BurningChick
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Posts
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Joined
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Zeb Cook (AKA, Lord Recluse) had planned on on-going updates to the Gladiator System. Indeed, post-I6, there were some tweaks and passes. And then he split, and the system died from neglect.
FWIW, I think WW should (wo)man up and remove the Gladiator requirement from the villain accolade. One shouldn't twist players' arms to partake in gameplay that the devs themselves dislike. Much like the way they lowered the requirements for badges like Zookeeper -- badges that could only be attained by an egregious amount of farming. -
Quote:Again: very, very nice.Originally Posted by Father Xmas
That is a lovely case. Nice and wide with those wonderful cable routing holes lined with rubber grommets and integrated case fan controller. Big gaping hole behind the CPU so you can install a big CPU heat sink after you install the motherboard. Even has a USB 3.0 front port. Yes the downside is the cost of $160. Still cheaper than some of the more extreme looking cases or high end gaming cases.
Yup! I have the old model Silencer, in red. It's really nothing fancy, but it just keeps going ... and going ...Quote:PC Power and Cooling just introduced some new mid range PSUs at CES last week. They're currently owned by OCZ who has their own PSU line as well.
I've had PSUs from most of the big names over the years, and the PC Power PSU is the only one that's performed well for me over 2 years, maybe close to three. -
I'm out of the loop when it comes to PC parts these days, but I used to build 'em and fix 'em (and, for a while, network them at a .com) ages ago for a living.
The big things for me are having a high quality, roomy case to work in (especially for your first build) ... and a power supply that's not going to go BZZZZT! and melt your motherboard in a year. Everything else is details. If you end up upgrading down the road, or find out just like futzing with your rig, you'll appreciate not having to get a new PSU to keep up with your new toy's beefier power demands. And you'll definitely appreciate having a roomy case to work in (trying to seat cables with pliers or tweezers 'cause you're fingers won't fit in the case sucks).
I really like this case, but it's spendy. I just rebuilt my PC in it this afternoon with this case, and I gotta say ... lots of nice touches. The motherboard mounts were in place and ready to go; no sharp / jagged edges (seriously nasty -- cases get dusty, dust leads to dry skin, dry skin on jagged metal results in bleeding); superb cable handling; easy access behind the CPU (good if you're using warranty-voiding cooling options); roomy; superb air flow; easy access to the front fan's filter (see comment about dust, above); toolless drive mounting (except for notebook drives / SSDs).
I love my PC Power and Cooling PSU -- rock solid for 2+ years, but, again, it was spendy.
Good luck
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Quote:Uhhh ...Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
Secondly, trying to blame players for changes that devs made is simply ridiculous, especially when players made countless good suggestions that were completely ignored, and raised rational objections for the ridiculous changes that were implemented anyway.
I didn't /just/ blame the players (PvPers, really). I simply said they were a part of the problem, along with the devs, the community reps, and NCSoft / Paragon. I didn't assign % values to the blame, either. But, surely, players should shoulder some of the blame.
As for everything else?
PvP has already seen massive investment. And nothing's stuck so far with more than a minuscule minority of players. Not the Arena. Bases suck (god-awful implementation, mind you). The minigames in the PvP zones are something less than popular.
I think that's what everything comes down to: nothing with CoX PvP sticks. And it takes a LARGE investment in dev time and money to have functioning PvP. It's not set 'n' forget like releasing a new TF, or the way Inventions and the Market have (mostly) been. PvP /requires/ frequent balance passes (start with the premise that every primary / secondary combo should be viable -- no LoLbuilds).
Past performance would seem to indicate that the only way people will take in an interest in PvP would be with fantastic rewards. And, at the point, PvP would be about farming, not PvP. For the people who love the thrill of the fight ... there wouldn't be any. Just a lot of shrieking that fighting's getting in the way of farming. -
Quote:Nah, that's not weird. We're just seeing the same fault at different points in development ... which suggests that there were multiple points where the fault should've been caught, but wasn't.Originally Posted by Arcanaville
This may sound weird, but in my opinion the fault happened further upstream. Even with someone like me writing guides and posting explanations, the simple fact of the matter is if it takes someone to explain it, you've already lost: most players won't hear the explanation, won't understand the explanation, or will forget the explanation.
As someone who has patiently tried to describe what my bubbler's doing to a team of newbies, I'd totally support thatQuote:Defense percentages are the percentage of attacks you'd dodge if the power was on, relative to if it was turned off. I can hear the eyes glazing across the Intertubes when I say some simple like, "The more def you have, the better it works."
That's what I was getting at -- the end of beta CoV event was OMG wild fun. Even the Cuppathon was good. But, at some level, those events, which are a pretty gentle entry into PvP, require a good deal of organization. Ideally, you have Paragon staff there ... and you have some experienced PvPers putting together PuGs of newbies to help get things rolling ... you put up a notice on the front page ... make a big deal out of it on the forums ... That's what I meant by organization. Organized PvP with ladders and practices and Vent? That's not my cup of tea.Quote:Another observation: in its current form, or for that matter in any of its previous forms, CoX PvP has always favored disorganized PvP rather than organized PvP. I know that is not what you meant, but its still true: organized team PvP is the purview of the experts: a good PvPer will win most of the time against an inferior foe, but a good PvP team will win every time against any team not explicitly of comparable skill and experience.
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Think the open mass PvP from near the end of CoV beta. Or even to a certain point the pick up PvP from that other game. You can't throw newbees into situations the experienced PvPers have full knowledge, control, and experience with, and have all the variables covered. There has to be a random element to it, random as in limited chaos or unpredictability.
I like PuGs. I like jumping into the game, hanging out for an hour, and splitting.
Too bad the devs never managed to make PvP approachable on that level. -
Hey Arcana,
The devs completely missed the bus on describing PvP's mechanics -- that's something I find particularly appalling.
As I said during I13's open beta, PvEers will not partake in PvP if there are barriers to participation; not understanding the rules is, IME, one of the worst possible barriers.
CoH is a casual-friendly game with one of the least casual implementations of PvP imaginable. You (almost) have to learn a completely new game in order to participate, with some powers working nothing like the way they do outside of PvP.
The whole system is designed for maximum frustration of newbies.
There's no longer even any tokenism of having community reps, let alone a dev, showing up in Bloody Bay for some relatively organised PvP. -
Quote:Repulsion Field and, IIRC, all similar powers do have a duration in PvE. FWIW, I once asked Castle about this, and here's his response, "The duration is basically there as a redundancy to help ward off latency problems."Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Knockback would be stackable. If you hit something and it doesn't fall, the kb effect would stay on them anyway for the duration of the kb animation. Casting the same power over and over would not count; you would be rewarded for having multiple powers that kb. The effect remains even if the enemy is eventually flung, allowing you to eventually corner an protected enemy with kb the way you can a boss by stacking holds.
So ... the mechanic exists in-game to have stackable KB, but the devs chose to use it only on one class of powers. And, even then, it's a workaround.
FWIW, I think KB and its sister, repel, were supposed to A Big Deal for limiting melee damage. The problem, however, is that the numbers don't work out in favour of the players -- mobs derive more benefit from Repulsion Field and Force Bubble than players. Every time I've tested Repulsion Field and Force Bubble, they most assuredly decrease incoming DPS, by about a third and a quarter, respectively. But they also reduced my FF / rad's outgoing DPS by an even larger amount, relegating her mostly to weaker ST attacks (remember the original range of Cosmic Burst?). The original devs seem to have envisioned CoX as a tactical game with a huge ST component and not the AoE-fuelled zergfest we have now.
In most situations, it's FAR better to clump mobs and immobilise them (or even slow them) than to spread them at out with wide-scale KB and repel. I.e., you're still forcing mobs to used ranged attacks, but you're keeping them nailed in place for maximum AoE efficiency.
Low mag KB, however, is a whole different kettle of fish -- low mag KB definitely fits into the AoE-fuelled zergfest. -
Quote:As I've said elsewhere, Castle didn't get all the changes he wanted. The buck did NOT stop at Castle with the PvP changes -- at the very least, he had to report to Positron who, in turn, deferred business decisions to Clayton.Originally Posted by Cyber_naut
It seemed to me that chick said its not castles fault that pvp 'fizzled' out. First of all, he was put in charge of the pvp situation, and it was his job to make improvements to the system - he himself admitted this according to quotes that were provided in a thread in the scrapper forums. So it was absolutely his fault, because they were his changes.
Yes, he was in charge of implementing a new PvP system.
No, he was not the final authority on those changes.
Saying the whole mess is Castle's fault misses the roles played the community people, the PvP community, and NCSoft / Paragon Studios.
The three sides of this debacle created such a poo storm that the devs stopped working on I13's PvP changes during beta. And it's possible that the precipitating events leading up to both LightHouse (pretty certain about this) and Ex (not so certain, but it may have been a factor) leaving were PvP-related.
PvP in CoX is toxic. It's a feature that's had a massive amount of resources rammed into it (4 zones, bases / raids/ Arena) and has gained, at best, minimal traction. When people get nostalgic for PvP's glory days, they gloss over how much hand-holding and organizing Ex did for the community. They get better RoI from booster packs. -
Just throwing something out (up?) ...
The current PvP system was designed under the assumption that it would be balanced on an on-going basis -- Castle baked a lot of numbers to fiddle with into the design. Individual powers can be tweaked, as can AT-wide performance (I think many people forget this part -- the devs can tweak the DR curves for many variables).
No major tweaks have occurred since I13's release, which makes me believe that a /business/ decision (i.e., PvP doesn't generate enough revenue to warrant re-investment) has been made that PvP is not to see much lovin'. Business decisions are the bailiwick of Brian Clayton.
It might, perhaps, be fairer to be more upset with Mr. Clayton than with Mr. Grubb. -
Quote:I'm not a badger -- I get PvP badges red-side only because of the devs' boneheaded decisions to tie PvE-oriented rewards to PvP.Originally Posted by Passchendaele
This sounds like someone who feels entitled to eventually "get" the badge without having to "earn" the badge.
Some badges can be grinded, some can farmed, some can be gotten as a tag along on good teams. Some have to be earned through a different skill set, luck, etc such as PvP.
I don't bother grinding out nukes or Shivans; if I'm planning on doing a tough TF, I'll join an RO team and bring a force multiplier.
If you were aiming your post at me, since you quoted me, you are, simply, quite wrong.
If you were going off about the OP ... I get the distinct impression that he was OK with getting ganked a couple times, and was half-way expecting it. But to get ganked, repeatedly, by the same person? That crosses the line; the gankor most likely got no rewards after the first kill. The reward system exists as it is in part to make people switch targets 'cause the devs don't want one guy being fodder for the whole zone. The gankor was going out of his way to be a knob; that, to me, is griefing, ya' know? -
KK, I'll bite.
Mummble mumble mumble ... after the departures, new blood ... mumble mumble mumble ... most exciting year ever ... mumble mumble mumble ... Incarnate slots ... mumble mumble mumble ... Issue 20 progressing ... mumble mumble mumble ... Arbiter Sedin added to Sharkhead ... mumble mumble mumble ... year ahead looks great ... mumble mumble mumble ... increased dev communication as people settle into new roles ... mumble mumble mumble.
I dunno. I think that the really meaty stuff gets released in third party Dev Diaries and interviews ... and then gets fleshed out on the web site / forums. -
Quote:Ganked? Maybe once or twice.Originally Posted by Scooby_Dont
If the badge is for PVP, getting ganked is part of the deal. No two ways about it. Sorry.
Repeatedly? By the same person?
That's coming up on being a textbook example of griefing. -
Quote:Castle said, a while back, that he did not get all the changes he wanted; what we have now is some sort of compromise between Castle and ... uhhh ... he never did say. How often do compromises work out?Originally Posted by Charnell
The changes were short sighted and stupid. All we needed were a few tweaks, say the mez change and the defence thing. And some pvp content would have gone a really long way.
...
But no, hurpy durpy castle had a crazy brainwave of just suppressing everything. To "even" the playing field. And look at how effective it was. We now have the most unblanced and unfair pvp in the history of the game.
Anyway ... the original system was broken. Hideously broken. In many ways. The problem is that the 400 or 500 hundred active PvPers LIKED the broken gameplay, even if it limited the total number of people who would PvP.
What we had, IME, is a group of dedicated players who liked the speed, specific buffs, and coordination required to OMG spike an opponent.
What the devs saw (Castle alluded to watching a Test match with BaBs) amounted to 2 or 3 kills in a half hour, lots of bunny hopping, and a handful out of powerset combinations (with no melee, Khelds, or 'trollers) out of the thousands possible. The PvPers saw this as a demonstration of what PvP should be about -- skill, speed, and coordination; the devs saw an exclusive club that placed a ceiling on how many players would ever PvP.
There was a disconnect between the two visions that Ex never managed to bridge.
Throw in some ill behaviour that led to a chunk of the PvP community becoming marginalised (PWNZ, the Egg Nerf), some miscommunication, some broken promises (looking at you, Posi), and things ... fizzled out.
There was systemic failure throughout the system on all sides: the players; the devs; the community reps. To lay the blame on Castle is, at best, a self-serving delusion. -
To add to what Evilmeister said -- you can put 2 damage procs in Caltrops ... and have stacked patches. Traps / dark can chug out a holy crapton of proc damage because you can nail mobs in place with Tentacles.
FWIW, Dark's AoE damage with a few global recharge bonuses is close to the top of what defenders can achieve. It's dark's limited ST damage that cheeses me -- it trades off a third, heavy-hitting ST attack (like Cosmic Burst) for some extra utility.
Also ...
The -ToHit of /dark stacks with FFG.
It's a powerful combination, but needs, IME, some IO abuse to really shine.
And, uhhh, you can solo some 8 person maps (*cough*BM*cough*) with a Traps / Dark. -
Just IME ...
But I've seen lots of fire / kins over the years get man-handled by Malta and Carnies.
With my fire / fire / fire dom (built for large scale carnage, not survivability), I can walk into damn near any map and waltz through it.
Fire / kins are very, very good at certain maps and mob groups, and less good at others. Doms tend to be pretty good at everything. If you want to run the same map over and over at 50 to PL / grind loot, a fire / kin is your best bet. If you want to mix up with some teaming and shard farming, a dom would, I believe, be a better choice -- but I admit to being biased in favour of doms.
FWIW, I think doms are more fun to play. And, if you end up teaming, you don't have to deal with idjits spamming "sb plz".
Sorry, no build for my dom -- never could wrap my head around Mids. -
Thank you, Castle, for the time you took to answer my sometimes drunken and incoherent queries about FF.
Good luck in everything you take on
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I used to play my fire / kin corruptor. A lot.
But I increasingly ran into people with freakin' keybinds for SB PLZ! that they'd spam every 30 or 45 seconds. They'd spam it 15 seconds after getting hit with the buff. And the people who spam for SB tend to have LoLbuilds for which they're compensating by being annoying. I even had MMs tell me to skip them, but plz sb my petz. I'd have other people who wanted it, but would run clear into other spawns and start up a cascade of inadvertent herding.
I just couldn't stands it no more.
Eventually, I started randomly SBing the spammers. The only thing worse than not being the only person on a team w/o SB? Getting it once every 5 minutes. If they didn't get the hint, I'd ignore them and never ever SB them again.
Unless they were stoners. For stoners, not only would I not SB them, but I'd go out of my way to slap ID on them.
The way I look at it is like this: Kin is a /very/ busy set; there's /always/ a useful button you can mash, and that's not even taking into account my corruptor's secondary. Taking time out to SB someone every 45 seconds to keep 'em happy is time taken away from hitting FS. Or IDing the fire tanker. And I, playing a fire / kin corruptor, could unleash a holy megacrapton of carnage with Fulcrum Shift > AoE immob > RoF > Inferno that, frankly, relatively few toons can ever hope to match.
And, FWIW, if I'm leading a team and someone's pestering a (busy) kin for SB, I'll kick him. -
Heya' Plain,
You make some interesting points. But here are some other things to consider.
On most teams (and possibly solo, depending on build), Assault will most likely add more DPS than Time Bomb. It's available at L6 and is good right out of the box.
Further, your best use for Time Bomb involves a single late-game TF; that is the very definition of situational. For me, I'd rather have power a power that is always decent than one that is occasionally really good. And that is a decision most of us make with regards to our pool powers.
It's excellent that you've found a good use for a power most people skip. But that's not the same as saying that Time Bomb is a good power; it really isn't. Most people have access to other powers that will be far more beneficial to them over the long run. -
Quote:Some sets have good T9s, some don't. FWIW, Liquefy is more generally useful than Force Bubble or Time Bomb from 32 to 50.Originally Posted by Airhammer
and thats a lot of my problem as a tier 9 its really not a lot better than the tier 1 or tier 2 of other sets and those other you can reactivate much faster.
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Quote:EBs, yes. AVs, on the fence, leading towards no. GMs, IME, should be the toughest mobs in the game that should, simply, insta-gib any soloers.Originally Posted by OminousVoice
1. Do you favour the idea of being able to solo EBs/AVs/GMs, if so/not, why?
Yes, AV (hero?) Woodsman on my Thugs / Traps. Bored. I did it as a lark, and it took an awfully long time. This was after the Poison Trap nerf, but she does have 4 damage procs (AFAIK, no longer possible) in Caltrops.Quote:2. Have you ever soloed an EB/AV/GM, and if so how did you feel afterward?
I dunno.Quote:3. Do you think the dynamic will change after the implementation of the Incarnate system?
I think that the proliferation of ZOMG extreme builds has hurt what used to be one of CoH's prime strengths: teaming. I can can rack up more 100+z soloing on heavily IOed toons from ~ 25 or 30 than I can teamed. That really, really shouldn't be happening. Don't get me wrong, I love my purpled toons (note: my Thugs / Traps is /not/ purpled), but the game has lost some of its zazz with how easy it is to solo what should be team-only content.Quote:4. Whatever else you wish to add. -
Quote:Since I've started, I'd peg it at about 1/3 to 1/2 of defenders I've seen have been empaths, with rad a distant second. With everything else mostly just surprising me unless I'm on an RO team. The last defender I levelled to 50, a traps / dark a few months ago, would get comments like, "Wow, I never see trappers!" I only saw 2 others, on Freem -- and I generally pugged my way up.Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
Sooo.... all those Darks, Rads and Trappers I keep running into are a figment of my imagination? I see a lot more of those three sets than I do Empaths although Empathy probably does come in 4th.
FWIW, I mostly PuG, so that means I ususally come across new(ish) players who can most easily wrap their heads around healers.
I think the more interesting question is, "Which set would you like to see more of?" -
Quote:Everything that is not Empathy?Originally Posted by Elimination
Whats the least common primary powerset nowadays? Want to play something unique.
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Quote:Carrion Creepers also used to cause Vigilance to kick inOriginally Posted by RiverOcean
Carrion Creepers...I just love em. They are a hidden gem..sure you have to resummon em' but if you slot right they can be almost perma.
Otherwise, I've had experience with Imps and Gremlins. I like the idea of Gremlins (KB, end drain, damage). I like the way they look. But ... I don't think they quite click with electric.
I'm kinda' thinking out loud here, so bear with me.
Gremlins do AoE damage in a set that relies heavily on a sleep.
If you have the spawn slept, but the confuse is still jumping through the spawn, the Gremlins will aggro something. And since elec doesn't chug out AoE damage, the Gremlins eat a lot of initial aggro.
Imps might be fragile, but they really don't eat a lot of aggro since, on my fire / fire either everything is stunned ... or really, really POed at my dom. I.e., my dom is my Imps' meat shield. The Imps are, however, weak to AoEs.
But the Gremlins' ability to generate AoE aggro combined with elec's low AoE damage output and reliance on somewhat flakey controls seems leave them open to abuse that imps don't really get.
Anyway ... I think I'd happier with the Gremlins if the damage aura were nuked from orbit, they did slightly less ST damage, and kept the KB. In exchange, they'd get more mitigation.
Oh, and I mark the Gremlins down for being able to pull off the interesting trick of stacking KB from time to time. And once you have several toons with Gremlins, the whackiness escalates. -
Quote:I was there, on my dark defender.Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
Sad Lemur. I'm pretty sure this is from the "Oil Slick? WTF!" night. If not, the night before.
Gonna miss you, talking to you was always insightful.
Saddened I am -- he did good work.
Good luck, BaB
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FWIW ...
One generally shouldn't pose complicated legal questions on the Intertubes to a group of random individuals. Eventually, someone will give you the answer you want, which isn't always the correct answer.
Hillarity often ensues.
Also, when it comes to intellectual property, many 'net denizens have have very, very big axes to grind so that many responses skew towards, frequently non-sensical, extremes.