UberGuy

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I am working on leveling up a /SR scrapper with a goal to soft-cap my defenses (~45 DEF...maybe a little more). Now, if I fight +1 mobs, do they still only have a 50% chance to hit (before my defenses), or do they get a bonus since they are +1? I remember something special about +5's, but my recollection is very "fuzzy" since I usually don't make characters who primarily rely on DEF.

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Very, very (over) simplified, the mob hit calculations look like this.

HitChance = Accuracy * (50% + mobToHit - yourDefense)

Higher levels and higher rank mobs get more accuracy (up to +5, beyond which they actually start getting +toHit as well).

Effectively, mobs always have a 50% base chance to hit you, but their final calculated hit chance can work out better than that suggests based their rank, level and the power they're using, because all three things can affect the total accuracy.

Accuracy modifiers for rank, level and power all multiply together to get the total accuracy.

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I don't think the fundamental intention of the market is to make it a stock market to earn big money, although it can be used that way.

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While I agree in principle, this market is pretty clearly set up in a way that encourages it. In particular: double-blind bidding and listing with limited price history. That design seems unusual enough to need to be a deliberate attempt to make the market a kind of game of its own, and the prize for playing is big rewards.

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Why? The whole point is too be able to calculate storage space - THAT'S why limits are in place. Just because whatever they changed now takes up more stored chracters to implement a line break - it doesn't mean that the devs should resize (and increase)their data field size for something so minor.

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The problem is that they've increased the storage used by previously valid (and in-limit) text while (presumbably) leaving the storage limits the same.

Edit: Worse, it's not intuitive. If the editor required you to enter markup to get carriage returns that would be one thing. But it looks like it's silently converting them after entry, meaning the only way most people will ever figure out how much of the storage they're using is by trial and error.

Actually, I'm fairly sure that unicode was lost some time back.

I might be thinking of another input field, though.

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Carnies are one of the more seriously creepy groups in the game. Forget the women, has anyone taken a good look at the men? Each has his entire back covered with whip marks. Vanessa must get her jollies in some decidedly non-teen rated ways.

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If you have not followed the arcs, the truth behind the male carnies may be far more creepy than you know.

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If you watch carefully, when they are defeated, you can see their souls departing. I believe this is Vanessa DeVore eating their souls. The punishment for failure.

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For support of this theory, read up on the group's backgrounder, here.

Warning, this contains spoilers.

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I generally wouldn't accuse Silverado of not knowing what he's doing given all he's accomplished on so many different toons.

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And I didn't do so.

I said that his advice isn't likely to be sound for an extremely large number of players, because an extremely small fraction of them is going to be leveling at that speed.

In the very broadly general case, suggesting slotting recharge over damage because you plan to hit 50 in three days is comparable to telling people not to bother slotting anything in their attacks until they hit 50, since that'll only be for three days.

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I disagree. Without a market I think getting all the IOs I want would be almost impossible.

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In theory, you could just do it with merits or tickets, assuming they put everything for sale at the appropriate vendors. For some people that would make it "take epic long periods of time" instead of "impossible".

The market fills the role of offering non-epic-long IO acquisition for people who can't play a metric ton of TFs or story arcs, but who are willing to play the market mini-game. That makes it extremely useful.

I think the OP's question sounds like it's looking for people who like the market itself. Sure, the mini-game works because people are looking for IOs and a few other rare things, but given that reality, it does exist as a dependent mini-game, and some people like it on its own merits.

I wouldn't really play the mini-game for its own sake, even though I have no enmity for it. It's the IOs that hold my attention, and not the market that provides them.

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If there were no IO's, noone would want IO's, therefore you wouldn't be missing anything. You'd be playing the game just as everyone did before WW.

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Before there were IOs, there was a substantially vocal segment of the board population calling for "ph4t l3wt". So what you're saying about what people would want is untrue.

If they added a market without loot, then yes, that would be pointless and no one would use it, because you could get all the non-loot stuff at a store.

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It worked out just fine for the 3 days it took to get to 50

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This statement alone is a counter-endorsement for your recommendation. It suggests that your playstyle is radically out of touch with what the vast majority of players are experiencing.

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Has anyone ever tried slotting attacks for recharge rather than damage??

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Think about this.

If you look at an attack as dealing X damage per Y sec, then you can improve this by increasing X or decrease Y. However, because Y is in the denominator, decreases there don't behave like increases in X.

Additionally, your attacks have animation or activation times which recharge reducers cannot change. The total time between activations of a power are AnimTime+RechTime, and only RechTime gets smaller as you add more recharge enhancers. This contrasts with adding damage enhancers, which have no comparable limitation on how much they increase damage.

Finally, as others have said, you can eventually combine multiple different attacks and some recharge to have an attack chain that basically never has to stop until you run out of endurance.

The best approach is usually to get near the max damage slotting ED makes useful, and then add in some recharge. Generally, unless the power has an extremely long recharge time, 1-2 SOs worth of recharge is plenty.

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Typically these systems quantify challlenge by levels or "challenge ratings". The wider the gap between a character's level and the level or challenge rating of something they overcome, the more progress they make towards their next progress threshold.

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I think you misunderstand me. If a character undergoes two encounters, they should definitely earn more XP from the more difficult one, assuming other factors are equivalent.

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But that's not the assertion that led me to launch into the background of the systems. Specfically, it was the assertion that the character who's better at something should get the greater reward for it.

Going back to Arcanaville's recent example, consider the case of two Scrappers, one L45, one L41, teamed up and fighting L43 mobs. Assuming identical powerset choices (as much as possible for the four-level gap), the L45 Scrapper will be far more efficient at defeating mobs than the level 41 Scrapper will be. Under your principles, the level 45 Scrapper should make more progress towards being level 46 in that encounter than the level 41 one should, even though (as the game stands), he's facing significantly less threat.

In a perfectly idealized setting, the level 41's decrease in progress due to foe level scaling should be perfectly offset by the level 45's increase in progress. (The L45 would defeat more foes but get less for each one.) However, not only is that not the current situation, it's not clear that such a thing is possible in the general case, due to the complexity of AT or powerset differences. That doesn't even account for differences in power choice or slotting within powersets.

Fundamentally, though, I think we have really come down to the critical factor - the question of whether teaming should ever be worse for you than soloing. I do think that making sure that teaming is always a benefit is a strong principal the devs have pursued (perhaps to a fault), with the strongest evidence being the bonuses given for being on progressively larger teams. Now, that was done a significantly long time ago, but I think it may be telling that something like it was only just implemented with MA Ticket rewards.

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I can find NO data indicating that MM pets have any threat level at all, neither do controller/dominator pets with the exception of PA with a threat level of 5 and phantasms decoy. Not even the bruisers attacks have any kind of taunt component in them. MM pets do NOT appear to have a higher threat level than anything, if you have data proving otherwise I would be very interested in seeing it.

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Iakona's AT spreadsheet lists the MM pets as having inherent threat ratings of 3.

This compares to a 1.0 for a Blaster and a 4.0 for a Tanker.

Regular "Pet" critters have a 1.5.

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Nice guys. Thansk for relating. It definately gives SoA's some hope...let me ask you this tho; Do you guys have yoru accolades for +reg +recovery +hp + end and the like? What about numina's and such?
I realize that with the AE generation, alot of people ar neglecting accolades and some of the uniques, but most of the Vets still run for them and such, thats all I was wondering

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I have all those those things now. Of course, I'd strive to have them even if I wasn't going to try to solo AVs, because "stronger, better, faster" is just how I like to play.

IMO, you always want these things for AV soloing. Every little bit helps. The inventions system, generally, is all about adding up little buffs to big net effect, and most of the passive accolades fit nicely in this scheme.

As someone with a softcapped Night Widow who goes and pulls grate ambushes of L54 Rikti at RWZ raids, has soloed more than a couple AVs, and generally runs rampant, all with less scaling resists, less Defense debuff resistance, and significantly less HP than a Brute, I have to agree with some of the early responses.

You're doing it wrong.

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Now since I suspect what you may be asking is actually more along the lines of whether we would be here without playing the market, then I am not one of the ebil marketeers in that way so I would be here since I don't play it, I use it. But I do know it wouldn't be very useable if it weren't for all elements using it including the market gamers.

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I don't hate having to use the market by any means, but the market is a means to an end for me. That end is inventions, and the market is just how I get most of them.

It does help make getting them somewhat engaging on it's own, though. I won't say I think the net result would be quite as satisfactory if somehow the market was just a store. I think the very fact that you can achieve little (or big) victories on the market do make it a mini game many of us enjoy to some degree.

But on its own that wouldn't keep me here.

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I was running through the Barracuda SF on the day I15 went to test and we had a /Traps MM (hai Karl!) with the proc in his Triage Beacon. I noticed funny text in my combat logs and was like "o.O it's healing me!"

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Ooh, that's nifty.

It's not a "d" anything system. It uses floating point random number generators and checks the results against thresholds.

A d20 system would be based on even intervals of 5% thresholds on checking for success.

In contrast, CoH success rolls can be against essentially arbitrary values like 44.273% (a wholly made up number).

Most numbers in the game are displayed rounded to the hundredths or thousandths, and most base values are expressed as things like 0.65 or 1.125, but calculated final values are, as far as we know, not rounded except for display purposes.

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(1) If you are doing something that's harder for you than someone else, it makes sense for you to get more reward.

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I absolutely disagree with this. If two people are doing something, and one person is more effective at it, the person who's more effective should get more reward.

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This is in opposition to every reward system I have ever experienced, including pen-and-paper ones.

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I think you may need to remember the context that these reward systems are founded in. The most clear vision of the what XP systems generally represent is a the classic story character of a young hero thrust into adventure. Early on they have minimal skill at fighting, picking locks, fast talking, or whatever it is they do for their class or skill selection. As they do more of these things, they get better at them - expressed in game terms as XP or other points that they can allocate to their progression.

Typically these systems quantify challlenge by levels or "challenge ratings". The wider the gap between a character's level and the level or challenge rating of something they overcome, the more progress they make towards their next progress threshold. A level 8 D&D character gets more progress towards being level 9 for defeating a level 10 foe than a level 10 D&D character progresses towards being level 11.

The idea here is the old "risk vs. reward" notion. If you take on a challenge more risky than normal for your level, the roleplay story translation assumes your character learned more from the encounter than normal, gained more confidence, etc.

That's the story analogy for what XP systems try to represent. How much your character progresses because of that encounter. It's not some sort of wage system where the more experienced characters always earn more for being better. Instead, the more experienced you are the harder stuff you have to do to keep progressing at the same rate, because you don't "learn" anything from the things you did before.

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if no % it means 100%? like Knockout blow?

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Yes.

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Here's the crux of the disagreement then. I don't see why this should be true. At best they should be earning the same XP/min since their contribution is proportionally the same (assuming all they do is tank - if they also do damage or control, their contribution is proportionally somewhat less).

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Fundamentally, reward should be based in some measure on a couple of principles.

(1) If you are doing something that's harder for you than someone else, it makes sense for you to get more reward.

In the Tanker case, if he's lower-level than the mobs he's fighting, he's taking on more risk and suffering more damage. If you substituted in a higher-level Tanker, they might both ultimately achieve the same performance on the basis that both were sufficiently tough to pull it off. However, the higher-level Tanker has an easier time of it. How that translates into requirement for player action depends heavily on powerset - a lowbie Fire/ Tanker is probably going to have to play more actively than a lowbie Stone/ tanker running Granite.

(2) If you can perform as well as someone higher level than you, it doesn't make sense for you to get less XP than they would doing the same thing, scaled for level.

Going back to the Defender example, let's say that we have a Empath Defender and a Blaster. All an Emp Defender's buffs function equally well not matter what level they are - only their Heals are weaker at low levels. If the Emp is following the Blaster around buffing his mitigation, damage and regen/recovery, they're both getting benefit and acting as a team. Presumably they both get equal shares of the XP.

Now we replace the Emp with one that's -4 to the mobs. His buffs work out the same for the Blaster. He shouldn't get less progress per defeated foe towards his next level than the same-level Defender did. That would be nonsensical, because they are providing the same benefit. However, the XP system has no way to tell if the 2nd player is an Emp, a Tanker, a Fire/Kin, or whatever. If we say the 2nd, lower-level player is a Blaster, and then we scale the system based on the fact that such a character will deal less damage and contribute less, the low-level Emp is getting less reward than his contribution suggests.

(3) Contribution to progress is not the only thing likely wrapped up in the current XP model. There is also threat represented by foes.

This is extremely hard for me to express quantitatively, partially because I don't have the interest in the topic to think too hard about it. But at its simplest, if you are on a team where you're, say, -3/-4 to all the mobs, you're at a much higher risk of getting waxed than if you are higher level. Part of the difficulty of quantifying that is that it depends immensely on who your higher-level partners are, how smart/good they are at playing the game, and probably what ATs and powersets they have. Going in -3/-4 on a PuG is likely to give very different results than going in on a SG superteam. I think there's a tendency to handwave this aspect of the XP picture away, but I am unconfortable doing so. I'm not sufficiently certain that enough players play in ways that makes being the guy that's really low-level on the team a safe bet without being a door sitter.

Edit: Thinking about the above and what I think you are describing, I think the difference comes down to opinion about what is more important. Neither system is perfect. The existing one is arguably overly gracious, and rewards things more than it arguably should. Your system is arguably overly conservative, and rewards things less than it arguably should, in order to ensure that it's not overly gracious. Which system is "better" depends on which situation you think it's more important to prevent.

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I tried to play a SoA but i just can't seem to enjoy it. I went to the hero vets, witch i just got yesterday, and they can fly right away and can transform and stuff it just seems more rewarding than a SoA. Now am i just missing something or what because it just seems so lack luster right now.

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SoAs start pretty much like other characters, maybe a little weaker on defense. They end up stronger than a lot of other characters. They're incredibly survivably, deal excellent damage, and act as force multipliers on teams.

SoAs start modestly and end up demigods. Kheldians start with a flare, and end up as epic heroes.

That doesn't mean you'll like SoAs, or that it's wrong to like a Kheld better. But it's why people go on about them.

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That was more of a PvP issue and how Auto Follow works, and Auto Follow is the best way to deal with moving foes in pvp if you are melee. Not that it made huge difference there, you still have to rub shoulders but now you don't have to do it so darn close.

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This was most certainly not a PvP issue on pre-release weekend of CoH. The problem I describe came out with the game and persisted for a decent while. I don't remember when they actually fixed it.

I do not now and did not ever use autofollow on mobs. It was not an issue spcific to autofollow.

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In pve it was just a bonus as pve critters rarely move a much.

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You do realize that we're talking about "runners," right? By definition, those are mobs that move, and move away from you. Hitting mobs that stood still was never an issue.

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Also; holy crap I undervalued this baby.. I didn't realize it granted end in PvE as well!

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Heh.

Oh, I know. I've received plenty of it.

I had assumed that VP was saying he sent feedback via mail explicitly. I can see though that maybe he meant he thought the built-in feedback mechanism used the mail system. That never occured to me.