Fernandes

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I cannot for the life of me find a team any more, Virtue. I go into all your fancy global channels and inquire there, I set my flag in the little team window, I broadcast. I join a Supergroup; nice people, I enjoy them, but they are all running around in 50s I cannot play with.

A month ago, this is not a problem. I take a short break, come back, and my daily experience consists of yawning, bored to tears as I solo through some instance I could care less about. It does not matter if I am red or blue, the experience is all the same.

What am I supposed to be doing, Virtue? 'Network', they say, so I friend people I enjoy playing with. Now my global friends list is 50 names, none of which I recognize and 3/4 of which are usually grey.

Yes, Virtue, I realize that I am whining and pissing and moaning. But when I cannot freaking team on one of two servers actually capable of reaching yellow, it is like I am banging my head against a brick wall and there is nothing left to do!

There. I am done ranting and will not bother you any more.

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YOu say your friends are in their 50s? Level up and join them. It takes abuot 5 seconds through the miracle of AE, and soon you too will be running end-game task-forces, hunting praetorian archvillains, raiding motherships, PvPing, and doing whatever else your friends do at the level cap. You'll do it WITH them. Everybody's happy.

Whats that you say? Dont wnat to skip the precious content? Well, by your own words it sounds like you're not enjoying it much, but OK, no problem. Send around tells to people in your level asking to join their teams. Ive never failed with taht strategy yet in my life, but if you do, then do what everyone else above me has said and MAKE a team.

I knwo a lot of people see this as a non-solution becuase they're nervous about leading a team. But trust me, its not rocket-science. If you have even the most basic understnading of game play, enough personal skills to avoid getting punched out on a daily basis, and one of these new-fangled things we call spines, then you will do just fine. Like somoene once said in a sappy movie, its all about having confidence.

The first time I got propoistion by a complete stranger to come have cybersex and be their online love-slave. I have played a LOT of games, and roleplaying to varying extents in all of them, but I have never seen one that even comes close to having the a community of "mature" roleplayers as large, diverse, or active as this one (or maybe its just this server). Like Keanu Reaves in The Matrix, I didn't - nay, I couldn't - really believe it until I saw it for myself.

From taht day to this, when people ask me, "what can teh CoH roleplaying community provide that I can't get as easily or as well in some other game", my first answer is the genre itself (superheroes - for another 58 days, they are available nowhere else), but my second, if Im honest (which I rarely am, but its been known to occur on a blue moon), has got to be the bisexual hermaphropditic underage shapeshifting catgirl dominatrixes.

Honourable mention goes to any event hosted by the Angry Angels . I try, as a rule, to stay far, far away from any and all in-game social events of any kind unless hosted by me and/or my supergroup (and in the latter case Ill probaby still make an excuse), but those girls know how to throw a party.

Also, more recently, my first time playing out a roleplaying moment with others through the mission architect. I don't care how much anyone QQs, I LOVE that system.

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[I don't get this thread]

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[I got it, I just didn't want it?]

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QFT!

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*lmao* Power gamers are awesome.

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And don't you forget it.

Depressingly, I honeslty can't remember. obviously I've done new content as its come out and some of it has been different, but the last time I noticed something that wasn't immediately obvious and said, 'hey, thats cool'... honestly I don't know.

I tip my hat to you, sir!

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Because it's more interesting than enemies blindly running at you with the sole hope of knocking off a bit more of your hit points. It doesn't have to amount to something to be interesting. Enemies doing something other than standing around, punching their fists doesn't amount to anything. The crates the Council are standing on disappear and they don't use the rifles they were holding, but instead pull out shotguns and submachine guns. It doesn't amount to anything, but it makes them a little more interesting.

And patrols not guarding and ambushes not ambushing are things I LIKE.

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No, its not. It doesn't raise the challenge level of the encopunter. It doesn't make you think in new and interesting tactical ways. It just amkes the encounter longer, and more frustrating, but actually LESS difficult.

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This should be posted on the wall in every AE building.

//Jack

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QFT!

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..completely ruin the theme sometimes when it comes to Epic Power Pools?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm NOT telling anyone how to play at all. However it just strikes me as so odd when someone has obviously put a lot of thought into a character, their primary/secondary powerset, bio, character name. Yet come up with the most rediculous EPP. It is such a shame I think.

The other day I saw a blaster who was themed as a witch. A great bio, and electric blast/electric manipulation. Her outfit was pretty cool and her bio was enjoyable. Yet to my suprise when reading her power selection she had the munitions epic power pool. I noted that this witch would apperantly throw out a ROCKET LAUNCHER amongst her electric spells?

Why is it that when people reach 41, their idea of concept sometimes flies out the window?

Sometimes a flawed character who doesn't wipe the floor with everything and does have weaknesses, is a more interesting character to play.

Peacemoon, Mind/Storm/Psi Controller

P.S I realise that sometimes it is thematically correct to have different elements etc, but you can only stretch it so far.

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Yes, how dare they make intelligent strategic decisions and not gimp themselves to conform to your arbitrary standards of what makes an acceptable character. Those bastards! Also, I have to say I've never understood the logic that a wizard shoudl be somehow phsicaly incapable of using modern technology - rocket launchers are badass, and being a witch doesn't make you forget how to pull the trigger on one.

Another thought - have you ever actually asked one of these people in-character about their choice? You might be surprsied how many of them have a good explination. Or at least a passable one.

Wow... I really can't remember the last time I said this about anything any player ever suggested for any game ever made, but those are ALL really good ideas. I'd kill to see some of those implemented in game. It would be fantastic.

Except Steelclaw's ideas, those are jsut funny. EDIT: Actually if you replaced minions with underlings, and somehow did it without exploding the server, the multiplying minions thing (I think it was number sixteen) would be really cool.Also, although the scenario is obviously described for humor the basic mecahnic of clicking exit and finding yourself surprised with another, far more deadly encounter is also one that has some merit, although you'd have to be careful not make players feal like they're powerless and being jerked around (once again, even powerful heroes ARE often jerked around like that in comics, but once again, its one of those things thats a lot less fun when its happening to you, and not some other guy in a book).

Also, neither here nor there, but I actually find the bosses taht you need a special gimick to defeat a little iritating and arbitrary (not that arbitrary plot devices aren't a time honoured comic tradition, but some things don't work as well in a game as they do in a static medium). But then, I remembrer a while ago there was some fellow whining about how normal AVs make him feal un-super and he thought more AV-fights should be gimick-oriented, so thats largely a matter of taste.

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Seconded. I've already tuned up my existing three arcs with I15 technology, and I'm roadblocked again. Other than running the TF and SF there's nothing else new to do until I get more slots to work with. The slots are what I most craved.

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Just a thought, but your coudl /play/ in other peoples' arcs as well, to pass the time.

That said, I too like the thought of more arc slots too, of course. IM not sure how much I like it as a micro-transaction, but you can't fault them for knowing a revenue source when its starting them in the face (and obviously there's only so much server space so you can't really give it away even if you wanted to).

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Let's remove Purples and IO sets -in general - from the game.

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Much like deliberately gimping your character dsicussed above, taht woudl make teh game harder, in the way that youw oudl suck more, but its not necesarilly more fun.

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Mobs in this game need a serious AI overhaul.

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"Good" AI is a double-edged sword. Sometimes "good" AI can just be really, really annoying. Guild Wars had much more intelligent enemies, but generally speaking, it just made them really frustrating.

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In my opinion, this argument doesn't apply to CoX. CoX mobs are 1 step above straw dummies, if you ask me, they have strayed too far below the Mendoza Line in terms of passivity.

You get a mission from a contact and you head off to the villian's hideout ... not your hideout, not that little old lady on the corner's hideout, THEIR hideout ... you're in their house now.

Except . . .

Patrols: What's the point of having patrolling mobs that aren't aggressive enough to engage close by targets. Their perception rules are way out of whack. A patrol should be aware of things like intruders and straight up combat occuring in the same room or hallway they are in. Otherwise, what's the point of introducing them to the game (oh yeah, exp . . . strawman exp).

Ambushes: Once they reach the point they "think" their target is in they should enter Patrol mode (at run speed) and hunt down the target until it is found. Not stand there and wait to be ambushed themselves. Once again, why introduce ambush mobs that aren't capable of performing an ambush (oh yeah, exp . . . strawman exp).

Positional Perception: 5 feet behind you is still just 5 feet away. Mobs completely oblivious to players and combat directly behind them is unaccetable in my opinion (especially when this behaviour was explicitly introduced into game long after launch).

Seems to me the devs are on autopilot and asleep at the wheel lately. All I see is fluff coming from them. Booster Packs and power proliferation, no serious looks at basic game mechanics or improvements.

Now that we have AE, allowing players to make their own little snoozefest exp farm missions to speed to 50, how about working on making contact missions a little more challenging (rewarding) for the rest of us?

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Agread 100%. More aggressive/more perceptive mobs would go a long way towards making the game more intereting and less effortless.

Its also a very small increase in damage. 71.2 HP every 50 seconds on average is, if you do the math, less than 1.5 DPS.

Its something I would do if I had no other place to put those slots. In most builds though, its just not worth it.

Hmm! I have been playing nillusion contorlles for years, and IM not aware that Spectral Wounds has ever had impact on run speed in PvE or PvP. I assume that the attribute doesn't actually work the way it sounds like it does form the description.

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I do find maxed-out boob sliders with Eden tops a bit distasteful - sue me. Whatever gets your thrills...

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Technical question: I've got an older computer and a less powerful video card. My settings are kept on the low end. At higher video settings, do these maxed out racks still go all Buckminster Fuller?

Honestly, that is the part I find most distasteful of all. Without vertex shading it just looks corny. Nevermind trying someone trying to look like Powergirl.

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I have a feeling the chest slider "maxed to the right" looks freakishly silly regardless of your video card.

To be honest I don't really mind that our game's chest slider maxes out as far as it does. I've never set one of mine out that far but if that's your thing then more power to you. I'm actually more upset that the smallest you can set it is still roughly C-cup sized. I have several characters who are either thin, small or young enough who would realistically be either flat-chested or nearly flat-chested but I can't set them that way.

Maybe someday this game (or another) will allow that kind of realism. *shrugs*

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Blame Statesman. Back in the late 80's, he took everyone in Washington hostage until Congress agreed to pass a law mandating that all females had to get implants.

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A true hero to men everywhere, of course. *le giggle*

You could realisticlay say its a B-cup with the slider all the way to the left, but yes, I've noticed that too - there's simply no way to make a genuinely flat-chested character in this game. Of course, RPG avatars are, to some extent, author fantasies, and I somehow doubt there are a great many more women who fantasize aobut being flat-chested than there are men who long to drool over it, so I suppose it works out. Certainly I've always been of the iopinoin myself that if IM going to pretend to be fighitng demons, deities, and alien invaders with my magicla superpowers, then by heavens, I may as well pretend to look GOOD doing it. But it is certainly iritating on those rare occasions when I need a character or an NPC of less ample purportions (particularly, as you say, when she's meant to be young).

The idea you first stated - of putting defence and resistance into the same formula as recharge - doesn't, no. But the example you were taling aobut - where-by each buff is half as effective as the one that preceeded it - and the system you anmed "Diminishing Returns" bare a striking similarity to the changes of the same name that recently struck out big-time with the PvP crowd (the formula wasnt the same, but the principal was - the more you get buffed in a particular way, the more that subsequent buffs on you are diminished.

Deminishing returns at veyr high levels would be a net effect of using the recharge formula so if thats what you were trying to describe I appologie, but thats not the what your example illistrates.

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The thing about this game is that it uses typical diceroll combat. Making it more 'difficult' wouldn't make it more 'challenging', it would just change the numbers in the computer's favor, thus making both combat and downtime longer and more tedious. To make it more challenging would be to rebuild the combat engine into something more skill based, which would be ideal but is not likely to happen. Ever.

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Yuo could always go the Darkfall online route, and make targeting FPS-like, rather thanb ased on an internal dice mechanic. I've never been sold on this idea though, since I've always felt my character's performance should have more to dow ith my ability to do with build than reflexes, but thats just me, and I do see the appeal of the other way of doing things (I had actually planned to buy DFO when it came out, but due to the uselessness of Adventurine studios, I was literally unable to do so - I was trying to give them money, but their website refused to sell me their product).

I do so love it when people claim to represent tha majority without any actual evidence to support the supposed representativeness of their ideas.

That being said, you do have a point - the game has always been marketed as a casual gaming product. Thus, you have to be careful not to make it TOO hard. I think there's a little room for upwards mobility myself, that might hurt some of the real "I cant find the Hollows" noobs, to borrow your own turn of phrase, but not average players. Still, there isn't MUCH room, I admit, particularly when consider soloability of certain builds.

At the end of the day, I agree with you - although there is some room for improvement (a fact I believe the develoeprs ahve realized given the higher challenge of task-forces, and even enemy groups introduced recently) a massive upgrade to the over-all powerlevel of the game's content would not be a good idea. That is not to say, however, that we can't have SOME challenging content.

I also agree with you about one other thing: this is NOT a game for the hardcore gamer, PvE or otherwise. And I do, in fact, play another game like that - its called Ultima Online and Ims till not bored of it, 2d graphics not withstanding. I would have loved to see a game with open character creation, open (balanced) PvP, and a dynamic world in a superhero setting. I would have even settled for something more WoW like where the realy highest of the high level raids simply can't be done without the best gear and builds available. But instead I got this, and unfortunatley there IS no other superhero MMO to move to. For now.

One reason I am thrilld to deatha bou the immanent arrival of Champions and after that DCUO is that wiht 3 superhero MMOs competing to domiante the genre, At least one of them is sure to be, or to eventually become, more "hardcore' (one again, to borrow your terminology) than this one is now in order to find its niche. CO is already going that way with frequent harping of their extensive end-game, and a non-class-based character system. It will mot certainly not be dynamic-world (though it will ahv emore open-world content), nor, from what I hear, will the PvP be significantly better than here, but you can't have everything. For the next 61 days, however, I'm afraid you're stuck with me.

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Click "Enemies Buffed" when starting a Task Force.

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Also true! It can be hard to get a team together for an invicible taskforce with buffed bad guys, but if you do, its fun!

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Change buffs so that defense and resistance buffs (and debuffs) work similarly to recharge reduction buffs, in that they asymptotically approach their limit rather than linearly approach their limit.

Or, to put another way, two 50% defense buffs would be as good as one 75% buff, rather than one 100% buff. Thus, individual unenhanced buffs can become more powerful, and maximally buffed characters are not orders of magnitude (1000x) stronger than those without buffs.

(a.k.a. diminishing returns).

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Because thats a solution that has had nothing but positive impact on PvP?

Just sayin'

I see. So sicne our perceptions (and, evidently, abilities) differ, you are automaticaly right, and we should do it your way?

Well, as much as I respect your bluntness, how is it any less legitimate to say that it should be MY way, and YOU should have to suffer instead? Why shouldn't YOU hae to change what you put into YOUR character (see, I can use capslock too), in order to play the game at my level instead of the other way around?

At any rate, the point I was trying to make is that through the miracle of Architect Entertainment, we can ALL get wehat we want, since not all missions have to be tailored to fit all people. The mision full of levle 54 archvillains and ninjitsu scrappers is fun for me, but not so much for you... and thats perfectly fine! More than rapid levleing; more even than roleplaying and storytelling; THIS to me is the real beauty of MA: the ability to play exactly the content you want to play without the developers having had to screw someone else to give it to you.

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Change your own settings.

Don't try changing mine, thanks. I like my level of difficulty and challenge exactly the way I have it. So, if you don't want it "easy" try this:

Don't use any enhancements. Don't take primary powers. Delete after defeat.

The game itself is exactly as challenging as most of us want it to be, and already has a difficulty slider - now admittedly I'd like the slider to be able to produce more customized results (I want more x or y instead of a and b) but the outright challenge? Is fine how it is. If you're not challenged by the game, don't do all those things that make it easier to play, eh?

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That philosophy is roughly equivalent to practiing golf 6 days a week, and then breaking your wrist to "give yourself a challenge". Its a way to go, I guess, but not a fun one. The smart plan is to find a more challenging course - one worthy of your improved skills. Video-games are the same way. Deliberatley gimping yourself will certainly make things harder, but it obviates a lot of the point of game-play - get better (whether better means more skilled at playing your character or designing your character's build, or simply earning cash to buy uber-er gear) so you can meet harder and more impossible challenges succesfully.

As someone recently mentioned to me, a problem with this game is that its "easy in all the wrong ways". That is, cahracter design and play strategy is complicated and hard compared to other class-based games. It is painfully easy to make a gimpomatic character and, and similalry, if you invest the research and time, its possible to make very, very powerful characters. The range of ability between the two extremes is simply too great. To compensate, the actual content was made painfully easy, such that even with a gimped character or a terrible team you can still accomplish it.

All of that rant being by way of saying that this represents a problem in creating more challenging content since a certain number of people wont be able to do it.

The best you're realisticly likely o get is the occasional end-game task-force with more difficult bad guys (harder hitting, more mezz protection, more self-buffs, ECT), and with more OF them - wave upon wave of endless ambush, and higher-than-50 base levle archvillains seem to be the way things are going. It does a decent job, but I dont know if it will really give you waht you're going for. I suggest turning to the mission architect. Mobs that can stack debuffs; mobs that can stack holds; mobs that have seldom resisted effects (confuse is the prime example); mobs that have seldom resisted damage types; mobs that have pets; mobs that have mezz resistance; mobs that have ninjitsu and a good mele damage set; mobs that justplain hit like a truck; mobs that have all their powersets turned up to extreme - these things are challenging, believe me, and there are people out there who design missions to incorporate them (Im one of them).