City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Arcanaville

Arcanaville

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  1. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Steele_Magnolia View Post
    I give up. Good luck, people. I tried about 20 randomly through the post and every one already applied.
    The way I did it I copied the second set of NA codes into Excel, started from the bottom, and just went CTRL-INS, TAB, SHIFT-END, SHIFT-INS, ENTER, nope, TAB, UP, CTRL-INS, TAB, SHIFT-END, SHIFT-INS, ENTER, nope, TAB, UP, CTRL-INS, TAB, SHIFT-END, SHIFT-INS, ENTER, nope... over and over again until I got the hit (after about fifty codes or so). You can quickly zip through codes until you get a hit that way in a reasonable number of keystrokes.

    Then again I opened 2400 super packs and wrote down all the cards, so maybe I'm not a good judge of what's a reasonable number of keystrokes.
  2. Arcanaville
    Yay, got a hit on 35JP-628L-93CF-FNVR-J64J working from the bottom. By my reckoning, there's still a lot of codes to go, so don't give up if you're still trying.
  3. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by seebs View Post
    I'll take that bet, but I warn you, this time of day all that's left are the ones with the coconut on them, usually.
    The question is are they worth at least a buck a piece.
  4. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mercykilling View Post
    What is a slap in the face is that the very same subscription fee was just fine for game play for a VERY LONG TIME. Freedom comes along and all of a sudden, it's no longer enough. A blatant statement was made by the devs which I will paraphrase here. "We once got $15 a month from you, and that covered everything we put out. Now, however....we want a $15 sub and extra for you to get everything we put out."

    True, we're getting stuff at a more frequent pace. This just shows me that the game developers were capable of this pace previous to the Freedom model, but were too.....heck, I'm not sure -why- they didn't. Another slap in the face.
    Wait a second. Are you actually saying that you have no idea how the devs could possibly be making more content now than before, and also don't understand why they have to charge more for some of the content they are making now? You actually think its a coincidence that they make more content now, and charge more for some of it?

    Consider my mind officially blown.
  5. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Ironik View Post
    It pretty much did burn out. It earned 60% of its money opening weekend. Attendance went from more than 34,000 per theatre its first weekend to 13,000 its second one. In week two it was beaten by Sex and the City. That's bad word of mouth in action.
    That doesn't sound right. According to boxofficemojo, Indy4 made $100M opening weekend ($125M to Sunday because it opened on thursday) and ended with $317M domestically. That means it earned about 3.2x opening weekend. That's actually pretty good, its opening weekend was only 31% of its total domestic take. Even if you focus on the first four full weeks of release from May 22 to June 18, Indy4 took in about $281M. That means opening weekend took in about 36% of the total four week take domestically.

    They certainly wanted more, but the movie did not "burn out." It certainly did not earn 60% of its revenue on opening weekend. It earned about 60% of its first weeks revenue on opening weekend. By the end of week two, it had more than doubled opening weekend's grosses ($225M).

    Even if you count the entire period from May 22 (thursday) to May 26 (monday) "opening weekend" due to the holiday, Indy4 went on to more than double the total take from that stretch of five days. It was fairly financially successful domestically and very financially successful overall including worldwide grosses.
  6. Arcanaville

    Salut!

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Angry_Citizen View Post
    I finished all six arcs.

    Mind = blown. Blown like a.. well, like a simile I can't say on these boards.

    I am literally in awe of the arcs presented here in Dark Astoria. I particularly love the "contact story" missions. The writing was phenomenal and awesome and incredible.

    I.. I can't even complain a little. Wait, I tell a lie, I can complain because I can't complain, which makes me Purposeless_Citizen. I guess I'll go wander aimlessly and repeatedly bump into walls since I can't fulfill my main function any more?
    There's always First Ward and Night Ward. I actually got a bit choked up over Clarity's story, although of course the critter group being a namesake could have something to do with that.
  7. Arcanaville
    The ones I probably would quibble with the most are Quantum of Solace, Troy, and Kill Bill 2.

    Kill Bill is basically one movie split into two movies so movie audience bladders don't explode. Its difficult to understand liking the first and not liking the second or vice versa, so I don't find the movie particularly disappointing or overhyped as a sequel.

    While I think Casino Royale is the crisper of the two Craig Bonds, Quantum of Solace feels to me a perfect continuation of CR. I like that it changes things up a bit and brings the overall reintroduction story of Bond to a close. So I wasn't remotely disappointed in this movie.

    Troy I think was a bit overhyped, but I don't think it was overhyped more than any other summer blockbuster, and to be honest I actually liked the angle the story took, sort of a pseudo-realistic story-behind-the-legend thing that a lot of people seemed to think should have been truer to the original myth of the story. Of the three, I think this is the weakest, but I don't think its weak enough to make a list of the worst offenders. I certainly cannot understand how it ended up so high compared to Catwoman, or Alexander, or probably the movie with the most wasted potential on the list, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
  8. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kangstor View Post
    EDIT: Almost forgot one of most important reason why complete voice over in an MMO is bad. It is language barrier, now I am not mentioning people not knowing english it is totally different. Just you know enough english to play a game does't mean you have enough diction to talk or listen in said language and if you are going to read subtitle anyway what is the point of voice over? I think this is the biggest cons of voice over. But than again this is personal opinion.
    The graphics are a different barrier. If we eliminated the graphics and reduced MMOs to a text adventure, we could make MMOs more accessible to tools that assist the blind. That is, after all, where they started.
  9. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Trolloc6340 View Post
    Very good information, thank you. Will I even be close to getting phantom army perma at lower levels, or is this most likely a later build scheme?

    And if I join lower level teams and you are set to a lower level, do I lose those benefits?
    Well, if you're willing to go all out, you can do this:

    Code:
    | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
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    Its *barely* perma-PA. You could shuffle slots around and get a little more recharge, but it will still be barely perma PA.

    The problem is that while you can build this at level 50 and then exemp all the way down to level 30 and still have perma-PA, the slots themselves simply don't exist at native level 30 to build it. At level 30 you have 17 powers plus inherent fitness and 28 additional discretionary slots, for a total of 49 total enhancement slots. Even if you magic yourself perma hasten and perma AM, I don't know how you both slot PA and get an additional +100% recharge with 45 total slots. Purple sets offer the most efficient recharge per slot bonus at 2% per slot burned, and that would only get you to +90%. I think its probably mathematically impossible before about level 40ish, at least for Ill/Rad.
  10. Arcanaville
    Technically, you need 422% recharge to fully perma PA. That includes the time to cast the next set before the previous set starts to expire. You can get away with a tiny bit more than 400% and still have some overlap, but it will much more sketchy. 400% recharge is +300% with slotting and global recharge.

    My Ill/Rad has perma-PA with a combination of 99.28% slotted recharge (way over the ED softcap) and 212.5% global recharge without incarnate powers. That's +311.78% recharge or 411.78% total recharge. Close enough.

    I can't say what IOs to take, because my recharge comes from slotting, Hasten, global recharge set bonuses, and Accelerate Metabolism. I have four LotG procs and four purple sets.

    And in practice, Spiritual Core Paragon buys me an additional amount of recharge on top of that for extra insurance.

    For reference, here's the build:

    Code: 
    | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
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|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
  11. Arcanaville
    1. Critters don't cheat when it comes to using endurance. They use endurance exactly the same way we do, and are impaired when out of endurance in exactly the same way we are. Its true they have less toggles and less attacks, but that's not saying they cheat. Unless you want the devs to add more defensive toggles and attacks to critters.

    2. Drain is more problematic for damage mitigation than other secondary effects, but its not completely broken. There are lots of mechanical ways to address its issues in ways that wouldn't make it identical to other mezzes or soft controls, but would make it more effective in general. Doing so mostly requires looking at endurance modifying effects holistically, and using the entire arsenal at our disposal: literal drain (removing points of endurance from the target), recovery debuff (slowing the recovery of endurance), discount manipulation (increasing the amount of endurance the target uses), and maxendurance debuff (reducing the maximum endurance the target has, and with it the size of recovery ticks).
  12. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mercykilling View Post
    It really -is- a smack in the face and saying "Hey, the fifteen dollars monthly you toss at us as a subscription price ISN'T ENOUGH. We want more."
    The people who are still saying, over a year after City of Heroes launched its hybrid model, that they deserve everything they want for just their subscription cost probably shouldn't be smacked in the face, but they should at least be shaken vigorously.
  13. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kimball View Post
    I've recently returned to CoX after about a six year hiatus and I'm still trying to wrap my head around all the changes. This is what I've come up with so far for a build. I'm absolutely certain that improvements can be made, I'm just not sure where. That's where you fine people come in. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
    1. You have over 50% defense to melee, but only 40% defense to ranged and AoE. You would probably benefit more from more balanced defenses: the target for SR is to get at least a little bit above 45% to all positions. 45% to reach the soft cap, a little more for insurance against debuffs (which will be highly resisted, but not to zero).

    2. Full sets of Luck of the Gambler are overkill unless you're really trying extra hard to add psionic resistance.

    3. You're not slotting Boxing or Kick, so I'm assuming you're just taking them to get to Weave. Take tough instead. Even if you don't run it, you can slot both Steadfast Res/+Def and Gladiator's Armor TP/+Def. Each offer +3% defense. Put both in there, and you'll have 6% more defense. That helps make it a lot easier to reach the soft cap. The Gladiator's Armor proc used to cost a ton (two billion if not more off-market), but with the advent of enhancement converters it sells for a more reasonable two to three hundred million. Steadfast is much cheaper and you should at least slot that.

    4. Unless you really want to jump fast, I would consider swapping the jump IO in Super Jump with the Winter's Gift resistance IO. It offers resistance against movement slow and recharge slow, and it stacks with the resistances in Quickness. You'd be up to 60% resistance to movement slow and recharge debuff. Believe me: its noticeable.

    5. Before spending a lot of money on enhancements, consider keeping an eye on I24 beta. Issue 24 is in beta test now, and it has a lot of changes to among other things power pool powers and enhancements. All set bonuses that had small mez resistance buffs will now be larger and have damage resistance buffs as well. So there will be a lot more ways to build for resistance in I24. There's also three new enhancement sets, one each in healing, resistance, and defense. On interesting new IO is an Absorb proc that has a chance to pop an absorb shield around you. Absorb is like ablative armor: damage deducts from the shield first, you second. The chance to pop the shield increases as your health drops until its 100% when you reach 30% health. Could be very useful to SR in combination with the scaling resistances. Another useful one is a proc that offers +7.5% max health, also potentially very useful to SR.


    I tried to juggle your build around a little, shift slots around but not radically change the powers or what you seemed to be aiming for, and ended up with this:

    Code:
    | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build |
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|-------------------------------------------------------------------|
    Its not an optimal build or anything, just a food for thought build on what's possible. It gets to 47% or higher defense to all positions, swaps kick for tough, uses both resistance +def procs, uses a full set of attuned (not catalyzed) scrapper ATIOs, uses some Overwhelming Force IOs (but not the expensive proc), and improves some slotting here and there. Also, I put a full set of Gaussian into Build Up: in i24 the proc will trigger very often in BU due to its base recharge and the full set offers 2.5% defense to all positions - that's 8.5% defense added to the build from just two IOs and that one set. I'm a bit over the cap on a couple of bonuses, but its not too bad.

    Anyway, like I said, food for thought.
  14. Arcanaville

    Of TankMages

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dugfromthearth View Post
    I do not think your conclusion is the correct one from your premise.

    I absolutely agree that:
    "There's no good justification for expending all that effort unless it generates something that produces a unique solo and teaming experience."

    But the unique experience is for the player playing the character, not for the rest of the team. I do enjoy playing and having different teams play differently - but there are only a few roles that do that: aggro control, lockdown, healing/protecting, and massive damage (powersets make a bigger difference with buffs). I cannot tell the difference between playing with a brute, stalker, scrapper or blaster - they just contribute damage. But for the player of that character there can be a massive difference.

    a ranged damage/defense character may play in a team like a scrapper or a blaster to the rest of the players - but it is worth having that AT if people like playing it instead of a scrapper or a blaster.
    But that's my point. Everyone can claim some form of unique experience within different circumstances, but that's not what developers usually are referring to. Its not what anyone should be referring to in this context, because being a truism there's no interesting point to discuss. What's usually meant by "unique contribution" is the design side of that statement; what unique set of tools, intended to function in a particular way, does the powerset, or archetype, or whatever, contribute.

    Its all fine and good to say everyone can satisfy every role in a team. Fantastic. But designs have targets, and our archetypes do not have as their target "everyone does everything equally well." An archetype designer has to be able to answer that question: "what does this archetype contribute to a team (that is unique)?" How the players decide to use those tools is up to them, but game designers can't design archetypes like the Metrons design planets and just pray that players know how to make bamboo cannons.
  15. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by konshu View Post
    Triumph isn't dead. It's just sleeping.
    Its just resting its eyes.
  16. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
    The thing with just "updating" textures is kind of the same problem with CSI style series getting a grainy video and saying "Enhance it!" to get a high-res version of it. The truth of the matter is that there's no information held in the low-res textures beyond what abstract interpretation we have of them based on what they sort of look like.
    [Science]
    The notion of taking a grainy, low resolution photo and generating an enhanced version of that which has more detail is, for the most part, science fiction. However, the notion of taking a grainy, low resolution video and generating an enhanced version of it which appears to contain far more detail than the video appeared to take is actually not impossible in at least some cases. The concept existed twenty years ago and I studied it myself in college at one point (specifically, jitter induced subpixel detail). However, the technology to do it hasn't really existed until relatively recently. Today, the set of techniques are usually referred to as super resolution technology.
    [/Science]
  17. Arcanaville

    Ice/Ice in i24

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
    I know right?!

    But Chief Mesmerists (for example) still tend to get enough high damage potshots off to not make Blizzard as safe as I'd like. Normal spawns it is a very nice control.
    Well, bosses with strong ranged attacks will hit harder than minions, even if they are affected by the same amount of mitigation. They'll always be more dangerous. It may also have something to do with the average amount of time it takes before you're likely to get the first knockdown, compared to an "instant" effect like Nova. Also, the physics engine being what it is now, knockback has significantly higher mitigation potential than knockdown in many circumstances due to psychotic ragdoll. I'll have to do more extensive testing in that area.
  18. Arcanaville

    Of TankMages

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
    Once upon a team, I PMed an AT suggestion directly to Castle (on request by posters from the suggestion thread) and his reply was, in part, to ask what role this AT would serve on a team. At the time, his question made sense, this was years ago, but now? I really don't think this is relevant any more, because it kind of sort of assumes a system where characters are defined by what they NEED to do but CAN'T, for which role another on the team is needed. To me, the game as I see it now has only one major role - help kill stuff. Because this can be accomplished in so many different ways by so many different combinations of characters, I really don't think we should keep asking what this character's role is.
    The question is still relevant because it forces any hypothetical archetype designer to ask the question: what does this archetype contribute to a team that is unique. Creating archetypes is an enormous undertaking. There's no good justification for expending all that effort unless it generates something that produces a unique solo and teaming experience. And I'm not going to quibble over what constitutes a unique experience, except to say that people who quibble over that probably wouldn't be hired to be game designers. Game development already requires too many meetings and memos, without having to deal with the person that wants to spend several more trying to convince the rest of the team that technically speaking all experiences are unique.

    Character roles are whatever the player decides they are (they could end up good or bad at it) or whatever their team mates request of them. But archetypes are designed with tools, and those tools dictate the archetype's strengths and weaknesses. And I'm pretty sure when Castle asked what the role of your archetype was, he wasn't asking what every player that played it should do, but rather what your intent was in giving that archetype the tools you gave it, within the context of teams. Even if you think everyone's role is "kill stuff" today, the answer to that question would be dramatically different for defenders and scrappers, say. That difference in answer is what makes defenders and scrappers provide a unique contribution to the game.

    Put it another way. When you propose an archetype, you give it a bunch of powers. On what basis do I judge whether you gave it the right powers? On what basis can I suggest alternatives to your design elements? I have to know what they were intended to do first. The question Castle asked you is (a component of) the first question the developers all ask each other. What is this intended to do? And that question will always be relevant.
  19. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Quinz View Post
    What I'm hearing from Sam, and would be my suggestion, is actually make a new 'tier' of subcription. There's Freebies, Premium (For those that paid SOMETHING), Subscriber (The current VIP) And a NEW VIP, which costs between 20-30 dollars and allows:
    * ALL non-in-game unlockable costume sets FREE! While Subscribed. (So it does not include things like the Roman set, Auras/Capes, and Holiday stuff.)
    *Includes ALL Powersets Unlocked, no need to buy them.
    *Includes the ability to purchase time-constrained items (Overwhelming Force Set, Costume sets as Christmas and Holloween, Etc.)

    Of course you lose all this if you didn't buy them before and lack being a VIP.

    What's that sound for?
    I don't think that's what Sam is asking for. Sam is asking for something that's simultaneously less, and a lot more. He's asking for a tier of subscriber that has no restrictions on bundling, gating, or time limits for the store. Whatever the devs sell, Sam wants to buy ignoring all time limited availability, without any prerequisite requirements, and unbundled from any specific packaging.
  20. Arcanaville

    Ice/Ice in i24

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
    I've not found Blizzard to be particularly helpful against bosses. Maybe I should stop doing the RWZ challenge and do some normal spawns, but it's main effect has been against lower ranks. Playing on even cons is better, but still not as reliable as I would like.
    That's odd, because bosses are not intrinsically resistant to KB. Blizzard should affect all critters that lack KB protection equally well regardless of rank, and fail to affect things with any KB protection regardless of rank, comparable to how Nova does.
  21. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by UberGuy View Post
    You know, when you're certified as a mind reader, let me know. Until then, don't presume you know what I'm up to or why, because I'm going to state bluntly that you're wrong.
    Don't be ridiculous, Mila Kunis probably couldn't even breathe in that.
  22. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by planet_J View Post
    Your numbers don't include dull pain... add that in, and who is winning?
    Regen.

    Lets look at just Reconstruction and Dull Pain. Reconstruction alone slotted with SOs has the effective health recovery of about 21.2 h/s. And while Dull Pain is up, regen's regeneration is about 51 h/s. That's 72 h/s while DP is up, which it will be 2/3rds of the time with SOs, about 80% of the time with Hasten. DP also has a heal: about 5.8 h/s, or 7.0 h/s with Hasten (still with SOs).

    While DP is up, which is between 66% and 80% of the time, Regeneration has an effective health recovery equal to Willpower when RTTC is saturated (at least based on your calculations above which I haven't double checked). Without Instant Healing. Willpower is unlikely to have 10 things in RTTC range 66% to 80% of the time.

    Willpower's main strength is enhanceable and stackable resistances and defenses: with high end invention builds it can develop very strong layered defenses. But with just SOs, Willpower does not really out-regen Regen.
  23. Arcanaville

    Ice/Ice in i24

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
    But Psi also is wonderful. In Issue 24, it's going to have even more reliable controls when Wail becomes usable without a crash.
    Wail is going to be good in I24, but its going to be a different animal in i24 than say Blizzard or even Nova. I'm finding Nova to be an excellent alpha bomb because its KB is guaranteed and affects (most) bosses. That buys me several seconds to either take out a boss or clean up lesser ranked critters. Wail is going to need to stack stuns to affect bosses and its unfortunate that Scramble Thoughts has such a long cast time. Ironic, because Wail has such good cast time (for a PBAoE).

    If you solo with bosses off, Wail is going to be really good. With bosses on or in teams, its mag 3 mez may significantly reduce its mitigation (and recharge is a good backloaded mitigator but not a good start of combat mitigator for obvious reasons). I was afraid Nova's KB would not be as good as some of the slottable mez out there, but I'm finding that at least at higher difficulty levels, being able to affect bosses directly relates to the utility of the nuke as an alpha strike, particularly because the nukes are going to kill or reduce to near death most other things it hits. I believe mitigating bosses should be weighted higher than average on nukes for that reason.
  24. Arcanaville
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by UberGuy View Post
    So good players are the ones that smooth out things that go wrong, without needing direction, successfully and regularly.
    There are players that, when I've teamed with them, do not play anywhere remotely close to optimally. They'll do crazy, silly, amazingly bananas thing - and so will I - because we all know we can recover from anything bad that might happen. Someone dies, no big deal: the team can tolerate a death or two. Accidentally pull an extra group, not a problem. The team can adapt because every player on it knows when they can goof off and when they need to put the serious hat on for a few seconds because of excrement-induced turbine malfunction.

    When everything goes absolutely perfectly, and perfection is expected of me, I'm either playing with robots or doing a Master run of something. When everything goes barnstormingly berserk and everything ends up still fine, I'm playing with skilled players.

    It takes no skill to play the game, and only a little skill to beat the game. It takes a lot of skill to get the most out of the game, entertainment-wise.

    If you achieve the level of skill necessary to avoid problems, but never seek to achieve the level of skill necessary to deal with them constantly, I personally think you're missing out on one of the best reasons for playing an MMO with broken superhero mechanics.
  25. Arcanaville

    Ice/Ice in i24

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by EvilGeko View Post
    It's probably underrated because of secondaries that require you to be in melee range to do your best damage. Which is why movement slow and afraid don't seem that much better to me.

    But we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't see one as significantly better than the other.
    Even if we agree to disagree on movement debuff, its hard to make the argument that the two guaranteed mag 3 holds in Ice are not generally superior to the guaranteed stun and the 80% sleep. Psi's superiority lies with its recharge debuffs, but that runs into cap problems: the recharge debuff floor is -75%. Both Ice and Psi can hit that cap, which means Psi's advantage exists primarily in reaching it one attack quicker.


    On the subject of melee attacks: most melee secondary attacks are single target. As someone who played a blapper for years, movement debuffs are very valuable to someone using melee secondary attacks, because while you're attacking one thing with melee attacks, its normally extremely valuable to be able to keep other things from crowding around. Only sets like /Fire might not care, but being a PBAoE blapper is sufficiently difficult to make it very rare.