Corebreach

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so it doesn't make sense to you that I don't believe anything is perfect?

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It doesn't make sense that you insist on equating the maximum possible rating with perfection when you know no one can attain it. Essentially, you're throwing away an entire category by rounding off differently from most other people. You're really using a 4-point scale, and since most others are using a 5-point scale, the averaging function is getting thrown off.

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That only depends on how realistic a definition of abusive behavior is used to begin with. Limit it to clearly defined criteria, and it is feasible.

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This is demonstrably false. For example:

"Be honest."

That is a clearly-defined rule. Enforcing it is not feasible in any system that allows all players to enter ratings, as it is not possible to verify the honesty of such a large and uncontrolled body of people. This is true irrespective of how constrained the ratings system is -- 5-point scale, 10-point scale, thumbs up/thumbs down...

Guaranteed legitimate ratings are possible only with guaranteed legitimate raters. The rating scale and input method are irrelevant.

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What I was advocating was the notion of adding SOME new content that moves out of the "you can do everything with SOs" model. If they did this and you didn't care for it, you'd simply skip it.

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If the game has 6 things to do, all of which can be done with SOs, and the devs add 4 more things to do, 2 of which can be done with SOs and 2 of which cannot, any given player can say

A) "Hey, I could do 6 things before. Now I can do 8. That's a 33% increase. Cool!", or
B) "Hey, I used to be able to access 100% of CoX's content. Now I can only access 80%. Not cool!"

They're both right. One of them unsubscribes.

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Wait a second... if you don't put in any rank is it zero starred?

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If you finish before you click any stars, you're fine.

If you click on any star rating first, you commit yourself to submitting a rating. If you click the same star again to turn it off, you'll submit a rating of 0.

I just ran it with a couple of characters, level 50 (to make sure it wasn't the SK screwing things up) and 6.

The level 6 had these results:
vs. +0 custom Lt.: 40 XP, 48 inf
vs. -1 custom Lt.: 29 XP, 35 inf
vs. +1 Family Minion: 7 XP, 5 inf

The level 50 had these results:
vs. +1 custom Lt.: 9,029 inf
vs. +2 custom Lt.: 11,878 inf
vs. +1 Family Minion: 1,806 inf

I can't tell from your original posts if you were getting low XP on every enemy or just non-custom ones, since you say "std Minion and LT spawns" but also "XP sucks from beging to end". If you mean non-custom only, it's because they're high-level Family. Family in the 45-54 level range (and possibly lower) give reduced rewards because they have fewer and less-powerful powers than is standard for that range. Family used to exist only at lower levels, then, as I remember it, the devs made higher-level Family for some Villain-side content, those missions got farmed (because of the aforementioned underpowered enemies), and the devs' responded by dialing the rewards down.

If all enemies gave you low XP, I can't help you. It didn't happen that way for me.

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thanks, i tried asking in a broadcast and got a multitude of answers

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There is no diminishing returns from Enhancement Diversification. ED applies only to direct Enhancement values in each power, then you add all set bonuses on top of that, at full strength.

There is the Rule of Five, though, as Starflier mentions.

There also may be PvP Diminishing Returns, since those apply to certain character attributes after all buffs are totaled together, regardless whether they come from direct enhancement, set bonuses, or self- or teammate buffs.

Post deleted by Corebreach

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Number of powers is a horrible criterion

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Not when the point is what a Blaster is designed to do [u]in general[u]. If it was designed to spend most of its time in melee range, you would have more melee range powers to choose from than ranged ones (the opposite of how it is now).

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I still believe quality to be at least as important as quantity.

Thankfully, that whole side argument is irrelevant. The point is not what Blasters were designed to do five years ago. The point is what they actually do, today.

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Anyway, the powersets make my point for me. Just compare the number of ranged attacks vs. the number melee range attacks.

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Number of powers is a horrible criterion. Compare the number of melee attacks in the Power Pools vs. the number of Recovery-increasing powers there, then apply the same sort of logic.

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Actually, if he had 50% resistance it would last 7.5 seconds - Resistance caps at 100% and at that halves it. Due to the way the formula works, you take your mez resistance, halve it, and that's what it reduces the duration by.

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Both your formulas are, unfortunately, incorrect.

Mez resistance affects mez times the same way Recharge Reduction enhancements affect recharge times: you divide by (100% + the bonus). A 50% Sleep resist divides Sleep durations by 150%. Dividing something by 1.5 isn't cutting half of it off, and it's not cutting a quarter off either -- it's actually cutting a third off. So 10 seconds would drop to about 6.67 seconds in your example.

Also, player mez resists aren't capped at 100% any more. As an example, you could go up to, say, 500% Sleep resistance, which would divide all the Sleep durations that hit you by 6. (Notice how going over 100% doesn't make mezzes wear off instantly.)

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There are a couple issues with defenders that need to be fixed. But won't because of the nature of the game.

The first problem...
The share their primary with controllers. Controllers can use most defender secondaries with around 75% effectiveness. Paired with their control primaries they completely overshadow defenders in what they can offer to teams. This is a pretty damned heinous oversight as far as I'm concerned.

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I agree. Defenders should have their name changed so players stop expecting them to be the best AT at defending the team. They're not and never have been, but that would be okay if people stopped thinking they should be.

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Visibly, my question wasn't understood....like I wouldn't know it's different in effect...

I meant the mechanic behind. kB is magniture 1+, KD is less than 1 but PW said KU uses a different mechanic. I guess if a power says KU, Mag 1+ = KU instead of KB, is it correct?

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Knockback and Knockdown turn into each other if the magnitude goes below/above a certain threshold (which may or may not be 1.0).

Knockup is always Knockup.

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I thought the way it worked was that each bodyguarding pet takes 1 "share" of the damage, while the MM takes 2 shares. So, if the MM gets hit for 100 points of damage while he has his four minions in BG mode, the damage get spslit into 5 sahres; the MM takes 2/5 of the damage and each minon takes 1/5.

Is this incorrect?

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Right facts, slightly wrong math. There would be 6 shares: 4 for the henchmen and 2 for the MM himself. The MM would take 2/6 damage, and each pet would take 1/6.

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thorns will still be an AOE set,

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Yes, but a sub-optimal one due to its unusually low DPE on its area attacks and its highly-resisted PvE damage types.

12 Months: Melee Attacks

At the 12 Month level, a player gains access to veteran melee attacks. There are two possible choices. Every character on the account gets to choose separately, but each character can only choose one of the two, and the choice is permanent. Not even respeccing can change it.

Ghost Slaying Axe
1.05 inherent accuracy multiplier
7' range, 1 target
defense tags: Melee, Lethal
2.17 sec. activation / 12 sec. recharge
8.58 endurance cost
13.2 – 141.36 lethal damage to all targets
13.2 – 141.36 additional energy damage to True Undead*

Sands of Mu
1 inherent accuracy multiplier
7' range, 45° cone, 5 targets max
defense tags: Melee, Smashing, Negative
3.07 sec. activation / 16 sec. recharge
10.66 endurance cost
21.6 – 230.88 damage (half smashing, half negative) dealt over 2 seconds
-5.25 – -9.375 ToHit debuff for 10 seconds (depends on AT)


Comparison

The Sands takes noticeably more time to activate and recharge than the Axe, particularly since it uses the same punchity-punchity-punch animation as Flurry and Shadow Maul. It also costs about 25% more Endurance. On the other hand, the Sands A) puts out more than one-and-a-half times as much raw damage against most targets, B) deals a mix of damage types that is resisted less than the Axe's pure Lethal delivery, C) actually strikes an area and can hit up to five enemies per use (although hitting only two, or three with practice and luck, is far more common), and D) applies a ToHit debuff as well.

* The Axe's bonus damage applies to most spirits, ghosts, and zombies, though not to Vahzilok zombies or to Necromancy Mastermind henchmen. For a full list, see the ParagonWiki article on Undead Enemies.


33 Months: Ranged Attacks

At the 33 Month level, a player gains access to veteran ranged attacks. Again, there are two possible choices, every character chooses independently, and the choice is permanent.

Blackwand
1 inherent accuracy multiplier
80' range, 1 target
defense tags: Ranged, Negative
2.5 sec. activation / 14 sec. recharge
10.66 endurance cost
14.8 – 158.49 negative damage, ×1.5 if your Origin is Magic, Mutant, or Natural
-5.25 – -9.375 ToHit for 10 seconds (depends on AT)

Nemesis Staff
1 inherent accuracy multiplier
100' range, 1 target
defense tags: Ranged, Smashing
2.5 sec. activation / 16 sec. recharge
10.66 endurance cost
16.4 – 175.63 smashing damage, ×1.5 if your Origin is Science, Tech, or Natural*
3.84 – 8.308 Knockback (depends on AT and level)

* The brief summary describing the Nemesis Staff power before you choose it omits the fact that Natural characters do bonus damage with it.


Comparison

These two powers are more similar to one another than the melee attacks are. That, combined with the significant increase to base damage that comes from matching your Origin, means that non-Natural characters usually have an easy choice to make.


54 Months: Go Back For One More

At the 54 Month level, a player gains one more veteran attack: either the melee attack skipped from the 12 Month reward or the ranged attack skipped from the 33 Month reward. Each character chooses separately, yada yada.

Important Note: If the ranged attack is chosen here, it will not do bonus Origin damage.


Common Traits of All Veteran Attacks

1. No Archetype damage scaling

Veteran attack damage does not vary between Archetypes like it does when ATs share common powers. Lightning Bolt and Flurry both do more damage for a level 10 Blaster than for a level 10 Defender, but the Blackwand does the same for both. This makes veteran attacks relatively stronger for the more support-biased Archetypes.

The secondary Knockback and -ToHit effects follow the standard AT scaling for such things.


2. Limited interaction with Archetype Inherents

Veteran attacks benefit from Vigilance's Endurance reduction, and they build Fury and Domination. They do not benefit from or interact with any other Archetype-specific Inherent Powers.


3. Unenhanceable powers

None of the veteran attacks can be slotted with Enhancements.


4. Unbuffable effects

The veteran attacks' effects ignore all buffs and all Enhancement set/global bonuses. That means you can't buff anything these powers do:

• all damage, including the bonus Origin damage on the Blackwand and Nemesis Staff and the bonus Undead damage on the Ghost Slaying Axe
• the ToHit debuff on the Blackwand and Sands of Mu
• the Knockback from the Nemesis Staff

But that's all that's unbuffable about those powers. Other aspects respond to buffs normally, including

• +ToHit buffs, like from Tactics, yellow Inspirations, and even Build Up (just the +ToHit part, not the +Damage part)
• global Accuracy bonuses
• global +Recharge buffs, like from Hasten or the Luck of the Gambler Defense/+Recharge IO
• Endurance cost reduction buffs, like Conserve Power and Vigilance
• Boost Range (Staff and Blackwand only)

Plus, even though some buffs don't matter, enemy resistances do. Radiation Infection lets you hit more often with your Axe, and Enervating Field makes it cause more damage. The automatic adjusting of effect strength when you use powers against enemies above or below your own level, a.k.a. the "purple patch", is still another factor that can alter unbuffable effects.

And one last, occasionally useful point of information: any effect that ignores buffs also ignores debuffs. Your veteran attacks still do full damage if you get hit by an enemy's Siphon Power or you're in the middle of a Rage crash, for example.

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If you have charges for a click or toggle power, the power will show up in the powers menu under Temp powers

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This. You need to drag Day Job click powers to your hotbar manually.

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But even if you get a team together and drain all the end from an AV/EB/GM, as soon as they have a single sliver of endurance back, they can fire off any and all attacks or buffs or whatever.

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That's why you cycle Short Circuit and Tesla Cage so you're constantly debuffing -Recovery as well.

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I saw a group of electric blasters/defenders drain Lusca before. There is a video of it somewhere.

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I don't know if one single character can drain a GM, but I know it can be done by as few as two, as I've been one of the two who did it.

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I'd like to know if AV and GM have resistance to endurance drain.

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It's in here. To quote it for you:

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this resistance applies to -RunSpeed, -Recharge, -Endurance, -ToHit, -Defense, -Perception, -Regeneration, and -Recovery.

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That's for Archvillains. Giant Monsters are probably different.

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According to Mids, Rise of the Phoenix doesn't take accuracy enhancements. Yet, when I check City of Data, it appears to summon a pseudopet (the Phoenix) which does its attack at base accuracy. I'm not seeing anything that suggests that it's an autohit attack.

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I see that site say it's autohit.

http://coh.redtomax.com/data/powers/...d=Pets_Phoenix

Max targets hit: 16
Entities affected: Foe
Entities autohit: Foe

I see no "Not auto-hit" specification on any individual power effects, either.

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Also, I don't really get your point. Pretty much any market system that only lets you drive the price UP from the original asking price will favor the seller. This includes more conventional auction houses as well. This system incents sellers to price low so they sell fast, which lets buyers bid-creep to essentially get a lower price than the apparent "going rate". In addition, the listing fees disincent sellers from relisting if the going rate is rising. It's actually more buyer friendly than a regular auction if you ask me.

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I remember a dev post or a phrasing in an early feature list that they chose the system they did because it was the fairest to both buyer and seller, or words to that effect. Unfortunately, I can't track it down.

I can track down this, from the "Consignment Houses and the Black Market" entry at http://help.ncsoft.com:

"Buyers can not see what price sellers are selling their items for. Sellers can not see what buyers are willing to pay. This ensures that sellers get what they deserve, and buyers pay what they feel is appropriate."

This implies that the Consignment House's designers intended for a seller to be able to ask for less than an item usually sells for but get full market value anyway. (EDIT: Positron implies the same thing here, when he says, "This means that sellers who don't know the value of what they have have a greater chance of getting what they deserve for the item, no matter how low they personally value it.") The second half of the last sentence, about helping buyers, does not require a double-blind bid system to be true. Any system that allows typing in an arbitrary value or making an immediate purchase at a known price would allow "buyers [to] pay what they feel is appropriate". (I'm hard-pressed to envision a non-braindamaged system that actually prevents buyers from paying appropriate prices, to be honest. Something like a market where players can only bid in increments of 100k, on anything, would achieve that, but it would also be dumb.)

For an outside perspective, there is also this blog entry from a dev team member on another MMORPG, Pirates of the Burning Sea. PotBS has a market similar to CoH's. It (currently) lacks standing buy orders, but its bidding works like ours, including the blind pricing. The blog entry goes into great detail about why their dev team chose the blind bid system. In particular, the author enumerates seven key benefits of it, and while the logic behind them is muddled and mutually contradictory at times, and some benefits listed are questionable as to whether they're actually benefits, most of the factors listed involved insuring higher prices for sellers. This makes sense given that one of their main design goals was avoiding the kind of irrational, runaway undercutting they observed in other MMOs with open pricing markets. (The benefits for buyers? To paraphrase: "You can offer less than the going amount and maybe get something", which is true, but pitiful compared to open price markets where it happens in 100% of all opportunities; "You can bid-creep or offer a large amount up front, depending on whether your time or money is more valuable," which I have a hard time swallowing as a "benefit", and "There are fewer transaction collisions", which actually benefits both sides.)

I wish I could point to something similar from CoH's dev team on what they primarily were trying to achieve with the Consignment Houses, or why they chose the system they did.

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Weapon set redraw. Confirmed myth by BaBs and yet still the subject of so many player balance debates.

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Claimed myth by BaB, multiple times, followed by admission that redraw was not consistently implemented in the way he thought it was, and it wasn't a simple matter of "yes it's a myth/no it's not" after all.

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Of course, none of this explains how you can shoot out of a force field, but are protected when inside.

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The field is based on repulsion. If you expel something from inside the field, it gets pushed away, which would actually assist in damage.

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Especially if you shoot lasers, since the beams would get pushed faster than the speed of light.

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My guess is "Stuff like that gets boring fast. "

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I don't want to guess when I can know, especially concerning a crucial little detail that determines whether something has actually been confirmed.

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Well done, well documented!

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Roger that.

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Be prepared to be told how what you did does not satisfy the criteria.

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I believe it doesn't satisfy the criteria. I remember Smurphy's challenge required a sustained profit by selling above EP. Unfortunately, I think all his challenge-related posts have rolled off the forums, as I cannot find any.

I don't believe any "ebil marketer" would deny that it's possible to cause, or profit from, a 1- or 2-day price spike.