Void_Huntress

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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    There is a heavily underutilized opportunity to do that: temp powers. Most are totally worthless (slugger). Some are actually worth a lot (the recovery aura one, whose name escapes me at the moment). If the crafting costs of those were made level-dependent so it could be set to reasonable costs for any character to make them, and such things had other properties (like being able to store extra "charges" for them up to a limit that was higher than "you can only craft one") I think you could make a bunch of those that people would be willing to craft, and thus spend inf on. Basically, disposable powers.

    Temp powers can't be traded (the recipes can, but not the powers) so these things could be cost-normalized to level and draw inf from all levels.
    Oh hell yes, I would be all for the ability to pay a bunch of money for more charges of the useful temp powers.

    More Recovery Serum? Check. More Envenomed Daggers? Check. More Plasmatic Tasers? Oh yeah. And other powers I currently don't use could BECOME usable, like the defense toggle. 30 minutes is just not enough time to bother with for me.

    That would be a great place to aim money.
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by UberGuy View Post
    A lot of cogent points.
    I find myself pretty torn on this one..
    I don't have any trouble with the principle of distinguishing between a defect report and a change request, but when you DO have a system whose requirements were not completely delineated, or whose requirements have changed over time without the application being refactored, the difference between a defect and a change request gets VERY fuzzy.

    That's really the core issue here; City of Heroes has had its requirements change both internally and externally over the years, both in explicit and in less explicit fashions. Sometimes identifying where the development correctly met old requirements that are no longer in force is itself identifying defects. You've found bugs not in code, but in the logic leading to the code being implemented the way it was.
  3. Void_Huntress

    Judgment slot

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Another_Fan View Post
    You aren't counting the teams increased damage from -res as being from the corruptor. .
    Er? What's this mean?

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Another_Fan View Post
    And back to the alpha slot not only does the corruptor get a proportionately bigger boost from it, they also get significant benefit from the secondaries.
    ... Proportionally bigger boost? It's the same proportion for everybody. You can only get a "proportionally bigger boost" for one character versus another if it's an absolute increase. This, being percentage based, is going to give the same PROPORTIONAL benefit.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Another_Fan View Post
    I haven't seen one case where there was an alpha slot boost that was "wow that is just beautiful for my blaster" I have seen that on my characters for every other AT I have looked at.
    Picking up Spiritual Boost on my blaster let her more effectively tank spawns for the squishies on the team.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Toony View Post
    Trapdoor and the map he was on was hand tailored to mock my stone tanker.
    Turn off Granite?
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by LostHalo View Post
    You're still wrong but hey, why fight shadows...
    If you believe there has been a misinterpretation, you could try stating yourself clearly, instead of playing with implications.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Sailboat View Post
    I think you've taken what I said too seriously. As the quote train above should make clear, I was adding damage to the list of layered defenses, where it very much does help keep you alive, a fact any Fire/Fire Tanker can demonstrate. I'm not claiming damage alone will let you tank Lord Recluse. But then, I guess if the game offered ENOUGH damage, you could just one-shot him and go home. It's really only because the most severe threats tend to be built to survive enormous amounts of damage, and the game won't let you wield that much damage, that it is inadequate.

    Your argument is a bit like if I came into a layered mitigation discussion, focused on just the passive regen from Health, and aggressively kept pointing out it won't keep you alive. It won't -- by itself.
    My response to you was intended to be a supplemental statement, not an argument, my apologies if it came across differently. I only brought it up then because I do see a lot of people interpreting things like that as 'Well, killing them fast should be better than thinking up ways to not die, then'

    My response to airhammer was due to his contesting my statement, not aimed at you specifically.
  7. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Airhammer View Post
    None of my blasters have one iota of defense built in and I can survive with any of them just fine. And Ive been around since about launch.
    I did say 'general population'. Remember, we know for a fact that a couple years ago, blasters were THE worst performing solo core AT blueside.

    If offense as mitigation was reliable, this wouldn't be the case.
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Rajani Isa View Post
    Don't Malta sappers have mez?
    Melee. Arcana was talking about 'genuinely ranged'.

    Or are we calling -end a mez?
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Sailboat View Post
    And damage output. "The best defense is a good offense" works fairly well in COH/V. My Fire/Fire/Pyre Tanker, for example, only has to live longer than the spawn, and she can make that a pretty short time indeed. Then Healing Flames fixes everything before the next spawn.
    Offense works well to supplement other mitigation methods, but offense alone doesn't do you a lot of good.

    Just ask general population solo blasters from a couple years ago.
  10. I'm personally aware of three incarnate TF runs that included people who didn't have anything in their alpha slot. Two of them succeeded. The third failed due to team members dropping, not difficulties with the level shifted characters.

    Someone who doesn't have an alpha boost slotted can still provide team buffs and healing, assist with dealing with the weaker enemies (if only to a lesser extent), and ... you know, hold a slot down, for team size.

    Going into Apex/Tin Mage without mostly alpha-slotted characters is a bad plan, yes, but the ability to include folks who don't have their slot yet is not automatically stupid, plus someone could get enough Incarnate Shards during the arc to COMPLETE their boost mid-run.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lycaeus View Post
    There is a -reason- why every character in CoH can get an individually rolled loot drop off the same mob, rather than play the need before greed competitive dice roll game of other MMOs. I'm saying not to lose sight of that kind of rationale for inclusiveness in the upcoming Incarnate System additions.
    Setting aside the rest of your post, which I don't have the focus to get into right now, I feel it important to note this is false.

    Specialty drops (vanguard merits, incarnate shards, reward merits for GMs) can be produced for each player, but a mob will produce at most one IO recipe, at most one invention salvage, and then it's assigned to a random player of those eligible for rewards.
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by warden_de_dios View Post
    My goal isn't to knock traps, but it's a distance third and tied with some other set for best (de)buff powerset. Rad and Dark never end up feeling like dead weight on a team. Put Rad or Dark in the hands of a button masher or a rookie, your team is going to get some pretty good results out of the player. Both sets have a nice buffer of idiot proof built into them. Traps can't make that claim. Comparing how a powerset handles in the hands of a bad player might not be far to you, but I've pugged with bad trappers and bad Darks. A bad dark is an adequate teammate a bad trapper is just dead weight. No matter how awesome a set can be in a skilled players hands, its not going to be any awesomer then Rad or Dark in a skilled players hands. All sets are tied in that hypothetical situation. Out in Paragon City where everybody is average, Traps is getting outshined by Dark and Rad big time.
    ... idiot proof?

    I've seen several teams experience wipes because of the anchored debuffs being left on runners, aggroing more spawns than the team could handle.

    There's quite a bit a rad or dark player can do that will screw over a team, or simply fail to help a team.
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Eiko-chan View Post
    This is so far away from my personal experience that I really have to wonder if we're even playing the same game. I find neither the ITF nor the LRSF to be easily achieved by just knowing the right strategy. I find both to require combinations of luck and copious use of debuffs to be successful. And, at least in my experience, they require very specific groupings to succeed.

    I'll add the caveat that I have never possessed nor used (and probably never will possess or use) Warbug Nukes, Shivan summons, or Vanguard Heavies. Such powers aren't really in my characters' themes, and what is required to get them is not really fun for me, so I don't see the point.

    That said, I have never completed an ITF unless I was playing one of my characters with Dark Miasma. Having me running Dark on the team made Rommie trivial - my other runs, with my WP Tanker and my Traps Mastermind, were complete failures, with multiple party wipes. The Mastermind was the worse - her mere presence on the team seemed to have doomed the attempt from the start, as the summoning Nictus counts Mastermind pets as full players and summons extra blooms accordingly. Without Dark to lock down the to-hit of those blooms (and bolster the negative resistance of the party, I'm guessing), it was game over almost before it started. "Don't bring your Mastermind" isn't a 'trick' I'm willing to learn to succeed.
    I don't use the summon powers, myself. I have occasionally deployed the Backup Radio because seeing a PPD hardsuit on my side is HILARIOUS, but otherwise, nope..

    And yet, despite the troubles I often have with the huge battles, things like the final battle with nictus-Rommie are within my perception. I've succeeded in the ITF with all kinds of different team builds, and the only consistently necessary facet is that you have to have people good at aggro management. Every other approach you might make beyond that is flexible, as long as you can keep Romulus where you need him, and if necessary for your strategy at the time, manipulate the fuzzies.

    As long as everyone knows the plan, and you've selected a plan your team can actually carry out, it always goes smoothly for me, and I've even done ITFs completely lacking anyone with defender sets. No defenders, controllers, corruptors, or masterminds.

    Conversely, I've also taken masterminds on the ITF on a couple of occasions, to no ill effect.

    Being coordinated counts for a lot.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
    TFs, especially large-scale ones, simply present me with information overload, reducing me to doing "whatever," which usually results in me auto-targeting the nearest enemy and just keying whatever attack I see is up at the time, usually dying from something I can't identify because I didn't realise my health was low or that half my team was dead or in another room. It's doable, yes, and I don't tend to complain, but it's not the part of the game I sit down looking forward to.
    This is pretty much my experience as well. I've managed to take my main character and tune her into attack patterns that work more or less equally well at any number of teammates or enemies, so I can rote-fight in big teams and just... trust my slotting and teammates to keep me from falling..

    ... but despite my apparent effectiveness, I really have no idea what's going on, and it often gets to the point where I can't even see any characters anymore. I'm so overloaded, I can't perceive enemies, teammates, or even my own character anymore. I'm not playing the game at that point, I'm staring at a glowing wall and not able to make any sense out of it.

    The actual story that apparently occurs in TFs is generally completely lost on me as a consequence.
  15. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Not everyone will want or appreciate the higher difficulty, just like not everyone wants to team for task forces, or PvP, or participate in raids.
    It'd be nice if some of those TFs were available in Ouroboros, like the old Posi is now.

    You know, for those who might like to try soloing them. I mean, I know in some cases, I'm pretty sure I'd've been better off WITHOUT teammates than with them...

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    If anything, Trapdoor represents the very beginning of the incarnate difficulty curve, not the middle or end of it.
    After what we got for unlocking the Alpha Slot, I'm REALLY hoping that next issue, we'll see some more incarnate story arcs.
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper View Post
    I guess we just didn't know Black Pebble well enough to notice him go missing between BAB and Castle? :p
    That's easy. Black Pebble isn't a dev. :D
  17. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma View Post
    I've heard of scrappers soloing pilons. And there were controllers and defenders soloing giant monsters for ages. I saw a dark/dark defender solo Lucia for example in issue 4, a GM which usually required 3 to 4 teams to beat... with a lot of dying and teleporting back to the fight from the hospital.
    I'm still of the opinion that those in isolation don't qualify as 'content'.

    If a scrapper manages to get all the pylons down and through the mothership, that'd be soloing content.

    GMs also not so much, unless it's as part of something larger.
  18. Void_Huntress

    The Defence Myth

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
    To be fair, my sister's pretty hot.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by UberGuy View Post
    If I didn't refuse to change my sig because I have a grandfathered one too big to be allowed on the new forum, this would so be my new sig.
    That's okay. After all these years, I finally set a sig. Just for you.
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Snow Globe View Post
    Would it be exactly as written? Not a chance. It is pseudocode. That pseudocode works in an event driven environment (ie. this game) though.

    Edit:
    To put what I said in another way, I present the following.

    Make variables for (the max amount of proximity bombs to be "dropped" at one time), (the max amount of time between drops for each Mine Layer), and (when the last bomb was dropped by a specific Mine Layer). If the maximum amount of bombs hasn't been dropped and the current Mine Layer's drop cycle is up, drop a mine, increase the count of the amount of current mines out, and reset the Mine Layer's drop cycle. When a bomb explodes, decrease count of the currently placed mines.
    Data driven development, folks.

    When they design things like this, they don't HAVE programming to work with in the traditional sense. They're designing creatures that have powers. There aren't any variables for 'how many times have I cast this power', that would require new tech that the engine doesn't have.

    The CLOSEST that I could see for something like this would be to create a critter who has 0 recovery, a set amount of endurance, who only gets endurance back when one of their deployed mines (which are THEMSELVES critters!) go off. This then goes pretty wrong once you're dealing with multiple minelayers, unless you make multiple DISTINCT minelayers with different keys to control which ones get endurance back from a mine exploding or expiring, and in turn this results in you having to make multiple kinds of MINES, too, and having to make sure you don't ever have the wrong minelayer deploy the wrong mine.


    I feel bad for whoever on the powers team gets THAT project.
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Some people think its too hard, some people think the difficulty is just of the wrong kind, and some people think the difficulty is unnoticable. Personally, I think its fine, but regardless I don't think we know if the average players who have reached level fifty and are going to seriously pursue an end game progression system will find it terribly difficult in a month. Its not like I'm unaware of how hard the game is relative to average players, rather than forum readers. I still have to remind people that blasters radically underperformed everything else, even the lowest damage defenders, simply because their difficulty in play made them debt-magnets to a far higher degree than anything else, regardless of powerset combination. Still, I don't think its certain, even with initial complaints, that we know if the arc will really be a stumbling block in the long term.

    If it is, it bodes badly for the end game system because if we can't ratchet difficulty upward over time as the system progresses and have the playerbase adjust accordingly, it'll become pointless. And personally, I'd feel greatly disappointed.
    What gets me worrying about all of this is logging in and watching people struggle to figure out how to ACCESS the unlock arc, much less complete it.

    I really fear where that lowest common denominator actually lies for a game like this.
  21. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex View Post
    I'm notoriously slow witted, but can you explain why that would matter? With the ability to interchange influence and infamy, and email money within an account, the only transactions that seem important to me are player to player. Red v Blue cash flow seems as relevant to me now as Steel Canyon v Atlas Park. What am I missing?
    I'm guessing something about earning potential, wealth creation versus consumption rates, and how much people are actually getting things done redside versus blueside.

    While we've come a long way in linking the two games together, in a lot of fundamental ways they're still two separate games that just happen to be running in parallel with a few catwalks connecting them.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nethergoat View Post
    then why waste time creating them?

    Clearly they expected at least some % of their customers would be engaged by this system and pursue the rewards.

    2004 (or whenever they added badges) was a long time ago , but gamers were still gamers.
    I'm willing to bet the naive expectation back then was that while perhaps a few people might go out of the way, the general behavior would be a surprised "Oh! I got something NEAT! YAY! I'm AWESOME!" And go on with their day.

    Designers tend to think innocent and pure thoughts like that when they're new.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    It can be tricky to detect these sorts of missions in real time, but I think I have an idea for how the devs could unequivocally detect an exploit mission in the AE which would *always* locate exploits about a certan level, and *never* accidentally trigger on a mission that did not have exploits. Its not as simple as just looking for a mission that gives a lot of XP, or even a lot of XP fast. If you fight four AVs for ten minutes, you can still get a big burst of XP within a small one minute window if you defeat them all at once. I believe I have a solution to that problem that would work in theory. But its a bit tricky, and I'll need to think about it carefully to see if there are any loopholes.
    Is your idea one that sharing it publicly would help defeat it?

    Because I'm really fascinated by this.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Pretend you're War Witch for a moment, and you have to write a memo explaining what *specific* data you want some other group of people to monitor, and what specific actions you want them to take based on what they see in that data. And once you write that memo, some completely different group of people you have no direct authority over is going to read that memo, interpret it however they see fit, and then execute its instructions without your oversight. Consider all the possible things that could go wrong there.

    Consider all the possible things that might have already gone wrong there.

    ... and all becomes clear.

    "For my first wish..."
  25. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Of course, regulating AE rewards goes hand in hand with improving the quality of published AE arcs, but as long as the devs see the AE as a tool for mission writers as opposed to a tool for mission players and focuses on promoting the maximum number of players to write arcs as opposed to focusing on getting the maximum number of players to play arcs, reward regulation will not have much of a point to it long term.
    I also completely forgot to comment on this:

    In my case, the AE is ... borderline unusable for me because of how stunted the search tools are. They're woefully incomplete, and they keep me from finding arcs that I actually want to play.

    I have a great deal of trouble managing unexpected aggro, so allies are disruptive to my playstyle. I cannot search for arcs lacking allies.

    I know people spend a lot of time lovingly crafting their custom enemies' costumes, but I almost always find them vastly more difficult to fight than standard critters, for generally less reward. So, I want to play arcs that don't have custom enemies. This cannot be done automatically. I have to manually flip through who knows how many listings.

    What's particularly vexing about this one is that I explicitly am able to search for arcs that have custom groups, but yet not arcs lacking them.

    I would like to say "I run arcs that my friends recommend to me" but they've all stopped running AE arcs due to the difficulty of finding things as well.