Samuel_Tow
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:I do that after I'm finished writing a post and before I submit it. However, all the posts I lost, I lost them mid-writing. At work, I have a mouse with a Back button on the side. Grabbing the mouse to move it causes me to accidentally squeeze the back button with my thumb, and unlike the old forums where I could just hit Forward and my post would still be there, if I hit Forward here, I get taken back to the original quote with nothing I wrote remaining.Originally Posted by PhiloticKnight
Sam, you should REALLY consider getting into the habit of right clicking your text input field and choosing Select All and then Copy.... I've been doing it even BEFORE the new forums because the old forums ate my posts just as much. Now it's habit, I copy EVERYTHING before sending.
Then, if I 'lose' it, I just have to paste it and hit Send again. Works every time, nothing lost.
I can't copy things to the clipboard as I'm posting before I'm done, either. I'm usually copying things from other posts to quote, copying links or copying numbers to reference. I'm also often switching between tabs. Posting about numbers, say, has me simultaneously looking at Red Tomax's City of Data, what local notes I have, Arcanaville's guide to defence, Iakona's power standardization charts, Mid's Hero Designer and the Windows Calculator. It's very easy to accidentally load a new page in an old tab, and being that I can't just back into it without losing my post, that is a significant danger.
The old forums allwed Firefox to remember what's in my text box. The new forums do not.
*edit*
Like I said, I tried to give the forums some time so I could adjust to them. This is no longer resistance to change. The old forums had several functionalities that the new forums either don't have or have but they aren't working. Until something is done, this is change for the worse. Change I can handle, even change that doesn't improve or deteriorate but just shuffles things around. Change that removes things I liked and adds things I don't care about is not change I like based purely on what it does, rather than what it is.Quote:People's fear of or resistance to change. Yes, MOST people have at least a resistance to change. But you do have to change your habits to a certain degree to meet the situation. -
Quote:It does because we covered it eleventy billion times back then and we have covered it once every couple of months since then. And because I explained it three times in the last couple of weeks, as well.Originally Posted by Battlerock_X
So what? That doesn't detract from the point of the message.
Other people have hinted at answers to your questions, and on of the other threads may have a more complete explanation. It was moved here partially by player petition, partially by moderator decision. That's that. -
Been suggested a few times, largely by me, and I will support it every time. I'd like to see full sound control of our characters. At the very least voice, but also breathing sound (maybe I want to sound like Darth Vader or maybe I want to beep like a 60s futurstic robot?), footsteps and so forth. But voice at the very least.
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Quote:I'm afraid you made a lengthy and at times interesting analysis, but failed to draw any actual conclusions on it aside from what has already been proven as fact. The introduction of super-sidekicking is a clear attempt to, among other things, regulate the flow of rewards without curtailing the ability to play content, and in fact expanding the availability of content and the ease of which it can be played. For instance, setting up an ITF will no longer be an exercise of mentor chainsaw juggle.
WHAT THE FUTURE THEREFORE HOLDS, OR "UUHHH...WHAT WAS THE POINT AGAIN?"
When people see problems with changing activities in the game, the kneejerk reaction is to police those activities. Really, though, we need to keep in mind that the system of rewards--and the ways that system can be manipulated--are integral to our understanding of such shifts in the player population. Often, the best solution is to consider how players are compensated for their accomplishments than to change what they're allowed to do. One thing is for sure: the options for content in this game are continuing to expand, something which should be in the best interests of the game's players and longevity.
What's more, "time vs. reward" is already a metric which is not just being considered, but practically applied to the actual game. TF/SF merit rewards are based on median time of completion, taken as some kind of statistical average of the speed of completion of any particular TF/SF by everyone who runs it. It's a reward modifier which has seen a major shift in what people play. I haven't seen a call for a "Speed Katie" in probably over a year (don't hold me to that) and instead have seen calls for everything from Positron to Lady Grey and everything in between, and I have seen calls for every villain SF, though admittedly more rarely. Obviously there are still better choices and worse choices, but the difference isn't such as to create a BEST choice, so which one is the best is an opinion which varies both between people and between level ranges. People play more TFs. Mission accomplished.
There isn't much to question here. It's all a question of how lucrative an activity is. You can reduce this into risk vs. reward, time vs. reward or what have you, but the bottom line is this is simply an instance of the broader balancing point of "cost vs. worth," or as I like to present it:
value = worth - cost
This was never a case of looking at activities and trying to figure out what rewards they hold vs. what rewards they should hold. It's always been a case of looking at rewards and deciding what activities they should be earned by. The objective, independent worth of the reward is the upside, the objective, independent cost of the activity is the downside, and the final subtraction of the latter from the former gives us the reward's actual worth. What causes all of this farming and grinding nonsense is that people are always shooting for the rewards with the highest worth and, much as they may try to minimise the cost, they still end up paying a steep cost at the end of the day. It's a player's individual choice.
Since I can't claim to speak foe all players, I can speak only for my own personal choice - I always pick the rewards (or indeed "rewards") with the highest actual value. This often gets me laughed at as I settle for the small, cheap stuff and not the maximum ultimate best, but I've never been an overachiever. I'd sooner have something that's not worth much, but comes for free, rather than have something that's worth a lot but costs twice as much as it's worth. I've been called all manner of names for holding this opinion, but I guess that's just the cost for having a playstyle, and indeed a lifestyle preference that's worth so much. To me, it is worth it.
And that's the question we should all ask ourselves, and indeed ask each other. Not "How valuable is this?" No "What does this cost?" No, we should ask "Is this worth it?"
That's all it really comes down to. -
Hack or no hack, I'd be happy if they just all accounts, EU and US, access to both games, or at the very least allowed all US accounts to clone an EU account and all EU accounts to clone a US account, like we have CoH retail and CoV retail. Even if we need two separate logins for EU vs. US. I never believed making an EU-specific version of the game was a smart move.
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Quote:I hope this doesn't make me sound like a jerk, but the fact that it bothers you guys does actually make me feel a little betterOriginally Posted by Castle
You have NO IDEA how much I've yelled over this particular issue. All I can say is, we're working on it...and it CANNOT possibly be fixed fast enough for my own tastes.
Not because I like you being bothered, no, no, no! But because it does reassure me that this IS a real problem and it IS being worked on with some priority. And knowing that is good enough for me. I can wait for a solution to the problem, and with the player-made Developer's Digest, the boards are just about usable.
When developers come over to the boards and share our problems, well... One of the things I liked about the original forums was how much the developers themselves felt like an integral part of the community and how approachable they were as people. Gathering around a common problem so we can hate it together sort of reminds me of that, and it makes me feel better
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Quote:It's not entirely a question of art and design. ANYTHING you're forced to look at all the time becomes boring. The different Rogue Isles zones aren't actually all that similar, with the exception of Mercy Island looking a lot like Sharkhead Island. It's just that the CoV world is so damn small we know it inside and out and the similarities between the zones stand out more than the differences when tedium strikes. City of Heroes is actually MORE similar between the different zones than City of Villains - it's all off-scale tower block legos. It's just that the place is big enough to where you aren't seeing the same thing over and over and that lets me, at least, focus more on the differences than on the similarities.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Quite the contrary for me.
The monochromatic look of the Rogue Isles does bug me, but that is a failure of art direction, not game design.
I don't enjoy a small word. I prefer many big zones to a few smaller ones. Travel time be damned, more land area is always good.
The old CoH content sucks, that's the bottom line. It's five years old, probably more. It hails from an era when Jack and his crew thought they were making EQ in tights and believed making things tedious was the answer, as well as that people would just roam around the zones and hunt stuff. But let's be fair here - what brings people to the Architect, for the most part, isn't the quality of the writing, the mechanics of the missions or even the convenience of zero travel. It's tickets, the so far unique super-sidekicking that takes place and the ability to custom-tailor your own farm for easiest grinding.Quote:But it's not either/or, Sam.
The city is always out there- MA provides an alternative, one that looks pretty good compared to quite a bit of the CoH content.
Let's wait and see what the global super sidekicking and difficulty additions will do to outworld popularity. I've no doubt many will stay with the convenience of Architect farms, but I'm also confident that many will move out onto outworld farms and many still will feel less cheated by not cashing in on the golden egg that is Architect Entertainment. It's supposition, obviously, but I envision more people playing the old content.
To each their own. I consider most any custom critter spat out by Architect enthusiasts to be boring and annoying, both by virtue of custom critters being abnormally strong and by virtue of most people designing their enemies too tough and annoying on purpose. I don't enjoy fighting minions with Electrical Blast stacked on top of Radiation Emission and Forcefields. By contrast, the Hydra are unique and interesting enemies, dangerous to a point, but also vulnerable as well. You can find them low-level in a variety of places, but who goes hunting for Hydra any more? I like the fact that they're used in missions, the same as I would like it if the Cap Au Diable Demons, Luddites, Legacy Chain, Wyvern, Knives of Artemis and all the other "barely there" enemy groups were used more often.Quote:Identical missions at the same location after running halfway across the city and back isn't acceptable to me.
Especially for a boring, annoying enemy I can find in their hundreds in Perez Park.
At the end of the day, it's not a matter of convenience. The game is far too convenient as it is, to the point where you can easily regard it as something less of a game and more of a sandbox. I don't like sandboxes. -
Quote:It's always been accurate for me, or at the very worst a couple of pages late if I haven't checked a thread for a couple of days of forum browsing. Never have I had the old forums take me to a post that's BEFORE my last post, however, and these ones keep taking me to the FIRST page in threads I've posted in numerous times. Why even have that option if I might as well just start from the beginning?Originally Posted by Primal_NA
Frankly I didn't care for the "zoom to what the boards consider the newest post in the thread" thing, because it was very rarely the last post I had actually read anyway. Many times I had never clicked on a thread at all.
I often come to the forums when there's server downtime. Sometimes I forget to open up a Server Status tab before I'm already browsing. Other times I want to link to movies or history bits on the official forums. Still sometimes I just want to go back there and check out the patch notes. It was there before, so it makes sense it'd be there now.Quote:I've seldom had the need to go to the main site from here. Just not much of a problem for me.
I can multi-quote, but I can't quote in any depth. Anything the person I'm quoting has quoted is lost, which oftentimes abolishes the meaning of the entire post. I've been told admins hate quote pyramids, but at least quotes two levels deep are practically a necessity for me. Longer quote pyramids you can usually truncate at level one or level 2, but just one-level quotes is simply insufficient. And since we no longer have specific-person responses and I don't get a name in the quote box if I write it by hand, it's not always simple to follow the train of thought, either.Quote:You can multi-quote people. Too, if you want to address someone directly and aren't satisfied with it looking like a general reply to the thread, you can just quote them.
Funny thing, that. Since the new forums were introduced, I've seen them spaz out and load for hours, and on the very first day of their introduction, I lost more posts than I've lost since I switched to Firefox three years ago. On the old forums, you could back up, reload, even close the tab and Firefox would remember what you wrote. On this one, the script "knows" what to put in the text box at startup, usually a full-scale quote, so if you write something and reload, what you wrote is wiped out and replaced with what the initial value of the script was. The lazy man's guide to losing posts - buy a mouse with a back button on it. Oops!Quote:New forums are okay with me. No timeouts or lost posts at all, issue-free.
I'm actually lagging right now as I'm posting this. Everything I do and every page I open takes upwards of 30 seconds to load, including the initialization of this post. I don't believes image tags and organiser doodads are worth THIS kind of decrease in usability.
*edit*
In fact, let me put thing in perspective. I clicked Submit and stared at the page loading for upwards of 45 seconds, which in the end gave me a blank page. I didn't know if it posted or not (I copied to the clipboard just in case, something I didn't have to do before) and it took another 30 seconds to load back into the editor. I clicked on the link leading back to the thread and that took 10-15 seconds just to show me the thread. After clicking edit, I waited another 30 seconds to see this screen again. So that's two minutes on the clock that I was waiting for the boards to load, and Lord knows how much longer I'll be waiting once I hit Save Changes. I am not happy. -
Quote:Ooh! Well, what do you know! I got my magnifying glass and there it is. Thanks, oh angry oneOriginally Posted by Angry_Citizen
There's a linky to the main site at the very, very bottom where fine print is usually kept. It just says "City of Heroes".
[/quote]I'm more upset that I can't just scroll through all the subforums with the sweep of a mouse wheel and see if there's been any activity. I miss the old board.[/QUOTE]
Well, there's the clicking on English trick, but that's still one more mouse click than we had to do before. For me, though, I stick to For Fun anyway, so I generally just go straight there. -
The worst part is that, for about the last year or so, I wasn't getting almost any timeouts and the only errors I got were when I walked away from the computer for an hour with a reply half-written. I've seen occasional slowdowns for all of O NOES 10 SECONDS!!! from time to time, but those were rainbows and kittens compared to this mess. And I'm still getting the same occasional slowdowns here.
Outside of the ability to post unnecessary pictures, what did I gain? -
Interesting. I hadn't heard about that, but it sounds fair. I guess the only way I'm getting into any betas is by paying through the nose. Oh, well. Given how worthless I am at consistent testing, that's just as well
Mine's on a recurring billing, so I won't mess with it. -
OK, I've had about as much as I can take of this nonsense. I try to be a reasonable person, when my first reaction to the new boards software was "What the hell, man! What the hell!" I thought I'd keep my cool and just give myself time to adapt. New forum software, new interface, a lot of stuff to learn. It'll be all good, right? Wrong. Not when a basic functionality such as going to the first unread post completely and plainly doesn't work.
What should "Go to first new post" do? Well, judging by its name, it should take me to the first post made into a thread since I last checked it. Fat chance. Not only does it not take me to a new post, it actually counts posts I made as new. Um, hello! They're not news to me. I made them. But, OK, technically they are new, so I can roll with that. But even that aside, this still doesn't work.
Here's how the forums have been working for me all day: I haven't logged in for around a week, so when I logged into the forums today, there were a lot of new threads and a lot of old threads with new replies in them. I used the microscopic little triangle to go to the first new post in them and, lo and behold, it took me where it was supposed to. So I posted in a few threads, took a stroll around the house while the windows in my living room were being replaced, came back to the forums and decided to check out what had happened in the past half hour.
You'd think the posts made AFTER I posted would be new, but no! The little triangle thing kept taking me back to the OLD posts that had been newest when I first came online today, but were no longer newest or unread. I read them. In fact, I quoted them. It's kind of hard to quote someone if you haven't read his post. The "Quote" button is right next to each post, so I have to at least have had the post drawn on my screen. But no, that's still undread and the damn function keeps bringing me there, so I have to scroll down, flip through the pages and manually find the last post I read. Well what the HELL is the point of having an option to take me to the first new post if it doesn't take me to the first new post but some random location in the thread so I have to manually look for the REAL first post? At that point, I may as well start from page one.
I tried to give these forums a chance, I really did. But it's just one thing after another. The colour scheme sucks, the functionality is down the toilet for the most basic stuff, direct-poster replies and multi-level quotes are gone... And now I'm finding that the most basic functionality of any forum - finding where you left off a thread - isn't working right. Oh, and the Dev Digest is still gone, to the point where players are having to make their own. Now, I'm grateful to the many people who have rigged up versions of the digest, but come on! What did this forum shuffle fix that was worth breaking practically everything?
I'm sorry. I just finally feel fully justified in being very loudly indignant. This is an absurd, embarrassing step down from what we had before, and it's only getting worse.
*edit*
And for the love of pi, where did the link to the official game site go? The old forums had a link to the effect of "Go back to City of Heroes" which brought you back to cityofheroes.com. No such thing exists now, and even clicking the banner up top brings me to http://boards.cityofheroes.com/index.php, the root of the forums (for which a link already exists) rather than back to the official site. Since I don't have any tabs with it open right now, the only way to check the server status is to open a brand new tab and write in the url by hand. Why was this functionality removed? Was it a problem to have a basic link of convenience? -
I wonder how many people are going to discover that Suggestions was moved to the For Fun section somewhere between two and three years ago. I've already seen at least three threads on the subject since the forum move, not counting this one.
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Quote:The square root of a number squared equals the same number and the capital of France is Paris.Originally Posted by Night_Ouul
This thread is hilarious.
So? -
Quote:Personally, I have to agree with the spirit of the thread, though - buffs shouldn't be slow and annoying to apply. I don't even know why things like Recovery Aura and Accelerate Metabolism have to be so short-ranged. As far as bubbles go, a 50-foot-wide targeted AoE would be pretty cool as a means of application. They could even paint them as a once-off expanding bubble that buffs everyone it passes over.Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
Gather for bubbles would be more annoying to me as a player than buffing on the fly.
Add the 'would effect the caster' and subsequent rebalancing (ie reducing the effect) and this idea gets a hearty thumbs down from me sorry.
I actually remembered something while posting my previous post - there is one power in the game which affects everyone BUT the caster. Grant Cover is a player-centric toggle AoE which affects all team-mates, but does almost nothing for the caster, himself. If this is possible to be done for a large-scale bubbling effort AND the reduction in both cost and buff time is acceptable, then that IS a change I'd like to see. -
Quote:You're entitled to your opinion, but I find Broadsowrd's family of animations to be by far the best-looking melee attacks in the whole game. No exceptions. Head Splitter/Cleave/Shatter have been my favourite moves since day one and I've never found anything cool enough to surpass them. Oh, sure, Dual Blades and Martial Arts have fancy spins and tricks, but nothing quite compares to the SMASH!!! of Head Splitter. Or... Hell, to the brutality of just about any of the Broadsowrd attacks.Originally Posted by Leo_G
And all that's ruined by the flyswatter-esque animation.
*Le sigh*
If I had to rank melee attacks in terms of coolness, I'd go Head Splitter -> Sweeping Strike -> Energy Transfer -> Seismic Smash -> Eagle's Claw. I wouldn't even enter Golden Dragonfly into the mix. It's cool and all, but nowhere near the punch or the flash of Headsplitter. The red Pillar of Pain is the only thing that keeps it cool. -
Quote:One or more of these, actually. Corrupters skirt the line between Ranged Damage and support while Dominators skirt the line between Damage and Control, with no clear distinction as to whether they are Ranged or Melee. Even something as simple as a Scrapper can skirt the line between Damage and Support with enough aggro control tools (a Taunt Aura and the AoE Pool Taunt, or thereabout). As this very thread has shown, ATs here don't really have a clear designation as to what they are supposed to do or be, so I don't believe inventing a clear distinction five years into the game is a good idea.Originally Posted by Anti_Proton
How about dividing things up into "Range, Melee, Damage, and Support" Every AT falls into one of those.
To my eyes, we should let players pick their own Dual ATs just the same way as they pick their own Dual Builds, rather than having them be mandatory PvE and PvE and nothing else. This allows people who want to have both a team and a solo AT to have those, and it also allows people to pick two team ATs, two Solo ATs or any esoteric combination that suits their tastes. For me, if I were allowed to pick from any two ATs in the game, I'd likely Dual my Energy/Energy Blaster into an Energy/Energy Brute for special occasions without a second thought. -
Quote:It can very much be compared to at least Parry. To me, Parry looks like nothing other than two swings, yet it's only one hit. Crippling Axe Kick is the same. It may be subject to interpretation, but to my eyes the first part is not an upward kick.Originally Posted by Fuzz_JDC
If you look, it kicks straight up THEN moves across the body followed by the hook for the axe part. It's like there is a thunder kick in there.
This can't be compared to parry or soaring dragon, they are like that for a reason. -
Quote:There's actually something interesting to note about that - attacks, especially small, fast, cheap attacks, are the biggest drain on endurance a character can have. Knowing what to slot for endurance first, foremost and most heavily is actually key to getting around Stamina with not too many slots devoted. In a sense, I had to become smarter and plan a little more not to be better, but to be just as good (or bad) as I always was, only do it more easily.Originally Posted by The_Laughing_Man
to get +10-20% recovery inexpensively
- Slotting for End redux in attacks -
Quote:Gotcha. Unfortunately, good as my English may be, I studied mathematics only in Bulgarian and I'm sadly unfamiliar with English terminology for most things mathematical. To me, the formula for endurance reduction would be a fractional function, where final cost is a function of reduction. This one is offset one "to the right," but other than that it's an almost classic example of a fractional function, inheriting all properties thereof.Originally Posted by Quinch_NA
Asymptotic in this case means it approaches zero, but never reaches it - the formula for reduction is 1/(1+reduction). So 100% endurance reduction will actually be 1/2 endurance cost, 200% {hypothetical, natch} would be 1/3 cost, etc.
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Quote:I hate the fact that I can't make quote pyramids as easily!Originally Posted by ChaosExMachina
Champions DOES do it, apparently. Not only do you get 4 stances, but 3 builds.
Aside from the lack of matching set themes between ATs, why WOULD it be too late to do something like that? Think of it in terms of the classic multi-class option from the old games, only without any of the penalties. What do I mean? Let's call it Dual AT. Everyone should have them!
Let's take something that has analogues everywhere - Fire. At creation, you pick not just one, but two ATs, let's say a primary and a secondary AT. The only difference between them is which one you start as in Outbreak/Breakout. After that point, you can switch your ATs the same way you switch builds. Maybe even in real time as Kheldians switch forms.
Back to Fire. For the sake of killing stuff, you opted to be a Fiery Melee/Fiery Aura Scrapper. You have largely damage and self-protection, perfect for when you're by yourself or when you don't have to worry about other people. You just go out and burn stuff. However, you also picked a Fire Control/Thermal Radiation Controller. That's largely control and support, perfect for when you want to be helpful on a team that has other people shooting up the place.
Oh, but what if you didn't pick Fire/Fire? What if you picked Fire/Ice? For the sake of argument, let's say Ice Armour were ported over to Scrappers and you made a Fiery Melee/Ice Armour Scrapper. What would your controller mode be? Well a Fire Control/Ice Domination Controller, keeping to the old ATs. Same setup - Scrapper for solo or offensive teaming, Controller for supportive teaming or masochistic soloing.
Obviously, there are a LOT of problems with this, but I don't believe balance and technology are the biggest ones. On the contrary, I believe corresponding sets, or rather the lack thereof and extrapolated need to make a matching set for everything would be a far greater challenge. I don't want to see a Rad/Rad Defender turn into a Katana/SR Scrapper, but what does Katana correspond to, anyway? Archery? Devices?
There's certainly room to multi-class, it's just a question of what should be allowed and what new powersets need to be made to account for that. Elements are easy. It's weapons that aren't as straight-forward. -
Quote:Currently, endurance reduction slotting is more than enough to mitigate the consumption of all but a few sets (and the ones it isn't enough for typically have absurd-cost powers for no real reason). It is logical to say that increasing the power of endurance reduction enhancements will allow endurance slotting to help even more, or help just as much for fewer slots invested. As the biggest argument for Stamina over endurance reduction is the large investment in reduction slots, I think it should mitigate the problem enough.Originally Posted by NeverDark
It doesn't quite solve the problem. It takes a little more sting out of the most costly powers, but as endurance reduction is asymptotic, it doesn't help quite as much as it should.
As a general thing, reducing the cost of your most costly powers is actually BETTER at mitigating endurance lost fighting than Stamina is, though that's only mitigating loss, not creating gain, which in turn means better fights but more downtime-inbetween. However, with lots of reduction, endurance replenishment, such as through the Catch a Breath family of inspirations, are worth more because the endurance they return can be used to fire off more powers.
And on a more theoretical topic, could you describe exactly what you mean by "asymptotic?" From what I've seen, final cost as a function of endurance reduction is a fractional function, whereas what I can find on the 'net about "asymptotic analysis" seems to talk about fractional multi-function limits, which I'm not able to correlate to the problem at hand. -
Quote:If you want to fully invest in an Epic pool and grab four powers from it, one power from that pool will always end up being shafted, only being able to take a single slot. For my AR/Dev/Munitions Blaster, that power was Body Armour, which I delayed until 49, because I wanted to 6-slot Long Range Missile Rocket. Between 47 and 49, you get 6 slots total. 5 slots to 6-slot one power means no more than 1 for the other, and LRM Rocket cannot be taken any earlier than 47, because it's Tier 3 in the pool. That's one power from Tier 1 at 41, one power from Tier 2 at 44, then the Tier 3 power at 47. Which means one more power from Tier 1 or Tier 2 at 50 and only one slot for it.Originally Posted by Umbral_NA
Not to rain on your parade or anything but you can 6 slot your "level 49 power". All you have to do is take it at 47. There is no power in the game that you can take at 49 that you can't take at 47, allowing you to 6 slot it easily.
Granted, you CANNOT make it such that you can 6-slot both the 47 and 49 powers unless you grant 10 slots between 48 and 50, which means either 5-5 or 3-8, which in turn just isn't feasible. But being able to 6-slot one power and still have at least a few slots left over for the other one is definitely a good idea, in my opinion. Plus, the fact is that the reward for level 50 is insulting. It's God damn level 50! It should give something more than what I got at level 31! -
I can't say I could get behind the original suggestion, because it's far too open to really absurd combinations. For instance, a mentor could give his sidekick Build Up, and the Sidekick could already have access to, say, his own Build Up as well as Fiery Embrace. Or the Mentor could give the sidekick access to Nova when the sidekick already has, say, Inferno. You're also opening the door to people whining to their mentors about sharind this or that power, like a SR Scrapper being told to share Quickness or Practiced Brawler or some such.
It's also a fact that some powers don't really benefit from enhacements all that much, such as powers that don't have to hit or are self-targeted (Hasten, Smoke Grenade, Targeting Drone, etc.) which creates a bit of an unfair situation.
I liked the idea of giving a sidekick access to a power he will eventually have in the future, though. However, I'm not sure how it could be decided which power he "will" have. Going from primary or secondary is good, but only valid until level 38, and it ignores the fact that sometimes pool powers, or even Epic powers, are sometimes more useful. I suppose sidekicking could act something like Battlefield 2142's Field Upgrades, where being a sidekick could allow you to unlock your "next tier" of powers temorarily, potentially giving a sidekick one more primary power, one more secondary power, one more power in his current pools or a base-tier power from a new pool, by choice. Only temporarily, of course, but slots are once again an issue. Why pick an attack that won't hit or deal any meaningful damage when you can pick something that doesn't need slots?
*edit*
I suppose granting those powers not "effectively unslotted," but rather "effectively somewhat slotted for everything" or even giving you "phantom slots" and "phantom enhancements" to put in them might mitigate the slotting problems. -
Quote:False. I would still have thought it would be patently ridiculous that thugs with clubs and knives can so much as scratch my power-armour-clad super soldier who rips alien armour and futuristic robots apart with his bare hands. Claiming we feel as we feel because that's what we've been conditioned to feel IS existentialist nonsense. I prefer the status quo not because it is the status quo, but because I consider it superior to your suggested change. It's not change in and of itself I oppose, it's what you are proposing to change the game to that I dislike.Originally Posted by paradox_NA
No it's not non-sense. If the game had always been set up so that at level 10 you could take on 3 skulls, but at level 50 you could take on 15 skulls, it wouldn't be percieved as a problem now that skulls don't become completely obsolete as you level up. No one would of played the game and thought, "now that I'm level 50 skulls should never be able to hit me anymore." if it was never that way to begin with.
I red up more on this super-sidekicking thing, and I find myself I don't like the concept of MANDATORY sidekicking and exemplaring for much the same reasons - it makes wimps suddenly super strong and strong men suddenly wimps with no way to opt out of it short of leaving the team. The one mitigating factor is that you at least have to have a higher-lower level member on the team for this to take effect, and you can always explain it away as "Oh, I'm just pulling my punches to show the new guys how we used to do it back in my day." I do not, however, exemplar my characters ever for any reason, so being on a team and forcibly exemplared such that enemies who shouldn't pose any threat now do is NOT something I like.
This isn't limited to JUST exemparing. A lot of genuinely high-level enemies don't make sense to be a challenge to us in the upper levels at all. Things like Crey Scientists punching and causing actual damage to a supposedly invulnerable character is absurd, and them having even as much health as they do is ridiculous. They're not armoured, many of them aren't armed, and some of them are BOSSES! Mobsters also have no business spawning at level 50, and the various Pratorians have a lot of enemies who have no business being as tough as they end up being. Marauder's "level 50 Hellions" are a perfect example. They're not super-powered. They're just very tough. But being tough doesn't protect you from a long-range missile rocket to the face.
False. Being able to "cheat" the system so that you can play with your friends in no way suggests that not HAVING the system to begin with is superior. Levels have their place as both a statistical and practical measuring stick of a character's standing in the game. Being level 25 makes me a lot stronger than a level 1 and a lot weaker than a level 50, not just because my "number" is half-way in-between, but because I can kill stuff the level 1 can't even touch and the stuff the level 1 can kill can't touch me, and also because the stuff the level 50 can kill I can't hope to touch, yet the stuff I can reasonably kill can't touch him. At level 25, I'm BETTER than a level 1, but a level 50 is BETTER than me. Not by a little, not by the measure of a few minions, not by a few powers or a few percent points. Overwhelmingly, visibly, tangibly and undeniably BETTER.Quote:The SK system and AE and certainly the new SK syste make levels completely arbitrary. The ability to circumvent the level difference in these ways illustrates how useless having it is. Trying to make the argument that haveing a system where everyone can play at what ever level they want to (as long as they play with someone who is that level) is fine and desired, but somehow a system that everyone essentually is always the same level (doing nothing but elimnating having to jump through hoops to circumvent an arbitray system) is broken is an asinine argument.
That this can be circumvented for convenience does not mean it SHOULD be circumvented as status quo. Level-less games simply suck.
And as Folonius later appended: "I am against this as well." As far as I can tell, no-one here was ever in favour of removing levels as a game mechanic, but everyone was in favour of making sidekicking easier, myself included. Sidekicking, even super-duper-ultra-sidekicking, is NOT a removal of levels, it's an out to make teaming easier without ruining the game. Just the way it should be.Quote:However, as I have noted, The super Sking system answers my primary concerns for why I wanted such a system (ie easier team formation). As folonius mentioned a week ago "what you suggest, and what the Op implies are very similar."