Arcanaville

That can't be blamed on PnP games: many of them have special rules to deal with those cases. In fact, as I recall D&D had a rule that sleeping characters could just be killed, no dice required, no hit points consulted (because hit points themselves were never intended to be analogs of physical health exclusively, but rather they were supposed to be a simplified metric of how hard it was to kill the character overall).

Furthermore, in Champions Online every attack hits, no attack misses. They can be partially avoided, but never completely dodged (theoretically speaking, something with 100% avoidance could completely dodge the *damage* of an attack, but 100% avoidance is also impossible to achieve under any circumstances in CO). So this is not an issue for all MMOs.

Within the context of CoX, the issue is one of a simplification of sorts: Defense in CoX isn't related to the pure concept of evasion: its used to represent both evasion and deflection. While it may be obvious that an immobilized entity should have much lower ability to evade, it wouldn't have any less chance of deflection under many circumstances.

Further blurring this situation is the fact that CoX is deliberately vague about some of the conceptual foundations of powers, to leave it up to players. Should you *really* be able to always hit someone at point-blank range? What if they are supernaturally lucky? What if they are superhumanly fast? What if their evasion comes from precognition (Fortunatas are said to have this property)?

How do you decide which concepts to honor and which ones to not honor when it comes to ignoring +Defense, if your intent is to create a balanced game?

The problem here is actually that at some point, you're not making game rules but trying to simulate physics. Anything short of that and you're making *some* simplifications, and the ones you think are perfectly acceptable will not be to a lot of other people. Where ever you draw the line, some people will think you went too far, and most of the rest will think you didn't go far enough.

Lots of maps were pulled because there were reports of missions being for various reasons problematic when using them, including some problematic spawn points. This one had some really weird spawn point issues, though (I used this map in my Secret Weapons arc originally, and I think I ran into every single one of them).

Been waiting for that map to reappear for a long time. Question: were all of the weird placement errors fixed on it (guess I'm going to have to check now)?

Actually, its the reverse. The +Recovery in Miracle is not tagged to be an enhancement. Enhancements are specifically tagged so that their buffs only affect the power they are slotted into. Non-enhancements are tagged the opposite, so that their buffs affect the player and not the power they are slotted into.

So the fundamental difference between the Miracle +Recovery IO and an endurance modification IO is that the endmod IO is tagged to only buff the recovery buffs in the power its slotted into, while Miracle buffs the player's recovery directly. Because its also tagged to allow Strength modifiers, the endmod IOs are buffing it.

My guess is that the reason these buffs are tagged to honor Strength modifiers is less to allow us to benefit from slotting in this way, and more to make sure they obey recovery (and regeneration) debuffs. If they did not obey Strength modifiers, players who slotted them would have recovery and regeneration that could not be debuffed.

Its not easy to make things that can be buffed but not debuffed or vice-versa in the general case in CoH.

The one I'm still puzzling over is a reputation comment that just says "Thanks!" and is attached to a negative rep. I can't be sure if that's sarcasm or an error.

I suppose its possible its an attempt to get me to think about their reputation tagging for as long as possible, in which case its genius.

I've thought about responding in a similar manner, but it occurs to me that private anonymous stupidity is harmless, including to me. Responding to it requires that I first broadcast it, and I'm much more comfortable relegating their anonymous stupidity to irrelevance.

The ultimate fate I want for all stupidity is irrelevance, and by posting both privately and anonymously, they've already made themselves more irrelevant than I can otherwise achieve.

Of course, I reserve the right to make fun of truly epic stupidity, but I haven't been graced by that sort of reverse-genius yet.

The average SR player might not notice *explicitly* but I think the lack of protection to non-positional psi does have an impact on SR's performance vs Lost and Rikti missions, and it also has some impact on running Carnie missions (specifically missions with lots of Illusionists). Non-positional psi is not very common, but its also not as rare as some people think it is (you see it as early as the yellow tsoo ink men).

The devs don't consider being able to soft-cap with the invention system to be necessarily broken. There may be other reasons to believe that situation is not operating as fully intended, but the mere ability to soft-cap was explicitly stated to be not directly game-breaking when the invention system was first released, and a couple of times since.

Its probably too easy to do so: there's not enough trade-off costs to attempting it. But that's not the same thing as saying soft-capping is broken (soft-capping is also possible without the invention system at all with SR, but the endurance and build costs are very high and probably enough cost to balance that advantage, at least to a significant extent).

It would seem that a mandatory requirement for this rule to be viable would be an easy way to selectively hand out respecs. Handing out global freespecs because you combined two SR passives would probably be seen as excessive.


For what its worth, I agree with you in principle. My version of the cottage rule, if I were the (lead) powers designer would be:

Changing the order or mechanics of a power in a powerset is permissible if the net result is that the powerset has the same or a superset of its original functionality for all availability subsets of the powerset, and that capability is encompassed in a set of powers with equal or lower usage cost.

In other words, its okay to transfer dodge's defense (and scaling resistances) to agile, because both are passives and agile becomes available earlier. Transferring lucky's defense to Evasion would violate the rule because that presumes no SR player would want to take lucky but not Evasion due to Evasion's endurance costs, an unsafe presumption under my rule.

This rule, too, requires as a necessary prerequisite the ability to confer selective respec to players affected by a focused powerset change.

The first version, which compared Invuln and SR with a hint of Regen, was written in I3 (a predecessor was written in I2, but it was a slightly different animal). The I4 version added Dark Armor and a full discussion of Regen. The I5 version had a discussion of using discrete calculations to compare to the average calculations, and some Markov analysis. The I7 version is the version you see above.

I'd say, between all versions, there's about a hundred hours of research into it. That doesn't count the fact that while writing it (every version) I was levelling Dark Armor and Regen (I had level 50 SRs and Invulns) to allow for in-game testing of the calculations and some of the gameplay analyses. And it doesn't include simulation time.


On the subject of updates: I've been considering updating it. The numbers are of course dated. But the reason I preserved the guide was more to preserve the thought process behind the methodology, moreso than the conclusions themselves.

If I was going to update it, it would be less to simply update the numbers, and more to add to the methodology. And Willpower does have a unique twist to it that would allow for a revisit of the methodology: I'd like to incorporate my thinking during I11 beta regarding Willpower, and why it doesn't necessarily function the same in terms of survivability for scrappers, brutes, and tankers, due to the non-proportional scaling of regeneration on survivability (specifically, I'm thinking about the proper way to think about RTTC in the grand scheme of things).

Its not high on my priority list, but never say never.

I think this is a good time to restate my version of the cottage rule, which I did have permission from Castle to post, long before his cottage post:

Changes to either the order of powers in a powerset or to the mechanics or core effects of a power are to be considered only as a last resort when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

The "cottage rule" can be broken: Singularity, Elude, MoG. But when its broken, its broken because the problem being solved is considered important enough to break the rule, and breaking it is the only way to address the problem.

So: if you want to combine all three SR passives into one passive and add new powers, its totally irrelevant if you can prove your version of the set is better. You have to demonstrate that there exists a problem with the SR set that is severe enough it is worth breaking the rule - with all the collateral damage that always occurs with breaking the rule - and that no other solution to the problem will work.

When those two conditions are met, the cottage rule is no longer an obstacle.


This is why precident is also irrelevant. Had the devs decided to break the cottage rule for epics it would only be because of the above justification and the cottage rule would still be completely intact. That's why MoG and Singularity don't invalidate the cottage rule.


If you're saying the rule itself is not worth following, I would ask what you would replace the rule with. Because if the rule doesn't exist at all, that's tantamount to saying the devs are free to change things at whim, without any regard for gameplay precedent, so long as they think the new way is better. If they think SR would be better if Focused Senses was replaced with Reconstruction and SR had no more ranged defense toggle, it doesn't matter if players are used to an SR that has it.

I'll be honest: if I were a game developer, I would not bind myself to the cottage rule either: I would follow a somewhat different rule**. But that's the rule the devs currently follow, and if you're going to jettison it you should at least suggest an alternative that your suggestion doesn't violate. Eliminating the rule without replacement is really not an option.


** I'd mention it, but I'd rather hear what your alternative is first.

I don't know how likely it is, but there is a possible solution: change the +DEF bonuses in the invention system to Elusivity.

Its been a while since I posted my two Elusivity threads, and I think people forget that Elusivity was *not* intended to be a PvP-focused mechanism. It was only tangentially intended to address PvP issues. It was actually directly intended to address stacking.

Since Elusivity doesn't stack linearly with Defense, it benefits +DEF, +RES, and Hybrid Def/Res sets equally. In fact it benefits things with zero mitigation proportionately the same also. This means you can have relatively high levels of Elusivity (to a point) in the Invention system without overstacking on existing defense sets.

Elusivity was actually specifically intended to address that specific issue (although the invention system didn't exist when it was first proposed: it was designed to address stacking issues in areas like power pool defenses and the stacking situation in the force fields set).

I will say, however, that if the devs were thinking of implemented Elusivity in the invention system, I'd want a hand in suggesting the correct values. It was done in a little too sledgehammer of a manner in PvP when it was first introduced, and Elusivity loses most of its benefits if it isn't finessed into the system with carefully crafted values. I would also consider limiting stacking opportunities with analogs of the five of a kind rule in most cases (only probably lower than five).

Welcome aboard Dr. Aeon.

The cottage rule isn't just a historical precedent, though. As both jabbrwock and Jade_Dragon point out there are very strong foundational reasons for the cottage rule. The rule is really just short hand for attempting to avoid all the issues they mention.

If there is one thing that should unquestionably be stolen, literally just stolen, from Champions Online it's the bug/(player side)bug-tracking system (except ironically, to fix the bugs in it).

I'm not saying the current /bug is worthless, but for myself personally every closed beta I bug one or two little simple bugs just to remind Q&A that I'm still a subscriber and then pretty much everything else goes into a forum post or a PM to a red name. The kind of stuff I focus on simply isn't able to be accomodated by the current limited /bug.

The problem isn't that I can't use /bug (I can just pm the appropriate dev) but rather that there are whole classes of bugs that take far more space to describe than /bug allows.

I strongly recommend that someone take a look at the CO bug system. Just the fact that I can see the other previously submitted bug reports before writing my own is a huge benefit.

It's worth noting that it was a similar suggestion on my part that first prompted Castle to articulate to me the early version of what we now call the "cottage rule.

That's because most people would be trying to figure out if they just lost a bet or are in the process of winnng one.

My feeling is that Ninjitsu with a +DEF stealth replacing Hide might be too much defense for the set. I'm just not sure how the devs will resolve that problem.

At the crux of the problem is not Ninjitsu specifically but SR. Stalker SR is actually much, much stronger than Scrapper SR. Most people aren't aware, but while stalker SR lacks lucky, Evasion more than makes up for the loss of AoE defense: in fact stalker Evasion is actually *stronger* than the total AoE defense of scrapper lucky and Evasion combined.

The loss of lucky also costs stalker SR some scaling resistances, but its not as much as you might think: stalker dodge and agile have *more* scaling resistances than scrapper dodge and agile. The net result is that while scrapper SR gets zero to 60% with three passives, stalker SR gets zero to 50% with two passives.

So, here's the comparison between scrapper SR and stalker SR:

Scrapper SR, slotted mitigation:

30.4% Melee
30.4% Ranged
30.4% AoE
0-60% scaling resistances

Stalker SR, slotted mitigation, suppressed Hide
33.3% Melee
33.3% Ranged
36.3% AoE
0-50% scaling resistances

Is there any doubt which one is intrinsicly stronger?

Now, you could argue that because stalkers have lower health, that lower health imposes a small penalty on a defensive-heavy set. The reason has to do with an effect I mentioned a long time ago (back in the I4 version of my scrapper comparisons, actually) when I called it the "run line." Basically, no player really gets to "use" all of their health if they want to avoid death, they can only get to the point where they are one shot/volley away from being killed, and then they have to run (or take their chances). This run line is proportionately higher for low health archetypes (because proportionately speaking each critter attack deals a greater percentage of health) and for defensive sets (because individual attacks are not reduced by resistance, which would lower the level of the run line).

The problem is that Ninjitsu gets a sizable percentage of its mitigation from defense and should thus be affected in a similar, if slightly lower manner. So while stalker SR is stronger than scrapper SR (in raw numbers), and stalker EA is similarly stronger than brute EA, scrapper Ninjitsu would be numerically just as strong as stalker Ninjitsu but the logic says it should be a little weaker. That's a moderate inconsistency.

The proliferation rule seems to be to proliferate to stalkers, its okay to just add Hide on top, because that extra defense is offset by the disadvantages of lower health. That rule would seem to indicate that proliferating away from stalkers you should jettison Hide.

But of course its not that clear-cut: there are examples that contradict this line of thought. I'm just tossing it out as the reason why I think its not obvious to me that Ninjitsu would get to keep its stealth+def when ported to scrappers (and stealth without defense seems to me to be too light of a power for the set).

Perhaps they could add a stealth without a defense buff but with a different compensating buff. My concern is less the stealth and more the +Def that comes with it.

That's true. However, one should never assume that if something is trivially easy to change, then the devs not changing it is a priori proof that they don't want to change it. It may just currently fall into the category of a very low priority issue to look at.

If Castle did want to change this, though, all that would be required is the sixty seconds it would take to find and change the "AllowStrength" flag in his spreadsheet for every version of this power from a one to a zero.

I was going to say that psychological studies have shown that men tend to have a much more visceral reaction to visual sexual stimulation than women tend to have on average, and while there is some overlap the average difference is substantial.

However, then I remembered who you are trying to engage on this subject, and you iz on yo' own, hoss.

Perhaps, but I think a detailed discussion of the mechanical incongruities of genital dimensional sliders between male and female characters is likely to earn me an Ocho-prize timeout.

If I recall correctly, PP only had +20% regeneration, half the base buff of Health from fitness.


People have been asking for Nin scrappers going back to CoV beta.


On the subject of advantages and disadvantages between Nin and SR, one thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that Nin has substantial resistance to toxic and psionic damage (15% toxic res in the heal, 22.5% psi res in its version of Practiced Brawler). This means Nin and SR have opposite resistance coverage: SR's scaling resistances do not cover toxic or psionic damage.

This also means that while SR has no protection against non-positional psionics, Nin has no special vulnerability to them (its defenses are also positional, but the psi resistance combined with the heal mean it has reasonable coverage there).


Outside of the powersets themselves, Nin can slot resistance and healing IOs without needing power pool powers, so its much easier for Nin to replace fitness with IOs (SR in effect needs fitness to slot the IOs that typically reduce the desirability for fitness). That counterbalances SRs greater benefit from stacking +def IOs (at least until both of them soft-cap).

If Nin were ported to SR, its basically a given that it would lose Hide and gain some other power. If I had to guess, I would guess that Nin would gain quickness or a similar analog. I don't know if Castle would be comfortable letting Nin scrappers keep smoke flash or not. My guess though is that a scrapper Ninjitsu with quickness and a replacement utility power replacing smoke flash would be very popular blue side. I'd certainly roll one.

Keep in mind that Paragon Studios is a not an independent developer as Cryptic was. PS is essentially a subsidiary of NCSoft. The only reason why Paragon Studios would be working on another title would be because NCSoft told them to. I'm not sure why NCSoft would want them to.

We may not always individually want what they develop, or agree with the direction they are developing in, but I'm reasonably certain that the resources I'm thinking about are being explicitly used to further development of CoX. I wouldn't say its impossible that PS is working on another title, but if so I have had not even a tiny hint of it, and conversely I do have first hand knowledge of increases in the resources available to Positron et al to further develop the game that are probably not common knowledge.

I don't want to oversell that point: those resources could be dedicated to small things the players could care less about. But I'm pretty sure they will end up in CoX somewhere.

Of course not. Those breast sliders are there for a reason.

I'm sure it would be. Is that where you were before getting this job?