GavinRuneblade

Excellent clarification! I need a hover mode for Squid form. the form itself is fine. Maybe a pocket Kin who can hit me with Inertial Dampening, or whichever of those powers slows you down.

Yes and again, you have pointed out something very important:

THANK YOU to everyone for all the responses and advice!

Can't believe I forgot to say that sooner. As demonstrated, I have chosen the quotes in my signature for a very good reason =)

I agree 100% with everything you say here. The thread is about why new players gave up on Kheldians or found them hard. Not about what is wrong with them and I tried to answer as directly as possible. I may or may not be one who they are for. I never (I hope) said or implied that I thought anything was borked on Khelds except the mindset that "team-based" = leeching and that the design feel is of things taken away, not of things given or added on. And these are both very subjective issues.

Everything else I tried to be as clear as possible was my personal lack of ability to use the tools available. As I said originally, Khelds're just too hard for me. Makes the play frustrating and not fun. so I have given up on mine. But I'm willing to keep trying, I'm stubborn that way (or is that masochistic? I always get those two confused).

Thank you for the two excellent catches!

You never wanted access to a hold or stun or sleep in dwarf or nova form? After earning an accolade power you don't care if you are forbidden from using it? You're ok with paying for a market teleport that you're not allowed to use after you buy it? I'm not ok with these things. It has nothing to do with having access to all the benefits of every form at all times. But I earned my accolades, even the rubbish dayjob ones. Let me use them! I want my Nova to have access to the elusive mind if I just turned the corner and said hello to a fortunata. I have that power in human form, why do I lose it everywhere else?

But it does mean that I don't bring anything someone else doesn't already also bring. To me, as I said in response to Alien, as a hero "team based" should be generous. If Khelds were villains, I'd think the inherent was perfect. As heroes, it seems basackwards.


And therein lies my problem. On my defenders, the real problem is my builds. On my Khelds, MMs, and Tanks those are all ATs where player skill is as or more important than character build. And that's where I hit a brick wall, because I'm not a good player.

I'm pretty sure that I've done that. I may have selected poor powers, but I have tried to focus my slots. I think taking the "ranged brawl" level 1 power was a bad idea, because nomatter how it slots, it really is just brawl. And on my warshade, orbiting death is probably the most grossly misnamed power in the whole of the game. =) Looks gorgeous, but takes vastly more stamina for half the damage of any other damage aura I can find. Gravitic snare, also not a good idea. Trying to build for ranged damage in general doesn't seem functional. In Nova form, I am ok, need better accuracy and stamina. but I don't handle flying in combat well, I keep getting stuck looking at the ceiling or trapped headed into a wall. If the nova moved as slow as the dwarf I think I'd be ok. It all gets back to the "used correctly" part of your argument. I don't use the tools correctly. After 18 months with fly on all but 3 of my characters, I still can't fly in combat. This really hurts my ability to use nova. Nova needs a hover mode.

I've sent in petitions. It seems to be a more severe problem than just not liking them. I create a bind or macro, I use it, nothing happens except I get a purple error saying the power was not found. I've copy/pasted straight out of the forums to my chat bar. Someone told me that quote marks get messed up so I retyped it exactly as shown in the guide. I get "power not found" or "unidentified power" (I forget the exact message it's been a while since I tried). And yes I have repaired all my files, reinstalled from scratch, and tried again after a couple of patches. I just live without them.

Because I want to hold someone. Or I want to use a third AoE to finish off the spawn instead of plinking at one of 4 guys while waiting for the other two to recharge. Or I want to be able to use buildup and get more than 1 attack with it before it wears off. Or I want to haste without needing to drop to human, haste, turn back to nova, get back into the air. EVERY DAMN TIME. It gets really annoying. There's a lot more than just the attacks. This is a huge quality of life issue. Especially taking away all my accolade powers and temps. That's just mean spirited.

Don't want all that at once. But I would like a smooth transition between them and I would like my pool powers available and temps and accolades, etc.

Here is the big problem, I try to use buildup on my Peacebringer. I drop out of nova and fall to the floor. Now, if I had been out of melee range, I'm suddenly in it and getting hit becaues I have no toggles up in squishy form. I mouseover and click buildup. I mouse again to nova and spend 2 or 3 seconds squatting over grunting while getting hit. Wasting half of the buildup time. If I screw up a key click, or mouse onto the wrong enemy or whatnot, I lost my target and I only have enough time to get one attack off. If I gotta get him back, I might not get any. Now I just took 3 or 4 melee hits for nothing. This is not fun. As anyone else, I just hit buildup and shoot. So the solution is to only use buildup before the fight starts. Why do I even bother with the power? It doesn't add enough damage to let me 1-shot anyone. And it certainly makes my opening attack a pain in the rear. It's just not fun. Add in doing this again when I need to haste, and again for heals and HP buffs. And this is just for two-form. It really is not fun, and not easy. I can accomplish a lot more on any other AT with the same powers and no form shifting.

Both my warshade and peacebringer have both a human-only and human-nova build. I tried a human-dwarf warshade for a while but respecced out of it because I couldn't figure out how to use the dwarf powers intelligently and because my one and only working bind stopped working (yes I did rename the sunlesss step to dwarf step or whatever the correct name is, but it still didn't work).

Binds don't work for me. I just get purple error messages.

If you know anyone on Virtue late nights (very rarely as I work 90-hours a week so I don't have a lot of time to play), I am the most stubborn person alive. =)

Here's the thing. As a hero, shouldn't "team-based" be almost synonymous with "generous"? If Khelds were villains, I'd think the inherent was great, but like you could wish for more useful categories of bonus.


Because HEATS are not intended to be "team-based AT's" but they have more team-based features than anyone but Defenders. But by request, here is the exact same argument without using any other class as a comparison:

Why, when I switch to Nova or Dwarf, do I lose access to all of my team-based powers such as grant invisibility, teleport friend, leadership, taunt, etc. from the pools? If this is a team-based AT, shouldn't the team-based powers work at all times? At the absolute minimum, in Dwarf form, because tanking is pretty much a team-based activity.



Then why do they exist at all below level 30? If you can't make it fun at the start, no one will stick it out to learn. Also, this just screams bad game design. "we'll steal all of your fun for 38 levels, after that you are exactly the same as everyone else". That's not good game design.

Actually the damage is so bad outside of nova form that I can't tell the quantums and voids are any harder than anyone else. A quantum minion is about the same as a lieut to me. I burn two full trays of insps and he's dead at the end of it. Sometimes I get lucky and he goes down on one full tray.

And this is exactly one of my complaints about forms. If I'm supposed to be flexible from teh beginning then give me nova and dwarf at level 1. DO NOT train me as a human then take all the powers away that I just figured out how to use. Train me from day 1 as a shapeshifter. This is what I need, and what I think would really help almost all newbie Khelds. Start us out on the right foot, not on the wrong foot. First impressions are everything.

I disagree here for the prime reason that your point goes against CoH's design philosophy. In any other game I'd back you 100%. But City is about the journey and alts and doing it different ways. Why then are Khelds about "level to max then you'll enjoy it"? Isn't that sort of odd to you? I know it feels odd to me. It is like the Khelds were developed by someone from Everquest or WoW or another game who didn't understand the mindset of "fun all the time" that exists for all other parts of CoH.



You seem to have misunderstood. I have some bug (I assume it is a bug) that prevents them from working. The only bind or macro that works on any of my characters is the "hold shift and left click to teleport" one. But each time I use it I get three purple error messages in my chat window saying I have "unknown power selected". It works anyway. No other binds or macros work. I've sent in petitions but all I get is an email saying "thank you". Been 18 months, I have learned to do without. Makes it rough on my Khelds and Masterminds though. That is a handy trick with Dark Extraction though.

Just finished reading this whole thread. To answer this I'll give you my reasons why my Warshade and Peacebringer are both shelved indefinitely. The short version is that 80% of the design is based on taking things away, not giving them to me. This is totally unlike any other experience I have in City of Heroes. And it just feels bad. Everything is either harder than it needs to be, or something I had is now gone for no good reason. And either way, it takes my fun away with it. Here are the specifics (I appologize for the wall of text).

Supposeldy a team-based AT with a team-based inherent, but the devs define "team-based" in the inverted way that I do. This is a "Team-leaching AT" not a "team benefitting AT". Killed it for me right there. VEAT's get supercharged leadership toggles to benefit themselves AND BENEFIT THE TEAM. I get to benefit from my companions while offering them nothing in return. Honestly, I think the Kheldian inherent power is the only one as close to *****'d as the defender's "reward you for doing your job poorly, & give you no inherent power at all 99.9% of the time" inherent. Shouldn't our inherent either buff the team, or both ourselves AND the team? Are we leaches or contributors? This is where I think the Devs first went wrong. At the very foundation of the AT. Their definition of team-based means I benefit from the team, not the team benefitting from me.

The Dev's went too far down the "jack of all trades master of none" concept. Khelds are not flexible enough to be anything I want. I can't be "defender-sh with a touch of melee built in". Instead I just suck at two things. Everything I want to do and can do someone else does better. Even Blappers are more survivable AND more damaging in both melee and range. So why have me around? Unless you're farming and just need someone to pad the team. I'm great for that. Not great for anything else. I'm sub-par for anything else and I really don't feel like the flexibility makes up for it. Instead of feeling like I have the tools to adapt to any situation, I feel like I have the tools to fail in any situation. Which gets directly into the next issue:

I can't use forms. I understand their concept, and I know the value. The problem is that there is a difference between character ability and player ability that I am not sure the Dev's took into consideration. Consider the average First-Person Shooter. All the characters have the exact same abilities. But the players have different levels of agility, precision, timing, etc. Khelds appear to have been balanced around what top-end players can do. I, personally, have the reflexes and precision and timing of a jellyfish on a good day, and an eggplant most of the time. I've tried, really hard, but I can't do forms. The character has the power, it is slotted and enhanced as well as the recommended builds and guides say it should be. But I, the player, am not capable of using the character successfully. Part of this is the clunkiness factor mentioned in many other threads. Multi-second form shifting is an extremely bad idea. Making me start out in human form and not learn forms until after I think I know how to use my character, not a good idea. Making all my hotkeys stop working (I only use 1-6, nothing else because I can't get binds to work and I'm not agile enough to use any others on my keyboard without looking away from the screen) not a good idea. As soon as I form shift I can only fight with the mouse to click buttons until I shift back. Or I can click with the mouse in human form and use hotkeys in dwarf or nova. In the end, I just give up. I can't do it.

Forms are a take-away not a Give-New. When I go to Nova, I lose EVERYTHING else on my character. Everything. It is all just gone. In exchange for 10 to 20 powers, I have 4 that are almost identical to eachother. The WoW druid was brought up. The key difference between a kheld and a druid is that in forms (except for travel forms) Druids have the exact same number of powers as in their natural state. And those powers are nearly as potent as their counterparts from other characters. Unlike the kheld powers which are massively weaker. And taking away all the powers? Was it just because of animation issues? Hell, give me the power with just a sound effect and no animation if that's the issue. But the experience that I have as a player is that when I switch forms, I lose out. In WoW as a druid, I felt that I was gaining. As a Cat I could stealth. As a bear I could charge. In seal form I could breath underwater and travel really fast. In cheetah form I can run as fast as the horses. All of these are things I can't do at all in normal form. With a Kheld, in nova form I have the same ranged blasts as human, but only 4 of them, and they do more damage but I lost over a dozen other powers. Nothing new was given, but a lot was taken away for only a stat bonus. This FEELs like a loss. I know that strategically it isn't, but it feels like one. Between this and the difficulty to control them, it really feels like forms are a punishment not a power.

I can't solo. Other people can and great for you. I have been driven to the debt cap on level 18 scanner missions set at heroic. After 15 to 20 hospital trips and only getting through about half the mission, I put the character on the shelf. 8 to 12 attacks to kill a minion coupled with stamina problems on par with a tanker = no fun. I've managed to stubbornly stick it out and get my warshade to 36 and peacebringer to 29 but right now they are logging in every three days, dropping a mission, and logging out again and will eventually via this method reach level 50. This is as close to playing them as I get right now because it is more fun than actually trying to use them.

Targetting corpses on my warshade is next to impossible. I know binds supposedly exist that help with this. I have exactly one bind that almost works. My warshade can teleport if I hold down shift and mouse click. I get three purple error messages about "unknown power name". No other bind or macro I've tried has ever worked. So I'm left trying to manually click something that is physically under or behind a living enemy. I have to move the character around, then angle the camera and try to get in a fast click. Meanwhile the enemy is kicking my but. This is not fun. It also often means teh body I need goes away before I can use it. So I use powers right when an enemy dies and I still have their corpse selected before I move to the next enemy. Which means I either use the power when it isn't particularly needed, or I don't use it at all. Again, this is not fun.

Being locked out of the travel powers doesn't make any sense. I really don't know what the thought process was, but as an ignorant player just wanting to make my character the way I envision them, it is really weird. Why can't my warshade fly? Why can't my peacebringer teleport? He can teleport in dwarf form so it's not a genetic limitation. The devs being unable to do the animation can't be the issue because other human-shaped beings can teleport. So why can't I? In reality, I the player don't care what the real reason is, the only thing I care about is that it feels like something was taken away from me.

I never went into my Kheldians with the thought that epic meant more powerful. I actually hadn't even heard the term "epic" applied to them when I got access to them and had seen a few in Wentworths but had never teamed with one. And for the record it took me 9 months to get my first level 50 character. I honestly read these boards for two weeks before coming up with my two kheldians stories. I really never expected forms to be as difficult to control and play with as they are. I have put in over 100 hours of played time into my two khelds (combined, not each) at this point and they are both still at the low end of mid-level. This is how hard they are. My warshade is honestly incapable of completing missions solo at -1/x0 with me controlling her. I'm sure that any of you could use her and wonder how I can have trouble. But that's where I am. Combined with the fact that I know exactly two people in-game, and I see them online one day a week for about 3 hours means that my two khelds don't get used much.

16 issues in 5 years says roughly 1 per quarter with a few extras. I expect at least one more Issue before GR.

Stheno and Trapdoor also visited the Well. Stheno thousands of years ago, and Trapdoor is a mystery.

Imperious can be said to be a different man than Statesman. They might be the same soul reincarnated, or some echo of fate, but they are clearly different mortal bodies though very similar in attitude.

The similarity in power is because the Well of the Furies bonds a mortal with a deity and they both bonded to the same one. All who bond with that deity will theoretically have the same (or very similar) powers. There is some evidence that the deity also influences personality. But as the various Statesmen show, the effect is clearly not one of the deity taking over the host body (ala the angels from Supernatural). Certainly all of them become leaders and very headstrong.

Also, we know that the last time the Well of the Furies was opened was the golden age of greece. We know at least Imperious drank from it at that time. Stheno drank either then or earlier. We have no idea who else survived with Stheno into the modern age. Or who might have been around the time before that (if there was one).

Other things to consider: There is theoretically a Well of the Furies on Rikti earth. They had magic on their world and destroyed all of it. But there may be a Well, or may have been.

Actually not true. Some other MMO's include minigames. Runescape has sodoku, Emote contests, math puzzles, quizzes, treasure maps, and a fishing trawler game that's unlike anything I've seen elsewhere. At the extreme end there is one MMO where the only mechanic is walking and all the rest are user-developed minigames everything from Tetris and Pacman to crosswords, board games, pong, sodoku again, etc. WoW has the Simon Memory Game on the Ogrilla Plateau and a few others.

But the majority of the content in all games is: Kill enemies. Gather Drops. Click on quest item.

It's just that there are a few extras that other games throw in as well.

And there is something to be said for the enjoyment value of more unique/custom maps rather than the identical templates. Eye candy is still tasty. I know I love doing the Frostfire mission in the hollows specifically because of the unique map. Now if the Devs would add voiceovers and animated "glowies" I'll be really happy on the eye candy side. =)

You are my hero for today. =)

It's even easier than that. If you have the good vs evil copy you can teleport to the Tiki Bar in Pocket D at will and use the tailor there.

How would giving rewards for doing PvE in a PvP zone make people anything but really angsty targets? It seems to me it incentivises pure PvE people to come into the zones and farm NPCs, then complain loudly that they are being attacked when all they want to do is get drops from the NPCs. Then they will get frustrated and leave the zone.

Not liking to bring up WoW, but the way they handle it is after a battle you get credit for your side's accomplishments (CoH equivalent = Merits) which you spend on the rewards. Some for kills, some for team accomplishments (like each flag capture, or burned tower, or etc), some as a bonus for being on the winning side. Point being, you can lose and still eventually earn anything you want. Just takes longer than if you're the winner. But you gotta be in the fight against other players not just NPCs.

This is why most games with PvP have PvP minigames. These solve several problems:
1. Easy to understand.
2. Tiered difficulty in that some are for nOObs and some are for 1337 players. (never works out as experienced PvPers love the challenge of making the meanest possible character in the weakest possible tier)
3. Fast start (you enter the game and fighting starts immediately or very swiftly)
4. Short/fixed duration with an actual end point and a clear winner/loser
5. Game creates teams of equal size on both sides so you are not thrown to the sharks all by yourself (though premades tend to obliterate pugs when they end up against each other in those games that make it possible).

CoH PvP has none of these advantages. I've tried to PvP, but I actually can't figure out how the Arena works (this is very bad from an encouraging people to try standpoint), and most of the time in the zones you run around doing PvE looking for anyone else. When you find them, they often aren't interested in PvP and are just there for the badges, or Shivans, or Nukes, etc. to be used in PvE elsewhere.

What CoH has:
1. Hard to understand, & totally different rules from PvE
2. Tiered in the sense of having level breaks, but uber-sets give dedicated PvPers far more power than experimenters
3. No "start" just wander in, wander around and hope you find someone else who may or may not exist in the zone
4. No "end point" you just go until you are done. No "winner" no "loser" except for a specific round/bout.
5. Teams happily hunt down and gank loners. No balance or assisted team making.

Runescape has its castle war, with a very cool mechanic with "law vs chaos" as the two sides, and people can sign up as "balance" who will be used to ensure both sides have equal numbers and thus ensure the game starts faster. Virtually every MMO with PvP has a variation of "capture the flag", Conan has city sieges, Lineage had castle sieges, WoW has the different battlegrounds plus it's Arena which works quite well for idiots etc. PvP minigames are the standard, and they work for a lot of different MMOs.

In my opinion, the least work to make this happen would seem to be taking Recluse's Victory out of the world as a free-for-all zone and make it into a minigame only accessible during PvP matches. Copy the signup scenarios from other MMOs and from the CoH Arena. Click interested and go back to playing. When enough people on both sides are up for a match, boom it starts and you teleport onto the map. Fist side to spawn and drop Statesman/Recluse wins, everyone on the winning side gets merits and is returned to the portals in Peregrine or Grandville, or the arena of "choice" (including Monkey Bar in Pocket D). Choice marked off because villains don't have any =). Make it cross server. Once Going Rogue comes out let the "middle of the road" style characters who can access both Paragon and Rogue Isles sign up not for Good or Evil, but rather a mish-mash to ensure there are equal numbers on each side. Some form of balance ala the Runescape model. This will speed up the queues and ensure some randomness.

No amount of "carrot on a stick" will work with the current "show up in the zone and hope something happens" scenario. Even with broken PvP mechanics, people will play a fun game. With "perfect" mechanics not many people will do CoH PvP in the form it currently exists.

He's got a ton of KB: LRM Rocket, M30 Grenade, Slug, and Buckshot all do KB. He loves to open with either the rocket or grenade and scatter everyone. Then he uses full auto and flamethrower but since he just scattered everyone he only gets one enemy. the Medic also has a grenade with KB, but he almost never uses it and it is very weak.

Thanks! I'm pretty sure that will go a long way.

That's some good advice. I'm trying to figure out how to fit some more AoE's in to grab aggro onto me. Usually Fluffy and I hold aggro pretty well. I spam Fearsome Stare and my hold and heal and that seems to keep people firing at me. But once the AoE's show up, it's all over.

Seriously. The spec ops are far more interested in spamming webnade and flashbang than actually hurting anyone. They have the attack powers to be very dangerous, but the AI prioritizes them as if they were a controller. Commando is about 80% of my damage, but he loves to open with AoE knockback then hit just one guy with two AoE damage powers. So most of his potential is wasted. The two soldiers are actually decent, but the medic will waste his heal on an uninjured buddy when a nearly dead one is standing just a few feet away. Or he'll heal instead of shoot right on the opening of a fight. I've never seen such a goofy AI.

If you look at the numbers, Mercs should be really cool and dangerous. But the AI ruins it.

Ironically, of all the pets it seemed like Zombies have the smartest AI. Ninjas are on crack. Robots felt to me like they prioritize by the farthest enemy they can target, bringing in new groups all the time that I wasn't actively controlling their targets. Thugs are both suicidal and confused: The Bruiser things he is a ranged fighter and the arsonist things he is melee. I often wonder if they accidentally swapped the AI's for those two and Bab's just hasn't figured out that's the problem. Makes me wonder how quirky Demons will be.

I've been looking into the Patron AoEs. I've avoided them because in general I prefer a hold. But using it as a wide taunt is actually not a bad idea. Thanks for the tip on that.