Arcanaville
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Quote:Its not intended to be at the moment. Its intended to be fact-finding exercise to see if there are leveling techniques that can beat these numbers by any reasonable means. You're free to twink your character out at any level with any enhancements available at that level and give it a try.Originally Posted by Kractis_Sky
I feel that this will become, as it stands, a mathematically speculative exercise.
spiritfox already asserts its possible with specialized AE missions, which are probably designed to leverage AoEs to a sufficiently high level that they exceed the DPE limits of single target attacks, possibly combined with using critters that have reward bonuses. If the limit could have been broken anywhere, I assumed that would be how it would be at least one way to do it. -
Quote:Actually, taken in isolation, both #1 *and* #2 are wrong. The conjecture doesn't assert either #1 or #2. It only asserts #3, for the case where you do not have special powerset-specific endurance recovery or management powers. I mention the calculations themselves as a matter of course, but not all of my justifications for believing that they mesh together in a way that generates a reasonable leveling envelope. There's a sufficient amount of judgement in that thought process that its not concrete enough to really debate around.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Does illustrate the fact that this is not one "Conjecture" but at least 3
1. The fastest way to accumulate XP/end is ST +2 boss kiling
2. The rate of endurance recovery is at best fully slotted stamina over the career
3. The rate that endurance can be generated caps how fast you can level solo
2. Is certainly wrong.
Actually, I considered just posting the table itself, without calculations, and simply asking if people could beat the table. -
Quote:See, its easy.Originally Posted by Tank_Washington
I don't know
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Quote:In the case of the accolades, its unlikely a player will have very many of them for most of their levelling career, and you have to factor in the time to acquire them where you are not earning XP efficiently.Originally Posted by Miladys_Knight
Edit - in your post directly above did you factor in the Atlas Medalion, Portal Jockey, and the average boost from using Geas of the Kind Ones every time it recharges? Also the recovery boost from the base empowerment (cheap and easily sustainable requiring only an SG with the appropriate empowerment station and salvage that can be easily obtained in the hour that the empowerment buff lasts?) and the boost from using the Vet pet that grants recovery.
Theoretically speaking the base empowerment station is something available to a lot of players even if they are leveling solo, but I specifically didn't factor that in. The vet pet is something I didn't factor in even though I myself always take the endurance version specifically because I think the pet doesn't do much at higher levels, but at lower levels every point of endurance helps. But its a relatively high-level veteran reward, so its not available to probably most players.
Here's an experiment. Take one of those blasters, and make an AE mission with an extreme Willpower AV as the boss (just to make it basically impossible to kill solo). Test mode the mission, and set yourself to be immortal. Now wail away on that AV as fast as possible, constantly. If your endurance bar genuinely doesn't move downward at all over a long period of time, let me know what the build is and at what level does it become possible to construct it, and as a result level with it. I'm not asserting such builds are impossible, but I believe they are rare enough at early enough combat levels and/or require enough compromises to make them not significant to leveling balance.Quote:Against non-end draining foes, I can create a blaster that has a seemless attack chain, ED capped damage, and 100% end sustainability even with a travel power runnning (I have a few actually). -
Quote:My point is that continuously mentioning the drop in subscribers in the last reporting quarter before they stopped reporting access numbers is intellectually dishonest. You can't have it both ways: you can't keep saying "they stopped reporting so everyone is guessing" and then in the same post "but nod nod, we all know what it means when there's a big drop and then they stop reporting, wink wink."Originally Posted by Tank_Washington
So what's your point
You want to guess wildly, that's fine. You want to play games with numbers, I can swing that bat. I can also play my amazing command of color demonstrates my superior intellect if you prefer.
But the tactic of attempting to be right by simply saying everyone else can't be sure they aren't wrong, is older than dirt and just as interesting. -
One thing:
Quote:No, not that, although that is probably not generating as much concern as you might expect. No, really this:Originally Posted by Coldmed
all i can say is..be concerned cause as of the 17th im back outta here.
If you weren't playing before, and you have no intention of playing in the future, why would you spend money to move your characters around to other servers you're not planning on logging into? That seems rather weird.Quote:i only upped to use the free transfer things and that was it. -
Quote:Most archetypes can manage at least a 1.0 DS/sec attack chain. That represents a 5.2 eps endurance burn rate. Base regeneration for non-VEATs is about 1.67 eps. With slotted stamina its about 2.48 eps. Slotted to the ED soft-cap in endurance reduction a 1.0 DS/sec attack chain burns 2.67 eps.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
DPS seems more the constraint.
Even a leisurely 1.0 DS/sec attack chain burns more endurance per second than most players can recover without inventions, and that's assuming more or less maximal endurance slotting reductions and no other endurance loads. So to a first cut approximation, I believe endurance is the limiting factor in continuous combat conditions.
However, in real life, we can't generally achieve 100% combat time. At some ratio of combat to non-combat activities (i.e. traveling between spawns) its DPS (in scale terms) that becomes the bottleneck and not DPE. I looked at that a while ago, but I'm trying to work back to that point (and past it) from a different angle.
The calculation seems to suggest that as well. Which brings up the interesting question of why people run out of endurance? And I'm asking that question rhetorically: I know why, but I'm attempting to revisit that apparently obvious question from a more fundamental game balance foundation.Quote:Anywho The conjecture is that the availability of end is the constraint on how rapidly you can do things in the game, in this case level. Well that is apparently just not the case. -
Quote:REFUTEDOriginally Posted by Sardan
I sort of dread the pineapple option. I mean, once he uses that there's no going back. And then how will Arcanaville respond? I mean, what can she do to refute the pineapple?
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Quote:That's the second time you've said basically that everyone is just guessing, then turned around and tried to imply that the prior subscription numbers vaguely support the contention that the subscription numbers are most likely falling rapidly.Originally Posted by Tank_Washington
I mean the last time subscriber numbers were revealed it wasn't a trickle of player loss it was a lump sum of ten thousand subs Q to Q lost.
And then the subscription information was hidden, for the first time.
So lets see what those numbers actually say, shall we:
Technically, as far as I know NCSoft has never released raw subscriber data, only monthly access data. But assuming monthly access numbers are a consistent proxy for subscriber numbers, here are the access numbers as reported:
There's no point in interpolating the data prior to March 2006 because its a shotgun pattern. From March 2006 to September 2008, linear projection would estimate the current subscriber numbers at about 101,060. Logarithmic projection estimates 112878 subscribers. Normalized logarithmic projection estimates 124,520 subscribers. Linear projection based solely on last eight quarters reported estimates 109,927 subscribers.Code:2005 Mar 140481 2005 Jun 162922 2005 Sep 150068 2005 Dec 194000 2006 Mar 171951 2006 Jun 171000 2006 Sep 172420 2006 Dec 154953 2007 Mar 143127 2007 Jun 153331 2007 Sep 139313 2007 Dec 136250 2008 Mar 134195 2008 Jun 137028 2008 Sep 124939
The average quarterly drop reported in each quarter relative to the previous quarter is:
Historically, the June reporting quarter is the best (it averages a net gain of subcribers for the reporting years 2005-2008) and September is the worst (averaging twice the subscriber loss as the reporting quarters of December and March).Code:Sep 8081 Dec 3804 Mar 4971 Jun -8632
Extrapolating 50% of the September drop into all five quarters from December 2008 to December 2009 generates a projected realistic worst-case subscriber floor based solely on extrapolation of 94,717 subscribers.
Historical guidence therefore suggests a current subscriber level between approximately 95,000 and 125,000 subscribers, assuming no development between September 2008 and December 2009 served to reverse (or accelerate) the projected trends.
If subscriber drop-off was accelerating from the September 2008 reported number, our subscriber levels would be below 60,000 subscribers, and dropping at a rate sufficiently high there would be practically no reason to release Going Rogue at all.
If your estimate of 70,000 to 80,000 subscribers were correct, it would mean that from September 2008 to about now we've been losing between nine and eleven thousand subscribers net a quarter. There has never been a rolling four quarter period where the game has sustained that level of subscriber loss in all of the reported data, so that would be an extrapolation significantly outside what the data suggests is likely.
Looking at the Q3 2009 report, there's one other thing I noticed. In the sales breakdown, it says CoH/V is "5471" (out of 153,260) but the chart says the units are in millions of korean won. When I do the reverse calculation based on today's exchange rate, I get $4,803,756.57. Now, that can't be box sales, so that's actually very likely the total revenue for box sales, subscriptions, and value packs. If that's true, then if box sales and value packs are a relatively low percentage of the total revenue, that number is 1.6 million a month, and at $15 per month it represents 106,750 subscribers. If the average subscriber is on a 3 month plan at $14 per month, it represents 114,375 subscribers. If 30% of all subscribers bought one $10 value pack during that quarter (which seems like a high estimate) that number implies about 106,750 subscribers. If we had a large amount of turnover, say 20% turnover in the quarter, and essentially about 20% of the subscribers had to pay about $30 on average to buy the game on top of that then that value implies 94,191 subscribers.
I haven't done a complete analysis of all of their released financial data, so I cannot yet be certain these assumptions are completely valid, but its an amazing coincidence that those numbers match almost precisely the extrapolation numbers from the older subscription data, if it is a coincidence.
Of course, this is all just a guess. -
Quote:Then consider it a guess. In fact, consider this Arcanaville's Leveling Challenge: can anyone level solo faster than I've predicted its not possible to level.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
The problem is without the calculation no one can even look at or make a change to the assumptions to see if they are modeling anything that even connects to the game.
Its not a model anyway: its constraint logic. But at the moment I'm not interested in refining the calculations, because I'm going to discard them anyway. The question is whether I discard them for a more refined version of the same, or I discard them completely as an unworkable methodology because there are too many exceptions to its framework.
To do this "right" would take a significant amount of effort. It would be wasted effort if (for example) Topdoc posted two minutes after my analysis that his fire dominator levels 30% faster than my maximum, so the calculations are worthless. So I'm taking this in stages.
In principle, anyone could duplicate these calculations, though. For each level, take the health of bosses at that level, divide by scale one damage at the blaster ranged scale. That's the damage it takes to defeat a boss at that level, in scale units. Take the XP required to level per level, and divide by the XP an even Boss gives. That's the number of kills it takes to level. Multiply the two. That's the scale damage to level. Multiply by 5.2. That's the endurance points required to level. Divide by 1.12. That's the approximate purple patch scaling factor. Divide by 1.95*1.33, which is the DPE efficiency factor for 3x1 slotting. Divide by (100/60)*1.49 which is the recovery rate of slotted-stamina enhanced recovery. That's the number of seconds it takes. Divide by 3600. Those are the numbers in the table above.
Its extremely rough, because its intended to be. That's why I didn't bother with a complete description of the calculations: they are intended to be relatively quick and dirty, as a test of the methodology. But at the moment, I'm not interested in all the ways the calculation "doesn't model reality." I'm interested to know if its beatable.
And part of the reason why I'm looking at this issue from this angle is because, as you point out, everyone else already looks at it from the opposite angle of attack chain output. I'm assuming you've solved the optimal attack chain problem and have an attack chain that is as efficient and as fast as possible. At that point, endurance becomes the bottleneck, and no one has ever really looked at the endurance bottleneck.
Which is interesting to me, because its a fundamental balancing parameter of the game. We're supposed to be endurance-constrained, but no one - not even the devs I don't think - actually knows how *much* of a constraint it is, or even if its an actual significant constraint at all.
Just because it looks like one, doesn't mean it actually is one. My *guess* is that its sometimes one, and sometimes not one. But I'm a very very long way from where I ultimately want to go with this. Baby steps. -
Quote:I think we sometimes need to do a better job of explaining when a suggestion:Originally Posted by Fury Flechette
Completely agree with these last two paragraphs. Veterans should have a big picture view instead of just focusing on the details. Also, disparaging someone's work by calling it "dumb", etc. is not exactly conducive to influencing them.
1. Is much more technically difficult than the poster implies.
2. Runs counter to the devs intentions, as previously expressed by the devs.
3. Has serious balance issues.
4. Is redundant or ineffective in accomplishing the stated goal.
5. Has better ways to accomplish its goal.
6. Is unclear as to what its stated goal actually is.
7. Appears to be a personal preference other players likely would oppose.
In return, posters should try to explain as clearly as possible when they are:
1. Expressing a preference with the understanding other players might disagree (which is entirely reasonable)
2. Expressing a suggestion knowing it might suffer serious mechanical or balance problems, with the intent of seeing if feedback can repair them
3. Suggesting a general addition to the game which is not intended to disrupt the existing game (but which accidentally might)
4. Suggesting a correction to a perceived bug or error in the game's implementation.
This would help in terms of giving the proper feedback. For example:
I don't know if the poster believes its too slow relative to other peer powers and this is a balance-objection (in which case its probably incorrect), or if this is just a personal preference expression and the poster just wants fast attacks (fine, but you're probably not going to get it), or if this is related to some more general problem the poster has with electric melee.Quote:2.) Jacobs Ladder animation is too slow.
Also, a note to posters of suggestions in general:
Its usually obvious when you're having conversations in your own head, and anticipating arguments. If you know a suggestion is going to be controversial, acknowledging that fact by anticipating it and pre-dismissing it is a sure-fire way to incite a real argument, one you won't be able to win as easily as the ones you have with yourself in your own head.Quote:12.) Winter Event Present Inspiration rewards, I wouldn’t mind having fewer drop but actually have them do something special, like Cap an ability for 20-30mins, maybe you can only have 2 things capped at any given time. Maybe a temporary power like SS, SJ or TP Friend or even a Temp Store where you can trade in so many presents for a Temp Power your char would normally not be able to have. It’s only a few weeks a year, lighten up.
If you know a suggestion is going to be controversial, its better to state why you think it will be controversial, and your reasons for believing the suggestion's benefits outweigh its controversial issues, or say nothing.
"I would like to reduce the recharge of energy transfer to zero and have it emit yellow ponies. I recognize there are balance issues to reducing its recharge to zero, but I believe the small amount of extra damage it will allow energy melee characters to generate is not very high compared to the benefits of being able to see yellow ponies prance around."
is much better than
"Make energy transfer have zero recharge and have it make yellow ponies. I'm sick and tired of all you balance-tards telling me which ponies I can have and which ones I can't have. And stop making that face at me; for the last time I'm not killing the babysitter." -
Quote:I'm actually sort of hoping someone comes along and tells me a way to beat this that bypasses the assumptions rather than breaks them. Something I just haven't thought of. I'm pretty sure the assumed limits themselves are practically unbreakable as stated. But they might not represent the best possible options.Originally Posted by Psyonico
I understand you are running entirely hypothetically, Arcana, and I'm trying to imagine a way in which someone could either make or beat this time, and I come to two conclusions
1. it would have to be a MM with damage enhancing powers, /dark has an early start, but I think Storm, TA, or possibly Therm might take the advantage in the higher game. Picking the highest damaging primary would be the only possibility (not sure which one that is)
2. It is not possible to reach your +2 boss condition, simply because AE would be the only way to fight an almost constant stream of such enemies, but if that was all you fought, you would lose XP because of the anti-farming measures that were implimented. -
Quote:In real life, probably. But the open question is can an AoE-heavy character beat optimal killing of +2 bosses, not can they beat their own personal time on +2 Bosses.Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
I'd imagine you'd get better results with something hugely AOE heavy running at -1 to +0 set for 8 than single target heavy running +2 bosses
Why +2 Bosses, by the way? First of all, it comes down to health vs XP. Bosses have more XP per point of health. This means all other things being equal, one point of damage earns more XP when it hits a boss than anything else. Second, the XP multipliers give you more XP if you attack something higher, but the purple patch reduces your damage vs those things. The optimal point is +2, where you are doing 80% of the damage but getting 140% of the reward, which is a net 12% better return on damage (that's a simplification: a +2 will have slightly more health as well as taking less damage, but that doesn't change the optimal point by much, and its a simplification for the purposes of this estimate I think is reasonable at this stage).
At their target cap, AoEs can generate as much as 3 times the DPE as single target attacks. But its questionable whether that is sustainable to the degree that it can break the absolute single target limit I've calculated. If I go back and refine this calculation to determine a more precise (and lower) limit, the effect of AoEs will probably become significant. At this point, I'm not sure it is. -
Quote:Then they would probably level slower. I'm currently interested in whether anyone can level faster. I have plans to do a more refined version of this calculation, taking per-level maximums into account, and trying to zero in on more precise bottlenecks, but that's a lot more work (about 50 times more work) so before I do that, I'd like to know if the entire exersize is doomed from the start because the assumptions the calculations are built on are wrong.Originally Posted by eryq2
You are always killing the most optimal targets in terms of endurance per XP point. And that is +2 bosses
Not every toon can run mishes at this level.
Basically, if no one can beat this, I move on to better calculations. If its beatable, I go back to square one. -
Quote:He prefers the more politically proper "activity-challenged."
Many know how little BAB like to be called "lazy" -
Fulmens:
I'm not assuming patrol XP. Thanks for reminding me of that. I'm going to assume that for someone attempting to level quickly patrol XP is going to have only a small effect. Its theoretically possible, of course, to take ten days off per level to gain maximum patrol XP and level in half the time in terms of play time, but that would take over a year of calendar time to pull off.
As to the other assumptions, well, that's why I'm posting this. I'd like to see someone demonstrate either by example (actually testing leveling) or by very strong argument (something fairly mathematically rigorous) that assuming those are relatively minor leads to an incorrect guestimate for the leveling limit.
vernichterhelge:
I didn't forget about leveling inspirations, but I did forget to mention them. I'm assuming that inspirations in general, including the leveling ones, are not material. This includes damage insps (which increase DPE), CaBs (which give E) and the lifesaver roll you get on dinging a level.
To give you an idea why I didn't consider them significant, my estimate for the amount of endurance necessary to reach level 50 is about 213509. 50 dings of full endurance is about 5000 endurance.
Another_Fan:
I'm not so much interested in comments on the raw calculations themselves as I'm interested in knowing if there are empirical tests that can contradict them. I posted the per-level table so that theoretically speaking anyone could take a character of any level and test leveling strategies to see if its possible to beat the curve I specified. You could take anything and see how high you can get XP/min to go at a particular level, and see if its faster than the curve implies.
The other way to look at this is the way you mention: try to calculate how *fast* someone can generate damage. But the problem with that is that sustainable damage is actually very tricky to calculate boundaries for. When I attempt such calculations, I end up with limits higher (faster) than the endurance one. So the endurance one is, at least for me at the moment, the stronger constraint, so its the more interesting one.
gec72:
Personally, in terms of *normal* play, I've never reached 50 in anything remotely close to this limit. My fastest leveler to 50 is probably around 200-250 hours myself, and usually I take even longer than that, because I am almost never focused on leveling speed.
Scientist:
I wonder about controllers and masterminds myself, because they aren't bound to this limit directly (as are some powerset combinations). But I'm curious if their ability to side-step this limit comes with other disadvantages that prevent them from exceeding it anyway, which is the purpose of my post.
Kractis_Sky:
The assumptions are very extreme because I'm looking for the boundaries of solo play. However, as extreme as they might appear, its still actually possible that someone could beat them, or at least come close to them, if just one of my assumptions turns out to be too conservative. For example, if you could be dinging arc completions all the time, those bonuses could be huge. But I don't think there are enough of them, or that you could do enough of them quickly enough. If I'm wrong, there might be a strategy that doesn't have to do the extreme levels of work the calculation assumes and can sidestep them. And actually Warburg missions with the old bonus reward came surprisingly close to doing so.
If absolutely no one jumps in and tells me that this is possible, I will probably go back and refine and loosen the calculation to come up with a lower (slower) limit, and see if someone challenges *that*, until I'm satisfied I have a reasonable guestimate for the limit, or until I get distracted by something shiny and go do something else. -
I've been hearing crazy leveling claims for almost as long as I've been playing the game. Sometimes, the claim is true, and sometimes it points to an exploit. Most of the times I think they are exaggerations, comparable to the ones made about endurance limits or one-shotting bosses.
It got me thinking about whether there was an actual mathematical limit on leveling; something that would prevent a solo player from being able to level any faster. And there sort of is: there is an endurance limit.
Fundamentally, we all convert ticks of the blue bar into damage, damage into kills, and kills into XP. Most characters have a limited amount of endurance (certain powers in certain sets can increase this to extremely high levels in theory, but most powerset combinations don't have access to this).
Now, kills are not the only way to get XP: you can get XP from mission bonuses (that intrinsicly do not require endurance, although they may require mission objectives that do ultimately require endurance) and you can get them from miscellaneous activities (such as finding exploration badges). But assuming that those are relatively minor, and assuming that things like CaB drops are relatively minor, I've calculated what I believe is the endurance limit on leveling from level one to level 50: its 35.6 hours.
This number is based on the following assumptions:
1. Throughout the character's leveling, they had the best damage modifier (the blaster ranged modifier, 1.125).
2. They were always operating at a DPE efficiency of 1.95*1.33 = 2.59 of base (which is scale 1.0 damage per 5.2 endurance), which is the efficiency of being slotted to the ED soft cap for damage and one SO worth of endurance reduction, from level 1 to level 50 (really from level 2 to 50, I'm not counting the time to level from 1 to 2).
3. You are always killing the most optimal targets in terms of endurance per XP point. And that is +2 bosses.
4. I do not assume you can farm targets with higher than normal XP, aside from the bonus for killing +2s.
5. I assume targets never regenerate.
6. I assume single target damage efficiency.
7. I assume fully slotted stamina from level 2 through level 50.
Given those assumptions, it takes about 35.6 hours to produce enough endurance to generate enough damage to earn enough XP to reach level 50. And while there are some assumptions that are conservative (I never assume AoEs will do better than single target attacks in terms of DPE), and some are not strictly always accurate (Brutes can be more efficient with fury than the list above assumes) most are highly aggressive (for example, it assumes targets are on an infinite conveyor belt and line up to be killed one after the other without pauses, and don't ever shoot back).
I'm not saying its impossible to level to 50 faster than in 35 hours. I'm saying it seems unlikely to be able to do so without help. But this is a very loose calculation. Its possible it contains some unreasonably conservative assumptions. So my question is: does anyone think they can level from level 1 to level 50 in less that 35.6 hours, under the following restrictions:
1. No teaming
2. No direct combat assistance
3. No exploiting bugs in the reward system
That's it. Beyond that, anything else would be fair game, twinking with inventions, any archetype, any powersets, even ones that break the assumptions about endurance limits (i.e. electric armor). Is it actually possible to solo level to 50 in less than 35.6 hours, and if so, how?
I was thinking of adding a fourth rule that said:
4. No leveling by dropping missions
Because I thought of the possible exploit of waiting three days and then logging in just to drop a mission, but actually I don't think that will work anyway.
I'm not interested in vague anecdotes about sorta fast leveling. I'm interested to know if it would be possible to do now, and what specifically would allow a player to exceed the apparent limits of this calculation. Is it that mission complete rewards are higher than I am assuming, or that combat is really far more efficient than I am predicting, or that AoEs are much more efficient than I think can be leveraged consistently? Or something else I just haven't thought of or thought was unimportant?
I don't necessarily expect someone to try to level from one to 50 all at once just to test this conjecture, so here's an extra bit of data for anyone that wants to experiment with this conjecture of mine. Here's my raw calculated numbers for the estimate for the minimum time to reach each level:
Code:Note that is the minimum estimated time to reach each level in hours. In other words, it should take at least a half hour to reach level 15, and an hour to reach level 19. After 10 hours the fastest possible player according to this conjecture would be between 36 and 37.2 0 3 0.01 4 0.02 5 0.04 6 0.06 7 0.09 8 0.12 9 0.16 10 0.21 11 0.26 12 0.31 13 0.37 14 0.44 15 0.5 16 0.59 17 0.68 18 0.8 19 0.93 20 1.1 21 1.29 22 1.54 23 1.83 24 2.14 25 2.5 26 2.88 27 3.32 28 3.82 29 4.36 30 4.9 31 5.52 32 6.2 33 6.95 34 7.78 35 8.63 36 9.57 37 10.61 38 11.67 39 12.88 40 14.27 41 15.82 42 17.56 43 19.45 44 21.51 45 23.78 46 26.08 47 28.41 48 30.77 49 33.16 50 35.59
An interesting observation of mine personally is that the conjecture guesses that it will take about an hour or so to gain each level in the 30s at maximum speed, and that's actually very close to the maximum solo leveling speed I saw running Warburg missions back when they had extra-large completion bonuses (of course, it took a lot more than 5 hours for me to reach the 30s in the first place).
So: anyone out there want to prove me wrong and beat this leveling curve? -
Quote:My best estimate is that City of Heroes shut down their servers back in 2008 when the last three subscribers died of bird flu.Originally Posted by Obsidius
At this rate of hemorrhage, I'm expecting the game to hit a negative number of subscribers any month now.
Don't ask me how; it's just the way the math works with the current number of subs minus the increasing amount of "hemorrhaging". I'm sure you'll come to the same conclusion once you crunch the numbers as well Arcanaville
I don't know why people are so anxious to know more about Going Rogue. I mean, there's the two new powersets: Dual Pistol and Adolescent boy Summoning. There's that new zone where everything is clean and crime is severely punished: Singaporia. And side-switching, where people can now play for the other team. Do you really need to know how high ninja run leaps in the Moon Base, or which Praetorian Clockwork transform into jetbikes, or how many nipples the new ultra mode body sliders will max out at? I actually envy you guys, who don't know all these things yet, and can still be surprised by x-ray vision and that new emote BaB made for Dominatrix with the Cheeze Whiz and the velcro (that might not make it to the live build, so test the 3D task force with the special glasses *as soon* as you get into the beta). -
Quote:Was this the guy that used to bully him?Originally Posted by Xanatos
Don't you dare mock skdgsojhgs. Not after everything he has been through. He used to be bullied at school for being a univowel.
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Quote:We've been hemorrhaging badly for years. At the rate we keep hemorrhaging players, by 2014 everyone on Earth will have quit City of Heroes in disgust at least once.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
It's hemorrhaging quite badly now
Fortunately, six million people are born every month, and only half of them subscribe to WoW by age 2. -
Quote:I'm not sure what's weirder, the fact that pamcake is actually a word or that on these forums I can't be 100% sure it wasn't deliberately used.Originally Posted by Rookery.
So I am extending the pamcake of detente
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Quote:We can only pray its not the Alabama edition of Charley's Angels.Originally Posted by Rookery.
I think this is A-Team, Alabama edition right?
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Quote:CO has those things too, but one additional small but I think significant factor in the teaming situation in CO is that it relies less on instances and more on shared zone content. Ignoring team bonuses, leveling rates, and every other reward-based advantage to teaming, in large teams you simply tend to *see* bigger groups of foes than solo (or at least you used to, before the current difficulty system). Even if you leveled at exactly precisely the same speed in teams as solo in CoH, there is a different gameplay experience in teams: its simply a different kind of fun to play eight vs twenty than it is to play one vs three.Originally Posted by Dispari
* Teaming-encouraged content like task forces, giant monsters, zone events (though rare and sometimes limited to holidays), and AV-missions.
That sort of thing adds an incentive to teaming at least some of the time in CoH, even for people who predominantly solo. This effect is significantly muted in CO, because a team fighting foes in a shared zone often degenerates into eight solo players heading in random directions and essentially "playing solo in a team." While CO does have instances, they don't seem to scale in quite the same way they do in CoX, and more importantly the percentage of time you spend in them is much lower. -
Quote:It used to be a great server, and then we started seeing all these players running around with characters with names like "skdgsojhgs" with no clue how to use their powers. But I hope not too many players hold that against us.Originally Posted by Xanatos
Of all the servers Triumph is definitely the most rubbish.
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Quote:I meant what I said: Defense has been very ardently described as "they help, but only kind of, only sometimes, and not when it really counts."Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Here's the crucial point, though: they help sometimes, but they help exactly when you need them.
The argument has generally been that Defense fails to mitigate "lucky bursts" and it is the high damage bursts that comes from bosses that scrappers need damage mitigation the most; they practically don't need defense at all against minions and LTs.
Mind you, I'm not making this argument, I'm repeating it. And my counter-point has generally been, among other things:
Everything always fails exactly when you need it most. That's because we usually judge failure by getting dead, or close to it. And every one of those situations is when we needed it the most. Practically everyone says that defense fails when you need it the most, regeneration fails when you need it the most, mez fails when you need it the most - nothing ever fails when we didn't need it anyway.Quote:Blaster "survivability-through-killing" works sometimes, but FAILS exactly when you need it most.
What matters is whether something does what it is supposed to do, when it is supposed to do it. Is Blaster damage supposed to be able to kill a Boss before it can return enough fire to put the Blaster in jeopardy? Probably not. So the mechanism of allowing Blasters to mitigate damage through cutting down on the number of attackers is primarily a tactic intended for minions and LTs. That's almost certainly intentional. The fact that it doesn't work on Bosses is almost certainly a direct design requirement *of* Bosses. if it worked on Bosses, the devs would probably increase Boss health until it didn't.
1. As I said, it usually works.Quote:A couple of points to make here. One would be the one you alluded to, but avoided - damage modifiers only matter insomuch as they determine the strength of a melee attack relative to the strength of a "similar-size" ranged attack. That means that, all things being equal, things will hit harder in melee than they do at range. And this is true for a lot of things like Warriors, Trolls and even Rikti, to some extent. That is because they are, by and large, melee NPCs with a ranged attack. This fails utterly, however, when you are pitted against NPCs designed to be ranged damage dealers, whose ranged attacks are so strong they end up dealing MORE damage than their melee attacks. And some enemies don't even HAVE melee attacks at all. Nemesis Dragoons are a good example of this, as are Rikti Drones. And given how AI operates, you are unlikely to suffer melee AND ranged attacks if you go to melee, making some enemies actually safer in melee. A good example I can think of is Zeus Class Titans. If you force them into melee, they will only cycle their punch, never actually firing their much more damaging Plasma Beam, Plasma Beam Barrage, Explosive Missile Swarm, Incendiary Missile Swarm and Gas Missile Swarm attacks. They are LITERALLY safer in melee, because they are designed to be ranged enemies. Gunslingers are in the same boat, lacking a melee attack, as far as I've seen.
To add to this, the developers have continually acknowledged that while, yes, that's how things were designed to work, when things ACTUALLY work like this, they find themselves scrambling to fix it. When people were farming wolves by hovering out of their range, they got a ranged attack. When people kept doing that anyway, they got a ranged attack that STUNS, so as to knock fliers out of the air. It ought to have been working as intended. So why was it "fixed?" I mean, OK, give them a ranged attack, but why keep making it stronger?
2. Sometimes, you're correct, the critters do dumb things that make this work less well than intended. That's a problem that hopefully will be fixed sometime in the not too distant future.
3. Sometimes, the devs don't do the right thing, or they do contradictory things. However, that doesn't in and of itself contradict the notion that range (specifically, *being* at range) is a form of attack mitigation. If you said smashing resistance was damage mitigation, you would think I was quibbling if I said "oh yeah, well what about all psionic critters?"
And by the way, there really aren't very many critters "designed" to deal more damage with ranged attacks than melee attacks. That would require breaking that damage/recharge/endurance formula: the critters follow basically the same one we do. The only way a critter does more damage at range than in melee is if it has more ranged attacks than melee attacks and fails to use those ranged attacks when in melee range and their attack selection is exhausted (they run out of melee attacks to use and they are all recharging). That *does* happen, but only because, as I said, sometimes the critters are unintentionally brain-dead.
Unintentionally, so there is some hope that down the road this gets addressed, although ironically if the critters get smarter about how they attack, the first canary in the cage that could get negatively affected is the archetype running with the lowest margin of survivability: Blasters (believe me, this is something I've put a lot of thought into).