Chrondeath

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The system does not track each power individually; instead it tracks every miss you make in a row, regardless of power (or target). Otherwise you could have nine different powers, each with a 0.95 to-hit, and if you executed them all in a row you could miss each attack (note a caveat at the bottom of the post regarding this).

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Ooh?

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To determine the to-hit used in the table above, you take either the current to-hit, or the worst to-hit in your current miss series, whichever is lower.

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Aww.

And here I was about to go out guaranteeing hits on my targets by standing around whiffing on some high-def inert thing (a friendly SR scrapper or something) until I was past the streak breaker for the to-hit on my real target. Pity.

So, to get the most out of the streak breaker....never switch back and forth between high-def and low-def targets?

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CoV only.

Most arachnos/longbow are except for Warden, Nullifier, Guardian Mu, and Fortunata Seer.

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That's kind of weird that the villains have an easier time getting Longbow to help them than the heroes do....

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Isn't this tactic the very reason they put in supression on SS.

I don't agree with supression, but I don't think a dev should be promoting a tactic that other devs have deemed "broken".

Get rid of all supression, thats what I say!

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Agreed. At least a dev is acknowledging that jousting was fun...

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Right now, the number of "best builds" is too few. Currently, this is from the unbalanced costs; however, even with better balancing, all the player needs to take into account are Cost vs Capability. There just isn't much depth in the concept of gladiator matches.

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I don't know. I think that if there were more buff/debuff/healing mobs, or the existing minion/lt ones were equalized with bosses, there would be a good amount more strategy to constructing a team. Even currently, "Capability" isn't the same for every mob...AMoAs have pretty low damage potential for bosses, but their huge resists and heals make them great, while other bosses are used for damage potential.

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One idea is Battle Experience. Basically, make it so that your gladiators can gain levels in battle. Experience is gained over time (by staying alive) and by defeating others. The Experience tables vary by gladiator type so that at the battle's end, Sluggers may end up gaining 5 levels (provided they can last that long), while AMoA's won't even level once. The idea of battle experience is to put not only a unit's raw Capabilities into figuring against Cost, but also a unit's Potential. It also introduces risk, as you're betting that your unit can reach that potential.

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Eh...I don't like this idea. Currently, part of the draw (for me, at least) of gladiator matches is the lack of consequences. I don't have to worry about losing a 10,000 prestige object from my base, or getting XP debt, or having to kill another 300 Ancestor Spirits if I lose. If my gladiators started gaining experience but started over when they died, I'd be very averse to playing gladiator matches because I'd be losing a time investment if things went against me.

Also, this system would provide reinforcement in an unbalancing way. If you start out winning, the game gives you an edge over your opponents, making it more likely that you'll keep winning. If you lose, your opponents' units get stronger while yours stay the same (or even get weaker, if they lose their accumulated experience when they die), making it more likely that you'll keep losing.

On that topic, this also goes against one of the other aspects of gladiator matches that I enjoy--it's a reasonably even footing. AMoAs aside for the moment, there aren't really any major time investments required to compete. The only time investment is basically badge hunting, which is something you'd probably do anyway. You don't have to worry going in that your opponent might have spent 400 hours playing Gladiator matches and stomp you with an incredible starting advantages--the only thing he's going to get from 400 hours of Gladiator is better strategy.

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The other idea is customization points. After you buy all your units, you have a separate pool of points with which you can customize your units. Possible customizations:


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This would be interesting.

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I may not have seen these particular ones....what's the badge for them?

Pretty sure I haven't seen these if their cost is ~500 like the Arch Mages'.

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I believe you get them by finishing a door mission in a PVP zone (one of the ones that buffs your side or debuffs the opposing side). They've got psychic blasts (I think they use mental blast, subdue, and the psychic tornado), they can fly (so you can have them hover-blast if the map allows) and they have a PBAOE heal (I think). In my experience, they do better damage than the AMoA (at least when he's avoiding melee), but they're much easier to kill.

Some of the gladiator lists I've seen have had a "Longbow Warden 1" and a "Longbow Warden 2". I'm not sure what the difference is.

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Swift Steel is unlocked by killing 300 Ancestor Spirits.

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In CoV, CoH, or both?

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All Longbows are pricey, and have no "punch" that I've seen.

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Longbow Wardens are great--they're like AMoA-lite. Easier to kill (and just as expensive), so they're not quite as good as AMoAs, but then, what is?

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Actualy I dont really like any of your suggested improvements. Becaues lets say with
opt 1: Johnny X just unlocked the Tanksmasher. Now he must choose to take a powerful unit and run the gambit of not haveing enough points to balance a team or choose a large force of weak units and run the risk someone is useing warhulks/AMoA/longbow wardens. OOPS! Its not fun anymore now that his options have been nerfed sideways.

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How is this any different from the current situation? How would this be a nerf, for that matter? He said to rebalance the costs, not increase the cost of everything. If it's always one mob for one pick, minions should cost less than bosses.

And what about the opposite situation, where Johnny X just unlocked some cool minion, only to find that one copy of his new minion costs more than the Tank Smasher he already has on the team? If he wants to play with the new minion, he's not only going to be short on points for other mobs, but his new team is probably going to be strictly worse than his old one. (If you find a minion that can take a Freak Tank one-on-one, let me know.)

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Opt2: No one would diversify teams anymore. They would just find the best way to cram as many minios and LT's onto the feild and pray for the rum shot Jimmy V felt like playing with his boss brigade today. Since no one would want to be undermanned with 4 heavy bosses VS 15 moderate minios and LT's well lets leave it at that. And since there would be over inflated minios teams about well My comp barely handels 6 man free for all. leave it at that.

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I'm not familiar with the term "rum shot", but a pack of four bosses with AOE powers would mow through a group of 15 minions. Maybe if the minions were all Sappers, it'd be close to a fair fight.

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I can definitely say that the Crey Protector is NOT earned from defeating just any prisoners. I defeated about 250 of them today without recieving any sort of badge.

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Crey Protector? I thought Mob Specialist was the badge that you got for prisoners. Did you have that one already?

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I killed over a hundred Razorvines in Eden, didn't get the badge. Today, I logged into Talos, killed 6 Bladegrasses, and got the badge.

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My experience on this:

Killed maybe a dozen Bladegrass in Talos. Went to Eden, killed a few Razorvines. Flew to the back of Eden, killed maybe a hundred Blackroses. Went back to the front, killed a few more Razorvines. Decided to start counting Razorvines. Got the badge on number 68 after I started counting.

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Also, I have the Raider Engineer badge. Seems that killing 100 or so Force Field Generators does the trick.

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Back to the grindstone...^_^

We're running around collecting badges so we can have our pet monsters fight in the arena. Gotta catch 'em all!

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The reason is as he stated blasters, kelidens, defenders and controllers have options for ranged attacks that tankers and scrappers do not have.

It may not make "sense" but rarely does game balance make sense outside of game mechanics.

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I don't think this makes sense from a game balance perspective, either. It completely cuts out a Blaster's secondary (other than Devices).

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Nearly all Blasters have access to a ranged Stun or Hold that will drop Hurricane. This gives Blappers a MASSIVE COLLOSAL advantage over all melee AT's when facing most kind of Storm users. I'm not ashamed to tell anyone My blapper in particular got the Tracer badge faster than any other build I've ever played.

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Fire/* doesn't....and Fire/* can't make a good single-target attack chain without the use of melee attacks from the secondary.

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Yes...

BUT not right away. As soon as we get newspaper tech in, we'll get the mission completion sharing in...

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w00t!

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I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of this proposed change, but I think that it misses the primary problem with Defense-based sets (in PvP at least): the overpowering nature of toHit buffs. With a single click, an unslotted Aim, a moderately slotted Build Up, or a heavily slotted Focused Accuracy/Targeting Drone negates an entire Defense-based line, even fully 6-slotted.

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Understood; we're still working on this.

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If I may ask....what is the eventual goal for the interaction between accuracy (via enhancements, inspirations, toHitBuffs, inherent power bonuses, defense debuffs) and defense?

What should it take to hit a six-slotted non-Eluding SR scrapper 50% of the time? Six-slotted accuracy enhancements in a power? Six-slotted accuracy and several inspirations? Six-slotted accuracy, several inspirations, and additional to-hit buffs?

I don't see any good balance point here. The SR player has devoted half his powers and slots (or more) to defense, so negating that with anything less is unfair to him...but it's not possible to spend half your powers on accuracy, so if you make it take that much, there isn't going to be anybody capable of hitting him. (Spending half your slots on accuracy actually sounds fair to me, but my understanding is that defense owns accuracy enhancements no matter how many of them you have.)

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Sorry. No new Hollows badge. My bad.

New badges are for Moonfire, Dr. Quaterfield, Sara Moore, and Faathim the Kind.

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Whew. My first thought was "Dear god, don't tell me I have to do the Hollows trial again!" That and the Sewer trial are the two most difficult things to finish in the game, now, IMHO. Task Forces can be boring, but all they really take is time (and players to commit that time, which is a whole separate challenge, but still...)

And yeah: Did Justin Augustine get anything?

How do you feel about the removal of Task Force souvenirs?

Would it be possible at some point to see some of the indirect historical references to the 5th Column ("The Vampyri were created after the Council expanded the supersoldier project it inherited from...that other villain group. The one we don't talk about any more.") changed to explicitly mention the 5th?

What is the goal of the Warrior-Outcast-Hellion chain? Are the Warriors bringing artifacts into Paragon City from the rest of the world, as suggested in the lower-level Hellion comments that someone is trying to flood the streets with artifacts? Are they trying to steal artifacts from Paragon City to sell elsewhere? Do they just want artifacts for the sake of artifacts, and they don't really care where they get them?

On the wave missions, I agree with some of the other comments. Quantums and voids are not appropriate for waves. And there really needs to be some indicator as to what we're supposed to do...a countdown of the number of waves left, or something.

A counter might also help with another problem I've run into on at least some wave missions where the mission just didn't complete, for whatever reason.

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Paragon city does not need more Magic, the addition of Gnomes
or another boring (and mucho drab) villain group (Cabal).

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I'm going to disagree with you here; I'm always looking for more magical villain groups to fight.

And would the idiot who posted that page-widener please edit it down?

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It's the idea. The concept. There used to be Nazis in Paragon City and now there aren't, and future players will never get to experience the joy of being up Nazis.

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The joy of being up Nazis?

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Then not every team is going to be able to face every threat they encounter. IMO, the goal of CoH teaming is that you can handle most things with most any set of AT's. This doesn't meant that any group of AT's can handle every situation. But that's just me, I know reasonable peeps disagree with me.

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It's not enough for there to be a crap-ton of things you can't (or aren't supposed to be able to) solo? You want to start adding things that are impossible without exactly the right mix of teammates, too?

Are you TRYING to kill the game for people without large SGs?

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As things stand right now, the usefulness of a controller is far to often redundant with a good tanker.

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EVERY AT is redundant. One of the major things that makes teaming bearable in CoH is that you don't have to sit around saying "Shoot, we can't really get this team moving without a Controller/Defender/Tanker/Whatever and there are none on." You can pretty much throw darts at the search screen and, assuming the players are reasonably competent, have a viable team. That's a good thing.

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Maybe even make it so that only one or two thorns have the heavy duty control, but you can't tell which one before you engage. If its just one or two, you can't automatically single them out and avoid the control entirely, but the actual amount of it would be much lower.

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This is already the case for the Possessed Scientists in PI. You can jump into a group of lieutenants with no idea if they're Madness Mages, Ruin Mages, Agony Mages, or...uh, whatever the other one is. And the minions can be Earth, Fire, Air, or Ice Thorn Casters.

Woohoo, it's Geko!

Been a long time since we've heard from you. I hope we'll be hearing more from you once I5 comes out; you seem to be the best source for a dev perspective on the numbers behind the powers and such.

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Have you thought about making Lt. versions with the hold powers to complement the minions without?

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This was my first thought on reading that. Aren't the CoT short on lieutenants in that range, anyway? (The big winged Behemoths are the only lieutenants I can think of.)

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Whoo. I think it would be cool if you mixed it up, so you dont get just big groups of Earth thorns, or big group of Fire, or big groups of Air . Having a few of each kind would be far more interesting than getting smoked by stacking powers from one type of mob.

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This would be cool, too.

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Nearly every religion is based on earlier religions that have had doctrines refined or corupted and bit made up out of whole cloth. Christianity is no exception to this.

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Idioteraser:

I rebuke you and your anti-Christian hate speech, over several posts in
pages 23 to 25 of this thread.

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The heck? I hate Idioteraser as much as the next guy, but he's right on this count, at least as far as being based on earlier religions goes. Or are you claiming that Christianity didn't take anything (the Old Testament) from Judaism?

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I'll look forward to the evil Jesus, Mohamed and Buddha monsters in a future publish.

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That would be awesome! I'm all for equal opportunity religious offensiveness.

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And to make a point: we don't know who or what will make up the Tuatha De Danann. That giant monster looks a lot like an Irish monster called the Jack-in-the-Green, and the giant himself (who I'm guessing is a Fomorian) looks an awful lot like the mythological Jack-in-Irons.

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And the Fir Bolg last Halloween looked like Jack'O'Lanterns.

So the theme of Croatoa is....things named Jack?

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The blaster motto has always been "Kill it fast or die fast." This allows the "Kill it fast" to be faster.

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Heh...I would say it allows the motto to be "Kill it fast AND die fast."