk-Acc/Rchg(29), ShldBrk-DefDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(31), ShldBrk-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(33), ShldBrk-%Dam(34)
Level 30: Health -- Heal-I(A), Heal-I(31), Heal-I(31)
Level 32: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(33), EndMod-I(33)
Level 35: Air Superiority -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(37), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(48), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50)
Level 38: Bayonet -- T'Death-Acc/Dmg(A), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx(39), T'Death-Dmg/Rchg(40), T'Death-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), T'Death-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40), T'Death-Dam%(42)
Level 41: Pummel -- KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(A), KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(42), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(42), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43)
Level 44: Wide Area Web Grenade -- Enf'dOp-Acc/Rchg(A), Enf'dOp-EndRdx/Immob(45), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx(45), Enf'dOp-Immob/Rng(46), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob/Rchg(46), Enf'dOp-Acc/Immob(46)
Level 47: Combat Jumping -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(48), Zephyr-ResKB(48)
Level 49: Super Jump -- Empty(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Conditioning
------------

Can any one see any glearing problems with it other than its going to cost a fortune? how do you think it'll do and any advice for those that have allready done Soldier bulds?

Perhaps the entry in the frequent suggestions thread should be updated so that it indicates that MM pets are included under the heading of power customisation.

Not that I'm saying that it should no longer be suggested i think that its important that every so often suggestion are repeated just to keep the idea fresh especially when something new is added that looks as if it could maybe be used to achieve the desired effect after all you never know some one out there may spot something the Devs didn't or it may get the Devs looking at something from another direction.

I think asking the Devs to roll back the changes in PvP is silly there just not going to do it they stated at the time that it was going to be a on going process so i can see them just hiting the undo key and to be fair i like some of the changes or at least the idea behind them even if the implementation leaves a fair bit to be desired.

Instead we should encourage the Devs to forge on with there changes and politely point out things that don't work.

dont you just bump people out the way as you arrive any ways?

I kinda like the idea would be cool if you could nominate a area in your base as a PvP area and have inpromtue PvP fights in it with fellow SG members would also be cool if it could be implemented in some where like pocket D (i realise it has terminals) and the vanguard base could be treated like a sparing area or something.

But probably to hard to implement

While the argument rages over on the suggestion boards it struck me when some one was talking about valve dose CoH report back on your system specs in a similar way to steam.

The reason i ask is i remember reading a while back how valve use the info that steam gathers to develop there games and what support to include so for example when generation 7 nvidia cards drop below i certain percentage of users valve will drop or cut back the lengths they go to to accommodate those users or if the average amount of memory a user has increases valve know that they can create more memory intensive games.

And i was just thinking it would be quite handy if CoH did this as it would allow the developers to add more complex stuff as the player bases PC become more powerful

Ok point taken maybe I'm getting a bit ahead but it would be nice if CoH had Nemesis's for champions coming out that way when champions go

"look what you can do in our game you can not only create your very own hero but you can create there arch rival as well"

to which CoH go's

"and? we implemented that last month"

What do you mean by plastic what would stop them looking like plastic in your opinion?

but they do say other things of there own back have you never noticed all the "hey there go's hero X did you here how he took down tyrant" they only give you the scripted information if you click on them i like to see how many hours I've played a character for and things like that what is that information being available doing to harm your enjoyment of the game.

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but then claiming it'd fix things like mobs getting stuck in scenery, in order to sweeten the deal, is just wrong. If anything it's to do with map holes and dodgy wall geometery than it is to do with enemy models.

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To be frank, from your narrow player mindset and view, you have absolutly no idea to the cause of players, mobs, and civilians getting stuck inside, outside levels and other geometry objects.

(oh and by the way, anything appearing vague in my description, was due to you not reading it, in several posts back, I elaborated that Improving civilians could be
AI, PATHFINDING, MODELS(geometry) AND TEXTURES.)

My arguement was that by investing time in the improvement of model geometry, and other aspects, they might actually be able to fix the character models, while in the process of improving them, so they clash less with the environment. It occurs to me that getting stuck out of the level, is caused in part by a conflict between the model geometry and the world, physics forces more a less force the model into a place they are not meant to be in, and collision events dont fire properly. - This is my assumption, I recognise that it is an assumption.

Its just an assumption on your part that civilians getting stuck in roads, is caused by the world geometry, if thats the case then the world needs fixed,indeed, however I feel they could fix character objects (models, npcs, mobs) as a whole, to prevent them getting thrown out of bounds.

Characters, Npcs, and mobs are not just models, there is alot of scripting that goes into a model object, before it becomes an npc,mob, or even the character object.

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And to be frank you have no idea that its not because of faults with the world that models get stuck yet you seem intent on believing upgrading the models would solve this problem

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Lets try looking at this another way what would you prefer the devs put there time into.

1) more varied looking civilians on the city streets some of which have disabilities and contacts that have disabilities.

Or

2) the ability to create your own custom mission and factions to fill those mission which is a feature that as far as im aware has never appeared in another MMO and so allows them to re-release the game and get more money in the door so that they can create even better improvements to the game ?


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So, your saying they can either fix the 'bad' models on the civilians, and not provide issue 14.
Or
Provide issue 14, and never give us better looking civilians that look, and behave better.

Noting you never said that option 2 could lead to option 1, so Im assuming its one or the other.

I've already said that Issue 14 is going to get me playing for a while, regardless of civilians current lack of quality. However there is no reason for them not to provide both.
Do any of you know whats in Issue 15? Issue 16?
No?
Well, whats wrong with them investigating possible improvements to Models of Civilians (and/or mobs), and better Pathfinding.

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Basically yes big game inprovments such as architect are allways going to take priorety over small QOL inprovments as big game inprovments is what keeps the player base happy now if small inprovments happen thanks to those big inprovments thats a good thing but its not a major thing.

as for i15 and i16

i15 is probably well on the eay to compleasion if not compleat and just waiting for i14 to launch i16 is most likely polanned and possible started its inportant to remember that the dev teams work 2 issues ahead so when i12 launched i13 and i14 were in development when it transpired that MA wasent going to be ready for i13 launch they launched 13 without MA and made MA i14 old 14 is now 15 and old 15 is now 16 so theres a good chance that the devs are curently well into the planning of 17 or atleast have a fair idea of what they wish to include.

true but then you would be defeating your character with your character as it be your nemesis not wanting to defeat them is like captain America not taking on the red skull.

So i was thinking with architect come the ability to create your own custom factions and boss to populate the missions.

could this be used to implement Nemesis's you create your custom nemesis and then the game randomly inserts them into missions in place of a generic boss (eg not a specific named Boss that's important to a story arc) or even better you can design a custom faction to go along with your custom Boss and both are inserted at random into mission

so for instance as a villain you pic up a mayhem mish proceed to bank brake the volt and await the hero but instead of overdrive or whoever you would normally get accompanied by a bunch of longbow its Captain Be Good and some of is Be Good inc. buddies

could make things intresting.

QR

Lets try looking at this another way what would you prefer the devs put there time into.

1) more varied looking civilians on the city streets some of which have disabilities and contacts that have disabilities.

Or

2) the ability to create your own custom mission and factions to fill those mission which is a feature that as far as im aware has never appeared in another MMO and so allows them to re-release the game and get more money in the door so that they can create even better improvements to the game ?

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The Ethics issue does not exist because of what they do,
it only exists if they do what they do, to save money or trouble, at expense to their customers.

In context, I am not saying that there is an ethical issue with them providing bad civilian behavior.

I am saying that there could be an ethical issue, if they are providing bad quality for civilians and bad city quality, as a cost cutting measure, or not improving it, because of cost cutting.

They should not be compromising their end product to their customers in any way while still charging them the same price.

If they want to save money, they should do so from within.
Stop giving bonuses, freeze merit increases.


We as customers, makes them obligated to deliver good quality. There is no denying that, and they ethically cannot compromize their obligation to their customers just because they are short of man power or money.

Imagine I ran a company, and told my clients that because of economic climate, I cant deliver a good quality product for the time being, but I expect you to still pay us.

I would loose my customers, to be frank, the only reason people keep paying, is to keep getting veterans rewards. The occasional monthly log in, and voila, dont have to immerse myself in bad quality game for another month.

New issues coming out are exciting, and do promote playing for a few weeks because its brand new, but in the end everyone slows down, and realises the game hasnt changed that much since last month.

Not everyone realises it, but your paying alot of money for a game, that is trashy in quality compared to other games out there.

Prototype - £40
City of Heroes - £6.99

In 6 months of paid time, you have more a less paid more than what you would for Prototype, and the game quality is no where near as good.

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this argument only really holds water if the've decreased somthing to save money if anything so far the've put money in NC soft spent a lot of cash to get all the rights to CoH and probably spent another chunk of cash getting the developers to move with the IP they then spent even more cash setting up NCWest so theyre sertinly splashing the cash they have a lot invested in CoH and its in there best intrests to inprove and keep it going.

as to

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Prototype - £40
City of Heroes - £6.99

In 6 months of paid time, you have more a less paid more than what you would for Prototype, and the game quality is no where near as good.


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see my last post but ill add it depends how you look at it as i look at it

Prototype - £40 = a week of constant play (being generous i have games that lasted a hour tops before i got board) then a few hours here and there with maybe a re surge in interest 3 or 4 months down the line possibly more if it has some add on content

(Following figures are ruff guesses)

City of Heroes - £25 for box + £6.99 a month for 48 months £335 (ish) + CoV box + wedding pack + cyborg pack + GvE + lots of extra slots + bargain CoV collectors edition (must get code added) = lots of cash paid out over the last 4 years

on top of that there's a second account with pretty much all the same stuff so lets say Ive spent 600 quid over the last 4 years on CoH

for that £600 I've had 10 issues of new content with a 11th on the way and each one of those issues is like a new game to me so 10 x £40 (average Ps3 game price) = 400

So that would be 400 quid for probably 10 weeks worth of play while for 600 quid I've had 4 years of play and probably more play than the PS3 games.

I spend probably some where between 20 and 30 hours a week on CoH (bloody hell that's a lot) and that's just a normal non new issue, non DXP, non event, week on one of these weeks i easily spend more time (i lost 3 and half days to the first DXP weekend)

So personally i feel I'm getting far better value from CoH than i do from my console and even other PC games

But of course your mileage may vary.

(p.s thanks for making me realise that the other half id right i spend far to much time on CoH)

well to be fair you cant really blame NC Soft at the time things like Civ AI was implemented the game was developed by cryptic its also important to remember that were playing a game that's 5 years old (probably closer to 6 maybe 7 when considering development time but lets say 5) so when you sit CoH next to the likes of Prototype there's gonna be a massive difference in quality even before you start to consider things like MMO Vs single player.

a better comparison would be CoH to something like WAR or Conan and while these games are still technically better than CoH (better graphics etc etc) there's far less of a gap so CoH is weathering pretty well

But don't give up hope a lot of us are guessing that CoH has something big in its future it go's without saying that this year CoH faces its first true competition (yes other MMOs were competition but not like DC and champions) and only a fool would ignore the fact that other super hero MMOs are coming at the very least NC Soft are going to want to maintain brand awareness if they intend to release more CoH related games and if there intending some EVE like major graphical and game play over hall (effectively a CoH2) there definitely gonna want to keep the current player base onside and gagging for more CoH goodness

Oh agreed the city could do with a real over hall when it comes to the civs and i would love to see the city with the amount of life in it as prototype or the GTAs. it would be great to over above a crowed of civilians as they flee in terror from some GM but can you imagine what kind of performance hit things would take the Devs seem to be making a conscious effort to not upgrade the game so much that it kills lower spec machines (something that is both a good and bad idea IMO)

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again whats the point for Civ NPC there basically background noise there to make the city's look alive there like extras in a TV show and of no real importance


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This argument is flawed. Look at the game trailers for Prototype I suggest this one http://www.gametrailers.com/player/35644.html

I don't think this game could claim to be worth £40 if they deemed their npc population as 'insignificant'.


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Ah prototype there's a game I'm looking forward but its a completely different game yes its set in a city yes your a super powered individual but its not CoH the civilians that wander the street in that game are fodder there there for you to use and are part of the game play in short there far more than window dressing in CoH this is not the case.

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First things first NPCs really don't matter all that much to be brutally honest after you've done there first few missions you probably never see them again and just call them so whats the point of doing a hole new body type for a contact you'd probably physically see maybe 2 or 3 times in the life of your character.


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With this reasoning, you could argue to just have the mission giver replaced with the police radio or newspaper, if they just aren't that important to begin with.

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U could and probably quite successfully there are very few NPC within the game that you need to visit more than 2 or 3 time but currently to create a new NPC to give out a mission it takes very little work and they all ready done it once so may as well keep doing. and a single NPC in a wheelchair probably could be implemented when and if the devs have a need for it but there not just gonna stick one in on a whim

Smoke works the same way as Myopic described flash arrow working

First things first NPCs really don't matter all that much to be brutally honest after you've done there first few missions you probably never see them again and just call them so whats the point of doing a hole new body type for a contact you'd probably physically see maybe 2 or 3 times in the life of your character.

again whats the point for Civ NPC there basically background noise there to make the city's look alive there like extras in a TV show and of no real importance

basically its only likely to happen if its being implemented for players and as standoff mentioned the dev's have already said no to "fat" "female huge" and "monstrous" body options as there would be to much work involved in porting over costume options/power animations and that's with a monstrous skeleton already in existence and all these options are humanoid they have 2 legs and 2 arms and a head so could do power animations like foot stomp and the martial arts kicks a model which is basically legless couldn't do any of these things (just look at snakes and ghosts there very limited in the powers they use)

so in the time required to implement Vs cost effectiveness equation its a no go.

that's not to say I'm against the idea of a legless model (quite like the idea actually for a MM concept i have) but the work required would be a lot and not be worth it that is unless BaB (think it was BaB) gets his way and manages to implement some form of costume part power limitation (the hook hand and duel blades really annoys him seemingly) if that was to be implemented i could see future costume parts like missing or mutated body parts being possible as you could exclude power sets or maybe even just powers (or in a perfect world power customisation would come along and they could just exclude specific animations)

But that's more than likely a very long way of and doing it just to have a wheelchair in game so you can play as a disabled person is a really bad idea from a PR point of view.