Samuel_Tow

OK, I didn't see the "disapprove" radio button. Yeah, turn it off. Reputation is best saved for the REAL thing.

No bad experiences for me this weekend. I managed to avoid almost all contact with other people, which means no-one has been bugging me about all that powerlevelling nonsense and I haven't seen anyone lose his mind over it. So it's been good times all around, and I managed to get a Mastermind from 18 on Friday to 30 last night. That's probably not a big achievement for most of you, but it's pretty fast for me.

No complaints because there hasn't been much to complain about. Pinnacle is stable, and that's all I've tried, and there hasn't been anyone bugging me with farms and bridges and all the other civic infrastructure crap. Good times all around

How do you even give someone negative reputation? All I see is "add to XX's reputation."

Well

Between near-defence-soft-capped robots and myself hiding behind two shields and Bodyguard, it's rare that anything short of a really big boss or an elite boss can actually get past my defences and do some meaningful damage. I can certainly understand them mitigation potential of a knockback toggle, but I don't see... The need, I suppose I could say. Mitigation isn't really one of the things I lack, and against the few things I actually lack, knockback isn't really going to work. Experimenting with Force Bolt has shown me that much.

I'm not actually looking at force bubble as a form of mitigation so much as a tool over the control of positioning. I actually don't WANT to keep things 50 feet away from me, because that would mean my darling Assault Bot wouldn't get to use his Flamethrower much Not that he uses it much now anyway, stupid bot.

If only it didn't cost quite as much...

OK, what is up with the "Go to first new post" option? It's supposed to bring me to the first new post, isn't it? Then why does it always skip two pages of new posts? Are new posts somehow declaring themselves are seen even though I didn't see them? I think I saw something like that in this huge thread. Why would they EVER declare themselves are read, anyway? Why, if I didn't actually read them?

It's bad enough I have to pixel-hunt the world's smallest triangle to achieve a functionality I used to reach via the thread title, but it doesn't even work? Come on, guys!

Well, I guess I'll put Repulsion Field off until I have nothing else to take. I can always respec later if I'm not happy.

I wasn't really planning to use Force Bubble for mitigation, though. More to pin things against walls and into corners to maximize the Assault Bot's potential damage. We'll see how that goes when I actually take the power.

For what it's worth, though, from the limited experience I had with Repulsion Field on my Energy/Energy/Force Blaster, I HATED HATED HATED it. It had the tendency to do "Now watch me make all of your endurance disappear!" and it knocked enemies, like half a mile away. Funny to watch, but at that cost, just... Horrid.

I'll keep this to a simple question - what is the point of Repulsion Field from Forcefields? Specifically, what is its point when Force Bubble appears to do pretty much the same thing for half the cost and five times the AoE range? I mean, I can see what use the power may have for a Mastermind - keeping enemies from coming into melee range of you, but it seems like Force Bubble does that even better and doesn't cost as much?

So what's the point to taking Repulsion Field?

I'm in a quandry. What do I put in the "repot" text box? "This thread is completely pointless" seems about right, but that would invalidate a lot of other legitimate forum threads, as well. But this IS pointless AND meaningless...

Uh? OK, that activated the Quick Reply box. But... Why? It's supposed to be a QUICK reply. If I'm going to be clicking around links and suchforth, why bother to have a "quick" reply? It doesn't come with the name of the person I'm replying to, does it?

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No, it does not. Then what, pray tell, is the POINT of having that? Ugh...

And why do my new posts not have an avatar attached to them when my older ones do? Does it take some time for my avatar to travel to my new post or something? Should I give it more money to catch a cab?

My complaint is largely a simple one (aside from the unnecessary change in theme and colour): no more replies to specific people unless you want to quote somebody. I've already seen a lot of posts like "I clicked your link and..." You clicked on WHOSE link? Your post no longer comes with a name attached at the top, so how am I supposed to know who you're replying to if you didn't specify MANUALLY? Why can't we have specific "Reply" buttons for each poster? I preferred the threaded hierarchy of the old forums better.

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How the BLOODY HELL do I use the Quick Reply box?

Boy, this thread is one big bowl of sunshine, isn't it? First thing I get to see in the new forums is an ill-informed, low-brow rant that doesn't even have a point. Well, business as usual, then.

For what it's worth, it's always funny when people start clamouring against "recycled content" like customization of powers, costumes and even missions is stuff NOBODY wanted. And as for making the enemies harder, let's all remember the boss buff of I4 and agree to never speak of such nonsense again.

Dynamic fight systems are very exciting, but they have their own rulesets and requirements. For one thing, projectile speed is VITAL, as is attack animation time. Only some of our attack animations are even taken into consideration, and that's done strictly on the DPS side of things. Attack travel speed isn't taken into account for absolutely anything at all.

Look at your average FPS game and you'll spot what's good and what isn't very quickly. Even in third person shooters, attacks fire INSTANTLY and attacks that travel fast (or even instantly) are much more effective than attacks that move slowly. Even something as simple as a very fast but still not instant attack will require you to lead a moving target. Trust me, I've tried. It's not easy. Slow-moving attacks, though, like your typical Quake rockets, are hell to hit someone with at anything but very close range, and even that's down to splash damage more so than actual direct projectile impact.

Which brings us to the other problem - here in City of Heroes, we have EXTREMELY slow-firing attacks, very few of which have any meaningful area of effect. Our attacks are constrained by animation time and recharge time, and even at the best of times, no-one can manage more than an attack every second or two. I had a list of UT2004 weapon fire rates a few years ago, but off memory, the Link Gun did something like 10-20 shots per second, and it was STILL really hard to aim, despite its projectiles being rather very fast and very powerful.

There's a reason automatic weapons have been favoured, historically. It's simply easier to hit moving targets with a machinegun than it is with a rifle, especially when you have to fire it on the assault (hence, the term assault rifle). In City of Heroes, we are all essentially armed with catapults, trying to hit fast-moving targets. We ain't gonna.

And how do you even target in a game that has dynamic combat like this? You can't really rely on current-game targeting, because the game would just hurl your fireball at where the enemy is when you throw it, meaning you can never hit a moving enemy. You can have the computer try and calculate a leading path, but with the speed with which enemies can change direction, this is largely meaningless anyway. So you're left with a cross-hair style targeting system where you put your attacks where you point. Even if this wasn't nigh-on impossible thanks to the balance of the game, currently, you're still going to alienate a LOT of player who came to City of Heroes because it was NOT a twitch-based game. Trust me, there are a lot of them. There are plenty people who have trouble walking through a door or jumping over a gap. How many would want to use dynamic targeting?

And then there's server ping. For a game with dynamic combat to work at least reasonably well, you need ping of no more than about 50-100 ms. As of the typing of this message, my average ping in City of Heroes is 250-300 ms, and that's on an East Coast server. On West Coast servers during prime time, I can get anything from 350 all the way up to 500 ms sustained ping. That's half a second between me pressing a button and something happening on the screen. This is not conducive to dynamic gaming.

It's a neat idea, to be sure, but I'm not sure it's something that can work in an MMO environment until speed and quality of connection are vastly improved, and even then, I'm not sure it's something everyone will even want, or be able to handle.

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their is already a sytem implemented that scales xp based on the difficulty of mobs. a level 10 hellion doesn't/wouldn't give the same xp as a level 10 carnie for example. And, again this is already true with the AE system, it doesn't change the status quo.

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A level 10 Carnie? Are you serious? There is a reason the level divide exists - it's to keep high-level content high-level. A villain fresh out of the Zig has no business attempting the Time After Time arc, and a hero fresh out of Outbreak has no business taking on Malta, the specialised super hero hunters. Content ramps up in both scale and importance as you progress through the levels, and though you may have done it all and know it all, a new player experience where you go straight to the end game is NOT ideal.

And look at it on the flip side. Why the HELL would my level 50 hero trekking through Atlas Park find a deadbeat Hellion a meaningful challenge? Right now, I can walk up to them and sneeze in their general direction, and they'll drop like flies. I LIKE that. It's a demonstration of how powerful I've become these past 50 levels. Overshotting a Hellion for about 20-40 times his total hit points is COOL. It's not useful, it's not productive, but it's COOL.

As far as I'm concerned, letting the Architect auto-SK was a mistake. I'd sooner a single person allowed to SK 7 other team-mates than see all content opened to all levels all the time. At least with even a wide-scale SK system, you still need one high-level character with access to the content to take the new guys through it. You don't just hand every shmuck who signed up for a Hero ID the key to the city.

I am firmly against any idea that lets low-level characters access high-level content by themselves and that makes low-level enemies con white to high-level characters.

Interesting idea in general, but I can't say I agree with monopolizing half a player's inspiration tray for use on the pet. A better mechanic, such as having a separate inspiration tray for the pet, would be much better. Also, if you're going to give the player an Assault primary, you're going to have to give the pet some kind of defence power. Either that, or give the player the defence powers and the pet the attacks. You can't really have a team-up of two Blasters, one has to be able to take some punishment.

The idea of controlling the pet's powers directly is interesting, especially since that means it can gain new powers as you pick more powers from its secondary. I've always fancied an AT that deals with just one pet that can be upgraded as the character progresses through the game, and that works pretty well. In fact, I'd move the pet summon right out of the AT and make it an inherent powers, like how Dominators get Domination as an inherent. That way you can start out by giving the pet its first power right off the start of the game.

I'm also not convinced a 1-to-1 power ration is absolutely necessary. Like Mastermind upgrades, why have each power taken for your pet actually represent a pack of powers that it gains. So, say, the first power you pick would be "basic attack" and give your pet two attack powers, then the next could be "basic defence" which would give him some resistance to smashing and lethal and maybe resistance to something simple, like immobilization. The idea is to give your pet an array of powers at least somewhat similar to that of a full-fledged player. I'm also not sure if I'd be a fan of controlling your pet on a per-power basis, more so than something more general. Say if the pet has two small attacks and two big attacks, you could order it to attack light or attack heavy, or if it has controls, you can order it to use them. Practically speaking, this pet is gonna' have to have a LOT of autonomy.

Personally, I like the idea a lot. I'm not sure I like the presentation of sidekick/lackey, myself. It seems kind of... Cheap and generic. Instead, I'd like to see it as more of a... Creation or big older brother or guardian angel or some such. So a technologist could be walking around with a robot that starts out small, but gains new parts and grows bigger as he levels up, while a scientist would be walking around with a zombie that grows bigger and nastier with each new power. A wizard could be walking around with a big demon, a ghost or even a guardian angel, as I said. Or you could just be walking around with a bodyguard who gets more buff and ripped as you level him up. Heck, you can even walk around with a pink tentacle monster, the options are many if you don't restrict it to being a humanoid sidekick.

I honestly like that a lot

Oh. Cool, I guess. I keep hearing good things about the EU boards, so maybe some of that will spill over to these boards and replace the doom and gloom that always comes with any new Issue.

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I don't think anyone can be dissappointed in something they havent actually tried for themselves.

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You should know better by now

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Yeah also remember, I didn't have the character rotated in those videos. We hardly ever see our own toons performing these actions from the front, at least not regularly.
Besides, "soon" we'll be able to try it out.

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Is that your voice in the video?

Did I miss something? Are the EU and US versions being merged or something?

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I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this; I don't see either of us changing our views so discussing back and forth for a couple pages won't do us any good. I'd rather just call it here and save us both the trouble.

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Fair enough. I'm just playing high-level Masterminds at the moment, so my perspective may not be objective

Back to front:

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Plus if something is about to die, Detonate it and resummon.

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I love, love, LOVE Detonator Most of the time I detonate my minion class henchmen. If one dies, I might as well detonate another one, since I'll be resummoning them all anyway. Usually, if my Commando is dying, I'm more likely to feed him Serum, but I've detonated him plenty of times, too. I'd take that over Poison's final power, as a dead henchman can be resummoned, but a poisoned one will be dragging his feet the entire time.

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With the build I have on Dame Demolition, there's not much I won't take on.

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This is the quintessential point of this whole thing, as far as I'm concerned - having the guts to take on, if not anything, then almost anything, is what makes an interesting character to me. This is less a point about tanks, themselves, and more about the world of sissies they allow, and indeed REQUIRE, to exist. Tankers are, at least in this game, largely able to take care of their own problems by themselves, albeit very slowly, as this game isn't dependent on a tank that's being healed. Tankers are just naturally tough. But aside from Tankers and a few other tank-like classes, a lot of characters are DESIGNED with the idea that a Tanker will be present, and as such there are a great many problems that they really don't want to take on because they'll be killed. Granted, we can sort of kludge a solution to most of this, but there is no denying that we have ATs which can take on anything without batting an eye and AT that can't take on anything without trembling for their lives.

I wouldn't really be against the notion of "the holy trinity" as a concept, were it not for the fact that developers use it to justify what characters can do and, even worse, what characters CANNOT do. I don't need a character to be able to do EVERYTHING, but I need a character to be able to do ENOUGH. Not only is this not true for all characters even most of the time, but even some of those who CAN do enough do so just barely, while others do more than enough all the time with little effort.

Take Scrappers, for instance. They're not especially versatile characters. They can really do one thing for the most part - deal damage. They're also pretty good at surviving long enough to deal that damage, but that's about it. No fancy tricks, no wide-scale support, pretty much nothing other than "stand and fight." And yet even a mediocre Scrapper can face pretty much anything within reason and triumph without too much trouble. I don't want to get into a debate about what ATs can't do enough as I'm sure it'll go on for pages and pages, but suffice it to say I'd like to play in a game world where no-one is designed with the idea that a tank, a healer or a damage dealer will be present.

If anything, I'd like to see MMOs of the future designed more like arcades or single-player games, where each character is designed with his own strengths and weaknesses, but each is self-sufficient and able to play the game, because ultimately these games have to be played by a single player, even if they feature multiplayer support. There is room for team roles and team dynamics even if players aren't gimped by design.

The Mercs Mastermind Medic still has a faulty animation on his Aid Other. When he activates the power, the tricoder simply appears in the air roughly where his hand ends up mid-animation and stays there the entire time, pointing 90 degrees to the left. The "green ray" effect still plays off the tricoder, but does so to the left, as that's where the device is pointing.

This only happens with Aid Other and never with Stimulant, which plays the proper animation every time, and it happens every time the Medic uses Aid Other.

P.S. I would SO love to have the bow-tana as a new powerset

Please understand that this is not a put-down or anything of the sort, but merely an explanation of what my experience and observations have been over they years.

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A Tanker is in full control of their abilities, not AI.

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To a point, yes. You can't tell your Spec Ops when to use Flashbang, can't tell your Jounin to use Soaring Dragon after activating Smoke Flash on him, and you have to keep telling your Bruiser to go into melee and fight (or at least used to have to). This much I will concede, though by and large, Mastermind henchmen tend to compensate for this by simply having an excess of powers to burn.

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A Tanker won't freak out when hit by Burn or Caltrops.

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No, but a Tanker needs to worry about other things such as Sappers, psychic damage, ghosts stacking to-hit debuffs, hideously melee-centric enemies and so on. Granted, not all tankers have to worry about all of these at the same time, but Tankers, and indeed every AT, has enemies, powers and situations that plain and simply suck. Yes, Masterminds have their fears, but Tankers aren't immune to these, either.

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A Tanker doesn't need to worry about mezzes (for the most part).

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Nor need a Mastermind the majority of the time. When your secondary doesn't actually provide overt status protection (say, Dispersion Bubble), your primary may have status resistances, and even failing that, it takes large-scale, repetitive AoE control to affect a Mastermind in any meaningful way. From my experience, it's not uncommon for a controller-type enemy to incapacitate a henchman or two, but even then, I have 4-5 more, and whoever is held will wake up soon enough. Granted, Malta Stun Grenades are EVIL, but then that's Malta.

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A Tanker can 'focus' on one target without sacrificing defense.

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I'm still not convinced a Mastermind actually gives anything up by going Bodyguard. As I said before, the situations you most need bodyguard in are the situations where focusing fire matters the most. And even that aside, it's very, very doable to simply hang back and not be attacked, yourself. The henchmen do a good job of holding aggro. Seriously.

Granted, those are derived of current play experience, and that experience is of a level 49 Mastermind who has... Well, everything he's ever going to have. Those aren't necessarily true for lower-level Masterminds, but even at lower levels, those still hold true to a large extent. I know a properly-built Tanker can probably walk away from the keyboard and still not die. Well, a properly built Mastermind can walk away from the keyboard and WIN. Seriously. I've had instances where I'll get up to get a drink, then come back just as my henchmen are finishing up an ambush that apparently struck while I was away. That's without me at the controls at all, forget about tactics and strategies.

Personally, though, I don't find this to be overpowered. As far as I'm concerned, Masterminds have just the right balance of tool versitility and tool strength. They have damage, but not too much, survivability, but not too reliable, and support, but not too strong. They're not better than Tankers at tanking, probably (wouldn't know, I haven't played Tankers past level 6), but there is nothing about them that makes them truly weak in any one area. Pretty much the ONLY other AT in the game I'm aware of that comes even close to this level of all-roundedness is the Scrapper, and only because Scrappers have a LOT of both things they're good at.