Void_Huntress

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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Not with our powers system it doesn't. Its a lot easier to do this in conventional MMOs where the powers balance places *extremely* narrow limits on what both individual players and teams can do.
    And this is pretty much why I can't play conventional MMOs. I need a sense that I, myself, am more awesome than my opponents. City gives me this. Most conventional games can have me lose to Random Mook 3918732.

    In a one on one.
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    (Also, I accidentally typed "psi(r)" rather than "phi(r)" so someone's calculus textbook is now totally messed up.)
    The good news is I'm pretty sure recaptcha doesn't go off of single returns. So it might not be ruined forever.
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Emberly View Post
    Just to confirm, these IOs are sticking around after this sale, just at the regular (higher) price, right?
    I wouldn't count on anything in the sale being permanent. This is experimental, so they may decide something isn't worthwhile, or to change things up before the next time something resurfaces (or is price slashed) again.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Draeth Darkstar View Post
    I really don't like a couple things about the Dark/Dark combo for Controllers, as detailed.

    <snipped for brevity>
    It's interesting to me, how people will look at a powerset like Dark Miasma and see different things. A testament to its versatility, I suppose.

    I always saw it as a buff/debuff set, rather than a control-oriented set. To me, the mezzes were the things that were out of place.

    While I can see where you're coming from, personally I would LOVE to have Dark Affinity available for other ATs as alternate version of Dark Miasma, because swapping out those two mez powers would be great to me.

    ... I do agree that blackhole's persistence as a power is kind of baffling, though.


    Synapse, is there any chance you can tell us what you think Blackhole's actual PURPOSE is, as a power? Because to date, all of the purported purposes it has have been demonstrated to be not met by the power.
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Necrotron_RO View Post
    Permanent versions of current 'temp' powers (e.g. baseball bat) for per character use.

    Want to make a Baseball player themed character? Buy the permanent (unlimited) use baseball bat!

    Creating a bee-inspired archer? Purchase and use the Vial of Bees permanent temporary power!

    I think many people have little interest in a 30-use baseball bat purchasable at the store, but if I can have it on my character and not have to worry about counting the uses of it! Oooh yeah! Homerun!
    I'd be all on that for the gadget attacks. Of course, some of the current temp powers out there really ought to be 'you should have a limited amount on hand'. See: Recovery Serum, and Power Analyzer series.

    Which is why my SO suggested at one point selling 'memorized recipes'.

    So that you only needed salvage to craft your temp power whenever you want.. and maybe for some of them increase the max holdable stack.
  6. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood View Post
    Dark Affinity is basically Dark Miasma with Fearsome Stare and Petrifying Gaze removed. One of the replacement powers was a team wide high magnitude, short duration Defense buff (the comparison used was to Moment of Glory) but I forget the other.
    ... I'd like that variant on a defender or corruptor. Alas.

    With A Pony Wish List Item: Be nice if we could have alternate version powersets, or powersets with mutually exclusive choices.
  7. I'm still curious what led to such a crucial communications breakdown internally at Paragon.

    The OCR team should not be blindsided by stuff like this. QA should have apprised them of the state of things.

    Unless, of course, QA wasn't aware, which would be more baffling.

    Then there's the question of who is in charge of deciding "No, it's good enough, release as-is, we'll fix it in post."
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
    My knowledge of other mmos is almost entirely second hand but I believe City of Heroes creates more private mission instances that most other games. And if the instance (or dungeon) is "open" then the question of there being a gate on team size doesn't come in to it.

    I could be wrong though as I am a one MMO kind of guy
    One of Turbine's games is a notable entry, where essentially all combat (aside from some PvP duels) is instanced. Even the 'wilderness areas' are instanced.

    It's also the MMO I think does the most interesting things with in-mission mechanics.

    It permits you to attempt a lot of things 'solo' that are meant for full teams (which is six members there), even though some things are genuinely impossible without multiple hands.

    You can get around that to a degree with hirelings (which are essentially temp power teammates; they count as a teammate for all purposes except the command bar the summoner gets), but some quests are genuinely impossible without multiple sapients involved.

    ... Aside from raids, they still let you in the door. I don't know if raid content is permitted to be entered solo.
  9. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    The only question is what are "royalties" and whether City of Heroes is entitled to any. I don't think so, but NCSoft seems generally reluctant to answer questions regarding how they compute royalties publicly.
    The only thing I can think of is whatever NCSoft might be possibly paying Cryptic for their initial work on the game. Would that be reflected as a reduction in income, if it exists?
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
    The OCR team doesn't scrub for bugs in Beta. That's QA. They don't currently have anyone who posts acknowledgment of bugs during beta. I'll discuss this with the QA managers and see if we can change that.
    If players are reporting critical bugs that aren't fixed prior to build finalization, I would think that at the least the OCR team would be informed so that they aren't learning about the (already documented) problem from players after publish.

    There's definitely a communications problem here.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
    Build schedules are a very tricky thing. We're not able to just pop code in and send it over to be published the same day. Usually we have to send builds for publishing at least a week in advance.

    The ops team supports all NCsoft products, not just CoH. This requires rigorous scheduling which has to be adhered to.
    We didn't get any kind of acknowledgment that it was noticed in Beta, and it didn't even rate a 'known issues' item. What's up with that?
  12. Technically, you can save window defaults and load those defaults after you log in, but the idea of needing to take a moment to unbreak the UI every time you sit down to play for every charater is crazy.
  13. Well this is just dandy. The UI resetting issue we reported in beta? Not fixed.

    I am _NOT_ going to fix my UI every time I log in.

    I will be taking a break from City until this is resolved.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lazarillo View Post
    I haven't checked to see, but is it possible Resilient will boost pet default resistances? IIRC, that was possible very early, but deemed too powerful in general practice. Maybe the idea here would be to allow it under specific circumstances?
    Please re-read my post. The part you quoted has the relevant bit.

    Pet resistances are not relevant in the taunting scenario.
  15. I'm a bit confused. You say here:

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arbiter Hawk View Post
    Last but not least, Resilient Boost offers boosts for those who wish to grab agro and survive it. Whether you're a Tanker who wants extra taunt slotted in every attack or you're a Mastermind who wishes your soft capped Bots/Traps wouldn't get hit as hard when it uses Confront and a lucky shot punches through your defense, this slot offers enhancement to many common powersets who like to hold aggro. It's also a viable choice for resistance-heavy support sets, or for control-heavy builds.
    (emphasis added)

    How exactly would Resilient Boost help a mastermind when taunting? Bots/Traps doesn't have any +res to self. Any resistance the bots have is irrelevant when taunting, since the MM takes damage directly and pet resistance doesn't apply to bodyguard mode damage distribution.

    Are you assuming Tough, or an epic shield power?
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
    That was an example. Most of the Shields available to players are a piece of metal or wood you hold on your arm. Could that block TK Blast. Sure, I'll buy that. Mind Probe....lol.
    I always figured Mind Probe being tagged 'melee' meant it had requirements on positioning. Likely contact, or being very very close to contact. That allows for 'not being there, or placing an obstacle in the way'.

    The fact that contact doesn't seem to actually happen could simply be an artifact of the animation system. I mean, my Martial Arts and Street Justice characters seem to be punching the air in front of enemies all the time, and the enemies still get hit. Does that mean shields shouldn't work against them, either?
  17. I'm also in the crowd that finds the idea of spending RL money on consumables kind of bewildering.

    Now. If they were selling a memorized recipe for CRAFTING the holy shotgun shells temp power? I'd totally be all on that. Burning a little salvage and inf occasionally to get another load of a temp power isn't so bad. I do it all the time on one of my characters, for the powers we can get as drops.
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    That's not a trivially simple solution: I don't know if it still happens on older systems, but in the old days skirts would sometimes disappear at certain distances and under certain load conditions, and while that is a computationally satisfactory solution to a rendering problem, there are non-computational issues with that solution that make it not a good idea to implement deliberately.
    There are hardware configurations (certain ATI boards and/or drivers, I believe) where skirts still to this day vanish underwater.
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by RavenSoul View Post
    Maybe what we should be awarded - in the future, of course, it's too late to implement this idea this time - is get Unlock Tokens for the Reward we choose from Events?

    That would be a lot better, yeah. I'd still rather not be under time constraints (what if I didn't get enough? What if I accidentally claim it on the wrong character?), but it'd be a vast improvement over the current situation.
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Void_Huntress View Post
    I'm sure I'll eventually have a character concept that would benefit from either the aura or the emote, but it'll probably happen in spring. Which means it won't be available.

    This sort of thing bothers me, and I think I'm just going to sit the event out. Like I generally do for seasonal stuff. I very much do not like having to know who to put in the effort on to get these things, and having a limited span of time to figure it out and actually go through the process.
    Responding to myself because I had a related thought.

    In most MMOs, cosmetic items being connected to time-limited or high difficulty content is common. The thing is, in most MMOs aesthetics are not a primary draw for a significant portion of the playerbase, due to the high constraints on aesthetics until you've gone a LONG way into investing yourself in the game. So the people for whom these are The Most Important Thing are very, very rare because most of them don't sit around that long.

    This means that most of the playerbase either doesn't care about the pretties, uses them as kind of status symbol, or just goes 'Heh. Pretty.' There are of course exceptions, and they'e possibly loud exceptions, but they're exceptions.

    In City, because of the flexibility in expression we have stepping in the door, even as a new player with none of the extra shinies, a lot of us get invested into the IDEA of a character, and that idea can be more tied to appearances than powersets.

    To me, things like this are about as sensible as "You can only roll a shield defense character in August" or "You can roll Shield Defense, but you have to unlock Shield Charge in January."
  21. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
    My sources inform me that it is per character.

    Get to running!
    I'm sure I'll eventually have a character concept that would benefit from either the aura or the emote, but it'll probably happen in spring. Which means it won't be available.

    This sort of thing bothers me, and I think I'm just going to sit the event out. Like I generally do for seasonal stuff. I very much do not like having to know who to put in the effort on to get these things, and having a limited span of time to figure it out and actually go through the process.

    Is there any chance some of these seasonal-only things could turn up in the store? I would pay for almost all of them as account unlocks. Pretty much right then.
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man View Post
    No permanent items have been discounted below 20% at this point, though, you are correct.
    Costume slots are currently discounted 25%, and that was the initial discount on Beam Rifle as well.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Too low for too much. However, I've been suggesting that in the same spirit of unlocking individual character slots permanently the devs should probably add a way to unlock inventions on a specific character slot permanently. Something like 300-400 points to permanently unlock a character for invention use might be fair. You'd then have two options to use inventions: a 30 day temp license that would allow you to use them on all characters in your account, and a permanent license that would unlock inventions on a single character forever.
    I'm idly curious how well, for example, the gleemail subsystem would cope with mailing IOs and salvage to yourself when not all of your characters are valid to have them.

    Bet there's a hilarious minefield of 'Oh. Wait.' for this option.
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Electric-Knight View Post
    What else did you have to buy within this game in order to access something that you do not consider to be part of that something that you had to buy in order to access it?
    Super Tailor.
  25. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Impervious Fist View Post
    Well see, this is where I'm lost. See, access to just about everything but contacts on the other side seems a bit better than a new currency.
    While being a 'tourist' you cannot:

    * Access O-Zone. This not only keeps you from accessing old arcs on your own outside of contacts (which as established you cannot do), but it's also a useful transit tool that essentially isn't available while on the other side.

    * Access SG bases. This hampers both social interactions (some people hang out in SG bases) as well as actual gameplay benefits (storage, base teleporters, empowerment stations).

    These are nontrivial limitations. They may mean more or less to some folks, but they're definitely barriers to many folks' 'normal' play, and that's being on top of not being able to initiate play on anything but paper/radio/tip missions as a tourist.