Black_Mink

I too am experiencing this client freezing problem. I have only just returned to the game a few days ago, thanks to the code I got in the mail for 15 free days. But every time I play COH, I only get roughly 1 hour of play before my client completely freezes like others have described here. If there is no solution to this problem, I won't be continuing when that 15 days runs out.

*Cry* my belt.... my belt....

So I read todays patch notes. It mentioned that there were changes to belts. I thought, "Hey, I wear a belt." So I logged in and I got an unpleasent surprize.

My character, The Black Mink has always worn the "Metallic Fanged Skull" belt. It looked cool, and it hugged my body very nicely. Tonight I logged in and found that it no longer sits properly on my character. Infact, it looks absolutely stupid.

Please put it back to the way it used to be. Otherwise you should change the name to "Metallic Bucktooth skull". Just look at how it protrudes now. PLEASE put it back to the way it used to be. None of the other belts have the look I need.

Bucktoothed!


Another belt problem I have is with another character. On one hand, I love the new V belt. On the other hand, I really want my old V belt back. The old V belt just "worked" better on her costume.

Here is another one. On a female character, if you are using one of the bulky tops (shirts, jackets, etc), the chest decal appears on the left side of her chest. It looks fine unless you increase breast size. If you set the slider higher then the default (middle) position, the decal dissapears into her. Jay is still sexy.

I recently noticed when modifiing my character at the tailor (female), that there is no Young Face 12 listed. (I think it was 12). The list just jumps strait from 11 to 13. Jay is sexy.

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I think the upgrade power should be another goon walking up behind them, tapping them on the shoulder, belting them across the chin, and replacing them.


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Outstanding

Yes, please...

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I think that is the coolest suggestion so far.

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I'd like to see it where we could choose how our minions look. Not in a costume designing way, I know that'd be a nightmare. But something where we could pick from the Thugs available who will be Thug #1, Thug #2 and so on.


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/signed

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I am glad I am not the only one who is thinking this way. Currently, you can summon a black guy, name him Trey, only to end up with an asian looking guy named Trey in the next mission.

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-My pistols are freakin huge. I am a female, with the default height and athletic build. The guns are rediculously gigantic. The handle is way larger then my hand could hold, and it penetrates the geometry of my character. The top part of the gun is no better. It also has a bland white texture, which does not look very gun like.

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Your guns look "bland white"? On my MM, they're grey/silver. I'd check your grpahics settings or driver... I've had issues in the past where metallic objects don't render properly...

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Pistols close-up. They look pretty silvery and gun-ish to me. And yes, they are rather oversized. However, my character is only 5'4" or so and is rather petite, so it's hard to say whether they'd look as huge in the hands of an "average" (i.e. 6')-sized character.

They don't even look that bad from a distance. I don't see any clipping issues either. Actually, such oversized guns fit my character concept perfectly. YMMV

I can see where a character at minimum height and build might cause a problem....

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Yea, that is what they look like to me as well. Besides their huge size, they are just too white looking. I mean, just look at those screenshots, they stand out as the brightest thing in the image. I am no gun expert, but I know that gun metal comes in two colors, black or shiny silver. I have seen enough shiny armor on arbiters, fortunatas and even my corrupter, to know that these guns can look a whole lot better.

My thug feedback, level 4.

-The basic punk sometimes looks like a cool guy, but sometimes he looks like a really grungy, pot smoking embarassment. I like the randomly generated appearance, but sometimes the appearance can be pretty bad. Suggestion: Remove the nappy looking hairstyles from their possible appearances.

-My pistols are freakin huge. I am a female, with the default height and athletic build. The guns are rediculously gigantic. The handle is way larger then my hand could hold, and it penetrates the geometry of my character. The top part of the gun is no better. It also has a bland white texture, which does not look very gun like. Suggestion: Make the pistols 1/2 scale for female characters, and add a "shiny" effect to them, like the Arbiters armor.

-Lack of resistances scares me. The idea of the leadership bonus from enforcers sounds cool, but I worry that it will be hard to balance against the innate resists of other MM pets. Especially considering that all other MM Pets have their resists in effect at ALL times. From level 1 to 11, my punks will not get to enjoy their passive bonus. If one of my enforcers dies, they lose their passive bonus. What if my punks lose their line of sight to my enforcers? Is this leadership bonus strong enough to compensate for all these weaknesses? Suggestion: Maybe it would be better to give thug pets a small innate resistance to every damage type?

-The summon animation. I think the whistle is apropriate, but the gorilla animation that follows it looks so freakin stupid on my girl. Suggestion: PLEASE change it to something more graceful.

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it seems to work most of the time

still it'd be nice if pets retaliated when an enemy tried to attack me and missed, instead of *just* when an enemy's attack hits...

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Even when the enemy HITS me with their attack, my pet will often stand there and ignore it until an enemy manages to hit my pet with an AE or something.

Not really feeling like a mastermind anymore....

That sums up my experiance on the test server. As a mastermind, I have always had to aproach combat with at least a small sense of tact and smarts. I had to make a concious effort to avoid drawing too much damage onto myself. A mission, even soloing on an easy difficulty, required a certain level of caution.

Now, my mastermind on the test server just plays like my brute. I charge through missions, guns blazing, with almost no reguard for personal safety. I do not even have any pet macros on my hotbars, I dont need them. I just leave pets on defense/follow, and if they bother to join the fight, great. Even with only a single henchman on bodyguard, damage becomes fairly trivial. I can easily heal myself with an inspiration once in a while if I need it, and if my henchman dies I just quickly resummon him during combat. If I had twilight grasp to freaquently heal myself with, it would just get even easier.

Although the old mastermind playstyles are still available, they seem somewhat overshadowed by this new "supertank" style of mastermind.

I am happy that I7 is finally on test, but I feel a little "turned off" to the mastermind AT with bodyguard. It is now a completely different character then what I got hooked on... and its a lot stronger this way. I kinda wish bodyguard had a better implementation. One that supports the existing playstyles, rather then giving us such a radical new one.

Well, thats my feedback on the subject.

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The entire powerset follows this theme of being unpredictable, including the pet.

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Darkest Night, Tar Patch, Shadowfall and Howling Twilight are all completely reliable. None of them involve to-hit rolls of any kind and always the same way work when activated.

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I disagree. Just because they do not require "to hit rolls" does not mean that they are perfectly reliable. There is a certain level of unpredictability in all of the dark miasma powers. I will not claim to be an expert on these powers, so I will just explain darkest night.

This power, when looking on the bright side, is an area effect debuff. Accuracy I believe?

So what makes darkest night "unpredictable?" Well, first of all, it is not just an AE debuff, it is an aura you stick on a single enemy target. If the rest of the enemies suddenly move away from him for some reason, they lose the debuff. If your teammates kill off that particular enemy early, the debuff drops. It is also a toggle power, which means that if you suddenly get hit with an effect like hold or sleep, this debuff ends. Finally, of all things, this is an accuracy debuff. As nice as that is, there is no guarentee that the enemies will not get lucky and land lots of hits on you anyway.

As I said, I am not an expert on every DM power, but after playing with it for a while, this was the overall design theme I noticed. This is just the tradeoff you pay for such strong powers.

Anyway, this really has NOTHING to do with the subject of patron power pools.

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So how does this still explain how PATRON pool pets can be perma, but Dark Servant the 9th tier power for defenders is still thrown to the curb by not being perma :/. Bringing this up again cause it still exists and is a HUGE QoL issue, not an uberness factor.

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This is off topic, but I can answer this one. What a lot of people seem to overlook with the whole dark miasma power set is that although the powers are strong, they tend to be unreliable. Twilight grasp for example is a very nice heal and debuff. But if you are desperate for healing, it could very well miss the enemy. The entire powerset follows this theme of being unpredictable, including the pet. You can not guarentee that the pet will be there every time you need it, and that is the theme of the entire set.

I have been thinking on how I wanted to respond to this. So here it goes:

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We tried to create a vibrant villainous organization that players would want to be part of.

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Ok, this is the first problem, which sticks out like a lighthouse. Its NOT an organization I want to belong to, not because of my character theme, but because the organization sucks. Maybe I would be more friendly to Lord Recluse and the arachos forces if I didnt have to fight them all the damn time. Maybe if they didnt attack me in the streets while I happen to be walking by. They spring you from prison, then they manhunt you at every chance they get. When I started playing COV several months ago, and the early contacts suggested that I could "rise in the ranks of Arachnos", I considered that a definate possibility. But after the 1000th time I had to demonstrate who the chosen one was to a foolish (and now dead) arachnos flunky, I ruled out that career path. I make it no secret, either in game or on these boards, that my characters all strongly dislike the entire arachnos organization. I chose to be a villain, but I am no ones servant.

I dislike lord recluse and his lame organization so much, how about letting me choose a hero for a patron instead?. Thats right, I said it. Let my character choose Statesman as my patron, and fight against Arachnos forces. While many COV players cant wait to serve a patron, I am itching for the chance to kick all their butts. And they all have it coming, especially mako. Someone needs to beat the chum out of him.

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Many have complained that this hinders creativity and roleplaying. After all, not everyone wants to be a villain that works for Arachnos. Certainly, a large strength of the City franchise has always been its customizability. To a degree, the Patron powers somewhat inhibit this by compelling people into “working” for certain Arachnos agents.

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Ok, "working for" is not the operative term here. My character, being female might be somewhat inclined to "ally" herself with the female patron. But this is not the terminology used to describe the whole patron story arc. "Swear loyalty to a patron of lord recluse" is how it is most often described. In my mind, there is a gigantic difference between "allying myself" with a patron, and "swearing loyalty" to a patron for the rest of my characters existance.

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The powers also do not dovetail perfectly into current power sets.

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What an understatement. I am one of the masterminds who feels that the powers available to me are not even in the ballpark of what would be useful to me. I appreciate this insight into what the designers were thinking, but I am looking for some hint that you are reconsidering some of the patron powers. Not only for masterminds, but for all ATs. Patrons are a big deal, so please make me WANT my patron powers.

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When designing City of Heroes, I remember a lot of people telling me that it was just plain wrong to give people so many costume choices in the beginning. People wanted to earn individuality over time, not receive it. Yet, to this day, I think character creation is the single most praised element of the City.

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I was not here back then, I do not know anything about that. However, when I bought City of Villains several months ago, one of my first reactions was "where the heck are the capes?" Unlocking more powers over time makes sense. Unlocking clothing does not. For the love of god, what was stopping my character from going to a fabric store and making a cape at the low levels? Lord recluse forbids it until I prove myself? Screw him. What was he going to do, send troops after me? I already kill his men all the freakin time, they wont stop me from wearing a cape at level 1. The game mechanics are what stop me, and thats sad.

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I wonder whether it’s the genre (super heroes), the medium (City of Heroes) or the nature of the internet which has led to a greater demand for individuality.

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How to put this...

"Individuality" is not really what is on my mind when I create and play characters in COV. I am not trying to be individual, I am just trying to do what I want with my character, reguardless of what others are doing. COV does give me more freedom in this department then any other videogame I can think of. I love the fact that my brute is wearing little more then tights, yet she can do the job "tank" just as well as someone wearing armor. Its not about giving us individuality, its about giving us freedom of appearance, and you are doing good so far. Now if I could just choose the color of my powers, I would be a lot happier.

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Marvel tried this already. They created a Wolverine clone in the game and then tried to sue Cryptic over allowing the character to be created.

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This I can 100% appreciate. But in lieu of the settlement, can't the EULA be updated to recognize previously trademarked ideas that players self-own and recreate in the game? That's totally different to what you're saying when a player logs in and recreates a toon that *someone else* owns.

Granted, I don't want to see someone create a 100% identical toon like "Rubberlad" and rename him "Tennis Ball" but at least it's not "Rubberlad." But to say Cryptic owns "Rubberlad" the minute I log in and create it even if the toon never existed in the game prior to my logging in, that's just ridiculous.

That would assume the same mentality as corporations who own their email and IT storage systems and own exclusive creative rights to all the work created by salaried employees and contractors they pay to work within that system and create those ideas which would be incorrect.

As a consumer, I'm not paying Cryptic to take ownership of my ideas but to provide the environment in which I can make my ideas possible and enjoy them. Next it'll be Microsoft suing me for ownership rights of a novel because I created and published it in Microsoft Word (even though I paid for the software to make it possible to create and publish my ideas).

Sorry but it just doesn't work like that.


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I agree. This has to be the stupidest thing I have heard all month. If MMOs actually did things this way they would all be pretty well screwed out of business. Most player character names used in any MMO will also show up in other games, by other players. There is no possible way an MMO can claim ownership of a name chosen by a player. The best they can do is moderate recognizable names from popular literature, like Drizzt or Lestat.

What an MMO owns of your character is not your intellectual property, but the data that comprises the character. You have no rights to that data, and if you decide to leave the game, you do not get to take a backup copy of your character data with you. It stays in their posession.

There is no way they can claim ownership to a name, and as I understand it, their winning arguement against marvel was that you can not claim ownership on peices of costume art. What more is there to your character, your powers? Dont tell me NCsoft thinks it has ownership of flight, teleportation and ninjas.

The only thing they own is the title of the game, the setting, storyline and any NPCs. Speaking of which, some of "thier" major characters in this game strike me as ripoffs of other existing comic characters. Statesman especially sticks out.

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Open your own eyes! In PvP, AoE attacks are the extreme minority. It is the single target damage that kills us, and when we share that with our pets, our bubbles do NOTHING to help.

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Right, okay .... and this is different from PVP NOW in ... precisely WHAT way, again?

NOW: Single-target damage dealt directly to the MM ignores any benefit from the MM's secondary powerset with very few exceptions (mainly, debuffs already applied to the damage-dealer) ... and when the MM is nigh-inevitably one- or two-shot, the pets die anyway.

SOON: Single-target damage dealt directly to the MM ignores any benefit from the MM's secondary powerset with very few exceptions (mainly, debuffs already applied to the damage-dealer) ... but now it is almost impossible to even THREE-shot the MM, because some of the damage is spread out among their pets.[/i]

Ao ... what exactly is the problem, again ...?

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I am surprized that some of you just dont understand his point. It is pretty clear.

Reguardless of if the mastermind has bodyguard or not, the /FF secondary has a big design flaw. It was designed for a purely PvE game. PvP was added later. It is simply not designed for PvP use, and that is not fair to any /FF user. It is just a lot more pronounced for a Mastermind then other /FF classes. What is the point of a powerset that is primarily focused on reducing the damage my pets take, when in PvP combat, all the damage is focused on me? The only thing that made /FF worthwhile in PvP was the ability to turn PFF on and off frequently, which is no longer an option to masterminds.

Even if you have bodyguard active, and the damage gets spread to the pets, even then that little bit of damage they are getting ignores the protection they are supposed to get from Forcefields. This secondary is already at a big disadvantage in PvP, this little fact is just "adding insult to injury".

There is however a simple fix for this problem. Allow the mastermind to target himself, so that he can cast his two forcefield buffs on himself. This way the MM gets to enjoy the same damage protection in PvP as he does in PvE. The difference being that PvE damage is focused on pets, while PvP damage is focused on mastermind. /FF needs to accomodate for this fact.

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I like the way the poster made an attempt to test pet responses. I think the fact that you want to dismiss his tests to be extremely nieve. Sure, he didn't NEED to use bodyguard mode, but he was doing it to TEST the reactions of his pets. The confused reactions of his pets are rather typical, as a matter of fact.



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Thank you Solitair, that was also my reaction reading his reply to my post. I have seen many people in this thread saying things like "In defensive/follow, your pets will engage when you are attacked." Or "just order them to attack and then switch them back to def/fol."

I wanted to see how well these two ideas actually worked in practice, and I was VERY dissapointed. It sounds a LOT more effective in writing then I experianced in game.

It was just oh so nice to get attacked by three yellow cons, and see only ONE of my ninjas attack, while the other just stood there. I should also mention that the one that decided to fight back, did so by throwing shurikens. Woo hoo!

What I found was that, neither of these tactics worked very well against stupid NPC opponants. How do you think it will be against an enemy player who is out for your head? I believe that taking advantage of bodyguard, either in PvP or PvE is going to take a lot of macro work, and some very careful timing on the players part.

Supremacy has a great range, you just need to make sure you have line of sight on your pets. It is very easy to stand back from the battle and still keep supremacy and leadership powers on your pets.

The problem I have is I have been trying out defensive/follow. Using a low level mastermind, I had two pets. Both set to defensive/follow. I walked up to a group of three yellow-con minion enemies. I could have killed them all fairly quickly, if I just ordered the pets to attack them one at a time, but I wanted to see the fight play out by using defensive to get my pets fighting.

I ended up with three enemies attacking, one of my pets fighting back, and the other one just standing there next to me NOT fighting. I had to order an attack to get them both to fight.

I also tried out the idea of ordering my pets to attack and then quickly order them back to defensive/follow mode. This is no that easy. If you do it too quickly, they never attack. But the longer you wait, you are creating a larger window of bodyguard being down. Bodyguard is starting to seem more like a gamblers power to me.

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People talk alot about the setup time for the pets. What nobody seems to mention is the setup time for the battle! Stalkers stalk their prey, blasters seek out their advantageous positions, defenders assemble their posse, why aren't masterminds planning ahead of time? Isn't the Mastermind's job is to be tactical where his boneheaded minions cannot be? Terrain usage, clever maneuvering, and active application of the secondary set powers would seem to allieviate alot of the problems we're complaining about...

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All the time that another AT spends in the activities you describe, Masterminds have to deal with too. However, the extra two to five minutes the MM spends getting their pets set up, no other AT has to go through. It doesn't take a Tanker five minutes to turn on their toggles. Nor does it take that long for a Scrapper. Indeed, no other AT even comes close.

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It is also worth mentioning that you can NOT just create a mastermind today and see how long it takes us to setup. A low level mastermind can be fully setup in just a few seconds. But if a level 32+ mastermind wants to perform at their best, it takes at least two minutes of building pets.

I think this is a flaw that the devs overlooked during beta. MM setup is not a problem at the low levels, where they probably got the most beta testing. But at the high levels, we are talking minutes of time. The mastermind hates it, their teammates do not want to wait for it, and enemies in PvP will not wait for it.

This problem could be solved easily, by either making the upgrade powers AE instead of single target, or just turn them into Passive powers like they probably should be.

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I don't mean to get under anybody's skin with this comment, but I haven't seen it made and I think it needs to be said...

To be perfectly clear, what is the common Mastermind doing while his pets are trying to duke it out with the Hero?

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Well, that entirely depends upon what secondary pool the mastermind has. Each is extremely different. I am not an expert on all of them, so I will not even try to talk about detailed PvP battle tactics. Reguardless, none of them are that terribly involved. You use a few key powers here and there while your pets fight, and hope it turns the tide of battle in your favor. That pretty much sums it up.


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If he's standing still like a statue being an immobile toggle platform, he is naturally going to be killed (and really should be killed) rather quickly, bodyguard power or no...


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I am not sure what it is you are suggesting. Do you expect us to run around like crazy? Jump around to avoid gunfire? This isnt a first person shooter, a moving target is not harder to hit. You expect the MM to "get the high ground" or some other tactical position? What function would that serve in this game? Do you expect the MM to hide behind cover? That may prevent an enemy from shooting at us for a moment, but it would also neutralize our aura powers like supremicy and leadership.

To answer your first question, I do not know what the "common" mastermind does in PvP, but I have a pretty good idea of what we CAN do, and its not as much as you seem to think. Playing a MM does get pretty fancy sometimes, but it still comes down to the pets doing the real work of battle, and it is far too easy for enemies to neutralize or bypass those pets.

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2. TP Foe brings the MM and his pets, and the specific target (i.e. the MM, is replaced with a random pet)



I disagree with this, as this negates the usefulness of TP Foe.

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A MMs pets ARE his powers. If you use tp foe on a tank or blaster, do their powers get left behind? A MM's powers should not be left behind by using tp foe on him.



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Could not have said it better myself. With or without bodyguard, this is a major issue that needs to be addressed.

I am not very familliar with the Hero side of things. Could someone tell me, what are the biggest damage Area Effect and Single Target hits that a Hero can muster?

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Not every ability fits with every playstyle.

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That is exactly the problem here. All Masterminds are desperately in need of this sort of power, mainly for PvP. It is not appropriate to give it to us in a form that only fits certain playstyles.

I can see how bodyguard is potentially extremely powerful, using an entirely new kind of MM build and playstyle. But for our current builds and playstyles (which we enjoy very much), this implementation of bodyguard is considerably less helpful.

Bodyguard is such a good idea, yet it is just so poorly implemented with the def/fol settings. It needs to be more available for use in all types of MM playstyle.

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ever since the dec 23rd patch (when pets started following other mm's for no apparent reason) i can follow my prot bots, have all my bots on autoattack, and go afk

works pretty well

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No apparent reason?

Mastermind pets set to defensive mode will attack anything that attacks their mastermind or their fellow pets. This game has a quirk, in that any other pets on the team are considered "friends" of your pets. This is why protector bots will bubble other players pets, but not other players.

What you are seeing happen is another masterminds pet takes an attack, and your pets are reacting as if it were one of your pets. Set your pets to passive or agressive, and they will stop running off like that.

This is how I believe it works, based on observing my pets in teams.

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I just dont know..I want to like this power, but Im struggling to see how it benefits melee masterminds. There is no way we are going to benefit from this as well as the ranged Masterminds, and I think that

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Having played a ranged MM for a long time, I have the same sort of feelings toward bodyguard.

Above and beyond all else, reguardless of what primary or secondary I take, the greatest asset of being a ranged MM is the ability to focus all that ranged fire on a single target and get it dead before It can do damage. Another major asset of ranged pets is the ability to "get the jump" on an enemy. The ability to START the fight with a few seconds of massive volley of damage flying their way before they notice me.

I can not do this, if I am on defensive/follow, waiting for an enemy to hit me so that my pets will fight without losing my bodyguard effect.

As many others have stated, there are LOTS of ways for a MM to get seperated, or be forcefully seperated from our pets in PvP. This does not promote better survivability or tactical play of a mastermind. What it does promote is fancier ways to quick kill a mastermind.

As many players have suggested, use one or two of your little pets as bodyguards. Well, if that is the popular tactic, then enemy players will likely knock off the little ones quickly first. They are super easy to kill.

AE root + teleport foe should make for an easy way to seperate a MM from their pets. As someone else suggested, teleporting the MM to a rooftop would also be a quick and easy way to eliminate the bodyguard effect.

I feel that this implementation of Bodyguard does not help us. It does not give us the protection we need, it just forces enemy players to get a little more fancier in how they quick kill us. But the quick kills will continue. Even if we are only taking 25% damage, we really do not have much health in the first place, a strong enemy could probably burn us down anyway. The problems MMs have is that we have big exploitable weaknesses that noone else has.

This whole thing would all make a lot more sense, if each patron gave different types of powers, and no more of this archtype specific nonsense.

One patron pool could give crowd control powers. One pool for ranged damage attacks. One pool for buffs. One pool could give debuffs.

This makes a lot more sense to me. Let players decide what type of powers they need, by making each patron completely different.