Samuel_Tow

What is this thread about?

A couple of easy answers.

On multiple selves: BABs has stated, restated and repeated that things players summon CANNOT inherit any costume data they may have on their characters. This is the reason why you can customize your bow, but not your arrows, why you can customize your rifle, but not your muzzle flash, and also why you can't customize Spines - you can change what pops out of your body but not what you throw out of your hands.

In order for multiple selves to work, you'd need to be able to summon entities that inherit the player's own costume, which the game cannot currently do, as the powers and costumes systems are not very well interconnected.

On the point of growth, our models follow many rules which define what they look like and how they act. Character skeleton details and character scale are the big things, and neither are currently changeable AT ALL. You can change costume pieces, but you can't grow your arms longer, you can't go from a Male to a Huge and you can't alter your height. Changing those on the fly, as would be required for growth/stretching is not something that the game is currently capable of it.

My experience with skeletal animation is limited and I can't remember if bone lengths were allowed to be variable, but I seriously doubt they are. And even if they were, causing them to stretch is NOT growth or stretching. Growth would depend on how the body is weighted and scales off the bones, which stretching would mess up, and mimicking actual stretching ala Mr. Fantastic would require a lot of extra joints.

Furthermore, there is the problem of character bounding boxes. Contrary to popular belief, bigger characters don't bump their heads on low ceilings and smaller characters can't get through tighter spaces. All characters have the same bounding box with smaller ones clipping as though they were slightly larger and large characters clipping as though they were significantly smaller. Take a tall, masculine Huge shoulders 6 feet wide and take him through one of the 2-foot wide doors in your average office. Even though the character couldn't visibly get through unless he were disassembled, his shoulders will just clip through the door frame and pass freely. Making characters much taller than 7-8 feet begins to create characters that look MUCH bigger than they ACTUALLY are, practically speaking.

What's more, if you DO enlarge a character's bounding box, then you pretty much hose that character's manoeuvrability around tight quarters, or indeed his ACCESS to them. Tall Males are already clipping through the roof of most blue caves and big Huge clip into walls left and right. Making them bigger still would not just drive your camera into the ceiling, it would actually make you unable to get around most offices and caves, as well as many warehouses and many places in sewers, to say nothing of shops and the Rikti War Zone. Because most of the game takes place indoors, overly large characters are badly impractical.

And if they're not overly large, then their growing up to the size of the rest of the team isn't too big of a deal, is it?

Torak also had an avatar reminiscent of WarCraft III's Muradin and was a generally memorable and very pleasant character. I do wish he'd stuck around.

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'What we can do, is finish this mission, and then EXEMPLAR the L50's down, and it will all be ok'
"Dude, you have NO idea how task forces work."

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Actually, if the ITF works like the Respec Trials, it should scale to the highest effective level. If you exemplar all the 50s to 40, the next mission should scale to that. Or was that changed at some point?

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I find Titans much more fun to fight now. Wasn't much of a challenge beating on a heavily armed robot flailing clumsily with its fists.

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No, but it was fun not being two-shotted and actually winning.

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Yeah, a lot of the people we used to hang with have left over the years. A lot have also been banned. I wonder, though, if anyone ever misses me

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There's always a 5% chance that they will...

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OK, that I liked

The really big problem I have, and this is probably quintessential to my disagreement, is that this feels more like something that should be handled by power customization (or, yes, an Epic AT) rather than a whole set devoted and designed to be magic. The game is as generic as it is for a very sound reason - the more uses a new addition has (new costume piece, new powerset, new AT, new zone, etc.) the more return it gives on the investment made to create it. The game supports a STAGGERING variety of character concepts, and one of the driving priorities as I see it is for new additions to accommodate as many of them as possible. That way, many people get to use them.

Trying to design to a specific theme, origin or idea is, by and large, a death trap in anything other than a small-reference-pool game. You can add another pistol to a shooter and no-one will question why you didn't add a sword or a bow or a slingshot, and you can keep adding swords to a sword-and-sorcery adventure until you're blue in the face. No-one will complain. But here, there are so many concepts possible that designing for one specific concept, even a small subset of concepts, is just an unwinnable battle. Say they make a magic set. Then they'd need to make a tech set (say, morphing cyborg), then a "pure natural" set, then maybe a mad science set and so on, and all the while we're waiting for the simpler things, like basic handguns or Crossbow Blast to come into the game, and they simply never do because we're getting more origin-specific sets.

Weapon customization is clear evidence that it's better to allow people to customize their powers than it is to make a powerset for every concept. With Dual Blades, some people wanted a rapier and dagger combo, others wanted twin daggers, while others still wanted dual big hinkin' swords. Now, it's technically possible to design a powerset for each combo, but it's much, much easier to have ONE powerset that can just be used with different weapons. Shields are even better. They fit strength-and-skill fighters, they fit magicians, they fit technologists and all of that with a single powerset. It's too late in the game to make concept-specific powers.

I WILL agree with you, however, that IF we ever get powerset customization, then staffs and/or wands should be one of the first things added. In fact, think DC's approach to letting people pick a power SOURCE is nothing short of revolutionary. Sure, you can shoot ice blasts. Doe you shoot them out of your hands or your eyes or your chest? Or maybe out of a little ray gun or a big blocky rifle? Or maybe you fire them from a staff or a wand or a ring? If powerset customization ever comes about, this is what I'd like to see first and foremost, and I'll be right there with you supporting a wand variant.

As an epic AT, I'm not so sure. On the one hand, it seems a bit... Odd for an epic AT, but then on the other hand I don't really enjoy any of the ones we have, and I'm not sure if the developers will ever make one I TRULY like for all their efforts to mix and match what they do. So I can't say I'd be aggressively opposed to this, though in all complete honesty, I'd rather not see any more Epic ATs.

As for the original point of a powerset that mixes elements and effects, I'd sign up for that in a heartbeat. There's some question as to which elements will be stronger than which, but we kind of already have "natural" effects to them all, so we could keep to that. It would be interesting to see one, let me tell you.

What Epics?

Well, Pyre/Fire/Flame/Whatever Mastery is more than obvious, given the somewhat recent addition of Fiery Melee/Aura.

Beyond that, I'd like to see more single-weapon based Mastery sets. That means Archery, Handguns and, yes, Assault Rifle. Not really sure what would be in those sets, but I do believe they fit the AT thematically.

Yes, I realise I'm replying to myself. This will be a compound post, so bear with me.

AkuTenshiiZero
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But, anyways, I see your point. On our Corruptors, my friend and I have taken down EBs simply by virtue of tactics and synergy, less due to damage output and more due to combined forms of control. Against the average mooks, up to and including lower-end Bosses, I've seen AR to be godly. Against higher-end Bosses, EBs, and heaven forbid AVs, not so much. I never saw a problem with it because I attributed it to the game telling you "You can't handle this alone". Frankly, soloing an EB may be possible, but I don't believe they are meant to be soloed.

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That's a lot of what masks the problem, in my opinion. Most ATs other than Blasters, and even some Blaster combos, can make up for lack of single-target damage by other debilitating effects or, as is the case for my Electric/Electric Blaster, with heavy-hitter secondary attacks. Not all sets have those, however. Devices, chiefly, does not, nor does Fire Manipulation have many (it's still more AoE) for example. From playing with it, especially solo, I can say that I can attribute my victories more on Devices and ESPECIALLY on Munitions than I can on Assault Rifle. Comparatively, my Archery/Devices Blaster does significantly better, both through Aim and through the lovely Blazing Arrow. It also manages to one-up full auto AND keep two of the three remaining AoEs in Assault Rifle almost the same.

Zem__
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If anything contributes the least to AR's AoE damage output, it is M30. Granted, it has twice the range and you can hit 16 targets max, vs. Buckshot's 10 but if you've got 16 huddled that close you better be hitting them from the air with M30 or have someone -KB immobilizing them or... there might be tears.

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I'd be perfectly fine with replacing M30 with it, myself. I'm WELL aware of the cost, though given how rarely I get past Full Auto -> Flamethrower to even GET to Buckshot/M30, recharge is largely irrelevant. About the only reason I pick M30 over Buckshot a lot of the time is because I tend to stay farther away from enemies to facilitate Full Auto and keep my Auto Turret from engaging until I'm ready, so it's easier to fire a grenade long-range than it is to fly in and use Buckshot at short range. Dropping either, however, will do, as M30 seems to do even LESS damage than buckshot.

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Still... I'd rather have all those AoEs, even M30. If I want a single-targetter, I'll pick something else. My 2-bits anyway.

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I don't specifically need single-target damage as such, but I DO need a Blaster primary that can handle bosses, at least, which, indirectly, requires single-target damage. I don't really need Assault Rifle to beat the single-target kings out there, but I'd like it to have SOME leg to stand on. The bad thing is, even a single-target-mostly Blaster set can deal with solo spawns of minions and lieutenants, and how much easier or harder that is is arguable. An AoE-mostly set, however, though it won't have THAT much more of a leg up on minions and lieutenants, will always hurt against bosses.

AkuTenshiiZero
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I think part of the problem is, what exactly would make it differant than Slug? As it stands, a sound effect. That's it.

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Well, how much different is Power Burst from Power Blast, really? And how much different is Blaze from Fire Blast? Or Snap Shot from Aimed Shot from Ranged Shot? Of course, I'm not saying I want it to be a second Slug, but there is precedent. And even right now. Buckshot doesn't really look all that different from slug. It actually uses the same animation.

But OK, let's look at other things we can do with this. How about turning it into a downsized version of Head Splitter? Make it a VERY narrow cone (how much spread does a shotgun have over 20 feet, anyway?) and up its damage to upper-border Heavy (as opposed to the Extreme I was suggesting before). It still won't act exactly like a shotgun, but it will act A LOT MORE like a shotgun by keeping to a narrow cone and hitting HARD at short range. It's stiff different, it's highly effective against clumped-up enemies AND it gets to keep some AoE potential.

Buckshot is currently set as a 40-foot, 30 degrees arc dealing 0.91 scale damage to each target. So what if we made it a 20-30 foot, 20 degrees arc, 1.64-1.8 scale damage power? It will be different enough from Slug, still provide strong single-target damage AND give the opportunity to the accurate to sew in some very serious AoE damage. I was initially looking at Power Burst's 2.12 scale damage, but if this is a narrow cone, I can deal with damage slightly above or below that of Slug.

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Suppose we keep Buckshot where it is and doing what it does. What about balancing it like a single-target power? See, most powers have a damage scale to cost ratio of about 0.190-0.200 scale damage per units of endurance for single-target powers. Burst is a little more efficient, but by and large most powers will be around 0.197. AoE powers, however, vary depending on their size and other characteristics. Buckshot is at around 0.089 scale damage per unit of endurance, more than TWICE as expensive as Slug, whereas M30 has a ratio of around 0.059, which is a little better than half of that of Buckshot and almost a quarter of that of Slug.

Personally, I've taken to using Buckshot as a third single-target attack, but IT COSTS! A LOT! A lot for what it does, anyway. Fact of the matter is, when the situation is right for a good AoE, that good AoE is Full Auto or, failing that, Flamethrower. Rarely have I found a good AoE opportunity and thought to myself "Oh, hey, that's the perfect opportunity to use Buckshot!" Inevitably, I end up using it on either a single enemy, or when I happen to catch two enemies standing in a line, and it takes at least three enemies for the damage done to offset the cost.

So, how about just balancing the power as a single-target one, or at least slashing its cost to where just two targets offset the investment? I won't be PERFECT, but it will give the sent another quasi-single-target attack in actual practice, which should actually help a lot. Plus, being the apparently intended king of AoE, wouldn't it make sense for Assault Rifle's AoEs to be a little favoured?

Just as I feared, Zeus Class Titans have become living hell. Gunslingers are nasty but sort of beatable, Tack Ops are mean, but tolerable, but Zues... Well, when a rocket barrage can take out 80% of my hit points AND set me on fire AND set me up for being shot with Quad Plasma Blast... That's plain not fun. Worse still, the one in the Daedalus mission summons reinforcements, the [censored]!

Yeah, a lot of the people we used to hang with have left over the years. A lot have also been banned. I wonder, though, if anyone ever misses me

Personally, I happen to think that the exile of all hardcore silliness to the Forum Games section was the best thing to happen to these forums. These days, it's not rare that I'll fine multiple interesting threads on the first page, whereas before it was all silliness and maybe one actual thread, if that. Granted, it's still a case of troll/troll/rant/troll/troll/rant/interesting, but I'm hoping that if the mods delete enough farming threads, that will subside.

I've also never been a fan of American politics and religion, though I guess not being either American or religious makes me heavily biassed. Still, I don't mind that the place isn't open to any thread of any topic, because I've seen heavy-traffic public forums where anything goes, and it's not very interesting to participate in. Again, not sharing the same pop culture and culture in general with much of the rest of the posters may have coloured my perception.

One thing I DO miss, however, is that there used to be a time when the rules were applied with thought behind them, not just because the forum rules says so. Sometimes we were allowed to push and bend the rules if it was obvious it was in good spirits and helpful to fostering productive discussion, whereas other times trolls and idiots had their threads pulled for even passing violations of minor rules because they were making a mess of things. In fact, I used to tell people that they shouldn't worry about accidentally infringing on the rules as long as their heart is in the right place and they don't make a giant huge mess of things. Whether that was due to the generally lower severity of moderation or due to personal style (and it's not just Cuppa, as Lighthouse was pretty good about these things, too) I cannot say, but this no longer seems to be the case.

I don't mean to criticise Mod8. Hell, the guy's doing a great job and really holding us all to a high standard, but it's very often that I've seen him take the rules too literally and cut threads that, while they WERE technically violations, weren't actually causing a problem to be on the forum. Sometimes I wish he'd moderate a little less on the letter of the law and more on the spirit of the law. Let people cut loose a little bit if they manage to behave themselves and have an interesting discussion, but don't hesitate to burn them if they devolve into a flame war.

I guess maybe if things calmed down a little bit, we could relax a little, but still... I'm having to watch what I say a lot more these days than I pretty much ever did.

Well, even with their improved AI, I still found other ways to outsmart the Malta Group. Turns out that Operation Officers, some of the BIGGEST problems for people without status protection, will actually NOT use their grenades past a certain distance (looks like past 50 feet or so) and will not approach, favouring instead to use their rifles (which I wasn't even sure they had, since I'd only ever fought them close up). Now that I don't have to stick close to Gunslingers and Titans, this has helped me on several occasions, saving me from getting 30-second-stunned yet allowing me to blast away with Full Auto with impunity. Honestly, I'd rather get shot at than flashed when it comes to these guys.

Gunslingers still hurt like hell, though, and the bosses are a nightmare. It's forced me to regard every Malta boss as an Elite Boss when I'm on my Blasters. That actually makes them easier (four purples and two reds tend to do that) but it has increased my dependence on inspirations, thereby slowing me down. Then again, both Blasters I have in range of these guys are 50, and so speed no longer really matters, since I'm not actually levelling up any time soon and I don't care about anything that drops (beyond inspirations, obviously).

It seems I forgot about this thread shortly before it dropped off the face of the world, because I missed this interesting quote:

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Malta is probably the most well-designed organization in the game. Their guys look too low-tech for the most part, IMO, and we need to see more of these pet supers they're supposed to have (which is why I put one in "Blowback"), but the history and organization of the group is great. Dunno what went wrong between the creation of Malta and the creation of Arachnos.

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Interestingly, though I despise secret service spy stories and find the group as a whole badly overpowered, I have to agree with that. The Malta group are VERY scary, both in terms of fiction and in terms of soldiers who can bring down the mightiest of heroes, their plot points are very tight and thought their motives are somewhat loose and their goals somewhat absurd, they aren't actually unbelievable. If ever someone were controlling a country with an iron fist, I'd expect it to be these guys (or the Nemesis, but he's Dr. Doom double anyway).

How Arachnos managed to miss being the serious, threatening, ironclad organisation and fell so far off the deep end into the uncanny valley I will never understand. The whole thing is a collision between the Combine Overworld and a space circus side show. Animal-inspired spacesuit-clad soldiers operate out of tall spires of shining metal, an evil overlord with metal spider legs reigns over an empire from his ivory tower cathedral where he deals with destiny and magic and and ghosts and robots and talking fish while ruling over the perfect slum and... And... Ugh! It's like the twilight zone of overblown evil and misery, where an actual STATE that at least tried to appear to be governed in such a way that it could work would have been so much more easily believable, and at the same time would not have turned off as many people with garbage and rickety shacks.

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I see him just rip targets apart regularly. Burst, Slug, Buckshot, Beanbag here and there, Snipe if the opportunity presents itself (Calibrated Accuracy on that making it almost never miss). For AoE work, Full Auto and M30 are enough, and usually the opening on a wave following the Snipe and a Freezing Rain. Most groups won't survive long after that.

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AoE destruction is one of the things Assault Rifle is not just good, but the BEST at, that much I cannot disagree with. However, it's when it comes to nasty things like, say, a Hercules Titan, a Cheif Soldeir/Mentalist, Greater Devoured and so forth that Assault Rifle really hurts more than any other set, with the possible exception of Electrical Blast, though Assault Rifle tends to suffer more due to many things resisting Lethal damage. Surprisingly many, as I'm finding out through Surveillance.

What Assault Rifle is even worse at is Elite Bosses. Yes, technically I just took out Ghost Widow (EB) solo with my 50 Assault Rifle/Devices/Munitions Blaster thanks to a forest of Trip Mines and copious uses of Surveillance and Targeting Drone, but that was also done thanks to four purples, one of them medium, and two reds, as well as another red that dropped off a Tarantula, I think. That's a one-off event. By comparison, something as fairly common as a Gunslinger boss is hell and high water because they deal MASSIVE amounts of damage and, lacking concentrated single-target damage of any sort (to say nothing of sleep and hold protection), are too hard to kill before that damage becomes a terminal problem. In fact, I'm going to go up to Malta RIGHT NOW to test just how horrible the recent AI upgrade has made them.

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I don't know, I have rolled my first /Dev blaster and I have to say, it doesn't really have that many problems. No it doesn't have more damage, but it has a constant to hit buff and to hit debuff resistance which I think the rest of the sets don't have. So overall I may not do as much damage but it is balenced do to the fact I may not do as much damage but I hit everything, except for the occasional lucky one, but that is usually followed by a strikebraker.

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To a point, but the thing is, a Blaster survives by taking down the opposition, as he has no defences to rely on. A damage injection like Aim + Build Up can allow most other sets to lay down some serious smackdown and get a HUGE head start, and do so at the cost of 4-5 seconds. While Devices CAN do that, it costs 8 seconds to lay down a Time Bomb plus an additional 15 seconds for it to go off. Targeting Drone may help you hit things, but it doesn't keep you from getting hit. Build Up, on the other hand, allows your lovely Aim + Fireball + Fire Breath to destroy entire spawns, where not having it just leaves a full spawn of pissed off enemies gunning for YOU.

I'm not sure where you're getting your defences from, but I CAN guarantee you're not getting them from your powerset, so the point remains - Devices doesn't provide enough damage to kill things quickly and doesn't provide enough self protection to kill things slowly.

Now, the one thing Devices works really well at is pulling enemies into traps. And, believe me, I'd be the first one to campaign for how good this was, if it didn't take SO BLOODY LONG to do. Even Trip Mines take a really long time to go down, and that's the big thing - no team is going to sit down and wait for you to set them up. I've tried, it doesn't happen. Even my friends don't want to wait. A damage buff would help that a lot, and keep in mind I'm not talking about the full 100% of Build Up. Gun Drone only gives around 36%, which isn't even Aim, let alone Build Up.

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The only thing I don't like about Gun Drone is the set up time, other than that the thing is Golden. To me this helps offset the fact that the set doesn't have build up, not only does it do extra damage but takes aggro, I like it just wish it didn't take forever and a day to set up, that or either if it were perma.

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The Gun Drone may be able to take a few hits, but it doesn't have any aggro-grabbing powers. Not only that, it actively transfers its aggro onto you. Even if you're hidden and completely invisible, if your Drone engages a spawn, half of that spawn will be shooting at YOU. Trust me, I've lost dozens of Sniper Rifle shots for this exact reason. Also, its set down may be long, but its COST is astronomical. 39 endurance points base, that's almost a full half of your endurance bar. And for what? A floating box that does barely any damage and grabs more errant aggro than it holds? I have it, I use it, and I STILL don't like it. It really should either be cheaper or do a lot more. Giving it an owner-affecting damage bonus is one easy way to make it do more. Giving it more attacks or upping the damage on its one attack would be another, but I wouldn't say it's something I'd prefer, personally.

Devices is workable, that much I will never contest. After all, I got a Devices Blaster to 50, so it must be good at SOMETHING. However, it is also slow, fiddly, unreliable and rather wimpy. That's what bugs me the most. It doesn't feel like a strong set. It feels like a set barely scraping together, and it doesn't have to be that way.

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Mind you it does have a strong 3rd ST attack own version in ignite, but that has tactical limitations.

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When it was just tactical limitations, I was inclined to agree. But with what recharge it has now (and STILL that stupid 3-second cast for no apparent reason), it's actually worse than Sniper Rifle in the role of third single-target attack. Heck, Sniper Rifle takes as long to fire and recharges faster

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It would be a reasonable change, and logically laid out. But it falls into the category of being a pretty major change, which the devs are reluctant to do (at best). It would also lessen the Assault Rifle's AoE ability, which is one of the things that makes up for it's relative mediocrity otherwise.

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Yeah, I'm running against the problem that this will NOT happen under any circumstances, but aside from that...

I'm not sure Buckshot is such a great help in AoE capacity, at least not in my experience. Yes, it has a somewhat large cone (not as big as most Blaster cones, but still) and it does SOME damage, but... Honestly, when the set has Flamethrower, Full Auto and M30, I never really GET to Buckshot, especially since all the other AoEs work from fairly far away, whereas Buckshot is exclusively close range.

Granted, I'm counting Full Auto as another AoE, whereas I don't count nukes for other sets, but that's largely because Full Auto can be used every battle and doesn't impose a mandatory rest break, so in practice... It is. The whole set feels like it was designed for forced teaming, which is something Blasters haven't been consigned to for several years now.

Of course, I'm not looking to make Assault Rifle a single-target kind or anything even remotely close. I just want the set to have tools to deal with the stuff that kills the most Blasters every year - bosses. AoE doesn't really help with them in the slightest. Not even for Master Illusionists.

I'd like to start out by saying that the "use it to level it up" idea is hardly unique to anything, though I can't say if Ultima Online was or was not the one to start it. And, as you remarked, this is perhaps the MOST grind-prone mechanic ever the grace the face of a game. Why? After all, you want to use, say, swords, so you fight with a sword and raise your skill. Ain't anything simpler and more fluent than that, right? Well, suppose I got bored with swords or, as often happens, got an axe drop that was just AWESOME! Now I'd need to shift to fighting with an axe, but OOPS! My skill with an axe is so bad I can't even EQUIP it, much less be proficient with it. So I have to buy a crappy axe and go beat up small furry animals with it until I can equip the big one, then go beat up stuff with the big one until I become proficient with it, then keep on grinding at stuff until I at least break even to where my skill plus the axe makes me STRONGER than I was with the sword. Which was the point, right? So I've wasted how much time doing chores before I could get back to playing the game? I'd put it somewhere between "tons" and "way too bloody much."

Revenant was like that, once upon a time, and it made me dread switching weapons. Dungeon Siege was like that, and had the added bonus of bows needing strength and strength coming from swords and axes, so my archers had to "grind" strength not doing what they were supposed to be doing. Much as I like it otherwise, Advent Rising's weapon skills and powers, though they became available at scripted points in the game, were upgraded by using them. Cue thirty minutes of me firing Aion Blasts into a wall and setting down a little house of shield barriers to bring stuff up to level. Having to start from scratch and nothing as soon as you decide to switch weapons or skills, though it may be "realistic," is a really, really crappy way to play a game, because you end up going sideways and trodding in place instead of moving forward.

As far as what constitutes "grind," for me the definition is simple: anything I do not want to do but have to, in order to proceed through the game. Hey, this is a really cool quest line, I wonder if... What? I need to gain ten more levels? Go kill stuff in the forest, you say? Well, up yours, Mr. NPC! I'ma find myself a better game! Gah! 9Dragons was SO BAD like that. It started out almost impressive, with what felt like an overarching storyline carrying me forward, until I stopped getting quests. Then it became: Grind brown bears for one more level to get you next quest. Quest done. Now grind brown bears for one MORE level to get your next quest. Quest done. Now grind brown bears for one more level to tear your hair out.

In City of Heroes, nothing feels like a bigger grind than having to do chores like store runs, delivery missions, "go talk to Wincott" missions and so forth. One of my "favourite" times is when I hit, say, level 37. Then I might as well quit my team, go figure out what I need to take to level up, run around and sell my various stuff, replace my whole set of enhancements and only THEN go back to the game. And that's outright benign compared to what other MMOs tend to make me do. I mean, it's a chore, but at worst it'll take me half an hour out of a whole day. Most other games take up over half their playtime with these grinds.

I learned a long time ago that if I started thinking about how cool the game would be after a level or two, it was time to step back and admit I was getting burned out. As a general rule of thumb, when that time comes, NOTHING will make the game better. All I'll end up doing by trying to stick it through is hurt myself even more. Because when I've put in all the effort and all the work and found out that, no, they didn't make the game better at all, then I get angry and I blame the game, and I don't feel like playing it any more. The fact of the matter is, however, that it's my own fault in sticking to a game (or, more often, a character) I'm quite clearly tired of. To a great extent, that's why so many people blow up over such minor things - they've been burned out on the game for months, maybe even years, still engaging in the one thing that may yet give them hope for better times. So when it gets changed or they realise it won't make anything better, they get angry. And it's understandable. It's also perfectly preventable.

I've seen all the grind people claim to be here. For me, however, it has never been about how much I HAVE to grind, but rather how much what I'm working towards is WORTH working for. In a game I play for fun, the answer is often "Not a whole lot!"

Figured I may as well lay this out while I was contemplating Devices in my previous thread: how would you feel about turning Buckshot into a single-target, Superior/Extreme damage attack at close range, similar to Power Burst, Blaze and Bitter Ice Blast?

I'm going to look at this from two sides.

On the practical side, I would say Assault Rifle could do with some more single-target damage. The whole set has all of two single-target damage attack - Burst and Slug. It has Sniper Rifle, yes, but that is highly unreliable in most situations. It used to have Ignite as a single-damage-equivalent, but with its recharge increase, it hasn't been able to patch things up as well as it used to. Beyond that, though, the set has FOUR area attacks and a control power. Personally, of all the are attacks Assault Rifle has, Buckshot is the one I end up using the least, partly because of its short range, partly because of its crappy damage. Full Auto gets a lot of use for obvious reasons, Flamethrower has a very wide cone and M30 is good shelling enemies from afar. But it has been my experience that, even on a BIG team, I rarely get the opportunity to go through my entire arsenal, unless I'm the only Blaster on a team of Tankers or something. By the time I get down the chain to Buckshot, most of the things are either dead or scattering about, meaning it's better to hunt them down with Burst and Slug.

On the conceptual side, one thing has always bothered me about Buckhot - it doesn't actually behave like a buckshot should. I don't mean this just in terms of realistic realism - even just about every other game treats Buckshot slightly differently. The thing is, a buckshot shouldn't spread as much as this one does. Hell, ours goes almost 45 degrees off centre. Secondly, buckshot isn't really effective at long range or without enough pellets hitting the target, especially if you're shooting at something big and sturdy, like a man wearing body armour (as opposed to, say, small birds). Practically speaking, about the most effective I've seen a buckshot ever be and what has always felt the most satisfying has been not trying to spread the pellets among a group of targets, but rather unloading a whole shell, ideally TWO shells and both barrels, into a single target, dealing massive, massive damage. In fact, I made a career in both Half-Life and Half-Life 2 taking out soldiers with a double-barrel shot of the combat shot gun, which I'd pick over ANYTHING else at close range.

I understand that's something that's not likely to just happen, and I doubt the powers that be will ever consider it, but I do believe such a change would help Assault Rifle tremendously. And I do believe Assault Rifle could use at least a little help.

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Wow, you guys are still talking about this?

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Imagine that. People like to talk about stuff. It's almost like we're on some kind of... Forum where people come to, like... Talk or something. Then again, stranger things have happened.

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I don't see the reasons why reward should be changed for solo vs team: For example, you getting the same reward for 3 men Posi as 8 men posi. Why solo posi should be any different?

[/ QUOTE ] Almost all the the TF have at least one AV in them. By scaling them down to EB level they become significantly easier.

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Even if TF has AV in it, AV will be scaled down to EB in case if only 2-3 players are on TF and all others quit...

[/ QUOTE ] Why would it scale down because people quit? I was assuming you only get the EB if you start it solo.

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TFs are designed to never scale down at all. Even back when a TF could still technically consist of just one player, AVs would still not scale down to EBs. Spawn sizes will still scale, but today, the best you can hope for is two-man spawns even when solo, because you'll need to have at least one more person before the TF auto-disbands.

Also, to address the thread, I don't mind content designed for groups, and I would actively vouch for it if there were also a version of the same content designed for solo players. Kind of like WoW's raids and dungeons - there's the regular version that's doable much more easily, and then there's the Heroic version that's many, many times harder and requires around five times the players. So, I'd say give us "lite" versions of the current TFs, but cap their team size to three or four or some such. Enough so that they're not limited to JUST one single person, but also not enough for them to be done on a big team that should be doing the ACTUAL TF anyway.

The other thing that bothers me is stories that get left hanging. The Hollows, Striga and Croatoa storylines all end in a TF, which is a real bummer if you've done the content solo up until this point. In fact, I've never so much as seen the Caverns of Transcendence and the Katie Hannon TF, and I've only ever done one speed-run of the Hess TF which actually failed, and I STILL didn't get to see any of the actual plot.

I'm not going to ask for TFs to stop being "serious business," but why can't we have a smaller, easier version that simply doesn't reward as much (or at all) available on the side? Or, hell, why not go the other way? Why not make TF versions of all available story arcs? Put them all at a minimum of four people, don't scale anything and upgrade all Elite Bosses to AVs. I'd actively like to see that happen, both because I won't actually have to do any of 'em, being that I can still do the regular arcs, and because it might get people to do some of the older arcs if they were cool enough. I mean think about it - World Wide Red as a TF? I might be tempted to do it, actually, because I like the arc and I like the Kronos Titan.

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I'd be happy to see your build and even happier to assist you with multi aspecting cheap sets for increased performance if you would like.
That said, if your personal preference is sticking to commons and you don't wish to budge from that position I'll respect your decision.

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I'm kind of stuck in my ways and pretty stubborn when it comes to sets, I'm afraid But still, I might as well share the build I'm using now, just as a point of reference. I'm pretty happy with it at the moment, though I'm sure it will raise more than a few red flags with most people

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1,401
http://www.cohplanner.com/

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Level 50 Technology Blaster
Primary Power Set: Assault Rifle
Secondary Power Set: Devices
Power Pool: Flight
Ancillary Pool: Munitions Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Slug -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(3), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(11), Dmg-I(19)
Level 1: Web Grenade -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(40), Immob-I(40)
Level 2: Buckshot -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(3), Dmg-I(7), Dmg-I(11), Dmg-I(25)
Level 4: Burst -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(5), Dmg-I(7), Dmg-I(27), Dmg-I(46)
Level 6: Caltrops -- Slow-I(A), Slow-I(40)
Level 8: M30 Grenade -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(9), EndRdx-I(9), Dmg-I(17), Dmg-I(31), Dmg-I(46)
Level 10: Targeting Drone -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Sniper Rifle -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(13), EndRdx-I(13), Dmg-I(17), Dmg-I(19), Dmg-I(43)
Level 14: Hover -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(15), Flight-I(15)
Level 16: Fly -- Flight-I(A), Flight-I(46)
Level 18: Beanbag -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(25), Dsrnt-I(34)
Level 20: Flamethrower -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(21), EndRdx-I(21), Dmg-I(23), Dmg-I(23), Dmg-I(34)
Level 22: Cloaking Device -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 24: Taser -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(31), Dsrnt-I(37)
Level 26: Ignite -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(27), Dmg-I(37), Dmg-I(37)
Level 28: Trip Mine -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(29), Dmg-I(29), Dmg-I(31), RechRdx-I(43)
Level 30: Smoke Grenade -- Acc-I(A)
Level 32: Full Auto -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(33), Dmg-I(33), Dmg-I(33), Dmg-I(34), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 35: Time Bomb -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(36), Dmg-I(36), Dmg-I(36), RechRdx-I(42)
Level 38: Gun Drone -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(39), Dmg-I(39), Dmg-I(39), Dmg-I(43)
Level 41: Cryo Freeze Ray -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(42), Hold-I(42)
Level 44: Surveillance -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(45), RechRdx-I(45)
Level 47: LRM Rocket -- Acc-I(A), EndRdx-I(48), Dmg-I(48), Dmg-I(48), Dmg-I(50), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 49: Body Armor -- ResDam-I(A), ResDam-I(50)
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Level 1: Brawl -- Dmg-I(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 1: Defiance

*edit*
Figured this was as good a place to boast as any. I was just able to solo Ghost Widow on the Blaster with the above-listed build, and it was actually kind of easy. Sure, I cheated by using inspirations and I was only running on Tenacious, but given how much trouble that woman was for my Broadsword/Invulnerability Scrapper, I was still rather impressed

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But then a Task Force or Strike Force wouldn't be a Task Force or Strike Force. The whole meaning of those terms is out the window if they are all soloable.

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So call the soloable versions something else. We've all seen how much most people care about the content anyway, so stripping the phat rewards from a Not Task Force would, I guarantee you, simply ensure that people still do the full-reward Yes Task Force, instead.

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I like this. Though I would also like it if they did a few things such as taking away the interrupt time from the gun drone, and reducing the total time for set up and explosion of the time bomb to 15 seconds.

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For some reason, both Time Bomb and Gun Drone have LUDICROUS activation times. Time Bomb takes 8 seconds to set down, and then takes another 15 seconds to blow up. Auto Turret takes only 6 seconds to set down, but costs a bundle and doesn't come anywhere near the destructive potential of the Time Bomb. Even a Trip Mine takes I think three seconds to set down. To my eyes, given that these powers themselves are slow and unreliable to yield just from how they are designed, giving them slower and more unreliable still activation is just compounding a problem.

That's one of the biggest problems I think a Gun Drone damage buff would begin to address. It's the set's final power, and as such is drastically underwhelming, between its cost and its merit. Adding some not-insignificant damage to it for a full minute would change it from "Eh, why bother?" into "Must slot more recharge in it!" To my eyes, that would be a good thing. I like the little bugger, ugly as it may be, and I would really like to feel less silly for keeping it around so heavily slotted.

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Perhaps a compromise. Introduce some new content along the lines of the Ouroboros TFs; surely a difficult challenge, but one that can still be soloed for those who desire a harder fight than the regular content, which even at highest difficulty can still be pathetically easy for some toons. I wouldn't do this to the existing TFs though, as it probably wouldn't make sense storywise for those tasks to be undertaken by a single person.

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Pretty much all of the Surviving Eight TFs are old and outdated, children of an age when we were still supposed to be gnats who would look for a five-man team just to take down a boss. 1 hero = 3 white minions, remember? The game has moved on from that, however, and our heroes are not taking out things much worse than that. At the same time a full team of heroes are struggling to just about barely take out the Clockwork King, a single hero is laughing in the face of Dr. Vahzilok. At the same time people are just getting to grips with the Sky Raiders and the overpowered Colonel Virgil Duray, people in Faultline are defeating Captain Castillo. And long before people are having to gather a team to challenge Nosferatu, people are beating up Nosferatu, Brukholder, Vandal, Maestro and Requiem solo.

I'd say let scaling difficulty take care of the "epic struggle" and let people lower their difficulty and try the TF alone. After all, what's so epic about a TF that doesn't even have an AV in it like Positron? Yet it will still not let you start it alone. What's so epic about beating up Countess Crey's fat bodyguard that requires seven people when I can take care of the countess herself just a few levels later? The only reason the TFs, especially the OLD TFs, are hard is because they've been artificially bumped up in difficulty.

I'm of the opinion that if any TF is doable by a single player if allowed to scale down, then that TF should be allowed to be done by a single player at the cost of forfeiting all TF rewards. Obviously, not all will be doable solo. I struggle to imagine how a single player could defeat Nictus Romulus even as an Elite Boss. At least, a player NOT power-built to solo AVs. Or take out the weakened Hamidon, for that matter.

I really don't see why we can't all get what they like. Those who want epic battles of many heroes squaring off against a greater evil can play the classic form of team TFs while those like me who don't find a group effort to be as interesting as a single hero standing up to a (scaled-down) greater evil can have their own fun. I mean, we added a whole Inventions system just to broaden the game's group appeal, did we not?