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Posts
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First, let's get accurate when describing this. Blasters are not "broken" because broken things don't work. Your car breaks down, it doesn't work. Your refrigerator breaks, it doesn't work. Blasters? I make one, I play it, I see mobs die, I get experience, I level up, I hit 50. That sure doesn't seem broken to me.
It took pages of discussion to finally get to why some people think blasters are "broken". They set their difficulty to +2 or +3 mobs for an 8-man team, and can't run a mission solo. That's very different from being "broken". For one thing, when you're solo, you don't have to set your difficulty that high. You're basically saying "if I set the difficulty higher than what my character can handle, I do badly". Well, don't set it that high. You're solo. You have that option. If you're on a team, it doesn't matter what the difficulty is because you have other characters grabbing aggro and debuffing mobs and buffing you up. If tanks and scrappers are able to solo the highest-difficulty content meant for the largest teams, then it doesn't mean that it's the standard for all characters. It more likely means that the game is "broken" because some archetypes are too powerful to have any significant challenge regardless of difficulty level.
I'm comfortable playing my blaster with +1 or +2 content set for three or four players (with bosses). It offers a good challenge and while still letting me actually run the missions. If other characters like scrappers and tanks can run through more difficult content just by mashing attack buttons, well, good for them. It's not a playstyle I find particularly engaging. I happen to enjoy that I use strategy for my battles.
And also, I fully disagree that blasters don't bring much to a team. On every team I've been on, blasters bring lots and lots of damage, which ultimately is what completes the missions. -
Quote:Aid Self also gives a healthy stun resistance. If you're going up against an enemy that can stun, it can help to pop off an Aid Self just before the fight.If you're at all impatient /Devices is not for you. They may be effective, but they're a huge time sink. Nothing is more tedious than standing around waiting for a /Devices blaster planting several Trip Mines.
If you like to do big damage with minimal down time, go with Fire/Energy, take Hover and Aid Self, then go to town nuking mobs from orbit. Aid Self can work in combat, but it's more useful for a quick heal between battles, allowing you to keep purples in your tray instead of greens. Using purples liberally in combat allows you to go nuts. -
Quote:This is very correct. Blasters are more challenging to play at the higher levels because you need to use more strategy. Namely, the mitigation in your secondary. Things like hover blasting can be very effective since Blasters can still attack while mezzed.I've not found the game to get significantly harder for Blasters post-30. But it does require being on your toes more. It also helps to take those controls that they put in the Blaster sets.
Quote:Yes, that is really the case. Blasters have always been outdamaged by other ATs at higher levels, and they're defenses are basically non-existant.
They're clearly the worst AT in the game. But they've always been that, so it's sort of like a golden cow; it's not really going to change unless without a significant paradigm shift. -
I have a fire/ice blaster, and I never had a problem soloing him. Ice as a secondary is a very good powerset. Chillblain is an excellent power. Besides doing damage, it roots enemies, grounds them, and debuffs their attack rate. Add in Shiver and Ice Patch, and it's quite a lot of mitigation.
Hover is a great power for blasters. When you add in Defiance, you have access to up to three attacks even while mezzed, and you stay hovered unless someone hits you with a -fly power, which doesn't happen often. You can be totally held or stunned, and still hovering out of melee range of that pesky boss, blasting him with your Tier 1 and Tier 2 powers.
I even have Chilling Embrace on my blaster. It mitigates a LOT of damage. Besides debuffing the enemies' attack rate, it debuffs their damage by about 15%. That's like having a 15% resistance applied to you. Enemies attack more weakly and much less often. -
I like the idea of having Fitness as an inherent, but I never found felt that the current method isn't fun. At the early levels, even with little slotting, enemies drop quickly. You don't need to max out the damage to be very effective, so slotting some endurance enhancements on endurance-heavy powers make a difference. Most of my characters don't wind up getting to Stamina until their 30's, and then it's only because I have the powers I want.
To me, part of the fun of MMORPGs, and CoH in particular, is tweaking your character so that he's as optimal as can be with your current powers and slots. I don't mind if damage or debuffs or whatever aren't capped until late 20's or early 30's because I enjoy seeing my character get gradually better.
The only thing that concerns me about getting Fitness as an inherent is that to take advantage of it on a good portion of my characters, I'll have to respec them, which is arduous and boring. -
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Only because with that many slots, why even have assignable slots at all? You may as well automatically have the powers given to you with six slots as a default. Characters are already powerful to the point that the game is very easy, giving more slots just makes them even more powerful and would trivialize current content even more. The change in Fitness, making it inherit, means every player becomes more powerful automatically. They either have enhanced recovery/regen/speed if they didn't choose Fitness before, or they get to choose up to four additional powers (depending upon how many powers were chosen from the Fitness pool).
Powers don't need to be six-slotted to make a difference in gameplay. Even attacks can get by with as little as two or three slots. Every single power six-slotted to max out all or most of its attributes is a lot of power that's unneeded with the current difficulty of the game. -
If we get Fitness as an inherit, like what I read they're working on, then most likely it'll be most characters that will have to respec to take advantage of that. That's a lot of time players will have to drop into respeccing. I've been wishing for a real respec system, rather than just a power reboot, for years now and only hope it'll be something that the devs will realize can be one of the biggest QOL features possible.
They're a LOT annoying. If you want to drop a slot from one power to move to another, or drop one power and pick up another, then you have to choose every single power, every single slot, and reapply every single enhancement, just like you did on every single training level-up since you created the character. It couldn't be more time- and effort-consuming than it is now. -
Having been with this game for quite some time now, I think it's about time that the respec system was revamped to be more intelligent. I'll list the reasons why....
When respecs were put into the game, it wasn't envisioned that players would respec very often. Whether it was believed players wouldn't want to respec often, or that there was a desire to keep players from respeccing too often, I don't know. But it was created with the idea/goal that respecs wouldn't be numerous. Three trials were created to allow respecs, and it was felt that those three trials would be sufficient (along with free respecs added in because of power changes).
It's obviously very clear now that respeccing is much more desirable than it was previously thought. Besides the three trials, we're given respecs as veteran rewards (and we get several respecs as rewards), and there's also respec recipes that drop. Looking at the price those recipes command on the market, they're indeed very coveted. There's no argument that respecs are highly desired by a large number of people.
But look closely at our current system. The current system is barely a system. All it does is wipe out everything from character creation on and force you to totally rebuild your character. Not a single thing was placed into the system to aid in this process. You have to carry out every single leveling action you ever performed on your character, make every single decision you ever made when assigning powers or slots, and reapply every single enhancement. It requires as much work as possible, and doesn't do a single thing to save even a single step on the player's end.
Besides this, the advent of the invention system has made respeccing even more cumbersome and difficult than it was before. Before, all you had to do was take a screenshot to see what TOs/DOs/SOs were in a power. Now with the IOs, you can't easily tell by a screenshot. If you have three melee powers, all with Pounding Slugfest, they all look the same. One power though may have Accuracy, Acc/Dam, Dam/End, and another one may have Acc/Dam, Acc/Dam/End, Acc/Rech, or something like that. But unless they are all different levels, they all look the same unless you hover over them with the mouse.
Devs, please, it's time to give us something more intelligent. We have to carry out every single step just to drop a single power or move a single slot. Veteran players and power players who respec often will say "I can breeze through it in five or ten minutes because I've done it so much, it's no big deal", but the point is that they can only breeze through it that quickly because they've already spent so much time doing it so many other times. Unless you have a low-level hero, respeccing is a long arduous process in which it's easy to make mistakes. Even during the process, if you see towards the end that there's something you have to change (you have an IO left over and realize you forgot to assign a slot), you have to back up and start all over again.
Simply, it's as difficult as it could possibly be. There is not a single mechanism in place to streamline or facilitate the procedure. None. It is as basic and stripped-down and threadbare as possible. It was a nice bandaid when it was released, but after many years, that bandaid needs to be changed. What would be nice is a system that lets us target individual powers and slots and enhancements, changing them without the need for changing/touching every single power and slot and enhancement you have. The recommendation people make to use the 3rd-party designer programs just reinforces this argument. Sure you can respec in five minutes once you spent an hour in some program figuring it out. It's still a time sink.
On a personal note, I hate respeccing so much, all my characters have most of their reward respecs, their granted freespecs, and still haven't done all of the respec trials. It's why I won't make any more Soldiers of Arachnos (you're actually forced to respec at one point). I want to play, not spend 20 to 30 minutes, or even an hour at times, juggling slots and enhancements and worried that I missed something. -
I'm not in favor of this recommendation. Why? It only partially addresses the issue at hand. That issue being that the respec system is the worst it could be. What we need is an intelligent respec system, not this aged frayed bandaid.
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About half of my characters get it, usually ones that have weaker attacks or ones that don't rely on personal fighting (masterminds, defenders, etc.). For them, it's nice having something that does a lot of damage to at least certain enemies.
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I've noticed that the latest changes to flight really increased my hover speed (I haven't been playing much lately). I think if I respec and get the inherent Fitness, I can gain a slot or two from Hover since I like to add a slot or two there for speed. On my one blaster, I actually have it five-slotted for speed, stealth, and a Kismet +Accuracy.
That is, if I can bring myself to go through a respec. I DETEST respeccing. It bothers me that after all this time, they still have respecs executed in the most unfriendly cumbersome way possible. -
I pulled my names from a series of books I read about three demon brothers
Demonlings: Connor, Cain, and Caleb
Demons: Gabriel and Cressida
Demon Prince: The Traveler
Not crazy about "The Traveler", but there were no other demons to choose from, and his proper name was never given. -
Well, I bugged it and hope they fix it. It's frustrating to have to call up a calculator to figure out what the damage and resistance is actually working out to be.
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I can empathize with you. I'm just not a dastardly person. I tried playing Grand Theft Auto 3 (I think it was number 3), and I got to a point where I was supposed to do a drive-by, and I kept thinking "I don't want to do a drive-by!" It's about as far as I got.
It's not as bad in CoX because most of the time, I feel like I'm just beating up people, and most of the people I beat up are thugs anyway. One mission though had me collecting people from Paragon City to turn over to the Vhazilok, and I had a very bad taste in my mouth after completing it. Like you, it's why I have tons of heroes and just two villains. -
This isn't really that much of a problem..... unless you use logitech Setpoint software. If you use Setpoint to program your mouse buttons to generate keystrokes, and then have CoX programmed to activate certain powers, etc., upon those keystrokes, it will stop working. Unless UAC is disabled, Vista and Win7 seems to isolate CoX from other programs, and those keystrokes generated by Setpoint never make it to the game.
Someone once recommended making a copy of the Cohupdater.exe file, and that seems to work. I copied it to another name without "upate" in the name, and when I run it, it runs fine. Now, I run the regular updater just to check to see if there's updates, and then the copy to actually play the game. If there's been an update to the updater, then I just recopy it again. It's a real pain, but at least it lets me use my mouse like I want to use it. -
Quote:Really? If I rename the updater, what would the ramifications be? On patch days, would it download and install a new updater? Would it try to update itself if it was renamed to something else?Rename CohUpdater.exe, UAC is triggering off the "updater" in the name. Or launch the game by bypassing the updater altogether, and running the updater only on patch days.
Sometimes I just want to slap those Microsoft programmers. Of all things, to have Windows react differently to the name of a file! That's absurd! -
I'd like to see this topic pursued as I have the same problem. I solved it in Vista by turning off UAC, but since it's supposed to be less obtrusive as it is in Vista, I'd like to keep it running in Win7.
The problem I notice is not that Setpoint doesn't work well in Vista/Win7, but that CoX in Vista/Win7 doesn't register itself quite right. For example, every time I try to run CoX, I get the Windows message asking if I want to run software from an untrusted publisher. Even if I set the Cohupdater and the client to run as administrators, Vista/Win7 sees my installation and doesn't trust it. I'm getting the impression that because of that, it's isolating the game somehow from fully communicating with other programs (like SetPoint).
Is there a way, other than turning off UAC, where COX can be run without getting that prompt? If it doesn't prompt other people who are running UAC, then how did they/you install or configure the game? -
I think TP could use some love. It does have advantages over other travel powers, but it does have quite a few negatives too. It's the only travel power that absolutely needs enhancements or Stamina (unless you're doing short jumps). It's tricky to use and is not very accurate (explained later). Also, while it's fast as a travel power, the activation time makes it difficult to use in fun ways.
Accuracy. Yes, you can teleport right to a spot, but that spot must be something that can be pointed at. If you wanted to teleport on top of something, you can only do it if you can adjust your camera angle or pull the camera back far enough to see the spot and cursor it. With range enhancements, you can easily overshoot your mark and have to teleport back down again. If someone is running away, it'd be nice to be able to teleport to them, but you have to instead try to target the ground ahead of them and time it so that you'll arrive there when they hit that spot. These aren't major things, but they make Teleport not feel like what you'd expect. To me, endurance is one of the least of its issues. -
Quote:And here's where I agree with you. I've long advocated sprucing up the early content so that it's the equal of the newer content. There's a very obvious dichotomy within the game. You take a newer zone like Croatoa or Striga, and it's still a joy to play through. The older zones are fun only when you're new and learning the ropes. Once you play the newer zones though, the older ones just feel old and stagnant. Face it, once you "graduate" from Kings Row and head off to Steel Canyon, you don't want your contact sending you back to Kings Row for half of the missions. When that happens, I find myself thinking "didn't I just get strong enough to take on SC or Skyway? Why am I back here again?" Where I disagree with the devs is that they feel it's better to only concentrate on new content, while I feel it's important to devote some time to the old content so that it's on par with the new ones....
My position is definitely hardening on the topic- I started off thinking "sure it stinks, but whatever- you can PL past it, you can MA past it, GR is on the horizon...options are there". But now I feel like they NEED to completely re-do the low level hero game in the interest of putting our best foot forward.
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Quote:I still fully disagree. The boring junk is only boring junk because we outgrew it and got into more exciting content later. As for people complaining back then...... you're wrong. The people who complained back then are the ones who had already played through those early missions, made a mid-to-high-level character, and then wanted to make another character. In other words.... they were no longer new players. Someone who has been with the game several months has a right to complain because they've seen more. Someone who is just starting and is in their first day or two isn't complaining. I've NEVER seen anyone complain about the early missions the first time they were doing it while they were new. Every true new player I've seen has been like "wow. this is a cool game. The graphics are good, the combat is fun, the zones are cool looking."Yes it is.
It's BORING JUNK however naive and unsophisticated a player is.
We complained about five years back, when we were ALL 'new players'. The exp stunk, the travel was ridiculous, the missions were monotonous and boring, there were way too many fedex missions and street sweeps.
And the devs knew it- compare the low level hero game to the low level villain game. The monotony exists, but only because of a lack of diversity. I would never recommend that a new villain skip the 'official' content- if you haven't played it before, it's relatively fun, engaging and a good introduction to the game world and the mechanics of combat.
The low levels have been improved greatly by all those QOL changes over the years, but the low level hero game is flat-out garbage & a poor introduction to the game that is not at all indicative of the kind of fun available.
I'm not sure how suggesting that people skip boring, annoying content that stunk the day it was released and has only grown worse with time is "turning around" anything.
Generic MA runs or sewer teams are lot more fun than the 'real' thing. Encouraging new players to have fun seems entirely reasonable.
Ask a player who's been with the game for a few days and is doing normal content "what do you think?" I doubt you'll hear many, if any, negative comments. Those negative comments only come later, after the player is playing higher-level content and they're faced with possibly doing the early-level stuff again. When they're doing the stuff for the first time, it's all fun and games. -
Quote:And I'll still stand by what I said..... to a new player, this is all new. It doesn't matter how much you say those missions are bad, it's coming from someone who is a veteran. That early content is going to look different to a new pair of eyes. And I don't care if it's someone who's already experienced in MMOs, there's still new mechanics at work, new artwork, different combat system. I had come from many MMOs, and the game was new to me when I started. While I dread doing those early missions now, when I look back, I had a great time during my first few weeks because everything was new and different. I'll even go out on a limb and say that for most veterans, they felt the same way during their first few weeks. If they didn't like the game then and felt the way you do now, they wouldn't have renewed their subscription.I'm going to have to emphatically disagree with you on this. New players to this game aren't necessarily new players to MMOs, or RPGs in general. The early content in this game consists of fetch quests, fed ex missions, and multiple zone journeys to go defeat X and crew or get the Y item missions. In this day and age most other MMOs have seriously eclipsed this kind of content.
It's not even so much that the missions themselves are bland and boring, or that the long travels are tedious, but it's also the story content. There's plenty of cool story arc things to do 15+ plus, but there is absolutely nothing on the caliber of Faultline or Croatoa for lowbies other than The Hollows, which many new players can blow by on a sewers team without even knowing it. The early missions in this game are designed specifically to get players to run all over the damn place and figure out how to get to different zones, which isn't totally a bad thing. However, the way they are structured makes them boring and tedious. I didn't even like doing them when I was a new player, and I had never played an MMO before.
As far as I'm concerned, all non-story arc contacts are just a waste of time and are nothing more than mere filler content to pad time between the players completing one interesting story and getting on to the next one. There are just too damn many contacts in the 1-20 game that give nothing but filler pad missions that send you all over the city and way too many ways to totally avoid that kind of boring drivel and still level. -
Quote:I have to disagree with you on that for two reasons.The devs should have one of the contacts in Outbreak warn new players against the epidemic tedium of the low level contacts and suggest they hit MA or the Sewers until they can get missions in Faultline.
The low level hero game really is that bad.
1) The low-level game is indeed tedious to all of us who have experienced it before. But you're not talking about vets, or even people who have played for a few months. You're talking about new players. As a new player, that low level content is absolutely not what you're saying it is. A new player is getting real missions for the first time, traveling through a busy city zone for the first time, introduced to new villains..... all of this is total tedium to us vets, but these are new players playing for the first time. You can't rate the content there using veteran criteria when it's a new player we're talking about. I'm sure if you asked all of the vets how they felt playing through those missions for the first time, you'll find that most of them probably thought it was fun and entertaining. Since it's the first time, it's new and interesting. The 2nd time? Most likely not since we've been exposed to high-level content. But for a new player who hasn't seen anything else yet, they'll find it a fun way to get their feet wet.
2) You used to advocate that people should be able to play the way they want to play (and farm or PL if they want). Now you've turned around and are recommending that anyone coming into this game play it your way. This is a couple times now where you're saying new players should only play a certain way. -
Quote:I liked it. I got a good laugh out of it.Well I wasn't sure whether to put this into City Life since it has to do with CoH, or in the off-topic Comics Culture forum because it also involves webcomics, so I'll just put it here and it can be moved where it needs to be.
Today I was reading through my daily webcomics and I came across the latest edition of Penny Arcade. Nothing too amazing, but I did notice for the first time the large and clean word balloons and the generic and non-topical graphic presentation. So I decided to wipe the word bubbles clean and try my hand at making my OWN version of Penny Arcade regarding CoH. I self-filtered to remove profanity etc. from my own ideas, and here is the result:
What do you all think? If anyone likes it, I'll probably do some more. I figure it's fair use since I'm not getting paid for it, right? -
I don't have a problem with a lack of mez protection on my squishies. It's not like they're not strong enough to win. If anything, the game's gotten easier and easier over time. How easy do we want it to be?
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Quote:You're always skipping content! There's too much content to possibly do it all without turning off exp gain.Either way Nether's point is spot on.
You're SKIPPING content. As far as I'm concerned I see no different between getting on a PI farm from 1-5, sewers, or standing by the door in a mission while someone clears a map, or an AE farm where everyone on team fights from 1-5.
You're all skipping the low level content.