Samuel_Tow

Technically, this is a forum game, if you were a developer, what changed would you WANT to see made that you're pretty sure others wouldn't. There are a million and one ways to troll players, that's not interesting. What's interesting is hearing all the things people genuinely want to see that are still completely unworkable due to how much they'd upset other players.

It was a legitimate information source, but it could have been wrong. I know I'm not remembering this wrong, but it doesn't mean I'm right. Apologies.

This reminds me:

Originally, I really found Archanco's "out" of not being invaded by a coalition of other countries to be quite clever. Whether or not it may be ruled by super villains, the Rogue Isles is still a sovereign state and thus protected by international law. But like the Crey corporation, that law only works to prevent first aggression. Once a sovereign state starts taking hostile military actions against another state, then hostile military action may be taken against them. If Recluse were smart, he's hide behind that law, conduct his operations covertly and when an angry Statesmean went kicking down his door and accusing him of war crimes, Recluse could just shrug is shoulders and say "Prove it."

The trouble, really, is that Recluse ISN'T smart. At all. Say I'm a brand new player just starting out. What's the first thing I see? Lord Recluse IN ******* PERSON invading Paragon City, leading an aggressive military action on US soil and punching the Statesman into a building, demolishing it and no doubt killing dozens of innocent civilians. Then we start the game and we find Arachnos forces invading with ground troops, setting up bases of operation, taking prisoners of war and acting exactly like a hostile invading force. Then we level up a bit and go to respond to a bank robbery and who shows up to rob it? Ghost Widow in person, with Arachnos troops helping her. What? So then I switch sides and go evil since clearly the bad guys go unpunished, take the ferry to Grandville Island and I'm greeted by giant monitors playing a loop of Recluse saying "The heroes are doomed!" to massive applause.

And we worry about Longbow holding a fort near an island not part of Arachnos' sovereign state and doing nothing more than providing local policing? I mean, either it goes both ways, or we ignore both cases. We can't keep focusing on Longbow and keep ignoring all the other ways in which the game isn't consistent with its legality.

Do you realise just how close we are to someone quoting real world events and having the thread locked? But it won't be me. My pile of moderator warnings is high enough.

I know it is in British English for certain - that's what the rule was referring to.

I apologise for having to do this, but I have to point out - the Rikti have no working knowledge of nuclear power. I've had people refuse to believe me, but it's in a clue in one of the legacy contact Rikti missions. I want to say either Dr. Science or Angus McQueen, but I can't really be sure. And the clue doesn't really say much more than what I said. Something to the effect that "This research shows that the Rikti have no practical knowledge of nuclear power." They may be aware of it from a theoretical standpoint, but they don't have machines to harness it, as best I can tell.

To my understanding, that's just the studio's attempt to simulate two dissimilar concepts within the same overall mechanic. Positional defence models dodging, the concept of not being hit by an attack, and at the start it existed pretty much to give SR and nothing but SR a point. Typed defence is what I'd call "block" - the concept of taking damage but being able to stop it from hurting you. That's why Rock Armour grants physical defence - it's like hitting a rock, in that you deal no damage unless you can penetrate to the person underneath.

That's primarily why I'm proposing two separate systems to model two separate things and, crucially, such that both players and developers can control both aspects separately. A Shield Tanker, for instance, wouldn't have to worry about enemy accuracy at all, since he'd WANT to be hit so he could deflect the attack. What he'd have to worry about is enemies who hit so hard they can either punch holes in his shield or otherwise knock the shield out of his hands, which is how you typically see these types of characters defeated in movies.

Now, one can argue that blocking is more than just how thick you shield is since an enemy can always shoot above your shield and hit you in the head, thus some kind of skill roll is necessary to determine whether you can get your armour in place correctly, but considering most armour-based sets don't suffer from this, I'd say it's not an issue. Invulnerability, for instance, presents a character who is covered in invulnerable skin, thus this character doesn't nee to worry about blocking at all - he has armour facing in all directions. A character under a forcefield similarly has armour in all directions, it's just a question of how strong that armour is.

THEN you can have a point to having this "false hit points" absorption mechanic they were talking about in relation to Bio Armour. You could have a shield cast on you that has a certain armour rating around it, but also has hit points of its own. For every attack it takes, whether it penetrates or not, the shield takes damage. When it goes down, you lose that portion of your armour.

That sort of thing.

This I agree with, because it's simply common sense. Anyone who's ever played a game with manual aiming (to say nothing of used real guns) will know that being given time to aim makes the accuracy of your shot far greater than even the most skilled snap shot you can pull off. Some games model this as an actual mechanic, but even for those that don't, having time to line up your sights gives you better accuracy than squeezing a shot off as soon as you're facing in your enemy's general direction.

I actually have to commend World of Tanks for getting their accuracy mechanic down pat. Moving makes you less accurate while stopping makes you more accurate, but also easier to hit. Small, fast targets are insidiously hard to hit because all cannons in that game have slow reload times and most are single-shot. In fact, the bigger and more devastating your cannon is, the slower it reloads, so when you're firing at, say, 5 shots a minute and you're aiming at a fast target darting across terrain and you miss... That's pretty much it unless someone else can pick up the slack.

A long time ago, someone (I think it was Jack Emmert, but I could be wrong) wanted Tankers to be the kind of heavy-hitters Johnny Butane wants them to be, but for this to be counter-balanced by them having horrible accuracy. It's somewhat reflective of the big, slow bruisers in comic books and in most games, but in this game, missing just sucks and there's very little you can do to offset it.

Unless you can take careful aim, and this is something I wanted to suggest, myself. Allowing us to "charge" or "aim" our attacks longer in return for a bigger hit would be an excellent way to deal with problems of poor accuracy, especially since there's not a lot players can do about it aside from a small handful of tools.

That still works. Symmetrical tattoos are still better than no tattoos.

Well, keep in mind that despite my pride in the language, I'm still not a native speaker. A lot of the history of the language is lost on me since very often all I have to go with is what I know about rules of spelling and grammar and not how things are actually done in practice where practice differs. I spotted somewhere someone explaining that the past tense of "eat" - "ate" is supposed to be pronounced "at" and not "ait" like one would think, and people who pronounce it as the latter are seen as uneducated for having deduced its pronunciation from seeing the word spelled as opposed to hearing it spoken.

I agree completely. I never realised how much I enjoyed putting tattoos on characters until I ran into a few games that allowed me to do it - Saints Row, The Klub 17 mod and so forth. I would REALLY like to be able to do that in City of Heroes, as well. I know there are technical limitations to it but I would really, REALLY like to have the ability to add tattoos on my characters with skin-exposing clothes. Back, shoulders, neck, arms, legs, hands, feet, face - everywhere would be great.

I really don't know how that might work, and I REALLY don't want a retread of the Champions Online fail of tattooing where you had three tattoos total and they only worked with a total of two different tops. Ideally, I'd like to see the ability to pick tattoos separate from skin-exposing clothing. Say, an athletic top with an upper arm tattoo would be great. And I'd be perfectly happy even if those were all just single-colour.

As far as I'm aware, Nerva Archipelago is not under Arachnos jurisdiction and the Longbow installation is there legally, with support from local authorities. It's Arachnos who are there illegally.

I don't want to believe it, either. However, I'm not a game designer, so I have to wait for an actual game designer to create a game where this isn't true before I can have proof that it doesn't. I'd say the newer "action MMOs" that keep coming out may be slightly closer to overcoming this problem as much of the performance depends on player skill, but so long as they subscribe to the MMO holy trinity of tank/healer/damage dealer, then the problem will remain.

Personally, I look to non-MMO games for inspiration of how team roles can exist without specifically relying on static classes. To me, the best example I can think of is Left 4 Dead 2. As you'll notice, there is literally NO difference between the four characters in the game (OK, Coach has a slightly larger hit box), yet characters nevertheless assume roles when actual people are involved, at least from when I've played it. People generally strive for some kind of balance in their loadout, so if someone grabs a shotgun, someone else will grab a rifle to ensure there's damage at all ranges. If someone grabs an axe, someone else will grab pistols.

In all cases, players all have the same hit points, the same access to weapon and can generally have the same performance. And yet nevertheless, you'll often find people with shotguns rushing ahead while people with sniper rifles hanging back and taking potshots. That's because people aren't stupid and they'll play to the strengths of their chosen tools. People will, in other words, still play to their roles less because they're prevented from taking up other roles and more because that's just the best way to use the tools they brought to the fight.

As far as I'm concerned, a game where classes are not balanced by being gimped is a game in which EVERYONE is a fighter, but everyone can ALSO pick some kind of secondary specialisation. In other words, you can never have a pure fighter, because that fighter is always something else, as well, but you can never have a non-combat character because you're forced to be a fighter to begin with. Once everyone is a fighter, you can ensure that everyone gets a moment of glory based, at the very least, on the expectation that this character can fight.

Agreed. Whenever "generic heroes" were required, Longbow always showed up in storyline. A genuinely feel more could have been done with them, but the story just never really went beyond "bad things happen, Longbow responds." Introducing them as antagonists to player characters for a good year also didn't help.

Ugh... Yeah, t3h pWnXx0rZ was funny the first few times I saw him, but the bulk of his joke was that he was so unexpected. When I first saw him, I had to do a double-take, and I did chuckle quite a bit. Then they drove the joke into the ground and stomped on it for good measure to the point where that's expected of the Freakshow. Instead of being funny, it's become annoying because it's just hard to read.

It's like people's entire view of the Freakshow is informed solely by a selective reading of the Freaklympics, completely ignoring arcs like A Hand of Iron or the Freakshow Wars where they're shown as ruthless killers, amoral thugs and actual sadists. The Freakshow should be the kind of faction who scream at the top of their lungs in ecstasy over thing that horrify us. They shouldn't be seen as quaint and cute and adorable.

I agree that the PPD are handled quite well when they're used... They're just almost never used for anything. Villains aren't in Paragon City (can we see why that was a mistake now?) and heroes should have no reason to fight them, so it's easy to forget the police even exists.

I disagree. In the beginning, Longbow were presented as true-blue heroes fighting for the side of good. They were the de-facto heroes in every PvP zone, they were the ones who showed up to combat villains even in the isles and THEY were the ones protecting Paragon City before the PPD existed. Run the first of the Radio's missions and you'll find Longbow, not PPD, protecting the streets of Kings Row.

I recall a fair few arcs talking about the difference between Longbow and Wyvern, how Longbow do everything by the book and stick to morality whereas Wyvern don't mind breaking laws in their pursuit of criminals. There was a time when this is what Longbow were specifically said to NOT be like. And that arc is still in the game, I just can't remember who gave it. I want to say someone in Sharkhead, but I don't remember. Maybe someone in Cap?

This has been my complaint since idea one of iTrials being announced on the forums, and the primary reason why I hate Rikti invasions more when I participate in them than when they inconvenience me - like Z from Antz, they make me feel... Insignificant. It's just a basic fact of large unscripted fights that the greater the number of heroes involved becomes, the less individual each of them is. Hell, it's a hallmark of industrial era warfare - there are no warriors, just soldiers for the simple fact that so many are involved and they die so easily. That, really, is just how most MMOs work.

If you look at the Avengers, there aren't that many people in the team. Correct me if I forget someone, but you have Captain America, the Black Widow, the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man and, um... Hawkeye? That's six people by my count, which is fewer than even our maximum team size, to say nothing of a 24-man raid or the maximum the League system is able to handle, which is 48. Just imagine a hodgepodge of 48 hero and try to figure out how you design a task that lets them all have their own "moment."

Then you're running into the granddady of all MMO restrictions there are - "class balance." Every class has to be crippled in some way because if you don't twist people's arm into teaming by making them incapable of solo play, they might do the unthinkable and not run raids ad nauseum. It's actually worse in City of Heroes because some characters are solo monsters while others are almost entirely team support, so you can't really give them a moment of their own, or at least I can't think of how one would do this.

In the "bad ideas" thread, someone suggested capping all teams in the game at 4, and I feel this is a good number for a task where everyone can shine. It's enough people to ensure you have a little of every kind of contribution and it's small enough to where everyone's contribution matters. To call up the spectre of the "healer," being the only healer on the team lets you see that you're making a difference. Being one of ten healers makes it feel like you're not doing much of anything at all. The more the people who perform the same function become, the less evident each individual person's contribution becomes.

Simply put, I find smaller teams to be much more rewarding because they have much better feedback, and if you want a team task that treats every player as an individual, you really need to limit the amount of people you engage.

Here's an example: A L4D DLC campaign ends in a mission where one player HAS to die. The survivors are on a bridge which needs to be raised out of reach of the zombies, but the generator for it stalls and three Tanks show up to kill everybody. At least one survivor has to dive back down into the horde, start the generator and ultimately die for the other three to survive (it's always bill because "Kill Bill" is an achievement).

Here's another example: An Alien Swarm campaign has the team of soldiers enter a small building with two doors and three windows, where an engineer has to hack a console while the other three team-mates cover him. You can weld the doors shut, position turrets towards the windows and spread out so you can cover all entrances. And in Alien Swarm, EVERYONE has a gun, be he medic, commander or engineer.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you want mission scripting that requires everyone to do something, you need to do it with fewer people.

I would, actually. I'd pronounce it like Yahtzee pronounce "xbla" when mocking the Xbox Live Arcade. I'd pronounce it "ksploded." Letters in the English language have a n "alphabet" pronunciation and an in-word pronunciation, and X becomes "ks" when used in a world like "paxton." I wouldn't pronounce "xploded" as "eksploded" any more an I would prinounce "park" as "peeark."

Hurricane really annoys me, as well. There are two things in this game that I will never get, and they're PBAoE knockback and PBAoE repel. Hurricane has a very nice debuff, which I would really like to apply to my enemies, only I can't because the power keeps pushing them out of range. Yes, I guess I could corner enemies with it, but this is rarely reliable even with the much broader front of Force Bubble, let alone the much more curved front of the considerably smaller Hurricane.

Like Hand Clap, these powers just seem to cause more problems than they solve in almost every case I've tried to use them. And I'm the kind of guy who LIKES Dimension Shift and Detention Field.

You pretty much have everyone's support in this, including the developers from the looks of things. T9 VIP stuff is available for a time, then goes into a Disney Vault, then the last we heard is it will be made available "by other means" at some point. We don't know what that is, but presumably it will be a means other than being a T9 VIP.

"Balance" is just a way of saying that a player has many different choices that are all viable without there being a single "best" choice. Whenever powers, especially those available to EVERYBODY, are discovered to outperform their peers, then balance has been upset. People who want maximal power are forced to take this power because it's clearly optimal and people who go for a specific concept that doesn't include it suffer for it.

Whether or not massive recharge bonuses are integral to someone's enjoyment of the game is irrelevant to the fact that there's really only one very easy source of getting them, with all other sources being more costly and less productive. If that level of recharge has to be retained, then it needs to be retained by other means.

Consider this in the same light as Stamina. Giving Fitness to everyone for free was not an idea solution, and one Castle was staunchly against, but it was an easy solution to the very obvious problem - Stamina was never a choice. If everyone or close to everyone takes the same power every time, then that power pick is not a choice, and you end up with one less choice than there could be. A solution is necessary to ensure every choice is real, presenting a selection of at least superficially comparable options.

I've said this many times before - having a choice between two equal options still presents more variety than having a choice between 9 wrong ones and one right one, because that presents no variety at all. The very reason "tank-mages" are feared in most MMOs isn't because they're too strong pet se, it's because they're so strong they make choosing anything BUT them pointless, thus robbing people of their choices. Yes, the choice is still there, but when it's "wrong," it doesn't count.

You're welcome

You're right, I remember that now that you mention it. The City of Hero update is what brought us robes and jackets, the so-called "anime-inspired" costume pieces which caused small minds to rant and rave in protest.

I still think the Click-to-Move feature has to have come out later, though. That came with the Free Camera Movement which detaches character orientation from the camera and includes the /cameraturn slash command. I remember playing with those for the very first time on a low-level villain, one of the first I had, which has to have been somewhere around CoV's launch.

I recall trying to use camera rotation instead of mouse look to look around, and then binding my character to turn the camera when he started moving so it'd be more like in Prince of Persia (or how White/Black Dwarves move) but that never worked.

I don't know, I could have my timing wrong.

*edit*
You are absolutely correct. According to ParagonWiki, click to move was part of I4.

Pretty much. This sounds more like something to do in an organised Trial where you can split people up to handle various logical objectives. Actual zone events just devolve into a mosh pit which is never exciting or interesting.

At one point, there was a drive in this game to get random people just minding their own business engaged and excited in random happenstance. "O noes! A giant octopus is attacking the port! Quick, everybody, we have to stop it!" In a cartoon or a comic book or, hell, even in real life if real life had super powers, that might work, because in real life it's a big deal. In a game where people don't enjoy being compelled and don't want to bother... That doesn't quite work. I get the allure of spontaneous unexpected massive events and the adventure they bring, anything which is "spontaneous" is going to run into the problem of people who can't be arsed to drop what they're doing - people like me, for instance. The problem is you start running into problems of organisation, and the larger the event is, the more the organisation required.

Here's the thing - very, VERY few people actually enjoy having their game interrupted on a regular basis. For the first few times, sure. It's a novelty and there's lots of interest. Thereafter, though, that interest wanes, organisation becomes harder, events become impossible to run and they turn into a nuisance. And ALL of this is because these events start themselves. They show up whenever they feel like and rely on whoever is available and interested at the time, which at the times I play (like right now) isn't many people.

Presenting this as a TF or a Trial is far superior. Hell, presenting it as a Praetorian style event is far superior. The reason it's superior is because people can start it intentionally. What this means is organisation can be done ahead of time and you can be sure you have sufficient participation BEFORE the event starts, and you can be sure the event won't start on you unless you specifically do something to start it. And even then, these are localised and don't bother other people in the zone who don't want to be involved.

MMOs in very recent history have been learning a very crucial lesson: The days of EQ's tough love are over. MMO players are far more diverse these days, and as such their patience for unfriendly game mechanics is at an all-time low. MMOs, therefore, need to be much more careful about maintaining not just their gameplay, but also players' comfort level. The best way to do this is to simply not force uncomfortable situations on people unless they acted to put themselves in that situation.

Right, that. I HATE this acronym, because it's not an actual acronym this it's next to impossible for me to remember it. To me, this would be a UEB.

This is pretty much why I hate Rikti, Zombie and Nemesis invasions - they're a giant mosh pit covered in a soup of effects. I never have any idea what's going on in those. I just target what's nearest and start pressing attack keys until it drops. And this can go on for 15 minutes. It's about as interesting as stirring a bowl alphabet soup.

Oh, yeah - this. I meant to suggest this as part of my "muscular females" request, because it kind of goes with the theme. Please put more muscular human-skin arms in the Robotic Arms category. Again, I'm not asking for new tech. Foreshadow already has arms like these:



If necessary, you can keep the metal rings that separate the torso from the arms and we'll just claim they're decorative metal bands, just so long as there can be skin on both sides. If I could use that, I would do so in a HEARTBEAT for quite a few of my female characters. Probably fewer of my males since males already have huge muscular arms. I guess we could have a LESS ripped alternative for their arms? Smaller, thinner ones, perhaps?

While I'm on the subject - do you remember how people are constantly asking about Robotic Arms with jackets? I think this should be fairly easy to do, given how Jackets coded. Right now, Jackets don't display ANY sort of geometry under their sleeves. There isn't an arm below a sleeve, it's just a hollow sleeve. That's why when we pick the short shirt sleeves, we always get a skin arms regardless of what torso we're using - because it's an entire replacement arm. Well, why can't we do the same for robotic arms? Have a short sleeve (or even no sleeve) and have that skin arm replacement be a ROBOTIC arm replacement, instead. This shouldn't require much actual new artwork, should it?

I'm not sure how this can be applied to shirts and robes, but it very much can be applied to jackets. Best of all, then we can have those more muscular human arms show up for a Jackets, too! I'd suggest cloning this tech for Trenchcoats and the Bolero, as well.

Finally, while we're on the subject of non-robotic robotic arms, could we get a few more of those that are neither robotic nor human? We already have a crystal and stone right arm from Fire and Ice, but that only works on one of the three categories. I believe one of the artsts said because of the way the mesh is done, the arm can't be use in pieces. Could we get a few more like these that CAN? I'm talking about bulging monstrous mutated upper arms and the like. There's a LOT of room for more stuff in that category.

*edit*

Also, this. If these muscular human arms show up in Robotic Arms, you HAVE to let us pot at least a modest selection of tattoos on them. They'd be separate from any Tights With Skin so they should be able to take colour mask patterns, right? Bonus points if you can come up with some way to add tattoos AND Tights With Skin on the same body part, but that might require new tech.