Judgement_Dave

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Upstairs in the VIP lounge.

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Thank you! I will have to remember that, no more 'death runs' through Steel from the Yellow Line on my low end toons

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If you ever need to get a lowby to a tailor and don't have Pocket D VIP access then the tailor in Independence Port can often be easier to get to than the one in Steel. The IP icon is near the Kings Row gate and usually there's only 1 or 2 Family spawn to avoid.

If you missed it, Secret World has a small thread in the Culture section.

That's still no guarantee of it even progressing to open beta within 2 months.

And after such a small I15 (possibly due to things being bumped) it looked likely that I16 would be hitting some form of beta PDQ.

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yeah I don't think GR will be anywhere near as "big" as COV, but there's a couple of very often asked for things (the whole going rogue idea, and pistols powers are my own personal wants from this), if they're done well (new stuff works, and doesn't break old stuff in the process), and it isn't too expensive (£20, maybe £25 with a month sub included) then I'll be happy.

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I only just pay about £25 for a new game let alone an expansion for an old game. £15 is much better

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Where do you get your games from? don't think I've seen a new release game at the £25 mark for years. (well unless its been in games deal of the week and it wasn't all that popular)

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Suspect when Shazan says new games that they are referring to complete unopened games that are new to them rather than games that have only just been released.

In the past year or two I shifted to £15-25 for a new game - waiting for releases I'm interested in to drop in price. Even better if I can get a 2nd hand copy for a tenner.

Makes sense since I've probably got several hundred hours of play if I just completed the games I've got but haven't even installed yet...

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Naming isn't an issue for me luckily, I'm Carnifax both sides of the pond.

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Which account will you be using then? Take it they're not gonna merge both of them?

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I dunno, a bit of clarification that way would be appreciated too. I've asked previously what happens if we own the handle both sides (my EU one is the older of the two) but didn't get an answer.

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If I were you, I'd do what I did, and rename my US forum account name to something slightly different, so you don't have that problem.

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And that may lead to issues if US is given precedence in naming conflicts and John Doe registers today as FloatingFatMan...

I changed my US then changed it back 5 min later after realising this.

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I think the no-color option won't be available because of PVP. You have to know who attacked and what he used; it would be odd to be hit by an invisible fireball.

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But won't the combat tab still tell you?

I'd guess that a lot of powers may look fairly similar and that the combat tab will need to be used to tell what sort of damage you're taking anyway.

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So if you REALLY wanted to go, you could go over to the comiccon convention?

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It's not impossible, just rather unlikely.

I do see Carni's point. They should done more shows on the EU mainland and it's a pity they didn't. But now, there isn't going to be ANY more shows with NC Soft in attendence in the EU...

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Have they actually stated that?

I know it's very unlikely now that virtually all EU business seems to be handled stateside, and if we do see them I'll be watching out for porcine aeronauts, but have they said that they plan not to attend any events in the EU?

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I wonder if there'd be a Succubus as a demon.

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Possibly.

Sort of.

Only male.

Incubus.

Safer and easier to get away with as sexism only ever works one way.

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As I see it, the easiest way to cut down on the powerlevelling is to do what was originally intended. Launch the MA with reduced xp (why it was given full xp from start I have no idea... but a change of heart with the Devs). Instead of removing items and thus giving Story-creators an invalid Arc, just to stop a farming tool... reduce the xp.


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So the issue you have seems to be with PLing, not with xp being awarded.

There will be ways and means to reduce/discourage PLing without removing (or even reducing) xp from the MA. Your solution is similar to the Judge Death school of policing. Punish everybody and the few who are the real problem will be dealt with.

Reduce the xp by just a few percent and it won't affect those farming exploits or using the auto-SK to mass PL.
Reduce the xp past a few percent and virtually no-one will play MA except maybe a few RP groups, challenge competitions and the odd SG/group arc (maybe a subset of the RPers).
Remove xp completely and even the latter group would probably diminish.

After stating that MA would have reduced xp/rewards the devs obviously went to full xp for a reason. And I don't think it was an oversight or just a whim - they did it in the belief that full xp (or such a high percentage that it may as well be full) was needed to make MA a success.

They'd have done better releasing at 75% or 80% then buffing it up to 90% or 100% if everythuing seemed fine, but the time to do that has passed.

Now it would be a nerf. Players don't like nerfs.

IMO at a drop to 75%-90% You'd probably get a lot of non-farmers put off MA hearing that xp had been nerfed but not neccesarily knowing the details. But the exploit farmers and the auto-SK PLers would still use it as the returns could still be better than most alternatives.

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Had my shock yesterday since I finally had labelled my arc finished, then I find out that people cannot play it or find it. Reason... Something had happened to the destructive list and thus no destructive item had been "chosen".


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And the secondary issue you have is how the devs react to exploits.

Can't really argue there - I'm no fan of their actions (in regard to unannounced MA assset-removal affecting legitimate arcs) and the apparently failed implementation (or non-use) of anti-exploit/farming measures that were mentioned before MA launched.

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Farming always existed in the game and doing Frostfire multiple times never bothered most people I think. But at least there was a level limit to that mission. Not so with architect farming. You can level up from 1 to 50 with always the same mission.
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EDIT2: Maybe putting a level limit range on architect missions could be a good idea? For example you need to choose a range of 5 levels: from 1-5, 22-26, 43-47 etc. And/or abandon the automatic level adjustment feature (except when you are in test mode)? Farm teaming is so easy now because you can play at level 45+ without being sidekicked.


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I think you'll find the only real problem is the farming of arcs/missions with exploits. Farming non-exploitative missions is much the same as any in-game farming - there's a risk:reward within limits acceptable to the devs and it shouldn't be too far outside dev-content missions (though some characters may do slightly better due to picking mobs that they perform well against).

Exploits involving multiple buffing allies or exclusively using non-offensive mobs are both exploits as they reduce the risk to zero, so risk:reward shoots off the scale. The exploits provide something for nothing.

I'd say no to level ranges as you suggest. Yes it could hit farms, but IMO it would hit story writers as well by cutting down the potential audience they may have if they aim at anything other than the 45-50 range.

As a non-farmer, one of the great advantages to MA is that there are stories that I'm not going to outlevel. I can happily go off and play other arcs/TFs and dev-content and return and still play them at my natural level. It's also interesting at times to return to the odd arc that you enjoyed and see how it plays at a higher level.

I've never been on a MA farm SK'd - so there may be the odd error in the following, but this is how I think it currently works and what I'd look at changing if that is the case:
I think that the only issue you have with the levels is the characters auto-SKing to 45 whilst a 50 clears the map.

I'd look at tackling that problem a different way rather than impose level ranges and removing auto-SKs.

The issue is because the auto-SK 45s can have the work done by a 50 and so are sucking up lvl50+ foe xp at -5 levels to the highest in the team. So they're getting massive rewards.

If possible, I'd look at limiting the level range for xp/rewards where auto-SK is being used. So instead of a 5 level range for earning rewards (so a character needs to be within 5 levels of the highest team member to earn rewards) I'd look at a 3 or 4 level range if (and only if) auto-SK is used in the mission.

IIRC Nothing outside MA uses auto-SK (auto-exemp yes, but auto SK no) so this sort of change, if possible, would only affect MA arcs. And it should have minimal affect on teams that aren't PL'ing.

OK - you could still PL using bridges, SKing/exemping or using a MA misison with a 3 or 4-level range. But even just reducing the team level range would affect how much xp the lowest could earn, thus slowing PLing through AE. ANd if it's slowed then it becomes slightly less attractive.
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First of all they need to remove the force field ally exploit. And then I thought of this suggestion: diminish xp for every time you play the same mission in architect. EDIT: You could then of course remove your farm arc and publish it with a new ID to gain full xp again, but at least it will make you lose your top spot at the list


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I'd disagree with removing bubbling allies. A while back I suggested (in passing) that the number of allies with the same buffing sets be limited if possible. An author may have a legitimate story-based reason to want a bubbling ally for an arc, so keeping them in is good. What is less likely to have a story-reason and more likely to have an exploitative reason is to have 4 or 5 bubbling allies in a single mission. So a limit of 1 or 2 would leave them available for telling stories (which appears to be the devs prime rationale for the MA)

I wouldn't placed diminishing returns that last for ever on an arc (only ever do it once per character for full rewards). Diminishing returns for repeating a single arc within a short time period is too easy to sidestep. Publish the same arc multiple times (using multiple accounts if needed) and cycle through the copies. Even easier now that there are extra slots to purchase.

And what happens if you do the old 'don't finish the mission, exit & reset'? Does that count as doing the arc? If so, are you proposing that you get full rewards for the first time you start an arc? What if I start an arc then need to log or dc?

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Last time I was going down one by one the list of architect missions (starting with most popular), about 7 out of 10 were farm missions with bubble allies. I filed complaints to the devs about each of them


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AFAIK This is the correct course of action if you find exploitative farms - and helps the devs identify and remove them. If the MA exploit farms are putting you off then doing the odd play through/petition for a few of them should help the situation.

Maybe farms wouldn't even have got so bad if more people did this rather than stopping using the MA and posting about what a problem farming is.

BTW - if your idea about diminishing returns was implemented then, as you state, you may get a "unpublish and publish again" cycle for farms. Whilst that would remove the farms from the top of the rankings/search results it wouldn't help people to get exploitative farms removed (and the accompanying loss of slot for the author) as the exploitative farm would be removed and republished without having enough time to be banned/looked at by GMs.

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I just don't like to make or look for architect teams when people are likely to ask for a farm mission.


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IMO this is the wrong attitude and just helps the aspects you dislike ruin the game.

If you do like the non-farm MA content then you should make a team and when recruiting state that you're doing "non-farm story arcs" (or whatever). If after joining anyone starts asking for the big farm missions: remind them in team chat that you're doing non-farm stories and that you made this clear.

They can either carry on with the story arcs, leave or if they become disruptive use the old kick button - at least the whole team will know that you made the purpose of the team clear from the start and reminded the disruptive member about this.

If people who don't want farms shy away from the MA and running teams we end up with the current situation that many report: all MA teams seem to be farming arcs with exploits and teams that aren't are very hard to find.

You're either part of the problem or part of the solution...

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Very nice set i must say, although 2 aint right for tankers, the Word of Confusion. Confused = not tauntable, bad for tankers who need to keep agro.


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They'll still be Taunted once the confuse wears off won't they? It's just an alternative to a Stun aura (like Dark gets). IE the Taunt will still be on them, but the Confuse will take precedent. The tank can taunt them while they are confused and once the Confuse wears off they'll shoot the tank.

I'd have said it's bad for Brutes (since they won't be attacking them and helping to generate Fury) but not for Tanks.


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Why does a tank need to keep aggro on them? They don't usually - they just need to keep aggro off the rest of the team.

And a confused opponent isn't attacking the rest of the tank's team - job done.

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For me, dying is already enough for me to be "punished". I do not really care about debt how it is now or how it was in the past.

And I really don't understand people wanting to have debt badges...

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Fire blasters tend to not have a choice about wanting the debt badges

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I've never quite understood that.

Seen others play fire blasters suicidally, especially after getting RotP in the APP, but mine only ever seemed to get as much debt as any other character. Mind you - I've never been a fan of using nukes as the opening attack as I've seen many fire blasters do.

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I see on the American thread, BAB mentioned a "customizable Helllfire Whip" for Demon Summoning MMs - I thought whips where one of those impossible powers, like water?

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I'm guessing that whips are still one of the impossible powers. i.e. a complete whip set that involves a whip being used for some forms of entanglement (KD? Maybe even knock/pull forward?) as well as strikes.

I think the problem may be that a complete whip set would look poor without taking enemy models into account. That problem still remains. You could end up with some odd effects like the resizing arrows - but odder due to the whip being attached to both MM and target...

But a whip being used for just 2 or 3 attacks/strikes as part of an MM set is a very different matter. For this it could happily get away with a couple of shortish-range attack animations - no-one really questions attacks hitting odd places.

Just my guess, since we haven't seen the sets yet. But given that it seems to be linked to the demon summoning MM primary I'd guess it's pretty much going to be used on the level of the ninja MM bow, the thug MM dual pistols etc

ok - I was slow picking up on this one...

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perhaps there will be another specific 'power customisation' section in the character creating process, preferably after 'costume creation'.


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It should be immaterial where any power customisation screen sits in relation to other character creation screens since I16 brings the ability to jump back and forth between screens without losing progress. So even if power customisation is displayed (apparently) before costume you should be able to pick the costume first.

Though I'd guess that PC may well be tied to powerset/power selection screens.

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Of course, as a non in-game explanation, number of Kheldian characters and number of powers unique to kheldians probably makes them lower priority for the initial pass at power customisation. Hopefully they make it into the second pass.

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Kinda like the second pass of Powerset Proliferation?

How long did THAT take again? Oh wait, it hasn't, yet.

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But if the APPs and normal Pools aren't being addressed in the first pass I can see the devs wanting to get a 2nd pass done fairly quickly. I think it's almost akin to how the MA was delayed for customisable bosses due to player feedback there'll be a fair bit of player feedback miffed if PC only covers most primary/secondary sets.

Nice summary, Sing.
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Zones:
CoV provided us with Mercy, P.O, Cap, Sharks, Nerva and Martial. Six zones. Grandville was added later.
GR will have several zones. I imagine we'll see the more popular CoX zones in a praetorian version. If it ambitious all might bere there, possibly except the themed hero ones. Really cool if Emperor Cole has found a way to "merge" the dimensions and we'd have to fight for one of the sides to win, sort of Recluse's Victory style. That's sort of unlikely since anyone not buying the expansion would... well.. Doubtful, but it would be cool.

Story Content:
With CoV we got completely new lvl 1-40 content with several new SFs new contacts etc, and the introduction of paper missions. (somre arcs where added later, but not much). Villains have since been obsessed with desire for new villain-only (esp high level) content, to no avail...
With GR we'll obviously have a decent amount of content, but will it compare to CoV? It seems we need arcs att all level ranges for us to be able to switch sides regularly, unless the side-switching is as easy as clicking a button. My guess is some sort of good/neutral/evil gage.


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The actual number of zones may be pretty immaterial - a vast zone can hold multiple level ranges, so 3 or 4 vast zones could be just as good as many smaller zones. Both approaches have pros and cons (e.g. graphics performance, travel times/distances).

Given that it appears likely that we'll see some form of post-50 development (possibly the universal slots) I'd guess that we'll be seeing a great amount of lvl 50 content.

IIRC Universal slots, when mentioned, were touted as providing the equivalent of 10 more levels of progress for 50s. So that was a while ago and plans change, but that sounds fairly reasonable if some sort of post-50 development is introduced.

So we'd hopefully see something like 10+ levels worth of lvl50 content.

The biggest question is what level GR content will start at: Will it allow neutral characters at lvl1? Will lvl 1 characters be able to switch sides?

We may end up seeing the equivalent of content for 60 levels...

IMO GR will be bringing more complex, branching arcs but it's also very possible that GR sees much more complex missions than the existing content - with multiple mutually-exclusive objectives allowing for good/gooder/neutral/bad/baddest outcomes... Maybe the arcs/missions will have great replay value.

BTW: I'd long seen XP smoothing (and possibly the reaction to MA PLing as long as it's not exploiting a bug/quirk) as the devs encouraging a lot more 50s to make EATs and lvl50 content a worthwhile investment of dev time. I guess that GR was a reasaon for encouraging 50s as well.

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All i do know, it will has way less connection on the current game, as CoV was initialy. It was only after that, people needed both games to acces de SG bases and later on it the co-op zones and the buy 2 for 1 was moved in.

The impact however, if this is a 'standalone' addon, people will have to move there to play. So less people in CoH/CoV, i dont think Europe servers can cope this.

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As you say, CoV was sold as a stand alone game, but GR is a true expansion - you need to already own some form of CoX to use/play GR. So I'd expect GR to have more impact (other than emptying them) on the existing game zones than CoV had on CoH zones (even if it's just because of people taking characters to the opposing side).

Of course it's most likely that the Praetorian zones are only accessible to those with GR. In this case there's bound to be some thinning of the population in existing zones, although this may not be longterm once people have played the new zones a few times and return to existing zones/content with rogue characters.

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It makes no more sense to have a bright yellow dark power set than it down to make Kheld powers pink; yet the dark lot are going to be able to make their powers bright yellow if they want.

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Now I'd like it if you could re-colour kheldian powers, but can see that it's blatantly nonsense to suggest that kheldian powers are just like any others. IIRC the forms and powers are linked to the kheldian energy, which could easily be written in unseen pages of the game bible as having a set spectrum leading to set powers baked in to the AT.

If this is the case, then I guess the only valid in-game reason for re-colouring kheld powers would be if something had modified the energy spectrum - like a mutation, illness, perverse experimentation...

The key thing is: even if the colours are baked in to the AT origin story, there does exist the possibility of these extraordinairy modifications and so colour modification, whilst it would probably be rare, should be possible.

Of course, as a non in-game explanation, number of Kheldian characters and number of powers unique to kheldians probably makes them lower priority for the initial pass at power customisation. Hopefully they make it into the second pass.

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Just to note some Psi has no positional component, I don't think its been fixed at least

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Didn't think that was a bug that needing fixing. I thought conceptually psi damage isn't near or far it's inside your head.

Or maybe it's inside the head of the person attacking - and so can only miss if the attacker imagines themselves missing... EIther way - it's in someone's head/imagination.

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thing is though what if the colour change for powers isnt slot based like it is for auras? what if its one colour choice per character.

just dont want to set myself up for a fall and hope for things that may not happen, just like im sure my plans for a Villain Warshade will be dashed.

Regards

Spider

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Never fear!

The official i16 overview states:


it also allows you to select your colors and theme for each individual power or apply it to the entire powerset. These themes will allow for color tinting of geometry and particle effects such as energy blast colors and force field colors. The primary and secondary colors of any power effect can be changed individually for each power in the set.

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That didn't address Spider's fears at all.

As I read it: Spider fears that your power colour choices will be set for the character regardless of costume slot (so a character with multiple costumes has got to have the same power colours for each - you cannot have one costume with pink blasts and another with yellow).

You tried to answer this by showing that powers can be coloured individually. That has no bearing upon whether the colours picked are for the character (regardless of costume) or linked to an individual costume slot.

Eeek! Sorry about tonight - I didn't realise the time passing as I was caught up in a nightmarish ITF that I'm sure started before 3pm... By time I got on Defiant there was no-one about from the group.

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The cloning lab certainly had a buggy spawn point for objects - one of the floor slots at the "back" was actually in the floor and, depending on the object, could make missions impossible to complete. That's a map geometry issue, and, depending on resources, may be a non-trivial fix.

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And I recall hearing that the burning forest had one stuck up a tree that was also a mission breaker. There was certainly at least one wrong object spawn point in it (though I never saw it myself, just heard about it).

It's why I said that they were removed due to object spawn point bugs.

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Amnesia-B-Gone Emergency Response to the rescue!

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I was going to recommend that to SinergyX but couldn't quite remember its name. Shame as I have some in a bottle round here somewhere... hmmm.. where was it again?

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Every map that can hold large amount of mobs in them.. you know.. to farm?


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IIRC the maps weren't removed due to their capacity to hold mobs - they were removed as they had bad/buggy spawn points for objects.

But, especially if this is the case, the devs still ought to:[*] inform us of removals (and replacement) in patchnotes;[*] give us an estimate of when the removed assets will be replaced.

Bit worried about this 'Sothoth' demon reference being taken as a pointer to Lovecraftian 'demons'... No Sothoths in any mythos writings as far as I recall. Just Yog Sothoth - so the name may be a nod to more Lovecraftian entities but not actually existing ones from the Cthulhu mythos.

As much as a fan of Lovecraft as I am (well - possibly more a fan of Call of Cthulhu RPG and Campbell, Bloch and all tbh) I'd rather them do demons after Clive Barker... Lovecraftian beasties could just become laughable puppets when bound to a MMs will.

Of course, the Sothoth reference may mean that the demons are a metal band... But if summoning band members is a goer then I want it customisable so I can summon Carl McCoy.

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Yea i had noticed the mention of the lovecraft deamon name in her description and had taken it as a hint that we may see some Lovecraft inspired deamons.

Hopefully the've put that new model maker they were after to good work and created some non human models. some kind of hellhound is almost a must.


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If they are going towards the existing Cthulhu mythos then maybe the Hounds of Tindalos may suffice.

There used to be a player character (on Union CoH iirc) called the Hound of Tindalos

Just hope they don't venture to Y'golnac - although as long as they don't write the name down we may be ok.