InfamousBrad

Jack Burton: "Where are we, Wang?"
Wang Chi: "This is the Hell of Ten Thousand Identical Warehouses, Jack."


Jack Burton: "What's in the flask, Egg? Inspiration?"
Egg Shen: "Yeah."
Jack Burton: "Thought so, good. What do we do, click on it?"
Egg Shen: "Yeah!"
Jack Burton: "Good! Thought so."


Jack Burton: "Hey, what more can a guy ask for?"
Egg Shen: "Oh, a six-enhancement bag!"
Jack Burton: "Terrific, a six-enhancement bag. Sensational. What's in it, Egg?"
Egg Shen: "Hami-O, LOTG, all that kind of thing!"

Over and over again, they've said "We will never raise the level cap." Technically, they're keeping this promise, if the 10 Incarnate levels don't raise your base stats. But only technically.

I don't mind this system, I'll probably participate in it, and in particular the idea of it being tied into new zone events really catches my eye. On the other hand? I really hate the name. In all of the lore to date, it's impossible for anyone of any other origin to become an Incarnate. Incarnates are incarnate at their origin, that is to say, they got their powers directly from the Well of the Furies.

I saw in the cellphone-cam video from the PAX East panel that Positron said that it was what "we're currently calling" it. Does that mean that you're at all open to suggestions for a different name? Because if you are, my nomination is "Signature Hero" and "Arch Villain." After all, in game mechanics terms, what separates a level 50 (or above, but you know what I mean) signature hero or arch villain from a mere elite boss (the current in-game NPC equivalent of a player character) is that they have powers not ordinarily available to others, either because they're reserved for signature heroes and arch villains and giant monsters (like the Purple Triangles of Doom) or because they're powers not typically offered to that archetype. So saying that people who buy Going Rogue, reach level 50, and participate in the new end game system "become Incarnates" makes no sense, but saying that they become "signature characters" fits the game lore perfectly.

Or I'm open to other suggestions. But seriously, "Incarnates?" Does not work for me at all.

My honest opinion? 20 seems early to me. At the very least, it is way early to be playing a Kheldian. At the time, Kheldians were designed around two assumptions: (1) by the time you unlock Kheldians, you know how to play the game, so it's okay with you if we make it harder, and (2) by the time you unlock Kheldians, you've been playing for at least 450 hours, which means that it's very likely that you have plenty of friends to team with you, so it's okay if we hand you an archetype that's only barely playable solo, that gets an average stats boost of 25% or so across the board from being on a big team. I don't think that's going to be true for the vast majority of the people who unlock Kheldians at level 20. At level 20, attribute modifiers have barely kicked in. At level 20, you don't even have your character in single-origin enhancements. At level 20, you've unlocked only 11 of the 18 powers in your primary and secondary powerset; you don't even have a feel for how one character plays, let alone how the whole game's game mechanics work.

I understand the impulse. Right now, the target for "hours to 50" is 250 hours. Someone who plays the industry-average 22 hours a week has to look at people who are "more privileged" than them for almost three months, for three months they have to ask "why can't I play a shapeshifter?" and "why can't I play an Arachnos soldier?" If they have alt-itis (and this game really encourages alt-itis), it could easily be a year or more; it's not uncommon to hear some people say that they didn't get their first 50 for two years.

And there's a practical argument for making Kheldians and Arachnos as common as dirt: the 2% of the player base that plays those characters are screaming for upgrades and improvements (well, to some of the combos), and if you were the lead designer, you'd have a hard time justifying spending big money on a game system that will only affect half a percent or one percent or even 2% of your customers. If you want to see Peacebringers or Warshades or Soldiers or Widows get some developer attention, there need to be a lot more of them. This would do that.

Me, I'd set it at 40, not 20. But I can live with it.

If I had War Witch's job and the resources it would take, I would do for their map editing tools what they just did for their mission-editing tools, even if it took an engine overhaul to do it. And I would make it a priority, from now on, that every issue comes with at least one new instance tileset.

Oh, and I'd make all cut-scenes voiced, and add vocal "reaction" noises (like a grunt of pain when being hit) to all NPCs.

Put me down for a plants/poison controller(1) and a shield/sword tanker(2), and maybe an illusion/energy(3) dominator and an ice/ice brute(4). I'd also like a shivan summoning/radiation emission mastermind.(5)

Footnotes:
(1) "Poison isn't very heroic." And Dark Blast, Dark Miasma, Dark Melee, Dark Armor, Umbral Blast, and Umbral Aura are? Besides, you're going to have poison-wielding heroes by the end of day one of Going Rogue; at that point, the only remaining question is whether the only heroes who get to use Poison are masterminds, or not.

(2) I really do want it more for concept reasons than for game mechanics reasons. But I admit Castle is probably not wrong to be terrified (if, in fact, he is terrified) of giving Parry to a tanker. And the concept of a reflexes/broadsword tanker just makes me grin like an idiot; the only thing left in the whole game that could hit that would be Hamidon.

(3) "Domination won't do anything for illusionist dominators." As opposed to what it does for gravity dominators? And yes, yes it will: it will still give them the ability to auto-hold and auto-confuse bosses. If it doesn't do anything for Phantom Army, fine.

(4) "Recharge debuffs decrease incoming fury." And Cloak of Fear and Oppressive Gloom in Dark Armor don't?

(5) There's no reason to give masterminds Dark Miasma and not give them Radiation Emission. And Shivan Summoning really is low-hanging fruit; one developer could knock it out in an afternoon. No new models. Only two powers, and their animations and FX could be copied from the Necromancy ones and recolored. Take all of an hour to decide which powers the Shivans, Shivan Smashers, and Shivan Destroyers get with each upgrade. Powers: (1) Summon Shivan (1) Neutrino Bolt (2) X-Ray Beam. (6) Upgrade Shivans (8) Electron Haze (12) Summon Smasher (18) Summon Decimator (120 second duration, 15 minute cool-down, immune to recharge buff) (26) Summon Destroyer (32) Empower Shivans. Oh, and if Summon Decimator is too much? Even with that duration and cooldown? Fine, replace it with (18) Shiva Detonation (a version of Fallout that only works on dead Shivan pets). C'mon, do it! Even after Demon Summoning, masterminds will still lag everybody in powersets.

Thanks much, War Witch; I'm a big fan. Much of this is pretty much what I'd guessed, but you said one thing that would make me tear my hair out if I still had any. I just don't "get" this:

Only recently, and not entirely on purpose. I got lazy and used my alt build instead of respeccing on one mid-40s character, and didn't have any IOs to slot into them, so just as an experiment (or so I thought) I filled the enhancement slots with SOs, just like in the good old days, and went off to play to see if the new build suited me at all.

When 2XP weekend is over, I'll probably go through and swap a bunch of them out for a mix of Hami-O's, frankenslotted IOs, and level 50 common IOs, and be even better. But for now, I can still take down even relatively tough Elite Bosses with just a hatful of inspirations and no temp powers, and none of the teams I've been on have complained. There are worse things running around in this game than a character with no IOs.

I haven't had any trouble finding teams on my human/dwarf form Kheldians (I have one of each), not for being a Kheldian, nor for skipping Nova form.

I wouldn't kick a mastermind for skipping the pets. I'd just roll my eyes and ignore them until I could get back to my favorite global channel to complain about them. What I've seen more often, and I treat the same way, is (gods help us) a willpower or invulnerabilty tanker who skips all the toggles, who just takes the passives. Had one of those on a team I was on just yesterday. Also had no taunt and no AoE attacks. Useless as the paps on a boar hog. So instead, my human-form warshade and the blaster who'd taken tough took turns soaking the alpha strikes and trying to hold aggro.

Because here's the thing: unless you have the difficulty sliders completely maxed out, this game is so, so easy for an 8-person team that quite frankly, one entirely useless person tagging along with the team is hardly the end of the world. Heck, that team even had two completely useless people, the other one was a VERY low level pistols blaster with no enhancements, happily banging away without ever hitting or hurting any enemies. We still cleared every map fast enough.

Some people are just game snobs. Live a little. Treat the one or two completely useless people on your team as a pleasantly random difficulty increase, and prove that your oh-so-perfectly tuned build is as uber leet as you say it is.

I chuckled when I got to this quote: "Villains can experience Paragon City™ for the first time." Really? I experience Paragon City at least once every 5 levels: I set fire to part of it, rob at least one bank, blow up a few dozen people's cars there, it's all quite fun. But I know what you mean.

I'm really not crazy about the Dual Pistols video for two reasons. Even though many players do, in fact, stand that close to NPCs when they shoot, it's going to look silly to people who don't play City of Heroes to have groups of enemies just standing there, 8 to 10' away, doing nothing, while you flail around madly throwing bullets in every direction except at them. And secondly, even so, none of them actually ever seems to take any damage or fall down. So the impression the video leaves is that Dual Pistols is about throwing ammo in every direction but the target, leaving the targets completely unharmed.

That demo that was done at Hero Con, where the one resistance member guns down half a dozen Praetorian Clockwork, was a much better demonstration of what the powerset is about. You'd have to reshoot it to reflect the new Swap Ammo power (and, sadly, to remove the doves), but it was much closer to what the powerset deserves.

There's some kind of a patch. Live servers came down 10 minutes ago. Whether or not there's more to it than an exploit patch we won't know until it comes back up, probably.

OK, I don't get it. Are we talking unlocking Kheldians at hero level 20 and Soldiers of Arachnos at villain level 20, or are we getting whole new epic archetypes?

Oh, this one's easy for me. I'd tweak the PPD and the Circle of Thorns so that mobs never drop out, only get added. Even all the way back to the Life Mages, who could quite plausibly become quite annoying if you kept adding powers to them every 5 or 10 levels to level 50. And to be fair, I shudder to think what a level 50 SWAT Equalizer would be like. But it routinely annoys me, with both factions, that for many, many levels at a time they only have 2 lieutenants, 2 bosses, and 3 or maybe 4 minions. It leaves it seeming like every spawn is absolutely identical.

I agree that the hero side of the game desperately needs more of The Family; mobster villains and supervillains are still a mainstay of comics. I'd extend them all the way down to level 5 (as part of the still desperately needed level 5-20 content rewrite). And yes, please, please update their costumes; at the very least, get rid of those stupid-looking purple suits.

While we're talking villains in suits, Crey should extend a lot farther down, too ... as (so far as your character knows) good guys. After all, they're (a) the city's biggest employer, supposedly, and (b) prominently displayed in the tutorial. It would add punch to the later Crey content if the player felt betrayed by them.

Don't you dare take out the Goldbrickers, they've got some of War Witch's best dialog. Just extend them 5 levels and add another level 20-25 strike force, a sequel to The Aeon Conspiracy and the Virgil Tarikoss TF, where we go up against Dr. Aeon, and we see what, exactly, he had in mind when he created them as his private army.

And one last change: go through every mission with Longbow in it, and ask yourself all over again, "Should this mission really be versus Longbow? Or should it be versus Private Security, or the PPD, or the Legacy Chain, or Wyvern, or Hero Corps instead?"

Really, this time? Or are you just yanking our chains, like you were the last three times?

I keep TweetDeck running on my spare laptop, so I was in Vanguard HQ within 10 minutes of the original tweet getting posted. 40 minutes later, I went away and did something else.

You keep using that word "imminent." I don't think it means what you think it does.

Remember, the bad protest is the one with all the head injuries.

P.S. Uh, D_R? They kind of did ditch the pom-poms. The customizable energy melee fists are much more transparent, look a whole heck of a lot less like pom-poms. Check 'em out, even if you want to keep the pink color.

(P.P.S. I just now, while the servers were down, ordered a new Alienware to retire my nearly decade-old Frankenbox, specced specifically to support UltraMode. Well, and one other game with equally ridiculous "recommended" system specs. Requiem et pacem, old friend, but in one swell foop you went from ridiculously high end to barely minimum system specs on processor and graphics card, which would require new mobo, new memory, and a new power supply. That's too many components at once.)

Absolutely. I had to be pried out of PvP in WAR to PvE, unless I was only going to be on for a half an hour or less. But I don't think that the problem in this game is primarily balance related, nor even that you have to learn new roles for your powers. It's two-fold, in my opinion:

1) Hit and run just isn't fun. You get someone down to a quarter health, and then 30 seconds later they're a quarter mile away and have broken aggro. But even this could be fixed if ...

2) There's nothing to fight for. They can't let us gain XP in PvP until they solve the problem of people taking turns killing each other without fighting back. There's no reward for winning at the only territory-control game. You can't point to anything other than your score (on a scoreboard that nobody ever sees) and say "I accomplished that" or (more importantly) "we accomplished that." It's all just completely pointless. So people go level up another character in PvE instead, where they can see their rewards and show off what they've achieved.