Bad_Influence
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Posts
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...This is just my take: I have a level 14 Tanker in Praetoria at the moment.
I am all about the most expeditious route from A to B. Almost always I will beeline toward my goal. Its just how I am.
The problem for me is that while Praetoria is visually beautiful [the three fusion reactors in Neutropolis are just some of the loveliest things in this game, seriously.... just so evilly awesome], the difficulty posed by the missions means that leveling happens much more slowly for me there.
I don't find being dogpiled by swarms of ambushes fun. One or two, i can forgive. And the bosses...! Just bosses *everywhere*. As a level 10 I think one can carry eight inspirations? Is it eight? Or ten?....? It would take me more than 8-10 insps. to deal with each group of NPCs. Some of these mobs can all but STOP your recharge, or they take all your Endurance. How much end does your level 14 Tank have...? I can tell you mine don't have much! And then that little you do have gets sapped, and your toggles drop. Oh, so much fun.
As such, I will still be starting most of my new people in Paragon or the Isles. Its just easier for me to level there. Less frustrating.
Quote:Mobs in Praetoria aggro extremely easily. You might try to pull and get just the one, but you are far more likely to get the entire spawn. I have seen it happen repeatedly.Regarding the issue of the screenshot above, it looks like the player engaged all the mobs, instead of just pulling one of them. -
Quote:1. I don't think anyone expects mobs to remain rooted in place as one hits them endlessly. It seems to me that the run-away AI is almost certainly meant to tempt one away into at least one, and maybe more groups of other NPCs; death ensues and thus its *real* function is to slow the leveling process. Mind you, I don't know that. But I suspect it strongly. Due in part to the fact that a beeline is inevitably made for the nearest unaggroed group.
I don't want to just whale on a sack of hitpoints that's going to stand there feebly smacking me until it keels over dead, which is what a lot of people here seem to crave. Apparently being forced to do more than stand in one spot and fire off your attack chains over and over is a game-breaking flaw to some people. (See also: People whining about knockback because it forces them to move around in a fight
In my case at least, this fails. I will not chase an NPC anywheres unless it is the final AV of a TF. Ever.
2. Knockback from other players is a nuisance anyone who plays melee has come to expect. However, my long-standing rule still holds true: if you knock it away from me, you better be prepared to kill it. 'Cause I am not chasing it; nay, not even to save your knockbackin' self from that level 53 you have just thoughtlessly aggroed. Have fun
Don't get me started about being a Tank or Brute running a damage-aura, on a team with a control-type who shows up and instantly Immobs everything in sight, so that instead of the NPCs grouping inside your handy-dandy aura, they're scattered all over the place taking angry pot-shots. Now that's some team-centric thinkin' right there. Ha! -
....Perhaps it is just me: when I roll a hero, I create him or her against a nice soothing blue backdrop. A villain gets a dark red backdrop, less pretty but good enough.
Someone in Praetoria gets *shielding eyes!* a screaming yellow, glaring backdrop I all but have to squint against. I would say it is my monitor, but the rest of the game is fine.
Maybe tone down the gold, make it more of a neutral ochre....? Its interfering with judging how appropriate my colors are. PLease...? Maybe? -
Quote:I often wonder the same exact thing.... about the Knives of Artemis. There is no villain group I detest more than Knives. Not Malta. Not Nemesis... although they're a close second in my Most-Hated list. I absolutely refuse to fight Knives solo. I will not even bother flying over to talk to Knives-heavy contacts.Originally Posted by Rowdy
I'm truly interested in knowing who likes to fight them, and why? In my opinion, there are so many other better and less annoying mobs to fight, so why fight these guys? I'm not trying to be sarcastic or anything like that, I'm just genuinely interested is all.
I love Carnies and fight them all the time. They are challenging, but not stupidly difficult. They are also beautiful to look at. -
QR: I completely agree that lowbie content needed to be addressed. I have had to deal with Kalinda waaaaaay too many times, and I simply ignore official lowbie blueside content before level 20. I just do. I hate it. Kalinda is old news, but not anywhere near the level of annoyance generated by lowbie hero contacts.
So we got an expansion for lowbies. Cool. NOW..... *now* next we need to see some stuff for level 50s to do. I have many level 50s and I enjoy playing them, but the ITF ALSO gets old after a while. And that is the main way I see level 50s generating drops and income, unless its a farm and it'd be nice to have something esle to do besides farm Battle Maiden.
This new content for 50s should in no way resemble the Reischmann TF/SF. I consider this one of the worst TFs in the game, discounting crap like DR Q which is unbearable if only for the length of time involved. Not longer than 5 missions, no AVs at the end with a regen rate of 1,000,000 HP/second. Thanks for your time
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Quote:Solo? It seems to be worse on a team. I think it's not so much that these new NPCs hit a lot harder - which they do - but the endless ambush, ambush ambush until your one character is surrounded by a sea of enemies. Be serious; I can't handle that as a level eight, even on a team.Originally Posted by Aurealis
This mish is easy compared to a resistance mish where there is just you and a psychic against a horde of about 20 PPD and Seers aswell as the boss you went in for :| some of the ambushes are insane, how they ever expect you to handle them solo is beyond me.
So far everything has been juuuuuuuust doable solo. The zones are lovely, but the continual faceplanting is less fun. Had my level 10 Tank on a team with 6 level 15-17 friends last night in Neutronia. I think at one point we were swarmed with AT LEAST 50 ghouls, all of 'em dying and healing each other. [at least it seemed like all of them were; I was too busy trying to stay alive to notice.] I have no idea what the leader was set on, but I have noticed this to be true no matter who I team with.
I am sure familiarity will bring a measure of added skill but right now.... man.
I will say the reduced danger as you run about the zone is welcome for lowbies, but they sure don't mind making up for that in the mission.
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QR:
<-------------- Loyalist.
For now. Although my Tank did steal the resistance mohawk, but then he likes mohawks anyways. I dunno, all my villains get along pretty well with Recluse and co. too. Probably because eventually they'd like to *take* those cushy lieutenant positions. Keep your friends close and all that.
It seems Resistance is the way to go, so of course I must do the opposite. -
QR: I think what happened to AE went far beyond "exploits getting fixed." I don't think people should be able to PL to 50 in 20 minutes, true - except for me, because I can handle it.... JOKE! Its a joke, people - but they went far beyond merely fixing that.
They basically stripped 98% of the rewards out of AE, rendering mostly useless a system they had devoted an entire issues' worth of thought to.
The merits [pardon the pun] of this strategy are debatable. They did stop the exploits, true. But at what price?
All I know of exploiting is the one AE baby I kept. She's extremely rich due to having had to purchase few enhancements - she had tickets. We all had tickets. And they were fun.... She went in the door level 1, came out level 20 in about ten minutes flat. I skipped a great deal of the pain of a pre-stamina character on a very end-heavy character. Call it "exploit" if you must, but that was a lot of fun. She's one of my top five favorite characters now.
I also got to try out other characters without having to sink six months of work into them only to discover that I hated the powerset. Strangely enough I did all this "exploiting" and here I still am, with just shy of fourteen level 50s and counting. Still paying a subscription. I would say that anyone who quit over perceived fun being blasted out of the game with a nuclear warhead - which is what the AE nerfs amounted to, a nuke applied to the AE building - may not actually qualify as an Evil Exploiter.
Sometimes people just wanna have fun. If they are paying a subscription to do it.... I don't know. All I wish is that we had those ragequit people back. We could use 'em. -
... I think my chagrin can be laid at the doorstep of, "...but I had no idea these people were really like this." A few of these people I have known for years.
I truly don't get the attraction. Password changes every two weeks, allegedly by itself. People who live across a continent seem to be whispering.... but don't touch those individual volume controls, because everything is now on Mute and you can't hear a thing. Microphones are not recognized all of a sudden. Then tomorrow, they are. Then next day they're not.
It just seems like a huge hassle to me, not fun, but I'm not a techy type anyways. I am now off the soapbox.
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Quote:I will certainly agree with you about the quality - or lack thereof - of that other game. I logged into the game ONE TIME and cancelled. But all that aside, how on earth do you know that all the new people who came in "wouldn't have stuck around very long anyways"?Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
The people that quit because the exploits got fixed wouldn't have stuck around very long anyway. They were planning to leave in September when that other super hero MMO went live. While they waited they bashed CoH on those forums but when that game went live they started cancelling their subs before the first week was up. By the end of the month that game was a barren wasteland compared to our playerbase.
I certainly never saw anyone say any such thing while hanging around in AE. What I DID see as nerfs were announced was, "I left over ED, I'm back again to try things out - and here they go with the same old bait-and-switch nerfage, I've had enough and the minute they do [X], I'm gone!" Then poof, implement nerf and they were gone.
I admit that my ten people are a vanishingly small sample-size which proves nothing, really. However your statement seems extremely broad and... I dunno, it just seems to me like we'll never really KNOW what happened, all we can do is guess. Love them or hate them, it looks from where I sit like the AE nerfs did quite a bit of damage to the subscription base. I certainly have not seen an influx of new people logging in, on fire to create new missions - hardly. AE is a ghost town now. But they were logging in, on fire to create new missions back in the day, for sure.
I don't love AE. I considered the missions I ran, for the most part, both boring and stupid.... but there were a lot of people really into that. Those were paying customers. -
^^ Perhaps my point, or one of them, is that without Vent these bad manners are much less obtrusive; I never noticed them, so my opinion of the Vent-ers was higher than it is now.
Everyone thinks they're a comedian on Vent. Maybe not so fast.... if I wanted to hear annoying jibber-jabber I could turn on any television [I hate television like... well, metaphors fail me. I just hate it A LOT, trust me]. I hear a lot of annoying crap at work and in the game is my quiet fun-time.
And there is the hidden factor. While tells have always been a part of the game, no sooner does one get onto Vent than half the people on the channel vanish into a private chat channel somewheres. One wonders what is being said that is ever so secret. I cannot state how annoying and divisive this is. Not to mention you have the people not on Vent at all, wondering if they're being chatted about on the regular channel.
Another one of my points, I guess, is this: are you one of those merrily jibberjabbering away on Vent 24/7? Be careful. You might be about to lose a friend or two over it - remember such-and-so? Where IS he these days? Haven't seen him for a while, have you? Did you even notice that person was gone till now? Did you ever consider that sooper-seekrit private channel might have had something to do with it?
Just some food for consideration, take it as [generally speaking] you will. -
Quote:No. Has nothing to do with WoW. At the risk of infuriating many, I can say that the recent severe dearth of players can most likely be laid at the feet of the AE nerfs. I personally know about 10 people who quit over this; I can only imagine what the gamewide effect must have been.
Ironblade: As for the dollar figure, why is it so low? Because this game isn't WoW
We saw a large player spike with the introduction of AE; when that was over, those people were gone. And they were gone, angry.
I know we have many here who will argue till the heat-death of the universe about how that is all a fallacy, the perceived dearth of players is due to everyone being on Hide, or being in missions, or what have you.
I hope you are right. I truthfully do. I love this game. This does not blind me to the fact that a big upswing of paying customers would be a very good thing, and much needed. Is the game folding tomorrow? No. Could we use more people? Don't be silly, of course we could. -
As of now, I have to say that my experience with Ventrilo has been overwhelmingly negative. It seems to me that if a given group decides they're all Going Vent, all those who are like, "no thanks" are promptly left behind. And for what?:
*A bunch of nonsensical jibber-jabber which often makes me think less of the speakers - because I truly thought they had more going on between their ears that that?!....
*Breaks my immersion severely. I just can't view chitchat about secondary sex characteristics seriously from Uberdark Lord O'Doom [made-up name, there]. I don't want to hear this. For real. I don't *care* about breasts. I know this makes me uncool.... If I hear it in text it is somehow only 50% as offensive. Go figure.
*When a group Goes Vent, suddenly no chat happens to those who are NOT on Vent. Strategy for the last mission of a TF? So solly, Cholly. You're not on Vent, so you have no idea what we're doing. hoo-ha! Welcome to The Completely Silent Task Force. Good times....
*And with that said, welcome to Completely Silent SG Meetings. Great idea. Remind me NOT to log in next time; if you lot are only going to chat on Vent I have no business here. Cya.
*Why must the password change every two weeks? For those of us reluctantly on Vent, this is very offputting. I have to jump through hoops of fire every two weeks so I can keep hearing jibber-jabber about.... secondary sex characteristics? This is an efficient use of my time, HOW?
Perhaps I am old and cranky, or maybe Vent just hates Vista. I neither know nor care.... I just miss the days of text chat, where we could be heroic or villainous in a much less intrusive manner. -
QR: Moar shots of the new costume parts, please please please...
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Quote:I remember those days well. I was running across Mercy and Port Oakes [seemingly] all but barefoot instead of across the Hollows, which I will grant you is a lot worse than Mercy... but still pretty bad. Especially for a new player.
Melancton: Back in my day: [...] *we had to run... RUN! across Grendel's Gulch in the Hollows and then up the mountain past the banner that read "WELCOME ANNUAL +6 DEATH MAGE CONVENTION" to get to the blasted mission door! We didn't have fancy shmancy flightpacks, temp powers or anything but our FEET!
I remember Hovering across that stupid bay to talk to Drea the Hook. This was before the Hover speed buff and I would get pretty high up, hit Autorun and then go make a sandwich or something. When I got back I might be most of the way to Drea. My people got smart pretty fast and started swimming across, but I remember a lot of Hovering. Sloooooooooooooow Hovering.
The only salvage we had was base salvage. IMagine some very poor lowbie villains, it was awful. We had nothing TO sell. -
Very nice pix, cannot wait to hit those tunnels and never come back out.
Now since the NDA has been lifted, new-costume-piece screenies please, someone.... anyone. Let's see 'em! -
QR: While the game has made many improvements that I like a lot, especially the ability to mail yourself stuff - hallelujah! - of course there are always more that could stand doing.
*The ability to dismiss most player-cast buffs. This is more urgent with customizable powers, because gosh darn it... I just don't want those oopsy-cutesy hot pink ice shields on me. Nor do I desire to see stupid chartreuse fiery rocks encircling my unwilling form. This crap is ugly, and I want it *gone.*
With that said, I would be cool with an option to render such things invisible, much as the /regen status protection can be invisible now. Who would this hurt? After all, Ms. Cute Pink Ice could still see the icon next to the team window, right....? Please do not tell me that her having to check to see if the icon is blinking would be too much work, because that amount of Lazy cuts no ice with me. Pardon the pun.
*The ability to completely change primary and secondary powersets via respec. You see, I love my level 42 Mace/shield Tank, but I hate the Mace Tank powerset. Sludgily, ponderously slow... nothing at all like the Arachnos Mace which I love on my Bane, I am just not liking this set. Watching my poor Tank swing that mace is like watching a brontosaur slooooooooooooowly stretch his half-mile of neck down for yet another mouthful of leaves. Sloooooooooo-moooooooo..............
As a result he is shelved in the hope that one day, maybe somehow it will happen. And for the life of me, I cant think of a good reason why it should NOT happen.
*Walk not detoggling toggles. Seriously, what the hell....? Why does it break the game if my Brute keeps Lightning Field running while she saunters around. -
Quote:What other AT has to deal with PToD issues...? None....? Now you see what I am saying.
You say that the removal of PToD on EBs would fix the issue for Dominators, and it very well may. Have you given any thought to how this will affect the balance (either positive or negative) for the other archetypes though?
Not being ugly, but have you ever once played an upper-level Mind Dom faced with, oh say... Biff? Give him a shot and then let us know what you think of the PToD and how fair they are to the Dominator AT.Quote:If you change something externally, then you are skewing everything. -
Quote:About a year ago, on Freedom server, outside of Icon:Originally Posted by Nerfed2Hell
Its an annoyance to have to do it again. But hey, since you don't mind... why don't you do it for me?
Tell from a level 30, scantily-clad female toon: Hey there! I need my aura mish but I dont feel like running it. Could you run it for me, I'll just stand inside the door and you clear the mishes? I'm kinda busy and don't have time. Pretty-please?
My level 18 Blaster: Dude, I'm level 18. I dont think that will work too well, especially for that Rikti hunt in Crey's.
This was in the days before that nifty-handy auto-SK feature, mind you True story.
They don't call it Freedumb for nothing:
Bad -
Quote:Yes, I am aware of this. It does not really address the fact that my Dom needed to be teamed to get past many EBs, when really.... almost no one else I play does. No one else, hero or villain, need fear the PToD. No other AT is hamstrung in quite that way.
The bottom line is, the Archetypes are all designed to be played differently. This is by design, and it's a good thing.
I did not begin in CoH, playing villains exclusively for two entire years before I ever rolled a hero. So its not that I am used to playing heroes and cannot play villains. Most of my top 5 favorite characters are actually villains. Three out of five, to be exact.
You are right about one thing though: I don't play ATs I don't find enjoyable these days. Perhaps this accounts for the paucity of Dominators one finds throughout the game - no other AT is nearly that scarce, and the higher you go, the scarcer they are. There's a reason for that, I'd wager. I can guess what it is
Some people enjoy the challenge of playing difficult, situational powersets. I'm cool with that, but I am not one of them. The first thing I will delete for is a perceived lack of strength. Strength can take different forms, but if I have bosses resisting most of what I can do.... I say weak. Mileage of course will vary.
Or perhaps I just need to roll a fire/fire Dom, who knows. -
Quote:Silly wabbit, what you think?Originally Posted by Robson
I have 3 or 4 new alts that I'm waiting to make so they can grow up in Going Rogue-land... anyone else doing this? Do bears perform bodily functions in the woods?
Of course they do, and of course we do. -
Quote:Doms doing more damage is simply not going to happen, so I would never waste my time postulating same. Here's what I was getting at:
Thirty: [PToD] protect [elite bosses, etc.] from CONTROL not from DAMAGE. So what you are REALLY saying seems to be that Dominators should do more damage?
*Blasters: Damage primary/damage secondary
*Dominators: Control primary/damage secondary
OR, in a worst-case scenario, Control primary/"buff" secondary. OMG.
This automatically means that Dominators are doing about half the damage of a Blaster, if they're lucky. You seem to think that there is no difference between a character doing damage or exerting Control, and I assure you there is a great big difference. This is why many people complain about upper-level Doms being all but forced to team: they often don't have the firepower to take down anything that is resisting their entire primary set. My Dom was often found in PvP zones getting the Shivan and Nuke temp powers as a result, esp. before they made getting Shivans much more difficult to get solo.
I have one level 50 Dom and I doubt I will ever have another: I simply have too much fun playing characters who have no problem whatsoever with EBs. If I want to play a Control type, I play a 'troller, who seem to have far fewer difficulties - at least, so it seems to me. I have a Fire/kin 'troller who has the powers of a literal god. He is all but unstoppable.
Wish my Dom could say the same
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QR: What I would like to see is the ability to shift slots from servers I NEVER USE, to ones that I do. For instance I will probably never be on Justice, so those slots are useless to me. I'd like to put them on my home server.
I have plenty of slots - just not on the servers where they need to be. -
Quote:Yes, my Blasters freely wail on EBs & kill them with thier damage, especially Fire/fire Blasters who, let's face it, are Gods of Damage and fear only mezzes and sleeps. And they don't fear them much; they fear being out of BFs I guess. Thats about it.Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven
I am confused. Your argument here seems to be that because a Blaster doesn't have Control powers... that the Triangles don't exist. Blasters can then freely wail on EBs and kill them with their damage?
Yes, you are. You're missing the fact that Blasters are pretty much damage/damage and Doms are Control/damage - or possibly Control/mostly "buff".... and a great deal of upper level NPCs in this game are sporting those little purple triangles which protect them from Control, to a great extent.Quote:A Dominator, though it does have control powers... will still deal its damage no matter what the amount of Status Protection an EB has... same as a Blaster. I guess I must be missing something?
Blasters and Doms are not really comparable. Blasters do have their weak spots, but the PToD are not one of those spots. Not that I've ever noticed. -
Quote:1. Blasters need not ever deal with the PToD. Not ever. Not once.Originally Posted by Slashman
So you're just not a really a good Dom player? I'm asking because I cannot think of one EB that I ever had to auto complete a mission for with my fire/fire dom. And he's using mostly common IOs. All the EBs I have fought are +1 to me and I even smacked down Back Alley Brawler(sorry BABs...but you had it comin'). I play solo most of the time.
How is doing it with a Dom much worse than doing it with a blaster?
I'm not saying it's a cakewalk for every EB...but that sounds kinda whiny. Use inspirations. It's not like you really need them for most of the rest of the mission.
2. Fire/fire is a special case. Fire/fire is very heavy on the damage, esp. if playing a blaster. I admit to never having played a fire/fire Dom, but level a Mind/energy Dom to 50 and then get back to me. Have fun with those PToD btw. They're a blast, and I speak from experience.