Gothika

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[u]Patron Pools and APP[u]

1. They all got looked at by Posi, Castle, and minion. Datamined which ones were taken and which were ignored. Buffs, nerfs, and power replacements!

2. If powers are replaced, when you log in, you'll have the new power. No grandfathering.

3. About 20% of the A/EPPs were replaced.

4. As one example of the Epic/Patron changes, Castle mentions that Weapon Mastery for Scrappers will now include Focused Accuracy. If his memory is correct.



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Thanks for taking the time to summarize everything!

The "no grandfathering" bothers me though. I mean, what happens to slotted enhancements?

They get placed in the tray or we lose them forever? And if the character's tray is full at time? Sigh...

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What they need to do is create an overflow tray that the enhancements can be dumped into. They could set it up so players can take items out of it but not put items into it.

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As I said, it could be debated if FA should get the higher scale value, but that's different from saying that a Scrapper Targeting Drone should not give a higher ToHit buff than a Blaster Targeting Drone.
I see no specific reason for why it shouldn't.

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For one, the adjustments made to weaken the various attack and mez powers used in the Epics (via longer recharge times for the most part, though Stalker snipes were adjusted even more) imply that they aren't supposed to be as powerful as their primary/secondary counterparts. I believe Statesman even came out and said as much, but it was a long time ago so I might be mistaken.

Where this breaks down is with the toggle Epics. They tried to balance those by increasing the endurance usage but that has had little impact on the effectiveness of those powers. Your previous example of Temp Invulnerability highlights this. The Defender version has a greater end cost than the Tanker version, but in practice it's basically unnoticeable.

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2) I misspoke re: Weapon Mastery getting Focused Accuracy. It's Targeting Drone. Functionally, it's *identical* to FA, it just has the visuals and display name of TD.



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I hope this also means the To Hit buff on FA is being adjusted. It would be pretty silly if the To Hit buff on the Scrapper APP Targeting Drone ended up higher than the Blaster Secondary Targeting Drone. It's already pretty silly that FA provides a better buff than the comparable Secondary power. At APP levels FA's greater End cost isn't that hard to mitigate. See: toggle Instant Healing and the reason it was changed to a click power.

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Those powers use the Melee_Buff_ToHit modifier, and Scrappers have a higher modifier than Blasters (0.1 compared to 0.075), so given identical powers, the Scrapper version will give a larger buff than the Stalker version.

FA does give a stronger ToHit buff though (scale 2.0 compared to scale 1.85), but pays for this by having 3.75 times higher End Cost.

While it could be debated if that bonus (higher scale value) is appropriate, I do not think that it should be expected that Targeting Drone in a Scrapper Epic would not give a higher effective ToHit buff than Targeting Drone in a Blaster secondary.
The attribute modifiers state that Scrappers are *supposed* to be better at (self) ToHit buffs than Blasters.


This can also be seen in other situations.
Scrapper/Invulnerability/Temporary Invulnerability and Defender/Power Mastery/Temporary Invulnerability are both scale 3.0, but since these powers use the Melee_Res_Dmg modifier, for which Defenders have a value of 0.1 and Scrappers 0.075, the Defender version gives a higher effective Resistance, 30% compared to 22.5%.
It's just the way things work.

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I'm aware of why an otherwise identical power on two different ATs can perform differently. Nevertheless, the result can still be silly even if its consistent with how the game engine works. Ask a Storm/ Defender about /Storm Controllers sometime.

FA is a separate case though, since it was invented specifically for the APPs and its buff value was apparently pulled out of thin air. There was little reason to set the base value of the power as high as it was to begin with.

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2) I misspoke re: Weapon Mastery getting Focused Accuracy. It's Targeting Drone. Functionally, it's *identical* to FA, it just has the visuals and display name of TD.



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I hope this also means the To Hit buff on FA is being adjusted. It would be pretty silly if the To Hit buff on the Scrapper APP Targeting Drone ended up higher than the Blaster Secondary Targeting Drone. It's already pretty silly that FA provides a better buff than the comparable Secondary power. At APP levels FA's greater End cost isn't that hard to mitigate. See: toggle Instant Healing and the reason it was changed to a click power.

I'll be out of town.

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I want to set up something horrible, stop the war between the Rularuu and the Knives of Artemis; because I think that mission would be pure hell for just about every archtype.

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I would love to get in on that mission!!!

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Agreed, I think half the funs going to be trying to come up with the biggest PITA mission for your team .

I'm thinking of a joint Malta/Carnie one for starters .

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Sappers, Sorcerors and Succubi, oh my!

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No no, you have to customize it! I'll make a mission where every single minion is a sapper, every LT is a fortunata seer or night widow, every boss is a paragon protector, gunslinger or ring mistress and every 3rd spawn has a ballista EB.

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Sweet! This should effectively end complaints about "end game content".

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How? At the end of the day the difference between player created missions and endless radio grinding will be flavor text and a map built from the same Lincoln Logs as every other map in the game.


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Actually, I have a feeling it might be more customizable than you think. Remember a couple months ago when Castle was tasked to ask the players about [u]"Abusive" bases[u]? I bet it was so they could start to test this idea out. We probably won't see customizable missions until I13 or I14 (it'll likely be the marquee addition in whichever issue it's attached to) but since they start working on issues long before we see them they've probably already started to test out the tech already.

I'm looking forward to the new monthly column: Mission Creating Tips by War Witch.

Also, don't forget that with the new mission branching tech, players will be able to come up with some *really* interesting stories, with actual **choices!!** Moral quandaries for the heroes and pro-active villainy for the villains!

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I can’t tell you how excited I am for our game’s future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made, one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon.


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This is made of Awesome and Win!

My initial thoughts and concerns:

<ul type="square">[*]How customizable will the maps be? Will we be able to use an interface similar to base tech to make some detailed, original maps or will there be pre-generated standard newspaper door map type maps?[*]Will the missions be screened by Devs before being available for players to actually play on? I would think so due to concerns over appropriateness of content and to avoid super easy loot generator 'missions'.[*]Does this tech give us the ability to play the game offline? We'd need to test the missions, after all. Obviously characters that play through the missions in this manner wouldn't gain real inf, exp or loot but it would still be fun just to make something outlandish to fool around with. [/list]
I'll probably think of more but those things sprung to mind as I read the announcement. Looks like it'll be a ton of fun!

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I think Castle's real life name is awesome! Floyd Grubb. That's pure epic, right there.


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Huh, any relation to Jeff Grubb?

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He's also excited about the addition of traditional RPG branching tree dialogue, something they didn't have in City of Heroes until this Issue and will now begin to use quite a bit.

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Ooooo! I've been asking for this since before CoH even went live! I'm *really* looking forward to how it works out!

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FWIW, we reverted out the "Not affect players" change to TK, and changed Break Frees to 50% Repel Resist, and 100% resist for Medium and Large inspires.

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Cool beans, good change.

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I don't mean to sound unreasonable, but I tend to agree with EvilGeko. I have a preference to just have it not work. Right now melee is a joke in PvP, and allowing a toggled effect that completely shuts them down is too harsh against characters that already lose most of their DPS to jousting. The cost of 2 BFs is... high when people are trying to deal with Controllers and perma-Doms.

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Toggled Radiation Infection completely shuts down nearly all my Villains unless I pop multiple Insights. Can we make that not affect players too?

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I don't know what you play, but Toggled Rad doesn't herd you into a corner and prevent you from moving without being able to attack back so no, it's not the same thing. Plus, there are tons of ToHitBuffs in the game to help counter it, including an accolade. There is, um, no Repel resistance outside specific secondaries.

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No, but with Lingering Radiation you don't need to be herded anyway since you aren't going anywhere fast. It doesn't matter if you can attack or not if you can't hit anything anyway. And those melee characters who aren't Willpower, Invulnerability or Energy Armor can all get ranged attacks after level 40 so they can, in fact, attack. Some of them can get ranged attacks before that, and there's also Vet rewards and a whole horde of temp power that are ranged attacks. It's likely someone who's prepared can do more while TKed than a Villain can while under RI. Those To Hit Buffs? Not many on Villain side, which has long been talked about. The accolade? Broken on Villain side; it isn't accessible if you exemp down.

And you know what? *Everyone* can get out of Repel using Breakfrees. The consensus here is that 4 is too many to have to use (and I agree with this) but that 2 would be quite fair.

Do I actually want RI to be nerfed? Maybe but that's not why I brought it up here. The point is there are other toggle effects that are just as debilitating, if not more so, than TK. *Especially* if Breakfrees get the recommended buff vs Repel effects.

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I don't mean to sound unreasonable, but I tend to agree with EvilGeko. I have a preference to just have it not work. Right now melee is a joke in PvP, and allowing a toggled effect that completely shuts them down is too harsh against characters that already lose most of their DPS to jousting. The cost of 2 BFs is... high when people are trying to deal with Controllers and perma-Doms.

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Toggled Radiation Infection completely shuts down nearly all my Villains unless I pop multiple Insights. Can we make that not affect players too?

By the way, since we're now balancing for 1v1 I'm looking forward to nerfs to Hurricane, Slows, Phase Shift, Hibernate, Power Boost, Power Buildup, all Slows, all auto-hit toggle Debuffs, Energy Transfer, Headsplitter, Focused Accuracy, Aim, Buildup, Hurdle, Teleport and anything else that can't be countered solo without inspirations. Thanks!

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they just had to changed the mag on the repel. that's it. make it so that it requires one break free to get out of, 2 in domination.


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This would be the best IMO. If you went with 2, wouldn't you need 4 if Domination was up with tk?

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Domination only affects the Hold, not the Repel. Power Boost does affect Repels, though. Just adds to my hate on Power Boost.

Edit: Actually, since the Repel protection on Breakfrees is a percentage, it shouldn't matter what the magnitude of the Repel is anyway.

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Umm, I don't believe you can get larger insps from combining, just different types of the same tier.

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You're right, my bad. Switches types, not tiers.

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How about 1 BF = 33.4% protection from repel? Then you need 3. Then it'd translate easily with the other. You leave emerge at 50% and escape at 100%.

Besides, arn't people just gonna load up on escapes when the issue comes and we can turn 3 smalls into a big at the vendor?

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That's a good point. In PvP people will have nothing but large insps once combining goes into the game. Maybe vendor bought insps shouldn't be combinable?

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Gothika-
Can you explain that to me please. Hate to sound so noobish but I don't understand why that would work that way.

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The way toggle powers work is it constantly reapplies very short duration effects. For example, every half second TK puts a 1 second Hold on the target. If he tried to put suppression on TK, then it would end up suppressing after 1 second.

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I thank you for addressing all of these concerns from the player base.
My question is would it be easier or less game changing to add "Repel Supression" as you say you are adding "Cage Supression"? I do not know if it is in the form of IO's or buffs to powersets or what, but it seems that the IO route would be a fun way to do it to help offset the break free "cost".

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He can't. Since Repels are toggles they'd almost instantly suppress themselves.

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castle, since ur actually reading this, please dont nerf acrobatics. with the new psy blast set having tk blast and a permeable power boost, your dooming any chance of high end pvp in this game.

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agree

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Disagree, Acrobatics has long needed a nerf. No power boost type power should affect KB though (or anything that's not a 'real' mez), imo. A Blaster using Power Boost + Power Thrust getting a 35.5 mag KB with 0 enhancements in the power is just silly.

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how about a dom lifting/levitating you for mag 34.

without powerboost.

add in powerboost, goes to what, 68...

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Domination doesn't affect KB. Vanguard Medal and Megalomaniac Accolades do, however. Imo Castle should just change all power boost effects (including power buildup and the accolades) to do this:

# +100% Stun Enhancement to Self for X seconds [Ignores Enhancements &amp; Buffs]
Effect does not stack from same caster
# +100% Sleep Enhancement to Self for X seconds [Ignores Enhancements &amp; Buffs]
Effect does not stack from same caster
# +100% Confused Enhancement to Self for X seconds [Ignores Enhancements &amp; Buffs]
Effect does not stack from same caster
# +100% Terrorized Enhancement to Self for X seconds [Ignores Enhancements &amp; Buffs]
Effect does not stack from same caster
# +100% Immobilize Enhancement to Self for X seconds [Ignores Enhancements &amp; Buffs]
Effect does not stack from same caster
# +100% Held Enhancement to Self for X seconds [Ignores Enhancements &amp; Buffs]
Effect does not stack from same caster

And that's it. No buffs, no debuffs, no heals, nothing else. X would be whatever duration he wants.

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They would have reduce the end cost a *lot* if they did that. Total Domination can already have a duration of over 30 seconds and you only need to click and pay endurance on that once.

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But TK has a base recharge of 60 to TD's 240, so I think a significant end cost is still justified.

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TD's recharge is 62 seconds on my Dom so no, it wouldn't be justified. The power would be nigh useless if it detoggled automatically after 30 seconds, actually.

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With that amount of recharge, you'd have tk back up in 15 seconds... 75% uptime. How is that nigh useless?

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Because I'm talking about PvE and in that 15 seconds whatever it was you needed to pin out of reach just killed you.

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They would have reduce the end cost a *lot* if they did that. Total Domination can already have a duration of over 30 seconds and you only need to click and pay endurance on that once.

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But TK has a base recharge of 60 to TD's 240, so I think a significant end cost is still justified.

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TD's recharge is 62 seconds on my Dom so no, it wouldn't be justified. The power would be nigh useless if it detoggled automatically after 30 seconds, actually.

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castle, since ur actually reading this, please dont nerf acrobatics. with the new psy blast set having tk blast and a permeable power boost, your dooming any chance of high end pvp in this game.

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agree

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Disagree, Acrobatics has long needed a nerf. No power boost type power should affect KB though (or anything that's not a 'real' mez), imo. A Blaster using Power Boost + Power Thrust getting a 35.5 mag KB with 0 enhancements in the power is just silly.

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It's too bad you can't make TK shut off after 30 seconds or so when used against players only. That'd be the closest thing to suppression.

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pretty sure it can be done.

make note of hibernate and phase's mechanism for toggling and detoggling.

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Yeah but those always detoggle after 30 seconds. The key is making it only detoggle after 30 seconds if the anchor is another player, so that it doesn't nerf TK for pve.

Honestly, though, I'd be okay with just having it turn off after 30 seconds in general, although they should maybe lower the end cost a bit if they do that.

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They would have reduce the end cost a *lot* if they did that. Total Domination can already have a duration of over 30 seconds and you only need to click and pay endurance on that once.