UberGuy

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You just have to consider your choice before you make it. Shocking concept, I know. Kudos to the design guys who came up with this, I'm dying to get my grubby little paws on it!

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Cool. You stick with the permanent choice when either they change either your PPPs or some other power that synergized well with your choice of PPP (thus driving that choice). I'll stick with keeping my choices reversible - just like heroes can, and just like both heroes and villains can for every other pool choice in the game.

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In City of Villains, we're being relegated to be lackeys of the lackeys. How fun.

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You can look at it that way. You could also look at it as one of the handful of villains who sit at the top of the Arachnos hierarchy taking a personal interest in you, as you've come to their attention to the point where they are trying to recruit you into their own camps.

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Great, we're the middle managers of evil.

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First ones to go when the organization downsizes!

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It could be that was just my impression. The way the city is set up with government services for all the heroes and Freedom Corps personnel guiding the new heroes and the level ranks and such forth, I'd always thought we were supposed to be FC.

In any case, even if the heroes aren't FC, the original point was that they're still organized through the city government, so a completely disorganized villain "civilization" out on the Isles would get plastered unless there was some sort of unifying element.

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In contrast, I have always taken that as nothing more than a legalized document of deputization. For all that it is a modern city, the conditions in Paragon (and possibly many parts of the post-invasion world) are not really comparable to a real world city. Essentially, to stem the tide of chaos and destruction, the city is deputizing superpowered beings of any stripe. There are clearly implied rules of such deputization, and abusing the power granted would almost certainly cause investigation and possible arrest by other supers. (See the original CoH comic.) However, it's always been apparent to me that such deputized supers are free to pursue justice in the way and times they see fit, without reporting up to anyone except to "turn in" "suspects" they have "arrested".

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There has to be some sort of code for taking out and replacing a badge. At least, the Croatoa Task Force mission against the Respawning Witch gives the impression of (each defeat changes/replaces the previous badge).

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I'd like to say that if they made it work like this I'd be perfectly happy. The respec badges also (appear) to work this way - pre respec you have one badge; post respec you have a different one.

I would consider this an odd interpretation of "permanent," but it'd make me happy.

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Just because you having heard of Freedom Corps fighting any of these other factions doesnt mean it hasnt happened.

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Ah, but to me it does. I have six heroes in the 40s. Some have done content the others have not. None have ever experienced anyone but their teammates fighting the threats to Paragon City.

That fact that it is not presented to me makes it not so for all practical purposes. Because it has not been there in the presentation made my heroes feel more independant - more meaningful in my eyes.

To say it was always there when it was never presented this way is, to me, a serious "retcon". Even if it was on paper somewhere.

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There is a lot on the hero side that hadnt been mentioned until COV came out. Take for example the Wyvern or the Legacy Chain. Not one mention in COH but they are fully fleshed out organizations helping to fight the evil forces in the Rogue Isles.

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The key is that they focus on the RI. And, honestly, neither has the scope of Longbow. They don't have "real" heroes among their ranks. Like most villain groups in CoH, they are mostly schmucks with advanced training and nice toys/powers. The backstory of Longbow bosses makes clear that they are approximates of full-blown heroes of Paragon City. And honestly, some of them hit about as hard.

In a previous post Longbow was being presented as a reason that Arachnos must exist, and that most villains must bend to Arachnos' will in some lesser or greater extent. I contend that this notion is overly restrictive to our freedom of character development. And I think the "laser cyborg" analogy in a fantasy setting is overboard. All we want is to not be lackeys.

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Something else that is bothering me about all of this is that just because it says the choice is permanent when it is made doesnt mean down the road you cant make ANOTHER choice!!!
I mean I really hope for more content past level 50 and who knows maybe then you can tell ALL the patrons to kiss your "you know what" and punk out Lord Recluse himself!! I really think everyone just needs to sit back and let the Devs play this one out because I believe we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg here.

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Getting something like that is exactly what we're asking for. Because we have been told, in plain white text, that it's permanent. Permanent: "Lasting or remaining without essential change. Not expected to change in status, condition, or place."

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Why put all the villains under one banner like that? If you ask me, there's a good reason for it. The entire hero population of Paragon City is unified under one common militaristic banner, the Freedom Corps. If the Rogue Isles were fragmented and filled with loner villains exclaiming "I wrk 4 N0 M4N!!11!!!" then the Freedom Corps would take the Isles in about twenty minutes. They needed a practical reason why the Isles would be able to withstand the heroes of Paragon City, and this is it.

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Actually, I want to address this. This is purely a CoV setting artifice. It does not exist in CoH. I never once had the feeling that Freedom Corps or any other of the organizations mentioned in the backstory had any more significant impact on the city than any one, lone hero. (Or at most, team of eight heroes.) There's never any indication of Freedom Corps keeping Malta, the Council, Nemesis, the CoT, or any other major, organized faction in check. And honestly, I compare any of those directly to Arachnos in power. Especially organizations like the Council and Nemesis have leadership hierarchies directly comparable to that of Arachnos, and potentially trans-AV-class leaders with cross dimensional and/or cross planetary scope.

One could postulate that Freedom Corps has been sight unseen because they have been busy with the Rogue Isles. I don't think that works, because in the timeline the assault on the RI is a recent development. Plus, it's hard to believe that the FC would ignore (other) dire threats of a planetary scope just because they were massing to deal with RI.

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The Patrons aren't showing up and killing off Heroes or Giant Monsters instead of us. They're just providing story direction, which is what characters like that are meant to do.

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Perhaps, but (and this isn't the first time we've been at this sort of juncture in CoX) its a matter of interpretation of the genre. What we're seeing here is that, no matter what the devs thought, a lot of people want to create Doctor Doom or Lex Luthor style villains - villains beholden to no ruler, patron, or partner.

I think the problem results because, on the hero side, nothing really stops us from creating a hero with that loner backstory who still has EPPs. But on the villain side we have to have this association if we want PPPs.

And they're permanent.

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Bottom line for me: I appreciate that some decisions have consequences. One of the reasons I play MMORPGs is that there's no savegame and I have to live with some of the decisions I make and actions I take.

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Your certainly welcome to that opinion. Me, I want those permanent concequences in any way besides my character design so late in the game. Have certain factions hate me. Have certain contacts never speak to me again (OK, they all do that eventually, but still).

Heroes do not work this way. I like that a lot. I don't want my villains to work that way.

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But, once again, the only piece of info we have is:
Perma.

And that's it. And it's enough that people have complained none stop.

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No, people have come in, said they dislike it. Then others come and attempt to convince them to like it, or outright disclaim that there is any right to dislike it. And those who posted they dislike it respond.

Or, for the examples I posted, people try to explain why they like or dislike it.

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There's be zero mention about the number of powers. Or the nature of the powers.

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Actually, there specifically has been mention of that. Unfortunately it was not by a fully authoritative source, so any effort to use it in discussion has been manhandled by people who seem to want to squash and expression of dislike over what might be coming.

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There has been mention by a dev (not a forum mod!) that full info would be given out beforehand. Which is more info you get before you choose your AT.

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If I don't like my AT or powersets, I usually figure it out within 6-10 hours of play. I might decide to tought it out on the basis of experience with other people's characters or hard numbers and my own imagination, but in general, that's not the same as making a permanent choice on a 400-500 hour investment.

Honestly, I don't think it matters sufficiently that we get full numbers. I am very much a numbers kinda guy and I still rarely choose powers without taking them to the test server first. And guess what - I can't test all the PPs until I'm high enough level to have them, but I might have started down the road to a power I won't like, and I can't go back. I dislike that. That you think it's OK doesn't make that better.

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And, of course, given the example of CoH, it's not like the epic/aux power pools are game breaking if you don't take them.

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So what? I like the EPPs. The ones I've taken work great. They didn't unbalance my characters but they made them better and more fun for me to play. I want that on my villains too, thank you very much. "You can just skip it if you don't like the baggage" is a total BS response.

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It's a different way of doing things. But it's hardly a horrible or game breaking one.

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Game breaking? No. Not horrible? Your opinion.

Here's your links. Just a sample.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

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Then kindly shut the hell up, since all you seem to have time to comment on is the stupid tripe and are happily ignoring anything here worth paying attention to.

You might stop to consider that a post like yours and the one you responded to are just another form of whining.

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There's things worth replying to?

Really? Can you link to them?

If you link to a post that's crying how much something not even on Test is going to suck, then you fail to get a cookie.

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Test server, test server, test server, test server, test server, TEST SERVER, test server, test server.

We do not need any of this to be on the test server to have the concerns voiced in this thread.

None. Nada. Nothing. Not one bit.

The test server would let us know if the powers sucked. It would let us know whether their visual themes clash with our characters. It will let us know if the arcs are broken, or if we can outlevel them.

The bulk of this thread's complaint has nothing to do with those things.

Not reading this thread has deprived you of a basic understanding of it.

We have been told that PPPs are a permanent path choice. They cannot be respeced out of. This is the one fact that has been said by a true dev, and not a forum mod.

This is the root of the complaint. We do not need a test server to know this, to dislike this, or to comment/complain about it.

Moreover they are patronization. Not even by Recluse himself, but by his subordinates. Those who want PPPs become the associates of subordinates to a top guy. You know, that not all of us want to work for.

Wake up and smell the freaking coffee.

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Um, Uberguy?

Exactly what did that have to do with what I was responding to?

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Heh. Well, it was a reply to you. I guess I didn't make how very clear.

What I'm saying is that, yes, you may be right that the "mainstream" content in CoV's 40+ game may make us feel less like flunkies/enforcers, and we may indeed feel as super villainous as CoH feels super heroic.

But the requirement to get PPPs is for us to choose Recluse's subordinates as our patrons.

In other words, no matter how well they do the main arcs and missions we get 40-50, what's been described so far leaves us with the choice of being patronized or getting no equivalent to hero EPPs.

And they're permanent.

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Considering we haven't played through the 40+ game and mayhem missions, this seems to be a disservice to the developers without seeing the upper end content.

I somehow doubt we are "just" flunkies up at the high end. Heck, we've had that whole destined thing going on since *level 1*.

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Ah, but here's the rub! "No one has to do Patron Arcs."

Sure, we might get stories that are the villainous equivalent of what we get in CoH's 40+ game. We might feel truly super and villainous, and feel equivalent to any of the named villains.

But if we want the equivalent of EPPs we have to be patronized. Oh, and the choice is permanent.

Hero: Hit 41, choose an EPP and carry on. Don't like it later? Respec.

Villain: Hit 41, need to run a story arc, become permanently associated with one of Recluse's subordinates, and never be able to change the choice.

And I'll tell you, I'll be truly pissed if they come and add an equivalent restriction to the heroes. That is not the solution I am looking for.

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Whiniest thread ever..

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Jesus, hell yes.

I finially read this thread last night, gave up after reading less then half of it.

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Then kindly shut the hell up, since all you seem to have time to comment on is the stupid tripe and are happily ignoring anything here worth paying attention to.

You might stop to consider that a post like yours and the one you responded to are just another form of whining.

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Technically, Doom started out as a lowly Gypsy and was a super-villain for *years* before he attempted to take his revenge against Reed Richards as a epic arch-villain.

We are just playing through that. I might have worked my way up the lacky chain, but that's because my characters started out as super-powered persons that were thrown in jail and had to be broken out. The guys who broke me out say I might be a destined one?

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And what I fail to see is how this is us working towards that. This feels to me like us working from enforcer to permenant sidekick. From freelance thug to well-known permenant employee.

We aren't working up to Doctor Doom, or even like many members of the Legion of Doom or Brotherhood of Mutants - by and large both are working associations of persons who can act as loners. (Note that I do not object to the notion of villains working together. That's what a villain SG is. What I object to constant servitude.) We don't seem to be going there. We seem to be going for a small-scale version of being the Heralds of Galactus. Yeah, that would be pretty kickass, but Galactus always gets the top billing.

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Please remember, Bridger is a mod like CuppaJo, not a dev. The devs could have changed things since they told the mods anything. Course, they could change things since they tell us too.

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I understand that perfectly. I was using "dev" in the loose sense we tend to use here. I have modified my post to say "redname", to reduce confusion.

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Maybe it's just me, but some powers have 'felt' different than they 'sound' when reading about them, which is why I hang on to respecs and use the test server to try a new build out.

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So do I. In fact, I think that such testing is more important and more relevant than the most exacting lists of numbers the devs could ever give us on the powers. I need to experience exactly how the powers synergize with my existing powers before I am sure I want to actually go with them.

And again, I have to point out that I find the suggestion that I have to basically skip taking any PPPs until I'm 47 to know what the 4th tier power really works like totally unacceptable.

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Anyway, maybe I'm rambling, but at this point, I want i7 on test already so that we can move past 'if'.

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I truly can't see what "if" we're discussing in the thread that's desirable to test in that way.

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There's still quite a bit of wiggle room for your background and hitting 50 isn't the end of your story, it's just the end of the story co-written by you and Cryptic.

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And I don't understand why people think that isn't a hard pill to swallow.

Every single one of my characters has a backstory in their description, and every single one of them is tied strongly to the universe. I don't have any S`hiar princesses or rogue Widlcats operatives or any Kryptonians in my stable of characters. Those that mention anything specific to the setting (about 1/2) are all tied to actions by Crey or the 5th Column or Arachnos or someone easily recognizable.

But who they are, and what they did after, is all their own.

I already have problems with how totally lackey we seem in CoV. We're super-powered enforcers for hire, not supervillains in the classic sense. Supervillains are, stereotypically, self-directed.

Heroes suffer from some of the same problems, as they never seem to solve any problems themselves except to exert brute force on behalf of their contacts. But some room is left to the imagination because the heroes (with the exception of Kehldians) have utterly no restricitions on their origins. None. Nada. Zip. It's left completely open. And so is their future. Nothing ties their allegience to anyone else. And I love that.

Concequences in power choice is a poor place to add concequence. If I want concequences I want it to be that I'm randomly ambushed by Black Widows for ticking off Ghost Widow, or by Coralax for joining with Mako. I want it to be environmental, not endemic within my character's design. I don't want it to warp my character in some way I didn't understand. That makes a good story, sure. But I'm not forced to play the characters I read about in comics. My characters are just that. Their mine. Let me determine more of their fate.

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Does this mean that each patron has five seperate pools within it, one for each AT, with four powers in each AT specific set? So, the patron isn't changable, but the powers within are?

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That's what I believe it is.What I thik Positron meant was that you just couldn't choose another Patron after you have chosen one but that you could change the powers in the patrons set for your AT.

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Please tell me that people don't think this ameliorates the concern about the permenant choice.

Now we have even more information from a redname, though it's now across to the Euro boards, and didn't sound certain.

1) Each patron will offer a powerset per AT.
2) Each poweset will have four powers in it.
3) The choice of patron and the set associated with them is permenant, though the powers within it are not.

If this information is all correct, then parts one an two are functionally no different than how heroes have it. Part three is the single, glaring difference.

And as a player I despise it.

If you look in my sig, I have three heroes within 2 levels of 50. All three are Pre I2 (two are pre I1). I could have had a 50 ages ago. One reason I do not is that Kheldians hold no interest for me. Why? There are several reasons.

*) In a game touted from on high for its character creator's incredible variety, I am would look exactly like every other Kheldian a large fraction of the time. (Admittedly, a few other sets such as Dark and Stone Armor have this problem, though auras and other things can help.)
*) My Origin (with a capital O - the thing that determines what enhancements I can use) is fixed.
*) There is a canon background for what Kheldians are.

All of those things are contrary to the notion of how we can create all the rest of our heroes. We choose their Origin, their backstory, and their appearance almost completely. The story-bound nature of the Kheldians repels me.

I have much the same problem with the PPPs, except I am more disgusted with it. I can choose not to play a Kheldian, but now to make a comparable choice for my villains, I have to choose not to expand their powers? People complain about how "unepic" the EPPs are, but I have never agreed with much of the complaint. They add a great deal to every Hero of mine that has them.

So if I don't want this forced content affiliation, I get to choose to skip content and avoid a useful power progression for my characters? How can this be considered superior by anyone? I can understand someone not feeling this is important to them but I cannot understand someone telling me this should not matter to me.

And note that in the above I didn't even touch on the matter of "do I like these powers?" To even suggest that we should try various patron sets out on test is insulting. That's a massive expendature of time, and its one that players of heroes need not do. Why should villains be different?

In my opinion, the test server is completely, totally and mind-bogglingly irrelevant. We don't need the test server to understand the limitations this situation would represent. All the test server will do is tell us, once and for all, which of this is speculation or not. I for one, have no intention of waiting until that late stage of voiceing my concerns. If my arguments are based on faulty information then all the Devs have to do is tell us that now. Until then I will remain provisionally disappointed and concerned.

Do not make the PPP choice permenant. I don't care if it delays them. I don't want them if they work the way outlined above.

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Actually, if they added "patron" arcs and four-five patrons on the hero side, I'd really be tempted to pick one, as that means my character was basically a serious side-kick to one of the FP.

And that would be cool.

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Futurias, I can appreciate that you would love this. However, it removes choice. You (and others) like that the choice is meaningful. I (and others) don't like that that "meaning" takes away choice.

Personally, I would never ask for something in this game that would actively remove choice from other players with opinions different from mine. Not unless it was a clear violation of a core mechanic such as leveling speed; in other words an exploit or bug.

I'll give you a prefect example. On my Regen Scrapper I have focused accuracy. I have some fear that once I7 is out and we can use EPPs in PvP that FA will be nerfed. FA is the only reason I have the Body Mastery APP on that character. If it is nerfed I will probably go for Dark Mastery instead.

Yes, we don't know how many powers or whatnot are in the PPPs. However, because Redname comments have equated PPPs to EPPs, assuming they will work similarly in terms of power pool choice nature is an educated guess; a reasonable assumption.

I am, for one, not someone who has complained about CoV being "too like" CoH. It's different content and the ATs don't play exactlly the same. It's different enough for me. I'd actually appreciate some similarity in the PPPs and EPPs.

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I read this thread and was disgusted, Clint. It's an entire thread of people acting like jagoffs, whether it's about lack of information about patron powers, the inability to change them, or even typos. Game balance, nerfs, devs, fanboys, trolls or not, I take exception to that as a forum reader. If you want to condone that because you suddenly find yourself at odds with the devs, that's your choice to make.

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Welcome to the black pot and kettle staging area.

Until today, I never felt compelled to ignore you. Now I will never again know what you say, and it relieves me. Goodbye.

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Patron Powers are truly permanent. This powerset, once chosen, is as much a part of your character as your Name, Primary Powerset, Secondary Powerset, Body Type, and Origin.

There is currently no way for us to let you re-spec out of them and into a different one. This is because it is tied to specific content for that Patron.

Because of this, hard numbers are given, in-game, about the powers and what they do before you even choose which arc you wish to partake (and will most likely be available on the website as well).

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This makes positively no sense whatsoever.

Why?

Because it's not true for Heroes.

Several times now changes to the game have made it worthwhile to me to re-evaluate the EPPs I chose on my heroes. There is no tie-in on the hero side to any patron. You chose the EPPs at will, each time you respec.

I am extremely disappointed that this is not an option on the villain side. I honestly don't care at all that its tied to content. I consider that an eggregious mistake on your parts.

Our characters are our toys. They are for us to play with, not you. More options are good, not less.

Take this back to the drawing board. It's a bad idea.

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Since he said they're not changing it I feel comfortable saying this. Aid Self is overpowered. It's on a third of the timer that the other self heals are and it heals for more than Healing Flames. My Blaster loves it, but a 20 sec. recharge is just silly.

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And as has been pointed out many, many times... none of the other self-heals are

a) Interruptable
b) Have incredibly long, no-action-allowed animations

Yes, you can make Aid Self near uninterruptable by slotting two interrupt reducers in it. That's two slots you can't use on recharge.

I have Aid Self on my Invulnerability Scrapper. If I use Aid Self while standing in a fight, by the time I can actually attack again I have always lost almost exactly as much health as I gained as the foe beat on me while I stood there animating the power. The one thing I can do is move around after the interrupt period ends, maybe getting out of melee range, but that does not help me win the fight.

For these reasons I fail completely to understand any comparison with powers such as Reconstruction, which has a no-op animation (the worst side effect is weapon "sheathing" - a non-issue for some users) and can't be interrupted.

Healing Flames, on the other hand, has no business being a smaller heal and does need to be fixed.

The only problem I have is with situations (which, in this game usually means foes) where my death is a matter of dice rolls only. There are a few non-AV/Hero enemies rolling around in CoV who can kill the "soft" ATs in one shot. Since it's quite rare to be guaranteed the ability to stop a boss in its tracks, this can come down to pure luck (or bad luck, in this case) that the boss gets to you despite your interferance or your teammates and delivers that one-shot blow.

That is not challenging or interesting. I dislike the possibility in the extreme. Foes do not need this sort of raw damage-dealing power to be challenging or interesting. I point to Night Widows, who vex many a player with their -perception but who aren't widely known for one-shot kills.

Related to this is the burden of extremely frequent mezzing that we face as a matter of course. Presumably meant to help them overcome the mez protection of armored ATs, this almost never happens in practice (trust me, I specialize in melee ATs) and is a source of frustration for ATs without that protection (trust me, I play those too).

I don't want things to never go sour in battle. But being down and pulling out a victory is one of the sweetest rushes you can manage in a video game. Overbearing damage/mez make things like that really hard for quite a few ATs, at least solo. I want there to almost always be a way to pull off an escape or victory for more ATs. Right now I see that pretty likely for the armored ATs, reasonably likely for those with potent control/debuff capabilities, and often a lost cause for everyone else.

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It just seems odd to me that a class that puts such a focus on ranged damage, and absolutely no focus on melee damage, would be 'better' at it than a class that actually has melee attacks.

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Corruptor damage listed in the character creator: High
Dominator damage listed in the character creator: Medium

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Am I insane, or does this chart say that (and those brawl numbers confirm that) Corruptors have a higher base melee damage than Dominators?

Corruptors, who have no melee attacks aside from Brawl in any of their sets, and Dominators who hang a signifigant anount of their damage on their melee attack powers?

Is that absolutely insane to anyone else?

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As Dwimble points out, it's because a Dominators' role isn't to do damage. It's to hold things.

That they have a major portion of damage in melee (not true of all sets, by the way) is, IMO, fairly meaningless for Dominators. Why? Because you are usually punching something that can't fight back. If it can still fight back, I hold it some more, then punch it.

Man, for people like me, this thread is pure gold.

Thanks for the work, and please keep it up!