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Tiger is several years old now, and every machine that can run Tiger can run Leopard.

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Unfortunately that is false.

I am currently maintaining an iBook (700 MHz G3) that can run Tiger just fine but, alas, cannot run Leopard. Leopard requires G4 or higher.

This of course has nothing to do with CoH for Mac since this is an old PPC Mac that cannot run CoH in any form.

I suspect that you meant to write the following true statement.

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Tiger is several years old now, and every Intel machine that can run Tiger can run Leopard.

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I'd make two identical tankers and call one -

I Am Spartacus

and the other

l Am Spartacus



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LOL

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What goes the best with Claws?


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Melted butter.

Reading the advice and experience of others on this board, I chose to optimize for melee defense. Soft-capped melee is pretty sweet.

I must be missing something.

What was the "player question" here?

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if you don't want to go through all of the trouble of installing boot camp and windows you can download and install Crossover Games from Codeweavers and while not with out it's problems it does work very well, this is a great option as it works in tiger 10.4 and leopard 10.5, if the only reason you are flipping to windows is for COX than this will save you some space on your hard drive.

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This actually works now? I might have to try it again. How does the performance compare to bootcamp or parallels.


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I'm wondering this too.

I wonder if CrossOver Games for Mac will work better than running CoX under Vista on my 1st gen MacBook due to the 2GB RAM limit of the hardware and Vista's memory-hungry behavior.

Here is a page of screenshots created by people running CoX on CrossOver Games.
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibi...9;screenshot=1

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So, there is something wrong with this logical syllogism?

Defenders have ranged attacks.
Ranged attacks have little use for support in a team environment, but are important solo.
Defenders must have been designed to be able to solo.

Perhaps you can explain to me why you didn't interpret that, instead of "ranged attacks can only be used solo".

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That conclusion doesn't logically follow from the first two statements. It can be inferred but not logically deduced. "Little use" is not the same as "no use". That is why I didn't chose it to complete the logic.

You could salvage that by not making it a "must" conclusion. You could perhaps soften it to say

"This suggests that Defenders may have been designed to be able to solo."

It was the sentence structure and the certainty of the conclusion in your initially posted statement that made me mistake this for a logical argument.

By rephrasing it with less definite language, it takes it out of the realm of being a conclusion that must be accepted by rational readers who agree about the truth of your predicate, and into being a persuasional argument.

I grant you that this wishy-washy way of expressing oneself isn't as confrontational therefore is not very popular in Internet boards like this where a strongly stated position is thought to be the only way to be noticed above the background noise.

But personally I wouldn't have chosen that as a middle statement since I don't feel that ranged attacks have little use in a team environment. I use them constantly when teaming with my FF/sonic defender. That goes toward the truth of the statement and not to the logical fit of the statement in the syllogism.

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So, again, what do you feel are issues with team play, that need to be addressed with Force Field?


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Nothing in particular comes to mind with Force Field. My first FF/ defender is just about to ding on lvl 16. I have found this discussion thread interesting in learing how to get the best out of FF.

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Because if there are none, well, then we can move on to the secondary considerations of solo play.


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Sure. You can do whatever you like.

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I means, it sounds like you were trying to argue that there are no problems with Force Field in a team, so we should not worry about it.


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I didn't intend to argue for that.

I don't consider soloing a defender (FF or otherwise) an important consideration when discussing changing the AT powers. If you are making a change to improve solo play, the change's impact on team play should be of paramount importance. If the proposed change has zero impact on team play and only benefits solo play for a defender, I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand I solo my defenders enough to be happy to benefit by improvements, but on the other hand I don't want it to add to the noise and draw developer attention away from more deserving issues. You could call me ambivalent there.

The Repulsion Bomb change being discussed recently is an example of this. I see this as improving team play. It may negatively impact solo play. I am OK with this.

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I was exercising the Principle of Charity.

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If you'd actually quoted me, I might buy that. Perhaps you can point out to me where I said that attacks could only be used solo?

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I'm sorry you aren't buying that. It is exactly what I was doing. You didn't say that attacks could only be used solo. I added that so that I could logically connect your statement to your conclusion. I wasn't trying to make a slight of hand or misrepresent you.

I don't feel that continued picking at this specific logical argument is productive. You have already clarified that you did not intend to make a valid argument. Part of my reason for focusing on it was to be pedantic and somewhat educational to elevate the level of discussion a bit for the forum at large. I am sensing that I wasn't very succesful. I may be in for a long haul --- kind of like soloing a defender.

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Do you feel that there are any issues with the FF power set in regards to team play that should be given HIGHER priority?


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I don't understand the question. If we are talking about team play, higher priority than what? I prioritize team play for defenders higher than solo play when considering modification to powers.

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It's nonsense because you made it up out of nowhere with no foundation in any statements I had made.

If you want to turn this into a logical argument, then start by actually defining the premise. And make it something I actually said, not what you're making up.

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I was exercising the Principle of Charity. In the context of debate, this means that I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and trying to find the most favorable interpretation of your case.s This would be, for example, transforming an illogical argument into the closest logical argument instead of just taking it at face value and dismissing it.

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Technically speaking, yes, you did say that Defenders are described as "difficult to solo". And technically speaking, yes, that is the way they are usually described. However, "difficult to solo" is hardly a point to be debated.


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My reason for bringing it up was that many of the recent posts in this thread about changing the Defender powers (FF in particular) were oriented toward playability of the AT solo. I wanted to chime in my opinion that solo play should be a secondary consideration when considering modifications to the powerset with team play being the primary.

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Blasters are "difficult to solo". Tankers are "difficult to solo". Even Scrappers are "difficult to solo", if you think you are entitled to just kill everything freely with no risk.

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That would be the connecting logical concept. This is how I interpret your syllogism.
Defenders have ranged attacks.
Ranged attacks can only be used when soloing.
Defenders must have been designed to be able to solo.

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This is logical nonsense.


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I'm not sure what you mean by that phrase. The logic is valid. The argument is unsound because it has a false statement.

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At no time did I say that ranged attacks could ONLY be used solo. Merely that they are HELPFUL solo.


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My reason for presenting the above syllogism was to illustrate that the only logical way you can draw the conclusion you did was to fill in the false statement.

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Defenders have no attacks whatsoever.
You must have an attack ability to be able to solo.
Defenders were designed only for team play.

Maybe this is what you were thinking of. But that isn't what we have. The first condition isn't met.

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This is closer. It is arguing the negative. But how about this:

You must have an attack ability to be able to solo.
Defenders have ranged attacks
Defenders can solo.

This is still an incomplete syllogism, because there may be OTHER things Defenders need in order to solo. But at least it's making some logical sense.

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That was my whole point of bringing in the syllogisms. That syllogism does not make logical sense. It is not a valid argument from an academic standpoint. I showed the one arguing the negative but didn't complete the train of thought to say that finding that argument unsound (yet valid) does not let you draw a different conclusion.

This would make it even better.

It is necessary and sufficient to have an attack ability to be able to solo.
Defenders have ranged attacks
Defenders can solo.

Now we are happy.
But that just brings us to the point that we both agree on. Defenders can solo.

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I play defence in hockey. I'm described as a Defenceman. Does that mean I'm there to support my team and not contribute offensively?

See how a definition of a word can be used to support a completely opposite position?


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Help me understand how your hockey experience sheds light on my previous argument. Why are you labeled a Defenceman? What are you defending? I'm not an expert on hockey, but my guess is that you are supposed to defend the goal and the area of the ice on that side of the rink. The only thing needed for the term to make sense in that case is that there be a goal and a threat to that goal. No teammates are implied.

If that is the case this differs from my analysis where the CoH Defender is defending their teammates and thus implies the existance of the teammates.

If your role is to defend your teammates similar to the way there are blockers to protect a quarterback in American football, then I can see the parallel. In that case it does have the same logic as my argument. It implies that your teammates exist and thus your role is designed primarily to exist in the context of a team.

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As for being the AT that is supposed to be about team support, where the hell were you before Controllers got containment. That was the team support AT, not Defenders.


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I presume the first sentence is a rhetorical question. If not, I'm not sure why you care, but I was probably in my home office. I'm there a lot. Is it important? I can probably check my old calendars.

I'm not embracing the "team support" term, but for the sake of argument, how is a Controller being labeled as team support relevant to the issue of a Defender also being labeled as a team support AT? I don't see the logical connection. Are you asserting that there can only be one in the game? If a Troller is one, then a Defender must not be one?

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You honestly believe that the name "Defender" in any way defines us as primarily team-support characters?

Quite honestly, your analysis of our name as an excuse to define us as a team support AT is crap.

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You are mistakenly adding words to my analysis. I do not define Defenders as "team support". My appeal to the word choice "Defender" is to illustrate how a Defender is primarily meant to be part of a team. The defender is not designed to be as effective solo as other ATs.

I am surprised that this is such a controversial concept. But I can understand drawing the wrong conclusion if you accidentally misread my post.

The role that the Defender plays on a team is left as an exercise to the reader. Different defender power choices will affect that answer quite a bit. Is this role best described as "team support"? I don't know. Is a blaster's role on a team "team support"? A tanker's? My FF/sonic defender was playing either role recently a tankerless large team.

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Actually, the official description of the Defender doesn't say anything about soloing. The manual may say something different, but primarily the Defender is described as the best at strengthening the team.


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I'm not sure what you mean by "the official description". Where can I read this? I'm not picking a fight here. I'd like to learn more.

The CoH manual on page 9 in the section describing each AT says:
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The Defender is a suitable archetype for grouping, though
soloing is possible—difficult, but possible.


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This does not say the devs never wanted this to be soloed.
Is not the CoH Manual an "official description"?

I am not asserting that Defenders are forbidden from soloing. I am asserting that they are designed for team play for their primary role. Soloing is possible, but difficult by design. I think I wrote as much in my earlier post.

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But if the devs did not intend for the Defender to be soloable, they would not have given it ranged attacks.

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(Now that in the following I'm nitpicking solely for the sake of academic debate.)
I don't see the logic here. Ranged attacks are not specific to soloing.
That would be the connecting logical concept. This is how I interpret your syllogism.
Defenders have ranged attacks.
Ranged attacks can only be used when soloing.
Defenders must have been designed to be able to solo.

Maybe you meant to say "they would not have given it any form of attack."
Defenders have can attack.
Attacks can only be used when soloing.
Defenders must have been designed to be able to solo.

Still it doesn't work. I don't agree with the second statement since attacks can be used for either solo or team play.

I can see the logic in this syllogism though.

Defenders have no attacks whatsoever.
You must have an attack ability to be able to solo.
Defenders were designed only for team play.

Maybe this is what you were thinking of. But that isn't what we have. The first condition isn't met.

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The devs did not give Defenders a Secondary with the intention that it never be used. And sometimes the best defense is a good offense.


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I agree.

On my defenders I use my secondaries often both soloing and on a team. My secondaries do damage and debuff mobs.
I don't see this as being pertinent to the issue of soloing.

I too am very pleased with the planned change to Repulsion Bomb.

On the topic of the difficulty of soloing a Defender, this is by design. It was not intended to be easy to solo. The (albeit dated) COH Manual states this as much in the description for the AT. Even the name suggests that this is a team oriented AT. "Defender" a defends his teammates. Defend is a transitive verb. (An interpretation of self-defense is also possible, but the ultimate self-defense is to avoid battle and not to go looking for a fight. Playing solitaire in the SG base is surely the best defense.)

Defender is the only AT name that is based on a verb whose object is the teammate instead of the enemy. Controllers control a mob. Scrappers scrap with a mob. Blasters blast ... wait for it... a mob. And Tankers "tank" a mob (note that this use of the word is game jargan but it fits the pattern).

I don't think there is good justification for making changes to the Defender AT to make it a better soloist. If becoming a better soloist is a side effect of the changes made for other reasons, that's great.

This is a MMORPG. It is ok to have some parts of it dependent on the MM aspect.

That being said, I have soloed my Defenders. It is very slow going, and I prefer to be on a team. My builds are primarily team oriented, but I don't shy away from choosing powers that help solo when it won't take away from a more team-friendly power.

Soloing a Defender can be very challenging. You don't progress quickly in levels. You have to be very careful to avoid getting in over your head. It requires lots of patience. At times it can require a lot of skill. While these seem like negatives, they are actually neutral statements. They are negatives to many people, but positives to some people who like such challenges. I am in either camp (negative/positive) depending on my mood and what I want to explore/experience in the game session.

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I propose that instead of it being based upon the average health of your teammates it be based upon the number of foes within 80' of you. This keeps it thematic to "vigilance", and also makes it fair and balanced to all Defenders, regardless of powersets, slotting, and skill (or lack thereof).


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I like this idea.

I like the way that it shifts "vigilance" from being vigilant about your teammates to being vigilant about the threat around you so it is still a plausable interpretation of the super ability.

I like also how it turns Vigilance into an ability usable often like other ATs' inherents instead of rarely. If a Defender is serving the team very well, his current Vigilance would be used rarely. And if the Defender likes using his current inherent and letting the team members health decline greatly, it provides incentive to work against the team's best interest (staying very alive and healthy).

If this revised Vigilance is intended to scale with the threat being faced, I would offer the following suggestion as a tweak on it. Factor in the level of the enemy being faced and Lieut/Boss/EB/AV status in addition to the quantity.

I posted this idea in another thread before I noticed this one.

Maybe this would be useful to stem the tide of the misuse of in-game Tells.

Could it be that simply limiting the rate at which tells can be sent would be sufficient to make a difference? How about requiring accounts to have a minimum of 5 or even 10 seconds between sending 'tells'. Plus no more than say 60 tells can be sent in an hour. Of course these numbers are arbitrary. The devs studying the logs would know what exact values would be useful to stem the tide of SPAM.

In my usage I only send 'tells' infrequently when trying to coordinate a team or to chat briefly with a buddy. These restrictions wouldn't be a burden on my playing even if they were on full-time for normal accounts.

Chat within a channel (Local, Team, Super Group, etc.) is a different matter. Lots of discussion happens there at a quick rate. I'm not sure what the devs should do with Broadcast, if anything, but I don't want SPAMmers to find refuge there.

Assuming that the devs could limit 'tells' and not other forms of chat at the same time, I think this is a workable thing that may dampen in-game SPAM quite a bit. SPAM is only profitable if it can be sent at high volume with low cost. Dialing down the rate allowed means that the SPAMmers have to exert a lot more cost to generate a high volume. It may no longer be profitable then.