Chase_Arcanum

No. The devs have said before that they need an in-story reason for revamping the zones (and removing the old content, no matter how flawed, from play). I have a feeling that we're going to reach a point with the coming storm and the shadow shard invasion and extradimensional incursions where the very foundation of the dimensions and the three cities we know is going to be shaken... and we'll see several zones revamp at once as a reflection of this (the old zones will be available via Ouroboros). This'll likely be another paid expansion... and it may even take the form of a CoH 2.0... but it will come.

No, they have too much of the story revolving around praetorians leaving at level 20. The praetorians then need to spend enough time on primal earth to establish themselves there, allowing ALL characters to be involved in later arcs fighting Praetoria.

This zone will be level 35-50+. It will be based in Praetoria... but outside the city.... Most likely in the ruined lands that lie outside the sonic barrier.

I'm more interested in the further weakening of this dimensional barrier when Praetorian magical AT's cross into Primal... and if this will bring these dimensions ever closer together... and what else might cross over.

...I STILL don't have my copy of #4. Local comic shop and my work hours really don't mesh well. I've been avoiding this thread for fear of spoilers, but can't help peeking in to see what's going on. Saturday's my next window of opportunity...





hmm..Should I have admitted to that? Will evil forumites now mess with my head with fake spoilers?

It seems like, if you're rewarded with uncommons, you seem to have a full list of any uncommon to choose from. Things wouldn't be any different if they just watered things down to "generic common" "generic uncommon" "generic rare" and "generic very rare..." except that people wouldn't have the problem of accidentally selecting the wrong one.

thanks

are they? and are they using a large enough sample size to verify that this is indeed the cause? do the reports take into account that multiple people might be reporting about the same single trial? has it still been doing so since the last patch. Heck, are all the people reporting it credible or are they just saying whatever they thing will reinforce their argument for a particular alternative solution?

Its one of the core design issues in CoH, really. As Jack notoriously said once, "its no fun fighting statues" (or being statues, in case of foe holds). CoH brought many of the DIKUMud mezz concepts over and made them more commonplace than any predecessor. They fit the superhero genre (though one could question the hero-ness of sucker-punching an incapacitated foe)

If foes succumb to mezzes quickly and easily, then adding new mechanics to foes becomes somewhat moot: the old method of "hold em and hit em" will always win out. However, if foes don't mezz as usual, then you've marginalize archetypes that are defined by that ability.


What they really need (but can't add to the game without an NGE-like revamp and corresponding player revolt) is a re-do of the entire mezz and mezz-management system. Rather than go by a binary "you're held or you're not" you may look at a tiered system:

- a foe resisting a hold attack may be slowed (from constantly pushing against the hold) or use more endurance to do the same action or even sustain damage over time by fighting back.
- rather than making a hold "fire and forget" you could create a "sustainment" mechanic where players can continue to strengthen or extend a hold through active involvement (some kind of minigame mechanic). heck, you could have it that if a specific mezz threshold is met the foe is totally subdued. No need to suckerpunch him then :P

Combined, you'd have foes that are resistant to various mezzes start to show other issues as they shrug off the mezz, and your mezzers could feel more actively involved in building up and maintaining the attacks. You lose the 'all or nothing' state that backs the devs into a corner, but you don't marginalize an entire archetype

I didn't see that correlation, myself, and quite enjoyed the many custom maps and feel of the fight.

You have to really abstract the powers to away to the core basics to make such a comparison. It's close to saying "all the missions are the same- they're instanced maps and you hit things" (ok not that bad) or comparing every friggin AV fight before it as just rehashes as one another (because they DON'T have that mechanic)

The Duray mechanic is a new tech item that can break up the "stand there and hit attacks" -- it encourages maneuver. Since the tech was only recently added, I'm not surprised that they include it in more encounters to break up.

Ah, my pet peeve.

Tonight, in my Lambda "grenade" team, the only tank did the typical "run off" skipping over every other foe in the halls. The Dom, controller, and mastermind couldn't survive the straggler aggro.... so my scrapper gathered them all up and the four of us fought our way through the halls with relatively good speed (we had 7 minutes left by the time all 10 were gathered) and the only deaths we had was when said tanker came barrelling out of a room we were entering, pulling the whole damn room's contents on top of us.

The MM commented it was the first time he ever dared pull his pets OUT in that map.

I still believe that if everyone just stuck together and defeated the foes that they passed, collecting all 10 would have been easily possible, with little to no deaths and every player earning participation credit. I just can't convince others (particularly the archetype that is supposed to be the key aggro-managers out there) to try it out.

EDIT: In the interest of full disclosure, usually that scrapper's just as bad. With stealth and superreflexes, she isn't a good tank, but she is quick at getting to different places, hitting hard, and getting away. I never figured she'd survive long as the primary tank, so never tried this. (the missus was the controller, so I couldn't leave HER behind to die...)

I did much the same, since I had all the rares I needed for tier 3's and no interest in the tier 4's. With my alt-itis and limited play time, I'm doing enough to get the level shifts and moving on. If I happen to later stumble into enough to get a T4... more fun for me.

I'd suggest its more complex than that. We know that participation at various stages matter. How does your MM fare in the "gathering the temp powers" stage? I'd imagine that keeping pets out as everyone runs from mob to mob would get messy....

So a person that fails to realize the FULL value of something will be miffed, while the person that realizes it, takes advantage of it, and profits from it comes out ahead. Score one for intelligence?

Depends on the state and religion. In the US, 30 states do prohibit it, or allow it only in certain circumstances. Catholics discourage it and generally prohibit it, though they do allow for a dispensation in certain circumstances. (This stance has varied over the years, though). Protestant faiths (generally) do permit it, though it may be socially shunned.

Yeah, I'd normally feel that way-- heck, the way battles play out would be very different in my writing, too. Unfortunately, the game has whole story arcs, not game mechanics, that establish these as "real" elements in this virtual world... and even out-of-game content makes use of them (like heroes using the mediporters).

The thing with the particular story I'm thinking of is that it uses none of the CoH characters... or even some of my in-game characters. Heck, much of the idea and inspiration predates CoH. The game here has inspired it further, and elements of the backstory DO mesh nicely with it and help flesh out the story world a bit.

Still, most of it is superficial... I could probably port the whole thing to a wholly unique universe with minimal effort. Heck, the idea and the characters were first inspired by a PnP hero game world run by a friend in the early 90's. (The city was coincidentally also named "Paragon," but it was in New Jersey-- about where "Atlantic City" is in our world, IIRC. It also had a global organization that would often recruit local heroes called "the Vanguard Syndicate" but the similarities about end there.)

Tis true... and then you (the dev) wouldn't KNOW that they've discovered the rules and are exploiting the system.

Of course, just as we see here, people can be testing, prodding, and experimenting... and even coming away convinced that they've figured it out (and ignore others that are convinced otherwise). People will believe they have it figured out. They might be right, they might be beneficiaries of a very lucky streak, or they may have their hand in a honeypot....

Could it be that a few of your tanks were doing a better job than mine at drawing the baddies into the AOE fields of everyone else?



...Mainly a Kinetics controller here. I kinda stay focused on the AV's since that's where the melee guys are clustered near enough to the enemy (for the enemy-targeted heals and buff). I've tried to come to the rescue of the outliers when they get NPC aggro, but they're never close enough to their target to get a heal off em... and then my pets agrro on those NPCs... and then my pets die and they aggro on ME... and then I'm running to the other side of the AV's, hoping to draw the baddies into the middle before I faceplant and become vengeance-bait for others. There were a few times that I felt that "Vengeance" was the most valuable buff I contributed to the team. ;P

If you say so.

The vickies tend to get within melee range, so they'd be hit by the AoE's. The 9cus tend to stay to far out for PBAoE's to hit them (unless they aggro on someone on the FAR SIDE of the group and wade into the mob to get closer... but that usually takes someone taking the time to target and attack them, something you swear isn't happening).

I know from my past experience, MANY of the people (particularly the tanks and melee archetypes) were more-or-less oblivious of the actions others were taking at the periphery. They may never notice the squishies at range getting hammered by those NPC's, or apparently realize that many of these higher-damage AT's are spending their valuable attacks on the NPC's to make up for the lack of situational awareness of the low-dps tankers.

It doesn't take MANY people to manage these NPC mobs, when done right. A tank's taunt (or squishie aoe attack-and-prayer/rez), then pull back to the opposite side of the AV. The NPCs will persue-- crossing into the PBAOE space of everyone fighting the AV's. That's how they meet that fate. Maybe you just weren't aware it was going on?

I can relate.

In the stories I've planned... heck, even in the character backstories... I take pains to try to be canon-compatible. Its OK to add elements that don't appear to be part of Canon as long as they don't CONFLICT with the canon, but I prefer to tie in to provided lore wherever I can... if only slightly. I take a twisted pride in that, and I've had to retcon little things as issues reveal more details about the lore that conflict with these stories.

I'm breaking away from that a bit now.... mostly because I've had a story brewing for years (starting well before CoH) that in some ways feels RIGHT in CoH... as long as I pretend some elements don't exist, like arrest teleporters, medical teleporters. The story's been in limbo for ages as I stumbled over ways to explain away these elements (sabotage, service outages, etc) without having THAT become the focus of the story, instead of what I wanted to tell. All that extra explanation got in the way, so finally I just snapped and decided to "write like none of it exists."

Things are starting to flow together nicely now... but the glaring omission still bugs me & makes me wonder if I'd be better breaking away from CoH lore at all. All because I'd rather abandon all the lore that fits the story so well just to avoid breaking with the canon that doesnt.

Not necessarily.

If they had a very low minimum threshold... just enough to catch the obvious freeloaders, then making it transparent means you've set the minimum bar for the freeloaders.

By its nature, the more transparent they become, the higher the participation threshold has to be.

Virtue-bashing? You make it sound like being in the presence of large populations of catgirls is a bad thing

Hmm.... The perception of emptiness in one of three starting areas for alts, consisting of three zones that can be completed in under 20 hours of play.... and most of that time is in instances... compared to two trials, accessible regardless of the zone you're in, that are the only path to advance level 50's, with said advancement potentially taking much more than 20 hours (even more, if you want to unlock multiple options in your incarnate and have the flexibility to take on different threats).

Not the best comparison.

Does this happen to you in all instances of the warehouse? I can see it affecting the trials, as there's a lot more geometry in the cluttered appearances, but I haven't seen it in the regular-play instances and one of the PC's that I play on is so antiquated it has an AGP-based video card slot. I'd think that if there was going to be something causing a graphical bottleneck, that one would be choking on it. I know better than to take it on raids, but the missus and I have taken it through many new warehouse story arc maps.

Not bad.

Now, how would you measure "participation?"

- Damage dealt to the enemy would be an easy metric for the damage-centric sets, but be a tougher threshold for buffers/debuffers/crowd controllers. You could give them credit for effects they place on teammates (did a minimum amt of the buffs get applied to teammates) for example.

- But maybe you want to encourage "even" play (not just focusing on the AT practically the whole way through the BAF) so you could apply this metric to each stage. Did you meed the minimum threshold of damage/buff/heal/mezz at each stage?

- Of course, you might want to give greater credits to those that directly participated in a core action... like cracking a container in Lambda. That runs the risk of penalizing teams that specialize (you herd the NPC's, we destroy the container), so you'd have to measure that with caution.