Samuel_Tow

My solution was to call the unneeded ones "Cabinet" and the important one "Filing Cabinet" It's not evidently identical, but I suspect that, to a player not specifically looking for it, it shouldn't stand out.

Well, my objections were visibility, lag and land area. A well-designed "raid instance" can and should provide sufficient land area and a well-designed raid monster would be big enough that visibility isn't such an issue. I'm not sure lag is as easily solvable, as I sometimes lag even with just 8 people around, though I suppose simply zooming out so I'm not seeing all the particles full-screen might help.

And, yes, for specific raid content (whether I agree with the NEED to have such or not) I can certainly see such a system to assist in management. I'm not sure too many events currently call for that, but some kind of inter-team communication system that's more than just broadcast or DIY global channels would definitely be good.

My objection was more to the act of having more than a full team of players in the same spot, but I suppose you're right - it's more my disagreement in having these than an actual unsolvable problem. Barring ship raids, effort HAS gone into making such events playable, and as long as they are playable, I've no objections to a multi-team organisation system to make playing them easier.

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Giant Monsters should roam around making life hell for people.

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If that's what your stance on what good design is, I feel I can safely say this: go to hell.

No
frikkin
way!

No frikkin' way am I going to accpet a game mechanic I have no interest in and which is a PAIN to deal with "making life hell" for me just so that you can have your little moment in the sun. Sorry, if you want to fight giant monsters, go fight giant monsters. I do NOT want to. I don't care if they gave me the moon and the stars. I don't care if fighting one freed me from next month's subscription fee. I don't care if fighting one caused people to come to my door and give me duffel bags full of money. I will NOT fight giant monsters.

I
will
not!

Wrap your head around this, let it sink in, and now tell me how GOD DAMN FORCING ME to fight giant monsters, or fight off Rikti raids or frikkin' do anything I choose not to, is good for me. And make it a good answer, not "just because you should." The game, as it currently is, is very user-friendly, letting us pick and choose our battles, fight what we want, when we want to, do what we want, not do what we don't want and generally have our way with things. If you don't like things like this, then get the hell off my lawn and stop suggesting changes that yank me out of my game and into your idea of how I should play.

You want to make the game better? Fine. Good for you. Go for it. But make sure that you don't break things for other people in the process, and quit trying to dictate how people should play and what people should do.

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Players are penalized for losing as it is. We get debt. We can be defeated. We can fail to defeat Lusca. Doing so means debt. We can fail to put out the fire, witht he same penalty.

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Debt was pushed back from level 5 to level 10, then halved inside instances, then reduced across the board, then experience gains were increased and debt reduced again, then patrol experience was introduced which eats at your debt when you're offline and with which you pay when you fall, rather than getting debt. Seems to me that the only "penalty" in the game has been systematically reduced into a meaningless metric, EXACTLY where it should be. Punishment and penalty for playing a game wrong is the worst, most repugnant concept in the gaming industry, and the evil legacy of a time when games had to make you stuff more quarters in the machine. Penalty doesn't make people want to win more. It just pisses them off when they lose.

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Granted, the penalty in my suggestion is zone-wide, but as I say, this should inspire people to take part.

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No, it won't "inspire" people to do anything other than move to another, non-raided zone, or speed through the raid and get to their missions. Failing that, it will "inspire" them to log off, go play something else, and not return until the invasion weekend is over. This is a game. It's supposed to be fun. Penalty is NOT fun, nor is the threat of penalty any more entertaining. In fact, the most fun times I've had have been with people who laugh at debt and play the game for the adventure.

If you want to design a good event, design it by making people want to participate, not by making people afraid of what might happen if they DIDN'T participate.

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In the process of creating this character creator, can you guys PLEASE make the effort to separate hats and hair meshes?

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Given that hats REPLACE hair, that's not possible. The most you can hope for is adding extra hair options unique to each hat, which would be cool, but seems somewhat improbable. I support it, of course! Three different hairs for every hat, please!

Also, I would REALLY like to a selection of hats for the Full Helmet Detail 1 category. Why can't I have a full helmet with a hat on top of it like Colonel Karl Kroenen?

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I'd like to see an AT-less system, so I can have a character with a ranged blast and a melee weapon, or summoning pets while mezzing the opposition.
Something that will never ever happen for a thousand years in CoH/V, unfortunately, but it's a nice pipe dream.

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You'd think that'd be great, but the Mission Architect actually gives strong evidence that that may not be quite accurate. Yes, it's possible to make stupid overpowered bosses. It's also possible to make bosses that SHOULD be overpowered, but aren't, like my own Energy Blast/Energy Melee boss. Yes, he deals a lot of damage... If he gets a chance to. Lacking any sort of actual protection from anything, however, he's dog meat before he can so much as blink. He even came in Hard Elite Boss for and he was STILL not very hard.

The Architect, in fact, is a perfect example why the AT-less system was scrapped. Some bosses are hideously overpowered, some look like they should be but they suck, and some are just about meh. That pretty much means that authors have to design their missions with a specific difficulty in mind and target only specific players, or throw their hands up in the air and give up trying to balance their content for everybody.

ATs are there there to ensure that everyone is on at least somewhat of an equal footing and you don't end up playing things like Invulnerability/Super Reflexes with no attacks whatsoever.

Dang... Oh, well, so much for that idea. And I guess we'll never know what they say

Thank you, srmalloy, for explaining that. I really enjoy learning something new when it is explained well I'll have to dig into the mathematics of this when time permits (and, hey, I'm at work, so I have time ), but it's nice to see it explained.

One small question. When talking about subtractive colours, you say "each colour absorbs all colours except the one it reflects." Does that mean that, say, Cyan absorbs everything BUT cyan?

Also, when you say "reduce the intensity of the blue," are we viewing intensity as a constant where, if it's only blue it's very intense, but if you mix it in with other colours as intense they have to share intensity and still fit within the constant? If you can, I'd like to hear a little bit more on how that part of both additive and subtractive colours work.

And because I forgot last time: THANK YOU BABS!

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I'd just be happy if I never saw another powerset get proliferated ever. Every time it happens there's 1 less reason to play another AT, and possibly less reasons for those that primarily play heroes or vills to try the other side.

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That's a really dangerous way of thinking, because it relies on the notion of making people play ATs they don't like to get to powersets they may like. This is BAD game design, because ideally, you should never make people play something they don't like whenever possible.

Face facts - some people do NOT want to play certain ATs and, sometimes, even a certain faction. Whether powersets are proliferated or not, these people will NOT play the AT/faction they don't like, and so not have access to certain powersets. Proliferating those allows people to eat their cake and have it, too and that should, ideally, be the goal. Let people have fun their way.

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On another note: every time a bunch of powersets get proliferated, it takes away from the complete, overall uniqueness of every AT (minus the epics). At this point, it's almost like the only thing separating most ATs is their inherents and epic/patron powers.

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The "uniqueness" of each AT is found in that AT's playstyle and dynamics, not in the powersets it has available to it. If the only thing differentiating one AT from the other is artificial limitations and, were they removed, the ATs would be very much alike, then that's a fault in the AT's design, NOT in the choice of powersets to give to the AT. Furthermore, it's not so much unique as outright silly to allow, say, a Scrapper to use a sword but a Tanker not. It's silly to allow a Defender to shoot radiation, but a Blaster not. There is nothing inherent in the nature of Defenders that makes them more qualified to use radiation than Blasters, specifically since Archetypes are just a framework design of the mechanics of ability, intentionally not defining the NATURE of ability. Tankers aren't Tankers because they can cover their bodies in ice while Scrappers can't. Tankers are Tankers because they have superior survivability to anything else in the game, and are designed for a playstyle that can rely on this survivability and exploit it. A Scrapper, even when he shares the same powersets as a Tanker, does not really play by the same framework.

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The only toon i have that (i regulary play) shows a lot of skin is Neutronic Avenger
And i tryed to make her look angry shes out for revenge after all but the clothing dose look paitned on for most of the older stuff.

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That's a lot of skin? O_o I'd call that barely any

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Lol It's hard to tell sometimes... especially now with the Witch Costumes running rampent all over the place.... and that outfit shows alot of skin!!!

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Yeah, that magic pack was much more "Halloween costume sexy witch" rahter than "wicked witch."

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I think that's the only kind of witch you ever find these days. Look at stuff like Charmed, or anime.

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There's a reason for that. Classic, scary, ugly, warted witches with big noses and pointy chins and who look like they're 500 years old are... Well, ugly and not very cool. Certainly not something I'd like to play as, or play against. Bad guys need to be cool, too.

It's interesting, come to think of it, because digital colours have always been interesting to me. I have to wonder exactly how this works - are bright colours simply colours with the alpha setting tied to reverse brightness with dark colours simply colours with the alpha setting tied to right-way-up brightness? Or is it actually the difference between 255 of every colour making white in one option and black in the other, such as the difference between reflected light and absorbed light?

I suspect this is heavily influenced by the fact that, in this game, sprite effect transparency is directly tied to colour brightness, so in addition to picking what colour you want your effects to be, you are also picking how opaque or transparent they are indirectly. For auras, this means that any of the darker colours come out almost completely invisible, and this wouldn't do for powers, so they had to come up with a solution. "Bright" and "Dark" seems like an elegant solution. I wonder when we're going to get that option for regular costume auras. It sounds like a blast!

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A rising tide lifts all boats. Except in this case, when you lift the players, there's still somebody left out: the Mobs. If nothing but nerfs happened, you'd get a case where the Mobs would become ridiculously easy. People would leave due to boredom.

If you buffed every set, then buffed the mobs appropriately, then you haven't buffed anything, really. You've just created a new baseline that is functionally the same as it was before.

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I believe you meant to say "if nothing but buffs happened."

That aside, there's a hidden danger to "just buff everybody" that people always fail to account for - many systems in this game, I dare even say most, work on a percentage base. In other words, they work as part of a whole, and there is only so high you can raise them before they hit the PRACTICAL cap of how high a given stat can be. For instance, even if there were no defence caps, anything above 100% defence would be wasted simply because you can never be hit more rarely than NEVER.

Even outside of caps, protection does not scale well with resistance, to give a direct example. 90% damage resistance is not countered by a 90% damage increase, but rather by a 1000% damage increase. If you only take a tenth of the incoming damage, then incoming damage needs to go up TEN TIMES to compensate. Now imagine the game was "buffed" to be meaningful against someone with 90% damage resistance and you DON'T have 90% damage resistance, yourself. You have diddly squat, like a support AT tends to be. Then your game is 10 times as hard. Talk about a "buff."

There are practical limits to how high most things can go, and the closer you get to those limits, the bigger the gap becomes and the harder it is to make the game fair for everybody.

Even if damage resistance wasn't percentage-based and resisted a flat number, defence STILL has to be a percentage, and that makes it practically capped regardless of how you design your game. And linearly increasing damage, hit points, healing, resistance and so on parameters are harder still to balance, too.

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Part of the reason they're not considered casual is because you have to have several like-minded people who are committed to completing them.

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Proven false by those that have soloed them. Not even a second player is needed to be present at completion. They only need to be part of the TF and logged off.

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Just because some people have solo'd them doesn't mean they should be turned into content that is intentionally soloable.

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This is truth. Just because certain players can solo it does not mean the devs should make it easier to solo. It's designed for teams - if you've put enough effort into your character to be able to solo a TF, you should have no problem forming a temporary team to get you started.

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This is a fallacy in thinking. TFs aren't special because of what they contain, they are special because of the label because they have been given. Aside from a notable few, most TFs are, really, just glorified story arcs, some not even that. The notion that they are "special" and should remain so is, therefore, unfounded, because the same notion can be held for any piece of content the game has to offer. It's fairly trivial to take all of Outbreak, slap an 8-man minimum requirement on it and call it a TF. That will not make it "special" in any way, shape or form. Not any more than it was before.

The proper question is "what's stopping a level 10 from soloing the Recluse Strike Force, then?" The answer is fairly obvious - like hell he can! Why shouldn't a single player solo the Imperious Task Force? The answer is the same - because Nictus Romulus is a bear enough to topple entire TEAMS, let alone a single player. So maybe a single player can do it. If a single player wanted to, he can do so now, though at a significant cost of hassle.

The notion that the TF mechanic itself makes grandfathered Task Force content "special" is a fallacy on its face. Special content is special only when the content itself is special, not when it is given a special tag. If a TF can be attempted outside of TF mode by a single player and that player finds it practically indistinguishable from any story arc, then that TF is NOT special. It's an arbitrarily chosen bit of content locked away behind a team requirement because SOMETHING had to be locked behind a team requirement by the developers' old mentality back in 2002-2004.

In very simple terms: if any average player would be able to solo a TF without any particularly special difficulty if not for the TF mode, then the TF is not special.

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[ QUOTE ][*] Embarrassing Situations in Sitcoms -- I literally have to change the channel or leave the room to avoid seeing the characters humiliated at times.

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LOL I do the same thing, in any show. I just can't watch, I feel the embarrassment myself.

[/ QUOTE ]same, cant watch those stupid singing/talent shows because of it. some idiot decides to broadcast how little talent they have, i have to leave cringing .

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I have a very strong sense of maintaining some level of dignity, so when it comes to those situations where a sitcom character "sticks it to himself," that's not funny. At least, not "haha" funny, but more like "nervous laughter" funny, and I don't enjoy doing the nervous laughter. Same with talent shows. It hurts my brain when they put people up on stage with the sole reason of them making fools of themselves. No, thank you.

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You can use LTs or Minions from custom factions as Boss details if they are custom mobs. Not if they are standard mobs.

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Understood. I have a couple of bosses in a mission of mine who have no business being bosses, whom I made bosses because I thought they had to be in order for them to be usable in boss objects. I'm glad to hear that's not the case, and will downgrade them as soon as I get back to working on my mission.

You vastly overestimate the "annoyance" of knockback and underestimate its mitigation power.

Heh, I got into a bit of that in Dragonica. I remade my coolest brute from MyBrute and played a chibi girl (though in the game where men look like little girls, why wouldn't I?) and had a team-mate ask me if I was a girl in real life, too. I guess he kind of felt bad he'd invited me to form a "couple" when he found out I wasn't Unfortunately, Dragonica has an annoying little subsystem for getting extra experience for playing with friends and extra powers from being next to a couple partner, I took it anyway. Hey, buffs are buffs. I'm not sure if his intentions were as pragmatic, but then I thought HE was a girl in-game because his male character looked like a blond little girl...

In City of Heroes, though? Most people either assume I'm a guy or don't care either way.

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The only add on pack I would buy

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Is a sixpack.

Does the Glowie name even show up? I thought they showed up as "Book case..." This is a problem. I called mine "Cabinet" and "Fake Cabinet"

So I CAN use custom faction lieutenants in boss spawns? Why not use standard faction lieutenants in boss spawns? In any case, I'll be demoting two of my bosses, then, if they don't need to be bosses. It will allow me to reduce the one real boss back from custom to normal. All I did was give him one extra power and now my arc has "WARNING! ENEMIES WITH CUSTOM POWERS! DANGER! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!" I'll be glad to be rid of that.

Which would be very amusing/disgusting if it were relevant, but where at all did you see anything of that sort in this thread?

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But you see, they ALREADY happen in the game. They're not going to take them out, so why not make them better?

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Make them better. By all means make them better. Making them more annoying to those who don't want raid content is NOT better. Base it on the positive. If players win, reward them. If players lose, don't. But for heaven's sake, don't punish people of failing, and certainly don't punish people who didn't take part and wanted nothing to do with it.

When a Steel Canyon fire is not extinguished, it doesn't set the zone on fire, denying it for regular players. When Lusca isn't killed, Independence Port doesn't become a hazard zone. True, Troll Raves used to create STUPID amounts of chaos in Skyway City for days on end, but that was actually fixed so Supatrolls despawn when the event is over. Do it like that.

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heh, i know you are in the eu territories sam, but you caught me off guard, red faction has been out for a bit in the us already.

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It has? *googles* Not for the PC it hasn't. Don't scare me like that!

As far as baseline mechanics go, a mechanic for handling luminescent colours on OUR costumes and perhaps even animated textures for them would be top priority.

Selectively destructible terrain in instances, sometimes important (like breakaway walls) and sometimes just cosmetic would be another. Fully destructible terrain is a pipe dream, and will be until Red Faction Guerilla launches, and outdoor destructible terrain is right out, but select breakable items in instanced maps sounds like a good idea.

Hmm... Well, our mouths don't move, so I can't really tell who's speaking, but I'm judging off timing. As the power goes:

Takes out radio
Pulls out antenna
Puts to mouth
*static* "Bravo 370" *static*
Takes away from mouth
Pulls down antenna
Puts radio away

If there were a quiet period where the character could be said to be talking on the radio and THEN the radio voice spoke, I could see that, but it really seems like the character puts his face on it, speaks, then pulls it away.

Of course, I've only played a male Mastermind. If the female one had the same male voice on the radio, that might be... Interesting. I can't say, though, and I don't feel like making a new Mastermind at the moment.

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If you do need a target, I'm not sure it would be a problem. When selecting a different animation for an attack, the way the game works, you actually slecting an entirerly different power. They will keep the endurance cost, cast time, recharge, damage and maybe even the name the same, but to the game it will be an different power....at least I'm pretty sure that is how it works. If I'm correct, instead of this new version doing 124.5 damage to upto 5 enemies in a 90 degree arc, it could made to do to ticks of 62.25 to the targeted enemy and one shot of 124.5 to anyone else in the cone.

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Not only is that a huge assumption, it's almost positively outright wrong. Different, mutually exclusive powers as a means for power customization has been suggested before, and castle shot shot it down like the aliens were invading. Making multiple copies of the same power for the sake of altering its animations increases the number of unique powers they have to keep track of and alter together if the whole power needs to be changed.

More than likely, power customization is going to be just that - customization, not outright power swapping.