Arcanaville
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Posts
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Quote:Because everyone knows the correct way to do that is to hang from one arm and shoot with your feet:Originally Posted by dugfromthearth
So let's instead go with the stupidity of a one armed archer who hangs upside down and pulls the bowstring with his teeth.
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Quote:Perhaps not, but in combination with the 2008 numbers a trend does begin to suggest itself, at least on the hero side. There's a significant gap in popularity between the "offensive" archetypes of Blasters and Scrappers, and the "support" types of Defenders, Tankers, and Controllers. And interesting, alone among the three "support" types Controllers seem to gain ground over time - i.e. they become increasingly more popular with increasing level. That's highly suggestive to me that what might cause that is the fact that Controllers slowly cease to be support-focused types and become more offensive, at least in terms of playstyle if not in terms of raw numbers. When players realize that Controllers can go both ways, particularly by level 50, they become "stickier" - people play them more often, and that boosts their population numbers.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
I have to question what the anniversary numbers are counting. Are those the number of those ATs rolled/logged since launch, in the last year before the graphic was made, etc?
It doesn't say from what I can see, and if it's the totals since launch, that's not going to show us any useful information or trends.
They may also steal attention from Defenders, which may explain why Tankers are more popular than Defenders: Defenders face more competition for attention. The numbers could be interpreted as saying the players perceive the overlap between Controllers and Defenders as being more serious than the overlap between Tankers and Scrappers. There's no way yet to compare Tankers to Brutes, because we don't have numbers from a period of time when they could be created without barriers between them.
Its also noteworthy that the seven year numbers correlate strongly to the trends expressed in the 2008 numbers. The numbers showed Controllers on the rise and Blasters steeply falling and that is a match for the 2011 numbers. If the 2011 numbers were totals from launch, it would suggests the trends seen in 2008 were more or less similar to the overall trend from launch. The only thing the 2008 numbers do not predict in the 2011 numbers is the switch between Brutes and Masterminds, which were fairly close to begin with. -
Quote:Like, say, Captain Britain, or all of Excalibur (the team, not the sword). Or most of Alpha Flight. How about Dr. Doom, Thor and the Asgardians, Big Barda and many of the New Gods.Originally Posted by Yogi_Bare
Fits of subjectively blind snark aside, yes, Battle Maidens - Female fighter caste with medieval armor and weaponry = Amazons or Valkyries; both steeped in classic pantheistic fantasy (same type of stuff you'd find in a pure fantasy MMORPG).
And where does Wolverine fit? He might be a mutant but his backstory is full of Native Americans and Ninjas. He's only not considered a fantasy character because he's become one of the most popular characters in the conventional superhero genre while never actually being *in* the conventional superhero genre except in occasionally wearing a crazy primary color costume.
Mainstream superhero-ish comics already include an enormously expansive set of very non-marginal characters. John Constantine and Swamp Thing. The Silver Surfer and Galactus. Dr. Strange and Mephisto. Of the "big three" DC characters one is a superpowerful alien, one is a billionaire western ninja, and one is a magical amazon.
Once you start saying armored women are or can be fairly characterized as fantasy characters, any line you decide to draw becomes not just arbitrary but completely random. Daredevil may have a science origin, but his signature foes from the Miller era, the Hand, were magical in nature as was his trainer Stick. Once you eliminate all the magic, all the fantasy, and all the non-technological non-scientific supernatural elements, you're left with a lot less than 50% of the genre. You're now left with a very small minority purporting to represent the mainstream of the genre. -
Quote:If I was of a mind to play En/Fire, I would play it as a stealth hover blaster. Hover over the spawn, hit them with torrent and/or explosive blast, then drop right in the middle of them and start fire-blapping.Originally Posted by Fulmens
I couldn't find a damn thing to do with En/Fire, on the other hand. (My first Blaster created, and like my fifth one to L50.) Very non-synergistic.
Otherwise, the best keep-away primary with the highest damage come-over-here secondary is probably not the best match up. -
Quote:Of course not. It would be ridiculous if it was just anything goes in the Star Wars universe:Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Just because suspension of disbelief has been achieved does not mean that suddenly anything goes. It doesn't work that way. Would Star Wars had been as popular if suddenly there was an army of clowns that showed up that shot bees out of their mouths for no reason at all?
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Quote:If you work hard enough, you can perceive Nemesis as fantasy-themed (steampunk technology), and all of Praetoria as fantasy-themed (dystopian alternate reality). I'm sure its possible with the 5th Column, the Trolls, and the Malta eventually.Originally Posted by Yogi_Bare
just showing that there is a concentration of what can be perceived as fantasy-themes recently.
Seriously: Battle Maidens? -
If you're thinking about the hardest Blaster combo to solo for an experienced player, I believe that is likely to be Rad/Dev.
For a novice player I would say Electric/Fire would be the worst. Its very difficult for a new player to leverage those tools.
But for an experienced player, you could get mileage out of short circuit and Fire's high damage. You could manage insps and get something out of PBAoE. Rad/Dev is going to mess with your head more, because its best when run with a very deliberate pace, something an experienced player is more likely to try to push the envelope on, and get into trouble with. -
Quote:For most people playing this game, Scrapper and Brute survivability aren't infinite. Tanker survivability itself is finite. For the vast majority of the people playing the game, tanker damage mitigation is not redundant. Its therefore not a given that improving tanker overall ability to acquire and survive aggro would not be considered a positive move by the majority of the players playing tankers.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
I'm going to say this, and I'd like people to keep an open mind. Don't focus on the messenger, but listen to the message.
Most people playing this game don't know there's an aggro cap, let alone what it is, let alone think that it's too low. I highly doubt that raising it is going to make Tankers any more appealing except to a relative few hard core players, as most players wouldn't even notice the difference.
Furthermore, if you're trying to increase Tanker popularity with the masses, making the toughest AT even tougher isn't going to do it. If they're not playing Tankers now, it's because being tough isn't enough of a selling point to them, especially at the cost of so much damage. That is not going to improve Tanker's image of being slow, low damage and boring. If people wanted premium survivability at the cost of losing a ton of offensive capability, Stone Armor would be the most popular power set in the game. Pushing Tankers further towards the extreme, and pushing them further into a niche doesn't help them.
In terms of popularity, its entirely possible that more people would rather be the one being protected than the one doing the protecting, but that's a problem that Defenders share. In fact, both the archetype statistics from 2008 and the seven year anniversary statistics showed that Tankers were more popular than Defenders. And more interestingly, there appears to have been a shift from 2008 to 2011 where for much of their career Tankers are apparently now more popular than Controllers, Controllers only overtaking them at or near level 50 (even more dramatically, they appear to overtake Blasters as well, coming second only to Scrappers).
It would be interesting to see what the archetype creation statistics are post Freedom, when you can now make anything on either side. You would think that Brutes would be more popular than they are, but that is almost certainly due to the lower popularity of playing on the red side with anything. Still, its noteworthy that Masterminds scored so high from 1-49: its possible that's because Masterminds present such a unique gameplay option relative to the five hero side archetypes that its the strongest reason to venture into the red side. That suggests that unique gameplay options as judged by the playerbase is possibly as compelling if not possibly more compelling reason to play an archetype than raw performance is, although performance must count for something. -
Quote:What's sad is that I used to take it, because at one time Power Bolt was even worse: it was the worst blast this side of Flares.Originally Posted by Diellan_
Power Burst is basically a poster child for bad tier 3 blasts, and I doubt ArcanaVille and I are the only Energy Blasters to skip it in favor of the just taking the tier 1 and tier 2.
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Quote:That would be interesting if true, because while such flags can theoretically exist (there are some boolean flags I'm not sure about personally) the power designers didn't actually have direct access to them. At least, I'm pretty certain they didn't between I7 and I18, and Castle himself said explicitly once he had no way to do what you're describing when I asked him about it.Originally Posted by Codewalker
Technically, it's very mutable. Each effect has 4 independent flags on it that determine if magnitude or duration is affected by resistance, and/or by combat mods (purple patch). These are usually set to mirror whether it's a Magnitude or a Duration scaled effect, but not always. They can even bet set together so that a power is affected by both, and the purple patch reduces both magnitude AND duration. Dimension shift was like that for a long time, but nobody noticed because, well, it's dimension shift.
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Quote:My instinct is to say set PvPDR Alpha and Beta to 1.0 and 0.0 for CUR for all boolean hard mez. In other words, turn off DR for mez magnitude. I don't think that has any bad or unwanted side effects.Originally Posted by Sentry4
I've edited the Solutions at the top incase a dev reads this to reflect these confirmations.
It may help if you were to confirm either solution as something that 'could' be changed and if it were to really fix the problem. If neither would, a suggestion as to what would fix it would help too. The more backup from known number crunchers, the more attention this problem will get, and the more confident the devs will be in changing it.
As to the 1.0 vs 1.00000001 thing, it occurs to me that the best way to solve that might be instead of searching for and changing lots of mez powers all over the place, simply set the base for player and critter confuse, terrorize, hold, immobilize, stun, and sleep from 1.000 to 0.999. That way, everyone and everything becomes vulnerable to a mag 1.0 mez effect, at least as I understand how the mez effects work. If that is what the devs intended. -
Quote:A big if, but not an all powerful if. Its interesting in certain corner cases, but the flip side to indestructibility is that they can't be buffed. In situations where you have the buff/debuff to keep them alive, the fact that the dark pets are buffable, particularly damage buffable, can make up for their lack of indestructibility. That's why you often see Illusion paired with strong debuffing sets: its the only way to increase the damage of the phantom army.Originally Posted by Lucky666
That's a pretty big except
Mind Control's two ifs are mass confusion and sleeps, and those are fairly big ifs also. Dark's overall power probably exceeds Mind, but where Mind excels it *really* excels. -
Quote:Do you say that because you believe it, or because you think there is any chance at all anyone else will?Originally Posted by B_L_Angel
The resistance caps on blasters and scrappers are the same and its no harder to build a blaster for defense than it is a scrapper.
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From: Legal
To: Operations
Cc: Internal Audit, Requisitions, Site Managers
Subject: Re: RE: Leprechauns in the airducts
Please notify anyone submitting Form 88B requests that flamethrowers are only authorized for use within the enclosed premises of Syndicate operations centers. The EIS studying the environmental impact of flamethrower use to dispell mythical entities in open environments has not yet been completed.
Sue D'Bass-Tyrd, esq.
Legal Department
Quote:Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
To: Guard station site 22A.
From: Operations.
Subject: RE: Leprechauns in the airducts
While we have room in the munitions budget to pruchase flamethrowers, please remember the follow MUST be completed before they can be purchased and issued :
- Certified completition of the "Flamethrowers and You : Modern Day Gardening" course. Available at CDEC.
- A course in Mythological Creatures : Identification, Handling, and Proper Care thereof. Available at CDEC.
- Form 88B : Justification of Expenditure over Reorganization of Position and Duties
Also, we need approval from Building Services and Maintenance. Some note about them almost unionizing the last time flamethrowers were approved for internal use.
All forms must be filled in triplicate, and forms for reimbursement of courses at CDEC must be filed within one week of acceptance. One filing per class per year accepted. Reimbursement dependent on successful competition of class. Death benefits are not applicable while attending CDEC, even when classes being attended for work related reasons.
-Operations Manager Ben U. Reaucracy -
Quote:Actually, after thinking about it more carefully, I have to retract one of my two statements. Since DR affects Curs directly, they can indirectly affect the hold magnitude of a hold without actually affecting the actual magnitude of the power.Originally Posted by Sentry4
Are we absolutely sure about it not being DRed? I can't test this right now, unless I get a hold with a magnitude -above- 1 that's 'would' DRed -below- 1, with the test proving whether DR affects it or not.
Its not that the hold is being reduced from mag 1 to mag 0.84. Rather, its the net hold Cur magnitude being applied to the character that is being reduced from mag +1.0 to +0.83.
I believe therefore as I understand DR to work, to mez a player in PvP the Cur magnitude of the mez must be at least magnitude 1.249 for DR to reduce that to a value still greater than 1.0. 1.27 to be safe from round-off error. -
Quote:Its hard to say what that would do. Certainly, it would make them not move while its on. But it might cause the AI to freak out a little: the standard AI brain seems to have code in it that causes the critter to react badly when it wants to do something but can't for some reason. For example, if the critter wants to attack you but it can't because its held, or even if its just heavily recharge slowed, that can sometimes cause the critter to decide to just up and run away, even if it has full health. If the critter intends to move and a mez effect stops it, it might conceivable do goofy things. Without knowing the details, what I have seen of the AI makes it difficult to say what's likely and unlikely, because some stuff is freaky.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
A portion of the Mastermind AI problem might be solvable by giving players a toggle that hits the pets with Mag 1000 Immobilize. Not "think about stopping where you are" but "even if you feel like moving, don't." That might cause other issues though. Like maybe immobilized enemies are dumb enough to stand there wanting to melee you and doing nothing when they could shoot a gun. <shrug> No way to know without seeing it first hand I guess.
I *still* can't fully explain this, even after accounting for some things I do know about how critters think: run in circles around a group of critters, and they will shoot less often at you, even with all ranged critters when you are always within range. There's no logical reason for them to do that given the known properties of the critter AI, so something much deeper is doing something much weirder. -
A couple of general comments:
1. DR affects scale. Every power effect has a magnitude and a duration (possibly zero). One, and only one of them, can be enhanceable. If its magnitude, its defined to be a Magnitude effect and the Scale of the power equals its magnitude. Damage is like this. If its duration, its defined to be a Duration effect, and its Scale equals its duration (and a different field in the effect definition specifies its magnitude). Most holds are like this.
If you can slot the mez effect, and the duration goes up, then that effect is a Duration effect. Since PvP DR *only* affects the Scale of the power, it can only affect the Duration of this effect. It cannot affect the magnitude. A mez effect that is a Duration effect with mag 3 can have its duration increased or decreased, but its magnitude is fixed. Nothing, not the purple patch, not PvPDR, not any resistance in the game, can alter the magnitude of that effect. Its absolutely immutable.
2. Mag 1 mez effects don't affect anyone on their own. Pretty much everything out there has a default -1.0 base value to all their status flags. Mez status attributes are sometimes called Boolean attributes. That's because they are evaluated as a true/false: if Flag > 0 then True, Else False.
Note: greater than zero. Not not negative. When you increase the base magnitude of a mez attribute from -1.0 to zero, the target is still not mezzed. *Anything* higher and they would be. A Mag 1.01 hold would work. 0.01 is greater than zero. But 1.0 doesn't work. It can only stack on other mez.
That's why mag 1 mezzes don't seem to do anything. They shouldn't with anyone with the normal -1.0 base mez attribute without mez protection.
Long ago, Thunder Kick in the Martial Arts set had a 100% mag 1 hold. The players complained that mag 1 didn't stun anything. So the devs changed it to a 10% mag 2. Now it had enough magnitude to stun, but now the effect almost never went off.
We should have asked for a 99% chance for mag 1.001. That would have stunned minions. For all I know, way back then Geko might have even fallen for it. -
Quote:What I meant was that every critter AI problem masterminds have, controllers have with the extra added complication of having no means to command them at all. Just having the ability to tell the phantasm "go here" would prevent a lot of phantasm deaths due to stupid. But I did not intend to imply that the mastermind command systems address all critter AI issues.Originally Posted by William_Valence
I very much agree with the purple patch issue.
But I can't agree with a MMs ability to control their pets until:
Melee pets go melee without taking ranged pets with them and ranged stay ranged without making melee pets stand next to them (Quite likely to address issues with non-controllable pets as well)
Damage patches don't override player commands
Pets don't chain aggro and run off on their own trying to attack something
Pets don't decide to run off after certain enemies in iTrials, instead of following orders
Pets don't cycle their "Too far" animation preventing actions, when on certain maps.
What I know of the AI system leads me to believe a fresh look at it could solve a lot of woes. Some of the dumb things critters used to do were caused by attempts to make them smarter but in ways that did not work correctly. Its entirely possible that there are ways to make them "dumber" that would make them *appear* to be smarter, or at least less problematic. -
Quote:Not just mind control. Except for the indestructibility of the phantom army, it seems to be a superior set to Illusion as well in many ways.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Dark Control really did seem to swipe the rug out from under Mind Control.
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Just to clarify the taunt aura tangent, what I said was that "not all brutes and scrappers have taunt auras that would factor into that equation." That's because not all Scrappers have taunt auras at all, and not all Brutes have a taunt aura that factors into a discussion of overriding gauntlet. Willpower's taunt aura has a pulse duration of one second. That's 13 times lower than the duration of gauntlet taunt, and that makes it unlikely to play a major role in aggro control relative to gauntlet.
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Quote:I wouldn't bet against it.Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
We're never going to get a chain of people answering the same question longer than four in this thread, are we?
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Quote:The only real problems I think Masterminds have structurally is that their intrinsic (and deliberate) vulnerability to AoE can get problematic in the end game, and the use of purple patch leverage can be problematic for them in high level content in those situations where their pets are not level-normalized mechanically.Originally Posted by William_Valence
But they should really look at MM issues first
Critters are also morons, but at least Masterminds can command them. The critter AI for controller pets is something I wish I could fix. -
Quote:Fundamentally, that only is problematic if:Originally Posted by BrandX
Would be nice if my Ice/Ice Tanker didnt have aggro ripped off her by those scrappers.
1. They die.
2. They blame you.
The point to aggro control is to divert damage from things that cannot survive that damage to things that do. No one actually gets any special reward for collecting aggro. If Scrappers interfered with Tanker ability to gain aggro, that would be a problem. Yanking it away on an individual target basis is not a problem if the Scrapper is doing so for only a limited number of targets they can survive.
If a Blaster or Defender, say, was yanking aggro away in large amounts, that would be problematic in the general case. Or if Tanker aggro was so low that Scrappers were talking all of it away and then dying, that would also suggest Tanker aggro capacity was fundamentally flawed. But theft of aggro by itself in isolation is not a problem unto itself. -
Quote:I can't be expected to remember who among my targets today was dead yesterday. Unless herostats tracked it.Originally Posted by Nos482
Then why would you shoot it today, when your target was killed a day ago?
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Quote:Break the chain, seven years of nerfs.Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
Damnit UberGuy, you were supposed to comment about how the radius of Gauntlet changes, just like the four posts before yours.