GabrielTemplar

give me my damnable rikti comm farms back.

"fun while it lasted" says it all: another nerf that removes fun from the game and drives me a step closer to cancelling my account and going back to games that actually keep me engaged on the Nth play-through. I can do 20 characters in a certain *other* 10-million-plus-player MMO without having to repeat content. If city is so pathetic people need to farm to 50 then give them the ability to do so.

Bard class? eh, not sold on it.

City uses some pretty rubber science, but bards are pure fantasy... not sure it fits thematically.

Definately agree 100% I prefer to listen to music anyway than another 12 hours of misc. grunts, the same music loop over and over and the sound of electricity crackling.

How about a texture change for patrol XP as well, if you're blue/green or blue/red colorblind it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between debt, patrol XP and normal XP.

V-side

Smuggler-- location: docks in port oaks, sharkhead, ect. suggested power: +5ft stealth radius when stealthed?

Mad Scientist-- Location: Aeoncorp offices. bonus: ???

H-side
Farmer-- Location: fields in Croatoa, Effect: +3% salvage/inf drops.

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Im sure the Tanker forum would disagree with the idea that they dont need situational awareness.

I'd also say a Blaster with no defences needs more situational awareness than, say, a Dark Defender running Darkest Night in the middle of a mob.

This is denigrating other AT's, lets not, eh? We dont need to.

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By the way, I wasn't saying tanks don't need situational awareness, they need a ton of it, but it's of different focus: they need to watch spacing, which way mobs are facing (indicating aggro attention) about half a dozen toggles, and through all that whichever mob they need to 'hard hold' (like an AV in the midst of holding onto their entire addspawn).

Blasters need to be very aware of aggro too, mob spacing for firing off their AoEs and pulling, their own end and health bars, cooldowns on their big, slow powers, what target needs their special brand of love, ect.

Controllers need to be aware of spacing too, for AoEs, their positioning if they have an aura, positioning of teammates for aura heals if they have one and teammate's buff bars if they have those, what mob is most dangerous so they can lock it up, in addition to anything a defender is worrying about heal/buff wise.

I guess my point is that while most ATs watch the mobs, I find my defenders more often watch the *team* as opposed to what they're fighting. I rarely even look at the fight, I'm watching health bars, buff stacks and the periphery of the fight in case I need to snap off something on a weakened runner.
When it's AV time, I can target the AV through any member of the team, they're all shooting at it after all, so I can devote a very small portion of my attention to clicking off my two main attacks while the rest goes to shepherding over the team: tossing off heals, keeping buffs up, intercepting adds and ambushes, watching AV health for critical points when they spawn ambushes or pull their special moves, ect.

I think that puts defenders in somewhat of a unique position as being more aware of the team and how it's doing, as well as the situation outside the immediate fight, because their attention isn't 100% occupied by trying to use their powers to greatest effect on the mob right in front of them.

Does anyone else find themselves typically being team leader because of the situational awareness thing?
Not to denigrate any other ATs, but it seems all to common when people, for example, can't keep track of how many generators out of four are live or where they're KBing mobs, or what mobs are under the bridge they're on...

My ultimate "if I could pidgeonhole a dev for an hour to talk" wishlist:

More dynamic TF/SFs: other MMOs make their 'dungeon' content unique and challanging for tactical reasons. CoX is hit-or-miss there. Most TFs are just a mission arc you have to grind in one go with an AV at the end. Doing 5 of the same exact mission (IE Faathim TF, Citadel TF) doesn't enthuse me for the content: I'm likely to grind it once because I'm a badge collector and leave it at that. Nevermind helping SGmates, I'm not doing the slog that is posi/quarterfield/citadel/ect. again.
Unique and tactically interesting fights like the STF, abandoned sewer trial, Cavern of Transcendence and LGTF are more likely to encourage me to repeat the content. "new" TFs like silos and mender Lazarus are great in that regard, nice to see they learned, some of the oldest content was great in that regard too, Eden and the sewer trial. Wonder what happened in the middle?

2: the game is highly tolerant of differential teams until the very upper end, then suddenly certain builds become manditory. Players are trained to play as they progress through levels, So when the Sister Psyche TF teaches them bum rush works, they think a bum rush works in the STF too; When a tank can get through the first 45 levels without taunt, they take great exception to being told they won't be included on a Hamidon team without it and would they kindly leave the zone so someone who's useful to us can get in.
Either tighten up tactical requirements in the mid range so people slowly learn the skills and required team constitution, or eliminate them at the high end to reduce the culture shock when people go from 'typical' to epic content.

3: more multipart goals and unique goals. I love the blue-side respec trial, because it's unique. I like anything unique. "go kill the AV" is not very interesting, Tina and Maria and Unai ask me to do that all the time. "take down the four generators, take out the first AV, then the next AV" (lady Grey) is unique and more interesting than "enter mission, stealth to end, send in tank, stack debuffs, whack AV." For all intents and purposes, you can interchange the name of almost any two AVs and the mission remains the same. sometimes a hostage/pet is thrown in, sometimes it's a shield generator-like device (pylon, generator, whatever), but really it all boils down to: stack debuffs, charge in, tank taunts, scrappers scrap, blasters blast, defenders heal/de

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I am a defender. I don't win battles,

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You can you know. I'm not saying you have to, but you can. Yes, even an Empath.

- Jock Tamson, Who is sounding a little like a Obama speech here.

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Oh I know I can add a fair amount of DPS, even being a healing-spec empath. But the increase in damage output when I fully buff a scrapper or blaster and make them more or less immune to mez and free from worrying about their health bar far outweighs anything I can do on my own.

To the OP:

I have a general issue any time the power is put in one player's hands to basically make life difficult on other players. It's bad enough some powers can be used in antisocial ways (see: knockback, confuse) unintentionally or intentionally.

But now, the fate of your team rests in a single person's hands, more or less. As if it isn't NORMALLY bad enough to lose a tank or a healer, now you'll be spawning groups of mobs with an 'invisible anchor' thanks to the fact they ditched out.

What's more, not everyone has perfect reliability. What this does is discourage people that do not have 100% ability to commit to a TF no matter how long it takes to come. And if you have an internet connection that isn't completely stable, you might as well not even try. All this will do is breed bad blood between players over irrevocably failed TFs that fail because someone has to drop, or loses connection.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Don't design a game for the powerplayers, that's usually the point in any MMO when things go to hell in a handbasket: design them for casual players and if people level faster than you'd like them to or make more inf than you want them to, let it go, because you're damaging the play experience of your main market if you go off chasing powerlevellers and inf farmers and those changes hurt the experience of a casual, typical gamer who suddenly can't stealth missions anymore, or gets inexplicably zero XP for killing a portal, or is screwed the moment someone drops TF.

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But the Rikti Portal XP and the task force changes impact people playing the game as designed.


New content is great, I'm looking forward to seeing what's coming in I12 and beyond. But if the current problems are just allowed to fester, that's not a good thing.

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I could say so many things coming in this late in the thread, but, I guess I'll limit it.

First, much agreed to your first point: Honestly I think that the devs need to entirely ignore the 'powerplayer' set and the problems they introduce and make the game built for a typical gamer. CoH is designed, it seems to me, to be MMO lite, you don't need a spreadsheet and a graphing calculator to design a proper toon. So why punish casual players because something was abused by a narrow set of the population. This happens a LOT.

To the second point: sometimes bugs are rooted nastily deep in the code and may not be fixable without breaking a dozen other things. It's a sad fact of modern programming. I played an MMO once where a simple elevator was broken for the better part of a year, the back door to a major city zone. Turns out fixing it required a total rewrite of the entire lift code in the engine itself. I'd rather the devs work on new content than spend inordinate effort to fix a comparatively minor bug.


All in all, I feel CoX has always given me an excellent value for my money, new content is continual and engaging, new zones and TFs and contacts are released on a basically quarterly basis. What other MMO does that for you? AND doesn't require you to pay for it? NCSoft's service has also always been top notch and that means a lot of my friends that won't play other MMOs for the harassment and general inter-player ill will play City Of... It serves its market well and provides a lot of bang for the buck.

Whatever new content they decide to come out with, be it a moon base, space station, another city zone or the Toledo bus station, I'm sure I'll enjoy it completely.

My manifesto:

I am a defender.
I am an empath.

I hope you never need me. On a good team, I'm pretty much a blaster that throws up some buffs, because you're never hurt badly enough to need me.
When I'm duoing with my best friend, a claw-regen scrapper, I can make her a dark and vengeful goddess of death.
When I'm alone I go slow and steady. I have holds, I have three of them, I can be your crowd control, I can be some damage, I can be your buffs, I can be your infinite health bar.
I take it personally when I let someone fall, even if it's Ghost Widow or Hamidon slinging the damage.

I am a safety net, I don't win fights. I help you win fights. I don't kill lord recluse, I try to keep you alive long enough so you can kill lord recluse.

People say controllers are more of a team-spec than a defender, I beg to differ, because a controller doesn't need you. I need you. I can't solo an elite boss, I can't run clean and fast alone. I need you. You might not need me, but with enough +defense, +damage +regen and +recovery you might want me anyway. Together we're faster, stronger, better.

I am a defender. I don't win battles, I give other people the ability to win battles.