Umbral

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I was talking about what Umbral was saying, not what you said.

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Cool! Maybe somebody's OK with my suggestion!

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I'm not agreeing with your suggestion in the least. I've been disagreeing with it from the beginning. What I don't think you realize that is that it's not possible to do what you want with the engine the way it is. The model and the power are 2 completely independent things. Changing the skin of the model will not (and cannot) change the animation thanks to limitations within the engine. Any "flexible limb" powersets would, by definition, restrict the entire limb to a single set up. No choices whatsoever. You wouldn't get to choose between a number of stripes or get any color selections. You'd get nothing. That's what we've been saying and you haven't been reading.

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Perhaps having shape-shifting and stretching WOULD require a new model.

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It wouldn't require a new model. It would require a unique model. No variations possible for any limb that would do any stretching. No tweaking colors. No changing textures. Nothing. They're not going to put a powerset that is that limiting into the system simply because everyone would complain about it being too limited or that it doesn't let them do absolutely everything they want to with it. The fact that they delayed AE for an entire issue because everyone was screaming for custom critters is fairly demonstrative of this. The devs won't release something unless it's roughly 90% of what the playerbase expects/wants from it.

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No that munitions pool is a regular rifle this is an energy rifle...that's why the MMs who use this use a different model.

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That's exactly what I'm saying. Munitions would need to be modified to use the energy rifle for characters with this set, to avoid excessive redraw.

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Actually, it wouldn't. The anti-redraw stuff is done within a set. They can't tweak the sets to avoid redraw if they're completely different sets without doing way more work than they really need to, especially considering that redraw has no in game effect.

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Mainly because I suspect that there are more things possible in-game but which haven't been implemented for fear of unbalancing the game. Or they can implement a power but it wouldn't be a strong enough reason to build an entire powerset around it.

For example, while a wrecking ball would be awesome, it really just amounts to a customization with new animation. (Of course, this would be true of most melee-type weapons, like nunchuks, frying pans, giant rolling pins, etc.) So far the Devs have tried to avoid that sort of PC powerset, but it might not be out of place for unique NPCs.

Plus giving NPCs unique abilities keeps new ideas flowing for opponents and allies. It keeps things exciting and fresh, and a new experience each time.

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They're not avoiding stuff like this because of balancing concerns. Balancing concerns are easy enough to address because they're simply based around changing the numbers in the set, which is pretty easy. The big problem is that they are a large amount of work (designing new animations and visual effects and testing them to make sure they work) for a small benefit (how many players would actually create these special NPCs?). The other issue is that, if they create these "micro-powersets" for NPCs, players will start wanting them which simply generate an additional demand for low effort:return ratio work.

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At a quick glance I see:
-There are only 7 powers (available to players) that cause confuse in the game, and there are five confuse sets, including a purple set, to choose from.
-Likewise there are only 6 Heal powers that require a ToHit check, but they added sets for those as well.
-There are only 7 Fear Powers(more if you count Assassin's Strikes, but they don't take fear sets anyhow), but there are 4 sets for them (and a thread asking for a purple Fear set).

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I once did a numerical comparison of the number of powers available for some IOs and the number available for others, mainly because I wanted the devs to remove the absolute equality of the drop table and weight them to more evenly distribute useful IO drops. Honestly, I don't have a problem with IOs that are useable to a very small subset of builds being in game. I have a problem with those IOs being weighted evenly against the other IOs that are nearly universally useful.

Another set of data points I gather were the number of purple sets that the various ATs can slot. Confuse was, by far, the least common because there are no melee ATs that can use them (blasters couldn't either because Mental Manipulation hadn't been released yet). A number of the IOs could only be slotted with very specific powerset combinations (Hold and Immob for Tanker or Scrapper). All in all, Controllers and Dominators made out like bandits. Adding more purple control sets would simply make it worse. If they're going to add more purple control sets, they're going to need to add additional melee and ranged dps sets, at least so that every AT (meaning a majority of the powerset combinations for said AT) can slot a roughly equal number of purple sets. I find it eternally aggravating that a Controller can have his/her entire attack string fully purpled out whereas Blasters, Scrappers, Brutes, and Tankers, et all, can only have 1-2 powers in their attack string realistically purpled.

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"Supply and demand" heard of it?

Business 101.

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"Cost Benefit Analysis" heard of it?

Business 102

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But that doesn't apply to everyone. Hell, Demons aren't a risk to someone with Fiery Aura, are they?

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Technically, the demons are a risk, just not a very big one. If you go afk with the demons surrounding you, you'll eventually take enough damage to die. The problem I have with the custom critters and their no-ranged capacity is that there is, literally, zero risk if you've got flight, which was something fixed with the normal enemies back before I3 dropped. It seems like a giant oversight.

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But they're still a risk to SOME people. For MA? It's Scrappers, or those without ranged attacks that are forced to get into melee range to get the job done. I don't complain, there have been worse outcomes.

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It's still something that needs to be tweaked in my opinion. Players can purposefully make completely gimp enemies to kill easily. If you really want to make mobs that anyone can kill without much effort, just give them 2 power attack sets that have long animation times (BS and Battle Axe, for example) and they'll never use half of the attacks you give them. The entire second half of the powers are completely ignored because there are a glut of powers.

The only way to fix it that I can imagine would be two fold. First, fix the risk-free-with-flight enemies by making every attack set have a basic ranged attack baseline, even if the set that players have access to doesn't. Give Dark Melee the ability to use Dark Blast, Energy Melee Power Blast (or Hurl). Heck, if they didn't want to do that, they could just say that all enemies get a default gun attack. Second, prevent some powerset combos from overlapping. Disallow having 2 pure attack sets (combined with this, I'd also give every custom critter baseline rank mez protection and reduce their scalars from player ~3.63 to NPC ~2.0, but that's not integral to the issue).

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If you let the people get a hold of the ability to give enemies NO powers, then you create no-risk rewards

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Not that they haven't already since it's quite easy to create enemies that have no ranged attacks. Just give 2 melee sets to a custom critter (avoiding SS and others that have ranged attacks automatically) and get flight (whether via the power or a flight pack). Virtually no risk (they'll try to jump at you and can kill you that way, but that's more player error).

The only problem I can think of is that it might involve screwing with the character creator to some degree, which I'm pretty sure they don't want to do.

I don't mind kill alls so much if the mission map is small or medium. What I really hate is when the mission map is one of the biggest available and its got a kill all requirement.

(Large maps + kill all) != fun

Of course, most of this is dependent upon whether you're running with other people. It's not nearly as bad searching for the last mob whenever you've got 8 people doing it. No matter what group you're in though, a series of 5 large maps that are all kill all is just over the top.

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LOL you just compared farming to murder ...

Still, this is only a QoL suggestion. I have no problems spamming people with fill. I've been doing it for 2 and a half years .... why stop now?

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Actually, I used a comparative device to elaborate on my point that sometimes something good can be used in a manner counter to the implied use.

You're also ignoring the fact that your argument of "the devs think farming is just dandy because AE makes it easier!" is blatantly wrong. Personally, I think the easiest fix would be to have the reward restriction on non-DC AE content be even heavier (approaching 80% less than normal). People that want more content would be reasonably satisfied because we're really just doing it for the stories. People that think that MA should be a completely different leveling path (that doesn't involve farming) would probably throw a hissy-fit though.

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(I don't know if difficulty level adjusts rewards, but you could just scale to Easy automatically if this is done.)

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It doesn't. The difficulty of a mob has no direct effect on what rewards it grants.

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im just waiting for half the crap sets to finally be removed. all the dev's have to do is visit themarkets to see which ones need it. and yes to some more purp sets.

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I'd actually like to see another PbAoE damage and melee damage set added to help balance out the AT purple set disparity (Scrappers get hosed!).

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but the Devs aren't trying to make Farming easier


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I disagree, they have just made it extremly easy with MA.

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Then why can you flag an MA arc for content if it's an obvious farming map and get it removed (at which point you can just go through the 5 minutes of effort to remake it, but still)? The effect of making farming incredibly easy with MA is simply a sad side effect of the devs giving us a large amount of control over additional content.

Think of it this way: the second amendment right to bear arms was made to allow people to defend themselves, but some people still use it to go out and murder/mug/etc.

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Question:

When you first enter a mission, it's not certain how many total mobs there will be. Team size and difficulty setting affect the size of the individual spawns, and the spawns don't actually spawn until someone gets close enough. (Thus "painting the map".) And if your team size changes, the un-spawned spawn sizes may change also.

Can the system even calculate a "Kill X%"?

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If it can't calculate "Kill X%" it should be able to calculate and detect "Wipe out X% of spawns" or "Wipe out X # of spawns" (for non-random maps though). We already know that the engine reads each spawn as a unique cluster (wipe out patrols, kill boss and group, etc). All it would require would be creating the completion requirement variable. It would be pretty much the same thing as "kill X%" and probably a great deal easier to program.

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The things that scrappers/tankers generally lack are Control, Team Buffing, and Ranged/Ranged Area Effect damage.

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The problem with 2 of those 3 things is that they aren't really all that useful to Scrappers/Tankers. Control does very little to contribute unless you have multiple sources to add up the mag. Team buffing values for bother Tankers and Scrappers are so low that any effect they get from those are going to be reduced to pretty much nothing, plus, basic "team buffing" is easy enough to access via the Leadership pool and is probably better than any kind of APP team buffs because they don't directly interfere with a Scrapper's primary role (re: damage). Ranged/AoE damage suffers similarly.

The primary reason that Blasters, Defenders, and Controllers work well incorporating additional attacks from the APPs is that they oftentimes don't have complete attack strings (Blasters less so, but, more often I see the APP attacks being used by Blasters to fill in on AoE attack strings). The APP attacks aren't trying to take the place of powers that are already better and involve being in melee for use.

The only Scrappers that I know of that regularly take the attacks from the Scrapper APPs are AoE farming scrappers (Spines/* and Claws/* normally) that just want a third AoE so that they can kill an entire spawn in a single string.

The APPs are less problematic for Tankers though because all of their attacks have Gauntlet attached, which means that all of those pitiful ranged attacks they can get that are general downgrades compared to their primary attacks for damage can be used to either replace or augment Taunt for getting/maintaining ranged aggro. Scrappers get no such benefit.

Honestly, the whole hole-filling argument doesn't really fly with Scrappers. Scrappers aren't missing ranged attacks (which, 90% of the time they don't need because most can't get a full ranged attack string which would make them actually useful) because ranged attacks are simply another way of dishing out damage (which they have no problem doing). The only "holes" that Scrappers have, as an AT, are debuffing, which would require that any APP powers they get have a much higher debuff scalar to counteract their pitiful AT debuff scalar, and control, which would require that enough be present in a single APP to make it feasible to use them without serious detriment to the primary function (or make them toggles, which is what I'd prefer them to be). Control powers that Scrappers get shouldn't interfere with their primary role, which isn't likely going to happen, but it is what happened with every other AT's APPs.

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'Far' too few?

One less than everyone else?

Poor scrappers. 'Far' too few indeed.

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If we're talking APPs rather than any of the Epic Power Pools (re: blueside only), it's not 1 fewer. It's 2 fewer than Blasters and Defenders and 1 fewer than Tankers and Controllers, which is more than "One less than everyone else?" especially when that 1 accounts for a 25% reduction in options (or 33% increase depending on your vantage point).

Meh. I'd like to see Scrappers get APPs that contribute as much as those of the other ATs.

Blasters get some shields, decent damage, and control. The shields and other defensive powers are just universally useful because they provide a decent baseline of additional survivability, and the extra damage and control stack well with the existing stacking and control in Blaster primary/secondaries.

Controllers get damage and survivability. The damage gives them decent damage dealing capabilities that doesn't conflict with their holds (if held: damage; if not held: control). The survivability blends very well with their support secondaries and is also simply useful for the same reason that Blasters like it.

Defenders get additional survivability and bonus support capability and self buffs with a couple decent attacks thrown in. It's pretty self explanatory. Survivability from the APP shields is awesome. The self buffs and attacks make soloing/blastfending much nicer. The support capability (re: hard and soft controls) mesh with the straight support from their primaries.

Scrappers (and Tankers as well) get a few anemic control powers, some painfully weak debuffs, and pitiful ranged attacks that don't mesh well at all with how almost every Scrapper/Tanker runs (re: using the melee attacks from their primary). Tankers at least get some use from the ranged attacks because they have Gauntlet attached to help get/keep ranged aggro.

Every other AT gets powers from their APPs that contribute to the functionality of the APP without being in direct conflict with and oftentimes working synergistically with the ATs primary and secondary powersets.

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Not self buff (already had in secondary), other.

I'd like to see some stuff from Thermal along with a couple of the Blast skills in scrapper fire, personally.

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"Self-buffs" as in "offensive self buffs similar to Focused Accuracy," which we've already got two versions of. Something akin to Rage from SS (with the doubled recharge that follows with being in an APP) would be nice, at least in my opinion, especially since it wouldn't be possible to stack, forcing the crash to happen.

If we could, I'd prefer to see at least one of them comprised of self-buff/debuff type powers rather than the anemic ranged attacks that we've currently got (thanks to the low scrapper buff/debuff modifiers).

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QR

My take on doing pistols I guess it a little different. Rather than various ways to shoot the same gun, have it be a rare super guy gun, with lot of different ammo.

cryo bullets, napalm bullets, spent uranium bullets (knockdown?), flechette bullets (cone attack), tracer bullets (accuracy bonus) high explosive bullets (aoe, targeted), taser bullets (low damage, stun), magnum bullets (your standard tier one attack),poison tipped, and of course, a nuclear bullet as the nuke.

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No thanks. I want a gun set that isnt a swiss army knife. I want a pistol set thats about shooting pistols.

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Personally, if I were going to make a new set like this, I'd set it up like a ranged Dual Blades. The special effects are all based on specific combos (varying from Knockdown/back/up, debuffs, stuns, extra damage via bleeding, etc.).

2-1 rule would work wonders

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[color= yellow]Devs, the masses have requested for a plaque to be placed in- game and in-zone[/color]

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What was said before is more than satisfactory. Don't presume to speak for the masses, especially since the number that have spoken for in no way speak in the majority.

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The difference between TT and RO, to me at least, is that I thought TT was a player run event and RO was just an SG. I've seen both on the forums for years now, but nothing led me to believe that RO was anything more than an SG (or coalition of SGs). I saw Taxibots in-game near launch but they seemed to fade away and then returned for a month or two after the Hollows hit then faded away again. Now, that's not to downplay either RO or Taxibots, that's just my perception of them.

Even more impressive is that TT has happened with zero assistance from NCSoft or NCNC. Both PvPEC and PvEEC (Is there a PvEEC?) were created through the assistance of the community reps and continue with their aid. Same can be said with the City Scoop. Of the two (or three with the PvEEC), only the Scoop is on a set schedule as the PvPEC Events seem to hit on random dates here and there. Again, not to downplay any of these as they have all done great feats for the community.

As I stated before, I've never been to a TT, but the fact that it's happened every month since Oct'04 is very impressive in any MMO's terms.

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Every time you use the acronym TT and refer to a 5 year anniversary, I always laugh a little. Top Ten (of Freedom server) has been around since the inception of CoX (re: 5 years), and we generally use/are referred to using the TT acronym.

Secondly, there is a PvEEC, though it's called PERC (Player Events Resource Council). We're on all the servers, run plenty of events, etc. etc.

And lastly, to state my opinion, I agree with Memphis on this one. It's truly awesome that Tanker Tuesday has been going on as a month event for 55 months (and will undoubtedly continue for however much more), but I don't really support placing any reference to it in game. In order to have heard about it, most people have either played on Champion (and happened to overhear about it in their normal play) or are avid forum goers (who potentially read about it in their normal perusal of the forums). Neither of those groups is in the majority (or even a substantial minority, iirc).

Also, how would it be put into game across all servers without breaking the fourth wall to some degree? The collection of Tankers (or any kind of hero for that matter) never conglomerated there with regularity on any other servers, and it would seem to me that all of the other in-game referenced player run stuff (Go. Hunt. Kill Skulls; Kill Skuls; etc.) are vague enough to not seem strange to the non-Champion/forumite.

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But i say space, moon, whatever you want to call it, i want to take the fight to the rikti in some way or another.

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They're not from space. They're from an alternate universe earth. "Taking the fight to them" would in no way involve space battles or a space zone.