Arcanaville

It would take no effort at all.

I think the only things they would match would be neon orange playtex living gloves.

Oh my god I just noticed that the sleeves might be a different piece than the visible top under the vest.

City of Heroes players just don't know the meaning of the word impossible, although there are times like this when I think a dictionary would be in order.

They change, but not dramatically, and giving the weights means we can calculate in what way. But since the rare table has 100 entries and only three costume pieces, once you get those the odds for the rest of the items shift only by a slight amount. For example, the odds of getting a rare XP Booster temp power award (two uses) is 9%. But if all three costume items are taken, those odds shift to 9.28%.

The very rare table has even more entries, so when the three very rare costume pieces get awarded the odds for everything else shift even less. The Black Wolf, for example, shifts from 0.3003% to 0.303% - essentially from one in 333 to one in 330.

Because the shift is small, the odds can be approximated as if the costume pieces didn't change anything. But if you actually wanted to know with absolute precision how the costume pieces shift the odds, that can be computed in theory. I leave that to people with more free time than I (says the player that opened 2000 super packs to collect the odds).

Now it just looks like I'm talking to imaginary posters.

See, I was thinking plaid, print, and navy solid all in one outfit?

I don't think any color saves the shoes.

No one is trying to predict random numbers. They want to know what the odds of a particular card are. Are you saying that whether the odds for the Black Wolf card were 1 in 10 or 1 in 450 or 1 in 1,000,000 as far as you're concerned either you get it or you don't, and the numbers mean absolutely nothing?

The weights I believe are correct and the 34.14 is a typo (it should be 35.14 as you suggested)

Unless the graphic was edited between when you posted and now, it seems to add up for me: 12+12+12+10+11+9+9+9+9+7 = 100.

It was posted because lots of people asked the devs to post what the chances were for each thing to drop. Those numbers do look a little different than my original guestimates from my beta testing, and that test involved 2000 super packs. I think its unlikely anyone is going to replicate a test on that scale on live, so posting the numbers themselves is beneficial.

You specifically asked about the weights: the weights are probably coming directly from the devs' reward tables: I've described how the City of Heroes reward system works a few times, most recently here. When the game decides you get a very rare card, it notices that the very rare reward card table has 333 entries, so it rolls a random number between 1 and 333. If its 1-117 you get an ATIO. If its 118-164 you get the very rare reward merit award (100 merits). And so on.

Personally, I have no problem with the superpacks in principle and I don't have a problem with random rewards either. However, knowing that the Black Wolf card is "rare" is one thing: knowing that its probably a 1 out of 450 shot per superpack is something else: it provides a point of reference for people who may want to comment on the relative scarcity of certain items (one out of 450 *packs* not *cards* seems excessively scarce to me).

Define "reasonable."

I only ask because it seems to be a fluid thing:



Why the random costume button is the one thing in this game I hope future science never invents

I was modded for posting a picture of a nazi stegasaurus tank and for making fun of Kim Jong-Il. Its the least I can do to do my part to help the economy by keeping the customer service industry fully staffed.

That may be true, but that's like saying City of Heroes being about superheroes and comic culture almost made you not buy it, and if it was just a generic RPG you would have bought it in a heartbeat. I'm sure there are such people, but there exists nothing they could do, neither complain, protest, or quit, that would cause the developers to decide to make City of Heroes no longer about superheroes or the superhero comics genre. That's what they wanted to do, and while details are negotiable, some things are not.

The fact that this is an MMO, and people decide to make MMOs specifically to include aspects of gaming that don't exist in single player games, is another axiomatic decision a development team makes. The details might be negotiable, but no amount of suggesting, complaining, or quitting will convince the devs to cease completely developing the parts of the game that are incompatible with being a single player game.

People aren't wrong to want a game that segregates all teamed activity into completely ignorable segments of the game without exception. They are wrong to ask MMO developers specifically for it.

Longbow Researcher: I have good news and I have bad news.

Ms. Liberty: Good news first.

Longbow Researcher: You know that project you had us start a couple years ago to bring back the Red Widow? Yeah, we can do that now.

Ms. Liberty: That's great. Perfect timing: we can use that to bring back grandpa.

Longbow Researcher: I'm afraid that's the bad news. It won't work on Statesman. It only resurrects dead angry women.

Ms. Liberty: Mom?

Longbow Researcher: Insufficiently red.

Ms. Liberty: sniff. sigh.

Longbow Researcher: I understand. We can delay the Red Widow project until you've had a chance to absorb all this. By the way, that new costume you ordered made just came in.

Ms. Liberty: Awesome! Why didn't you say so? I'm going to go to go put it on and head to Pocket D right now and show it off. Gimme that, whatever it is death thing.

Longbow Researcher: Hey wait, there's this thing about blood I think we should talk about! Darn. Oh well, I'm sure she'll call us before sending anyone on a dangerous magical necromancy mission.

Perhaps this is one of those times when being wordy diluted the sentiment. I've never been opposed to respectful discussion under any circumstances. That's always a good thing. I was specifically reacting to an earlier post that was not a discussion post, just an expression of blanket disappointment:

Everyone is free to express their disappointment in whatever venue they wish, but that right comes bundled with my right to express my own opinion of its appropriateness. Intelligent discussion is a separate matter.

I'm not 100% certain, but I believe this to be the correct version of what happens. If it happened the way GG describes, I believe the tests I performed on beta would have shown a stronger signal of it. But I think only the devs are in a position to confirm this one absolutely, since I don't really intend to do the specific sort of testing required to prove it (which would involve redoing superpack purchases on beta with a large number of accounts to produce enough trials on the costume parts - which can't be repeated on a single account even with multiple characters for obvious reasons).

If the store *only* subsidized more store items, it would be impossible for the devs to continue to offer a free to play option.

Well, I can't say I've spend hundreds of dollars on them. Yet. But I don't think its a bad thing to have more money than brains, when you already have my brains.

You should also consider that it is *because* some people spend $115 on the game that you can play it for free. Every time you say that what some people spend a lot of money on you should get some other way, you're reducing the number of people that would have spent $115 on the game and by extension reduced the amount of game the devs can make for you. Its all fungible: the store, and everyone who buys things in it, help support the game you don't have to spend the same amount of money to buy.

The question you should be asking is: what *would* you dangle in front of the people who can afford to spend more than you, to help subsidize the game? Whatever it is, if you can get it without spending a lot of money, so can they. The people spending money on the game might be willing to spend the money, but they are unlikely to simply give their money away.

The alternative to some people spending more and some spending less, is everyone spending less for a lesser game, or everyone spending more for a better game. What would you do if instead of putting things in the game like the Superpacks they just substantially increased the subscription for the game instead and eliminated the free to play option.

That's what I thought. Some would stay, others would be forced to leave because they couldn't afford it. The only way Paragon can provide an option to pay less to play is if they can convince others to pay more. And I don't think donation cards will work as well as the superpacks.

Still. Perhaps now in some ways more than before.

Since the last time Blasters were looked at, they actually dropped from second in melee damage modifier (Scrappers are higher) to third (Dominators now also higher). Controllers and Masterminds got specific iTrial buffs (autocontainment, level shift mechanics) but Blasters did not.

The best thing they ever did for Blasters was let them shoot tier1/2 from mez, but the primary benefit of that is to reduce the chances for mez to kill a blaster. No one else dies often to mez, and we know this because in I13 we found out no archetype dies remotely as often as blasters under any circumstance. We still don't know if the Defiance 2.0 changes actually brought blasters *out of* the balance hole they were in: they uniquely among all archetypes *significantly* underperformed *everyone else*. And that was *before* Kheldians were buffed, Dominators were buffed, Stalkers were buffed, etc. If those buffs actually did anything at all, any ground Blasters might have gained with D2.0 has been offset by significant gains elsewhere. Even Brute average performance might have gone up because while the absolute top performers performance dropped slightly with the new mechanics, fury is now more sustainable for probably a lot more players. Max fury went down, average fury probably went up.

That's just raw numbers. The ones that say if everyone else is 10 and blasters are 6, blasters are broken period. That doesn't touch the *huge* QoL list blasters have, at a time when everyone else's QoL list is being addressed. Dominators didn't *need* a net damage modifier boost, even factoring in Domination mechanics. That was a QoL change more than a balance change. Stalkers aren't broken: their changes are QoL changes meant to address perception more than numerical datamined performance. Certainly, Tankers didn't need Bruising to meet the balance requirements of the archetype: that was a QoL change.

The Blaster QoL issue list is a mile long. Crashing tier 9s for an all-offense archetype, inconsistent secondary performance, even the general lack of damage self buffs. Sure, Blasters all (almost all) get Build Up and Aim, but the *best* damage self buffs don't go to blasters. The best damage self buffs do not go to the damage archetype. Rage, Fiery Embrace, Power Siphon - until recently not even Soul Drain.

Power Boost just boosts my secondary effects and can't even be made perma. As it is, even trying to keep it up often means burning its cast time every 20 seconds or so, tying up as much as 6% of my time. Rage buffs damage by almost as much as Build Up for Blasters and can easily be made perma, and when its perma its only costing about 1% in cast time. Two different powers in two different sets, so the comparison isn't to say they should be the same: rather its to say the limits of what melee can have make the limits of what Blasters can have look actually pretty pathetic by comparison.

And look at average Blaster DPA verses average melee DPA. Comparing KOBlow to Total Focus is not an exception.

I love Lightning Rod. Its a great power. So tell me why the power that lets you teleport 60 feet and hit a target with a high damage attack while knocking everything else down (or at least 80% of everything) is a melee archetype power and none of the damage-only specialist powersets have anything comparable to it. Focus has a higher DPA than 90% of all blaster attacks. There is very consistent evidence that even though Blasters are supposed to be the best at damage because they do nothing else, the devs have carved out melee damage away from them and given the best "melee attacks" (because focus is a melee attack apparently) to the melee archetypes, along with the best damage buffs period. That leaves Blasters with the left-overs. The best ranged damage except for melee attacks that happen to have range, and average damage self-buff.

Blasters are, and I'm not in any way exaggerating when I say this, the archetype that gets to be whatever's left after every other archetype takes whatever they want off the table. And increasingly these days, what other archetypes are taking for themselves is DAMAGE.

More true than you probably intended.

Jeez I hope they either confirm our measurements or state the new odds. I'm not sure I can justify 2000 superpacks on live ($1250). If experienced stacked I would have enough on beta to go from level 1 to level 50 by killing one minion.

It'll change the problem to one that other people will be complaining about.

I mentioned this several times in the other threads discussing this issue, but the fact of the matter is there are large non-trivial contingents of players that want conflicting things that are somewhat mutually exclusive, particularly when factoring in finite-resources. Some players have for *years* asked for more, for lack of a better word, feminine but not overtly sexual costume options. The exact phrase was often "are there any actual women working at Paragon Studios?" In effect, they are asking for a more representative sample of costume options that mimic clothing or fashion options generally considered only suitable for women. In fact, generic versions that were gender neutral would probably violate the request for many of those people.

Then there are players that want all costume parts for all body types regardless of any perceived gender connection or preference. Not all these players want this because of a perception of quantitative fairness: some genuinely do not want the game to reflect *any* gender bias in clothing options at all on principle. And then there are the players that want numerically similar numbers of costume options for the two primary body types even if that numerical similarity comes at the cost of funnelling options, specifically because they are more concerned about resource fairness than costume option breadth.

You're not going to fully address everyone's preferences here, because its not just about preference its about priority. People want to believe their preferences have priority. They'll often say the converse: they don't want their preferences to have lesser priority than anyone elses. But given absolute equality isn't possible here, that's tantamount to saying the same thing.

Personally, and I expressed this thought several times although I don't think anyone was really listening, I think the devs should not have picked a side as they did. They should have said that no one's preferences would ever take priority, but each would be addressed at least in part sometimes. There would be costume packs/bundles that were unisex, some would specifically address the feminine option gap, some would be dedicated to porting gender-exclusive options that were gender neutral, etc. Your preference might come up 12% of the time while someone else's comes up 18% of the time, but everyone would have *some* avenue to hope that an option they want would be added eventually. The only people out of luck would be the people who didn't just want a shot, but wanted priority.

If we have to lose someone, I would prefer it be the player that says they must have things their way, or they quit. I would rather keep the rest.


None of this has anything to do with my reaction when a dev spends their free time between landmarks trying to untangle our irrational jumble of wish lists and decides to try to give us something they think at least some of the players would appreciate. Anyone thinking that that moment is the perfect moment to address the fact that the options being provided highlight a perceived injustice in the game has in my opinion chosen extremely unwisely and I plan to give the assertion a weight as far below zero as I can muster.

No, this would just change the problem.

When your expectations of reality don't match reality, reality wins.