Agent White
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Well, I think there are degrees to it. The original arcs treated you as new to the City, not new to life. And that's sort of the problem is that it's treating you as a different degree of 'new', where before it was vague enough that sure, you could be a 4,000 year old deity exiled to this plane that has to regrow his power or a 16 year old that just realized their mutant powers. It didn't really matter what your backstory was, you were now arriving in Paragon City and they were introducing you to the place.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
I am inclined to agree.
I'm getting a sense of "But....my character wouldn't DO that!" .........as though the game can tell what your character would or wouldn't do. Again, the beginning arcs are told from the assumption that your character is a brand new just-registered hero. Your first taste of action was the disaster in Galaxy City, and you're entering Atlas Park as an inexperienced newbie.
It's an MMO, and it kind of has to be pretty much the same for everyone. If they spent the time to ensure that the beginning story arcs fit each and every possible character created in the game, well, it would be years before we saw even a single new story arc released. (And people would STILL complain that there wasn't an option appropriate to their character)
I really don't see what the big deal is about the beginning arcs being gone. They were badly written, and introduced you to the "run over here and click on this guy, then run back and go somewhere else" mechanic that the game was designed on originally.
How many variations of "go beat up some Hellions" do you really NEED to get you from 1-5?
Also, don't forget that the new beginning of the game is designed for people who will only have 2 characters to run through it, unless they pony up some cash for more character slots. They aren't going to be running 30 different brand new characters through it.
The new intro really pidgeon holes you. You are, for whatever reason, some random nobody that was hanging out in Galaxy City when the meteors struck and you have to get out, in the process receiving super powers from a fallen hero, either by contact helping him or stealing them yourself. And then the rest of the introduction arcs treat you as the fresh faced youngster looking to prove themselves.
For all the ills of the original contacts and intro missions/tutorials, they were intentionally vague enough to allow for any kind of hero or villain to enter the scene. The new stuff really doesn't do that, it pegs you as a human (try playing a bot or something from the animal pack) and new to the world. Something like a 4,000 year old ex-deity can still be 'new to heroing', not 'new to life'.
Then again we can always still just start a Praetorian, which honestly has the better tutorial right now, even if Praetoria is a ghost town. -
hm, well looking at Dispari's incarnate guide:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=257011
It looks like the power's stats are the same across the abilities, the Tier differences are purely whether the buff pets can attack or are invulnerable.
As for comparing the different pets, at least for the 4 she lists, 2 share the same power (shield generator) that provides +5 to everything, but like the Clockwork mender's Field Projector gives +7.5 to everything but psionic, while the Seers have the +DMG and Tohit on top (and lasts 30 seconds). So, yeah buff pets definitely look very different from each other -
Doesn't answer all of your questions but:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Lore_Slot_Abilities
If you click the name of the specific ability like so:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Longbo..._Superior_Ally
It shows you what powers they have. Looking at it, no, buff pets have wildly different buffs. In fact, the Warden essence seems to only have heals, whereas like the Carnival Seneschal has Forge for DMG and +To Hit. No hard numbers though I'm afraid. -
I don't really buy 'it's good, so there's nothing interesting to do there', since we are talking about a story setting with dimension hopping. We've got Cimerora being invaded by the 5th Column, and the Rikti poking their noses into other potentially dangerous dimensions.
Not really sure why we couldn't see a mission set into stopping something in a dimension that hasn't been conquered by a villain group. 'good' doesn't have to mean completely peaceful and pacified. just where one of the 'hero' groups has the majority.
Then again, we do have Grym, from a 'Furry' or at least more 'Fantasy' based universe, so, i guess that can slightly count, not that we're probably ever going to be visiting it. -
Ok so my character furthest along has hit 40 and I'm starting into a lot of the portal corp missions and what not and we've got Praetoria knocking on Paragon's door and all that and so it got me thinking.
Are there any *good* alternate universes? So far all the ones I've seen or heard of are horrible. There's the council world, the 5th column world, the Devouring Earth world, the Psychic Clockwork King world, the Rikti world, the Circle of Thorns world, Praetoria, etc.
How come we haven't run into any alternate worlds where like, Freedom Corps took off in the right direction and the world is peaceful? Or the Freedom Phalanx snuffed out the last big bad. Or even a normal non-super world?
And then there's alternate timelines, like Recluse's Victory >> -
Yeah I wouldn't have a problem with a modicum of 'crossover' thematically since, as you said, the villains and heroes do theirs differently.
I'd be more partial to Sister Psyche as a Patron than Numina though, but I just prefer psychics to ghosts
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Quote:Well over the course of just making one ability you'll make a few different versions of it, if you build toward a very rare, since they consume a pair of Rare abilities.Originally Posted by thgebull0425
My apologies Ninus, I must have missed that part when I read through, but after you pointed it out, I do recall seeing that. My bad.
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Quote:Either glossed over (Ex: they got most of them out), left as a dangling thread, or something an author might pick up for a future arc.Originally Posted by Desi_Nova
But wasn't Galaxy City Destroyed? so What happened to the vault?
Personally I'm kind of interested in seeing if anything will be done with Galaxy besides making it a rare mission instance. -
Didn't they say explicitly he made it as a 'testament to his love' for Dominatrix? So, yah, kind of a no-brainer there.
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Yeah this debate comes up every couple weeks. Lots of ideas and lots of things people like to call 'answers' buuuut really all just speculation and suggestions since the devs never weigh in.
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Quote:Yes, still in testing. No changes for a couple weeks, I think. No ETA on release for eitherOriginally Posted by Ultimus
So are these trials still in testing? Have any changes been made since then?
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Quote:Perma-PA isn't feasible with just SOs. But you don't *need* perma PA to be strong. You won't be solo'ing AVs/Gms, but you'll do very well anyway. Ill/rad is a very strong combination for both solo play and team play. And between Accelerated Metabolism and Hasten, you won't have to wait that long between PA's 'uptime' anyway.Originally Posted by Subject87
Would that be feasable with just SO's though? I'm looking for something that will be good on SO's, not the best.. Just good enough to work.
Solo, you can go invisible (100% stealth at that) and pick off enemies by confusing them, then locking down the rest and taking them out via containment, saving Phantom Army for Bosses. You've got the trifecta of debuffs that will drop an enemies Resistance, Defense, Regen and others. Phantasm is a solid tier 9 pet that deals energy damage (most of your damage is Psychic)
Teams, you have a whole tool box of things to play with. A very nice PBAoE heal, one of the single best PBAoE team buffs with Accelerated Metabolism, you've still got all the lovely debuffs for taking down AVs with the team, soft control with Spectral Terror (fear) and 3 separate PBAoE holds (one an aura).
It's very survivable and *very* much a tool box set. -
Quote:That was sort of the problem they ran into with underground. The length and amount of mobs was obviously designed with the intent of dumping masses of iXP onto players, but the difficulty was designed with level shifts in mind so you only want to do it after you've unlocked the necessary slots.Originally Posted by Katie V
I don't see this as a good thing. If they keep with the current trend of making successive trials harder, people will want to bring their low-level incarnates on these high-payout trials, but without enough incarnate powers and level shifts, they won't be able to contribute much. There's only so much dead weight a league can carry, and I expect PUG runs will have a high failure rate, while non-PUG leagues will have fairly strict requirements for joining.
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Works for me. Though I was fine with the super packs.
Now to make way for the people with the pitchforks and torches about the elemental order costume pieces
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Quote:fixed that for you.Originally Posted by Black_Assassin
And it turns seeds of confusion into a bigger monster
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Quote:Do the leader boards even work? Of the... I think 3 times I've ever checked them they never listed any info.Originally Posted by Kitsune9tails
Not to mention that we have Info Booths all over Paragon that do basically nothing but show Leaderboards that I'm not sure anyone cares about. Please correct me if you care.
It also seems like many of the stores, trainers, and other npcs could be given info on Lore appropriate to their location, purpose and history.
But yah, that'd work. We've already got the Hazard agents (or whatever they're called. The NPCs right at the start of hazard zones that detail level, lore and NPC groups). Seems like we could just populate more of them for different purposes. -
Quote:I would and I wouldn't. The task force just throws *so many* missions at you, and when you're stuck fighting a group where 1-4 of the hardest enemies instantly resurrect *per mob* then it just adds a significant time drag, especially if it becomes a kill all. To be fair a number of the Psyche missions are 'kill the boss' so we could have stealthed and/or teleported and made those missions faster, but even so I don't think you should have to do that to get a *reasonable* time involved. A reasonable time in a run should be a standard run through it, with speed runs actually making it speedy. As it is, even if we had speed run the entire thing it still probably would have taken us a solid 2 hours.Originally Posted by Lothic
Well the difference between Mortimer Kal and the original Posi is a least 6 or 7 years between when they were made. Same could be said for the Sister Psyche TF so clearly the newer ones have many improvements.
But the self-res power of the Freakshow is just a quality that actually makes them a little bit challenging. I wouldn't consider it a specific "failure" of the Sister Psyche TF just because there's a bunch of Freakshow in it.
I'm not opposed to the freakshow self rez (though I do wish there was something you could do to prevent it that didn't involve specific power sets) But I would say I'm opposed to a task force length that doesn't seem to take that into account. It needs to be either broken up or missions cut down or, ideally, both. -
I don't mind cut scenes so long as they're not overly long and somewhat entertaining. Something like the SSAs would be pretty unreasonable, too much chatting.
Actually, stupid question, what's really preventing the devs from sticking more of the lore onto talkable NPCs like Prometheus? You can go chat him up for lots of info on the trials before and after you run them. How come there aren't other lore NPCs that can info dump on you completely optionally? -
Yeah I feel very fortunate I got pulled into a Mortimer Kal as the first 'force I've ever been involved with. It's a really good one. I think if I'd joined the Sister Psyche TF as my first I'd be much more hesitant to attempt any more after that.
Then again, I think another part that just made the Sister Psyche TF all the more excruciating was the fact it throws so many Freakshow at you and sooo many of them can auto revive. It's kind of a massive ***** being in the middle of a huge spawn and taking out the tanks only to have them get right back up as soon as you drop them. -
Minds of Mayhem was never intended to be released with 21.5. TPN was held back to prevent it from being another Underground that no one wants to run.
As far as we've been told, Issue 22 is supposed to have it's own iTrial coming out, so both TPN and MoM should be coming out between now and then. -
The 'rest of the issue' is pretty much the trial. They're still tweaking it before putting it out so it isn't another Underground. But all the other features intended for 21.5 went live.
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Ok, this is going to be a bit of a broad statement because I still have only played about half of the Signature TFs at this point, plus I'm still a very new player to the game. But by point of chance I've managed to jump into a few different pick up groups for the Citadel, Sister Psyche, and Positron signature task forces. My only other 'force' experience thus far is Mortimer Kal villainside.
I've just got to say, it's horrendously startling and very easy to see the extreme differences between the old content and new content.
Mortimer Kal and Positron are fun, actually very fun. Kal only takes a bit under an hour, as does each part of Positron's. The missions are all varied and have different things to do in them, the cut scenes are pretty neat (and fairly quick) and most of the fights aren't that bad. Oh and the reward for Kal is buckoo, it's really cool getting a nice stat bump til 50 and a slight head start on Incarnate content.
And then there's Citadel and Sister Psyche. Citadel really isn't *that* bad, at least for length it's pretty decent. In fact I had a wonderful team for it so it was fairly enjoyable, which was great being my first signature task force encountered. But it's really just the same mission repeated again and again and again, most of the time it's a kill all, sometimes it's just 'kill base leader and guards'. But it is still way way way too many times.
Psyche, on the other hand, was grueling. I know in part that was because our group shifted around a bit, we went from 6 to 5 to 6 to 5 over the course of it, but it still took us four hours long. It had a little more variety than Citadel's, but kind of suffered from the same just 'slog' kind of feel, so many clear alls or 'huge map, hunt the glowie'. Some go kinda quick... most of them didn't ;9 By the end we tried to speed through the end of it, stealthing and team teleporting past what we could. It just wasn't that pleasant and just took entirely too long, even a speedier run would've felt like it was dragging.
I've only heard horror stories about the old Positron TF of old, but witnessing the newer version first hand I just have to say... why haven't you done this to the others?! Again I can't really speak for the other task and strike forces, signature or otherwise, but it's just really.. bad to keep these aging, un-fun relics just hanging around polluting the game. They're not really challenging, they're just boring, repetitive, and tedious. I mean aren't the signature task forces supposed to be like, the show case task forces? That's why they use the big important signature characters.
Actually that brings up one point I was kind of curious about. Why is it the signature task forces don't actually involve the signature characters? Citadel's at least involved a plot to use his own plans but otherwise he wasn't involved. I'm not even really sure why Positron or Sister Psyche's related to them. It just seems like if you're going to trump up that these are the Signature Taskforces handed out by the Signature characters... maybe it should involve them more directly? Just being a contact makes them nothing but cookie cutter stand outs.
I guess at least one will be changing if one of the 7 Task Force contacts bites it in Who Will Die, but it seems like more of them need a look. -
Quote:oh gods that's right it was 15. I think I blocked it from my memory. Dead simple though. I had a phantasm pretty much just wipe out every mob, with Phantom Army up when I could to make it go 'faster'.Originally Posted by EricHough
Defend the Henges is 15 minutes. The only reason its not bad is the enemies come in evenly spaced waves and always enter the fenced in area at the same point - so setting up to ambush them is fairly easy. Its just long and boring.
The stop 30 firbolg is easy enough if you run it solo at base settings and instead of waiting for the firbolg to come running to the exit, you just start killing them all in a circle radiating out from the portal in the far corner. Some will escape but if you can kill them fast enough you will generally clear the map before you fail (thats why you don't want to run it at anything higher than +0/x1 - the more mobs on the map, the longer it will take you to clear). Mind you, that just means its an obnoxiously large kill all and is one of the few missions I auto-complete on all my characters, where I am willing to do the defend the hedge.
And ya, just a very obnoxious kill all. Again, it really lends itself to AoE or just folks that can kill speedily. I will never do it again XP
Luckily, I'm happy to say the Devs have shown they're better than those old tricks (Tho, I wish they'd just revamp them >>) but still I don't see Dark Astoria resembling those missions.
Which really just means it's going to have lots of ambushes :P -
Quote:Yeah, we know they're not afraid to dip into the animal pack for NPCs, s'how we got Grym afterall. Though, I'm kind of expecting the Shining Stars to show up in more future content too.Originally Posted by Rabid_M
I'd like to actually see that trio turn up in something. These are three "blank slates" that the Devs can work with, a small super team with a clear theme that we could run into from time to time.
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Quote:Defend the Henges isn't too bad, in fact it's completely solo-able but it's just *long*, i think it's 5 minutes? could be shaved down a minute or two.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
Doesn't scale well to team sizes or high difficulty settings. We had a defend objective mission in Terra Volta. People complained that it was too hard. They made it easier. People complained that it's boring. We have two in Croatoa. People complain that the Stop 30 Firbolg mission is too hard. I'm not sure if anyone complains about the "Defend the Henges" mission.
The Stop 30 Firbolg mission is just a godsdamn pain, I attempted it with a friend and... it just takes too long and it's too easy to fail because there are just. so. many. You either need to do it with a team or ATs with power sets that do a lot of AoE, or a tanker, to get them to aggro on you. A couple ST heavy ATs cannot do it reasonably. :P It's probably one of the few missions that should it come up I will simply hit auto-complete. Doing it once was more than enough.