Writer_Tina

Okay... I did, and failed, my first mayhem mission earlier. Two level 14 characters set on Villainous: my rad/rad corrupter, my sweetie's ninja stalker (his mission).

The failure came from the bank. We got in, and there was somewhere between 20 and 25 enemies in the first room alone -- a mixture of longbow and police. While they were mostly white (except an Orange police captain), the sheer number overwhelmed us. It was insane. After being 'arrested' and spending several minutes breaking down the door (definitely too tough for a short-timer mission, btw), we went back and tried to power through to the vault itself. I died again, and we ran out of time.

Everything up til that point had been fine. The groups we spawned outside generally had 4-6 whites or mixed white/yellows, which is about where I'd expect it for a two-person team.

As others have mentioned, we had a different time on the clock when we came in than it said we'd have. It was supposed to be 20 minutes, but it was something like 16 and change.

The key missions are a neat addition, especially with the potential for temporary power rewards (I got an energy-torrent-like cone attack from a glowie). However, it would be really nice to have the sub-missions tell you their goals! In the first one, we just went through smacking down gang members and saw the glowie; touching it got the temp power and a nice bonus to time (6 minutes for a mission that took about 3 to do). The second one turned out to be a rescue mission, though, and it took a while to figure that out.

We'll give my version of the mission a try and see if the bank is still super-crowded with insane numbers of enemies, or if that was a fluke.

Now, the best side: I love blowing things up! It is a little unclear what you get bonuses for (but, people not sure on the cars: it appears to be after n number of them, where 'n' is 'I have no time to keep track, but I'd guess somewhere around a dozen'), but since the objects spawned grey to us overall, it was fairly easy to just go around and blow everything in our path up.

I really like the dynamic feel of the mission. I could choose to just run for the bank and see what happens, or I can run around blowing up everything in sight and taking down police and hitting up key missions, or some combo thereof, depending on my mood.

Okay, I said I wouldn't reply, but just a couple points here, since you did make quite a reasonable post that I just don't totally agree with:

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The problem is, you CAN'T just look at base damage.

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No, and I didn't. The paragraph right after, I said, yes, Defenders seem to have an advantage overall in damage output for ranged attacks... and though you're right I didn't count buffs and debuffs, I didn't for the simple point I made later, which is: Dominators aren't Defenders. Defenders may be able to output significantly more damage per attack once you take their secondary effects into account (though not Emp or FF and much less of a degree in TA), but Dominators get more secondary-effect powers that damage via their primary and do totally different types of secondary effects (well, not 'totally'; a lot of Dom secondaries seem to do -recharge and there's some -Def over in the Thorny thing, but basically).

That having been said:

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Anyway, my suggestion would be to raise Dominators' base ranged damage to 70%,

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I could get behind this. It's enough of a boost to help the fact that they ought to be focussing more on damage without being a large enough change to really significantly alter balance.

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... and then raise their melee damage to either 80% or even 90%.

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I could get behind 80%, for the same reason; 90% seems a little high even considering the relatively few melee attacks Doms get.

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I'd also like to see a damage boost in every Secondary,

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And I could definitely get behind this; it doesn't make sense that only 2 of 5 sets have it.

You know, I keep seeing people talking about how Domination is the sole way to deal damage, and I keep looking at my secondary set and my actual damage output and, frankly, wondering what these people are defining as 'damage' that I don't seem to be doing.

From my perspective, a Dominator should play somewhere between a Controller (whose primary sets are similar) and a Defender (whose secondaries are similar). They're never going to be a primary damage dealer, but they should be able to do a reasonable damage output, combined with holds and debuffs.

Assuming the numbers over in this thread in Guides are more or less correct, Defenders and Dominators both do approximately 65% of Blaster damage for ranged attacks, while Dominators do 65% for melee (compared to Defenders 55%), which does give me some hard numbers to back up my feeling on this.

It's hard to precisely compare Defender and Dominator secondaries, of course, but the feel I get is that Defenders overall get a slight boost to BI in some attacks, so in absolute terms they probably do a bit more ranged damage overall, though likely a bit less melee. On the other hand, most of their primaries don't have damage-causing powers at all [Storm is the big exception, Dark the small one], whereas Dominators don't have that issue.

As far as their effectiveness on control goes, the numbers I see around the boards say that they're about 80% as effective as Controllers... while having vastly more attacks available to them in their secondaries. So while it's true that with Containment, per-damage attack for Controllers might end up higher, and it's true that the holds for Dominators might not work quite as well as Controllers, it's also true that both for non-contained enemies (hey, they do happen to controllers) and overall, there's less damage potential for a Controller than a Dominator.

My personal opinion is that comparing them to Controllers, Corrupters, or Defenders means expecting things from Dominators that they aren't. They're not any of those things, and if you go into it expecting identical abilities in any way to those things, I would not be surprised if you're disappointed.

On the other hand, if you go into it expecting them to be what they ARE -- a moderate-damage causing AT with some ability to hold and debuff -- then they play quite well.

At least in my experience.

As to Domination? I don't want it changed (other than the nice recharge boost it's getting, which I'm happy about). I don't want Containment-for-Villains (Domination does more than just boost damage, after all), and I don't want it lowered in effectiveness just so it's available all the time (triggering it in key situations has been extremely useful to me and I'd like to keep it that way).

Please note, you can argue with this all you want. I sha'n't change my mind, I doubt I'm changing anyone else's, and I have more interesting things to do than to get in a flaming match with people. Like, say, test Thugs. But y'all had your say, now I'm having mine, and I'm done.

Just amidst the inevitable complaints, I'd like to thank the devs for lowering the recharge on Domination. I haven't tested it yet to see how it feels, but I guarantee you I'll be happy about it in play to some degree.

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And also, I assume these buffs are to help with things like AV battles etc, if so, is it the devs intention that you should go to the mission, fight all the way through to the AV, stop, run back to your base, use the buff, run like crazy back to the AV and proceed to kick his/her/its [censored]?

That sounds a little silly to me.

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Yeah, we were just discussing this. Considering the length of the buff, travel time alone will eat a significant portion of it, and it certainly won't last a mission. And this is for a buff that takes at least 27 pieces of salvage, no less.

Better would be to create a temporary power you can activate whenever, of course. Otherwise, the length really needs to be reconsidered.

Hmm. Glue arrow is mob-targetted, but the effect remains on the ground for a time in a circle centered around where the target stood rather than moving with the original target, as far as I can tell. Which would make it something of a hybrid.

Well, regardless, I suppose it ought to be reworded.

I'd like to see a separate 'logo items' tab; I had a hard time finding the items in question.

A 'medium' wall hanging really ought to fit easily on a default-size room's wall. It takes up the whole thing and eliminates trim. It continues to eliminate trim if I make the ceilings higher, but only one of wall or ceiling.

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Also, I was disappointed that with all the salvage I've saved up since I6, all I could get out of the station was ONE buff of Fear Resistance, Slow Resistance, Knockback Protection, or Knockback Enhancement.

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With really careful foreplanning, on a character who has been accumulating salvage from level 12 (or maybe 11) to 31, I am able to craft at BEST 5 or 6 status resist buffs. Foreplanning is, granted, made somewhat easier with the salvage storage, provided the supergroup permissions are set up well, but...

If this really is to help out small supergroups, I don't really see it accomplishing that well, and honestly it doesn't even seem that helpful to larger ones, since the collection rate to number of characters remains more or less steady.

I'm basically getting one resistance buff every couple levels. While I grant these are fairly cool buffs, that does seem a rather excessively low rate. I think either the recipes or the rate of salvage drop (or both) may need to be revisited.

(Edited to remove side comment about other storage, now properly in the storage thread.)

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Believe me, you do not want to catch me.

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It's not really that I'm trying to rack up the alts, it's just, I keep going, "Oh, hey, I wonder what these two power sets would be like together!" or "Hey, honey, do you think we could play a controller/controller pair?" or "Hey, let's make a pair of blasters who are twins!" or "Gee, I wonder if I can solo a defender without ever teaming except for TFs or the like?"

SO. MANY. CHOICES.

And now they're releasing electric, and you know I am going to have to make a new brute.

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I think the devs are trying to kill me.

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Me, too.

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*ahem* How many alts do you have?

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Fewer than you. At the moment.

I think I'm up to 20 even, but I'd have to go count and the servers are down. (I had a sheet with a list and when they'd last been played, but soda got spilled on it.)

Oh, [censored]. I just realized how many characters I'm going to have to log on and off to get this badge universally.

*bangs head against wall* WHY? WHY MUST I PLAY SO MANY ALTS?

I guess this would be a good day to roll my magical girl, too, so it can be the first badge she earns.

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The Internet was dial-up only BBS's. 2400 baud with text compression was the bomb.

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2400 baud? I had 300 baud. And I liked it.

(Seriously, I remember upgrading to 2400 baud. These days, I can't even cope with dialup speeds. How things change...)

Also, did I miss it, or did no one mention this one:

You know you're an old gamer when you remember when there was no such thing as a 'web page'.

I'm going to have to come down on the side of there being such a thing as talent as well as skill.

I say this because I don't have it. There was a point at which I was sketching endlessly, and while I did improve, I never got to a point where I could consider myself more than moderately able to draw. I don't suck; I'm not all that good.

This is fine by me, since I still find it fun, but if you compare my best drawings to what some people here turn out regularly, there's still a VAST difference.

So while I agree that drawing is one of the many things anyone can learn to do to some extent (along with any artistic pursuit), I still think there's such a thing as inherent talent. I don't really buy into the idea that all people are born with identical ability for all things.

Please note: this is not the same as saying that everyone with talent learns to exercise this talent. I'm well aware the really good artists also have to practice to get there. But where 'there' is can differ from person to person.

That having been said, I would say to anyone who doesn't feel they have talent: never let that possibility discourage you. You do not have to be able to turn out perfect drawings to turn out good ones, or have fun doing it, any more than you need to be able to play Mozart in your sleep to be able to play some songs on the piano.

Besides, if I had a nickel for every person who thought they had no talent or their work sucked who I thought was utterly wrong, I would have enough money to replace my computer with something that can actually run CoV well.

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-Often find yourself telling other players, "and knowing is half the battle".

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Heh. I've never said that, but I really should sometime.

I'm more prone to come out with "Reading is Fundamental!", myself.

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Know the names of the actors that played all of the Doctors of Doctor Who and watched all the shows on PBS... along side those MPFC shows that you knew your parents would never let you watch if they knew that you were.

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Feh, my father both knew I watched MPFC and sometimes watched it with me.

Of course this is the same father who used to let me stay up to watch Saturday Night Live, back during the original cast.

You know you are a older than average gamer when...

You remember when SNL didn't suck.

You have a slightly larger than paperback book-sized box containing the rules to Traveller.

Your first experience with modding a game involved using BASIC.

You remember when TSR put out Boot Hill. (Anyone can remember D&D; IT was popular.)

Your introduction to anime was a show that you didn't realize was anime until 20 years later -- because no one had ever heard that term back then.

Your first introduction to anime as a concept involved people calling it "Japanime", and involved a 3rd-generation fansub because you couldn't commercially get the movie with subtitles.

Bah, Unearthed Arcana didn't come out til the '80s. Nor Fiend Folio.

...

Um. Really! I don't remember that! I'm young! YOUNG!