Doctor Brainstorm_NA

Answers to some of your pressing questions can be found here:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post10523131

Last week my great discovery was unveiled to you all, but many of you had some pressing questions.

Well, better late then never, I'd say! Here are the answers to some of the good ones (and the ones that seemed to keep cropping up!)

Hopefully I can have more answers for you in the coming weeks!

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"So, Lighthouse, any chance of us finding out what-all powers are in Mental Manipulation?” – Bitt Player



Subdual – Subdual deals moderate Psionic damage and may leave the targeted foe Immobilized for a brief time. Immobilized foes cannot move but can still attack. Damage: Moderate, Recharge: Moderate

Mind Probe -- Grip the minds of your foe with a Mind Probe. You must be in close proximity to pull off this attack that wrecks havoc on your foes synapses, dealing moderate Psionic Damage while reducing his attack speed. Damage: Moderate, Recharge: Moderate

Telekinetic Thrust – A focused attack or intense mental power that violently sends a nearby foe flying. Deals minimal damage, but can be very effective. Damage: Minor, Recharge: Moderate

Psychic Scream -- This howl of Psionic energy resonates in the minds of all foes within its conical area of effect, inflicting moderate damage. Damage: Moderate, Recharge: Slow

Build Up – Greatly boosts your attacks for a few seconds. Slightly increases Accuracy. Recharge: Long

Drain Psyche – You Drain the Psyche of you nearby foes, thus weakening their Hit Point Regeneration and Endurance Recovery and boosting your own. Recharge: Very Long

World of Confusion – This toggle powers allows you to cause psionic damage and cause confusion within a group of foes, creating chaos. The chance of confusing an enemy is lower than then chance of damaging them, and it may take multiple hits to affect stronger opponents. All affected foes within the area will turn and attack each other, ignoring all heroes. You will not receive any Experience Points for foes defeated by Confused enemies. Recharge: Moderate

Scare – You entwine a single foe within his deepest fears and cause him to helplessly tremble for a brief while. Recharge: Medium

Psychic Shockwave – Psychic Shockwave is a devastating Psionic attack that wracks the minds of all nearby foes. Affected foes may have a reduced attack rate and may be left Disoriented. Damage: High Recharge: Slow



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“I would like to see a red name explain why heros get cold and therm and villains get double storm.” – jeffg316



Originally, Castle only wanted to allow 9 powersets to be shifted around, while others wanted to open things up much more completely. After much debate, and back and forth discussion, we came to a compromise on which sets were proliferated and which would be delayed to future updates. The sets that were chosen, ultimately, were easy to port across, and tried to fill thematic holes where appropriate. “Balance” was mainly a factor in which sets NOT to port immediately – things like Kinetics for Masterminds would be extremely dangerous to port directly; many changes would need to be done to make that one work. The same can be said with moving Illusions to Masterminds as a Primary powerset.

Ultimately, it came down to ‘What would be fun, but not too game breaking?’

After we had that mantra, we matched things on a thematic basis whenever possible. Hence, Fire/Fire Scrappers, Controllers who had Fire Control getting access to Thermal, Corruptors getting Elec/Storm, etc.



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“WHY NO EMP FOR CORR?” – ELF_STALKER



Empathy isn’t a villainous trait, generally speaking. From a fiction standpoint, it will likely never be given to Villains as a set.

Back to thematics – Empathy isn’t really a villainous trait. From a fiction standpoint, it wasn’t our first choice to port over and the reason corruptors didn’t receive it in the first place as part of the release of City of Villains. If we were to add an “Empathy Like” set, it would need to be all new and not a port of it, to make it fit into the Villainous theme. As such, that fell out of the scope of Issue 12’s powerset proliferation and is why it wasn’t included.



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“What if testing proves a set port didnt work en masse like ice brutes in CoV beta. They obviously made it through your internal testing and QA but in practice it was found they didnt work.

If something is found NOT to work, what is the plan?” – Plasmastream



If something doesn’t work, we’ll adjust it, rebuild it or cut it, depending on what needs to be done. I don’t suspect this to happen in most cases.



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“Is the Corruptor version of Electric Blasts going to be colored red to match the theme of villain electricity?” – Blackavaar



Of course! They even get their own version of Voltaic Sentinal.



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“Any Red name wanna come out and let us know if Elec/Elec tank is going to be added?” – Lady_Dee



Castle said, “No, never!” and Positron said, “Yes, do it!” In the end, the decision of which sets to give everyone bounced back and forth multiple times. The next question is, “Why did Castle say no?!” At the time, he wanted each AT to keep certain sets so they were only found on that AT – Ninjitsu for Stalkers, Elec/Elec for Brutes, Ice/Ice for Tankers, etc. Ultimately, that concept was set aside later in the process, but some aspects of it remained in the initial pass of Proliferation.

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1) IOs provide a bonus of 7.5% at level 10 through 40% at level 53. Is there a chart showing this progression by level? At what level would an IO out perform an SO?

2) What determines the level of an IO you invent? I was guessing player level, but if L53 IOs can exist that can't be it.

3) Since you don't out level your IOs (you can still get benefit from an IO 4+ levels beneath you) is there also no upward limit to IOs you can slot? If my L10 character had an L53 IO could they slot it?

s.

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There are no level 53 Common Inventions. Commons only exist at 5 level increments starting at 10. Uncommons and Rares can go to 53 though.

It's based on the level of the enemy you defeated to get it.

You can still only slot Enhancements that are 3 levels higher than yourself, so your L10 character can't twink with an L53 IO.

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did his feet explode?

did his exposed brain get infected?

was it a horrible rubix cube accident?

you be the judge!

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Busy. Inventing.

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I believe it's been confirmed that both his boots and gloves are inventable costume pieces

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The feet are Invented. The arms are off-the-shelf and available in the Costume Creator today.

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Sting of the Manticore, for example, only works in Snipe or Assassin Strike powers (which I believe makes Stalkers the only AT that can slot it TWICE ).

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I hate to disappoint Stalkers out there, but Sting of the Manticore can only be slotted into Sniper powers, not Assassin Strikes. I don't know where that rumor started.

Assassin Strikes can slot in sets that are made for Single Target Melee powers.

I am listening to your ideas, but a Flashback system is simply not something we can implement in a timeframe you would all be happy with.

Instead we are looking into other options to get you the Pool B choice so level 50s don't feel gimped.

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Minus 1 billion coolness points for not calling the thread Drops II: Electric Boogaloo.

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I actually wanted to go with Drops II: Drops Harder

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Inventions has been touted as something that shelved level 50's can partake in. Level 50's that have completed all their story arcs already. Please, how can both of those occur? Level 50's can not experience IO's if they are locked out of acheiving specific rewards because they happened to hit the level cap before I9.

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It's like I said, we are looking into other options that keeps the mechanic of the four pool system. Our intention is to not make people feel "gimped" for previously completing all their story arcs.

Ok, I've read the majority of that monster thread I created titled "Drops".

Remember, if you kill that thread, it won't drop a recipe.

So here are some clarifications:

* The majority of sets are available exclusively through defeating enemies. This means that all the pieces of the set are attainable by beating up things.

* Some of the sets (the rarer ones), have parts of them that are only attainable by completing a Story Arc.

* These same sets also might have a part of them that require you to finish a Task Force.

* These same sets also might have a part of them that requires you to complete a Trial.

* This makes 4 pools from which recipe rewards can come from. Pool A is enemies, Pool B is Story Arcs, Pool C is Task Forces, and Pool D is Trials.

* There are different pools every 5 levels, to conicide with the recipes that are available at those levels.

* Not every level has all four pools (early levels don't have Pool D, the Trial pool)

* No specific anything is tied to doing anything specific. This means that completing ANY story arc in the level 20 to 25 range can get you a random rare recipe from Pool B. Defeating ANY entity (no matter if its a minion or a boss) can get you a random recipe from Pool A. This is done this way to ensure a more even distribution of recipes from that Pool. If defeating Archvillains always dropped a Rare, then someone would pull the old "farming AV" trick and suddenly that Rare is more common than Generic Damage Enhancements.

* Giant Monsters don't drop recipes so they are not farmed for recipes, causing camping issues we are actively trying to avoid. As for reasons to fight Giant Monsters... well the Hive and the Abyss now contain very good reasons to defeat these guys.

Now I hear you guys... you all seem to dislike the Story Arc aspect of this system. I've had some discussions with the team yesterday about what we could do instead, and still keep the flavor of the four pool system, because having the extra three pools allows us to not only reward risk/reward, but time/reward as well. Takes longer to do a Task Force? Here's a nice bonus you can't get anywhere else. Finish the Respec trial, but already have all your Respecs? Here's a nice reward that carries with it some good inherent value.

Now again, I must stress, the majority of sets, including entire complete sets come from simply defeating enemies. All the costume piece and temp power recipes come from defeating enemies. There are Rare recipes (ones that have a worse chance to drop than others) in Pool A (the defeating enemies pool) as well.

We also will be actively monitoring datamining on every aspect of this system through all of Training Room and into Live.