Arcanaville
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Quote:I believe the devs have stated that Praetoria is not an Earth in which everything is exactly parallel except with goatees. Its possible Hamidon Pasalima was born earlier on this Earth, or Hamidon Pasalima's father ended up creating the Will of the Earth. Its definitely true that we cannot assume that Praetorian Hamidon is named after the same Hamidon Pasalima as Primal Earth's is, or that that individual even exists on Praetorian Earth.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Well it's called Hamidon because that was the name of the Scientist who mutated. So if it turned up before the scientist in question was even born why was it called Hamidon.
Now it's possible that it was an older scientist named Hamidon who just happened to do exactly the same thing. But in that case to quote Hermes Conrad: "That just raises more questions". -
Quote:I have "giant robot" beat. I was thinking about a Nemesis task force idea during the Nemesis invasion events. The culmination of the task force would have you going to a distant island and fighting through the Nemesis army to a large structure on the ground being assembled by Nemesis. And when you reach it you have to go into it and try to shut down its computers. But when you do, you discover that you have only gotten the secondary cores, and the primary is still intact.Originally Posted by Organica
I mean, really, EVERY task force could benefit from some sort of giant robot
And then the entire structure lifts up off the ground like a giant steampunk Arachnos Flier with the team in it in a cutscene, and then the game respawns the Nemesis assault carrier just offshore of Peregrine Island and begins dropping Nemesis armies onto PI while the team tries to bring down the carrier and defeat the spawned enemies, calling for help from whatever players were out there. Sort of like a combination Synapse (spawning Babbage in Skyway), LGTF (which triggers a Rikti invasion event), Mothership raid (but a bit smaller), and an extra heaping scoop of kick-***. And the invasions would scale based on the number of players that decided to help, just like the Nemesis invasion event.
I'd write this task force for free if I could. -
Quote:Why is it a "mystery" that Praetorian Hamidon shows up on Praetoria decades before Primal Hamidon Pasalima becomes Hamidon on Primal Earth? Is there a specific reason why you'd expect Praetorian Hamidon to appear either simultaneously with ours, or afterwards? It almost sounds like you are implying that no other dimension can invent something before ours does.Originally Posted by Olantern
I predict that if his predictions are correct, the devs will continue to forget that Hamidon was ever a fanatical, narcissicistic human before becoming a monstrous ... monster. The team that wrote Praetoria, focused as it is on "fight the power of the Suits, man!" either doesn't recall or doesn't like the idea of an evil activist. Instead, we'll get more god-Hamidon, as well as no resolution of the mystery of how Praetorian Hamidon showed up decades before (originally human) Primal Hamidon Pasalima was even born.
The question is probably better stated as what caused Hamidon's appearance to be delayed on Primal Earth relative to Praetorian Earth, and the logical answer is that Primal Earth did not have the nuclear war that Praetorian Earth did, which may have both hastened the development of and strengthened the Will of Earth on Praetorian Earth.
I don't think anyone actually involved in the development of this game is receiving that implication.Quote:Hopes? I hope whoever's making the money decisions doesn't follow these fora, or the level of negativity (and I include myself here) will continue implying to them that the game isn't worth supporting any more. -
Quote:If regen has an advantage its that its proportional effect is stronger for weaker builds, and tends to dilute within stronger builds with higher regeneration and/or healing. When something starts off strong and descales with stronger player build skills, it can be made stronger for the players that need it most while not worrying about what the stronger players can do with it. Resistance and Defense operate in opposite fashion: they get commensurately stronger with more powerful builds due to stacking. You have to be a lot more careful with resistance and defense because of the way those stack in this game.Originally Posted by StratoNexus
+regen is also workable, but I do not think it will be as useful (alone) to the average player as it might be to stronger players.
We want players to get stronger as they learn more and put more effort into the game, but we don't want that process to be accelerating. We want it to be diminishing (but not asymptotic) or at best flat returns, or we amplify the gap between the strongest and weakest players. Games should tend to compress that gap without eliminating it, not amplify and exaggerate it.
You also don't have to worry as much about outliers like Drain Psyche. If you give +regen to primary sets, Drain Psyche will significantly dilute that benefit when its up, but then again when its up you're already doing better than any other blaster. If you give +res/+def to blasters in primaries, that will magnify the power of Drain Psyche.
In general, this is a core design principle of mine as well.Quote:Personally, I very much prefer adding abilities to current blaster powers and doing so in specific ways so each set retains different flavor. While some changes could be made AT wide, I'd rather see more variety. -
Quote:This would seem to be a difficult perspective to deliver to critter groups in this game.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Now, I teach computer science in the university, and I teach it to people who barely know what a computer is and don't own or have access to one. As you can imagine, this is not a positive proposition, and it makes my job quite difficult. I know my students will never remember the exact details of what I'm teaching them, so what I try to have them learn is how to teach themselves. You know, how to approach a computer system, how to go about figuring it out, what to try and what not to try, where to look for certain things. This has given me a rather different view on what "knowledge" constitutes, and I like to call this the knowledge of problem-solving unfamiliar problems.
Sudden changes in visual appearance usually denote power activations! THWACK! Is it wise to attempt to become tougher by using cybernetic implants that are vulnerable to being smashed? KRAPOW! Regeneration is less useful to minions with low health! SWIPTH! Take stock of your tactical advantages, such as range! FWAPANG! -
Quote:That's within the context of the EULA. The subject seemed to have come up in relation to analogizing what the unique naming policy is intended to do within the game. It seems to be more related to trademark, where the intent of the law is to prevent confusion by preventing people from using trademarks that are too similar to someone else's within the same context (roughly analogous to CoH requiring unique character names within a specific server), rather than copyright which is intended to protect creators by allowing them to be the only person that can profit from their creations for a limited amount of time (some people seem to think that limit apparently is "until the heat death of the universe", but that's the principle).Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
As far as the game is concerned both copyright and trademarks fall under the companies copyright policy and people that aren't familiar with the intricacies of the actual laws are probably lumping both together like the company policy does.
I don't think NCSoft is attempting to make sure I am the only person that gets to play with my names until I die, I think NCSoft is attempting to make sure no confusion arises between two different character names and all other players that could confuse the two. -
Quote:I think whatever it is, it has to become available no later than level 22, when SOs become available and the game shifts into blaster mulch-gear.Originally Posted by Kyriani
In the case of survivability I think a good place one can begin (but not the only place!) is with what blasters already have.
Power Pool/APP/PPP values for all aspects of the powers should be reviewed. Some powers have excessively long cooldowns, low durations or low base values (or all of the above) in proportion to what they do relative to other AT's. The defensive toggles (hover, tough, weave, app/ppp, etc) should have their base values improved, The holds should have their base durations increased and base recharge times reduced.
EM Pulse from the Electrical Mastery pool should have a shorter recharge time and longer duration. Surge of Power and Force of Nature should have their base resistance values increased slightly.
The aoe sleeps should have their recharge times reduced. The debuff powers such as surveillance and melt armor should have their base values increased.
Many AT's find their APP/PPP's game changing when they open up but Blasters seem to get less overall from them compared to the other AT's with Scorpion Shield being the only real outlier.
APP/PPP powers are supposed to let AT's dip into skills outside their typical repertoire but when the base values are so very low they hardly qualify as worthwhile even when enhanced. Reviewing these powers could improve blaster overall performance.
As I said that's not the only place improvements can be made but it's not a bad place to start since it's simply a matter of letting blasters get higher base values from things they already have so it's not so painfully difficult (and expensive) to build up that lacking survivability. -
Quote:Well, right up to the end of that passage I thought this was going to be a race of internet trolls.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
"This character" is a member of a race of creatures whose primary defining characteristic is that they're generally pretty stupid, but tough and VERY long-lived. They live in a world ruled by superstition, ritual and essentially clueless blundering, surviving on their hardy physique and thick heads more than anything else. At one point, these creatures received a gift of great power and knowledge, but while the others used their new power to wage war and conquer, this character instead took the time to marvel at the beauty of nature, to sample the fruits of culture and to generally try to understand the world, so that it doesn't seem as scary and confusing.
Thick heads and hardy physique suggest the huge body type to me. You can still use the scalers to tone that down a bit.Quote:Gender: Serious question here - should this character be male or female? That actually puts the story in quite a different perspective depending on which direction I go, just because it's a lot easier to paint a man as a dumb brute without putting much thought into it.
Maybe use some of the organic parts in the costume editor, but give them a more alien color scheme. Red/orange/yellow would be one palette that would seem alien when combined with organic shapes and textures, but still seem biological.Quote:Race/Appearance: I have no idea what this creature would actually look like. From speaking with Viking, we established that I want the creature to be organic, biological and to have been "born" in some way. I don't want to work with artificial intelligence or magical constructs because these put a whole extra layer of existentialist self-awareness questions that I don't want to get into as they'd dilute the "intelligence vs. wisdom" duality that I'm shooting for. I also don't want an "orc" or any other kind of "green skin" because I already have one of those. She's the face in my sig.
To answer this question, it would be best to step back and answer this question:Quote:Level of intelligence: I'm not sure how intelligent I want to have this creature eventually become. Obviously, I don't want godlike omniscience, but where do I draw the line? Do I make the creature still stupid, just more self-aware, or do I reward its efforts and make it nevertheless highly intelligent enough to lead an intellectual debate? Make it into a scientist, possibly?
What knowledge? Unless you're Orlando Jones in the Time Machine, you don't tend to share "knowledge" but something specific. Knowledge of health and medicine, knowledge of warfare and peace, knowledge of buying with no money down. What specific mission is the character on in terms of bringing its "knowledge" to the world, or alternatively leveraging it to serve others?Quote:In the end, the quest for knowledge gave way to a much less straightforward one - the quest to use this knowledge and in turn help others define their own place in life.
Same question as above.Quote:Brains vs. Brawn: How much of the creature's "power" do I want to come from the might side of things and how much should it stem from intelligence? Should I involve technology of some kind, or go more bestial?
Given your statement about Staff fighting above, perhaps the answer to this question is a partial answer to the questions above. Give him a staff, make him a traveling alien monk-like creature. Staff/Invuln, say, owing to his legacy of coming from a more physically sturdy species, but using his higher education to learn how to disable and disarm enemies with the staff rather than punching them in the face.Quote:Powers: Not a clue in the world, other than I want a Scrapper, a Brute, a Stalker or a Mastermind... Actually, scratch that. No Mastermind, just Scrapper, Brute or Stalker. And when that's done, what powers? I've done so much with these ATs that repeating myself is a real danger.
Now I'm picturing The Rock in a remake of Kung Fu. And that's really difficult to unsee.
I picture it big, with simple clothes. His physical nature is his defense, his simple stick is his offense, and fortune cookies are his vocabulary.Quote:Appearance: What should this thing actually look like? Big? Small? Tough? Scrawny? I want to put it in clothes of some kind, but what kind? Regular contemporary, future sci fi, power armour, what? Should it have wings? A tail, maybe? Should it have a face with a mouth? -
Quote:And there's this one: all I have is Single Shot, Charged Shot, Lancer Shot and Penetrating Ray. Oh, and Disintegrate...Originally Posted by StratoNexus
Woah (intended) is me! I only get to use this crappy Blaze power.
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Quote:Psychic Blast would be a bit problematic: that's everything except tornado and the nuke. Dark Blast would also be a bit problematic because you're letting Dark use the heal while mezzed which gives it a large advantage over other primaries.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
/edit
thinking about it, why not just let blasters use any of their single target attacks while mezzed? -
For the record, Super Stunner rez drains 22.5 end, applies a -100% recovery debuff for 15 seconds and deals Scale 1.0 melee damage (for a level 50 boss, that's 385.52 points of damage).
I don't think they are all that bad compared to the big offenders (quartz crystals, nemesis stacking vengeance, master illusionist phase shift) but that power does break the rules: it deals significant autohitting damage which critters are not supposed to do except in special circumstances. The drain itself is large enough to be annoying, but it breaks no rule to be annoying. -
Quote:At least with enough recharge you could be almost unkillable. Unless you stubbed your toe on the pavement too many times.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
gawd how i hated that power.
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Quote:If blaster survivability was boosted by adding +regen defiance buffs into attacks that could be fired while mezzed, would that not be technically a way to mitigate mez - in effect our survivability would not be as strongly affected by mez even if it takes hold. We could still shoot, albeit with less options, and still do something to try to recover health before getting killed.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
For some reason I like the idea of a blaster boost that doesn't involve +def or +res.
Why not +regen?
Add a +regen component to defiance- the more you blast & the harder you hit, the more survivable you are.
They'd still need some way to deal with mez- I'd be happy with just adding more attacks to those first two blasts. It's not so much being stuck that bugs me, it's the limitations on what I can do. Give me a workable (if restricted) attack chain for when I'm mezzed and I'd be fine. -
Quote:Just think what the personal missions would look like if we didn't have to preserve that T for Teen rating.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
If Ms. Liberty is Positron's granddaughter, does that make Anti-Matter and Dominatrix related? Because that would make their Praetorian relationship considerably more interesting, possibly enough to warrant me trudging through the quagmire of ambushes that is that bit of content.
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Quote:As Adeon says above, -regen is not useless against AVs. Even in situations where -Res is stronger against AVs, the -regen can still represent a net increase in damage on the AV of 20-30%. There is no way that could be described as useless.Originally Posted by Zul_Vakirol
Regen debuff is useless against AVs. Not only do they regenerate very slowly (it's just a very high hp pool), but they resist the crap out of debuffs like -Regen, effectively neutering it. A quick way to check an AVs debuff resistance is to either drag a Bane spider along for him/her to use their Surveillance power, or use the power analyzer Mk whatever temporary power, go to combat attributes and check what the AVs stats are.
That's not what MoG did. MoG stopped regeneration not by applying a huge -regen (which regeneration buffs could theoretically overcome) but by applying 100% resistance to regeneration and heals, and debuffing regeneration (with a self-unresistable debuff) to zero.Quote:Nothing will ever stop anyone's regen ever, not even the old MoG did that, it just created so much -Regen that the next tick would happen well after the power's 3 minute duration. With enough +Regen, a regen scrapper using MoG could experience some HP regen, but that took a huge amount of Empaths all firing off their +regen aura power.
With 100% resistance to heals, no heal would work. With 100% resistance to regeneration, no regeneration buff would do anything. No amount of empaths could reverse this, because all their buffs were being resisted to zero. Zero times all the empaths in existence would still be zero.
There's only one effect that could increase your health while under old school MoG: Dull Pain. MoG did not interfere with +maxhealth buffs, so if you activated DP while under MoG your health would increase. DP's heal would do nothing, but its health stretch would work. -
Let me toss this out there for discussion purposes.
An even level minion deals about 6% of blaster health in damage for a scale 1.0 ranged attack, and 10% of blaster health in damage for a scale 1.0 melee attack. The average minion deals something like 0.2-0.3 DS/sec in net average damage, factoring in base 50% tohit.
At range, that's about 1.2%/sec - 1.8%/sec damage per minion. Now lets assume that a +3x1 spawn is the target balance point - the devs have said in the past that three +3 minions is the rough balance point once a strong SO build is achieved. And lets also assume that blaster offensive damage mitigation is good enough to eliminate the damage from at least one minion out of three on average completely.
That would mean the blaster would average facing about 1.0 such minions while in combat (the average of two, one, and zero), which would average dealing about 1.33 * 1.3 * 1.2 * 1.0 = 2.1%/sec on the low end, and about 3.1%/sec on the high end.
Lets also say that a solo blaster spends about 75% of their time in missions in combat, and 25% out of combat. I would expect then that blaster damage mitigation should be able to survive at least 1.6%/sec to 2.3%/sec across an entire mission. Assuming blasters have slotted health, their intrinsic regeneration is about 0.74%/sec.
So that suggests blasters have to somehow mitigate about 0.9%/sec to 1.6%/sec of damage to reach that very rough goal. That implies reducing incoming damage by about 60%, or doubling to tripling blaster health recovery, or some combination of the two.
This is the *floor* of balance. Blasters shouldn't go lower than this. They could go significantly higher without being a problem, and that's entirely possible with a level of player skill that, say, improves the odds on the offensive side (I know I'm neutralizing a lot more than one minion out of three on average with attacks, but I also know the average player isn't, or they wouldn't have been dying pre-I11).
That's an extremely fuzzy target to aim at, but I feel very comfortable in saying that blaster overall survivability should on average at least double. That's not going to necessarily turn blasters into scrappers or tankers because their survivability is so much higher, and average survivability isn't the same thing as alpha strike survivability. Its worth noting that giving blasters a 50% res(all) shield and giving them slotted fast healing both double survivability, but only one of them would make blasters a far more effective tanking archetype.
Edit: corrected a calculation error: it changes the numbers only slightly from the original. -
Quote:Generally yes.Originally Posted by Droid76a
Is there a loss of DPS when a weapon character has to redraw as well as animate an attack
As far as I know, weapon draw and sheathe is mainly a function of the animation system. There should not be any specific effect, other than the delay of redraw, to drawing and sheathing your weapon.Quote:Also, what powersets are affected in ways other than redraw? For example, I noticed that Titan Weapons loses momentum if the weapon is sheathed (noticed from powexec_unqueue in the speed-on-demand binds); are other combo-based systems like dual blades affected as well?
However, Titan Weapons may be a special case as its the first powerset to deliberately play games with the way the animation system and the powers system interact in order to have momentum speed up (really, alter) the attack animations. It may be that the act of sheathing alters a mode bit in such a way as to cause a direct change in momentum or vice versa, beyond the obvious delay. -
Quote:As long as your second account doesn't literally quit the task force, you can log it out (and quit the entire game client if you want) and your first account can solo the task force to completion.Originally Posted by Socorro
Well, this thread intrigued me so I went and made a single freebie account, made a character, went to mercy, and then started a 2nd instance with my ViP account, took one of my Incarnates to meet him, and teamed with him. Got him to lvl 18 in an hour just doing radios...
First time I ever did dual-instanced, so it had that newbie coolness factor, but it sure is clunky. Can't see why people want to do it it a lot.
Did get me to wondering though, about soloing TFs. If I get a TF started, padding with volunteers who then quit, and I have my free account as the one non-quitter, do I have to leave that Instance running, or can I end it, and as long as that Character doesn't actually quit the TF I can still run it solo?
I have a pretty high end machine but it still feels like it's pulling alot of juice when running two CoH instances so I'd rather not.
Theoretically speaking if your PC can launch eight game clients, even if they don't run well at all, it only needs to run them for long enough for you to start the task force, and then you can log them all out and terminate those game clients, leaving one client running to solo a task force that requires eight players to start. You don't need fillers at all (although you do need to level alts in those free accounts to a high enough level to meet the minimums of the task force, and there are task forces and trials that require multiple players to take simultaneous action: those are much harder to multibox for obvious reasons). -
Looks like CoH is comfortably in the lead. Although I personally think ours is the best overall I can understand why some people think CO's one is better. A lot of that is style and taste. And ours could use a lot of organizational improvement (CO's has other issues).
I have no idea how much head injury it would take to believe DCUO's costume creator was better than either of them. -
Quote:Its hard to overestimate. On a RHW run, a league running Ultimate generates at least twice as much offense as one that doesn't if not substantially more (everyone's offense is literally doubled against Tyrant, and then on top of that everyone's resistance debuff strength is also doubled for those debuffing Tyrant - a league could conceivably triple their output by everyone running Ultimate relative to everyone not running them).Originally Posted by SolarSentai
Also, I think the importance of the Ultimate inspirations are understated.
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Quote:It significantly damages it, and I believe it was a mistake to do. It suggests that the dev team really isn't prepared to deal with a world that changes, when you have to impose chronologically conflicting static rules to the way the game treats time.Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Please explain to me how this retcon doesn't completely destroy the game lore and chronological history.
Some discontinuities are necessary, but this was one of their own completely voluntary (at least with regard to Paragon Studios as a whole) making. -
Quote:You saw a stop motion version of his fight I believe. I think at one point you can see where Spring turns to Summer.Originally Posted by firespray
I saw the video of Werner's 6 hour fight.
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Quote:I would say Mind Control is in the top five control sets.Originally Posted by EmperorSteele
I think Mind Control could use a buff. It's not a bad set, but ask someone to list the best 5 control sets, and Mind will NEVER make the list.
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Quote:"Snickers" isn't copyrighted, its trademarked. The rules on trademark are that once someone is using a trademark for business purposes, no one else can use an identical mark or a sufficiently similar one that could be confused with it within the same business context.Originally Posted by St_Angelius
Actually, it's not a bad metaphor In copyright law, 2 thing of the same nature cannot be called the sdame thing. for example. I can't decide to make a new chocolate bar and call it 'Snickers' as there is already one out there copy written. Same with coke and soft drinks. Mobile phones and IPhone etc. the same with this game and character names on each server. that is where the metaphor is and it is valid!
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Quote:In general, yes. But my recommendations at the start of the thread were based on the presumption that the devs are working on blaster changes as we speak, and will likely be beta testing them for I24 at some point. Now would be a good time to be brainstorming ideas that aren't just stand-alone solutions to perceived blaster problems, but also various options and ideas that could be integrated into whatever the devs have decided to do, which could steer those efforts into the directions we want.Originally Posted by Garent
If a problem with a set can be effectively addressed by modifying their animation times, then that's what we should suggest. Should we expect it to be likely to happen? No, because such a change requires cooperation between multiple people from multiple departments. Should we suggest it anyway? Yes, because we're players and the most that can be expected of us is to be aware that some of our suggested solutions require more resources than others. It's up to people within the company to determine what problems are severe enough to warrant resources, and which solutions will most effectively solve it versus how many resources it requires.
TLDR: Whether it's an option or not isn't for us to decide. We just can't present it as the only solution.
As with all game changes, the devs are extremely unlikely to throw out what they've done in favor of a completely new idea, and they are extremely unlikely to suspend an idea several issues while they work on a long-duration modification of that idea. So if someone wants X, I would ask why they want that X; what purpose does it serve, and what are all possible options for generating the same result.
For example, if the intent of altering animation times is to reduce them, is that to increase the DPA of the attacks? Is that to increase blaster single target output? If so, are there other ways of delivering a similar result without tampering with animation times across the board? For example, in a discussion somewhat related to this I suggested to the devs that one thing to consider was to boost the Blaster defiance buff for tier 1 and tier 2 attacks. The idea was that if the intent was to increase their damage, one sideways way to do that was to increase their damage buff which increases blaster damage overall. Modifying the defiance buff rules for tier1/2 attacks costs no endurance and no recharge. It doesn't require modifying animations or cast times. It boosts powers every blaster has at least one of, and the game already strongly encourages blasters to take both. Its basically the blaster version of the Storm Kick trick.
It isn't perfect for a variety of reasons, but its a way to increase the value of those powers without altering animations or recharge.
My intent was to get people thinking about the intent of their suggestions, and focusing on brainstorming as many possible ways to generate that intent, so that if their suggestion proves to be impossible or unlikely, their intent might still find their way into the blaster changes in some other way, by integrating with what the devs already intend to do in an interesting and palatable (to the devs) way.