Arcanaville

Fill the top with water. The water should exert even pressure over the top of the cylinder. The water will also exert a force against the sides of the cylinder, but what we're concerned about is, given the pressure exerted by the water through the cylinder, how much of that pushes against the x-axis through the piston. And the answer is, I believe, zero.

The issue of how you apply pure force through a non-perpendicular surface is sufficiently questionable so as to bring up the point that the problem as described may not be the problem as it exists.

Just a small calculation note. Things like Defiance and Musculature do not have cast time costs and usually can be factored in directly for reasonable calculations. But Aim and BU do have cast time costs and depending on the situation that is critical. If we're talking about sustained damage output on high level blasters with full or nearly full attack chains, that cast time cost is material. BU's mechanical buff limit on a high level blaster is somewhere around +45% damage, and as a practical matter its going to be closer to +25% damage over time. Aim will be significantly lower than that.

BU and Aim are much better burst damage tools than damage over time tools.

It would have had to have been a "go free 2 play or die within four years" mandate since CoH: Freedom has been in the planning stages for over two years now. Which would be a rather strange mandate. No one on their last legs gives the dev team a couple of years to execute their last ditch effort.

Here's how far back I can push City of Heroes: Freedom, and in the process dispel many of the theories surrounding it that the change was some sort of desperation move.

I learned about the focus group preview back in April of 2011. It had been in development for quite some time before then, which means City of Heroes Freedom had to be well underway in January of 2011. Any theory that says Freedom is a sudden last ditch effort by Paragon Studios is false on its face.

I learned a while ago that the devs actually did something which I can't share, but which was related to City of Heroes Freedom and occurred at a time when it could not possibly have been influenced by Going Rogue's launch or numbers. So City of Heroes Freedom must have been already in development when Going Rogue released in August 2010. Any theory that says Freedom is a response to Going Rogue cannot be correct for this reason.

The Strike Teams that Paragon Studios says were integral to Freedom's development model were being formed at least as far back as March 2009. Freedom's genesis has to date from around that time period, coincident with the development reorganization.

The people at the focus group preview were told in May that Freedom had been in development for "over two years" which also implies a genesis date of early 2009. Also, by May of 2009 Black Scorpion referred to his position within Paragon Studios (at least to me) as no longer the "powers dude" but "in charge of more stuff." Without going into the details, what he said sounds like the moment when he became the Live and End Game lead (more or less) which would imply that was around when War Witch became the lead for the introductory game, which must have been approximately when things like the tutorial and the early level experience updates were being formulated, both of which are closely coupled to City of Heroes Freedom. So any theory claiming that NCSoft gave Paragon Studios an ultimatum to switch to an F2P model has to account for them making that ultimatum years ago, and giving Paragon Studios years to execute it.

Also, any theory claiming Paragon Studios is only doing this because other companies have done it and proven successful would also have to account for the timeline when those other companies launched their Hybrid F2P transitions and then reported on their numbers.


My educated guess is that the genesis of the City of Heroes: Freedom model dates back to around March-April 2009. I am almost absolutely certain it happened some time between late 2008 and summer 2009. That puts a bit of a crimp in most of the theories out there as to why Paragon Studios has decided to launch City of Heroes Freedom, besides the obvious one the devs have basically articulated. Namely that the game was doing fine but was probably on a very slow decline overall, and this was the strategy they felt offered the best long term opportunity to strengthen and improve the game. They felt it was the best option, but one that did not need to be rushed (well, rushed on a time frame of years: I'm sure they felt rushed all two and approaching three years of it).

Leveraging DA, especially prior to heavily slotting with inventions, takes a certain playstyle not everyone stumbles into or enjoys. For example, Dark Regeneration takes a certain mentality to use at early levels. I found that at early levels I could get massive use out of it, by simply slotting it for endurance reduction *only*, and then instead of using it when I got low in the middle or at the end of a fight, I would try to use it at the *beginning* of fights to engage the maximum number of targets with it. Doing that, you don't even need accuracy but if you find you are missing too much, you pop insights before using it. This allows you to use it as a heal-to-full at the start of every fight with a lot less endurance drain.

I made a proliferation spreadsheet a while ago that I only updated to I13 (when Invuln was tweaked) that showed the relative differences in the sets from a performance perspective, but the person that was hosting it back then seems to have disappeared. I can try to google docs it, but it would take some time because the spreadsheet used a lot of active elements (pulldowns, dynamic colored backgrounds, etc). I think it would just break if I uploaded directly.

Important to note I keep this up in the guides not so much to compare these four powersets, but to keep the methodology and thought process alive. Contained in here are all of my thoughts from that time period on how to compare the powersets; what formulas I used for defense; resistance, regeneration, healing, +health, etc; and how I attempted to resolve questions about how accurate the average formulas really were.

I posted a probable reason up-thread. Basically, Rhode Island has a unique law regarding registration of sweepstakes offered in the state. Or rather, they have a law with a uniquely low threshold. In Rhode Island, New York and Florida you have to register sweepstakes with the state and pay a fee. But in NY and Florida the law only applies to sweepstakes where the total prize is more than $5,000. In Rhode Island its anything over $500. This sweepstakes is clearly designed to make its total prize payout exactly $5,000 to avoid the registration requirement in New York and Florida, but there was no way to realistically claim it fell under the $500 limit in Rhode Island.

That's a shame, because you're going to have to at some point.


Not exactly. They aren't revoking previously claimed rewards.


Its an opinion about a hypothetical that no one is suggesting will happen.

Actually, although Policewoman just made up numbers and her individual estimates are way off, her total estimate is actually not all that far away from mine.

A new powerset doesn't always involve programmers: that's only if it has new mechanics. It does involve power designers, who are not programmers: they are "data designers." They deal in Excel, not C. From brainstorming to initial design it could take dozens of hours just to get the basics down. And I doubt even the first cut at a powerset takes only 60 hours.

Separate from that, and the artwork time to make animations, effects, and other visual elements of the powers, there's also Q&A testing time, design reviews, design reviews, mechanics testing, design reviews, balance passes, design reviews, beta testing, design reviews, and post live support. I would be surprised if there exists a post-launch powerset with less than five hundred man-hours of effort within it, and I'd probably budget 1000 total man-hours for a powerset given what I know about the process (which is incomplete) for design, implementation, testing, and process overhead.

I'm sure Television's eyeballs bugged out of his head when he found out he should be making $100/hour in salary and benefits, but even at more conservative industry standard estimates a powerset is bound to cost between $30k and $50k to implement, if not more.

Just to make sure I'm not misleading you, keep in mind that boxed expansions have had things like powersets in them as well. The specific intent is to continue to offer the things that the base subscription used to offer (like powersets) in the VIP subscription, and to offer the things that existed in boxed expansions and boosters (like powersets) in the store.

Things like powersets, that have been both given away for free and sometimes sold in expansions will show up in both ways: some will be included with VIP subscription, and some will show up in the store. The devs have already announced powersets that will be included in VIP subscriptions and powersets that will be purchased with points coming up in I21.

Separate from all of that, VIP subscribers will get 4800 points to spend as part of their subscription per year (400/month), which will increase to 6600 points per year (550/month) when you reach tier 9 VIP veteran status. So the first 4800 points of stuff per year will cost you nothing extra. You'll only have to pay cash for the stuff you want above the 4800 points you'll get per year. Think of it as a subsidy for VIP players: the first 4800 points of stuff is comped to us by NCSoft.

But just to be clear: the devs are likely to be releasing a lot more stuff in the store than they ever did in booster packs. Its just that the plan is not to carve out stuff from the subscription service and put it in the store: its to keep making the same amount of stuff or more for the base subscription, and then add onto that even more stuff that will be sold in the store. They aren't robbing Peter to pay Paul. Or rather, they aren't robbing subscribers to fill the store. If anything they are actually robbing Premium players (who have to pay for more stuff and get no points stipend) to give more stuff to subscribers and using the store to do it. Although that's not true either, because Premium players get to play the basic game for free: everything they buy is voluntary and optional for them, based on how much more game they want and balanced against the fact they don't want to have to subscribe.

It sounds like something is being blocked on your end. The presentation should start with a tabletop with ten file folders on it, and as the presentation loads postit notes and pictures should start appearing on them. The right-pointing triangle at the bottom center of the presentation should step through it, one step at a time. The "More" button on the far right bottom should have an option to autoplay the presentation. If you don't see those buttons or the pictures and postit notes don't appear something has probably gone wrong with the Flash player.

That's basically what I've been saying (generally, not just about powersets) since Freedom was launched. Just like I wish there was more content in the game than I could ever possibly explore, I hope there will be more content/items worthy of purchase in the store than I could ever buy. The completionist in my dies a little saying that, but the rest of me understands that generally means unlimited opportunities to expand my gameplay.

If not this it would have been more booster packs and boxed expansions. Those were the only two real options for game expansion.


How did you deal with this problem in the past with booster packs and boxed expansions, because once again if not this it would have been more of those.


Your problems really seem to be problems directly associated with unbundling. Those may be intractable, because the vast overwhelming majority of people are likely to appreciate unbundling and prefer it. The all in one mentality is really the first permanent casualty of City of Heroes:Freedom. Theoretically speaking, they could make a VIP+ subscription that had certain things automatically included like powersets and signature story arcs or something. But since everyone is likely to have different ideas about what should be included in such a system and what it should cost, that wouldn't really address the problem except in a lucky tiny minority of cases that just happened to coincide with that package's constraints.

Which is not to say that at some point down the road, a VIP+ subscription option might not be in our future if enough players ask for it, and they can come to some median consensus as to what to include with it. But since people are currently still getting confused between Paragon Points and Reward Tokens, any expansion in options is highly unlikely. Its more likely to be on the table when the initial launch settles down.

I've been killing off all the Snow Globes in all other dimensions and assuming their identities in order to accumulate all the Snow Globe power in the multiverse.

In the old system, you got a predefined reward every three months.

In the new system, you get a token you can redeem for a reward of your choice every month, rather than three months. The limitation is that the rewards are organized in tiers and you cannot pick rewards from higher tiers until you get everything from the lower tiers first. Its still better than the current version where you have *no* choice. Now, you still have to take each tier in order, but you can take the rewards within each tier in any order.

On top of that only VIP subscribers get these tokens each month. Non-subscribers do not. To give them a way to advance in the system as well in the new system non-subscribers will get an additional reward token for each $15 they spend. The only way they can advance in the system is to spend money. So we get reward tokens every month, they get them for each $15 they spend.

And to make it fair, if VIPs spend money in the store, we get the same benefit: one reward token for each $15 we spend as well.

Since the devs have announced a gigaton of content in I21 that is confirmed included with your VIP subscription, your perception that the new plan involves paying for all new content is in error.

The plan is actually to take everything they used to include in boxed expansions or booster packs and add them to the in-game store so players can buy them ala carte, and then add more stuff on top of that.

No one on the dev team has said, and no one else can make the case that, the devs are specifically targeting "things we used to get for free" and removing them from the game and adding them to the in-game store. The only people making such an argument have as their rationale that even though all evidence currently is to the contrary, we can't trust the devs and its obvious that's what they will have to do regardless of what they say. That's not evidence. At least, its not evidence of the devs' future plans.

EoM is +DEF(all except psi) and upon checking that excludes the positional types.

As to Shadow Meld, its only 15 seconds long so its not enough to cover a crash completely, so I didn't really think about it. On the other hand, if I had taken Soul Mastery in the first place, I would have gotten an opportunity to lose a purple set but gain *two* recharge opportunities:

This build now has +240% global recharge. Elude is recharging slightly slower even so, but not by much and that's not important in a build attempting to cover with EoM. We might be within striking distance of the absolute best you could possibly do in terms of recharge. Dark Melee could swap a +5% crushing for a +7.5% Panacea maybe, and still fit everything else, but that's only 2.5% more.

Shadow Meld by itself is not really strong enough, but it is +Def(All). Now that you mention it I'm wondering what you could do with Elude + EoM + SM; could you add back enough defense to make SM stacked on top viable, and get a crashless E+E+S sequence. Hmm.

You're overlooking the fact that there was no way for me to actually get the content for Going Rogue without paying extra, over and above my subscription. I actually in fact *paid* for GR, and its content. But there are such paths in Freedom.

Absolutely no one can yet make the case that a VIP subscriber will have to pay one cent to get an equivalent amount of content over and above subscription, in terms of actual comparable quantity. When you strip away all the "fancy math" what's left is this: if I get more content for the same amount of money, Freedom is a win. Everything else is academic arithmetic. At the moment, given everything I know about City of Heroes Freedom, there is no possible way I could justify saying that the amount of content I'm going to be getting for the same amount of money will be lower. The fact that a powerset "costs" this much or that much "points" when I'm being handed thousands of points a year for my subscription means, in isolation, exactly nothing.

Now, if anyone actually wants to discuss the actual specific mechanics of pricing, at that point there's no avoiding fancy math, because comparing the dollar cost of points with the point cost of items without factoring in the points a subscriber gets for free is, within that context, worthless.

To put it bluntly, I paid for the content of Going Rogue. All evidence to date suggests that all the comparable content that is going to be released in Freedom's launch will be things I will be able to get without paying more money, if I'm just a little patient. So *I* won't be paying more. Everyone who voluntarily wants to pay more, however, is free to do so, and I thank them for doing so.

That task force requires eight to start. Maybe you could get Ghost Falcon to quadruple box and fill.

Well, ok this lunatic build actually puts Elude at almost the recharge cap I believe:

Its probably a teeny bit under it, if you are cycling Ageless. Call it 202 seconds of recharge, plus its activation time, so Elude is now cycling about every 204 seconds. It has so much recharge (+235% global) that Hasten is perma unslotted. Eye of the Magus should recharge in about 422 seconds. If you attempt the EoM->Elude->Burnout->Elude sequence, then at the end of it EoM will still be about 2 seconds from recharging. Factoring in lag and the imperfections of casting powers, you should expect a ~3-5 second window of vulnerability every seven minutes.

And one problem with my hypothetical build is that it would be tricky to actually fit burnout in it. You would have to do something like replace lucky and tough to fit in Burnout (assuming it requires two powers as prereqs) which is doable (tough is actually in there as a sort of placeholder for burnout anyway) but that brings up another glitch in the build. With passives so under slotted your defense debuff resistance is only high because Elude is up and has a lot of it. While Elude is up you will still have to run at least two toggles if you want capped debuff resistance. And if you drop lucky and squeeze burnout in here, while Elude is down and you are relying on EoM as your primary protection, your DDR will be about 79%. Not bad, but not up to SR standards.

There's also the small problem of paying for it. Even for the very rich, this is a kind of pricey build. But its within the realm of possibility I suppose.

What's interesting about this build is that virtually every single slot, and every single discretionary slot is focused on recharge. I believe it has 5 LotGs, 5 purple +10% recharge bonuses, 5 +5% recharge bonuses (the most common kind) and three +7.5% recharge bonuses (and 1 6.25% and 1 3.75% buff). I'm not sure where you go to get more recharge.


If anyone actually intends to build and play this thing, please report back. I'm pretty sure I'm not building it any time soon, as curious as I am. A Dark Melee scrapper could slot one more Panacea maybe (you'd pull slots from Elude and Hasten), which opens the door to getting up to about 242.5% global recharge. I think with that and Ageless, you might actually be able to close the EoM->Elude->Burnout->Elude gap, but by only about five seconds including cast times. Your margin for error activating four powers at just the right times would be about one second per power on average.

Instead of explaining it to him, you should have all constantly pointed out how unappreciated, useless, and ineffective his feedback was. Clearly his lack of understanding of the situation mandated highlighting his noteworthy lack of social skills, his fundamental inability to effectively communicate, and his obvious lack of intellectual self-reflection typified by repeating activities observationally conclusive in failing to generate the desired response.

These are all things I would assume this person would want to know, since its important to point out failings so they can be improved.

The entire set is for the pretty. Its not a min/maxer's paradise.

If you have decided to sacrifice EC for the best possible MA chain then of course there's no question about using it. But as I mentioned, the cost of using EC in a single target attack chain is not large compared to the optimal single target chain, and the benefit under AoE conditions is moderately high, so in my opinion that makes it the better balanced configuration.

The cast time of EC does significantly impact the DPA of the power when looking at single target output, but the actual hazard of being in an attack animation one second longer than average tend to be overemphasized. If you find yourself in a lot of situations where everything can be fine before you activate EC, but it can all go very badly for you before you exit EC, you need to dial down your difficulty.

My calculations say EoM cannot get close enough to cover those holes cyclically. You could cover every other one *outside* of Burnout, which would still leave one crash every three Elude cycles uncovered.

Theoretically speaking, EoM could be buffed to be fast enough: you'd need its base 1500s recharge reduced to about 420 seconds, plus or minus. However, that would require 3.58 total recharge, and without slotting that means it has to all come from global recharge buffs (even Alpha Spiritual won't help here). With Hasten and with quickness, you have 90%. You need +168% global recharge buffs without Hasten or quickness to get there. That would be difficult. The rule of five cap for LotG (+7.5% each: possible) plus purple sets (+10% each: also possible but tricky) plus 5% buffs (possible from sources like CI, but getting very tight now) plus 7.5% buffs (I don't even see how) would be 150% if you could possibly get that many.

In fact, because most recharge invention set buffs are 5-tier bonuses, in effect except for the LotGs the recharge bonuses described above account for 75 enhancements in a build and the LotGs bring that total up to 80. We're running up near the theoretical limits of how much recharge the invention system itself is capable of giving up regardless of powerset combination.

It seems theoretically possible in terms of the recharge cap, but not theoretically possible in terms of the possible sources of recharge a scrapper could tap within their own build (if you could be constantly speed buffed that would get you in range with a build with enough recharge). With +150% recharge as described above, plus Hasten, plus Quickness, you'd have a total of +240% global recharge, or 3.4 recharge total. That would reduce EoM to about 441s recharge. That would be 21 seconds short, plus or minus a couple of seconds due to activations, or about the duration of the next crash it had to cover.


The numbers come from the fact that if we presume Burnout gives us two Eludes consecutively, EoM must recharge faster than the amount of time protected under two Eludes and EoM itself. EoM itself can grant 60 seconds of protection, which means EoM has to recharge in 60+180+180 = 420 seconds to be up fast enough. 1500/420 = 3.571 = 357.1% recharge = +257.1% recharge. Factoring in cast times and rounding up, we get +258% recharge.

You know, I should have thought of that, but I come from a time where if you said you were going to make a high resolution image of a spreadsheet of a bunch of numbers and post that on the internet for people to fetch, you would have been flamed to death with actual flames.