Aett_Thorn

Not necessarily, but that might not mean you're doing it right, either. In the mission text, they will usually tell you where to go to have a good chance of finding the mobs it's telling you to go against. For instance, low-level Lost can be found in the northern part of King's Row, or in the northern part of Perez Park (just over the stone wall south of the Steel Canyon Entrance).

You'll learn, in time, where to find the enemies you're looking for, too.

If you want some help early on, check out Vidiotmaps.com, and see if the maps there help you.

First off, let's not compare anyone here on a game forum to people who hijacked a plane and crashed it into a building, killing hundreds of people, shall we?

Secondly, nobody here is saying that they believe that an AT should be "subservient" to other ATs. We are only saying that yes, some will be better at supporting a team than others, and when they are not on a team, they may not be as good. That DOES NOT mean that there is an imbalance there.

What we are saying is that there is a certain balance right now, and your ideas would throw that balance completely out the window, creating a situation where only a couple of ATs have any reason to be played.

This is still the case now. Each AT can solo, though at different speeds, and can team, bringing a different amount to that team.

The ATs are basically on a spectrum of solo -> team efficiency in this order (5 basic hero ATs only):

Scrapper
Tanker
Blaster
Controller
Defender

Now, obviously there are differences in there based on powersets. An Ice/FF controller is going to be worse solo than a Fire/Kin, an an Elec/Energy Blaster might find teams better for them than an Archery/MM.

Many of the original ATs did NOT solo as well as they do now. Controllers certainly lacked leveling speed solo up until they got their pets, and sometimes after that. Blasters really were glass-jawed for a while there, and didn't solo all that well. These have been fixed over time for the most part. But yes, many of the ATs specifically said in the I0 player guide that came with the game that the ATs were more of a soloer, or more of a team player. They were designed as such.

Because of what they bring to the team. I have explained this above.

If you have a Defender that can do near Blaster damage, and also buff the team to greater heights, that Defender is vastly better than the Blaster, which might do a bit more damage, but doesn't buff the team at all, then why invite the Blaster? He offers nothing that you can't get from the Defender at that point, while the Defender can do everything that the Blaster can do and more. That's called an imbalanced game right there.

Possibly. But what if there is no Blaster or Scrapper? The the Tank can do some nice damage. The Tanker might also want to team because the team as a whole, with him taking point, can net him experience at a faster rate than he could do on his own. Or maybe he just wants a sense of comraderie. There are many reasons for a Tanker to join a team, and that's a good thing.

Fantastic. So you've brought up a single data point and generalized from there? You point out that "if" the Blaster isn't held, he can bring down the EB faster, yet if you've built your Defender well, I'm betting that he won't be mezzed by that EB.

On my Dark/Psy Defender, I can fight EB's no problem. So does that mean there isn't a problem there? No. Because that's another single data point. Different sets can lead to different outcomes. That's the point we're trying to show you. The different sets within an AT can do things differently, and trying to shoehorn 'fixes' in for ATs that can throw other powerset balance out the window is problematic.


Let's take a look at some numbers here, shall we? Let's say that your Freezing Rain can reduce enemy Resistance by 20%. On your own, you've just increased your damage by 20%. On a full team, you've increased the ENTIRE TEAM's damage by 20%. On an 8-man team, that can be huge, especially against an AV or EB. Can a Blaster (baring a Sonic Blaster) bring that kind of effect to the whole team? Your Hurricane also brings down the AV/EB's ToHit, making the Tanker and other melee characters more survivable. Can your Blaster do that? Or your Scrapper?

Why should a Defender be able to do all of that, plus on top of that, do as much damage as a Blaster, while the Blaster doesn't get to do any of that?

If you bump up Blaster defense's, why bring a Tanker, since the Blaster isn't going to be in trouble anyways? The Blaster would do more damage, and at range, than the Tanker would, for no tradeoff for the Tanker.

The ATs all have holes in them that encourage teaming, but do not force it. Certainly specific powerset pairings within the AT might skew this one way or the other, but in general, it holds true. You can solo with anything in this game now, but trying to bring the soloing speed of everyone up to say, Tanker levels at least, would severely disrupt teaming and the need for certain ATs.

Well, how is this set really that different from the current Leaping pool? If the main power of the set functions the same way, and the 2nd and 4th power in the set are basically the same (the 4th tier power is actually weaker than Acrobatics), and the first tier power is basically about the same as Combat Jumping, what is in this set that is actually different?

I'm not bashing your idea here, I just want to know what you think would set this power pool apart.


Also to keep in mind: AT modifiers. While the +5% Defense on Gymnastics might be on Tankers, Blasters are only going to get around 2.5%. If Blasters get the 5%, Tankers are going to get around 10%. This is due to AT modifiers on DefBuffs. Tankers get higher values than Blasters.

Also, for Spin Kick, is that 32 Damage for a Defender or a Scrapper? Things like that can change the set balance-wise. Better in these stages to keep things like damage in the minor, moderate, extreme-type range instead of putting down specific numbers.

So the farming arcs would have had the higher ratings, since the people doing them would have had more influence to spare?

I know of no way to do this.

This is indeed what I meant. Just that they are either down or up, not that they go down for you at a bad playtime just because it's a bad playtime for you guys and gals, but that they're down for everyone at what happens to be peak time for you.

I did not say that the effects were the same, only that the downtime is the same, i.e., it's at the same time. Now, the time zones affect what time that is FOR YOU, but it is run at the same time. Your connection would be down at the same time as mine, if I was trying to play then. It would just be earlier in the morning for me, and at night for you.

I did NOT say that the effects from that were the same, only that the servers go down from 9-11 Eastern Standard Time for everyone. That is the same.

Please show me how Blasters are only doing 20% more damage than a Tanker. The Blaster ability to leverage AoEs and range allows them to do significantly more damage than a Tanker. I'd say well above the 20% that you mention. I've never EVER in this game seen someone say that they need more damage, so people should invite a Blaster or a Tanker, since a Tanker only deals 20% less damage.

Also, with the recent Blaster Buffs, they can still deal damage when mezzed, which, looking at the forums, seems to have helped a lot.

Again, please show us where you're getting this 20% from. Blasters have ranged attacks and melee attacks. Most have both Aim and Build Up, which can increase their damage vastly.

Also, keep in mind the teaming dynamics here. How much survivability is really needed? If you have a Tanker and a Blaster on the team right now, they both fill in the holes of the other. The Tanker takes the hits and holds the aggro, while the Blaster kills stuff with the greater damage.

If you increase Blaster survivability to the degree you're talking about, then why have the Tanker? What would be the point? The Blasters would likely survive just fine with the two of them (or even just the one of them), and the Tanker would no longer have a use. What sense does that make?

Also, what would the Blaster give up to get these new mitigation numbers? Would they lose some attacks, or would they just get the mitigation for free? If they're not losing anything, then I think you're going to have "City of Blasters" all over again.

How do you balance the sets so that Defenders always do more damage than Tankers, though? Should a Force Field Defender do more damage than a Tanker? If so, you then create a situation where a Kin Defender is almost always doing more damage than a Blaster, with slightly more survivability.

I have a Dark/Psy Defender. Solo, I am in no damger whatsoever, due to my debuffs. I can debuff the enemies' resistances, increasing my own damage. I can do a little bit of control as well, and heal myself even if I get damaged. Trust me when I say that I'm pretty frakin' tough to kill, even when facing an EB or AV. I might not be able to take down the AV solo yet, but I can mop the floor with EBs.

The vast differences between power sets among Controllers and Defenders makes them hard to be able to say that they should always do more damage than AT X. Because if you raise the lower sets up to do that, then you create a system where the higher sets always do more damage than AT Y and Z as well, who were supposed to be the more damaging ATs.

Take a Fire Controller and an Ice Controller. Same secondary set. Which is going to do more damage? If you buff their damage, who is still going to do more damage? If you raise the Ice Controller's damage through AT buffs, how damaging is Fire now?

No no no no no. What you want to have in a system like this, is ATs that are balanced. This does NOT mean that they have the same abilities, just that they have different ways of being able to accomplish the same things.

Let me ask you this: If you have the choice between a Defender who can buff himself to the point of being able to do Blaster damage, but also brings the same strength buffs to the rest of the team, and a Blaster, who has Blaster damage, but brings nothing to the rest of the team, who would you pick? You'd ALWAYS want to pick the Defender, since he is just as good, plus he brings you something else.

Right now, we have the choice between a Defender, who has lower damage, but is a force multiplier on the team, and a Blaster, who has higher damage, but is not the force multiplier that the Defender is. THAT is more balanced than allowing the Defender to be both roles.

Ask any "Green Machine" Defender out there how quickly they can imbalance the game, just by having a second empath on the team. There is a reason the team buffs are so powerful, but ones that can target the Defender are a little weaker. Otherwise, the Defender would need nobody else. They'd be a Tank-Mage, and they disrupt the game by being the only AT that people play.



This is not even scrathing the point that ATs that are good one teams should be a little less powerful solo because of what they bring to a team. Otherwise, why have teams? If you can make yourself godly, why bring along anyone else? Right now, anyone can solo. Some ATs and/or powersets solo slower, but on a team they vastly increase the team's speed. That is balanced right there.

Each animal would need a new skeleton created for it that is not in the game right now, or at least many of them would.

While I would like it, I realize that it is very far down the 'want' list for me. Might want to see about moving this down to the suggestions forum, too.

You have the same downtime as everyone else. You have had the same downtime as everyone else for years now. I get that this is peak playtime for you guys, and do feel bad, but know that any change in it makes it worse for more people. As such, it is probably unlikely to change anytime soon. If you cannot adapt to something that has been happening for 5 years now (and has gotten better over that time period), then I don't know what to say.


Okay, leave your computer running for days on end, making heavy use out of it. Don't shut it down for days. Make sure that you're opening different applications on it. Does it get slower after a few days of use? Do things start working a little oddly on it? I bet it does. Keep running your computer without ever defragging it. Does it get slower? How about if you never run a virus scan on it? Do things start breaking or working oddly? I bet it does.

That is exactly what goes on with the servers, too. It doesn't need to necessarily be a bug that causes it. Heavy use of the software can cause things to appear that wouldn't be there if it was restarted again. Why is it that whenever you call tech support for an issue on your computer, the first thing they usually have you do is restart the computer? It 'cleans' out a lot of the junk that has been going on by you using the computer.

Those applications that you've created; have they been intended to run indefinitely with the computer never shutting down? Have any of the computers with it kept performing wonderfully even after running for a week without shutting down?

The server gets heavy use. Take Freedom, for instance. Let's give it 20,000 of the game's 100,000+ players. That's 20,000 people using it on a frequent basis, doing a lot of packet transfers and making the server do a lot of calculations. Add that up over time, and things cna get misplaced, which makes the server act a little slower. If you don't take it down every now and again, it gets worse.

If you think that the Devs can track down every little memory leak or bug in this game's code, especially before new ones pop up, then I think you're deluding yourself. I've never seen an MMO where they didn't need to have server maintenance, and I'm betting that I never will.

I do consider it important. The Devs consider it important. However, as I've said, to change it now would only affect MORE people. Why would the Devs change it if they know that? They continuously work to make the game better. If they stopped everything to try to make it so that they never had to do server maintenance, I doubt they'd ever get to that point, and we'd have no new content updates while they did that. How would the game survive that? That's not even considering that I doubt the art department is great at debugging. They might be, but I doubt it.

Knowing that it affects people who wish they weren't affected by it is a far cry from being able to change it in a way that would make everyone happy.


Then go and get yourself a job on a team like this. I'm betting that business decisions would force you to not get the product you want out on time. Especially on an MMO.

First off: wow...quite a thread necro there.

Secondly, you are not treated worse. You are treated the same, it just affects you more.

Secondly, the game needs maintenance just as every other online game needs maintenance. Things don't always work out perfectly, and sometimes the servers can get bogged down. It happens in every business I've been a part of, and I'd imagine it's worse with an online game. So, they need to take the servers down and clean them out. This takes time. Time that the servers need to be down unless you want the game to be largely unplayable. If you can't understand that, then I suggest you not play MMOs, because it happens in all of them.

Secondly, the maintenance can't be done live. I'm sorry, but it just can't. The servers can't be up and being maintained at the same time. Not on a game this big where it would significantly slow down the game for a larger timeframe, and therefore impact more people.

Secondly, the time period chosen was datamined to have the fewest people on during the period where people could be reasonably asked to be in the office. The servers are in California and Virginia. If the company doesn't want to pay overtime (and that is definitely a business decision), then you want to schedule it during the time when people would already be there. So, you take that, and find out when the servers have the lowest population, and go with that time for maintenance. I'm sorry that this affects you, but to change it would only INCREASE the population affected by maintance.

Secondly, if you think that you cna program an MMO that doesn't require server downtime, go right ahead. I'd love to see it.

A tag...like a clothing tag, or a tag on an item at the store...that's what it looks like to me as well, though I can also certainly see the pencil.

No, you didn't. But apparently the OP did, because his complaint is that Defenders got better buff/debuff values out of the same powers, which is true across the board.

Yeah, this is a normal thing. That's like saying that Defenders got a buffed version of Radiation Emission. It's true, because Defenders have a higher Buff/Debuff Mod than Corrs do. It's like that with every set. OF COURSE their values are higher on this set than for Corrs, because it's like that for EVERY OTHER SET that they share.

You have been pointed to the place to learn this twice now. Click on the links provided above, and you can read all about it.