Samuel_Tow

Setting Henchmen to either defensive or follow (I'm not sure which) will "disable" their brains for approximately 10 seconds, during which time they will not attack or respond to attackers and just follow you around. I suspect it was a feature to keep people from switching to and from Bodyguard all the time, since going Bodyguard disables your offence for a short amount of time.

Another point to consider is that henchmen employ two completely different sets of AI for in-combat and out-of-combat behaviour. In combat, they follow their ranged/melee AI's orders, obey Fear mechanics and sort of follow your orders. Out of combat, they revert to what looks like standard Hostage auto-follow and will ignore any effect that doesn't put them in combat mode. So for instance a Burn patch or a red crystal in combat will make Henchmen scatter like cockroaches, out of combat they will ignore the "avoid" effect and take damage like it's not even happening.

As well, getting NPCs "stuck" in ranged or melee mindsets is something present in conventional NPCs. For instance, low-grade Hellions will often stand back and fire their handguns repeatedly, but approaching them and causing them to hit you in melee will then force them to chase you and NOT use their handguns again. This is particularly useful for a Hovering character, who can Hover in melee range, wait for enemies to take a swing, then Hover back up and enemies will circle below him like wolves, but not actually DO anything because they want to use melee attacks but can't.

AI is a curious thing

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For the melee portion, you can sort of look at Energy Melee - it's almost exactly the same as the Tanker version, except that Assassin Strike is in place of Taunt, Whirling Hands switched places with Build Up, and Stun got pushed back for Placate (which replaced Whirling Hands).

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Generally, Scrapper-to-Stalker conversions change two things - Taunt becomes Placate and one AoE becomes an Assassin's Strike. Rearrangement of the powers in the set isn't really so much a factor of proliferation as it is a factor of AT power order, so that's a little more expected. Occasionally, like with Tanker-to-Brute Fiery Melee, an AoE might be replaced with a concentrated high-damage attack, suck as Combustion to Cremate (is Tanker Combustion the same as the Blaster version?), but since I'm not familiar with Ice Melee, I can't say what might suffer this fate.

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Why, is my question? >> We already have an Ice Melee set. It seems kind of silly to totally redo it when you have a fairly solid frame to work with.

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Last time I checked (which was a few years ago) Stalkers had guaranteed criticals even out of hide if attacking a target which was held or asleep. Giving them direct holds might, therefore, become problematic. Now, I'm not sure if they kept this when they gave Stalkers their sliding critical hit percentage out of hide, and if the held criticals are removed, that wouldn't be THAT much of a problem. What's more, Ninjutsu already has a fair amount of larger-scale control, so that doesn't seem out of place, other problems aside.

Those are power icons, though, the same as used on a bunch of powers already. Just because an icon is called something doesn't really mean it corresponds to the power by the same name. It's fairly public knowledge that the internal name of Devices on the developers' side is Gadgets and that Castle jumbled the external names of Shield Powers, but not the internal ones, leading to things like Deflection being called Battle Agility and Battle Agility called Active Defence internally. Or some such. I don't remember the exact jumble. The point is, what icons and powers are called server-side doesn't mean that that's what we get on our end.

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No more prolif. Keep each AT unique - or as unique as you can now. Everyone having the same thing is lame and reduces the desire to try various ATs.

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I HAVE no desire to play various ATs, but I would very much enjoy being able to play their powersets. I'm not enough of a fool to get suckered into playing an AT I don't enjoy. I've been burned by that enough in the past five years, so the net result is that I don't have access to parts of the game. Proliferating the sets to ATs I enjoy means I get, in essence, brand new powersets. To me, Battle Axe was new when it was proliferated as Dual Blades was when it was added to the game.

If the ONLY reason to play certain ATs is because they have powersets no others have, then that's a direct result of those ATs being terrible on their own rights and requiring that players be bribed and bought into playing them. Driving players into playing things they don't enjoy is an inferior practice to allowing players to play what they enjoy AND giving them what they want, within reason. I'm not going to play a Tanker. Ever. But that's OK, because I'm still not missing much of the game, as I can get most Tanker sets on a Brute. I didn't play a Tanker before CoV came out, and I would never have played one even if it hadn't.

The different ATs are unique enough on their own AT structure. Brutes and Scrappers share almost the same powersets in the same order - melee then defence. Ask anyone who plays them and they'll tell you the ATs play very much differently, even with the exact same sets and builds. That's difference enough. The nature of an AT is both integral to it, and it defines the AT itself, so is inseparable from it. Being able to shoot radiation, however, is in no way integral to being a Defender or a Corrupter. They are defined by WHAT they do, not HOW they do it. The same logic extends to all Proliferation.

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The only thing I've ever heard from any kind of official adress (I think it was that survey) was 10 extra slots possible over level 50, but you'd still be a level 50, with max 6 slots in each power, just 10 more of them in total, f.ex to six-slot your level 49 power.

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Technically, being able to 6-slot both your level 47 and level 49 power would require 10 slots between them, which is four more than the six slots we get from 47 to the end. That means that there could be, from how I see it, a maximum of four extra slots added to the game, either as a bulk drop of 7 slots at 50 or spread between 48 and 50. I'd call it 4 at 48, 6 at 50, though 7 slots in bulk DOES feel like something which would make 50 stand out a little more. Right now, hitting the level cap is... Anti-climactic. You get "one more level" and poof.

That's about as far as I envision this going, however, and that's more wishful thinking than any concrete information, as to the best of my knowledge, no developer has EVER commented on giving level 50 more slots.

Having icons for the powers doesn't mean the powers are made, balanced and have graphics attached to them, though. That's in the same vein as people looking for the Killing Crew from the 2001 CoH trailer to be somewhere in the game, when they never actually existed in anything but name.

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A bit of a tangent here, but I'm curious how epic sets work into Going Rogue. Can't exactly have a patron hero, can we?

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This and probably a hundred other questions are probably what's kept this concept off the table until now. Jack, if I remember correctly, actually vetoed this idea out of hand once upon a time. There are Epics/Patrons, SG affiliations, badges, contact trees and so on and so forth. I'd like to know, myself

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Ninjas/Forcefield or Traps is the way to go. Hell, even dark would work well. The defense on the pets isn't impressive, but it stacks up with defense that you get from your secondaries.

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Mine is Ninja/Storm (sort of a classical anime ninja-wizard) and I suspect the Genin's defence would stack well with Hurricane's to-hit debuff. It already seems to stack well Steamy Mist's defence buff, though I'm not sure if that doesn't suppress. It's hard to imagine how that would work on a mechanical level, though.

Other than that, I agree with your assessment on what the Ninja henchmen are.

Epics are actually another thing I've wanted to see more of for years. That's not an exaggeration. We got the Epics we have now in I2. That's sometime around mid 2004. It's 2009 now and we have not seen a SINGLE extra Epic pool, period. We got a few more powers in existing pools, which I think was GREAT! But the fact remains that Scrappers still only have three and Blasters still lack Psi Mastery, among other things.

And that's not even looking at villains, who don't have generic Epics AT ALL.

Oh, come now. You went to such lengths as to invent Poisoned Caltrops and you didn't include the Flashbang Grenade? It's already in the game, as used by Mercenaries Spec Ops and PPD Ghosts (though the effects of either are different). I'd also probably go for some kind of longer-ranged stun gun as a single-target hold, myself. We need more of those.

Unfortunately, I don't have a good enough understanding of Control sets structure to comment on power balance and you haven't included any numbers to work with (not that it's very important, though), so I can't really approve or disapprove of the set's structure. I WILL agree with the thematic, of course, as I fully agree that a Devices Control set would be really, really cool. As a matter of fact, the game has enough powers in it to cobble one together, so that's a very justified call.

I've seen that suggestion before, and while I can't say I don't see where you're coming from, you're still running against two very serious problems.

One is that more slots make slotting trivial. If you could just 6-slot (ore 12-slot or whatever) all of your powers, why even have to choose what to slot in the first place? Secondly, I'm not sure what your friend did with his character, but I can easily say that, at least for powers with multiple aspects, going above 6 slots would be a serious balance issue. Most often people have to choose between slotting for damage, for recharge, for accuracy or for endurance reduction, and they strike a balance somewhere between. If you could simply 3-slot for everything and still have room for secondary effects... What's the point? And that's not even getting into the whole other issue of Set Inventions.

Secondly, Castle has said in no uncertain terms that even if more levels were ever so much as considered, two things players would NOT get are more powers and more slots. He said that when he asked a player insisting on a level cap increase what the point would be if those two things weren't included. So pretty much right there, this becomes unworkable.

And your avatar looks more like a Tasmanian Devil to me.

Funny, a Moderator has already been notified. Why does it always say that when I click Report?

Also: Quick Reply addressed to the thread's very existence.

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But looking at Issue 15, there's no mention of Proliferation...

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Is there a mention of ANYTHING other than new faces? I haven't heard anything about I15, other than that it might go on Test somewhere within the next month. What do we know about it?

That said, yes, I do agree with more powerset proliferation. I'd really like to see Blasters get Rad or Dark, as well as Scrappers get Axe and Mace. Among other things, of course. Definitely time for more proliferation. Come on, guys, it's the next best thing to new powersets

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When the power was first implemented, it sometimes caused debt. That was a glitch, and the devs admitted it and fixed it.

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That must have been one of the things BABs was talking about when he was addressing it. I think it had to do with being killed when you were already dead, or your death being attributed to enemies or some such. They did work to fix that.

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And then Smoke Flash? Pffft... Genin waste it with sub-par damage, Jounin are already IN Stealth, and the Oni is best used for Control, so it's wasted for them.

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But... Most of the Oni's powers are attacks. Fire Breath, Fire Blast, two Fire Sword attacks and Rain of Fire, to all of two controls, both of them coming with later upgrades. Isn't that like wanting to use the Spec Ops for control when their powerful Flashbang Grenades and Tear Gas Grenades each have a recharge of, like, four minutes? Say, the Lich I can see using for control, with more than half his powers being that, but the Oni?

As for the Jouning, yes he's always cloaked, but he's not doing criticals all the time, is he? I thought his stealth was identical to the Spec Ops version, where they'd just be invisible but not actually get damage benefits out of it. Red Tomax's City of Data is showing a MySQL error, so I can't get consistent stats on their Hide.

As for the Genin, the Shuriken are pretty weak attacks. Yes, I agree, they're squishy, but isn't that what your secondary is for? Their melee attacks are drastically superior to their Shuriken, at least they were last time I played mine. Plus, they have a melee AI, theoretically the same as the Jounin. They're not ranged henchmen like Soldiers or Droids, they're melee henchmen like Zombies. And they're not actually defenceless. They have SOME amount of defence to their name. I want to say 5%, but City of Data is showing a MySQL error and I can't run the game from work.

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In my experience, I clear all the mobs around her, trying to avoid her aggro if possible, and then load up on lots of purples. Then she's manageable.

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Biggest problem there is that at the level you are when you face her, you will run out of inspirations way too fast. In addition to purples, you will need breakfrees for that KB from her hurricane, and yellows for the - to hit...etc.

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In my experience, if you NEED status protection, you're on an AT that has it. If you're on an AT that doesn't have it, you can just shoot from outside of her Hurricane. She doesn't approach to melee range if you don't approach. It also depends on your AT, but if you're on a damage-heavy AT, then four purples are pretty much all you need to defeat her. Take them in and start hitting. Chances are, you'll be done before they drop, or at least will be most of the way there.

I've found her annoying, though never really unbeatably hard.

Now, Silver Mantis... That's a fine kettle of fish. Between stupid amounts of damage that punch clean through Defence sets, a lot of resistances, a self heal and frikkin' Unstoppable! That's a much bigger pain as there isn't as straightforward a solution to her. I'm not sure she has her Unstoppable in the 20s, but I AM sure she has all her damage and all her resistances.

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I'm pretty sure that Self Destruct is SUPPOSED to give you debt.
Are you sure that your patrol xp isn't just absorbing that?

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Positive. I'd incurred debt shortly before and worked it off. Slacked off while fighting and watching TV at the same time... As well, I'm more than positive it's not supposed to give debt. I suspect it was done to make people not afraid to use it.

That's a pretty odd way to look at your Mastermind, Sigium. The Genin are melee henchmen, so expecting them to stay out of melee and fire is pretty much opposite to the intended purpose of the changes, and I'm not sure about the Oni as my Ninja Mastermind doesn't have access to him yet, but I'd say I very much prefer him to use his attacks rather than holds and Rain of Fire.

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No, I mean the character. I put everything into the zombies, and her healing. I had formerly put the leadership pool on her but that stank and drained end like crazy, so I gave that up. I suspect with more *practice* she'd be a very workable character, but meh, I'm just not always into summoning Twitterpated, Diddlysquat, Boogiedeboogie and the rest...

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What made Masterminds workable for me was the system of binds I made to control them. The Henchman AI is pretty dumb, but with just a few keybinds, they're actually pretty easy to control. One of the really cool things I like to do on my Mercs/Traps Mastermind is set up a minefield, then pull with my Spec Ops So who cares if I get return fire? He's expendable

As for playability, I refuse to play anything support. Yes, people may be able to solo anything under the sun, but I don't care if they can get to 50 using just Brawl and Sprint, it doesn't change the fact that Defenders, Controllers and even Tankers deal so little damage that they move at a snail's pace. Plus, I have a REALLY big problem with powers that require an ally to use. Allies are unreliable and teaming with random strangers is rarely interesting, I'm afraid.

Luckily, though, I still have access to almost all kinds of powersets even keeping to ATs that can solo. Between Scrappers, Brutes and Stalkers, I get access to all Melee and Defence powersets in the game, I get Summons and Support from Masterminds and I get Blast and Support sets from Blasters. If Castle delivers on Dominators and makes them playable to me (hard to imagine, but I'm keeping an open mind), I'll get access to Control and Assault sets, pretty much giving me access to the whole game.

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I thought Self Destruct applied Debt when used?
I seem to remember BABs ranting about once you activate self destruct you're dead with all the benefits and penalties associated with it.

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I can attest that it does not. What BABs meant was that you were technically dead and shouldn't be able to be "killed" afterwards. Something about being able to awaken while the power was ticking down, as well. I don't remember fully, but I know that when I blew up, I didn't incur any debt.

Never really had a use for the power, though. I'm not sure if I have a single true robot to do that to

People were making very, very disproportionately rewarding missions in the Mission Architect, so the Developers have taken to taking down the missions, holding the creators to task and, sometimes, even removing rewards gained from them from those who abused them the most.

Yeah, but I just don't have enough to do that for all four labs. I do try to hit as many defence buffs as I an before I do that, though. My SR characters have the best rate of success

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I just want to see this play out in your heroes mind:
"Ah, dang it. I think that lab gas is making me sick... Well, time to blow myself up".

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Think of it more like a cold restart

This is going to be fairly simple. All those among you who have a habit of gambling on Blue Labs lab equipment know that, while the buffs are great, the debuffs can be crippling. For me, the -recovery debuff is specifically bad, because I don't have Stamina on most of my characters, which means it makes my recovery 0. Granted, buffs last 5 minutes and debuffs 3, but it still sucks pretty much not being able to fight without raiding my entire stash of blues for three minutes.

But we can't get rid of buffs, can we? I mean, the only way for you to lose a click buff is to die, and that incurs debt, plus for an Invulnerability Scrapper, it's also not very easy to achieve against smaller spawns. Then it occurred to me: Self Destruct! This power kills me without giving me any debt, it does so in just 10 seconds AND, through whatever bug they decided to leave in there, I can Awaken from it, clean of all dastardly effects. Sure, it costs me an Awaken and it did cost me an accuracy buff and a regeneration buff, but none of those were particularly valuable.

Of course, I've spent more than three minutes typing this post, so that makes me more than a bit of a fool, but let's call this the exception. So, do you think this idea is stupid or ingenious? I'd really like to know

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An option to set your character's weight so significant sounds can be set to a particular weight. This would make heavy characters sound and feel heavy.

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I've suggested sound customization several times before, and it SEEMS like a simple addition, but standard code rant obviously applies. Still, I've always wanted to customize what my footsteps sound like, what my grunts sound like, what my landings sound like and even what sounds I make when I run or when I'm idle (currently, nothing) to emulate the various silent auras we get as costume pieces IF WE CHOOSE TO.

I have an extremely heavy character, for instance, who would be perfect with the same booming footsteps as Robotics Mastermind robots and some kind of explosion when he lands.