Castle

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team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

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Yes, they should. In fact, adding diminishing returns to buffs and debuffs of all sorts would allow us to alter many, many problematic powers. In all likelyhood, though, it will not happen. The change would simply be too fundmental and require a great deal of work on our part.

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Would it be fairly obvious to say that it ill be levels 50-55?

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I'll go ahead and squash that one now. Level cap is NOT going up in I10!

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lol. Guess they weren't kidding about wanting to make more powersets useful in the new hami. They better not nerf this, that's freakin genius.

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Honestly, I burst out laughing when I heard about it. Makes perfect sense in the 'how' it works. Brilliant thinking, guys.

Is it what we intended the power to be used for? Not even close...but it's a great idea.

Thanks, EG! Beat me to it.

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Along this line... What can you tell us about the various +Stealth IOs from the Travel Sets?

Specifically, can they be slotted in passive powers? If so, how is this going to interact with NPC hostages and such that won't interact with a stealthed character?

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Currently:
<ul type="square">[*]They can be slotted into passive movement powers.[*]You can have one of each type on your character for some massive bonuses.[*]Escort NPCs will not follow you if these are slotted on your characters.[/list]
Now, before the uproar starts, I have to say that unless we find a satisfactory solution for the last item on the list, these IO's have a high probability of being cut before reaching the live servers. Even if that problem is solved, it is still unlikely that you will be able to slot all 4 versions in a single character -- either that, or the stealth aspect will be reduced greatly.

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While not quite on the topic of your post, your thread title makes this a good spot to talk about this.

Most of the Unique Enhancements offer completely new effects to a power they are slotted into. In the Edict of the Master example, your summon power now effectively gives you a 'click' version of Leadership/Maneuvers that only applies to your pets. That's a pretty good bonus, in my opinion.

Now, let's talk about why it has a duration. Since these are enhancements, the system only knows about them when you use the power they are slotted into. Once used, the effects of those powers hang around until their duration ends. If they are slotted into a toggle, the effects are constant while the toggle is running, but end as soon as the toggle is shut off. So, slotting Numina's Convalescence: Regeneration/Recovery into Rest isn't a great idea (actually, it's no longer possible, but it was a good example to use!)

So, making it a 'short term buff' wasn't an arbitrary decision. It is simply the only way to get the abilities to work in all desired cases.

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Just as an update, this information isn't entirely true any longer.

The Pet Damage enhancements which give unique effects (such as Taunt and Placate Resistance) turned out not to work well with the Mastermind code. So after a bit of work on the programming staffs part and a bit more of my time, those abilities now work 100% of the time once the enhancement is slotted. The radius limitation remains unchanged.

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Castle, what are the current unique enhancers if you don't mind us asking?

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Can't say yet! I can say that the list is in flux and may change during testing.

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Set Bonuses are always active. The special powers from IO Enhancements which grant them are not.

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What about in passive powers? If I slot +20% regeneration in Fast Healing do I get that bonus all the time?

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Passive powers are always on, therefore any enhancements of this type would always give their bonus.

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If I slot +20% regeneration in Dull Pain do I get that bonus only when I click Dull Pain?

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Right. A Set Bonus which gave +Regeneration would *always* be active in Dull Pain, while an Enhancement which grants +Regeneration would only work for a set period of time after Dull Pain was activated.

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This runs contrary to what we were previously told, that "bonus effect" IOs slotted into click powers are always active. Has the system been revised so that this is no longer the case?

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Set Bonuses are always active. The special powers from IO Enhancements which grant them are not.

While not quite on the topic of your post, your thread title makes this a good spot to talk about this.

Most of the Unique Enhancements offer completely new effects to a power they are slotted into. In the Edict of the Master example, your summon power now effectively gives you a 'click' version of Leadership/Maneuvers that only applies to your pets. That's a pretty good bonus, in my opinion.

Now, let's talk about why it has a duration. Since these are enhancements, the system only knows about them when you use the power they are slotted into. Once used, the effects of those powers hang around until their duration ends. If they are slotted into a toggle, the effects are constant while the toggle is running, but end as soon as the toggle is shut off. So, slotting Numina's Convalescence: Regeneration/Recovery into Rest isn't a great idea (actually, it's no longer possible, but it was a good example to use!)

So, making it a 'short term buff' wasn't an arbitrary decision. It is simply the only way to get the abilities to work in all desired cases.

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Ill bet Castle is wishing he had never said anything on this post at all.

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Not at all!

Samurai: It was a player, not an NPC. I know, since I was playing him! He is a Spines/Regen scrapper.

The power: What you are seeing is actually a graphics bug created by the demo-record/playback process we use to take screenshots.

And now you know!

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It could also just be a change in animations for a claws or spines power.

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Or it could be the Nemesis Staff seen from a strange angle.

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Okay, fine. It's not the Nemesis Staff.

It is *not* a new powerset or a re-do of spines or any other powerset. Sorry to disappoint.

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It could also just be a change in animations for a claws or spines power.

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Or it could be the Nemesis Staff seen from a strange angle.

Does that 30-40 minutes include the time it took you to get Shivan's and/or nukes? If not, how long do you spend in prep time before each of these solo runs?

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Some of them DO suck though, like the Slow powers one. Most of my Slow powers need 3 recharge reduceers to be viable, and the Slow sets all include 3 or 4 +slow effects and only 1 +rech effect. I don't need +slow effects when I'm hitting someone with 5 different slow powers. What I need are +recharge so that my good powers are up more than once every 10 minutes.

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Bear in mind that some of these issues will be addressed during the testing period. Perhaps not the exact issues you mention above, and perhaps the extent of changes may not be what you hope for, but there will be changes before any of this goes to a live server.

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mountains of Yserbius (sierra network)

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Wasn't it 'Shadows of Ysrebius?'

Earlier poster...
Air Warrior! Dear lord, the amount of time and $$$ I sank into that game. I could play at 300bps for $6 an hour or 1200bps for $12.99 an hour back on Compuserve, then had to cover the phone bill on top of that. Between IoK and AW, I had some huge Compuserve bills.

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Anyone know if any of the developers or community managers played MMORPGs before City of Heroes/Villains? Like maybe some of them played Everquest or Ultima Online back in the day.

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I started with MUDs like Island of Kesmai, Legends and Gemstone II.
Ultima Online
EverQuest (up through LDoN; primarily a R()gue)
Anarchy Online (Up through Shadowlands) [I *love* a lot of things from this game -- the Enforcer is perhaps my favorite 'Tank' class from any MMO!]
Asherons Call I and II
DAoC (Backstab with a two handed sword? You betcha!)
Star Wars Galaxies
World of Warcraft
Guild Wars

Dabbled in, but did not play much of:
Toontown
FF XI
Shadowbane
Auto Assault
Vanguard (Beta; I might still pick this up if I can find time to really devote to it.)

There are probably one or two others I can't recall off the top of my head.

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Thats pretty cool. I wonder if I ever played with any of you guys in Everquest or Ultima Online. It feels like such a small world

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There was a PK on Lake Superior named Ultimus than I ganked a few times. I think I even broke into his castle and looted it at one point...That was during the days when Cookie Monster was the top of the Bounty list, before he let one of his friends kill him ,turn in his head for a couple hundred grand and then split the bounty with him. Man, that made me mad!

Simplest way of thinking of it is "Any power which effects someone other than the caster in any negative way should root the caster during the cast animation."

Of course, that's a rule of thumb -- exceptions can exist.

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Something tells me you've been getting way too many PMs on this

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That, and I'm getting cranky in my dottage. :P

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Can we fix Consume now that we're normalizing timers?

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There will be NO CHANGES to Consume at this time. Why? There are some essential datapoints I need to confirm which I have not had the opportunity to do yet. I *should* get my hands on the raw data after the Invention system hits.

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My wife has problems with the Ranged shot issue. It happens when targeting drone is on. Causes the draw animation to happen 2x, there by slowing the attack and wasting some of her Aim.

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This should be fixed on the Training Room server currently. Give it a shot and let me know if it's still a problem.

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Just to clear up:
No, we're not discussing any changes to Shivan's or the Warburg Nukes at this time. Shivan's are easier to get than anticipated, but even that is not likely to be changed in the near future. My original post was meant to show that we knew how these powers were being used -- and that is all.

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Nerf Arcanaville!!

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I tried, but she baffled me with logic and I ended up buffing her instead. *shakes fist*

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Wait, did you just call me Optimus? I noticed you quoted my response.

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D'oh! My bad! This is a Prime example of what happens with lack of sleep!

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You do realize I've done this so far with Stone Armor/Super Strength (Tanker) and Fire/Fire Brute? Next is probably going to be a Corruptor. If they start nerfing, they may as well do another global nerf cause I can do this with any character.

Or they could buff AV's.

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Or we could reduce the effectiveness of a suite of Temp Powers. Shivans and the Nuke's are pretty dang good.

And before more people jump on Optimus, we've known those powers were over the top since they were created.

Another post from the Animation Dept.
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Hey everyone. The changes to toggle power animations and the standardization of what does and doesn’t root you should now be up on live. I just wanted to clear up any confusion about some other changes to click powers that also happened at this time. The only intended changes to rooting were supposed to be for toggle powers at this time. We’re in the process of standardizing click powers to follow their own set of rules, but they’re not going to be slightly different than the rules for toggles.

Right now, our intent is to use these rules for click powers:
1. AOE Heals will not root
2. Self Buffs will not root
3. Self Heals will not root
4. Everything else will.

You may have noticed some click powers that used to root you and now don’t. These powers snuck their way into the wrong build (see what happens when we don’t root them), and most of these will change back in the next build that makes it to live. Consider this an official head’s up.

Again, sorry for the confusion this has caused. We’ll get it all sorted out shortly and we thank you for your patience and understanding.

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