goldbricker

I seem to recall some talk from the devs a few months ago about how the war walls are coming down in the future. I couldn't find a specific reference, but I'm still persuaded that'll be the case by I10 or sooner.

So if you want to include the war walls, you might want to hurry a bit to get the story out before it might become anachronistic to include them.

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/em wonders when the devs are gonna realize that Force Bubble has the same "problem" that convinced em to zap Hurricane.

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It made only since that storm should be able to keep melee out when they are so vulnerable to everything else.


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Actually, the only thing I really wanted to change in this mess was the ability for Repel Fields to effectively trap a player against geometry in Base Raids.


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Sounds reasonable... but... wait...

Isn't there such a thing as getting too picky about superpowers imbalance?

I mean... In this case you're basically saying that it's not fair for a basic repel effect to interact with basic world geometry. Right? Doesn't this sound kinda ridiculous as a design imperative? Are repel effects only meant to be usable in open fields with no walls in sight?

I concede that the devs have to keep game balance in mind as a design priority, but let's call out the emperor's new (supersuit) clothes for what they are: the superhero genre itself is grossly unbalanced.

I mean... realistically, it's just not plausible for one as powerful as Superman to find himself in as much genuine peril as has been portayed over the last 50 years. Superman beats up Luthor every day of the week no matter how much Kryptonite Lex stashes away, and Lois Lane sees right through that meek pair of glasses in about one second.

In the same way, people that can throw repel effects naturally use them to pin their targets against a wall. This is natural in the genre. I remember one early issue of West Coast Avengers where a gravity-wielding villain pinned Wonder Man at the bottom of a posh swimming pool (filled with water) for days. Wonder Man eventually got out of the pin by digging his fingers into the pool floor and ripping it apart (or something like that).

That's an example of how comic book writers can work through the ramifications of this kind of gross imbalance. However, game devs tend to look for workarounds to prevent such situations from ever happening again. To some extent this is understandable. Balance fixes, as I'm sure the devs would insist, are not nerfs but fixes. I would agree they are fixes and not nerfs to the game balance, but they are nerfs and not fixes to the underlying genre as well.

I don't envy the devs' position here. They are in the unique position of having to simulate a full superhero world and make it work cohesively. No one else comes close or has ever come this close to this kind of accomplishment. Really City of Heroes is the paradigm shift of the genre.

But in City of Heroes, the devs have a paradox to deal with: people come to play the game because they get to play superheroes, but people leave the game because a true simulation of the genre is unbalanced against them in so many ways.

Fixing repel effects so that other players don't get pinned addresses game balance and helps with the latter, but nerfing repel power design so that it doesn't work naturally with natural world geometry undermines the genre and diminishes the former.

I'm not saying that fixes like reduced repel intensity, or eliminating controller pet overlapping, or introducing scattering side effects to burn patch tanking, are unjustified. I'm not even insisting that the devs have to work harder to stop putting in fixes that undermine the genre. I'm saying the devs need to do more to show they recognize these kinds of fixes are indeed nerfs. That City of Heroes is really more of a City of Semi-Heroes than the more idealized form of the genre that they might want to leverage into optimum revenues via their business model.

The playerbase will understand if you do it right. They already know the score as it is.

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And what about those of us who *DON'T* want Isolator granted outside of the tutorial? We pay the same monthly fee as you do, after all.


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Setting all the isolator-specific discussion aside for the moment, allow me to plead that everyone be very very careful with this kind of argument. I can understand that some people who get a not-necessarily-unfair advantage from certain rules want to see those rules enforced on everyone. But please don't get too caught up with the idea that paying a monthly fee entitles one to judge over what other players want to do with their monthly fees, especially over relatively trivial things like a simple hunting badge.

It's not an invalid argument, but can become an inflammatory argument if not kept toned down. Perhaps focussing on what you have and want to get for yourself is better (well, more cooperative anyway) than focussing on what other people want that you want denied them.

Maybe a good compromise would be to allow a post-tutorial isolator, but with a slightly-altered name (same badge though). That way, older badge hunters get a fairer chance at a full set, but newer badge hunters still keep a distinction on their badge.

A random thought occurs to me: I'm really glad that the devs took extra thought to avoid attaching isolator to accolades or any value more than as a basic badge. Tensions would escalate pretty fast if, say, isolator gave a gladiator or was a requirement for Eye of the Magus.

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Cuppa's been trying, but she has yet to be able to convince the devs to throw us a bone.

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IF we were to ever add a way to get Isolator post-Tutorial, it would most likely be incredibly hard to get. Annoyingly hard. Irritatingly hard. There-would-be-a-zillion-people-asking-to-make-it-easier hard.

But IF we were to add it, it would be available nonetheless.

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Well... consider how hard it is the way it is now: A player with a main toon created before Isolator and invested to the brim with close to 300 badges now has to wipe it, rebuild it from scratch and then reinvest everything they did before (+ extra for hunting those infecteds) to get those 300 badges back, all just to add Isolator. Not to mention all of the event badges that currently can't be recouped.

Badge hunting at the time Isolator went in was just kind of a bit of add-on fun to the game. But that's changed lately. Badge hunting is becoming more serious, because it requires so much investment now. (I still don't know how I'm going to manage 1 billion in healing from my force field defender, but I have to try.)

I suggest Posi that the devs' policies on badge designing evolve a bit to keep things balanced with how players are now treating badges. It's hard to believe that any cruel way you would implement a post-tutorial Isolator wouldn't end up being easier than what we have now.

(And aside, if a zillion people are asking for the same something, why aren't you listening? Surely there must be an opportunity to look for compromises towards their collective request?)

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Each of these three sites will spawn "purple" clockwork, which basically appear as though they were summoned by an Assembler Prince. Also there will sometimes be junkpiles scattered about, some clickable some not.

These spawns do not affect the chances of the Paladin itself spawning or not spawning. Interacting with them will not affect anything. Standing anywhere near the spawn points will not affect the spawn.


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Can I get someone to confirm that interaction is harmless? I spent 10 hours today flying through all three points, once in a while blowing away an occasional spawn as a change of pace, and not only did the Paladin never spawn, but I apparently angered a lot of players who accused me of messing up the spawn timers and who claimed that the boards are not a dependable source of information (though not giving any actual evidence against what this board said here).

Not really a fun day overall.

Brief doodle I made of some teammates.

Compared to most of the art I see here it's not that great. I never have any patience to actually see things through the right way when I pick up my pencil and a fresh sheet. But for what it is it turned out ok. How do you guys keep up your focus until you've finished the last layer of polish? It seems like I can only hold it together a half hour or so before I give up.

On the other side of the level range, I once got a mission in the shadow shard where the door was on the underside of one of the floating islands. Nonfliers could only get there by managing a precarious series of fortuitously placed floating rocks to reach the little ledge outside the door.

That was a pretty crazy time, trying to figure out why I couldn't find the door and then realizing where it was placed and what it meant.

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No more angling just in front of the fleeing foe - yep - you can punch him from behind!

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Ehxcellent.... Very much needed.

Question:

Does this apply to mobs chasing fleeing heroes too? Will this make it much easier for melee mobs to take out the last slivers of player health?

I guess I'll need to review my panic protocols and maybe practice a more conservative approach to encounters.

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AV's are intended to be a challenge for several heroes.

If you come across one, I would suggest going out and recruiting help!

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It seems there are several angles to the issue that are kind of confusing the focus of the original post. The expectation, reasonable or not, of a right to solo for example is something that while is a nicely debatable issue, it isn't really the problem being pointed out here.

If I understand correctly, the problem is (or actually may be, since it isn't really proven yet), that while AVs are meant (as Stateman suggests) as an exciting encounter for a group to take on, AVs are instead becoming treated as nothing more than vermin under the domain of lvl 50s who are being begged as if they were card-carrying exterminators to do housecalls.

Now that I think about it, that's what's happening to me. I just got through the CoT story arc where I have to face the same AV 3 times in 4 missions. Each time I saw I had to deal with him again, I just kinda gave up on the mission, and waited until a sg mate 10 levels higher than me had a free moment to come in and take him out. Now that I think about it, this probably means I'm not much of a hero.

There were times I tried to take on the AV. Once or twice with a couple of others with some judicious sk's, but we couldn't get anywhere with him, not even with some attempt at strategically using nearby crystals. We could have been just morons though.

In the end, I guess I'm becoming accustomed to seeing AV's as insurmountable. And I would probably agree that this is a syndrome starting to afflict a good chunk of the players, (though obviously not everyone as other posts in this thread attest). And thus AV's should be considered a problem in this vein only as far as this feeling of insurmountability has taken hold in the playerbase.

I have a suggestion though. Instead of AV's being a simple defeat/fail option in missions, why not have their function being to compete for something with the heroes? Like, say, have the AV's race the heroes around the map to touch a series of glowies. Or have the AV's attempt to defend a jail room from which the heroes must rescue a hostage. Or have the heroes be required to stay alive for 10 minutes while the AV tries to go nuts on them. No matter what the outcome, having an opportunity for partial success even if the AV is not directly defeated is something that can feel surmoutable again without the need for specialist exterminators.

Just a random idea...

Great stuff here. Thanks for all the work in gathering it all together.

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Psychic Blast is a powerset that matures later than most. It's first two powers are terrible and I recommend avoiding them and not slotting Mental Blast.

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There are a lot of harsh words out there reserved for Mental Blast and Subdue, and I don't understand why the sentiment is so stacked against them. Yes I agree they appear weak, but not overly so.

In fact against tough bosses who refuse to be Will Dominated to sleep I rely on Mental Blast a ton to keep their damage output as low as possible, which is just the advantage I usually need to keep my damage output ahead of them.

Also, I use Subdue all the time as a way to defeat running tactics (which helps a lot since my running ability is impacted by how I must remain still when so often using my blasts), as a low-end quick-shot option to finishing off mobs at slivers of health, and as a way to keep mobs out of range of attacking me. I have never regretted adding a couple slots to either. By 30 I had more than enough slots on all my powers and was soloing and teaming quite well.

Certainly once I got TKBlast and WillDom, then MBlast and Subdue got backbenched a lot. But neither early power is really as vile as has been being suggested. Unless I'm missing something...