Arcanaville
-
Posts
10683 -
Joined
-
Quote:One thing about defense that didn't stick coming from me was the notion of admittance. Admittance is the damage that hits you; its the converse of mitigation. So 90% mitigation is 10% admittance.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Incidentally, would you like to pitch in on the subject of how defence affects mitigation as the numbers increase that I brought up earlier in the thread, or do you feel bad about making me look stupid by correcting my explanation?
Non-regenerative survival is 1/admittance, which is effectively the same thing as your survival duration calculation. So 90% mitigation is 10% admittance is 10x survival duration, disregarding regeneration.
Although the term hasn't passed into common terminology, the basic calculation 1/(1-mitigation) is commonly used to (colloquially) say "90% mitigation is ten times survival." Different people call it different things, but "survival duration" is a common reference point for people to compare survivability. -
Quote:Worth noting: the original version of the SR scaling passives was, in fact, 0-25% per passive in CoV beta. I believe when someone realized that would mean it scaled to the damage cap for scrappers (stalkers only have two passives) they changed it at the last instant to 0-20% per passive instead.Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
More HP for better use of the scaling passives is part of the reason I remade my main as a brute.
They could easily tweak the equation for the scaling resists and need to anyway for tanks since they should have higher resistance values.
As it stands, with all three passives, you'll hit 60% dam-res at faceplant with the scaling starting at <60% health. They could have it begin at 70% health with 1 change. They could set it at 75% so that the scrappers would hit their dam-res cap right as they faceplant.
Will they do this? Maybe, if a strong enough case can be made for it.
Literally the last instant: it was 0-25% on the last day of beta, and 0-20% on the first day of CoV headstart.
Also, it was originallly Res(All). -
You don't condone the medicine pool but you phase shift during Elude's downtime? That seems to be a bit of an extreme point of view.
Also, Elude's not a Panacea. Its not true that *nothing* is better than Elude for SR. In I3, perhaps. In I3 Elude could theoretically achieve 94.7% damage mitigation against high level and rank critters. That's huge. Since I7, Elude cannot do better than 90% mitigation, essentially the soft-cap for a given tohit. Against incarnates, 92.2% effective mitigation. A non-Elude build that achieves higher resistances and regeneration can exceed an Elude build under many conditions. Elude will beat those builds in tohit buffed conditions, non-Elude builds will tend to win outside of them. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Durakken
That sounds fairly obvious to me... not the first thing you'd think of, but something that if you looked at all the things that are similar between the mobs and whats happening you'd pick up on it almost instantly as to where the problem is coming from...though you might say that i'm just saying it's obvious to piss you off or seeing it as obvious in retrospect, but i'd say given what i know that'd be one of the top 5 or 10 things i'd likely try to check.
*What* sounds obvious to you? Tell me what specifically you would have checked as one of the top 5 things you would have checked. Because as it turns out, recharge itself wasn't actually the problem. Range was.
Yes, a problem Castle mitigated by making pets immune to recharge buffs ultimately was a problem with range.
Mu hu ha ha ha ha...
As to whether its possible I'm just making this up, well, I proposed the code fix to Television to address the problem after extensive testing of the problem with pohsyb, so its not like I'm aware of this one second hand. -
Quote:Also a page out of Dark Knight's book. Still, this trailer is much more interesting than the previous one.Originally Posted by Freitag
Maybe they're trying to take a page out of Iron Man's book...
-
There's a lot of good advise in this thread on building in general, so rather than rehash it I'll try to address your idea of "clean building." I think you're jumping the gun thinking that SR is the hardest to build around with inventions. I think it can be, but it can also be the most straight forward. Lets try this: I'm going to put on my Sam-hat, and try to think like you, and see how I might build an SJ/SR scrapper with inventions.
First, I fire up Mids and start an SJ/SR. Now, I want it to be powerful, but also a straight forward and simple build. I don't know that much about the invention system, so lets start by just picking all my SR defenses and 3-slotting them with level 50 common IOs. Because really, the only optional power in there is Elude, and if you aren't going to be an SR min/maxer, I'd recommend keeping Elude anyway. So that part is easy.
I end up with 30.9% defense. Hmm. I can add power pools to help, and two make obvious sense. I can take combat Jumping which costs almost no endurance and adds some defense, and I can take the big gun power pool-wise and get fighting, which gets me both tough and weave.
Boxing, Tough, and Weave, abd CJ put me at 39.8% defense. If I can swing a Steadfast in Tough, I can get to 42.8% defense. Still with no real set bonuses, just one proc.
If I don't want to have scattered strange set bonuses all over the place, I need something simple. And the other big source of positional defense out there is Gaussian. And its a level 50 set, and I just have to slot the full set in something. So I take Combat Readiness and slot a full Gaussian. Now I'm up to 45.3% defense, which is the non-incarnate soft cap, and I still haven't really forced very many set bonuses at all. And if I now fill in the Street Justice attacks, I find I can have all of them except Confront by level 41. I may not want to do it in exactly that order, but clearly I can have a build with all the SJ attacks, all the SR defenses, CJ, and fighting, all by 41. I then have three discretionary powers left at the end of the build I can use to take anything.
And this build uses just one set bonus from a full set of Gaussian, and one Steadfast proc. The entire build could be level 50 enhancements. It could even be just common IOs if you want. You have 46 slots to go, which means you could still fully slot all your attacks if you want. This build is soft capped, has reasonable endurance, and barely scratches the surface of the invention system. If I just fill the slots with common IOs and take Body Mastery for Physical Perfection, I have a very simple build:
Code:It don't get simpler than that. Of course, there's lots of ways to improve this build. The order of the powers is a bit odd and of course I'm barely scratching the surface of invention possibilities, but sometimes I actually build kind of like this: with a simple starter that lets me see the options before I start messing with things and shuffling things around.| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1495;593;1186;HEX;| |78DA65945B73D240188637248894438BB5A4A794D28345B01146EF9DA955A73345B| |1E83513714B33930186A0964BFF8B56BDF197781AF53FA8171EFE017E61DFA5B0C9| |24F36CDEFDDE6FBFDD6CB67ABA9F7C7FEFE52DA6A56F7B8EEF37EACD9ED3EDF25EB| |4EAB4DC260BAE183DA6D41B55EE716EEFF59C179EDB6EE5C6FA3E3FE66D9FDBF567| |C1DB113FF6F829F73307ED13DEE3EDBE2D1BA95AA7E3D977DDD6499FFCC9D1DB217| |7BAF492105D5ED09719B50FDACF5DDF7DE27A6E7F90B9D3759BF65EE7E9A05175FC| |3EEF0D16A9B0023D1FB20CD730CA96091583A5C1CBD634B39279C16A303B6DE4D5D| |99AD0220A77117B9F6235C46AE83314CAD80714AB8BD8888EBE0B0A3F53DD51D41D| |7D151969175F836782336FC0B782E977825A4C7C18F2B218E65A23212E342D5E423| |D6096FA12A82781F1930A758A4989182D6552C3325805F379487DB3F0CF227E4EA1| |413119AC4F06DA258532DF11C5CE8B5836BF2BB48FB41E0B588F05CC695912DF6D4| |B25F27D22AF09AF09CF15496B9A3B92F07E21EF12BC4BF0EC8045C45E53096F9DE6| |B1827559C11C57157EA5FC16F25BC8BB26694D330F6E22FF37F2E6E0CDC1B32E694| |D537AF3F03EA2DA36F03D3650CBA6C2EB887D4CB1DBD84FDBD833DFB3E2FF0AC62E| |60CCAB92D634E53A15E5BAE88C9590AF847C6729C66CD4636F617CC975EC0FD0A47| |ACAF0978774B1DF33E3BF8F69D8317F273564FA33A91584F6EF5C8B68186151E1AA| |313E45E80E46CC19E3B361580CF596434A25A4DC08293743CA6148A919183698C14| |889CFD1692294E18FF3D36EF873A2FD6BA2FD1FD585D5F0| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
With SR, you're basically down to three options to improve survivability. First and most important, get a lot of defense: at least the soft cap, and if you want to go nuts and go for the incarnate soft cap, then that next. After that, your nets option besides running tough is to get as much regeneration as you can. You also have to decide if you want to run Aid self or not. Personally, I don't mind Aid self, but some people don't. If you don't, I think your best bet is to focus on regeneration, and of course having enough offense that you don't have to eat as much damage.
The problem, looking at this build, is that you're running out of slots. I'd like to slot up Health, but the slots have to come from somewhere. Playing around, I see I can steal a slot from CJ and it only costs me 0.1% defense. It would be better spent elsewhere since that 0.1% won't matter much. I can shift that to Health. Also, if I can afford it, I can slot a Numina proc. If I slot the proc and a Numina Health, I end up increasing regen from +194% to +226%. If i do the same thing to the two health slots in PP, although I slot a little lower the set bonus makes up for it, and I end up with +235% regen.
My attacks are slotted 2acc/3dmg/1end for a total of 83.32% acc, 99.08% damage, and 42.4% end reduce. A full set of Crushing Impacts does better overall, getting to 68.9% acc/end/rech and 101.47% damage. It also gives me more health, more accuracy, more recharge, and more psionic resistance as set bonuses. How much more? Who cares: its better slotting anyway, and its a full set of 50s, so lets reslot:
Still 45.2% defense, now 235% regen, and some recharge. Hmm, I put a bunch of recharge in the build. I wonder if I still need two recharge IOs in Practiced Brawler: might be nice if I only need one. Yep: I only need one. Great, another slot. I could put that in health, get more regen and also another Numina bonus, the next one is more MaxHealth, which is always nice on an SR. And actually, the all-crushing actually looks nicer than the assortment of commons anyway. But we still have those AoEs. If we're rich, we could go Obliterations in those. But I'm Sam, not TopDoc, so lets see what's on sale. If I put a set of Scirocco in there, everything but the proc, I still do pretty good relative to the common IOs: 73.78% acc, 95.11% dmg, 47.7% end, 52% rech. And I free another slot. Lets do that to sweeping cross.Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1495;625;1250;HEX;| |78DA6554CB72124114ED8641243C1212030909011292F0CA08A57BAB62D44A55501| |28C5B9C900E99AA29A018D4B0F45F34EAC62FF155EA3FA80B1F7F8077E8334066A6| |A04ECFB9F7F639DDB7A7AB177BA1F70F5EDE613C72D7D04CB3516FF6B46E57F47C5| |5ADA53799F5F8E91FB7F946551842A8BB3DED85A1B75BA931BF27CE44DB146AFD99| |F57624CE0C7121CCE87EFB5CF444BBAFDA8370ADD331D4FB7AEBBC4FF5A1D1DB81D| |0BAF4129421C38A4547E3FDF673DDD44F7443EF0FA2F7BA7A53DDED9C0E1A55CDEC| |8BDE60898CE5E8FF21C6F00C7DEC29414561114DE28D13605362EC14282456ADD5F| |151AD97AD49CEE3C09D8CC48794CB91CB11531C68E73EA25CAFCCF57811BBE6C0CF| |E4DB07DFBE579E1177FD35F052E2CC1BE05B89917712B95F36866A993F21E7AB111| |1901C0F14E10718A35850FAE141E887805E8A85110BC76990545805EB38A4D82CD6| |318BFC39072A9413C5BE44C1CD3BD09EEF887217642E5BD891DC47DA8745ECC322F| |A9740FF12E85F16FDCBA27F59F4EF13D5C6511BC73E6CD998BC8ADB36C2CB17AA5D| |46ED3274B7A15B806E09BA25E896A05BA775AC605F56B0C655077EA5F993983F094| |F6B3626AF6206B8016FDFA83685DA14BCA5E12D0D6F6978CBC05B06DE1E93B775F4| |631D5E361C78133AC794BB8973B489B3F23D26BF2B4B3B07ED3CB4F3D0CE43BB00E| |D82BD2F5EC68A98AF88F92EC38CA9F0A31E73A97F084CE37C00E3E4A78CFAF2901E| |F67B66FCD5318E13F377C271FE44CE14C2CC7FA6F37332FFDF84F370282D3970551| |9DF22F4B39453CAF86E18165CD1B28BA9B8985B2EE6B68B3970313505B2D60A464C| |608E6E13C90C7F4C6EBBE1CFA9F1AFA9F17F9857DEEA| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
Intruigingly, my AoE defense is now 48.3% due to the Scirocco's set bonus. If I'm shooting for at or near 59% defense, that helps. If I'm really just going for soft-cap or a bit above, I now have the luxury of maybe yanking a slot from lucky, my AoE passive. So actually, Scirocco's freed two slots, not one. I'll just shove them into tough for now. With common IOs in there, I now have 17.6% resistance to smash/lethal. And I have pretty good recovery. And I have conserve power. This build is not an optimal build by any means, but its not bad, and its also not a hodge-podge build, and its a pretty straight forward build in terms of how it was put together:
There's lots more you can do, and this approach even taken to the logical conclusion won't necessarily make an optimal build, but I think you can do nice things with inventions in SR with relatively straight forward thinking and not too much reliance on patchwork slotting. And a faster, more advanced version of this is basically how I tend to start builds from scratch actually: its how I try to break it down to simple parts for me, so its not like this is just kindergarden stuff. Its more or less how I eventually get to this:Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1495;631;1262;HEX;| |78DA6554DB721241109D8545245C128C818440808418AE2B94BE5B15A356AA82926| |07CC50D9990ADDA020A3001DFFC178DFAE297782BF51FD4072F7F80BDF481E0B205| |7566CF74F739333D3BE5FE8EEFDD8317778412B86BEADD6EAD5AEFE8EDB6ECB8CA7| |AC3A80BEB71D33F3CE66B65694AA96D77F473D36836E2137E479EC866576AD567D6| |DB813C31655F7683BBCD53D991CD9E361EF82BAD96A9DD371AA73DCAF78DDEF6A4D| |EA6172F4F99D65C7034DE6D9E195DE3C8308DDE2078AF6DD4B5EDD6F1A056D6BB3D| |D9192C93B134FDDF87049EA14B3C2528A922A0335E3F02D61943C740C958B656A78| |C729D628D39870D0B49C68714AB2056C19C6AC371EC238A7572ACC389B92B36FC44| |BE5DF0ED7AE91871575F012F18E75E03DF3006DE322A6E6E0CE50A7784EB5588F08| |0F3E4B04EE2BCEC43F142D70774D29C1FEBF1876910534534CF735BC012D6B34FB1| |F358CF3CF2176CA8524C10F582E0AED9705CEF80621739562C1698FB40FBB184FD5| |8421F23E863047D4CA18F29F431853E7EA4DC30E7AAE133E66E9C03FBC001D6F69C| |F133E5AC406F057A5BD0CB422F0FBD3CF4F2D0AB92FF55ECEB2AD616057EA1BA31D| |48DA1376B638CFD8F49E006F6E52BE5C6911B87A7043C25E029014F49784AC2D363| |F2B48EFD5F87970D1BDE84CE21C56EE2AC6CE2AC7C0BF1F76469A7A19D817606DA1| |96867A19D1DEF8753881CEAE550EFC22F84063FDAA1C2FAFBC004CE03304C7E8AC8| |2F0EE911BFE6265F9B507042FE5C720EE50957F2A17201957F4FE7A539EFEF741E1| |4976D185527B708FD2C07717572370CB333B3C519A634C3DC9A616ECF307B334C45| |85ACB58211E359A0DB8499E1F7CBDB6EF8636AFC736AFC0F9253E0F7| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
Which I think is a pretty good MA/SR build.Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1529;705;1410;HEX;| |78DA65936B53125118C7CFB28B288A425E5011C13B1759A1CB4C535653998689A1A| |8EF1A5AE1A8D406CCB2CEE8CBBE42CD6833D5BBB27AD337EBF209A2079EBFC80C3B| |B3F33BCFFF3CB773F6D9CCC94ADFCFB5B70F84D2FFD8346AB57CAE6019D5AAB45C9| |B867D6C19A6A0C7B357AA98D20E6F1FBFD937A58B94C0A55B3E234D29F58C61D925| |C3CC3FB4EC5AA8B5B7220F64B926F5DC71C3DA9607A63C91355FBA7C242D59B6F5C| |B455FB65231F50D69544BE5434FD3582D1D1ED92D2B238BA542A92CDD4D2B5795B2| |E87B522D15F44795E2693E63D46C699D8E525F517ACF1A0D369FBA26E61D42A434E| |1888031A61605E3CC4C234641CCAADAD4BAD699DE35E6489A39FA8C79EE4208C528| |2F05C71499DDFB6081E996CC4D8A51B98EAAA28E1BF947917F1C753F90AF93F33B9| |D5FB8CFBEAFE005B3FF1BF89DE9FDC17C4EB12EAEE3703968B1A089D9BA6872FE1F| |334B3E3D9C5FF4C4B9BF11D27A394EE9BD45D0543139AC34F714DAF3C0DFB3CC7B5| |BA40DA0CE4037D799D740C47D241F1FCEE13BE03AD75E8147CCA1D7E05362B071D7| |4C956207715F83234A538B2DF1FDC4FCB0AFB3BD4DBEC3EC2B86139C4F23CD8F783| |FFA1AF7725F135D6C4FA0CF4FE43B86EF397697EF71F236788739B5CC9CBDC7CC51| |4C00E70F0C719E59E45B401D3FF904716FC108F7F599B4106A85303B61CC4C18331| |3C62C4D61767628661A679946EE994110B567503B48BE739C5F99DB453F396688F6| |22BCA746B0B718E01A8B3BB0E19BA3AB8DA3F738666497341DF1FA12DFC3920E26C| |145E6050D4C123D27512B85DCA92DF09C7D27B4D67F2B04E66BA35DC337CD6AADFF| |4E28E829A4B5FEDF7AD6DD3835AF5FB4AD8DB6F57EDBBAC74BFF24E7ABFF225DC10| |C29A8F7BB5DC3F7FB73A5399534CF5114E78AE29C89FB3C9F8975DE4FECB1FEF72A| |5655CE3057B88385F7CCE83B66B2FDFC757A44AC43497528373B941B1DCA7F1228D| |A58| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
-
Quote:I'm afraid its not in this case. The statement under challenge is Bill's statement:Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
Quotes taken out of context mean nothing
...
Looking at Black Scorpion's full comment shows how GG took the last bit and tried to TOTALLY ignore what the man said just before that about the solo player. You see this is nothing more than more GG spin.
The problem is the underlined part. The question is not whether that statement is true or fase, but rather: do the devs agree, or do the devs disagree as GG asserts. And I believe both quotes state positively that the devs disagree, that they do not believe City of Heroes is just a game that happens to have the same people in the same environment. The devs believe there is specific value to teaming, and specifically to rewarding teaming separately and explicitly. It means, as Black Scorpion said, that sometimes the devs are going to be explicitly cogniscent they are developing a multiplayer game, and provide special encouragement - in the form of in-game rewards in particular - to teamed only tasks.Quote:MM stands for massive-multiplayer. All that means is that multiple players can exist in the same environment. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't mean forced teaming. It certainly means you CAN team. You've been pushing your own definition of the MM for years around here and you're still wrong.
Black Scorpion does say they acknowledge that there should be some options for solo players, but by acknowledging that some of their development will explicitly go into emphasizing teamed tasks they are admitting that, in effect, being able to solo everything is not an absolute rule for the devs.
Ghost Falcon's post also explicitly reveals the devs position that they do not believe City of Heroes is a game that just happens to include multiple players in a shared environment. Ghost Falcon also explicitly states that the devs think carefully about how the content they add to the game affects and encourages teaming. That doesn't mean teaming itself is preeminent, but it does mean its also not marginalized. Its very obvious that teaming isn't considered the faulty degenerate case of the rest of the game. Its considered a legitimate thing by the devs to encourage teaming, to reward teaming, to allow teamed events to take initial priority in certain rewards, to introduce certain elements of the game in teaming settings first, and to make some things exclusive to teaming. Not all things, or even most things, or even many things necessarily, but some things, and deliberately so.
In that sense, the devs do disagree with the statement that an MMO is just a shared environment. They believe teaming is a special activity in MMOs that deserves special attention. They do not say they believe forced teaming is a good idea across the entire game, but the difference between "forced" and "encouraged" is often a matter of perspective.
I don't know why this is true, but the devs position has been pretty obvious and yet constantly debated. Their position has always consistently been: Most things should be accessible by solo players, but not everything needs to be. Pretty simple, and pretty straight forward. And yet people still think that the devs either "know" that MMOs are all about teaming, or they think the devs have finally realized the truth that everything should be soloable on reasonable solo terms. Neither are true, and that's not going to change any time soon. -
Quote:Why would you think this was nearly impossible for me to do? I can think of lots of examples, because I have practical experience to draw upon.Originally Posted by Durakken
You expect me to imagine a way for something to be "not obvious" which is nearly impossible to do for yourself
For example, both prior to and during I14 beta - aka Architect beta - I did *a lot* of testing of critter behavior. Lots of things struck me as weird, but a long standing issue that was generally known for a long time was the fact that critters did not always use all of their attacks. This was most troubling when it came to mastermind pets. Sometimes you'd upgrade a pet with an attack only to discover it never used it, ever.
Turns out a major part of the problem was recharge buffs, but that was a very non-obvious bug. There's no logical reason to expect that improving the recharge of powers would make a critter not use certain ones. The *obvious* logical thought process was this: since the critter's attacks were recharging faster, it might end up using the same attacks over and over at the expense of other attacks. But it often happened that the critter stood around and did nothing when recharge buffed, even if it attacked just fine when not recharge buffed.
That was a very non-obvious bug, and it took a lot of very careful testing to figure out what was ultimately happening. -
Quote:There's no literal limit, just practical limits based on how much resources they have, and how much it would take to accomplish the change, and what the net benefit of that change would be.Originally Posted by thgebull0425
How far can they go with the engine they've got for COH? I'm not a programmer, but is there a limit to how much they can add to the game?
Take fingers. Our hands don't have separate articulate fingers. Would it be impossible to add them? Not literally. But you'd need to change the models to add fingers and finger skeletons, and even if you only want to animate them occasionally you still need to change parts of the animation system to account for those new skeletons. Then there are the costume graphical assets like gloves that would all need to be modified. That's a huge amount of work for fingers. At the moment, the devs don't consider it worth the effort, given what else you could add to the game for the same level of effort. You might get several new powersets for the same effort as having fingers.
As long as that kind of equation holds true, certain things will be practical impossibilities even if they are not literal impossibilities.
Sometimes the equation changes. Power customization's equation changed because the estimate for the amount of effort required went down, and the perceived net benefit went up. BaB also spent significant amounts of his time on the changes necessary to make power customization a reality, so having a dev that believes in the change and is in a position to help it along helps. Ultra Mode was funded in part by the resources made available for a boxed expansion which altered the economics of that effort. -
Quote:He isn't even mentioning the issue with normalizing the sequencers to deal with different modes.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Also if the devs were to reconsider their decision and work on a Swing power it will be as a non combat power. Clockwork O1 has flat out told us that
Fail to do that properly, and you get the situation where if you trigger Elude while simultaneously falling, you whirlwind instead of backflip. -
Quote:You want an example of a bug fix to a subtle bug so you can declare if you would have thought it was obvious or not?Originally Posted by Durakken
That's an example of the bug... it's not an example of where the fix is which is the thing in question which is your point.
Um, nice try.
The best way to demonstrate the skill of being able to identify and suggest corrections for bugs in code without having to see or review the entire codebase would be to do it. Its possible. I have about a half-dozen of those. But I genuinely doubt there are more than a handful of people capable of actually doing that. -
Quote:You should just record it so everyone can see for comparison. Alternatively, demorecord it if you can't video record smoothly.Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
before you decide, Id like to offer you the chance to see my blaster Bentley Berkeley in action. He is on Virtue, and even if you have to roll a fresh toon on the server Ill be happy to take you along on something to show you what blasters when well run can do.
If you do have something like a nice high end brute to bring all the better. Can run a fast 4 man 3rd respec jacked up to X8 to have some fast fun. ill be on BB all day just shoot a tell if you want.
Video demonstrations have the advantage of removing qualitative language from comparisons. Performance isn't good or bad, it just is when you're seeing it instead of reading about it.
Of course, its not going to be representative of the kind of performance someone will have leveling up a blaster, but it will show what kind of performance can be built up to if you really try. -
Quote:TPN seems to be having one of these now. Start guessing.Originally Posted by Durakken
You aren't giving an example and I'm fairly awesome at figuring out where bugs are even if they don't make much sense for most that they're there so there is no way for me to accurately measure what you call obvious to what i call obvious.
Also that is one of the skills good testers have... guessing where a bug might be based on what they are experiencing in game. -
Quote:Pthh. Just this thread alone seems to have woken up a substantial number of people to the idea based on recent market activity.Originally Posted by TopDoc
Can I have your stuff?
I'm beginning to think Topdoc's master plan is to get everyone excited about doing this, flood the market with this activity, cause a collapse of prices, get everyone disappointed at returns and abandon the strategy, and then clean up when the supply suddenly abates.
Or maybe he's infected all purple recipes with a nanovirus that will transfer all the character's funds to an offshore Rogue Isles account or something. -
Quote:If you read the article, you've seen it brought up in another context: the context of how objectifying and sexualizing both male and female characters denigrates women and glorifies men, because all men like to be objectified in exactly that way.Originally Posted by BellaStrega
The Cracked article in the OP is discussing comic book art in the context of the male gaze. Which is to say, that the art is created with an eye toward men reading the comics. Which is to say that the description of how Namor's depiction works is accurate in that context. Obviously, real life is messier than theory.
I can see what Arcanaville is arguing, but I have only seen "but men are objectified too" brought up to counter discussions about how women are objectified and sexualized. I wouldn't mind seeing a discussion of the topic that wasn't used as an attempt to derail, but I have not yet been witness to such.
The problem isn't the male gaze idea. The problem is the article writer is attempting to *prove* that comic book costumes exhibit the male gaze phenomenon by explicitly stating without any evidence a rather extreme position: that no matter how sexualized or ludicrous Namor's costumes are, well, we all know all men would jump at the chance to look like Namor.
Do we all know that? Isn't that just as absurd as saying all women deep down inside want to look like Power Girl, even if they won't admit it? -
Quote:And not one in a thousand is any good at it.Originally Posted by Durakken
As far as the statement of not looking at the code and assessing it... That's actually a standard thing for programmers. Professional programmers as their normal business have to estimate how long something will take to do and whether they can do it without ever looking at the code or without the code existing to begin with. So on that level a programmer saying that it's not hard or wouldn't take that long is a normal and skill based thing...
The game engine was written with a higher emphasis on efficiency than being a textbook example of structured code.Quote:Also programmers are regularly asked to implement something in a code without them knowing or understanding most of it... in fact that's the whole idea behind game programmers to begin with... All the work is separated and you're programming sections of code that has to interact with other sections that you have no idea what are in those other sections and have to work with an engine that is more or less a black box to you.
One of the most pernicious class of bugs that this game engine has had over the years are bugs where players zone into the wrong instance. Over the years some of those bugs have been extremely odd: sometimes only affecting certain kinds of characters, or only affecting characters doing certain things. Historically, these bugs have been extremely difficult to find and fix.
Imagine how its possible for that bug to even exist. And now imagine its possible for player activity *within* an instance to affect how they zone into *another* instance. And now imagine a way for this bug to exist that wouldn't be blatantly obvious.
When you do, you'll have a better idea of the state of the game code. -
Quote:Actually, there are many parts of the game engine or client that were created by people who for all intents and purposes no longer exist in our dimensional reality. The coders who wrote the original physics engine, for example.Originally Posted by Border_line
I'm not even going to bother trying to have a normal discussion on something with people who don't have their facts straight on this. The people at Cryptic who developed the engine are still working on this game.
In fact, I'm not sure if *anyone* who worked on the original release game is still on the code team.
On the general subject of what is possible and impossible, technically speaking practically nothing is impossible literally. But lots of things are infeasible. Grapple swinging ranks high on the list of things I believe would require so many changes in so many areas that its infeasible to add to the game. Completely separate from that fact is the independent problem that the most direct way to do it would probably conflict with a lot of ways existing things work that would require ad hoc solutions.
I once discussed with Castle the idea of having a "charge-up" attack. You hold down the button and the longer you do, the more damage it does when you release. But after discussing that very simple idea with him, it quickly became clear to me that was infeasible. Would it be impossible to add the code to do it? Of course not. The problems were that:
1. You would need to invent a whole new user interface widget to allow for that, because the current UI doesn't support that functionality.
2. You would have to figure out a way to document that new functionality.
3. You would have to deal with players that use macros or keymaps to activate their powers instead.
4. You would have to deal with the fact the powers database doesn't have data that could describe that functionality.
5. You would have to deal with the fact the powers system doesn't have a way to scale damage in that way.
6. You would have to invent a scheme to deal with the mechanics of tohit and line of sight for a such a power analogous to how interruptable attacks work.
I can go on, but the list doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop at 10, or 15, or 20. All for an attack that lets you hold down the button to charge it.
Grapple swinging is like that. Its a thread you pull that starts unravelling the rest of the game with it, forcing you to expand that one little thing into an excursion to make changes across so wide a cross-section of the game mechanics that its hardly worth it.
I will also repeat The Rule. In the history of this game, no player without direct inside or first hand knowledge has ever correctly guessed the precise way the game engine works, the way the developers work, or the relative effort required to add a feature. People still keep forgetting the data side of the game is implemented in Excel, or that there even is a separation between the code and data teams. Even people who have worked on other games consistently get pretty much everything wrong.
It took me several weeks to figure out how the animation system in this game worked, and that was with BaBs help, and to the best of my knowledge the system is practically unique to this game. The physics engine is unique. The way the powers system works is unique in many ways. The reward system appears to be unique. I think most MMOs have a lot of unique features to the way they are developed, but I think this game moreso is not a good place to be testing your guessing skills. -
Quote:History should have taught them more than that. No game since City of Heroes and WoW released have gotten a pass on content depth. You cannot have content gaps. You cannot launch so thin that players can *create* content gaps with their behavior. You cannot launch without enough content for at least one full replay. Anything less and you're on life support before you even launch, no matter what else you have going for you.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
To be fair, though, the industry should KNOW by now that you need to launch with content that covers all ranges at the very least. Sure, you can expand on it later, but starting with massive gaps in, say, the 25-35 and the 40-50 range isn't going to endear anyone to the game.
To compete against another MMO already in the space, you need even more than that. And regardless, even if you launch with the bare minimum content to survive, if you cannot launch content quickly after launch to give the appearance of trying to catch up, you'll bleed customers rapidly.
DCUO proves you can have everything going for you, and still underperform if you launch thin. Conversely, TOR seems to show that you can do everything wrong *except* depth of content, and still survive. TOR is not an MMORPG, its closer to an MMO adventure game. Its a Leisure Suit Larry with lightsabers and a horrible MMO wrapper. Star Wars or not, it should be dead already, but I believe the content alone is giving people hope that Bioware can fix it before the players run out of missions to run.
The real problem with launching thin is that you don't get many chances to make a first impression. -
First of all, I would recommend abandoning the argument that something is fine if you cannot see it being "game-breaking." Its the kiss of death. Believe me or don't.
Second, I suggested something similar for the architect: make pools of ranged attacks, melee attacks, and very simple defenses so that custom critters could be customized, and there was some resistance to the idea on a number of grounds. It would be easier to do this for custom critters than actual players, so that would suggest it would be very difficult to get this level of effort off the ground. It might increase the likelihood of happening if the idea could be downscaled to something small, that had within it the ability to be scaled up outward over time.
In principle, it could be done, it might even be a good idea if it was done, but I think you're underestimating the balance significant issues that crop up, at least as the devs see balance. And how they see it is the only thing that matters to a suggestion. In particular, in a game with level advancement and archetypes, it is not automatically true that if they give it to you at 41, its ok to have at 21, and just because a different powerset gets it doesn't mean its ok for all of them to do so. That would be breaking rules all over the place, and even if you could get Synapse to agree, there's no way you'd get everyone involved with powers simultaneously to agree to that stipulation. Too many people would have to simultaneously sign off on that sort of idea to make it viable. You can break the design rules occasionally, but doing so on a grand scale takes an act of god. Even Positron can't unilaterally do that given the current way Paragon works. -
Quote:The problem is that you believe this is an economics problem, when its a psychological problem. Pay to win isn't referencing an economic problem demanding a solution, its a psychological perception problem which has no solution. If you enact things that create the perception that your game is pay to win, you stand an extremely high probability of damaging or destroying your player population. That's simple reality. The question then is whether its worth the risk. If it offers no radical benefit that can offset that risk, its not worth it no matter how economically viable the suggestion is.Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
This. Wrong. On so many levels. And with the bonus of showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what people with cash on hand will do to circumvent the whole argument anyways. Just so wrong.
Lets start with some softballs. I'm just gonna lob them over and you dont even have to connect, just see if you understand the whole thing.
If you are using I/Os you are probably either A) an experienced CoH player. B) an experienced MMORPG player playing many games
If you are using I/O sets to build top notch characters you are either C) a very experiened CoH player D) a moderately experienced CoH player who is smart enough to get good help E) A very experienced gamer who picks up new systems fast F) a freaking genius
Now, if you are A, C, or D you have enough funds on hand to kit out at least one character fully just from what you have accumulated. If you are B or E you are probably gonna find a quick way to come up with the necessary in-game resources to kit out a character. I got nothing on F, they exist, and they do things different than me. I am sure the Fs will figure something out and be able to have a character I/O'd how they want pretty quick.
So, your basic premise is gone. But I aint done. What you are really saying is "You can only have one or two characters fully I/o'd perfectly. If you want to have a top notch character thats all you get. If its your main and you do not want to shatter it for the shineys suck it up and play a SO build.
And lets play hardball now. Cause you obviously have not been playing the game I have. Have you ever noticed, say, somebody offering to sell in game currency by the billions? What do you think, they been spamming that crap in game forever and have made no money? Lets just pretend some people who play our game have used their services. I know it unthinkable, but I suspect based on the fact they will not stop spamming that they have had some small success. What do you think players do with the billions they buy? That's right. They buy I/Os. Wow, youre coming right along. Okay here's where we start to run now. The Devs could be getting all the money that is going to chinese prison guards (a lot of the farmers are actually prisoners, read a little once in awhile) and the players who want to throw buckets of money at the game could actually be giving it to NCSoft.
Jeez, people irritate me when they have no clue about economics and logic.
The existence of RMT doesn't create the perception problem, what creates it is if they become to pervasive or successful, or if the developers aren't seen to be opposing them. -
Quote:Compared to the game at release, City of Heroes has a better graphics engine, a highly improved gaming engine, and far more customization options. It has a better teaming model, a better chatting system, a player economy, an advanced enhancement system, an end game advancement system, a player content creation engine, and a microtransaction store.Originally Posted by dbuter
I think the world is ready for City of Heroes 2. It needs better graphics, vastly improved gaming engine, more customizations, etc. CoH is a great game, but it is REALLY showing its age.
If you went back in time and told a 2004 player what our feature set was, they would assume you were playing City of Heroes Three. -
For me it was a toss up between A and B. I ultimately went with A because:
1. B is thermally incompatible with skirts
2. Because A doesn't have traditional exhausts, I think there's more possibilities for interesting travel auras with A
3. I'm adding my voice to the retractable nacelles thing
4. A will be more overtly visible than B, and if I'm strapping on a rocket pack on one of my characters, I'm clearly not going with the discrete look.
5. After they make the model and release it, I'm going to ask for it to be flipped on its back and turned into a rocket board option. -
Quote:So all we need to do is encourage more comic book artists to google search women's bodies, and problem solved.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Well, today's artist have the Internet to fill them in on such things, so, lack of firsthand experience is no excuse anymore.
-
Quote:On the other hand, it was a major plot point of The Greatest American Hero.Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
The only way to get the information critical to succeeding is to go through the trials and see what happens, see what the gimmicks are, and run them multiple times in a series of experiments to see what will actually work. I've never read a superhero comic book where this was the primary narrative paradigm for superheroes deep into their careers.
-
Quote:There are people who hate spreadsheets who play Eve Online? That sounds like someone who plays City of Heroes who hates super powers.Originally Posted by Darth_Khasei
I played EVE Online and market a lot there and asked myself the question of why more people don't do marketing in these games.
It has voice channels in game, so I would just ask people why they did not market since it is the best way to make money and you end up being the richest people in the game. The answer was quite simply some people HATE math/numbers and find it boring dealing with spreadsheets etc...
In the end some just don't find it fun no matter how much profit you show them they could make to buy that pimped out part they wanted.