Adelie

Omg! I can have a doggy?!! Woooooo! I love this game!

I can understand that in joining an online multiplayer game I should expec to be encouraged or even required to team with or compete against some other player at some point. But teaming up doesn't have to mean more than a duo. I am very weary of the recent push for super big group required content.

I just don't get it. Why does anybody find it enjoyable to be a tiny unrecognized cog in a massive machine instead of the solo star or a key player in a small team? These super big teams wind up having me wonder if anybody would notice if I just stood there and did nothing. I wind up just mindlessly mashing buttons along with everybody else, and being completely unable to see what is supposed to be going on with all the graphics spam on the screen.

Can we please start pushing more small group content? Something I can tackle with a random pick up group? Preferably in the 35-45 level range?

XP debt is actually not even noticed by me. For me the annoyance is having to to go the hospital and run back. I got the veteran rez power and carry a wakie, a break free, and a heal and a blue at all times. It is a fun game to awaken, break free, heal and eat a blue and then flee like the wind after dying at the feet of a mob.

My only real complaint about dying in this game seems no longer to be an issue. With the recent issue I found that I often crashed when zoning and going to hospital meant zonging, so it increased the likelihood of the game crashing. Recent patches seem to have fixed that now, as I haven't crashed at all in recent play sessions.

Arnabas, your avatar vid is seriously cute.

I agree with all the suggestions above regarding how to fix this text issue. It doesn't seem like a hard change to make either, to trigger ambushes and hostility changes during the final click instead of the click before it.

So what are the odds the devs make this change for us?

Why in the world are you soloing a mind controller? Controllers work best for team play. Why not roll up a brute or dominator or corrupter for solo play? Especially at low levels (things change at higher levels) soloing controllers WOULD be frustrating. A mind dominator will give you all the fun of mind control with a much less frustrating experience solo.

I agree with all of Samuel's suggestions except the last one. Don't put so much in clues. A lot of new players don't read clues. They may see "clue found" but that doesn't mean they'll know there is a special tab for them to find and click on to read some text. Clue could simply mean they found a clue and their mission objective may soon change. Contact dialogue they have to click through so they'll know to read it.

This is really getting tiresome. I have been doing some Tip missions recently and I find them very well written. I get into the story and then invariably at a certain point I am to talk to some NPC. The conversation proceeds through clicked dialogue and then at the end the NPC goes hostile or an ambush comes.

There is zero time to read the last bit of text, which is often multiple paragraphs before having to fight. The text box is right in the middle of the screen so I can't see what I'm doing without closing it. Sometimes I try to read it as I fight.

There has to be a better way.

Also, text bubbles of NPCs move way too fast to read and don't stay on the screen long enough, or they activate while you are attacked, forcing you to go back and sort through NPC text. I created a chat window just for NPC text but it still is more trouble than it should be.

Thoughts?

I have long disliked how the more you progress in this game the more you need to team up with others to accomplish your goals. The more powerful I'm told I am, the weaker I feel.

It has been this way ever since I first joined this game way back in i1 or i2 (i forget which). The low level TFs like Positron only required a handful of players. The higher you got in level, and the more you "progressed" the more people were needed for each TF. All of the high level TFs required 8 people if I recall correctly. When City of Villians came out it continued this trend.

Now that Incarnate stuff has come out it magnified this even more so. I am told that I have drawn uber power from the well of furies and I'm some kind of super super super hero now, and yet to accomplish anything important, like beating up that Maelstrom guy I beat already a number of times since level 20, I need the help of a bunch of other super heroes. And when I say a bunch, I just don't mean teaming up with a handful of others, I mean a whole lot of them.

The more I progress in level and power, and the more Powerful the game tells me I am, the weaker I feel. I wind up feeling like a useless cog in a giant machine, instead of somebody truly remarkable.

This is so backwards.

Yes absolutely agree with you guys. Tilesets and maps should be far more a priority than they have been. The greatest addition to this game (aside from ragdoll physics) was the transition maps (when you go from an office building to a sewer map). When the released that it blew my mind. Because maps had become so stale and repetitive. They need far more tilesets and layouts.

And why not add some interactivity to the maps? Put those sensors (from mayhem missions) in more missions. Put in more explodable objects too. Maybe have walls you have to break down. When they added mayhem missions they added a lot of good new tech and I was hoping it would eventually carry over to the game at large, but it never did. The Frostfire ice slicks were also a nice touch. More like that please!

In the replies above nobody addressed the core of my OP. Why the matching of higher level requiring more people on all TFs? Why can't we have some high level content built for small teams, and more low level content built for big ones (The hollows trial is the only one I can think of)? It is easier to build groups at lower levels since people can examplar. It is harder to build groups at higher levels, especially for casual or semi-casual players on smaller servers.

This is something that has always struck me with City of Heroes, right from the start. Why does the required number of heroes to run a TF go up as the level requirement goes up, even though there are more players at the lower levels (this has become less true has time has gone by but still the point stands, especially since higher level characters can examplar).

Now with the raid content, we are expected to find not just a full team of players to start it but multiple full teams of players. Thank goodness for the new team formation que thing. Without this this would fail completey on all but the busiest servers. It still may as time goes by and the novelty wears thin.

I always thought it was kind of odd that Positron can be done with so few heroes and yet all (or most) of the level 40+ TFs require 8 players. Should you not feel MORE super as your career progresses and not less so? You get more powers and get better rounded, etc. Controllers get pets later on in their careers for example and would be more able to solo or small team content, and yet the solo or small team focussed stuff is designed for the low level characters?

It just all seems very backwards to me.

I have become a more casual player over the past year or so and no, I didn't not notice any hype regarding I20. It came without fanfare from my point of view. And it also comes as not much to sink my teeth into as a casual player not looking for massive raids and massive groups of players needing organization etc. I'm the pick up for an hour or so and leave kind of player and there is simply nothing here for me. I'll be sticking around though to see what they come up with for Issue 21. Hopefully there will be something in it for us more casual players.

The Animal Pack is a lot of fun though. I love making new characters with bird nad cat and wolf heads To me the Animal Pack outdoes issue 20. I like to pretend it is issue 20 and that Issue 2 is the bonus stuff I don't have to pay any heed to

It is all a matter of perspective I suppose.

In all honesty, once the wave of us who have been playing the game for a long while go throug the system, I really expect the entire incarnate system to go the way of PvP and Architect. Things some people are really into, but the vast majority ignore. The meat and potatoes of this game is new powersets, new enemies, new costumes etc. By I23 or so I expect most of us to have forgotten about incarnates as we look to the next big thing.

Rag Doll Physics. This improvement made the game infinitely better.

How can you call Ice/Rad "average at best control" with a straight face? Arctic Air + Choking Cloud, and stand in the middle of them, keeping them still with aoe imob... and I do believe it is the very best control I have every experienced in the game. Add an ice slick isntead of that imob and its even better. Or use Ice slick to lock down a 2nd mob. Add TP Foe and nothing escapes. Nuclear Zamboni is definitely one of my most powerful controllers - even comparable to my earth controllers.

..... and here comes a slew of ThunderCats tribute characters. Thunder Thunder Thunder ThunderCats!

I like the idea of melee/support.

I also like the idea of buff/buff.

Buff/Buff would have to be a veteran AT, as one could very easily make themselves unable to do damage and thus unable to solo (except with veteran powers). But it would be fun to play on a team. The Primary would have buff values like Defenders and the secondary would have buff values like corrs or controllers.

Trick Arrow