Chaos_String

Doesn't matter what you thought was obvious months ago. The arcs went live yesterday and I commented on them.

And the only parts I see operating differently than standard content are the rewards.

It's a nearly effortless way to earn alignment merits that didn't exist last week.

Whether or not that can impact the economy I leave for others to discuss, as it wasn't at all my point.

Thank you Positron. But while this is good to know, the rewards are still Monty Haul.

A hero merit for 5-10 minutes of breezy gameplay isn't remotely in keeping with the rewards for any other content.

Even the reward merit award is overblown. If you can do the arc in ten minutes--which anyone earnestly attempting to speed the content should be able to do--the twenty merit reward translates to 2 merits per minute or 120 merits per hour, comparable to a 14 minute ITF, a feat which requires a pretty solid team.

Yet hilarously, people in this thread are complaining about being "underwhelmed" by this reward for rogues and vigilantes, as it compares so poorly to the alignment merit reward.

Now, I'm not bringing this up because I forsee it'll change the in-game economy (although it might), but because of what it says about the game design principles being applied here.

These missions are quite good. But there are only three of them. No, there aren't six. There are two versions of one three-mission arc. The parts that excite us as players--and require actual developer man-hours to implement--namely, the new maps, the gameplay elements, the cutscene, characters and story--are pretty much if not entirely identical between the hero and villain versions. They're just presented with subtle differences, which I guess were easy to implement once the framework was in place. And the loot table--well, it's just a loot table. Nothing particularly interesting there.

So unless the goal is simply to create a marketable product on as low a budget as possible, why make the loot table the selling point? Why not make the content itself the selling point?

Just some food for thought, from one entertainer to another.

FWIW, those three glowies are pretty close together and the induction is pretty short. So if you pop three or four small purples, you can click all of them while ignoring the mobs. Even on a squishy. Then run down to the end boss and take him out; most of the mobs including the ambushes will de-agro by the time you get down there.

Edit: and honestly the arc is just silly short like that. My 50s with superspeed can complete it in under 6 minutes. I'm off to try the redside one shortly so I can't comment on that now, but I doubt it's much longer. And that's fine--I suppose--but I'd rather see paid content that's more substantial than paid content with a grossly inflated reward.

And yes, it is grossly inflated. Six minutes for a hero merit, twice a week? No other soloable content has rewards like that. And it isn't a function of the content being challenging. Because it isn't especially challenging. It's a function of it being paid content. And I'm not sure how well that sits with me.

If that's the case, then I'll grudgingly concede Nemesis automaton tech as a panacaea for copying any and all powersets at any time. But I still don't buy it half as willingly as I did when I'd only ever encountered the Positron and Manticore copies.

I must admit I don't remember these psychic automatons. Which arc are they from?

Significant distinction: I do not get paid to post on the forums.

Also: I was not an English major.

A subjective question which cannot be answered objectively. Personally speaking, the lore has for some time been one of the reasons I play City of Heroes. But the lore is slipping badly and I no longer consider it to be a positive aspect of the game. It has strayed too far and I currently consider the writing a blemish.

In many ways, yes.

Yes, yes, and yes. I think the contradictions and messiness are all too apparent (Back Alley Brawler is/isn't a member of the Freedom Phalanx and the 5th Column debacle being examples of contradiction and messiness.

As for "poorly written," the quality of the text has been in steady decline since Going Rogue. In my experience few players care because new mechanics like dopplegangers and chained mission objectives, moral choices and so on have made storytelling feel more dynamic, but the writing itself is embarassingly unprofessional in places nowadays.

Here are some examples:

In Aaron Walker's arc (Praetoria)

"You and me, <character>, we just got ourselves a bonafied [sic] cause to fight for."

"Bonafied" isn't a word. There is no such adjective, nor is there a verb "to bonafy" which means "to legitimize." The author clearly means bona fide, a Latin phase meaning "good faith." Idiomaticallly it's used correctly in the sense of "a cause to fight for in good faith." But the execution is sloppy and unprofessional. No competent copyeditor would let this go to print.

In Dark Watcher's arc (Praetoria)

"I have still not found James Noble. Given that he went missing around the same time as Aaron Walker, I can only assume that Praetor Berry has retrieved his former experiment and put him to 'work', per say.[sic]"

Again, "per say" is an incorrect idiom. The author is groping for per se, a Latin phrase meaning "in itself," or idiomatically, "in the strictest sense." For example, the Prius is not an electric car per se; it has batteries which are charged by braking; the actual power being generated by an internal combustion engine. The author completely swings and misses here, not only misunderstanding the etymology of the phrase, but also its meaning. He's looking for "euphamistically," or "so to speak."

But here's my favorite example. Lady Grey, introduced as a contact back in Issue 10, has always used the majestic plural, or "royal we," in her speech. This ties into her origin in pre-Victorian England, and I found it most delightful to see it used by a character in this game (who clearly considers herself a lady of extraordinarily high station). She does not speak solely on her own behalf, but on behalf of the divine source of her power, too, and on behalf of those in her charge (i.e. the human beings of Earth).

But in Mender Ramiel's arc, she doesn't simply dispense with the "royal we," she speaks as though she had never used it in the first place, as if all the "we" and "us" referred simply to Vanguard all along.

And I have sadly come to the conclusion that this is simply because the author of the Mender Ramiel arc doesn't understand the majestic plural or its significance; and that furthermore nobody at Paragon Studios bothered to correct this butchering of the character through poorly written dialog.

Moreover, I bugged all these in Beta and submitted comments in the appropriate forums and these mistakes went live anyway.

And there are many other examples of failures to understand nuance in prior writing. For example, also in Issue 10, we encounter Nemesis automatons which are functionally identical to Positron and Manticore. And these automatons actually make sense as dopplegangers. After all, what is Manticore but a fairly skilled and athletic guy with high-tech arrows? Give such (perhaps stolen or reverse-engineered) arrows to an automaton and program it to use them, and you have a reasonable facsimile of Manticore. The same goes for Positron. If you could sufficiently miniaturize a "fission cell" of some sort and place it within an automaton chassis, it might well be able to manifest many powers functionally similar to those Positron uses. Certainly the automaton would quickly degrade, frying its circuits from the inside; and it would be highly dangerous to be around, but it could quite conceivably pull off the doppleganger ruse for a time.

Sadly, though, our current writers seem to think that this concept works equally well with any and all powersets and origins. So now we have Nemesis automatons which summon demons and magical flaming whips, manipulate the fabric of space-time, and so on.

What was once quite a fun and good contrivance is now borked.

What was once acceptible writing is now poorly-executed and unprofessional.

An issue with no new content is out of the question. But yes, I do think the devs should work on cleaning up the Lore.

And they should employ a qualified copyeditor/proofreader, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gVurt8TjeA

In This Thread: females (and/or female characters) hit on or harassed while playing CoX.

Not In This Thread: RPers being criminalized, dehumanized, or ostracized.

Hilarious offtopic angryface post not defensive enough. 7/10.

Needs larger chip on shoulder.

Perhaps the question was asked because the prior poster has never seen ERP-tagged players on any other server.

Or perhaps, after years and years of playing on other servers and never *once* being hit upon, the prior poster gets hit upon while playing on Virtue. Perhaps quite regularly. Perhaps in spite of not being ERP-tagged.

But these are just speculations founded upon my own experiences.

It is, but in a x8 scenario, all those mobs around you have collision detection. Meaning: it's a farily long way to run to get around the other side of them, whereas it would be only a short hop.

I used to run Boreas with a spines/elec scrapper with just Grounded for -KB, and while it was viable I literally had to force myself into that "stay on the ground" mentality (and often lapsed and tried to hop over mobs and got KB'd). Plus, there are some cases where uneven footing makes it literally impossible to stay grounded.

So if you can find a place for a -KB IO I'd say it's well worth it. Now you can hop over them and take them from ... er.. you can hop over them and attack from the other side.

Edit to add: and personally I'd choose full freedom to choose and re-choose your attack vector at will, over a few points of psi resistance, even when fighting rikti.

Sounds about right. If you took my build as a jumping off point and did the above, you'd be closing in on 300dps I think.

Problem is, you'd lose a bit of S/L defense. And would need to get it back so you could maintain output without Healing Flames. At a minimum you'd have to give up the Force Feedback proc in Stomp for the last Oblit piece; and ideally you'd try to work in a Gladiator's Armor 3% piece.

Something like this, maybe:

I find I have read this thread altogether more carefully than is warranted.

If base ToHit were 60%, then yes. That would be correct. 5% defense would mitigate 8.33% of incoming damage. If incoming damage at zero defense is 60, then reducing that to 55 via defense would be 8.33% (5/60)mitigation via defense. There's nothing "ugly" about this. It is simply accurate, unlike ascribing a positive mitigation value to zero defense.

It's important to note, however, that nothing I can think of actually has a 60% base ToHit chance. Accuracy modifiers like inherent attack accuracy, rank and relative level still use the base 50% ToHit, modified by defense, as their multiplier. Some enemies (pets, like Malta Gun Drones) have a base 75% ToHit, but nothing I can think of actually has 60%.

So, let's look at 75% ToHit.

Potential damage is 100 (all attacks hit).

At 0% defense, incoming damage is 75. This is zero mitigation via defense.

At 5% defense, incoming damage is 70. This is 6.66% mitigation via defense.

At 40% defense, incoming damage is 35. This is 53.33% mitigation via defense.

While this is slightly more complex arithmetically than your model, it avoids the fallacy of ascribing 25% mitigation to zero defense. Your model must assign a positve mitigation value to zero defense (regardless of base ToHit). You don't come right out and say it because it's absurd. Which means your definition of "mitigation" ought to change.

Zero defense is not equal to 50% mitigation (by virtue of enemy ToHit being 50%).

Zero defense is zero mitigation. In other words, your defense is doing zero (i.e. nothing) to mitigate (i.e. reduce) the incoming damage. If the incoming damage is 50 at zero defense, then the incoming damage is 50, not 100.

So, to revisit your examples.

Potential damage is 100 (if every attack hits).
At 0% defense, incoming damage is 50. This is zero mitigation via defense.

At 5% defense, incoming damage is 45. This is 90% of 50. 5 damage, or 10% of the original 50 damage, has been mitigated, or reduced, by defense. Hence, 5% defense equals 10% mitigation.

At 40% defense, incoming damage is 10. This is 20% of 50. 40 damage, or 80% of the original 50 damage, has been mitigated by defense. Hence 80% mitigation.

So, if you aren't defining zero defense as 50% mitigation, defense does indeed produce twice its percentage value worth of mitigation.

You killed my fodder! Prepare to die!!

Yeah, I was thinking specifically of a /SD scrapper. My SD/SS tank has survived Soul Storm, as has my Kat/WP scrapper, but my BS/SD scrapper has died every time.

No, you got hit with some variation of Tenebrous Tentacles or Midnight Grasp (she uses one of those, I can't remember). But if she hit you with Soul Storm, it's a hold, it lifts you up in the air and spins you around slowly and does a DoT that bloody well kills you.