City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Arilou

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  1. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
    I think you're thinking more along the lines of a pike.

    I, personally, would love to see a pike in City of Heroes, but it comes with a couple of problems. Proper pike use relies on a shifting grip, something which the current weapons system really can't do, as weapons are costume pieces locked to the "weapon hand." Even if we employed a grip with a fixed right hand, it would still require a sliding left hand grip, which is something BABs described a total ***** to make (not his exact words), which may be why the existing Titanic Weapons seem more slated towards a sword-style hilt grip.

    We'll have to see how that goes, though.
    Not to mention that a pike is pretty much useless without the other twenty guys with pikes covering your blind spots.

    I mean geez, those things are 4-6 metres long!

    There are all sorts of styles of spear (and other polearm) type weapons though. Some one-handed for use with a shield, some used two-handed like a quarterstaff, some used more like a bo-stick.

    Preferably I'd want a style tht could be used with a multitude of polearms (staves, spears, halberds, naginatas etc. etc.)
  2. Arilou
    The problem is animations. A sword+gun powerset can be given animations specifically coded to flow into each other in a way that a pistol/broad sword blaster (say) can't.
  3. Arilou
    Tanks: For characters who are defined mainly by their survivability.

    Scrappers. My "basic" melee toon. Can dish it out and take it, unless I have some specific other concept in mind I'll probably make a scrapper if I'm making a melee toon.

    Brutes: Berserker types, the longer they fight the harder they hit.

    Mastermindsi: Genius-types. Be it incredibly charisma, sorcerous powers or great tech skills. These are the smart guys who builds tools.

    Stalkers: Sneaky people.

    Controllers/Defenders/Corruptors/Dominators: people with wide-ranging powers that are less specific than just "hit people hard with ane element". Cosmic-powered types, elemental force-type beings etc.

    Blasters: More focused/uncontrollable power-types.
  4. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by narkor View Post
    so i was reading this thread mentioning the awesome things that will happen sooner or later and came across this.

    Oh my god this! Yes this! Please? Pretty please? With cherries? More cherries? Which flavor cake? Or would you like pie? How about both?

    Just give me weapon materialization as a set already :d
    unlimited blade works!
  5. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Spectral_Hunter View Post
    I suppose reasonable time is determined by dev testing and player feedback. I do think the current system is unreasonable though.

    Here's an interesting question for you. Why does the solo path or small team path need to be significantly slower than the trial path? Why does the trial path need to have incentives to make people want to run them?
    Because there's time-investment inherent in setting up a team.
  6. Arilou
    So, stalkers gets Ice Armor but no Ice Melee?

    Not that I've ever seen anyone pick ice melee, mind
  7. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Spectral_Hunter View Post
    I think the heart of the matter of all this is that the vast majority of players want progressive rewards in a reasonable time frame while having fun. Progressive rewards are essentially ways to improve our characters and make them more powerful. Fun is subjective to the individual as that person may find enjoyment spending most of their time in trials, small teams or soloing.

    Currently, the way the Incarnate system is designed, only those who enjoy trials have the ability to receive progressive rewards. If you don’t run trials, you will not be able to improve your character at a reasonable rate. I do think this is a bad design considering how CoH has developed and evolved over the years. The game never centered around trials/raids yet now in the Incarnate system, content and character development is gated. I don’t see the logic of forming a game for seven years one way then changing the dynamics in such a radical fashion.

    Now, some people are saying there is plenty of new content for those who don’t like the iTrials. Not really. As I said at the very beginning, the vast majority of players want progressive rewards, which ultimately means the end game. Most, if not all, of the so called end game is now all about Incarnate powers. All the other content affects earlier levels and as a result has no impact upon collecting rewards at the end.

    There are others who say if you don’t run trials, you don’t need Incarnate powers. Well, technically, those who run the trials don’t need them either. All it does is gate content and make the trials easier. Which is ironic since the raiding community often wants challenging content but by over gearing their characters, ends up trivializing the raids that was once very difficult (proving again, what people really want is to be able to progress their characters at the end).

    CoH has always tried to accommodate the soloist and small team player. You can see it by the past content. I don’t think it is unreasonable for the playerbase, who has evolved with such a variety of playstyles, to expect the devs to explore and produce Incarnate systems for those types of players, as well as those who enjoy running trials.
    And here we come down to the crux of hte matte: What is "Reasonable progression"?

    As it stands I'd say the non-trial team path (WST's, rewards from TF's, Apex/Tin Mage) offers a reasonable progression. Not neccessarily an ideal one, but at least one that's reasonably doable. It would take a couple of months of relatively dedicated playing, but it's doable. Mind, it could stand to be eased a bit more, but it's "reasonable" at least.

    "Hermit mode" however, isn't reasonable. Now, I'm not certain it SHOULD be, but I think there's certainly a reasonable argument for impoving the rewards.

    The easiest way to make it non-abusable would probably to make a strictly time-locked path for soloers: Say.... An astral merit rather than an A-merit for completing a tip mission. (the size of the reward is up for debate obviously) basically make it a daily or weekly task that can be accomplished solo and earsn you a noticeable progression, but one that is slower than doing Apex/Tin Mage or trials.
  8. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Clouded View Post
    Ya, no one is arguing otherwise. But you seem to keep ignoring that the REWARDS portion of our rebuttals.

    The REWARDS were not locked soloely behind team content. That's the difference with the Incarnate Rewards.
    Yes they were. TF commander.
  9. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by CactusBrawler View Post
    Or you could just buy them off some one who had performed the team content.

    Using inf that you earned solo or on small teams.
    That still requires team content.

    And besides, Hami-O's came before the market.
  10. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Clouded View Post
    K.

    The shard conversion is ridiculous and not reasonable by any means.

    APEX/Tin Mage are TFs, meaning teamed content. I.E. not for small teams or soloists. Obvious stuff here.



    Again, team content.



    The conversion rates are more than unreasonable. All of your 'solutions' require more teamed content.

    How does that help small teams or people wanting to solo?
    By "elswhere" I assumed you mean "outside trials". The shard/thread conversion alone is probably unreasonable, but combined with running apex/tin mag and The WST's it's not at all unreasonable. (even a relatively conservative run would earn you 110 threads a week, excluding shard drops)

    The hami-o's also required teamed content to be performed. So what's the deal?

    Likewise many of the accolades (that also provides a tangible benefit, 15% HP is nothing to sneeze at)

    The precedent for requiring team to acquire content is there. This is nothing new. It's always been that way.
  11. Arilou
    IIRC the devs stated in one of the dev diaris that one of hte things they'd learn is to ALWAYS have clear fail conditions. Because if they leave it open-ended players will spend hours and ours banging their heads against unwinnable situations and then being very angry afterwards.

    Better to have a clear "Now you failed, try again." to bottle up that rage.
  12. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Clouded View Post
    Hami-Os were tradeable.

    Yes, the new rewards cannot be traded or earned elsewhere which is poor design. That's the point many people are making.
    Sure they can be earned elsewher: Shards>Threads conversion and the Apex/Tin Mage TF.

    There's also the notice>40 threads conversion.

    They can also be traded within the same account at a fee (using the merit vendors)

    Now, you can argue whether or not the conversion rates are reaonable (I'd say they're probably a bit too harsh) but they do exist.
  13. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Clouded View Post
    True, but all of the rewards from that end-game content can be retrieved from other means. Whereas Incarante end-game rewards cannot be gained, reasonably, outside of the trials.
    Hami-O's couldn't for quite a while. And the same is true for the trial rewards anyhow. (the only excpetion bein the Ascendant Radiance costume pieces)
  14. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Anchor View Post
    If COH is a multiplayer game, and that's what everyone has been doing and should expect to be doing for high-level advancement from now on - and anyone asking for something non-multiplayer to do is being unreasonable and childish (unreasonable after playing a teaming-optional game for the better part of seven years) - why is one of the repeated concerns voiced about including a solo-friendly progression path that the number of people who would run the multiplayer Incarnate options would drop-off significantly if the playerbase was given the option to do something more soloable?
    The end-game has ALWAYS been multiplayer-only, FYI. Hamidon, Mothership Raid, LRSF and STF has always been team-required.
  15. Arilou
    No, you're misunderstanding what carrot and stick means

    The carrot is the reward to get you to run the content. There's no stick involved. (a stick would mean actively penaizing you somehow, beyond not getting the carrot, for not doing the trial)

    Say, you get your influence earnings cut in half for every day until you do a trial. That would be a stick. Not giving you a carrot is not a stick.
  16. Arilou
    I suspct it won't be given to stalkers because of the mechanics (IE: you need to keep hitting poeopkle with it, while stalkers need to pause and hide)
  17. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
    Plus the only difficulty with producing solo Incarnate content is this: How to make it so that the solo content doesn't empty the trials.
    The *easiest* way would probably be attaching rewards to an already existing system. (preferably one that's already time-locked)

    Unless they do something with the Signature Arcs (which they might, actually, now that I think about it) there's probably not going to be much *new* solo content. They *might* attach it to already existing content in some form, though. ("Incarnate Mode" is something that's been thrown around)

    But that still leaves the question of what is considered "reasonable" play-time to achieve something. And I don't think the hermits have the same conception as the devs there.
  18. Arilou
    To be honest, BAF is my least favourite trials. It involves a bit too fudgy mechanics (I don't like synch-kills) and the lag on the escapee phase is still very, very annoying.
  19. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
    Nice to see you know your Edda My pen & paper version of Thor has had the handle extended
    I literally learned to read from the illustrated "Gods and heroes of norse mythology".
  20. Arilou
    I actually kind of feel sorry for Mother Mayhem. In a "poor bint needs to be locked up" kind of way.
  21. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jagged View Post
    In my role playing games I have had more than one character that uses a great big flippin' hammer.

    Unfortunately I have found the War Mace set to be "missing" something, don't know what but definitely missing something. So if Titanic Weapons can provide me with a suitably nice Hammer-of-Nordic-Goodness then I may well re-roll a character or two.
    The funny thing is, Thor's hammer, while very heavy, isn't partiularly large. It's usually depicted as a one-handed hammer (and Snorri noes that the handle a bit too short due to Loki tryingto sabotage it's forging)

    Overall vikings don't seem to have used particularly large weapons. (didn't really have to considering the poor state of armor)
  22. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Aura_Familia View Post
    Seeing as how the devs have already said they are looking into it, I sincerely doubt you're correct.
    The devs are looking at it, which means there's two big question marks: A) It's not certain anything will come of it, they've looked at tons of stuff that proved to be too hard/time consuming/difficult to balance to make it worth doin. B) The devs concept of a "meaningful solo path". Which I suspect differs significantly from the hermits' conception.
  23. Arilou
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lemur Lad View Post
    You need to make a character. After that, E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G is optional not compulsory.
    Heck, you don't even have to do that. YOu can just sit around and pay your monthly fee if you want too.
  24. Arilou
    Honestly, the most I would expect in terms of solo content would be say... Being able to get an Astral Merit instead of an Alignment merit when doing tips. Balancing a solo path would just be too difficult. Small team is easier, but solo is eh... Probably not going to happen (still might, but I have no idea how)
  25. Arilou
    I sincerely doubt you're going to get solo incarnate content in the way you want it.

    I *do* think you're going to get some kind of small team oriented stuff that might be soloable with a perfect build, though.