Clintonian

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Finally, what would happen if Arachnos did go after the Destined Ones with enough force to pose a real threat? Simple, the Destined Ones would turn to the enemies of Arachnos for protection. Nemesis. The Council. Malta. Even Longbow. All of whom would jump at a chance to get valuable intelligence on Arachnos technology, tactics, bases, troop strengths.... (Though I pity anyone who chose Malta; better to die on your feet than live on your knees.)

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That's a good narrative idea. Can we put you down as a trailblazer for the idea of the alternate PPPs in I9?

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Thank you Nether for summing that up.

To all who are seeing this thread for the first or millionth time, this is the question at hand:

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Cuppa, is someone in a PvP zone aloud to Teleport you, hold you, immobilize you, or in any way do something to you that you cant control INTO a PvE mob. Does that count and is acceptable?

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I personally don't think it is fair for another play to go out of their way to try to give another play debt. I know it is griefing in PvE, so why isn't it in PvP?

I would love to get a Red Name to comment on this.

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It's been officially responded to a couple of times since CoV launched. Using mobs is street legal. If one wants 'pure' PvP, then one can go to the Arena.

I wish CuppaJo would sticky that judgement in the PvP subsection of the forum, because it ain't likely to change.

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Well, if this is postponed yet again and especially because of this PPP nonsense, I'm going to lose my temper again. I hope I can contain myself and not post a childish rant this time heh.

As for the 'not after level 40 to switch': if true, they had better make it absolutely clear BEFORE we level up. I've been planning on at least 2 switches---waiting and waiting and waiting.

Why won't they spill the info on all this? It's becoming tiresome having to gripe over vague tidbits of info. Bah.

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They won't spill the info on a hypothetical crossover TF because it's not a priority feature. I doubt they are doing much work on it currently. Maybe it'll be in I8, maybe next year - it's not coming soon.

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I doubt it would go through Pocket D, just seems cheesy and lame. If this whole switching sides thing is supposed to be epic and a major event in your character's life, Pocket D just doesn't "fit".

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Well, the whole TF could be held in a variety of more instanced area but still begin and end in Pocket D. I doubt that the hypothetical Crossover TF )switching to 'Crossover TF' since 'faction-switch' has been appropriated by PPP discussions) would be as light-hearted as the V-Day seasonal event, even if Pocket D figured prominently in the structure of it.

Tell you the truth, I'd like Pocket D to get a bit of a lighting makeover no matter what because it has the ambient brightness of a high school prom. Not a club I would frequent in real life, respectfully. I like shadows and smokiness (but not Dark Astoria smokiness) when I go to a club. I think that tweak of the atmosphere there would go a ways to diminishing the 'cheese' factor of the club for you.

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I guess I have 2 questions regarding the "hard wiring" of making patron powers permanent.

1.) how will this effect when hero to villian and vice versa happens?

Will the powers still be avalibale to a villian turned hero?

2.) How will epic power pools be handled for heroes who become villians? will they also get to chose patron powers? will they lose thier epic pools?

Seems kinda confusing when one set is permanet and the other isn't.

Thanks

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Good questions, and the lack of easy answers has likely contributed to a Hero/Villain-switch TF not being implemented anytime soon.

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(I'm not about to read 50 pages)

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Then change your forum settings to show more posts per page?

Seriously, why read the forum in the same limited, cumbersome fashion as unregistered viewers have to? 50 posts per page, 50 thread headers per index page, babee!

I think many people might look at the Excalibur as the equivalent of getting a temp power at the end of a storyarc or perhaps an Accolade ability.

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I wonder if this is to foster some factionalism (for PvP and PvE content conflict) that might arise in the future?

Lord Recluse "disappears" in the future and his lackeys try to take over as head honcho?

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You might be right about the factionalism, but I'm thinking that Recluse is here to stay for the foreseeable future. It'd be narratively compelling for him to disappear and return months later in a narrative sense, but looking at the big picture, the company would probably be loathe in doing it because Recluse is so central to everything that goes on in the Rogue Isles. Almost everything ties back into a scheme of Recluse in some way and mucking around with that could lead to 5th Column-esque hiccups.

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Here's a question.

I have characters with the Clan of the Black Scorpion Badge, back when the Strike Forces were all giving out bugged badges.

Am I screwed/forced to take Black Scorpion now?

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Whiner.

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Now we have even more information from a dev, though it's now across to the Euro boards, and didn't sound certain.


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Please remember, Bridger is a mod like CuppaJo, not a dev. The devs could have changed things since they told the mods anything. Course, they could change things since they tell us too.

Maybe it's just me, but some powers have 'felt' different than they 'sound' when reading about them, which is why I hang on to respecs and use the test server to try a new build out.

Anyway, maybe I'm rambling, but at this point, I want i7 on test already so that we can move past 'if'.

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All true, including the rambling - badump-ching!

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Clint, I get what you're saying and I don't necessarily disagree with this as an OPTION. But for me, I write up my character background/history and then I use it and stick to it. I seriously do not want to engage any more of the narrative than I have to.

There are reasons for this, many of them, but the primary one is simply this: I don't like the narrative.

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That's fair. I hope that there are non-patron PPPs (I recognize the paradoxical usage of terms.) along the lines of CoH's APPs (which is, realistically speaking, unlikely at this stage) or that one can do one or two missions for the patron and then ignore the patron if one chooses - just for this reason.

There are all sorts of rails in CoH and CoV already, so one can't say that PPPs change CoV from a free-form content game into a railed game. However, it would be nice to maintain the level of free-form choice that long-time players are accustomed to.

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Grab yourself a bit more salt....here's a bit more info from Bridger over on the UK forums.
...
And Bridger's reply was:
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That's how I understand it, although there are 5 ATs, so it'll be 5 pools with 4 powers in each pool, as far as I know.

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So, from what Bridger knows, Ghost Widow has one power pool for each AT, with 4 powers in each pool [and so on with the other patrons].

Which would mean that, once you've selected your Patron, you only get to choose from 4 powers.

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Yeah, I saw this posted here before. Since there is some level of disconnect between Cryptic Studios and the NCSoft community reps occasionally, I think a fair number of forum vets were going to wait until Monday before incorporating this into the discussion fully. Bridger could be operating off of assumptions or old info, but I've thought that this was going to be the way of PPPs since the COV tease in CGW magazine last summer. It's a logical extension of the structure of APPs, but I'm willing to wait until next week to fold it into discussion of PPPs.

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Heck, they never offered an AT respec for fixing Smoke Grenade even over the device blasters whines.

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For good reasons, outside of the fact that there are no AT respecs.

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No matter what the Devs do, someone will complain about it. Sure, the people complaining in this thread currently may not be the ones complaining if the PPP's were just like APP's, but both groups have one thing in common.

They tend to be the ones doing the complaining.


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Complaining is not inherently bad. Complaining about dev laziness when there is little verifiable evidence is silly, though. I'm sure you agree.

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Oh yes EvilGeko, because your opinion is so not valid. We're always right.

Jeez, all we are saying is to get a better opinion is to wait until it is on Test because we dont know full details. Is that an evil thing to say?

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But whatever goes on test is IRRELEVANT. We know your choice of patron is permanent. So discussing that cannot be premature.

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But what if there's enough powers in each set so that almost anything is possible? The set is permanent, but what if there's enough powers in the set that are respeccable?

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That'd be interesting, and it's possible, but it's entirely hypothetical. Hard to discuss that scenario for very long seriously, in other words. The precedent of APPs would indicate that it's a hair less likely that PPPs will have a menu of 8-10 powers similar to all the other PPPs, but it is possible.

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Here and here. See how he says currently there is no way to allow us to respec out of them? That makes me believe they are not against it, only that it would be difficult for them to program a way of doing so in-game. That seems lazy to me.

Edit: screwed up my links

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You can say that, but it's based on your assumptions and bias. There's a real strained A+B=C logic there. It's not pretty when the 'hip-hip-hooray' people do that, and it's not pretty when the 'grumble-grumble' people do that, either.

Why should I take your judgement over anyone else's? Who are you? (I realize it works both ways - "Who is Clint?")

Just saying.

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Really? Are you sure they didn't just tie the patron powers to content on purpose and by doing so incidentally locked the powers into your character once you've chosen them?

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Well, yes I am sure. I don't see any reason to believe that permanent, non-respeccable power pool choices were somehow a whoopsy-daisy side effect. Come on, they know how big a deal this is.

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I agree with Sadako. This "devs are lazy" meme is always a non-starter digression. Agree or disagree with the design choices or philosophy. Personal criticisms that requires actual interaction with the subject to assess is fanfic as far as I'm concerned. Wrong section for fanfic.

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This thread is barely 24 hrs old and is already 34 pages long......you'd think this would send a message to the devs.

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It sends a message that you're one of those people operating off of default forum display settings?

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Lady, I think you read Posi's comment a little off. From how I see it, what he says about the not forced to do Patron content, I think he means You dont have to do the missions associated with them but can still choose the powers.

I could be wrong but I dont think he was trying to say you dont get access to Patron powers at all if you dont do the missions.

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I'm leaning with Sadako's read on this and thinking that the PPPs are tied to at least receiving the first mission of Patron content. It may be like the Hollows where you can outlevel some of the Patron 41-50 storyarcs. It'll be interesting to see what other content is available if one chooses to skip Patron storyarcs - i.e., are there any other contacts in the Patron zone (I may be distracted, but I missed where the Patron contacts will be. Probably Grandville.), or is it just generic newspaper missions and Patron arcs.

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This just ignores reality. Positron stated that the choice is TRULY permanent

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Yes, I'm not saying otherwise. I'm saying that we don't know what it is we'd be permanently committing TO yet. A pool of four powers? Six? Eight? Preset, in a given order, or fluid? Like the hero ancillary powers, or not?

I've shifted my position a bit now, anyway. I'm pretty much convinced it's all about removing the incentive to PL.

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Well, there's that and the mixed signals we've sent to the devs that many of us want to feel more tied into the overall game narrative.

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I believe in the devs! This'll turn out fiiiiine!

Either that or I'll have the entire game to myself when everyone quits.

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*chuckle*

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If the design doesn't provide a clear and understandable motive for making the choices permanent, then I'm right over there with the 'this may not have been the best of ideas' crowd.

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But there is a fairly clear reason for locking in the Patron choice. I don't necessarily disagree with it either. It's patently ignoring min/maxing a character and nudging people to focus on the narrative of your character - choice & consequence. I think it's an interesting design choice. The truly obsessive can find a post of mine from last year when they teased this exact concept in the CGW article on CoV and future CoX developments where I commented that it'd be neat if APPs were more tightly-connected to Paragon City hero organizations and unlocked storyarcs.

However, it's tricky business to do this in a MMOG because the numbers of people who don't give a fart about their character narrative. In the villain sandbox, high-mindedness is less inherent in the theme of the game. Min/maxing can be a bit tawdry in CoH, but not so much in CoV. Additionally, some players will be torn from wanting to perhaps ally with Patron A, but Patron B's PPPs make more sense with their character's power concept.

Like I said before, it's not the time to gnash teeth and tear out hair, but it is appropriate to register concern about pitfalls in the PPP concept to help the devs read the tea leaves of playerbase mood. It's helping the devs help us have a good time.

Beyond that, the forum vets in this discussion can allay misconceptions and misunderstandings because you know how these parsed early promos lead to a game of 'telephone' amongst players. Double fees to play CoV+CoH, anyone? I think the spat yesterday between Revolver and you and Taser went overboard, but maybe it was necessary venting. I'd include myself as a full partner in that spat, but I was late to the party and don't think my contributions were half as entertaining to the hoi polloi.

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I'm just saying it's a bit difficult to reply with actual feedback that could be considered helpful when the feedback isn't based on factual knowledge.

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Well, we do have some facts, but I catch your drift. There's only so far you can go with feedback at this point. I do think it's constructive to communicate there are concerns about the non-respecability of PPPs.

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And posting an opinion based on past occurrences or based on likelihoods is like a...

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Yeah, we get it. Discussing hypotheticals is not foolproof. 'Wait and see' doesn't work much better, statistically. Discussing what we know now may be messy and go down some dead ends, but silence does less.

I'm just saying that some leeway and patience for other posters makes for better posts than, "You don't know for sure - you can't say that." No one can prove that concerned people are necessarily wrong about certain points either. Very few things in life are factually bad or good, in fact. They are what they are, and people have preferences.

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You can debate over what you assume is valid but it wont help much until you see how it works.

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I think the point is, if it was okay to discuss and debate CoV features prior to beta based on dev comments and article mentions, it doesn't seem outrageous to discuss/debate PPPs at this stage. There's virtually no talk about the specific powers, but there is enough info to discuss the pitfalls/virtues of non-respecable post-40 powersets. There are definite pros and cons. There was just that dustup earlier that took things to the extreme that was not constructive.

Additionally, if people had just shut up and played 'wait and see', Positron would might not have offered some clarification today. More info is good.

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I don't see how these are assumptions. They're perfect fodder for debate. Knowing what powers the sets have is irrelevant given the facts we have already.

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Err, I hope you're not explaining this for my benefit. I get it.

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This thread reads so much better in swedish

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hahaha... New bookmark for me. Good stuff!