Talen Lee

Things like claiming Arcanaville was 'part of the problem,' for example, indicates a very polarising 'us vs them' mindset too. Claiming that players 'need tankers to gain XP' is another one. The constant claim of 'rodeo clown' is a problem. Plus, there's the whole ignoring numbers thing.

Like twenty seconds. How much faster should tankers be at killing red bosses?

'What would Rorchach do? He'd go in there and kick some [censored]!'
...
'Any last words?'
'Yeah, Rorschach sucks.'

But seriously folks.

QR

Johnny has said that he quite likes brute mechanics. What other AT can one-shot lieutenants without enhancements at level six?

<ul type="square">[*]All three of the newest powersets have been made available to scrappers, and are great for them. Edit: Forgot Pain Domination. So of the four newest powersets, scrappers have gotten access to three.[*]Weapon customization benefits the scrapper probably as much if not moreso than anyone else.[*]The last time a new zone introduced featured something that was actually difficult for scrappers was I10.[*]Scrappers who were already leading the pack in power benefit much more from the IO system being able to push themselves to pylon-soloing.[/list]None of this was released to buff the scrapper, but the scrapper has been part of all the major upgrades to the game and has not found itself sitting on the outside by comparison. Certainly not compared to the dominator (Cimerora [censored] over doms, no 'new' powersets since launch, IOs let them catch up to the middle of the road, for example). About the 'worst' thing I can hear said about scrappers is they don't have a lot of variety in their epics, which isn't really in my mind a massively pressing concern.

I'm a really big fan of the dark melee/ice armour combo, I'm just really meh about making yet another tanker, and if it went to brutes I imagine I'd be appropriately bored.

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oh man, I would roll an anything/Ice Stalker soo fast, Pendix's head would spin.

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It's fine for some sets to be better at different things, but when one set is at or near the bottom of every category, that set is gimp.

[/ QUOTE ]'Good at soloing' is a category. 'Good at teaming' is a different one. Whine all you want about it, but it's not like you roll a brute thinking 'I will definitely be able to help friends with this.'

Yeah and the markup sucks. You have to go into those Longbow department stores and search the speciality bins.

When weapon customization came out, scrappers were amongst those that benefitted the most. When power customization comes out, scrappers might not benefit so much. Dominators got literally nothing out of weapon customization, for example.

Scrappers have gotten a lot of attention lately, I think acting like they're somehow suffering is disingenuous.

Mutant is the redheaded stepchild origin. There are plenty of 'pure' origin groups out there, but Mutants vanish wholesale around level 20.

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Considering how few Tankers actually make it to 30, 40 and 50, compared to farm-friendly AT's,

[/ QUOTE ]Prove it.

Just so I'm sure we're on the same page, the 'problem' here that needs 'fixing' is 'I don't like and cannot spell Gauntlet'?

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That's awesome Talen, however how many people who are trying out a new AT are going to wait 38 levels (footstomp). Maybe 39-40 (footstomp fully slotted). Hell Shield Charge and Rage don't come into play till what mid-late 20's?

[/ QUOTE ]Foot stomp isn't how I wiped out bosses. It was Punch, haymaker, jab and knockout blow. The single target attacks. The ones you get at 1, 2, 10, and 20.

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Tanks are the only AT I've played that I don't feel their essence within the first 5-7 levels. That's a problem IMHO.

[/ QUOTE ]Can you provide a more airy-fairy outline of the problem? Because my tanks feel like they can take a pounding right out of the gates, and the fact their offense scales up is the same as for everyone else.

Again: Twenty seconds to chew through four +1 bosses. That's not a normal spawn for crying out loud. Do you know how many bosses you face doing normal missions? One per mission tops until you start dialling up the difficulty.

I fear that too many people have been spoiled by playing the high end game that they don't realise it's not what things are balanced around. I fear even more that when I make a point and ask a question, people blithely ignore it because it's inconvenient to try and say 'Yes, you should be defeating +1 bosses, without IOs, faster than twenty seconds each, because otherwise I won't feel Super.' It does sound a little silly.

It's effort : reward ratios that bother me. I like some of the arcs I've played. But the AE feature as a whole, is a hell of a lot of work for very little reward in my case.

The weird thing is, Mc, because you're repeating that in an odd colour, I'm finding it really easy to not read. O.o

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... you know, I had totally forgotten that?

[/ QUOTE ]I'm not really surprised. I have the effect that whenever I'm not in the room yelling at people they forget I exist. Possibly why I'm so blatantly acerbic.

The review thread was part of an effort to improve content on the AE. It's been stymied of late by a paucity of good stuff to review, or reviews that aren't too appropriate. But in the end, I don't think anyone can claim I haven't given the AE a fair shot, and I really don't think it's fair to tell me that I should have been enthusiastic about a feature that has lived up to my expectations.

Incidentally, I know it's kinda weird for me of all people to be pointing to the topic drift, but I think it's worth underscoring that this thread, from Ultimo, is about the idea of adding ranged attacks to tankers, which I'm against because it diminishes the distinction between ATs, because it gives more survivability to an AT that doesn't need it, because it's tricky to implement and because I can't see what the game really gains from it.

In this strand of topic drift, we're discussing JB's favourite bugaboo of 'Tankers Need Moar Damage' where he tries to rearrange the order of the words and hope we don't notice, which prompts me to remember something I did the last time this happened. I was playing my non-IO'd shield/ss tanker, in Crey's Folly, and thought I'd see how 'slowly' I defeated enemies. Not 'how much slower than a scrapper', but how much actual time it took me to kill things. With fairly standard slotting, no hasten, no recharge in attacks,

The normal tactic of this character is to leap into a +0 spawn and shield charge them and then kill the lieutenant that was still standing. Since getting Foot Stomp, it's become leap in, Foot Stomp, Shield Charge, one-shot the remaining lieutenant. I do this primarily because it's fun and it makes me giggle to watch a large pack of freaks drop all at once. However, that's not really all that clear - after all, shield charge takes time to recharge, so I can't do it every single spawn. I alternate by bashing faces of lone or paired bosses in the area. Plus 'the activation time of two attacks' isn't really meaningful data for this little curiosity of mine.

I waited until Rage was ready to go, then clicked it and closed in on the a trio of red (+1) freakshow tanks and just laid into them. Between that point and the crash of Rage, I killed all three bosses, killed one that had rezzed, and was halfway through killing the next that had rezzed. So in 90 seconds, that's 4.5 bosses. 20 seconds for a +1 boss.

How much faster do I have to be before it's good enough? Twenty [censored] seconds.

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... I could be wrong about this, but Talen, the short form of what you seem to be saying about AE is that you can't be bothered to sort through the Sturgeon effect to find the stuff you enjoy, and want somebody else to do it for you.

[/ QUOTE ]That would be why I have that review thread, why I have used it, and why I have sent you, yes you, personally, advice on improving your arc after holding it up for public scrutiny and attention.

I thought, when MA was hinted at, that it would be used to produce gigantic shovelfuls of [censored]. I was right. It failed to engage my enthusiasm then, and it fails to engage my enthusiasm now. I do not sit down, log on and go 'Whoopee, let's see what interesting things the AE has produced today.' I tremulously sift through a selected list others have offered to me, wondering which [censored] I can pick through to find the odd diamond these days, find nothing, and then despairingly acknowledge that since nobody wants to read a review thread full of me telling people they're terrible, put it down and don't bother for another day.

If the rating system was better, if there was a more useful barrier for entry, if there was some incentive to do well rather than just being popular, if I had some reason to have faith that the devs would select arcs that are even vaguely similar to my own tastes as 'good' arcs, if the system rewarded good storytelling and useful creative spin, then I imagine I'd not feel as justified in not forseeing it as a good thing. When you add the farming/exploiting/playerbase gravitating/increased incompetence effect it's had on the game, I do consider it a net loss to the overall game for my play experience.

What Pendix is passively noting is that I wrote the arc of which he speaks. And I absolutely had fun and I want to refine that same arc. I had a lot of fun even as I revelled in a function that I feel is probably a bad part of the AE - specifically, I was able to take a group that level ranged all over, exemp down to 25, and drag all them up to 25, and run a plot arc that was tailored for them. Useful tool, powerful tool, produces occasionally useful things and even more occasionally, enjoyable things.

But when AE was announced, and I'm sure Pendix can corroborate, my immediate reaction as not 'Oh wow, this will rule,' but rather was a more cynical 'Oh dear.' Same as with Little Big Planet.

Now, if you want to argue the betterment of the game as a whole, the betterment of other people's experiences, the usefulness to SGs, VGs, badgers, farmers, frustrated creatives and so on, sure, probably blows their doors off. But I'm not speaking for them. I can't.

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ah, as I was typing, I think I figured it out. The defender counts as a member of the 'team' even when solo. Therefore, a solo defender gets the discount when injured. It didn't work like this originally but it was changed.

[/ QUOTE ]That's news to me, and to all my defenders.

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I think we should keep gauntlet and get another inherent. Blasters get pseudo-mez protection and a damage buff, controllers get criticals holds and containment damage, so why not give tankers a second effect.

[/ QUOTE ]Because tankers don't need anything at all right now?

Mako's the least terribly written of the patrons. That passes for 'like.'

Heroside, they tend to just come across as highly self-satisfied douches with indistinct character voices and generic flavours of badass, so it's hard to say if I could really like any of them.

Wow. That was really nice of that guy.

Well, clearly, it's going to someone who appreciates it!

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I have that, "I want to be in your face beating the snot out of you and survive this" (or some random change for the ranged at's)

[/ QUOTE ]I would suggest you try out Mind/Fire, or Mind/Elec. Or, with I15, Mind/Energy.

I may possibly just suggest mind/ for everyone though.

On the other hand, I have 90 levels of tanker under my belt and only today did I consider taking taunt on either of 'em.

Ah, the infamous 'I can't hear you' technique, alongside 'I don't need to prove you wrong, others did!' Excellent stuff.

As far as Jack goes, I'm actually convinced Jack's not really as clever as he thinks he is, but I started playing back in I7. I never had to deal with him 'as a dev', I just got to read things he wrote in hindsight (like his guide to Defiance, which seemed to be exotically bad game design dressed up with raw excitement).

So, where was I? Oh, right. August survey came out, and I hoped it wasn't true because I figured all the things in it would be implemented badly. How dare I.