Cmdr_Enfuego

Finally got a chance to download and play with the spreadsheet. Works great in OO 2.4 now. It's great fun to be able to see what powerset would look like on other ATs.

I also like the dam/end/recharge calculator based on the current and future(?) balance formulas. Of course, it would also be nice to have the powers show their actual recharge and end use for comparison. Maybe is 1.2?

Again, thanks for all the hard work in putting this together.

Awesome! Thanks for the quick fix. I'll have to check it out when I get home from work.

Really cool spreadsheet. Thanks for the hard work it must have taken to put this together.

For those of us without Excel, it unfortunately doesn't quite work right in OpenOffice Calc. In OpenOffice 2.2, it didn't work at all. So I upgraded to OpenOffice 2.4 and it mostly works. For some reason the scrapper, stalker and SoA sets don't seem to work right. It gives Err:502 for the damage scale for the powers.

Now of course the next thing I need is an attack chain calculator. Where do I get one of those

Since it's for all the NCSoft games, not just CoH, I doubt it's changing the CoH/NCNC budget very much, if at all. I suppose NCSoft could not buy it and give a portion of that money to the CoH budget, but things don't usually work that way in a corporation.

Also, we have no clue what it's actually costing NCSoft. All depends on how the contract is setup. Which I'm sure they have no plans of telling us about.

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In reality, I think it might be CoX's version of Mad Libs...


Select a Villain Organization.
Select a Map.
Select Mission Type.
Insert Primary Antagonist's Name Here.


As I said before, I think it will give players a chance to expand their creativity, but I think that's about it. I doubt you'll be able to select where mobs will be located at or where the important object will be placed. The Devs will put up safeguards to ensure there aren't ubermobs or unique and rare item drops.

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^ That was exactly my thoughts when I read this:

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Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it.

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The maps most likely are the ones already in the game with preloaded spawn points and specific layouts of rooms. No where does he say you will be able to customize your own spawn points, only that you pick your maps.

However, I am still enthused about this. Its very good news.

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That reading of it certainly looks reasonable. Having a fixed set of maps solves the problem of the mission awarding too much xp/inf/loot/etc. That said, it seems pretty limiting. Hopefully there's more to it than just those 4 options.

In any case, the devs should start dropping some more info on how much you can customize your mission. Otherwise, the wild speculation on the boards will be well into full overdrive mode (assuming it isn't already ), which will only lead to disappointment.

A few points:

1) Awesome

2) I'm sure player created missions will have to have no xp/inf/loot/etc, but should still be lots of fun to do. Maybe some of the best can be vetted and rolled into future issues as regular missions.

3) Another very nice way of adding end-game content. Once you're at 50 and don't care about XP, playing and creating other people's missions should be lots of fun.

4) I plan to make missions with the "donut room" in all possible tile sets.

5) Awesome

6) Did I mention awesome?

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Just like Stalker EM was brought into line with the other Stalker sets?

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Hopefully, the Devs don't want to repeat that mistake. If you look at the Stalker sets, they're all Scrapper sets except for one: EM. And EM is obviously way overpowered (or the others are underpowered). Basically making every other set (besides Dark and maybe Spines) completely inferior.

If they dropped EM straight into Scrappers, the same thing would pretty much happen. Broadsword, Katana and Martial Arts would become obsolete. Maybe claws as well. Spines and Dual Blades will still be liked for their AoE damage, and Dark for the utility of the set. There would obviously be a lot of existing Scrappers who would be pissed and demanding buffs to their favorite set. Not a good situation for sure. Hopefully Castle realizes this and won't bring EM in without major changes.

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Looking at the numbers, a straight port of energy transfer to Scrappers would do about 80% of the damage of a Stalker's Assassin Strike. And they could do that with being hidden and having much better defense than Stalkers. And with hasten and a Recharge IO, they could hit it again after 10 seconds. To say nothing of criticals or the fact they could follow up with Total Focus for another 65% of an Assassin's Strike. Not to mention, with fire aura being a scrapper set now, a EM/Fire scrapper could added Fiery Embrace into the mix as well.

PvE it would be potent, but I don't think game breaking. Most of the "uber" PvE sets are all about AoE, which EM is sorely lacking. But in PvP, it would be crazy. Pretty much a hero side Stalker with better surivivablity.

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You think of all that...yet you forget that a crit with ET would likely be the same as it is for a Stalker...No Added Damage. The scrapper would just not lose any life from using it.

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Just to make it clear, that 80% of an Assassin's Stike is without a crit. That's the straight-up damage a Scrapper could expect every time. Crits would just be gravy.

Yes, I suppose it's possible they wouldn't allow ET to crit, much like a Stalker. I think it's still way too good even without the crit. My guess is the Devs would be much more likely to greatly reduce the damage ET does, and then allow it to have normal Scrapper criticals.

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So, 80% of an Assassin's Strike...kindof like a Brute at high Fury does equivalent damage to Assassin's Strike with ET, each and every time?

Still not seeing a problem here.

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With 3 damage SOs and Build Up, EM's Assassin Strike does 1023 damage.

A Scrapper with 3 damage SOs and Build Up would do 841 damage with ET.

A Brute with 3 damage SOs and Build Up and no fury would do 523 damage. With half a fury bar, it would be 713, and with a full fury bar, it would be 903. So yes, with a full fury bar, a Brute does about 90% of an AS.

I don't PvP much (and not at all with Brutes), but my understanding is that it's much harder to build fury in PvP. Without fury, a Brute ET is about the same as Head Splitter. If Brutes are running around in PvP will full fury bars, then I imagine that people are already used to being ganked by ET+TF. If not, then I'm guessing there would be a whole lot of screaming if Scrappers got a straight port of EM.

For PvE, I don't think it's game breaking: Brutes obviously run around with full fury a lot, so I'm sure this happens all the time. I haven't seen a lot of requests to nerf EM, so I'm guessing this is OK with everyone. The real problem is that a straight port of EM to Scrappers would put it well above the damage output of other Scrapper sets. It's going to need to have it's damage brought down quite a bit.

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I have a question: why exactly is it that Energy Melee is considered to be "too powerful," as it currently is, for Scrappers? Sure, Scrappers > Tankers as far as damage output goes, but aren't Brutes and Scrappers on relatively equal footing?

So, Brutes, who deal roughly the same amount of DPS (damage per second) as Scrappers aren't over-powered when using Energy Melee? Or how about Energy Melee Stalkers, with their tremendously powerful Assassin's Strike/Stun combo that I continuously fall victim to in PVP?

I just fail to see why anyone thinks that Scrappers will be overly powerful compared to the other melee ATs with this addition, and would appreciate it highly if someone could enlighten me.

(In the meantime, I'll be curled up under my desk, sure in the knowledge that the devs have a personal grudge against me, said grudge being the sole reason that Energy Melee is not being propagated to Scrappers.)

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I've actually been curious about this myself.

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Looking at the numbers, a straight port of energy transfer to Scrappers would do about 80% of the damage of a Stalker's Assassin Strike. And they could do that with being hidden and having much better defense than Stalkers. And with hasten and a Recharge IO, they could hit it again after 10 seconds. To say nothing of criticals or the fact they could follow up with Total Focus for another 65% of an Assassin's Strike. Not to mention, with fire aura being a scrapper set now, a EM/Fire scrapper could added Fiery Embrace into the mix as well.

PvE it would be potent, but I don't think game breaking. Most of the "uber" PvE sets are all about AoE, which EM is sorely lacking. But in PvP, it would be crazy. Pretty much a hero side Stalker with better surivivablity.

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You think of all that...yet you forget that a crit with ET would likely be the same as it is for a Stalker...No Added Damage. The scrapper would just not lose any life from using it.

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Just to make it clear, that 80% of an Assassin's Stike is without a crit. That's the straight-up damage a Scrapper could expect every time. Crits would just be gravy.

Yes, I suppose it's possible they wouldn't allow ET to crit, much like a Stalker. I think it's still way too good even without the crit. My guess is the Devs would be much more likely to greatly reduce the damage ET does, and then allow it to have normal Scrapper criticals.

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Personally, it pisses me off to see a set like this go to the Blasters when my DOM would love MM with the right tweaking, but eventually, you become so cynical you just stop carrying.

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Um...not to pick on a sore spot, but....isn't Mental Manipulation a watered down version of Psi Assault?

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I have a question: why exactly is it that Energy Melee is considered to be "too powerful," as it currently is, for Scrappers? Sure, Scrappers > Tankers as far as damage output goes, but aren't Brutes and Scrappers on relatively equal footing?

So, Brutes, who deal roughly the same amount of DPS (damage per second) as Scrappers aren't over-powered when using Energy Melee? Or how about Energy Melee Stalkers, with their tremendously powerful Assassin's Strike/Stun combo that I continuously fall victim to in PVP?

I just fail to see why anyone thinks that Scrappers will be overly powerful compared to the other melee ATs with this addition, and would appreciate it highly if someone could enlighten me.

(In the meantime, I'll be curled up under my desk, sure in the knowledge that the devs have a personal grudge against me, said grudge being the sole reason that Energy Melee is not being propagated to Scrappers.)

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I've actually been curious about this myself.

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Looking at the numbers, a straight port of energy transfer to Scrappers would do about 80% of the damage of a Stalker's Assassin Strike. And they could do that with being hidden and having much better defense than Stalkers. And with hasten and a Recharge IO, they could hit it again after 10 seconds. To say nothing of criticals or the fact they could follow up with Total Focus for another 65% of an Assassin's Strike. Not to mention, with fire aura being a scrapper set now, a EM/Fire scrapper could added Fiery Embrace into the mix as well.

PvE it would be potent, but I don't think game breaking. Most of the "uber" PvE sets are all about AoE, which EM is sorely lacking. But in PvP, it would be crazy. Pretty much a hero side Stalker with better surivivablity.

I think the problem is fixing the side effect of the power so that they have the color the player selected. If your going to do that, you'll need to change the whole FX animation system to be able to lookup the RGB value from the source of the effect. So you'd pretty much have to do the full work of getting customizable colors: the invisible weapon hack wouldn't save you any time at all.

As Starsman pointed out, in addition to setting the color value on the character, you'd also need to copy the color it into the "buffs" (for lack of a better term) as well. Since these become the source of new FX (like the a bubble or the fire from a fireball) they have to have the custom RGB values as well. I'm assuming of course that the FX system has a pointer to the originator of the FX (the player, the critter or the buff). If it doesn't then they'll need to add code to push that down into the FX system. Additionally, there's the particles (the puffs of fire, the bits of electricity that shoot out, etc) that will also need to inherit their color from the player.

As Arcanaville pointed out, the the issue seems to be mostly a resource issue rather than a "can it be done" issue. Just the ability to change your toon's power colors seems like a small change assuming they have a developer that's very familiar with the FX system. It's always possible that current developers NCNC has are not well versed in this part of the code. So potentially, this isn't an "easy" code change.

Additionally, beside the code change, there's a huge amount of QA to be done. Besides bugs, they'll have to make sure that all the color combinations actually work well. I imagine that would take a fair bit of time deal with all those problems plus any special code that would need to be added to make funky combinations work. And to say nothing of the one-off cases that might be lurking in the FX code. Potentially a pretty big undertaking all in all.

In hindsight, it seems like the time to have implemented power customization would have been for the CoV launch. They did a big upgrade to the engine, so it would have made sense to do it then. It might have placated the people who hated ED. Oh well, water under the bridge now.