HurlyBurly

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, but I can't talk about Issue 11 or beyond... but that's pretty much what you guys WANT me to talk about so we are at an impass.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I can only speak for myself, but I would like a much larger presence of the devs in the AT forums. Inter- and intra-AT balance is an important discussion that you, Cryptic, have basically ignored since I1 or I2. Castle pops in periodically but IMO, he has not been enough.

Where we are now is nearly as important as where we are going. Give more peeps the power to talk about current issues. Give the mission team a chance to talk about current mission bugs and design problems (and successes). Give the invention team a chance to talk about current invention successes and failures. Art, powers, all the systems have current issues that players want to have dialog with the devs about, and YOU ARE NOT DOING IT.

If SOE can require its devs to be active on their boards can you not free up a few more devs as like minded as Castle to keep us informed about the current game? Just a little?

[ QUOTE ]
Starting at 1 PM PST/3 PM CST/4 PM EST the servers will start the spin down process to have an unscheduled patch applied to all live servers.

The patch will begin at 1:30 PST 3:30 CST & 4:30 EST.

[/ QUOTE ]

Never any love for us hicks in the Mountain time zone. I was a Liberal Arts major. Any of you smarter folks in the other time zones help a poor lettered rube know what time the servers are coming back up?

I did not see a thread title about this so I'll add it here. If you, the team leader, are in the TWZ and try to invite someone to your team who is not in the RWZ, you will get a "<Name> has quit the team" message when they try to join. You are able to invite them once they are in the zone.

[ QUOTE ]
Hurly, how do you find COH's usual pace? Do you favor one AT over another, to compensate?

Just curious.

[/ QUOTE ]

I find any AT that "slows" down combat easier (but not necessarily more rewarding) to play. My first 50 was an AR/Dev /Force Blaster. Laughing Jack (Virtue) is currently and most oftenly configured as a Blastroller, though I've played every iteration the combo allows. Freespecs are you friend.

(All toons are on Virtue) Control slows combat down: PowerOfTheMind, SL 34 Ill/Stm Controller. High resists slow combat down: Heavy Hand, SL 37 Inv/SS Tanker. Large debuffs slow combat down: Dr. Penny Cillin: SL 37 Rad/Rad Defender. Pets slow combat down: Scowling Jack, TL 50 Bot/Trap/Mace Mastermind.

I gravitate toward sets that allow me to stop, resist or ignore incoming damage. That is my definition of slowing down combat. The longer my health bar stays full the slower the combat is the more butt kicking I can do.

That said, Subatomic Quark, SL 42 Elec/Elec/Elec Blaster, is one of my favorite characters. He is played Blapper all the way with a Blastroller trump card (come on like I'm gonna skip three holds!). KungFu Hustle (created before the name length was increased, hence the missing 'r' and the movie was release TYVM ) is an SL 33 MA/Regen Scrapper is a fun build. Like Quark, he can be a challenge to play.

If anyone has a mobility impaired friend or acquaintance, who may be interested in playing MMOs, but not sure they are able, I'd be happy to chat about my experiences. Drop me a PM.

[ QUOTE ]
Jason Rowe kind of made me feel sad at first, but then I thought, that's who these kind of games are perfect for. In-game, he can be who he wants to be, no one sees his disability and feels sorry for him (like I did when I first saw the picture.) I imagine virtual worlds can be a great outlet, they allow people who are constantly treated as different to be treated just like everyone else for awhile.

[/ QUOTE ]

As someone with a physical disability (spinal cord injury), I could not agree more. Passive targeting and relatively slow combat make MMOs almost the perfect games for people with mobility impairments, which makes me wonder if he still plays SWG. The NGE removed passive targeting. SWG's disabled community was very vocal about how the change made combat nearly unplayable.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You know, I have the reputation of a fanboi here, but even I can see this in a cynical light.

Look at the way this was announced. NC Soft told video game newsites before they told us here at the forums.

So perhaps this is just a way to get some good PR in the video game media to try to band-aid the wound caused by news of the recent NC Soft layoffs.

I think this weekend has very little to do with Cryptic or City of Heroes in particular. This seems to be a strictly NC Soft PR move.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, i didn't even think about that option. That explains why they told the media first. And it also explains why only Co* is getting this benefit. It would be far too obvious if they did this for ALL NC Soft MMOs. As is, it just seems like a random act of kindness. Very good thinking Taser, lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a notoriously short memory, but can you remember a single time where the boards were the source of positive, announcement-level news? NCSoft Reds are good at linking to breaking news. Rarely, if ever, is it broken here. I'm not opposed to NCSoft's PR department getting cherry scoops, but do they have to get all of them?

[ QUOTE ]
Once every 24 hours versus once a week, Shall we do the math or are the numbers obvious?

Congrats on completeing this, a reward well earned.

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand some servers are able to raid the blob more often than others, but the simple fact is that Heroes can far outpace Villains for enhancements, if not in sheer number of enhancements than in quality of enhancements through trading.

I was an early and often raider. All of my primary powers and almost all of my secondary powers are fully HO'd on my main. My main has nine HO's in his tray, and I have two alternate characters each with 10. I have not even gone to a raid in 8-10 months.

To say that the 24-hour timer somehow gives villains in advantage over heroes in the procurement of these enhancements is ludicrous. I can understand how some might think the strike force is "easier" to arrange since it involves only eight members, but the narrow range of viable builds and the extremely small trading pool completely negates that. We are looking at six months to a year, if not longer, before there is any parity between heroes and villains -- and then only on the builds that are able to participate (or those accounts that are sharing their enhancements with their second or third characters).

[ QUOTE ]
First the assertion that AOEs will result in mad aggro and death. Speaking as someone who has and uses M30 grenade, this isn't true, especially in the late game when your pets are throwing out multiple AOEs.

[/ QUOTE ]

I am going to have to agree with the above. As a Bot/Trap MM, I have never drawn any extra aggro from any of my AoE attacks/skills ('Trops) that I could not easily handle. The Bots just spit out too much damage for the AI to notice lil' ol' me. All a new AoE attack will require is wating for the minions to aggro and perhaps shifting an attacking target if you do draw aggro. Nothing new there.

[ QUOTE ]
A full team of 75 level 50 characters should have a bit more than a tiny PvE base.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is it too silly to mention that a "full team of 75 level 50 characters" could bang out Influence at an insane rate? Soloing kora fruit mission to test my I6 AR/Dev I pulled in something like 9 million Influence in an afternoon. So a SG of 30 level 50 characters can easily bang out 540,000 Prestige an afternoon. Over two weeks of casual play you are looking at 7,560,000 Prestige or the start of a good sized base and that is not even counting the hundreds of millions of Influence just waiting to be converted on the current 50s.

I have found, playing my level 30 Elec/Elec and my level 50 AR/Dev/FF Blaster, that it is not very difficult to manage your health so that you have some Defiance boosting, though I'm only talking of the effect between 30-40% of health. (After that, at higher levels, you are taking way too much risk for any kind of systematic reward.)

I am concerned that the Defiance Bar seems to have a bit of lag when comparing it to the health bar over the toon's head. Further, the decimal is not entirely intuitive. I do know that when the bar is full your damage goes through the roof. Definitely got me out of trouble a few times! Any chance we could get an icon or something that gives the damage boost as opposed to a decimal representation of your health? Personally, I would prefer a vertical bar labeled with the damage increase percentage.

Defiance certainly appears to be something to be used while clearing out minions ind lieutenants. I would not want to have to rely on it while soloing a boss, though it would be (and has been) kind of nice at the last second. (Never let yourself get surrounded by four or five +1 Tuatha'an minions. I barely made it out and only because of Defiance spitting out the uber damage.)

I like the fact that Defiance is not something that should be used in every conflict. Though I would like to see some increase at the high-end of the health threshold, I would not make the increase very much, maybe +10% at 40% and +20% at 30%.

Overall, I am happy with the mechanism, though I do find myself staring at that lagging Defiance Bar much more then is healthy.

There seems to be a misunderstanding -- either my own or from others in this thread -- about Blasters role in the game, but there can be no doubt that we are the total damage kings. With a few exceptions, Blasters far outclass Scrappers in damage over time. Scrappers beat us hands down with single target attacks, while we out class the in total damage with AoE's. Turn on your favorite logging program, join a group with a Scrapper of your choice (also logging damage) and a crowd controller, and by the end of any play session you will have smoked the Scrapper's damage.

Scrappers are generally Boss Killers(tm) and we are generally Minion Killers(tm). Unfortunately, given our general squishiness (until APP's) and high hate factor attacks, that means we only really come into our own in groups or with specialized theme-heavy builds (e.g. AR/Dev). This means we come into our own in groups with some form of crowd control and that Scrappers are far more independent from the other AT's. So be it. Move on. The AT's are not created equally and we can be very thankful of that.

If Blaster damage needs any boost -- and I am in no way convince we do -- then a slight increase in the base damage of our single target attacks might be the ticket. Do not give us the same cap as Scrappers or limit the higher cap to single target attacks. The game is too easy as it is past 22. Let's not make it easier.

[ QUOTE ]
Soooo...

if all the problems are good and fixed now, any estimate on when I4 will go live?

[/ QUOTE ]

Identifying is very different from fixing. I cannot imagine I4 will be ready for quite some time.

[ QUOTE ]
States has posted 114 times since 10/1/04.

*Goes to check post count of other MMO Lead Designers*

[/ QUOTE ]

CuppaJo for the Pwn!

[ QUOTE ]
But would you please comment on the increasing types of additions to the game which force grouping and require larger blocks of time in each session to complete. And the effects of these additions on "Casual Players" (for the purposes of this discussion defined as not playing for more than 2 hours in any single session) ???

[/ QUOTE ]

I am not denying that there appears to be a move toward more group dependence (e.g. "bring a few friends" missions) and time intensive content, but your definition of casual play is far too restrictive. Maybe two hours on average could be used to define casual play, but I'd say two and a half to three hours is a better range.

If your lifestyle does not allow you to block out three or even four hours, essentially dinner and a movie, on occassion to do some of the TF's or Trials, you are not even much of a casual player. You are more of an occassional player -- as I would label anyone who plays for 10 or less hours a week. There is already plenty of content, forced grouping or otherwise, for the occassional player. They are not likely to ever run out, even at the (relatively slow) rate the devs are releasing new content. The fact that this type of player may miss out on some content is unfortunate, but perhaps inevitable.

As long as the devs are devoted to doing the right thing by embedding things like respec'ing into the context of the game, as opposed to some simple (and lame) interface, occassional players will just have to realize that some extra committment may be neeed to get the most out of the game.

Gotta have the Snidely Whiplash twirling the mustache!

[ QUOTE ]
The problem is that the great soloers.... are also great in groups!

A few builds get the best of both worlds, the rest... not so much.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I think it more accurate to say the great solo AT's become awesome in groups. My Blaster only really shines, I mean becomes a real force of destruction, when he has a meat shield/controller and buffing defender in his group. There is no doubt he does not need a group to blast villains, but he does so much, much better when he is in one. Simple as that.