ahaha

these skirts are so tight that they tear when we sit down!

http://img224.imageshack.us/img224/6...rnskirtrg7.jpg

My wife and I have some duos with coordinated costumes, names, and power themes.

Then we have toons that we run solo and never group, for whatever reason.

Then we have toons that we team out of convenience -- not designed as a duo, but we end up playing them together for most of the time.

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I dont get it . How resisting blows is related to Super Reflexes ? While that solution could make the powerset better , i really dont see how that is making sense .

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Easy: dodge and get mostly out of the way, getting grazed by the bullet. Roll with the punches. Leap and make it most of the way out of the explosion.

To respond to some of the other points about superspeed and lacking mezz resistance, let us not forget some of the current changes in the pipe (emphasis mine):

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Improved Stone Armor/Granite Armor Mez resistance.

Stone Armor/Granite movement speed penalty was slightly reduced and its Endurance cost was reduced. Cannot be active at the same time as other Armors in this set, Super Speed, Sprint, Hover, Fly, or Group Fly. Slightly increased recharge time.

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Rock Armor for some +def lethal/smash (inferior to +res)

And someone else mentioned this... and I'm not trying to troll or flame or anything but I was under the impression Defense was better than Resistance, Defense results in no damage at all while resistance is just less damage... am i wrong?

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It depends on your assumptions.

Def is also better in the sense that it affects mixed damage attacks (so smash/lethal def works against all attacks with a smash/lethal component, so if the attack misses, there is no damage from either component) whereas Res reduces damage for only the one component (so you will take full damage from the other component, assuming you have no Res for it).

But I think the main diff has to do with who you are fighting. If you are fighting mobs who are way higher level than you, then it may well be that Res will be better for your than Def. If you have +Def, it may not make much difference, because the mob accuracy is so good, but +Res will always apply.

So which is better really depends on a lot of things.

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Stone Tank
- Has to stand still for the whole fight

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This is not right either.

At low/mid levels, not all mob groups are full of mezzers. You only have to root until the mezzers are down.

I very much do not want to have some other defense be compromised in order to be mobile before we get Granite Armor.

If you think we are already not as effective as Invuln, then I don't know why you would want to further compromise our defensive powers. Statesman already said that the devs consider immobility a play balance issue, and that can be seen in the changes to Invuln (yes they got mobile status res, but they had to sacrifice things for it). Therefore, asking for mobile rooted is asking for a nerf of our other defenses. I far prefer to be differentiated from the other Tanker sets by having a full mezz resist at lower levels, even if we are rooted. It is something that must be worked around, sure, but it is not a critical weakness <32.

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As jvbrown mentioned, a very short range AoE wouldn’t be bad, as you more or less have some measure of control as to what is directly around you.

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The goal is to make holding aggro easier, and a very short range AoE Provoke will not be of any significant benefit. That should be obvious: if the goal is to affect mobs, then the goal is furthered by affecting more mobs, not less--precisely the opposite of having a smaller AoE.

There are two obvious solutions, to me, if all Tankers must have similar magnitudes for the auto-Provoke effect:

First, one can make it not mandatory. As an SS Tanker, this is already an option for me, without any changes to anything. As everyone knows, boxing as good as, if not better than, jab anyway, so one can just get and use boxing. Boxing is pool and won't have the auto-Provoke just as it does not have the auto-Taunt. But, of course, this is not a good solution for all Tanker builds. However, a decision could be made to just make some Tanker attacks Provoke and others not.

Another possibility is to make the Provoke effect less like Provoke and work only for _holding_ aggro and not _obtaining_ aggro. For example, one might say that any mob in the AoE has any non-null aggro magnitude towards the Tank increased. Then, the aggro management effect would allow Tankers to hang onto aggro despite AoE attacks but it would not pull in any more mobs than what we get now.

In any case, I feel that a larger area effect, not smaller, is necessary. I can understand the concern that younger Tankers are too fragile for it, but I believe the solution must lie somewhere other than shrinking the area of effect for all Tankers.

You have some very good points in your post

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Statesman went into an interview not to log ago

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I would love to read a transcript or something -- do you have a URL?

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MMOG's are an entirely different arena. for some reason balance is key in this situation at all stages of the game. Unbalanced situations lead to an overwhelming number of one type of power or class. This is even visible on these forums through everyone's talk about "Flavors of the Month".

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I do not think this truly has anything to do with MMOG. It is true in pencil & paper games, too, honestly. There are always people around trying to game the system, and the ones who try to do so will inevitably be drawn to the currently perceived best thing. It exists even in business, where we call it "best practices."

I think it is less aparent in many pencil & paper games for many reasons. Probably foremost because the GM can always "fix" things by fiat and that cannot be done in an MMOG. But, also the wider community is not always as developed as an Internet based game. Nevertheless, you can easily find examples. Just one for example, the nerfing of the D&D monk in 3.5: http://tinyurl.com/4pqg5

I certainly understand and respect the view that one cannot really compare an online game to a tabletop game. No one seriously considers the fact that chess knights are gimped compared to queens to be a real problem.

However, I do not know if it so much an issue with the game as it is with the players. There are "powerlevelers" in pencil & paper games too, we just don't call them that. We say that they are "powergamers" or "munchkins," or are playing "Monty Hall" games, or whatever. If it is the case that it has more to do with the players than the actual game itself, then the problem cannot be addressed in terms of game balance. That is, if the game world (be it a pencil & paper campaign world or the server world) is populated by powerlevelers, they are going to be dominated by the FOTM folks. If it is dominated by role players, then you will see something totally different happen. That is true regardless of the actual AT balance in the game. Nothing is ever completely balanced, so the FOTM folks will always find the one that is just a tiny bit better and glom onto that. RPers don't care who is most powerful, they will go to the one with the best RP potential.

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How do you create a balanced world where all types of players can co-exist?

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It is a basic tenet of business that one has to identify the market one is trying to serve, because it is impossible to serve everyone. That is not a flaw, it is just reality. Different people want different things, and so they require different things.

A mission cannot be simultaneously easy and hard, so a mission cannot appeal to "everyone." What can be done is to set up alternate versions of a mission, one easy, and one hard, which is basically what the mission difficulty slider is. A more crude way to do this is to simply designate some servers as +1 mission servers and others as +0 (and allow toon migration). In the same way, a mission cannot be simultaneously "good for teams" (that is, offering challenges for the unique advantages for teams) and "good for solo" (that is, not requiring the use of any advantages of teams). And, a game cannot be "good for casual players" (that is, offering easy progression for people who are on occassionally) and "good for dedicated players" (that is, challenging even for people who spend 18 hours a day online). In each case, alternatives (like the mission difficulty slider) can be set up, but those are alternatives, not one system catering simultaneously to discrete groups.

There is the phrase "jack of all trades, master of none." Trying to make CoH be all things to everyone will, in my opinion, just make it mediocre in all things and it will ultimately lose out to games that excel in their genere. I feel everyone will ultimately be far happier to let it be what it is supposed to be and instead to find the activity that makes one happy. The activity that speaks to you purely will be far satisfying than something that is making a compromise to give you a little taste of what you are looking for. In my opinion.

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But in the end , overall , many people got sucked in that game for months . Still today , many people are talking about Diablo 2 as maybe the Best Game ever

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How can one categorize a game that sucks you in for months as the "best game ever"?

When I played pencil and paper RPG, a campaign that lasted only a few months SUCKED HARD. Good campaigns lasted many years.

There are games I've been playing on and off for decades, like chess, or tetris, or whatever.

Diablo 2 was fun, no doubt about it. But if CoH takes it as its model, it too will be something of interest for merely months. Accumulation of in-game junk and new eye candy is not what ultimately holds people's attention for a significant length of time. Even inter-AT play balance is not that important over the truly long haul. Look at a game like D&D, still going strong, despite the huge discrepencies in balance between classes and races.

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The problem is that MMORPG’s in general reward those that are most likely to cause greater profit.

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Why live your life according to the way the game tells you to? The reason I haven't been playing other MMORPGs is because I cannot play them the way I want to. That doesn't mean they suck, it just means they are not the games for me. If CoH becomes like that, I will simply stop playing it and find something more appealing to do, that's all.

What I want (that is, not necessarily you) is to be able to play a game with my friends (supergroups and teams) even when they do not live near me (provider hosted game), and if we cannot all log in at the same time, I still want to be able to play with only some of them, or play while waiting for them (solo, pickup groups) or chat (social features). And I don't want me or my friends to have to stop grouping because they went on a vacation and have fallen a little behind on the level grind (sidekick, solo, now exemplar). I don't want to be made to feel like a pathetic weakling for the first month of play (easy leveling early on, and starting out on street thugs instead of rats). Most of all, I absolutely positively do not want to have to put 18 hours a day into the game just so I can get powerful enough to not worry about getting killed by griefers every 20 minutes (_no_ PvP).

Those are the reasons I like and play CoH. You will notice that none of it has anything to do with loot, or titles, or reaching level 50, or getting badges, or whatever. As long as the fights are tough and I have to think, I do not really care about new and changing content, honestly. When I play Counterstrike with my friends, the boards and weapons don't change that much. So what? We don't enjoy it any less for it. When I play a board game, there are no story arcs to speak of. And those that do exist, we know after playing once through. Again, that is me, and maybe it is different for you.

Yes, of course there is an appeal to seeing all the content the game has to offer, including the higher level powers. But, if, for example, the game turned PvP only, or got rid of sidekicks, or whatever, I would quit in a heartbeat and within a week I'll have lost all curiousity about hitting level 32 so I could get my last primary power. In other words, I am not playing to reach level 50 at all. I am playing to have fun and that is entirely unrelated to what level I am at. If I stop having fun past level 20 or whatever I'll just move on to an alt. If only levels 20-30 are fun, then I will make a decision based on how timeconsuming and annoying 1-20 are vs how fun 20-30 are. Level 50? Who cares? In 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 years who is going to even remember CoH much less base their opinion of you on whether or not you made 50 instead of stopping at 30?

The point is, the game fills a spot in _my_ life. If the game doesn't fill that spot, it is not a problem for _me_. Thus, I don't think you should be worried about what behaviors "MMORPGs reward." Just go and live your life according to what you value and don't worry about it. If you enjoy making 50, go for it! But if you are not having a good time, just quit and do something you enjoy instead. Life is too short to worry about a game vendor's expectations of you.

Simply put, the question is:
what is _your_ personal RL reason for making 50, independent of all the reasons the game says it is good for your _toon_ to be 50?

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But time you spend Taunting or attacking at range is time not spent doing melee attacks to maintain aggro.

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But doesn't Taunt maintain aggro?

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Taunting someone "over there" doesn't maintain aggro on someone standing "over here." To maintain aggro on the guy standing next to you so that he doesn't run over and attack the Blaster shooting him from across the room, you have to be Taunting him, hitting him, or Provoking him. If the guy standing next to you and the guy "over there" are covered by a Provoke AE, then you only need to do 1 Provoke to maintain aggro on both of them. Having to use Taunt for the guy "over there" and an attack for the guy "over here" means you have to choose between the two. On the plus side, with a melee Provoke, you won't have to choose which of the melee guys you need to hang onto, and hitting any of them will do. So, it is still an improvement. I am just not sure how much of one, considering how rare it is that I am able to get mobs with ranged attacks into a tight clump around me if they didn't start out that way.

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This concept goes against the tankers schtick - which is to land a few big blows. This will really favor the tanker who foregoes tradition and piles on lots of small attacks which will invariably come from the power pools.

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I think this problem would be simply avoided by making only Tanker powers (and not pools) build up damage buff. I actually assumed that would be the case, since my understanding is that only Tanker attacks and not pools or brawling has the Tanker inherent taunt.

These are very exciting changes and I'm looking forward to seeing what their final form will be.

I don't think Scrappers are in any danger from this autobuff thing. Even if Tankers get buffed to be Scrapper damage range, the Tanker has to buff up to there while the Scrapper starts there. So that is some number -- 3? 5? 7? whatever -- that the Tanker is doing lesser damage. Therefore, the Scrapper will still have a bigger alpha strike and a better DPS over time (though as the fight duration increases, the Tanker DPS will approach asymptotically). For dealing damage, there will still be no reason to prefer a Tanker over a Scrapper.

The auto-Provoke melee thing is a great idea. I think, though, that the area will either have to be reasonably large to work for rooted Tankers. What I am wondering about is if you are fighting a spread out group of mobs with ranged weapons, you can only control aggro if you are mobile, or use Taunt (or the inherent Taunt in a Tanker ranged attack). But time you spend Taunting or attacking at range is time not spent doing melee attacks to maintain aggro. Perhaps what would work is to have Taunt not only cause the mob to attack the Tanker, but also to want to close to melee. Then, a rooted Tanker can use Taunt to collect mobs into the auto-Provoke area. Is this even a problem at higher levels? I know I have issues controlling groups spread out groups now, but maybe it solves itself later on (in a way that doesn't require Provoke at range)?

I do have one concern about auto-Provoke that I hope will be worked out in playtesting: if you are using an attack power instead of Provoke to get the same effect, it will affect the endurance use curve. Without either giving the auto-Provoke quite a long duration, or adjusting the End use on attacks, it could still be necessary to take Provoke in order to retain enough End to hold the mobs through a long combat.