Arcanaville

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is anything else that I've said I'm looking forward to in CO something that's unreasonable to want? I don't think so.

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Perhaps not, but nearly all of it comes with unavoidable strings which you'll have to experience for yourself.

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Oh btw.. I'm only assuming like everyone else that when you zone into this new praetoria zone coming in issue 16, your morality meter will be one or the other, hero or villain with a gray area in between.

My reason for this is that the system must prohibit people from becoming heroes or villains at 51%. If they didn't, then mules will be created to shuffle influence over to infamy and vise versa. This would also include the auction house, and access to contacts and stores.

I'm guessing in order for a player to have full access to either side, they must be at 70-90% on their meter in order to access anything. Otherwise there would be a huge loophole in the way people transfer funds and drops to villain side or hero side.

With a 20% gray area on your meter, you basically cannot access or trade anything until you reach 70-90%. This would keep folks from exploiting by crossing over when ever they see fit and causing mayhem. Not that there's anything wrong with a little mayhem, but it would add an unfair advantage to players who could switch so easilty at that 50% marker on the meter.

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There's another possibility, and that is that the meter unlocks the ability to switch sides, but its not automatic. If there was something equivalent to the cape or aura mission arc that was required to "formally" change sides, that would eliminate some of the side-switching issues you discuss.

Its also possible that players that switch sides would have to surrender influence and/or inventory items before crossing sides. Its hard to say what the restrictions will be. We don't even know if side-switched players will actually be able to trade with natives: its possible they will be able to trade things like inspirations, but not things like influence/infamy. I don't think we have enough information at the moment to even speculate on what gateways players will have to pass through to get from one side to the other. My guess, though, is that it won't be an uneventful occurance. If for no other reason than there is just too much temptation from a game design perspective to make a big deal out of side-switching as an in-game process. I doubt it'll be "ding! you're a villain now" and pop all of the tier 3 inspirations. I think it will be something slightly more grandiose.

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you guys are all missing the obvious bonus if JB's idiotic predictions come true.


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The real bonus is he will roll a hero brute.

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The real bonus is he will be gone. But frankly, I'm not betting on it.

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That's a 180.

It was only a couple months ago you said I'd tire of my pursuit like "others of my ilk" and split.


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I said you'd tire of your pursuit and stop talking; as in disappear from the forums. That happens a lot. Some quit the game, others just quit the forums.

That's not inconsistent with believing its not a safe bet that you'll quit CoX for Champions Online specifically. I'd give that only a 60% chance of being true in the short term after CO release, and only a 40% chance of being true a year after CO launches. Not good enough odds.

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Challenge Missions are usually Scrapper Challenge Missions, I'm just being less specific than that.

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There we go, the cat is out of the bag... I dare Scrappers take on their own Challenges with anything other than a Scrapper...

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Does a Tank count?

In all seriousness, I tried my own with a blaster, controller, scrapper, tanker, and brute. The blaster and controller had inspirations coming out of their pockets, but I did try it. Managed to get past the first wave, and get killed somewhat into the second on my blaster.

Tried a second time with my blaster, and something other than an optimized inspiration tray, and on heroic. Managed to hover snipe my way to getting through wave one after a lot of scrambling.

I don't really recommend it for a non-melee, but on the other hand the choice is entirely up to the player (as are the conditions under which they want to use the mission to stress-test their characters).

By the way: still working on the 4.0 update to that mission. Thinking about something a little more goal-oriented, but still testing ideas.

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it looks like Praetoria is just going to be yet another in a long line of 'co-op' zones, and the only 'side' switching that's going to be done is based on an 'alignment' rating. the more eviller you get, the darker your missions become, and you can finally make 'good and evil' choices in plotlines.


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Not to be pessimistic, but that's exactly what I think it will end up being, with some new emotes and costumes. Still new and cool nonetheless.

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The information we have says that hero characters can cross into villain zones and vice versa through the side-switching mechanism ("..enabling Heroes to cross over to the Rogue Isles and Villains to experience Paragon City"). Unless they are planning on making all new shared instances of those zones, it seems that side switching will affect the core parts of the game at least by allowing archetypes from both sides to show up on either side.

My suspicion and its purely that is that the fact that they are making a boxed expansion for this tells me at least one of a) new archetypes, b) radically new powersets, or c) new gameplay options will appear in the boxed expansion. If I had to guess, I would guess (a), new archetypes that are more "neutral" than the traditional ones.

In fact, the "Spy" archetype frequently rumored about may refer to just such an archetype. I think "Spy" might connotate less the abilities of the archetype, and more the mode (someone who infiltrates the opposite side, perhaps?) After all, stalkers don't generally "stalk" in any sense we might have guessed before actually seeing the archetype. Spies might not "spy" in any sense we might speculate about. Perhaps "Spy" is like "Kheldian" or "Soldier of Arachnos." It has more of a story-connection than an obvious capability connection, and may not even refer to anything specific.

That is 100% pure speculation, however. I must point out I have no information related to Going Rogue that everyone else doesn't have access to.

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you guys are all missing the obvious bonus if JB's idiotic predictions come true.


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The real bonus is he will roll a hero brute.

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The real bonus is he will be gone. But frankly, I'm not betting on it.

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There's no way they'll make Praetoria an Open PvP area.

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Especially since with the moral shades of grey in Rogue, there would be no "teams". It would have to be free-for-all open PvP, like Warburg. I can already hear the PvP crowd screaming that they HAVE to do this for the expansion or the game will DIE FOR SURE THIS TIME, but somehow I don't see it.

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Unless they are planning major game mechanical changes in the GR expansion, making Praetoria a PvP zone would require Diminshing Returns to be enforced within it. That combined with the relatively low populations in the current PvP zones makes me think this is unlikely (and probably undesirable).

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EMpulse heads up the OCR department and is our fearless leader.

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Give EMpulse time: the fear should return soon enough.

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So does this mean that it is pointless to slot tohit buffs OR tohit debuffs more than about 30%, or for a dark to power boost? Does mez cur mean mag, duration, or resist?

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Buffs and Debuffs are resolved first, before being affected by DR. So regardless of the "softcaps" you're seeing in the calculations, if DR is placing something like a 30% soft cap on an attribute, and you build to 50, then if someone applies a -15% debuff on you, you still have 35% and you'll still be relatively close to the same 30% softcap. But if you decide to build to just 30 because of DR, and someone hits you with a -15 debuff, then you'll drop to around 15. Its always *totals* that are affected by DR, not individual powers.

The three aspects Str/Cur/Res are best thought of as "enhancement/buff" - "Value" - "Resistance." Mezzing powers are typically hitting you with Cur, but the enhancements slotted into a mezzing power are Str.

Now, mezzing powers are essentially always defined to be "Duration-based" powers, which means when they hit you with their Cur, that Cur affects the duration of the mez. The power also has an intrinsic magnitude (for player mezzes, usually 3) which is independent of its Cur.

By the way, damage powers apply something else, called "Abs" which basically means "the power does this much damage, in absolute number of points" and is unaffected by DR. The difference between Cur and Abs is that Cur is relative to some base value, while Abs is always an absolute number of points. To put it simply, a power that did -1.0 Abs damage to you would do one point of damage, while a power that did -1.0 Cur damage to you would do 100% of your base health in damage and kill you (minus the one-shot code).

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Is there a way to get the DR formula so I can adjust the totals that I get with Mid's?

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Yes and no. Yes: its possible to get the formula:

DiminishedValue = Value * (1 - ATAN(Value * A) * 2/PI * B)

The problem is that there are two catches:

1. You need to know what A and B are for every attribute you're calculating for, and those numbers are not always the same.

2. Cur, Strength, and Res are all computed separately before being combined, which Mids doesn't do.

That complicates things. I wrote a guide a while back, and there's also a simple DR calculator the latest version of my damage mitigation spreadsheet (its on the third sheet of the workbook) that includes the latest values I have for A and B for all attributes for all archetypes (yes, its potentially different for every attribute, for every aspect of every attribute, and for every archetype, although in general the numbers are the same *most* of the time).


The tl;dr version is this: to figure out how something like Defense is reduced in PvP, you'd need to *first* figure out how the enhancements of the powers are reduced (i.e. the Strength modifiers) and then multiply the base defense of the powers by those reduced enhancements and *then* apply DR again, this time to the net overall "Cur" of the power (how much its buffing your defense) to get the final, final DR-reduced value. That sort of multi-stage computation will be slightly tricky with Mids, because you'll have to look at Mids' various numbers for intermediate calculations, and work DR into them by hand.

I.e. Focused Senses slotted plus 3% defense IO will have FS's enhancements reduced, then FS * reduced enhancements will be added to 3, then the total will have DR applied to it again to get the final buff total.

Good luck working on those kinds of calculations.

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The annoying part is that the problem with the map is very minor. The glowie spawn points are all standard for that type of end room, but the geometry is slightly different.

The glowies don't so much spawn inside the wall as they do the raised flooring. It's really "just" a matter of raising a few of them up about a foot and removing one (that spawns the glowie inside/around one of the examination tables).

Not to mention that it only drastically affects smaller glowies...

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There's two problems with that map, and the problem isn't unique. The uneven flooring in the tank room is one problem. The other problem seems to be a more generic one: the spawn "points" appear, at least from my testing, to cause the MA to spawn the collection objects by placing their *anchor* at the point, and then picking a random orientation for the object.

If the anchor point was at the bottom-center of the objects, then all that would mean is occasionally objects would be turned funny *towards* the wall. But the anchor points aren't at bottom-center: they appear to be floating far in "front" of the object. Notice when you rotate an object in the MA's preview display the object appears to revolve about a point a few feet in front of the object. I think that is the anchor point.

The problem seems to be that whatever safeguards (if any) that exist to prevent objects from spawning in walls fails, and then the MA picks a random orientation in which the object is rotated *into* the wall. In fact, generic warehouse maps exhibit this behavior: when collections are scattered in them, you can often see things like crates half-stuck into those raised platform-things in the hallways. Its apparent that the object was intended to spawn in the walkway area between platforms, but the object was displaced by rotation into the platform.

Some maps are much worse than others in this regard, and the Lab map seems to be one of them: there are several points where objects seem to spawn partially or totally in walls by virtue of random chance where the object's orientation places them inside a wall rather than outside it.

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It would, I think, be useful to start a list of the undocumented changes / fixes from the last patch. Some of these break missions, while others make things work that didn't work before, i.e.:

Breaks:

<ul type="square">[*] Crey Hero Lab map has been removed[/list]
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That one's been needing to go for a while. I reported in open beta that the non-standard setup of the last room was leading to glowies spawning inside walls. Heck, it was in Arcanaville's arc, so I even sent her a message since I figured she might be able to get more notice than the standard bug report I'd already submitted.

I'm guessing it'll be back when they can fix that problem.

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I /bugged it, reported it, reported it, and reported it again. And then it got pulled the patch before last, sigh. However, the good news is that War Witch tells me its on the list of maps to fix so they can be put back. Bad news is I have no idea how long that will take. If there are as many people helping War Witch with maps as there are helping BaB with animations, by the time the map reappears Cloning could be a technology available at Walmart.

I'll check on it periodically, but I can't speed the process by annoying the devs about it.

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I am not sure how the thread turned into a debate about the quality of author skills instead of mission arcs. But since Arcanaville says it did, I will accept that - she is certainly much less biased about it than I am.

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It is always interesting to me when someone decides not just to argue against someone else's words, but to invalidate their own as meaningless or irrelevant. I'm never certain how to interpret that form of forensic suicide.

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For example, a certain power lists a "5% STRENGTH against attacks." What is "strength"? Does it make my character STRONGER (ie. do more damage?) No it means increased DEFENSE. Call it DEFENSE, not STRENGTH. Never call it anything BUT defense.

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There's a fundamental difference between a power that offers 5% smashing defense, and 5% smashing defense strength. The first increases your defense to that attack type by 5 percentage points. The second increases your ability to use powers that offer defense against that attack type: it increases your defensive powers by 5%.

In other words, if you have a power that offers 20% defense to smashing_attack, and you get another power that offers 5% defense to smashing_attack, your total defense is 25%. If on the other hand the second power offered 5% strength to smashing_attack, then in this case (with a lot of caveats I'm skipping for simplicity purposes) your total defense would be 21% (20 * 1.05).

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Unfortunately the detailed info windows show both types as "strength".
(e.g. Combat Jumping is listed as giving x% "strength" to the various Defense types)

So, for Defense, both regular Def and Def Str are listed as "strength" (in the power detailed info windows).

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That's pohsyb's fault: I only pretend to work here.

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For example, a certain power lists a "5% STRENGTH against attacks." What is "strength"? Does it make my character STRONGER (ie. do more damage?) No it means increased DEFENSE. Call it DEFENSE, not STRENGTH. Never call it anything BUT defense.

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There's a fundamental difference between a power that offers 5% smashing defense, and 5% smashing defense strength. The first increases your defense to that attack type by 5 percentage points. The second increases your ability to use powers that offer defense against that attack type: it increases your defensive powers by 5%.

In other words, if you have a power that offers 20% defense to smashing_attack, and you get another power that offers 5% defense to smashing_attack, your total defense is 25%. If on the other hand the second power offered 5% strength to smashing_attack, then in this case (with a lot of caveats I'm skipping for simplicity purposes) your total defense would be 21% (20 * 1.05).

List the power being referenced above and I'll see if its using the terminology correctly or not.

There's a lot of crazy terminology that isn't proper, I'll grant that. But in many cases the difference in terminology signals a real distinction.

In your example, such a power *does* make you stronger. It makes your ability to use defensive powers themselves stronger. This distinction occurs many times in the game: there's a huge difference between movement increase (increasing your base movement velocity) and movement strength increase (increasing the value of your movement buffing powers) for example.


Basically: some things buff you. Some things buff your powers that buff you. That's the oversimplified distinction between buffing Strength and buffing Attributes directly.

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c. High-velocity unsuppressed movement buffs plus unrooted combat creates exploitable conditions.

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This seems like an extension of b., unless there's some other exploitable condition besides "being able to strike without being hit back."

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There are, and its possible to see glimpses of it now, although it was easier to see in the days before unsuppressed travel powers: rapidly weaving in and out of melee range can confuse the AI of the critters sometimes to the point of basically making them inert. Players knowledgeable about how the AI picks attacks can create this situation in other ways as well.

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Excellent examples. All authors that are admired and left unread by the general public. It's great to name names. But they are not books that the modern public reads and enjoys. There are certainly a minority that do enjoy them.

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But not because of the skill of the author, which was the original point.


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As soon as you all cancel your CoX accounts and spend your days reading Dickens, Twain, and Jules Verne - then I will believe you that a good story is timeless and all that truly matters.

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That would be dictating an unreasonable level of proof. First, the strawman: no one said "...all that truly matters." Especially in the MA which is a combination of semantic story-telling and scripted action: that would be like saying the dialog is all that truly matters in a motion picture.

Second, no one said a good story is timeless; refer to your own post: the phrase was good storytelling is timeless, and your own reply makes clear you understood that to mean "skill and style" not topic. Twain, for example, still gets ripped off to this day (in many ways, he's the inventor of American snark). I think he would have no problems getting published today, without the benefit of 21st century writing "skills."

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Ok, imagine World Wide Red told in five missions, using only the maps that arc uses. (And without the giant robots, because NOOOO, they can't just limit them to outdoor maps, we can't have them at all.)

Now image the RWZ storyline told in five missions, with all those "cool new maps" it has. (Which we've all seen a zillion times unlocking the Midnight Club.)

Which is the better story?

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That depends: which one is being written in the 19th century?

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"Because good storytelling is timeless."

that's just not true.

read any 19th century classic - they are terrible to read now.
storytelling is a skill and style which develops over time.

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Aren't we lucky that we've evolved past the amateur story-telling fumblings of Dickens and Twain.

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Powers do not root in this game because of a game engine limitation or because it would take too much effort to remove the rooting. Powers root in this game because of a deliberate conscious decision on the part of the devs based on the combined facts that:

a. Unrooted animations are often ugly or weird
b. Rooting is a mitigator to kiting
c. High-velocity unsuppressed movement buffs plus unrooted combat creates exploitable conditions.

Any suggestion to remove rooting must directly address all three concerns without hand-waving** them away.


** Meaning: if you say "well, that's not important because..." - dead on arrival.

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Now, onto the next subject: What should be the minimums for each powerset at each rank?

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What I said during closed beta was:

1. First two powers in all primary powersets should be mandatory
2. First power in all secondary powersets should be mandatory
3. If the primary powerset's first two powers are melee attacks and the set also contains ranged attacks, the first ranged attack should be mandatory
4. Caveat: below a certain level (somewhere between 15 and 20) one of the two primary powers ordinarily mandatory should be optional.

Therefore:

All low level critters will have at least one attack and one secondary power, and at least one ranged attack.

All other critters will have at least two attacks, at least one ranged attack (possibly three attacks total) and at least one secondary power.

That would make them at least as strong as the average PvE critters, and in most cases somewhat stronger.

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Actually I don't think a single enemy outside of the MA has any kind of build up power.

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A few do, although the only ones that come to mind off the top of my head are red-side (I'm thinking of Silver Mantis in particular). Its extremely rare, though.

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*kicks thread*

We won:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post13411167

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Well... ok sure, we won.

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I agree that we should be able to start from minimums and pick any other powers we want via checkboxes. However, that is likely to bloat the size of the critters in terms of data. Would you still want that option if it doubled the data footprint of custom critters?


I would, but I'm not convinced I'm in the majority.

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I wouldn't, but I also know that would not be required. My own personal opinion is that the Standard/Hard/Extreme settings could be made much better, but also just like the tohit fiddling done in I5, its really a stop gap that has to eventually yield to a system that more directly addresses the problem, in tis case a more flexible selection system (I said as much in beta, and I said as much to the devs). The only question is a matter of when.

The Standard/Hard/Extreme metaphor only works for things like conventional attacks. It really doesn't work for things like Build Up, or Deceive, or Detention Field. Those powers defy the conventional "easy or hard" choice, or turn it on its ear (Build Up is the classic example of a power that overturns the apple cart on difficulty: giving it to minions can be too harsh for some authors, but contrawise if its only included with the hard-hitting powers then the performance gap between settings can become too high to be useful as well).

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So if you want to be very technical, the rule is farming is allowed if it's undetected and unreported.

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That's No Rule. That is a complete and total disregard for any existing standard of ethics or values. Under that, any crime, sin, or violation is justified as being "OK", no matter how ugly, abhorrent, disrespectful, or cruel, as long as no one of any consequence finds out about it.

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I agree that characterizing it as such describes an unethical situation. However, that is the only rule that exists if one specifically frames the question as one of absolute rules.

I'm not one of those people, so I don't have the ethical issue you describe. The real rule is farming as the devs have defined farming (which I'm not going to repeat for the gazillionth time) is something the devs actively discourage and take steps they feel appropriate to curtail. However, not everyone seems willing or able to accept that rule, concur it meets the definition of a rule, contend its a reasonably enforceable rule, concede its the clear communicated dev rule, agree with the general consequences of enacting such a rule, or even construct the conceptual scaffolding necessary to understand the rule on its face.

I don't have any of those specific problems either, so I don't have a need to pursue unachievable clarification.