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Adeon Hawkwood

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  1. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dispari View Post
    If these new incarnate levels are intended to be end-game content that makes people not quit the game for lack of anything to do, I don't think it actually does that. It's neither a large amount of content (two trials that take less than an hour each), nor is a large amount of grind/advancement/leveling up. It takes less than a week to be "done" if you just run the trials.
    That depends on how often you run the trials. I've been doing them for a week and am nowhere near done. I'm working on three characters at the moment, all have an Uncommon Judgement and one has an Uncommon Interface. At this rate I predict that I20 will keep me busy for several months yet.
  2. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Futurias View Post
    So they *planned* for people to grind the trials so hard that they got their rares in three days?

    I was about to say they couldn't have thought that wouldn't happen... except that is probably exactly what happened. They didn't put a hard limit on the gathering of threads, thread components, Astral and Empyrian Merits, so people just kept going to get them.
    The devs aren't idiots. The experience during the open beta showed that most people could pick the trials up in a couple fo runs. If they had wanted to limit progression in terms of calendar time then they would have imposed some limits on our ability to acquire components in order to limit people to progressing at a rate they deemed proper. Now, I will admit that I am somewhat surprised that they didn't do this, my theory is that the devs decided that since only a small minority would get the progression faster than the limits the devs might set anyway reducing the impact of calendar based limits made it more appealing to the majority.

    In any case for whatever reason they decided to go for a playing time based approach where you'll need to do a certain amount of runs but spreading your runs out over a period of calendar days has a relatively small benefit (it does have some benefit in terms of using Empyrean Merits to get rares/very rares but not a huge one).

    Quote:
    Expect to see a large nerf at some point.
    Why? Reward nerfs in the past have always been focused on issues of rewards per unit play time. Yes, the time on the trials is coming down somewhat but the nature of the trials means that the time variation is pretty low compared to older content. It's also worth pointing out that since everything in BOP farming Incarnate Trials doesn't really impact the value of other people's rewards in the way that other forms of farming do. As such I really doubt that we'll see any direct nerfs.

    However *Puts on Conspiracy Theory Hat* we might see an indirect nerf to the value of Astral and Empyrean Merits. According to the devs we will eventually be able to use them for things other eventually. Now there are two reasons for that not to be included at launch. The first is that the items in question are not yet in game (a plausible theory) but the alternative is that thy want to see the rates at which people earn Astral and Empryean Merits before setting a value to them *Removes on Conspiracy Theory Hat*.
  3. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Futurias View Post
    So that sounds like Epic Fail on gating this through two trials and a whole new salvage type so that people couldn't just buy it.
    The purpose of the new salvage type is not solely to prevent people from just buying them on day 1 (although it does help with that). It also serves to allow the progress rate from the trials to be balanced independently of the progress rate from other content.
  4. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by _Zep_ View Post
    How many people here have tried to play a FF defender I wonder?
    I haven't, and I will never play one (or a Sonic, Thermal, Cold Dom or Kinetics) unless something like this is implemented (of course that still gives me Traps, Trick Arrow, Dark and Rad to play with).
  5. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Diggis View Post
    Yeah, it's a bit hard to judge from the Wiki and Mids as they only show the values (that I could find) not the name, which the rule of 5 applies to.
    I think adding the name to every set is probably not worth the effort. However, the wiki does have an explanation of how defense buffs are named which should help clarify it for the curious:
    http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Invent...efense_Bonuses

    EDIT: The other odd one is movement speed increases. Different sets have it implemented differently. Some sets have the "Movement Speed" set bonus while others apply three different set bonuses "Run Speed", "Flying Speed" and "Jumping Speed". Since they are different names you can stack them but conversly you cannot stack a set bonus using the second implementation with a set bonus form a set that buffs a single movement type.

    Example:
    http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Thunderstrike
    versus
    http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Siphon_Insight
    versus
    http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Stagger

    I think the wiki has the correct usage on the individual pages although the summary page uses "+Movement Speed" for both types.
  6. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    That's unfortunate, but to be blunt people constantly cancel for all sorts of reasons. There were people who canceled in the past that would have stuck around if this end game had shown up earlier. They were not more important than you, but you are not more important than them either. This change will cause some players to cancel, but it will cause other players to stick around longer or attract new players to the game.
    Precisely. Speaking for myself I canceled my sub after the Alpha slot was pulled from Going Rogue. There wasn't any malice on my part but I'd been getting somewhat bored with the game and the loss of the one feature in GR that I was really psyched about meant I didn't have any interest in playing at that time. I came back shortly before Issue 19, spent some time leveling characters and then when I19 came out I jumped into the Incarnate Content.
  7. Adeon Hawkwood
    Honestly I can't disagree with any of that. I try to use PocketD2 to form leagues whenever possible since it's normally pretty empty and avoids the annoying aspect of having to switch leagues in the RWZ.

    I do feel a bit sorry for the RPers about invading "their" zone so I try to minimize broadcast spam but frankly no matter what zone you do it in you're inconveniencing someone trying to do someone else. Forming in the RWZ causes problems for MS Raiders, forming in Cimeroria makes it harder for other people to put together an ITF. Studio 55 makes that zone laggier for players leveling up new characters. The Midnighter club has the least impact on other players but due to the small zone size isn't really practical for mass league formation.

    In any case, the next time you see someone complain about leagues forming in "their" zone suggest they go to this thread and encourage the devs to make a zone for forming leagues in:
    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=257531
  8. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gemini_2099 View Post
    A new end game system post Incarnate may require only level 50, but this heads right back to my point of devaluing the work players would have done with Incarnate.
    [rant]You know, I really don't get the idea that it "devalues" the efforts of players. Yes, it makes it easier for other people to get to where you (generic you) are at but that doesn't change your accomplishments. You were still able to do it the "hard" way and that is the true accomplishment. All that has changed for you is that you are now longer able to prove to other people that you did it before it was easy, but to be honest who cares? If the only reason that you did it was to be able to prove yourself "better" than other people then IMHO you need to reevaluate your priorities.[/rant]

    Quote:
    I am leaning towards there being a "gear reset", but maybe with an expansion?
    I think that if they do a second round of incarnate slots a "gear reset" of some type is inevitable, the question is how? WoW did it by raising the level cap which allowed for the introduction of new basic gear that was significantly better than existing gear (also raising the cap helped defuse complaints from people who's uber gear was now useless) but I don't see that working here. In addition to the various issues with raising the level cap simply raising the cap doesn't make the existing incarnate abilities worthless, after all a level shift is still a level shift.

    That leaves two options I can see:
    1. Make the existing slots trivial to get to T3 (say a week or two)
    2. Make the existing slots non-functional in the new content
  9. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gemini_2099 View Post
    Having new players join in on the current fun is important yes, but it may cause resentment with existing players who took the time and effort to grind it out.
    Oh definitely. Personally I would say that locking new players out of the content is worse for the game as a whole than upsetting existing players by "devaluing" their efforts.

    Quote:
    No easy answers to these dilemmas by any means.
    Indeed and I'm curious to see how the devs handle it.

    One thing that interested me was a comment Posi made about the possibility of introducing even more Incarnate slots after the first 10. If they do that I'll be interested to see how they handle what will pretty much have to be a "gear reset".

    They might be able to get away without doing any of this during the first 10 slots but if they try to make a second set of 10 that require you to be Omega slotted to even start doing the content I think it'll come crashing down.
  10. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gemini_2099 View Post
    Yes they can help out the new players, but in that process they may end up making these current two trials into ghost towns.
    My point was that when the next set of slots comes along they will likely have a new salvage type. As such the current trials will almost certainly become ghost towns anyway.

    At that point implementing a "side-step" system to aid new players/characters in gearing up makes a lot of sense.

    In other games with a progression system it's standard practice to increase the rewards obtainable from non-raid content whenever a new raid is released. This serves to allow new characters to get the gear they need to participate in the new content without relying on sympathy runs through the old content.
  11. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dispari View Post
    My only concern is that they'll ignore the player feedback about wanting another method of advancement, and just add more trials that require you to do the previous trials to do. So it will be a multi-tiered gated advancement system where you have to do multiple levels of things you don't want to do to get things you want.
    Well that is the general idea behind a progression system. If the new trials that will eventually come out are balanced around not having any of the current slots it'll be a snooze-fest for those who have them.

    I guess the devs could potentially simply disable the new powers int he next set of trials but that'll piss off a lot of people.
  12. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gemini_2099 View Post
    3. More level shifts ensures that future content will be gated at tiered levels.
    This one I don't think is particularly problematic. The only content that is likely to require more level shifts is the future trials. If you don't want to do trials than getting the level shift isn't going to hurt you and if you are doing the trials then the level shift is simple enough to get.

    My only concern is that when the next tier of trials come out it will be harder for a new player to "gear up". I can see several options for the devs to do that in the future (the easiest one being to add additional recipes for the current slots that use the Alpha slot shard costs and/or reduce the component costs).
  13. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by YippeeGo View Post
    Once the people dealing damage get their +3 levels, it should really only take one or two meleers and a defender/corruptor/controller of some sort, whether dark, storm, emp, pretty much anything.
    Indeed, but for now most people are still only at the +1 from the Alpha. The people who have already unlocked and slotted T3+s in the new slots are not yet the majority (give a few more weeks).
  14. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Yomo_Kimyata View Post
    On completion, I was awarded 40 merits (which I think is higher than normal) and the Positron's Ally badge, but no additional incarnate rewards.
    AFAIK 40 merits is standard for the old Positron TF (it used to be 66 but was nerfed due to people speeding it more frequently once it bacame a flashback).

    I'm pretty sure the WST bonus only applies to the Part 1 of the new Positron TF.
  15. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Fedor View Post
    I have been wondering why teams don't just cover those two sidewalks instead of the doors. It seems like two teams at that choke point and one team on the north sidewalk would work better than scattering to the doors.

    But then a lot of teams scattered to the doors gets the badge for no escapes a lot. So maybe it's not worth the risk.
    I've done it both ways. In the long run it doesn't seem to make a huge difference, most teams seems to get about 0-4 escapees regardless of the method used. I think the path choke point method is better but people in general seem to prefer camping the doors.

    I've run a few where I asked people to camp the paths, most of them worked out ok but one failed due to people on the south path ignoring repeated requests to move east, they were situated to the west of Voodoo's choke point and consequently missing quite a few. After that I started making more effort to explain the location of the southern choke point when I used it.

    I think the choke point method is marginally superior but probably not be enough to make it a huge concern.
  16. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by YippeeGo View Post
    I'm just wondering why it takes a whole team to take care of the bosses.
    Depending on the characters involved it doesn't necessarily take an entire team. BUT it does take most of a team. You have 6 bosses spawning every 30 seconds. I don't know about you but a lot of my characters would struggle to take down a +3 boss in that time frame .
  17. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Eva Destruction View Post
    There are people with t4s in all their new abilities already. I don't see how the raid path could be devalued any more than that.
    When I say "devaluing the team path" I mean "create a situation where it is more efficient for a team to do the solo path as a team than do the team path".

    As for the people already getting T4s, the system the devs implemented bases progression solely on the number of runs with real time gates being very limited. Empyrean Merits (the only time gated reward) are essentially a catch up mechanism for those who run trials less frequently rather than being the primary gate for the system. Now, it's possible to argue about whether the devs should have put more time gates into the team progression system but it cannot be argued that the team progress system is succeeding in it's goal of being the most efficient way for a team to progress.
  18. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Daemodand View Post
    Locking soloists out of the top-tiers of the system is a bad idea. Very bad.
    I disagree (obviously since I posted the original suggestion). This isn't because I hate soloers, it's because I think that from a development point of view it is impractical for the devs to implement a full team-based path and a full solo-based path without either significantly more resources than they have available (if they do it by adding in challenging solo-only content) or ending up in a situation where doing the 'solo' path on a team becomes faster and easier than the team path (if they do it by just reducing the shard costs).

    The compromise I suggested is to make the solo path as easy (or possibly even easier) than the team path but limit how far it can take you to prevent the situation where running the solo path on a team is the best option.

    I agree that the current solo path is a joke. The problem is that if you decrease the costs (I'm talking shard/thread costs, the inf costs I think were a bad idea anyway) enough to make it less of a joke for soloers it would significantly devalue the team path to the point where farming level 50 content on a team of 8 is likely to be faster and easier than doing the trials.
  19. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
    I've only seen that happen on one BAF I've ran.

    All the others (that had a team taking out the add ons) just said "a few take on the adds" so people from all teams could have someone taking on the add ons.
    Sure and as the knowledge percolates through the community it'll become more common for that. The thing is it shouldn't be necessary to do it that way. Organizing people by sub-team makes things a heck of a lot easier but if you do so then some people get screwed on rewards.

    A good example is the Gotta Keep 'Em Seperate Badge. You pretty much have to split into 3 groups which are out of mutual support range*. Doing it on a team by team basis is a lot easier to manage than trying to split people by name, especially if you want to try and distribute buff/debuff characters evenly.

    *(You could potentially do it as two teams and fight the adds at the AV but that makes things harder to balance team wise since Siege's adds are quite a bit nastier than NS's so the Siege team needs more firepower there but not so much that they outdamage the other AV team)
  20. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
    No. No they're not.

    The nice thing about FF's little bubbles are that the players can take the bubbles well away from the caster for 4 minutes. If you turn it into an AoE toggle, it's just a double for Dispersion Bubble. What's more, it INHIBITS larger teams, as players have to stay near the caster to enjoy the benefits.
    Just to clarify I believe his idea was a toggle that applies a 4 minute buff to any players within it (sort of like the bubble machine in the Terra Volta Respec Trial). This is theoretically possible within the limits of the power system.

    While I don't like the idea for other reasons (I think a click power is a more elegant solution) it does not have the drawbacks you are suggesting.
  21. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by xeaon View Post
    to bad my dev blaster is not on my main server anymore (moved him for room when xfer where free)
    Yeah, this is one of the few times I regret speccing out of Munitions Mastery on my AR/Dev.
  22. Adeon Hawkwood
    I've noticed a slight rise in the price of the popular mid-range Rare recipes (that is to say sets like Positon's Blast which an IO build will often slot multiple of) but I excpet that's mostly due to fewer TFs running (meaning fewer recipes being generated from merits) and a slight demand bump from the new issue.
  23. Adeon Hawkwood
    I posted this in one of the other solo/teamed argument threads but it kinda got lost in the whole argument so I figure I'll repost. It's talking about the solo path more than small team path but most of the comments would apply to both.

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Me
    As for the solo route, I do think they screwed up there but I think the screw-up was in adding it at all (or at least adding it in the current state). The following is pure conjecture on my part but here goes. I think that the original plan for the Incarnate system was to have no solo path at all beyond the T2 Alpha (or possibly, up to T2 for all the slots but no T3s/T4s). When the WST was released the huge uproar about it changed the plans to include the need for a solo option. However developing an actual solo option would require a lot of developer resources which were not available in the time frame for inclusion in I20 (and indeed adding it in the future would require cutting back on other content). The solution was to add a "buy it" path for soloers but do so in a way that made it unattractive to people doing the trials. Hence we end up with the lol-costs for rare and very-rare components/boosts.

    I think that was a poor choice on the part of the devs. Adding the current method is (IMHO) rather insulting to solo players. It basically implies that the devs don't care about giving them a solo path but at the same time want them to shut up about it. IMHO not having a solo path at all would have been... nicer. It would essentially say that the incarnate system is not for solo players rather than the current "sure you can solo the incarnate path" followed by maniacal laughter.

    Now what if I were in charge of it? I think I would take a middle road. First add in a few repeatable story arcs or missions (of Mender Ramiel style difficulty) which either provide Incarnate XP or even unlock the slots outright (I don't mind the IXP thing but I also don't think it really adds anything to the system). Next change the shard to thread conversion rate a bit (say 10 shards for 20 threads once a day). Finally I'd remove the ability to craft rare/very rare components from shards/threads.

    The idea would be to make it so that people who solo primarily or exclusively can get their slots opened much more easily (raiders get thier's unlocked essentially for free, I don't see why soloers should not). They can them get them slotted with T2 boosts in a moderately reasonable time frame (you'd need 320 shards which means it'll take some time but isn't completely unreasonable). Getting the T3 and T4 boosts however would require doing team content (either the WST for the Alpha or the Trials for the other slots).

    Would that be unfair to soloers? Somewhat, after all it's capping their advancement below what non-soloers get. On the other hand the advancement they can get becomes a lot easier.
  24. Adeon Hawkwood
    The Incanrate system as a whole (including the new trials) requires the purchase of Going Rogue.
  25. Adeon Hawkwood
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Angelic_EU View Post
    Lets use FF as an example. Currently, you need to select someone, click on, say, Deflection Shield, rooted, and wait for it to cast on your subject; then repeat again for the next one, and the next, and so on. But what we are saying here is to change Deflection Shield (along with other similar powers) into a toggle with a radius of however big. Whoever steps inside that toggle area (or I called it 'catchment area' above) will receive a Deflection Shield without the FFer needing to select that person, click, rooted and cast anymore.
    This I don't particularly care for. I think an AoE small bubble cast makes a lot more sense than changing the into a "duration toggle buff" (although I'll admit that the idea would be interesting).