Cayenne

Wow, about half of them are down in the server status.

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/s...ver_status.php

I don't have (or want) a valid Windows installation, I've been using Linux as my only OS for about 12 years now. I prepaid through sometime next year, but I guess it's time for me to find a new game to play. Meh.

I read it most as a dedicated 'pulse blast' set with a couple of missile attacks. I think that a set focusing on just missiles would be more fun, since we have lots of other energy-type attacks already.

Traps and Devices work well, I agree, but I think we need more secondary sets.
Blasters have 10/6, Brutes 11/9, Controllers 8/9, Corruptors 10/10, Defenders 10/10, Dominators 7/7, Masterminds 6/8, Scrappers 10/8, Stalkers 11/7, Tankers 8/11. I'd like to see all ATs gain the same number of primaries and secondaries. Get all ATs up to 12/12, and we'll see a lot more variety.

How about a Mini-Missile Blast set? Instead of focusing on the power armor part of it, focus on just the blast part... the rest can be handled by already-existing sets.

The standard ST attack, ST DoT, cone/AoE attacks, snipe, and nuke could fit well with this, and it could be reworked for non-tech origins with power customization (fire elemental wasps?). The side effect for the set could be 'shaped charge': some fraction of the damage from the missiles ignores resistance completely, without offering a resistance debuff of any sort.

Powered Armor could be a blaster secondary possibly. It would have a few melee attacks, possibly some resistance or defense, and definitely a targeting computer. Adding in a stacking +jump or +flight power would be nice too, something that stacks with jump like Kinetics' Inertial Reduction power, or a similar flight power? The amount of defense/resistance should be low, or possibly high but with a VERY high end cost, or perhaps just allow Personal Force Field to the set.

Oh, I originally meant gang-specific tips to be separate from normal tips... perhaps call them 'leads' instead. The difference is that they all lead towards a story arc, not a morality mission. A similar UI could be used for it, with 3-5 leads from the same gang opening a contact.

As for the title, past experience has been that the flaming happens fast. I didn't even want to check this thread today...


I do think that this would be a more intuitive way for low-end play to progress. Altering the tutorial a bit to promote saving people instead of talking to contacts would help, something like the Ouroborous flashback of the tutorial perhaps? Saving a purse from a purse-snatcher and then having the victim tell you about what she heard seems pretty logical.

Even the bank missions could be reworked to fit this. Get a lead where a signature villain's name pops up, then investigate that to get more information, then to find the contact that the villain is meeting, and then the bank mission where you get there just in the nick of time. It would have a more active feel to it than the current police detective method. For red-side, the progression would be something like get a lead on a gang planning a robbery, then arrange to meet them, take down the person that thought they were in charge, and then go on a mayhem.

...but I'll post it anyhow.

I'd love to see the gameplay revamped throughout the low-level zones. Specifically, I'd like to see gang-specific tip missions replace the current contact system. Instead of immediately getting a contact that starts sending us on errands, why not drop gang-specific tips when beating on members of that gang, and then when enough tip missions have been run unlocking a TF/SF contact?

As an example of what I mean, I'd like to see Hellion-specific tips drop when defeating Hellions in the streets. Maybe one of them gasps out something, or lets it slip while boasting. After you complete a few Hellion tip missions, you unlock part of the story arc we have now for the Hellions/magic origin arc. Perhaps Paco Sanchez contacts you because you have a growing reputation as the go-to person for dealing with the Hellions.

After you unlock the contact, the series of missions is a normal TF/SF, just like the ones we have now, but with a minimum team size of 1.

So, to recap: instead of being the errand person for the whole city, I'd like to see my heroes and villains have a growing reputation that's reflected in the number of TFS or SFs they have unlocked. I think that we already have almost all the pieces necessary to implement this. Gang-specific tip missions could be reworked radio missions, the TFs would simply be the arcs we already have now, the contacts are already in place. It would massively increase the number of different TFs in the game, giving the whole player base more variety.

Any thoughts or comments?

I'm not able to get this working with wine, and it will be disappointing when I'll have to stop playing the game because I can't launch it anymore. No, I'm not going to switch to windows, no I'm not going to go buy a mac.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ull/ is an old, old project to provide a linux-native launcher for NCSoft games. Perhaps something like that could be provided to us?

Um, what do sets have to do with player ratings? I rate for things like quitting teams/TFs without warning, or having a wonderful sense of humor.

I'd liketo be able to see the star ratings when I'm searching for teammates, and to be able to sort by rating. I don't know if this would be hard or not, but it would be useful to me.

Dual Pistol Assault!

Yes, my suggestion was to fix the problem of market prices being out of hand, and of people buying and deleting salvage to drive prices up. A store that sold common salvage for 10k would automatically make market prices max out at 10k... common salvage price inflation solved! Being able to easily get specific salvage during normal game play (with merits rather than tickets) would reduce demand, driving down prices.

Linking drop rates to market prices would ensure that the supply always matched the demand. Again, problem solved as anyone that buys and deletes massive quantities of a salvage item merely ensures that other people will be getting them as drops.

'We already have a way to do that' is a bad argument. After all, we don't need trams or base teleporters, we can just walk to our destination! Wouldn't it be wonderful if the devs simply said that? We don't need multiple ways to increase power, levels should be enough. Or slots. Or accolade powers. Or set bonuses. Or Incarnate abilities... note that 'already having a way' is not exactly a compelling argument here?

I'd like to see a series of arcs that involve exploring your origin, that grant a special slot added to your origin temp that can only be slotted with origin enhancements, from an unlockable origin store/contact.

I'd also love to see the same sort of focus on travel powers. Imagine a series of arcs that teach you how to better use your Super Speed, Teleport, Super Jump, or Flight. The maps could be completely built around the power, with things like vertical maps for fliers, non-continuous maps for teleporters (teleport through these bars, there is no other way to reach the elevator), and so on.

Another solution that would work well would be to add all the detectives/fixers to Ouro as mission arcs, with each arc exemping normally but giving you 3 to 5 random radio/paper missions and then the bank/mayhem mission.

How about a 'jack of all trades' AT, that chooses two different primaries and two different secondaries, and picks gains the odd-tier powers from the first and the even-tier powers from the second? Make each pair roughly the same category: melee, assault/support, control, buff/debuff, ranged, summon, defense.

This wouldn't be a perfect solution, there would be all sorts of abusable set choices as things stand now unless the available sets were quite restricted at first. Even so, something as simple as a character with both a sword and martial arts would be nice, or both fire and ice sword powers, or storm and cold buffs... Another nice point to it is that every addition of a half-set increases the combinations available hugely, so even slow proliferation would have decent expansion of abilities.

I think that it would be more interesting if it had weaker defenses, and was forced to kite as part of defense. Make it an AT that isn't really meant to be in melee, but rather near melee.

The inherent for an AT like that could be 'Rootless': no primary or secondary powers root you.

A simple solution would be to open a salvage store that sold any common salvage for 1 merit each, or more salvage per merit if that's too high. Selling common salvage for inf would put an effective cap on salvage prices as well... nobody would pay 100k for a common salvage at the market if they cost 10k inf at a store.

Another solution would be to link in-game drop rates to (relative) prices. Assume that all common salvage 'should' be worth the same price, average the sell prices to see what that price is, and then drop more of the ones above that price, and less of the ones below it. This would work well, and the game would naturally respond to market fluctuations by giving more of what people need.

I think this is a great idea!

I think a support/defense should have weaker defense mods, and keep blaster damage mods. Make them squishy but they hit hard.