Infatum

Costume Contests

Because twinking your SG Mate's alt should be a public affair.

This thread is some sort of awesome wrapped in a delicious layer of win. Can't wait for your next review.

I'd be game for something like this if it was on Virtue. I've run a couple TFs now with just scrappers, tankers and the odd blaster (basically anyone who wasn't support, and was crazy enough to join knowing there wouldn't be any support), they're always a blast.

We've booted the Crey butt first through their sad attempts at portal technology, thrown down Ruladak the Weak and shown him that he should have been a Scranker if he wanted to call himself strong, now it's time for our next adventure in wanton destruction courtesy of Justin "Probably won't give his number until we're already done with the TF" Augustine. The details:

Justin Augustine Task Force
The Chantry
Saturday 6/27 10 PM EST/7PM PST
Levels 44-50
24 Merits
Scrappers, Tankers and equivalents only

This will of course be a TF Scranker run, which means two scoops of team splits and three scoops of crazy. Sadly Justin's TF isn't exactly full of action packed excitement, so we'll have to double our efforts to make up for his propensity for fail.

Regardless, after Augustine is Faathim, and the fact I'm not sure we *can* finish Faathim's TF makes me all the more excited to try, so think of this run as an appetizer for next time

Roster 8/8
Infatum
Soul Fane
Brunhilda Tyrsdottir
Phenom X4
Transhade
Hellion Omega
Ozora Nightdreamer
Hypricon

I was pretty sure he covered all those facts when he said Blue Steel was a scrapper, I mean sure some of us boil water for our coffee with rage about things other than Tub Ci's release, but honestly, what scrapper *hasn't* destroyed the periodic table at one point or another?

Given I recently ran a Dr. Q with 6 Scrappers and 2 Tankers followed by a Sara Moore last night with 5 Scrappers a Tanker and a Blaster... the only "Must have" I have is that people be at least half as crazy as I am, everything else is gravy.

Our run was successful at 2:51. We hit numerous rough patches due to stacking Vengeance, but in the end we prevailed

Ruladak the Weak was put firmly in his place, and much Rularuu butt was kicked by all.

Many thanks to all of Task Force Scranker! I should have some details up about a Thursday Justin run up sometime tomorrow. I also must give credit to Zero-Celsius who joined up despite my warnings and showed us all that Blasters can scrap it up with the best of us!

Great job again everyone!

Forming up in the Shard now, bring a few awakens and a good hearty thirst for violence.

[ QUOTE ]
Sounds like chaos ... I mean fun ... if you want another tanker im in "Phenom X4"

[/ QUOTE ]

Any tanker that would willingly team with a bunch of crazy scrappers is alright in my book

All the original hero side TFs are pretty terrible, Positron just magnifies that by subjecting you to said "terrible" for longer than the rest while in a level range that many people find unbearable to begin with.

Villain - Silver Mantis
She's a scrapper's dream girl, what can I say?

Hero - Breakneck
He's one of the few "Hero" npcs that actually feels like a hero. I like to think that's just because the devs never really show the assumed sacrifices the living heroes are making to keep heroing or what not, but truth be told most of them really come across as if they *like* being a cut above the wretched masses and seem more like they're on a power trip than actually making a sacrifice.

Posted a thread in Virtue for this for tomorrow night. It will be glorious!

So this past weekend I threw together a Dr. Quaterfield and it was actually a lot of fun (Hard to believe, I know). We had 6 Scrappers and 2 Tankers, and a big heaping helping of unbridled chaos. Completed the entire thing in 3:47 which I like to think is impressive given most of us (including myself) had never even done it before.

The whole thing went so well, that several of us are hankering to do it all over again. So here's the deal:

Sara Moore Task Force
Levels 40-50
Tuesday 6/23
10:00 PM EST/7:00 PM PST

Scrappers and Tankers Only

Our MO will be the same as the Dr. Q. run: Charge, Wait for No One, Team Split as frequently as possible.

If you need a Mentor for this level range please keep in mind that it will be up to you to keep up with them, some of us are particularly hard to keep up with especially when "stealthing" missions by dismissively ignoring ambushes and other spawns.

Please post here if you'll be attending, if we don't get enough we'll recruit until full on Virtue Badges tomorrow night.

Roster (5/8):
Infatum
Brunhilda Tyrsdottir
Soul Fane
October Demon
Phenom X4

[ QUOTE ]
Well, then I think the solution would be not to die then, correct?

[/ QUOTE ]

Or to have a self rez that buffs your damage and recharge to make up for lost time >_>

[ QUOTE ]
See BaBs? SEE?!?

Put a stop to it before it gets out of hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's too late now, this "confusion" will persist even until after I16 goes live, and we'll have team leaders kicking people with custom powers because "LOL coloors r nerf".

[ QUOTE ]
We need to reunite Task Force Scranker for the other Shadow Shard TFs!

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely! I doubt we'll be able to get the exact same crew together, but we should be able to find some like minded individuals. Why don't you PM me when a good time would be for you to run the Sara Moore TF (and of course pass the word on if you know of anyone else). I'm available most evenings so I'd be up for any time this week/weekend personally.

Once I get a workable time, I'll post in the Virtue boards and see if we can wrangle up most of TF Scranker, and some new recruits if not. This time when we finish we can work out when to do the next one.

Yes, Task Force Scranker was unstoppable on Saturday. I was a little leery even starting a Dr. Q after several people chimed in with completion time estimates as high as 8 hours, but once I saw what we had for a team I knew we had nothing to worry about

Was my first time running one, and was an absolute blast thanks to everyone on the team (which is saying a lot given how monotonous that TF is).

I have yet to encounter an arc where *not* using a defeat all would have at all hurt the suspense of disbelief.

I don't rate down an arc specifically for defeat alls (Although if they end up making the arc less enjoyable its rating may suffer for that), but I really see no reason authors should be using them, they've added nothing to the gameplay experience or the story in all the times I've encountered them both in MA and in Dev content.

[ QUOTE ]
These, I beleive are all acheivable in a time frame of months, rather than the years it would take to excise AVs from the game seamlessly, even if the Devs wanted to.

[/ QUOTE ]

I largely agree with your priorities, but I don't see where you're pulling the year+ estimate for excising signature AVs from. There is already a function in place to handle the AV to EB transition, I won't pretend to know everything about the CoH engine, but claiming that modifying that function would be a year long endeavor is incredibly far fetched and puts any discussion of doing so unfairly into "won't happen" land.

Having spent the past 8 years working as a programmer, I could take a stab at a counter estimate, but I think that's irrelevant to the discussion and would be incredibly uneducated on my part regardless of qualifications. Suffice it to say we don't know the cost of such a move, so all that can be discussed here is the benefit.

[ QUOTE ]
Just out of curiosity: any of the responders in this thread made any MA Arcs? If so, have they already, or do they plan on, making any with Arch Villains?

[/ QUOTE ]

The arc I'm personally working on at the moment includes neither AVs nor EBs, but the main antagonist in it is not worthy of such a status in my book anyhow. I know a lot of people use the MA solo or in small teams, and without easy ways of categorizing difficulty at the moment, I tend to lean towards keeping my arcs accessible to everyone, but that's a personal preference really.

[ QUOTE ]
But in any case, I'm sure there are people in the game (out of 150k, pprobably every conceivable opinion is reflected) whose experience would be diminished if they felt like the signature hero of the universe were just some chump they could easily take down solo. That's actually beside the point, kind of.

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you fought Statesman as an EB? He isn't a chump, nor do I want him to be one.

[ QUOTE ]
The point is YOU don't like it. Even if every one of the other 150,000 people were united in one voice against you, you'd still not like the fact that you are overshadowed by Statesman. That's fine.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes that is the point, I'm here voicing my opinion, and asking my detractors what the consequences of going this route is. So far you have not come out and said that you would miss having AV signature characters, only that there are theoretical people out there that would. Well maybe my theoretical people outnumber yours given you don't even appear to be part of your theoretical population where as I am along with a few others I know.

Honestly though I think most people who like the signature characters being powerful would be ok with Statesman still being able to flatten most players solo if they didn't use inspirations or temps. (He is a tough EB, many people can't solo him even with inspirations)


[ QUOTE ]
MY point is:
1) There is always going to be a critter that has bigger numbers than you; they are NEEDED.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I'd like more not less, but I want them to *feel* like they should have bigger numbers, not just *have* bigger numbers.

[ QUOTE ]
2) Since those are going to exist, there is no reason to exclude the Signature Heroes from that status UNLESS doing so would improve the game significantly. I have yet to be convinced that this is the case.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a handful of people whose experience would be improved significantly by this change. You have yet to show anyone who would be hurt by it, as you yourself have yet to actually show any real attachment to the signature characters only a general distaste for ideas that don't help you specifically.

[ QUOTE ]

Many archvillains are easy for a tema to steam-roll but not all. Very powerful archvillains, such as those found in the end-game task-forces, or possible through the AE, can confound poorly put together teams. Downgrade them to EBs and those same teams would flatten them.

[/ QUOTE ]

We went over this earlier but...

Aeon in the STF *should* be an AV because of his device. Wretch and the other flunkies should be heavily supported EBs.

Recluse at the end of the STF *should* be an AV because of his Web, his henchies on the other hand should be aggro linked EBs that are tied to the flier and have powerful backup themed to their branches of arachnos.

Romulus at the end of the ITF *should* be an AV because of the nictus infusion, but when he is with Requiem they should be heavily supported EBs (and should actually be linked to their support).

I can provide other examples if you like, but again if they have a decent story excuse, fine, if not EB them and ramp up the spawn with generic EBs and other goodies so it's actually a challenge.

[ QUOTE ]
I would argue that drawing extra EBs depending on how many characters are in the party, aside from all practicla consdierations, is an even bigger and less believable mcguffin than givign every single archvillain uber-duper power boost of some kind. It might work reasonably well for "teams", but what about the lone bad guys? If you went to take on Nemesis, and found him having a beer with his friends Tyrant, Countess Crey, Doctor Vazilhok, and Vanessa DeVore,

[/ QUOTE ]

I was never implying additional named EBs would be used. My original suggestion was to add generic EBs to each group that didn't have one and use those instead. Most late game groups either have EBs already, or have bosses that would be very challenging if upgraded to EBs.

[ QUOTE ]
The issue here is that conceptually, in the minds of the creators of the game, that adversity DOES have a reason to be there (presumably).

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly if they *want* to give story reasons why the Freedom Phalanx is so much better than everyone else so be it, but as I have asked several times already: What does that accomplish?

Does that add fun somehow? Does someone here like being their lackeys? I want challenge, I want some AVs, but the specific point here is that certain characters are crapping on the fun of some players for no reason that I can see aside from laziness on the developer's part or some hidden love they have for their in game avatars which defies good business sense.

I want challenging encounters, I want AVs, but if you're going to put characters in the game that by all appearances are essentially the same as 90% of the players I've met in game, I don't want them showing me up at every turn like some sort of terrible author insert from a bad MA arc.

[ QUOTE ]
Granted, but as Butane notes above, using a McGuffin for every single boss fight would fast approach the point of rediculousness. Comic writters have long since realized this and dispensed with any need for consistency in the power level, and even gross capabilities of characters (any long time Doctor Strange fans such as myself will be familiar with the phenominon where something which is done easilly in one issue will later be described as theoretically impossible and visa-versa; magical time travel is a good example). Instead the comi writters use whatever works best for the narrative. the AV/EB scaledown is essentially the 'writters' of CoH doing the same thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which is why I've suggested turning some AV fights into multi-EB fights (any team that would mow through multiple EBs would also mow through a single AV, most AVs are easy already).

But honestly if this power scaling thing is so acceptable, why not reverse it? Have a mission or two where you fight the entire freedom phalanx and they're all lieutenants, because in this issue of City of Heroes you're the star? Obviously that'd be ridiculous and not exceptionally fun, but that's pretty much how some people such as myself see the current AV mechanic. It's ridiculous and silly in the majority of places its used. A team shows up and all of the sudden Mr. Natural Manticore can take freight trains to the chest?

I can and do beat these jokers into the pavement, but it doesn't change the fact that they're numerically superior for no reason whatsoever. It's hard to find any sense of accomplishment in winning over adversity that conceptually has no reason to be there, and makes me feel less super given the time and effort overcoming said adversity took.

Chalk another person up for preferring nights. It seems like currently the game is stuck in the height of summer with the days being as long as possible.

[ QUOTE ]
Instead of thinking of AVs as munchkins, look at it from a comic book angle. Lord Recluse isn't an AV because he's better than you, he's an AV because this issue he's appearing in a team title rather than a solo title. One issue it takes the entire Avengers to take down Doctor Doom, another Spider-Man punks him by himself. AVs are the game's mechanical version of writer's fiat.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even in that situation, what is better writing? The entire Avengers being needed because Doctor Doom is suddenly abnormally badass for no reason what so ever, or the entire Avengers being needed because Doctor Doom has gotten his hands on the Magical McGuffin which makes him ten times as powerful?

As I said earlier in this thread, I'm fine with signature characters temporarily becoming AVs when the story gives reasons for it, but not when it is totally arbitrary.