Aett_Thorn

Ummm...sure, I guess.

Why is this in the Tanker forums, just out of curiosity?

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Those were originally designed as Street Sweeping zones with the occasional mission or two placed in them. Ever since the change to debt (50% debt inside missions) the majority of people no longer Street Sweep so, for the most part the zones go unused.

I think it's about time to even the levels of debt between exterior and interior defeats.



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Still wouldn't help too much. Mission completion bonuses, combined with merits for story arcs, would probably still have people doing more missions than street sweeping.

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Oh I see, so do people just do STF's all day for their Hami-O's now?

By the way, I see you on the forums a lot.. do you play CoH often or just go on the forums? Oh, and what happened to your avatar? It looks like it grew some hair since the last time I saw you.

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When work is slow, I get to post on the forums a lot. when work gets busier, I post less. I play when I can.

My avatar is thanks to Vanden, who made a joke comparing me to a less-than-reputable past world leader.

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Why are Hazard Zones like Perez Park, RWZ, Creys Folly, etc. so empty now days? I remember playing around 3 years ago and those places had tons of people forming teams. After rejoining again recently I barely see anybody in there. What happened in the time period I was gone?

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There are a couple of reasons for this:

1) There's very little content in those zones. With the exception of RWZ and the newly revamped Faultline, most of those zones either don't have a real story to go with them, or have content that most people have done many, many times before.

2) Street-sweeping isn't as prominent as it used to be. More people run missions than just hunt in these zones. So, you may not see as many in the zone as might be in missions in the zones.

3) The MA still has a decent number of people running content (and farms) there. Since the MA can potentially have limitless content, it's a big source of missions right now.

4) Esepcially with the low-level hazard zones, Patrol XP and the radio have made it easier to level up without ever going to those areas, or being sent to them, even.

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EDIT: Also, wheres all the hami-raids? Those used to be one of my favorite things to do, I don't see anyone there either. Nothing like destroying a humongous oversized evil jello blob.

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In short, it can take too long to organize a group of the size needed to take him down. There are other, easier ways to get the rewards that Hami offered. He is still run, but you may need to check your server's forums to see whan they are scheduled.

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PWN!

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Hold on, hold on, hold on.

We're talking about Japanese shows dubbed into English, right? Shouldn't it be more like:

<mouth moving>

</mouth moving> PWN!

I play when I can. I can post but not play from work.

The casual player that you seem to be talking about: he probably doesn't even notice or care if a stray mob escapes his aggro. Most of the time, it's probably dead before it matters anyways.

To steal aggro away from an aura-voke, a character would need to either have their own taunt aura, or do 6,750 - 13,500 damage at level 50 (lower value for a debuffing set, higher for a non-debuffing set). And that's another Tank. A Scrapper would need to do 9,000 - 18,000 damage. A Blaster? 13,500 - 27,000 damage.


That is JUST taking into account a single mob in your Taunt aura radius. If you can squeeze in ten mobs to the radius, then you can keep them all through that. Anything beyond the ten can be stripped from you just using the aura. If a mob leaves your aura range, the amount of damage needed to get aggro drops because your Threat decays on that target.

Those are the facts. If you'd like to show us that they are wrong, then show us. But your anecdotal evidence does not disprove them in the slightest.

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So I just referred a friend to the game and shes planning on playing beyond the trail. In order for her to do so will she have to pay the 19.99 on the PlayNC website to buy the actual game or is she able to just purchase a game card?

Also, how do I get the free month out of it?

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She will actually need to purchase the game from the website. Once she does so, she should UPGRADE her account with the serial code that she is given. Once that happens, you should automatically be credited with the free month.

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Basically the unspoken conclusion is that Microsoft forces you to have to buy a new machine if you want to have a good experience. Sure that's kind of underhanded, but we are talking about Microsoft here.


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I don't disagree that updated hardware is clearly the better way to go, but it almost sounds as if you're saying Microsoft is somehow also selling you the hardware... I'm not sure where the underhandedness comes in.

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The underhandedness comes in when they release "new" software which basically requires "new" hardware to match. It has long been understood that the hardware and software industries have, at least indirectly, helped to support and drive each other ahead because they clearly need each other to do well.

So while Microsoft might not be selling hardware directly they are more than happy to "encourage" people to have to buy new hardware to run their latest software because if the hardware guys sell more computers they directly end up selling more software.

Using the word "underhanded" was simply a humorous way to describe Microsoft's behind the scenes role in getting us to buy more stuff.

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I can see that. I view it as kind of the same thing as if you want to buy a new CD player for your car, you need to buy a whole new car.

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If you were a *real* Tanker playing with a *real* group of people (not a controlled experimental setting (seriously?)) you would know that taunt auras by themselves do not hold agro well enough. You would also know that taunt auras *and* punchvoke will take care of 90% of your agro concerns, with another 9% being reserved for Taunt. The other 1% I'd put down to the actual skill of the player (that's how simplistic playing this game is ... especially at the higher levels).

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Sigh.

Kruunch, I just want you to know how this comes across to most of us.



Us: The aggro auras work fine to hold aggro through damage.

You: No, they don't, you'll need to use attacks or Taunt to really hold aggro well enough through damage.

Us: Actually, I've never seen this need in game.

You: Well, I have.

Us: Well, we haven't. Also, in controlled experiments, it is demonstratively false.

You: I don't care about your experiments, just my own anecdotal evidence. Your anecdotal evidence is also not good enough.



We've had people say that it's fine in game (and that's been my experience playing my tank as well), and that it works just as we state in controlled experiments. I don't really know what else you're looking for here. But insulting people and saying that they're not not real Tanks doesn't win you any fans.

If you want to actually show us that we're wrong, show us that we're wrong. Give us some proof to back you up on that. Just stating that we're wrong with no evidence to back you up, then claiming that our anecdotal evidence also isn't right is bordering on insanity. It doesn't make you look right. It just makes you look stubborn.


If we can't use our anecdotal evidence or controlled experiments to make our points, what the heck do you want?

You may want to look through this thread.

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Please, please, read his post on it. He points out specifically why it's harder than you might think.

Yes, it was 'bad' coding. They didn't think that the players would want it, and so set up the power codes to not need anything like it. They then made each power based on this code. It was an oversight more than bad coding. They were a small team even then, and they were trying to get a game out quickly. They made a business choice, that came back to bite them a bit (the game still works without power customization, but people still really want it).

To re-do this decision, you'd need to re-do every animation in the game six times over, then add extra code on top of that.

Why six times? Here's why:

1) Male standing
2) Male flying
3) Huge standing
4) Huge flying
5) Female standing
6) Female flying

9 powers across about 70 sets. Even if we knocked that down to 7 powers across 70 sets to account for duplicate animations like Taunt that could be more easily reused, that would still be about 2,940 animations that you'd need to do. And that's not even counting unique powers in the Ancillary pools or temp powers, or pool powers (would add another 200 or so animations to do).

It is NOT impossible. It's just time consuming to re-do all that work. So far, the Dev decision has been that it's not worth it. Time spent on this would take time away from new powersets and new animations.

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This is kind of what I said (without going into specifics). And my apologies, I suffer from programmers syndrome ... "bad coding" virtually always means bad planning.

I understand it would be time consuming which is why I said it probably would never get done.

I'll assume the rest was meant for someone else as we weren't talking about broad based power customization originally.

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Yeah, the rest was to kind of put to bed the issue that full customization was easy. I wanted to make it clear to others just what we were talking about.

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A Longbow Frigate GM in Nerva, it launches (spawns) Chasers and shots at villains with 20mm cannons.

Edit: "Cannons" not "canon", Yes, it shoots the Dev Hero one at us who points out why our characters contradict CoX canon lore and bans them.

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Is it bad that I liked the second idea more?

If you are using nothing but a custom group, there is no way to set it to anything but level 1-54.

To set the minimum level of the mission, you either need to add an enemy group of the minimum level, or add a hostage of the minimum level (can either be an ally or foe). You need to add a group that is of the minimum level that you want.

Nope, and there likely won't be until it is very close to being released.

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It always amazed me that they wouldn't think players wanted it. I mean, they knew we would want to customize the appearance of our characters, and gave us the most amazing character design system extant, then dropped the ball with customizing the powers themselves...

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I agree with you on that. It probably wasn't the best long-term decision that they could make. However, it's the one that they did make. I'm not trying to say it was the right one by a long shot, just that it was the one that was made.

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Ranged ATs do have access to melee attacks. Blasters have their whole secondary. Dominators have melee in the Assault sets, and everyone else has access to things like Air Superiority, Boxing and so on.

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Okay, if that's the case, then wouldn't the optimal solution be to add ranged power pools, not replacing powers in current sets? I mean, if the other ATs can get what they want from power pools to make the characters they want (including an Energy/Energy Blaster taking Tough and other power pools to become more like Iron Man), then why should the Melee ATs be burdened with needing to make sacrifices to get theirs?

That still doesn't cover things like Debuffs and Controls for those who don't get them.

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The reason to add it is to fill a hole in the power sets.

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Just to say this again: the ancillary pools were designed SPECIFICALLY to do just that. What you're saying is that they come too late. However, those holes exist in the early game to make the ATs different. The powers in the ATs' sets are designed to perform the ATs main goal. You can generally supplement these with power pools over the course of a career. If you can't, then the Ancillary Pools shore up the holes remaining.

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I've often been left running away redside, because my melee character can't reach that Bombardier. It's the same reason they gave ranged attacks to all NPCs - to keep them from being helpless in some common circumstances (and from my personal perspective, to allow better realization of certain character concepts).

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The enemies don't have travel powers. The enemies don't have great AI that let them make the choices that players do. The enemies don't have nearly as many powers as an equivalent level player does. THAT is the reason that all mobs were given ranged attacks. Otherwise, there would be no need for Tankers or Scrappers at all. A Blaster would be the most survivable character out there, capable of decimating foes with no return fire.

You, on the other hand, have the ability to find pathways that the Mobs can't. You have the ability to choose powers that let a pathway not even be needed.

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That just sounds like bad coding (or lack of forethought) which could very well be (happens often in MMOs). From a coding standpoint, there should be no difference from "power" to "costume" customization *except* with regards to differences in animations (as we discussed) as that is the only real difference (standing graphic (or meshed graphic in the case of a costume piece) versus an animated one).

Having said that, I bet it would be easier then BAB (who is fairly new to the team?) thinks if some thought were really put into it.

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Please, please, read his post on it. He points out specifically why it's harder than you might think.

Yes, it was 'bad' coding. They didn't think that the players would want it, and so set up the power codes to not need anything like it. They then made each power based on this code. It was an oversight more than bad coding. They were a small team even then, and they were trying to get a game out quickly. They made a business choice, that came back to bite them a bit (the game still works without power customization, but people still really want it).

To re-do this decision, you'd need to re-do every animation in the game six times over, then add extra code on top of that.

Why six times? Here's why:

1) Male standing
2) Male flying
3) Huge standing
4) Huge flying
5) Female standing
6) Female flying

9 powers across about 70 sets. Even if we knocked that down to 7 powers across 70 sets to account for duplicate animations like Taunt that could be more easily reused, that would still be about 2,940 animations that you'd need to do. And that's not even counting unique powers in the Ancillary pools or temp powers, or pool powers (would add another 200 or so animations to do).

It is NOT impossible. It's just time consuming to re-do all that work. So far, the Dev decision has been that it's not worth it. Time spent on this would take time away from new powersets and new animations.

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I didn't suggest which powers might be best replaced, as I took that to merely be bait for the straw man, that is, I figured you were just trying to get me to say something you could easily shoot down. Considering the history of these boards, that kind of defensive thinking is becoming second nature. I'm glad to see you were actually in earnest.

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I was in earnest, but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have shot it down.


Basically, what I was trying to get you to do was look at the other sets aside from Energy Melee, and really look at what powers you think could be replaced with ranged attacks. It's not as easy as it looks. Dark Melee, for instance, really doesn't have any powers that are that bad in it. And changing any of them out for a ranged attack like Dark Blast would definitely throw lots of wrenches into the works for Dark Melee users.

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this assumes the set was balanced to begin with

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Taking this first. If they sets are not balanced the way they are currently set up, you need to show that. If sets with ranged attacks are currently outperforming the other sets because of the ranged attacks, then the other sets getting ranged attacks has some validity to it. If this is not the case, the purposefully screwing with balance to add something that isn't needed (because the sets are balanced now) is a lot less than a valid opinion.

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If Bone Smasher was replaced, the challenge would be to replace it with a ranged attack that was as effective as the power it's replacing (this assumes the set was balanced to begin with). The effect of the stun, for example, might be deemed more useful than knockback, so the liklihood of knockback might be increased to compensate for the difference. It's just a matter of adjusting things in the new power. It doesn't require adjustments throughout.

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Maybe not. But here's the thing: if you're adding a power that needs a lot of work in mechanical changes to make it balanced, where there was a balanced power before, aren't you just adding one headache onto another? If the sets are balanced now, then replacing powers with another means that you can just adjust that power and can probably eventually work it out. However, just because you can eventually balance it out is still not a reason to do it in the first place.

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I agree, some sets are easier to do this for than others. However, these sets were recently given ranged attacks in the MA. Granted, they're not great in many cases, but they are something to start with, at least. As you say, the weapon sets are the hardest to come up with something for. In my opinion, it just requires a little imagination.

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Giving these attacks to MA critters does not even begin to touch on the effects that player character balance would need to discuss. MA critters can be more powerful than each other, and it's fine. But AT balance does need to be considered when giving similar powers to players.


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Also, I would agree that ALL melee sets should have at least the one ranged attack, regardless of the AT (well, Blaster secondaries likely don't need them...).

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Why should only melee sets get this kind of treatment? Why shouldn't ranged characters also get melee options? Why shouldn't characters with both melee and ranged powers get some debuffs? Should Blasters be given more armors earlier, despite that they can get some later, meaning that later in their careers they can become real tank-mages?

If so, why? If not, why are melee ATs special in this case?



And still, without showing that sets without ranged attacks are somehow imbalanced with the sets that have them, I find this whole argument rather moot.

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As for thrown weapon customization ... if you went as far as to come up with new animation schemes for thrown weapons, using the current weapon customization the player has selected would be the easy part to implement in all this (its just a skin difference ... one that's already made).

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From what we've been told by the Dev BAB, it's not that easy. It's basically power customization at that point, instead of just costume customization, which is what Weapon Customization is. Weapon Customization is nothing like Power customization. Being able to swap out one costume piece for another is one thing. Changing out power graphics based on those costume choices is another. Again, it's the reason that Spines isn't customizable: the images that form the body can be swapped out, but the powers like Impale can't be easily swapped out. So, even if you made the spikes metal, you'd still be throwing a banana.

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While if a ranged attack were ever implemented I think the devs would take the short cut with weapons and just use an already existing generic equivalent thrown weapon (i.e. spikes, stars, discs, etc ...) and the already existing animations for them.

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I would agree with you on that.

Also keep in mind that if Mace and Axe were to get thrown items, the thrown item would not be customized. As such, you might be holding a wrench or the warhammer, but you'd throw the basic mace only.

It's why we don't have customization for spines and such.

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Why can't you replace one of the two first powers? What difference does it make when a Brute can pick it (and for that matter, you could always reorder it for Brutes if it did)?


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My thinking is that if Tanks get a ranged attacks, then you really need to give it to each melee AT. It's not like Tanks need the ranged attack, so we're just doing this because we want to, and therefore Scrappers and Brutes have just as much right to them.

As such, since Brutes and Scrappers have a choice of the first two powers, it can't be one of those.

Re-ordering for Brutes becomes even more of a headache, since then you can really screw with people's power picks and slotting. Better to just rule out the first two powers of the set, was my thinking. I mean, this whole thing is arbitrary. I just created the rules to show the difficulty here, especially with some of the sets.

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I would replace the single target Fire Sword attack with Flares personally (or a dumbed down Fire Blast). But I don't think FM needs a ranged since it technically has one.

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Well, it can't be one of the first two attacks, since Brutes can chose between those. So, unless you meant the Greater Fire Sword, which comes at level 35, I'd say that's out. And if you replace GIS with it, you're only saving yourself 6 levels anyways on the true range front.

Since this:

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Show us which power you would replace in each Tanker secondary to add in the Blast.

Rules:

1) Can't be the first or second tier power
2) Can't replace Taunt
3) Can't be the tier 9 power

Go!

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wasn't taken up, I'm going to show where the problems are


'Easily' swapped out powersets:

Dark Melee: Replace Touch of Fear with Dark Blast (however, this removes a lot of utility and mitigation to the Tanker, meaning that it's a significant loss for a Dark Melee character)

Energy Melee: Replace Stun with Energy Blast (again, removing a lot of mitigation from the set to get it)

Fire Melee: Replace Breath of Fire with Fire Blast (removes an AoE to get a single ranged attack)

Ice Melee: Replace Frozen Touch with Ice Blast (lose a lot of utility here, and likely less damage on a set that already suffers in the ST damage world)


'Harder' powersets:

War Mace: Replace Jawbreaker maybe? With what? What attack goes here? Is it a brand new attack? Does it cause redraw?

Axe: Replace Gash with something? Same problems as War Mace.


Potentially crippling powersets:

Dual Blades: Same problems as War Mace and Axe, with the additional problem of what would this do to the combo system.

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Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man.


That is all.

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rofl isn't he copyrighted ?

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And he'd never ever hurt us.

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I want to play Hockey. I want to be a Goaltender. Now, I don't expect to be the best goaltender in the world, right off the bat, but I do have certain expectations. If the coach says to me, "Great, you want to be a goalie! Now, go be a forward, and in 2 or 3 years, we'll let you play goal," I'd be very disappointed.

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I see it more like this: you want to play soccer. You want to be the goaltender. You get told that you need to wait 2 to 3 years to play goalkeeper. You get told to be a forward. You petition to allow forwards to use their hands.

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Correct, it's every bit as arbitrary. You say NO! I say YES! and there's really no reason for either stance, other than to create a kind of balance between the sets. Is it necessary? No. Would it be nice? Absolutely.

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Okay, so you admit that there's no reason for your stance, but then you also dismiss all of the reasons for the opposing stance at the same time. Very nice.

Again, if the other sets are balanced AROUND having a ranged attack, and the other sets around NOT having a ranged attack, then swapping out a melee attack or control to add a ranged attack can throw off the balance of the sets. Balance between the sets does not mean that all of the sets have the same tools. It means that they have equivalent tools.

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Hurl has been changed, and recently. They didn't change the rest of the set, just THAT POWER. If they added new ranged attacks to the various melee sets, they would simply have to ensure to balance THAT POWER. It would not require reworking the whole set to add one power.

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See, here is where you're not thinking about the big picture. Yes, the Devs can swap in one power for another. That part isn't all that hard. However, there are a decent amount of concerns that come WITH swapping that power out.

Say you swap out Bonesmasher for Energy Blast. Not only have you taken a power away from people who might like Bonesmasher, but you may have also replaced it with a power that offers less damage and less utility to a Tanker (replacing a stun with a KB effect). So, now what do you do? do the other attacks in the set get boosted to compensate for the lessened damage and utility? Do you increase the damage for Tanker ranged attacks? What do you do? This is not a trivial concern, Ultimo.