GuyPerfect

It's 9:05 and these doors are not handing out candeh!

Well, that's why it's a graph and not an optical illusion. The calculation's easy enough to do in my head for what it's worth, even without a chart to look at. (-:

I just counted the squares.

Crap, I think I accidentally inhaled my tiny violin.

Not to mention all the new costume pieces we've gotten in normal Issues. I mean, it doesn't sound as dramatic when you say "This new Super Booster contains nearly a FIFTH of the costumes we got in the last expansion!"

Sometimes, when a powerful attack leaves an enemy with just a tiny sliver of HP, and my next attack misses or something, I pop all my reds and yellows and hit him with the most powerful attack I have. That'll teach him!


Minor clarification: Scourge comes out to 30%. An attack against an enemy with random HP generating a random chance to Scourge will Scourge 30% of the time. Granted, this is different from an attack against an enemy with any HP dealing 30% more damage all the time, but I'm focusing more on the 25% part. (-:

Just speaking from personal experience, I've found the suggestion that an enemy has to be "almost dead" for Scourge to work to be an exaggeration. Even at 30% HP (barely over 2/3 dead), Scourge has a 50% chance to trigger, which is very good statistically: it's not more likely that it will fail than work at that point. I've had successful Scourge snipes when the enemy was practically at 50%, and I was quite amused when it happened.

Seeing chances for double damage start coming in at around the halfway mark, and knowing that with each landed hit the chances become more and more likely, I can't honestly tell someone that the benefits of Scourge only apply when you don't need it.

Try not to think of minions when you think of Scourge. Defenders can solo minions just fine even without a 30% damage boost. Think of bosses and you can see Scourge being a lot more useful.

This is true for any damage buff. Unless you save your weakest attacks for last, under no circumstances is this something that only applies to Scourge.

Were you at 100% HP?

Scourge grants a 2.5% chance to trigger for every 1% of an enemy's HP below 50%. That means at 40% HP there will be a 2.5% * 10 = 25% chance to Scourge, and at 10% HP or lower it's a 100% chance.

If you were to split the graph of enemy HP vs double damage using this formula, you'd have it a flat 100% double damage for the first 10% HP, sloping down linearly to 0% double damage between 10% HP and 50% HP and remaining a flat 0% double damage for the remaining 50% HP.

It'd look something like this:



Calculating the area of the 2x Damage region, it accounts for exactly 30% of all possible damage dealt, meaning Scourge adds an average of 30% to damage.

You'll notice this happens to match the 30% damage boost that solo Defenders now enjoy. This brings their average effective damage scalars to 0.650 * 1.30 = 0.845 for Defender and 0.750 * 1.30 = 0.975 for Corruptor.

The fact of the matter is this: we don't get new development in return for our payment (except when there's a price tag on it like Super Boosters or box expansions). However reasonable an expectation it may be that we do, our payment is explicitly defined in the User Agreement as nothing more than purchasing access to the game.

Do you feel your money has a longer reach than that? Then either stop paying or take it to court. Then you can try to convince a judge of the same things of which you're trying to convince me, and NCsoft's going to be using the same argument I am in their defense.

Deep down, I know my payment would help cover NCsoft's court fees, and while that's not a way I'd prefer my money to be used, the situation wouldn't be in my hands. I'm only paying for access.

I agree completely, and for that reason, it is an error for someone to suggest that the money they pay carries any weight. The fact that we spend money and continue to spend money is the point of interest here, not the fact that our subscription involves a $15/mo payment.

My argument is against those who assert that their $15/mo gives them the right to decide what NCsoft does behind the scenes. Being a customer matters, and NCsoft will wisely listen to the feedback of its customers, but the moment someone says "this is not what I'm paying for," they've stepped over into the realm of entitlement.

And the other single exception of the Arachnos Mace of Bane Spider Soldier Mace Mastery.

*Ptoo* I'd rather put words in my own mouth, thank you very much.

To answer the question, I doubt NCsoft could make City of Heroes free and still keep everything floating. Unless I'm mistaken, it's their largest source of revenue and if nothing else, it's what keeps the other games running.

Apply your intuition anywhere you want; in the end it doesn't matter. Our bank statements show a purchased subscription, not paid bills and salaries.


See here and here. The User Agreement was subsequently brought up to clarify what customers should expect in exchange for their payments, and product quality, management decisions and keeping the game going at all are not part of the package.

Is NCsoft dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot and make all their customers leave? Certainly not. Are they allowed to be? Absolutely. Our money doesn't dictate that one way or the other.

Wut? Did you put your brain on today? City of Heroes is the game. What kind of game? A "massively multiplayer subscription-based comic book hero and villain role-playing game" kind of game.

For reals, I show you a legal document that says "X is X" and you come right back and tell me "It doesn't say what X is!" practically quoting for yourself the part of the document that does. Are you so bent on making me wrong even when I'm right?


It doesn't have to, because that's not how legal documents work. If something is left out of a document like this, it means (and will hold up in a court of law meaning) that it is excluded. So the document didn't say that they'll send a free puppy to every subscriber? Then they explicitly will not, because the document didn't say that they will.

Sometimes you see ludicrous warnings on things like "Do not attempt to stop the blades of the chainsaw with your testicles" (I wish I was joking), but these are ever put in place for people with a lot of money who can't admit to their own mistakes. Instead, in most cases, the instruction manual will quite blatantly say something to the effect of "Use only as directed" or in some cases "Do not use at all" because of all the boneheaded losers out there who say "But you didn't say I couldn't use it like THIS!"

Despite what the Darwin Awards might indicate, more often than not it's actually the winning case in court that "you weren't following the instructions" is what decides who wins and who loses. In our game (City of Heroes, which is a subscription-based massively-multilayer online comic-book super hero game), if you sue NCsoft for not getting your free puppy, they're going to point out that it was not explicitly in the User Agreement and call you an entitled twit.


The argument being made is that since this revenue generally comes from us, the customers, we are by some monetary extension granted the right to dictate how our money is used by NCsoft. That if I pay for access to the game, it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect new development in return.

That's not the case. I can expect all I want, but if something doesn't happen the way I expect and I feel like they misused my money, I can't sue them over it because I'm only paying for access.

We are not investors: our $15 each month is not for supporting a company or its development efforts; it is for purchasing a service. This is an important distinction, because it defines what we should be expecting in return for our payments. What we should expect is access to the game. What we should not expect is absolutely anything else, including continued development and customer support.

If NCsoft one day decides that City of Heroes isn't worth the cost of upkeep, they can turn it off then and there without telling us, the customers, or even their own developers. How unexpected would that be! Should that happen, we can't do anything about it: our payments weren't made to keep the game running.

Not particularly. It was something designed to be team-exclusive content, so the fact that people can solo it kinda means something went wrong somewhere along the line.


I have (took down a number of GMs including Babbage, Kraken and Jurassik), and it was a lackluster experience. Felt more like leveraging an advantage in the game mechanics than being super and taking down big monsters.


Not really. As already mentioned, Incarnate boosts are for combat level 50 only, so the most you can expect from them is to help take GMs down a little faster in public zones.