Fernandes

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I didn't read the whole thread, but wanted to pop in with a couple remarks:

1) I don't know if it's the Steam deal or what, but I have seen a ton of no-vet-badge players out there. I tend to find noobishness cute if perpetrated by a genuine noob. Attempt to teach before attempting to punish seems a good rule when dealing with new players.

2) Playernotes are great. Using a playernote can help you avoid playing with a player in the future since they are global (too bad they don't show up in the search window, but that's another story). Make sure to set them to "always on" in the options, this will put them above a players head (only if they have been rated) as you travel the city.

Also, the best thing about playernotes is that it is a great way to alleviate stress without kicking or punishing a player. Take down the note, feel some self-satisfaction, and finish out the TF/arc/etc. with that idiot running around with the 1 lil star over his/her head.

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1) Firstly, its not my job to teach new players how to play. You can tell by how no one is paying me to do it. I am under no particular responsability to spend my free time tutoring others. I prefer to spend my free time doing things that are fun. Also, even if I were, experience tells me that very few people will actually take advice - most will simply get mad at you for daring to imply that they should stop re-using the tactic that has already resulted in 14 team-whipes, or that it may be important to select certain powers fundamental to the function of their class (ST holds for controllers; toggle defences for tanks, ECT).

2) I agree! Playernotes are excellent for this sort of thing.

They are. Brutes are NOT the tanks of CoV, as some people suggest. They are meant to have to work in concert with masterminds to mitigate damage through agro management. tryign to take on an entire room, or even an entire +2/+3 spawn without anyone else who can take a hit to help them is all ina day's work for a tanker, but brutes, or at least most brutes, simply can't pull it off.

when someone said that domination was getting nerfed, I was... extremelly skeptical. The more I learn, though, the more that the change seems like a positive. As someone recently reminded me in the PvP forums, however, there is a significant chance that dom's damage buff will be removed and NOT replaced with any corresponding increase in the PvP damage of domintor attacks, but PvP is a fairly small portion of the game. For most game-play, it will increase the over-all power of the class.

Also, perma-domination wills till own. I've never seena controller that can lock down a room full of bosses effortlessly (handy for the avid ITF enthusiasts in the audiance; to say nothing of those trying to lock down pesky Rikti Magi before they kill you), or stack well over 60 magnitude worth of hold on an archvillain.

There is a simple rule of thumb, I that once came up in a discussion I ahd on teh tanker forums, Inokis - if you can do it (whatever "it" is - but ussually it involves opening a battle ahead of or without the tank, as you suggest), and you succeed, and no one on the team gets killed as a result, then more power to you. Its when you do it, and fail, and die, and the team gets whiped as a result, that there's a problem.

In videogames, as in life, success (or failure) are what count in the final analysis.

And you're playing city of villains - there are no such things as tanks where you come from. Brutes make a passable imitation, but they don't shrug of 4-digit hits like rainwater the way their bigger (if softer-hitting) cousins do. To be frank, they need someone to help take the pressure off during tough battles, and masterminds are designed almost explicitely to do that.

That would be interesting, but it would pose new soloing balance issues between sets with credible AoE damage ability and sets without. Problems that could nto easily be solved by simply changing damage variables (making ST heavy sets deal more damage to compensate, for instance), since that would overpower them during team play which would, in this plan, remain unchanged from what it is now. It wouldn't be anhug issues, granted - underlings are VERY weak - but I suspect it would elad to a measurable increase in disparity of solo performance between sets.

Finally (reading through the thread by increments), if someone has failed to live up ot your standards, kicking them is fine (preferably after calling tehm to task for it and letting theme xplain themselves, but sometimes you can just tell that that won't help). Stringing them along to the final mission adn then kicking them to prevent them from recieving a reward is just asinine. Its petty and vindictive, adn a much greater hindrence to their fun than anything they did to you. It doesn't make you clever - it makes you an [censored].

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Bad_Influence wrote:
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QR: What becomes a legend most, I mean what deserves a kick the most....?

Answer: TANKS WHO REFUSE TO TANK! These are few things more annoying [rockin' the aura might be one of them].

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^
this

There is NOTHING in game that gets under my skin quite like a timid tank. (Not even rewdboi jerkholes) Why the heck would you play that archtype if you don't want to be the one to jump in first?

[removes cathartic rant]

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Becuase you're a noob, and choose tha class that has the best survivability withotu really understanding anything about the strategic setup of the classes, or MMOs in general. Altenratively because you're slightly less incompetant, but you are accustomed to less survivable character types and although you know that you know intelectually that a tank should be able to effortlessly withstand the punishment that would kill your blaster, you haven't yet acclimated your less conscious play behavior to that fact.

Or was that rhetorical question?

Also, tanks, as I so often remind people, are merely an inadequate substitute for proper control. ;D

Sorry, but I couldn't resist.

Kick them both, if they're not up to snuff. You're runnign a team, not a charity. There is no reason to accept performance less than what you consdier acceptable. you don't owe them, or any other PuG player, anything. By the same token, however, you must obviously be aware that the higher you set the bar, the fewer people will be able to meet it. Those who insist on teaming only with the best of the best of the best for difficult tasks (myself included) are certain to sometimes find themselves playing alone. Strike the balance that maximizes your enjoyment and appologize to no one.

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For me, the distinction is always simple - many weak enemies to form the bulk of the resistance throughout the story, and then a single tough enemy, or a series of single tough enemies at the very end.

If every fight is a boss battle, that makes the hero seem weak by comparison. When every mook is a boss, then the hero is barely as strong as the average mook. It's much more impressive to have the hero tear through hordes of faceless supergoons, only to be matched by a single hard enemy. This lends both the hero much more credence by displaying his prowess, and it lends the villain much more credence by having him be able to take a hero who's torn through so many mooks one-on-one.

In my opinion, difficulty should always be a plot device and never a status quo. Not unless you're making some kind of survival horror, which this game most decidedly is not.

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Well, see, personally I like difficulty. games are partly a storytelling excercise but they are also partly a tactical excercise as well. I can only speak from personal experienc, but as I say above, you would need a truly vast amount of underlings - we're talking at least 3 or 4 times as many mobs as in a typical 8-man spawn, and probably much more than that, before there would be any measurable chance they could bring me down. The same would be true, I think, of most skilled players I've seen in action.

Now that would be a FUN fight, but I imagine there would be logistical rpbolems with such huge spawns on many maps, and at any rate, you would need to mix some normal mobs in in order to keep things interesting - it tends to be the normal mobs that ahve the mezzes, or the HUGE burst attacks, or the stealth, or the dirty Malta-Sapper-style tricks that keep the battle interesting.

If the game could do that, then tht would be awesome, I agree. But it if just took the current spawns and removed a certain number fo mobs to replace them witha certain number of extremely underpowered mobs, just to make you feel more powerful, that might be cool for a short while,b ut once the novely wore off, it would be so easy you'd practically die of boredom.

Also, bosses are not a credible threat to a hero. You kill them b the bucketful. Thats why the majority of truly dangerous enemies are on a whole other, higher, tier -that of EB/AVs. The same tier that player-characters are held to occupy.

Hmm, I do LIke the idea of underling swarms. But they wold ahve to exist in truly, overwhelmingly, MASSIVE numbers to pose a serious threat, but if there were enough of them acompanying the normal mobs, it could be fun.

I love that song, actually - bonus point for the reference.

Well, you can begin farming up for the new PvP IOs I keep eharing about jsut as soon as they're done hitting the marcket.

Personally though, i find I enjoy my main character much more now that I ahve nothing to work towards with her. I can just do whatever I feel like doing in game and not care about my reward/time ratios.

In a perfect world, both. However, a fewer number of higher level enemies provide a dispurportionately greater challenge due to the (sometimes irritating) nature of relative level scaling in this game. Thus, as far as fun goes, they are preferable.

Never tried one, but judging from the slows on my old ice/rad controller, adn the big nerf-bat that was taken to the whole general strategy of stacking debuffs, I would guess that they are a lot less uber than you might hope for.

Depressingly true. I cant' help thinking that Domiantion should still affect PvP mezzes, just at their reduced base value. Ahh well. It does mean I can build for other things than perma-dom with my PvP build. Probably cheaper.

*is steadfastly looking on the bright side*

EDIT: I have to say, it will be an interesthing excercise. My heroes are all illusion controllers, adn my villains domintors, so ive never actually desigend a build to maximize anything but recharge (with recovery and health as secondary concerns).

... but... but... *darth vader voice* NOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOO!!!11111ELEVENTYONE!!!!11! !!!!

I hate it when they take the fun out of the really high end builds! Ahh well. At least, it still adds mezz time.

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qr

the proposed dom changes will likely have NO impact on pvp (well no positive impact) because the damage attacks do is almost entirely based on cast time (which is likely not changing).

The recharge and pve base damage modifiers seems to play almost no role in determining pvp damage.

*IF the base damage gets the domination buff factored into them for pvp that would be pretty insane for doms, though not necessarily unwelcome.

I much more likely expect the damage boost of domination to be stripped and NOTHING done to the attacks for at least a couple issues. but that is just the realist in my talking.

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Obviously I havent seent his news you speak of, but why would domination NOT affect PvP damage? It does now, does it not?

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...Wow! Just... wow! Good tip! I suppose its meant to be a boon to people who've chosen sub-optimal sets that dont HAVE big damage attacks in them.

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Y'know, that may be the first logical reason I've heard as to why pool attacks do more damage than some in-set attacks. It's still a stupid reason, but at least I can see the logic behind it. I think it's an excuse to say "Yeah, your powerset is pretty terrible in PvP, just take Flurry and you'll be fine."

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I fear this may devolve the discussion into something other than its original purpose, but to play devil's advocate, the purpose of the recent changes (regardless of the merits and disadvantages of their execution) was to make PvP more accessible - to make it so that no one ever gets that "sorry, you chose the wrong powerset - reroll or be useless" experience again. Obviously its far from perfect both in terms of accomplishing this goal and in various other ways, but looking at it from that purspective, buffing up the power pool attacks is actually an excellent idea.

Now, some might argue that choosing the right powersets is part of the strategy that goes into being good at PvP and shouldn't be taken away, and I tend to agree, to a point, but something to remember about superhero games, as opposed to most other games, is that for most people powerset choices have at least as much to do with character concept as strategy. If you are trying to build a character to fit a certain theme or image, then "dark blast sucks; play /psi instead" is not an option. Also, on a less RP-related note, most of the people they're trying to recruit are likely to build their characters for PvE first, and maybe give PvP a whirl as an after-thought, if they feel bored one day. Such people will be unlikely to stay if the main character they've put years into is completly gimped.

Now, all that being said, it seems, to this inexperianced observer, that somethign has gone too far when a tier-1 pool attack is better in every measurable way thant he highest damaging attack of the highest ST melee DPS set there is, but in principal, it makes a certain amount of sense.

...Wow! Just... wow! Good tip! I suppose its meant to be a boon to people who've chosen sub-optimal sets that dont HAVE big damage attacks in them. *le shrug* It certainly DOES make /fire appear more attractive by way of comparison, though.

A fire/Fire dominator or a Fire/(Rad/Dark/Kinetics) corrupter would be my choices. I imagine tehre are some brutes that can SMASH reasonably well from the get-go as well, but I dont know what they are.

On another note, after a loooong night of number crunching, Ive decided to give Electricity a Whirl and see how I enjoy it.

On another still another note than that, does it seem odd to anyone that Kick does about the same damage as Incinerate or Havoc Punch, and more than charged brawl with a recharge time of only 3 seconds? On a related note, I notice that it does /not/ say "+8 rage on self" like dominator attacks - do I take it that it does NOT build domination?

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Wow. So I guess doms will be able to just kill anything they want at will?

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You say that like its bad! *le grin*

*Dies Laughing* Nothing like good sarcasm.

All irony aside, though, the tendency of people in this game to have over a dozen characters (and sometimes far more than that) in many different guilds, adn even across many different servers has always beena baffling aberation to me, though I speculate it may have something to do with the near-total lack of end-game content and the famous customizability of character appearence. I can't imagine trying tokeep up wiht more than one or two characters at a time, myself, but to each their own.

As arrogant as it sounds there are really little or no measurable accomplishments I haven't managed, or piees of content I haven't seen in the game. I sometimes wish I spent more time roleplaying, but the people I DO spend my in game time with are (now, and in the past) fantastic, adn I wuldn't change any of the guilds, or teams, or friednships or acquaintanceships.

There are any number of things about the game I wish were different - BALANCED, meaningful PvP; dynamic world; non-class-based character building; no dilevery missions EVER again; ECT. Some of those things other games seem likely to do better. Others... not so much. Either way, its neither herenor there.

Oh, there is one thign I wish I had done differently within the context of the game as it is now though: I wish with the passion of a thousand supernovae that I had read the patch notes a while ago and not accidentally edited my main character's magnificant looking (but apparently, illegal) cloak+robe costume into oblivion. *le sigh*

Also, I wish I had been the first one on Virtue Server to jump on certain first names, including all spelling variants of Anastasia, Valentina, and Gideon.