Knight_Errant

Now that was funny!

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Indeed the structure is the hero launch pad for what is believed to be a moon/space zone (with the villains one just south of the arena in PO iirc).

[/ QUOTE ]The construction site near the Arena in Port Oakes is for a pathway between the two ferry ports, it includes a stairway down from the platform above. It's not anything special.

I'm hoping that Cimerora was just a practice run for a bigger content expansion. I don't mind the idea of a paid for expansion especially if it's going to provide a load more playable content.

With all the build up over "The Coming Storm" I'm hoping it doesn't turn into a damp squib, when it arrives, if it ever arrives.

As has been mentioned above, Voids don't do special damage any more, all they do now is negative damage with what is essentially a beefed up auto-critical when hitting Khelds. The damage is still described as "Nictus damage" but it is resisted.

Voids are still a pain in the neck but they are manageable. At low levels it's a matter of hitting them hard and fast before they can do too much damage. Nova form (mainly the Detonation attack) and any temp power that does knockdown are the key until you can get Dwarf Form. If he can't stand he can't fight. Also they're still unprotected when it comes to smashing damage so using melee attacks while he's off his feet will be more potent. Radiant Strike's almost guaranteed knockback and smashing damage is a godsend for this.

If the Void is in a stacked mob (ie his and the regular placement) then for a PB I find using Build Up > Nova Form > Nova Scatter > Nova Detonation as a salvo works well. If you target the Void then pretty much every minion around it will go down and the Void will be pretty badly damaged, if not dead. It's a good idea to build up the slotting in your Nova Form attacks for the pre-20s as combining their damage with Build Up as a first strike is generally your best defence, until you get Dwarf Form.

I hope that's of use to you Khorak. It's not a definitive strategy but it worked for my Tri-Form during her early days.

I think you're missing the point here. The original suggestion by Sweetchilli was:
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I say we make all the zones PvP zones and when you die you lose 1/8 of your total xp. It would be utter carnage at first but then an order would come about.

Yes, you would get level 50's obliterating level 1s in Atlas. But give people a travel power at level 1 and a 30 second timer whenever they enter a new zone and that would be enough time to get to a mish or a train station.

Alliences would form.

Be interesting just to see what would happen for 1 day.

[/ QUOTE ]No safe zones. The intention was to turn the game into a gankfest. Adding safe zones would be contradictory to that aim.

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I say we make all the zones PvP zones and when you die you lose 1/8 of your total xp. It would be utter carnage at first but then an order would come about.

Yes, you would get level 50's obliterating level 1s in Atlas. But give people a travel power at level 1 and a 30 second timer whenever they enter a new zone and that would be enough time to get to a mish or a train station.

Alliences would form.

Be interesting just to see what would happen for 1 day.

[/ QUOTE ]No need to see. The game would implode within a week of such a change being announced. Subscriptions would vanish faster than ice in a firestorm.


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Square Enix and FF11 lol at you for that comment, and PvE is included in the xp/death loss as well. Not that exp matters as it is so stupidly easy to level in this game. Mind you, 12.5% is a fair bit of exp to lose, I think that 5% might be more realistic if this was actually took any further. Besides, with the patrol xp, xp loss would be effectively nullified just in the same way as debt has. Loss of influence/prestige or a % debuff of influence/prestige gained might be more viable.

And in regards to Atlas being turned into a gankfest for world PvP, take a leaf out of WARs book and make certain areas Safe Zones. For example, the capital city and the starting area are safe zones in WAR. Why not make both Atlas Park and Galaxy City safe zones, as well as Co-Op zones such as RWZ etc safe zones too. Wouldn't be hard to implement imo.

[/ QUOTE ]Ah but that's FF11, not CoX and there's more to it than just the death penalty. Sweetchilli was advocating having no safe zones, effectively turning the game into one big free-for-all with no safety for newbies, lowbies or non-pvpers. My prediction stands, Square Enix can laugh all they want, they don't run CoX.

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Pffft! If everyone was a softie like you!

[/ QUOTE ]Being a "softie" has nothing to do with it. Turning the game into a gankfest where dying would cost you earned xp is hardly fun and is not in the slightest bit social.
Being able to chat under Atlas, GG or anywhere for that matter without being shot, held, whacked up-side-the-head or otherwise give a fast track to hospital by some bothersome n00b is one of the nicer things about this game.

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I say we make all the zones PvP zones and when you die you lose 1/8 of your total xp. It would be utter carnage at first but then an order would come about.

Yes, you would get level 50's obliterating level 1s in Atlas. But give people a travel power at level 1 and a 30 second timer whenever they enter a new zone and that would be enough time to get to a mish or a train station.

Alliences would form.

Be interesting just to see what would happen for 1 day.

[/ QUOTE ]No need to see. The game would implode within a week of such a change being announced. Subscriptions would vanish faster than ice in a firestorm.
Not that the Devs would be so stupid as to introduce such an obviously suicidal feature into the game.
IT would make the changes to SWG look like nirvana.

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-pokes and points to the 'Specialisation' thread started under Suggestion-

Maybe im not the only one to think that sounds like a viable idea? Even if it has not a hope in hell under current CoX.

As for the options of all-zone PVP, maybe limit starting zones like Atlas and Galaxy, due to their high security. And, thematically, the city Hall would wnat heroes cleaning out the villains that *do* make it in, like the Hellions, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]That's what triggered the idea. I know it wouldn't stand a chance of being considered as a suggestion for the current CoX so I posted it here where balancing has been discussed.

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Not possible if everyone has individual PvP flags. And you can prevent "flag abuse" with people toggling the flag on and off by giving it a cooldown period. You toggle it, it takes say, 30 seconds to actually toggle, and you can't retoggle for say... 15 minutes? That will put paid to people hiding behind their flag.

[/ QUOTE ]That might work however entering enemy territory would have to remove the option to toggle.

I just had a brainstorming idea for balancing ATs in CoX. The main problem seems to be disparity between Blue and Red. So, why not take the branching powerset system from VEATs and apply it to ATs. It would take a heckload of tweaking.

For example:
Basic AT: Tough Guy (High HP - Moderate Damage)
Starts off with basic punch-voking taunt mechanic like brutes have. Power sets are as Brute/Tanker with a choice of offence or defence being primary (canot be changed after creation).
At L24 it gets a branching respec into Guardian/Enforcer or Crusader/Brute with modifiers set accordingly (G/E get Gauntlet, a buff to defensive powers and a decrease in damage. C/B get Fury (probably renamed blue side) and slight damage buff.

Something similar could be done for Scrapper/Stalker melee DPS and Defender/Corruptor ranged support. Blaster/Dominator seems like the nearest pairing to fit for these two ATs.
How Controllers and Masterminds would work in this way is my only dead end. Ideas?

I think the problem with this would be that it's all very nice for weapon based sets but their's not the variety for non-weapon sets eg. Electric Blast.

However it has set me to thinking on another front regarding branching power sets.

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Thematically, open PvP suits quite well, actually.

[/ QUOTE ]But would turn places like Atlas Park into a gankfest. Open Free-for-all PvP (Hero vs Hero/Hero vs Villain) is all very well in theory but it wouldn't work in practice.
Also Paragon City heroes are supposed to be more regulated than the Marvel and DC types. So thematically for CoX it wouldn't work. If they've got a grudge then they can take it to the Arena rather than trash a city block because someone stood on someone's toe. Something similar although more villainous in motivation could well apply in the Rougue Isles.
Either way it's better if non-arena PvP is restricted to Blue vs Red.

While the idea of a KOTOR style morality gauge would be idealistically preferrable I don't think it would fit thematically with the game setting. At some point the powers that be would make a call on whether you are "one of them" or not. Boy scouts aren't welcome in the Rogue Isles, the likes of Scrapyarder and Sea Witch are good examples of what happens to them. Similarly villains or those with villainous leanings don't manage so well in Statesman's back yard.

Curiously enough, I find Mayhem missions really easy as a Stalker. It's all about not rushing things and making sure you fight the ambushes on your terms.
I don't think my Db/Nin Stalker has ever failed a Mayhem on her own.
Since the changes to Stalker damage and criticals went live earlier in the year Stalkers are now a far more valuable asset for a team.

Sweet! What a nifty tool!

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Get good PvE game.

Add poor implementation of PvP

Spend too much time fixing PvE game so that PvP works.

Result a game where not enough is done to make the PvE experience perfect and a poorly implemented PvP system.

You cannot fix PvP in CoH1, even if you remove all the chnages in i13 and return to i12 values, PvP still isn't working as well as it should, yes perhaps more people like PvP with the old values, but it doesn't fix the underlying issues that its very difficult to do PvP without a good build.

CoH is a game that is aimed at the casual gamer, the old and indeed new implementation of PvP is not easily accessible to that same casual gamer. Until it is then PvP isn't going to be right and the devs will spend more time trying to make it fit that bill.

Only solution is to start from scratch and build a PvE/P game from the ground up. Whether or not that will happen is anyones guess, personally I think it will come with CoH2 whenever that arrives.

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This.
PvP in CoX simply isn't going to be right unless the entire rules set for the game is rebuilt from the ground up so that there is no separate rules sets for PvE and PvP. All i13 did was twist the square peg to try and refit it into a round hole.

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WAR's PvP works because the whole game and much of the audience are there for said PvP. In fact if anything the PvE suffers a good bit for it, being more of a side show.

[/ QUOTE ]Not so much really, although PvE in each regions is pretty linear you can still get into teams fairly easily for social play, simple expediency or to complete the harder Public Quests. PvP was certainly the core aspect of the game with the PvE built around it but I wouldn't call it sidelined.

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I think (Although i'd happily be proved wrong) that really a game can't have its cake and eat it too in this case. Balancing between PvP and PvE takes too much time and is too much of a high wire act to work, you're going to have to choose one or the other.

[/ QUOTE ] I think this is a matter of approach. If you start with classes balanced for PvP and build the PvE around that framework then it's probably possible to for a game to have its cake and feast until it explodes. CoX was founded on PvE so shoe-horning PvP into the game was unlikely to end well.

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I think the lessons need to be learned for CoX2. If they are going to do PvP (and, as GG says, it does fit with the comic book hero theme) it needs to be part of the core game - something you will be introduced to naturally through play, not something way off to the side. WAR made a good job of this. CO looks like making the same mistake as CoX: however good or bad the PvP is, they are shunting it off to the side in arenas, condemning it to be a minority activity.

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Agreed.
There are alot of things that could be learned from WAR. The PvP/RvR has alot to offer and is the most accessable I've encountered so far in an MMO. As a so called "Carebear" I've never liked PvP, however WAR has changed my view on it. From my experience they actually got it right, the various classes seem fairly well balanced and there's objectives to all the PvP activities beyond simply finding someone to fight. AT balance aside I think that is one aspect that PvP in CoX is sorely lacking.
One of the biggest differences I've noticed is that games where PvP is successful always have a globally available range of classes. In WoW both sides have access to every class in the game (last time I checked) and in War every Order class has its Destruction counterpart, essentially repainted with a coat of evil. I think that's on thing that makes PvP in CoX a problem as there is no parity between hero and villain ATs it makes balancing harder, especially with the way Villain ATs are either hybrids of hero ATs or, in the case of MMs, have no comparable hero AT at all.

The Public Quests are another thing that would lend itself well to CoX as a number of zones have a theme to them that a PQ could be built around (It could even be used to take GMs off timed spawning rotas.

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Just under 10 million is still expensive for me.

[/ QUOTE ]Trust me on this, SOs are the cheap option. If you look to Set IOs then you can expect a significant increase in cost, at least in the short term. If you have a PB (or WS) then really the only expense you really need to worry about in their build is slots.

Tanking as a Dwarf is a matter of specialisation, the slotting suggested above is a good example.

Edit: As I'm bored I've done some rough number crunching and slotting a Keld with SOs isn't that expensive compared to other ATs. Essentially a Keld with both Nova and Dwarf forms will have 11 more slots than other ATs (4 from Nova, 5 From Dwarf and 2 from travel powers). Given that the most expensive SO at L50 is 60,000 Inf a fully SO slotted L50 Keld will cost a little under 6.12 million. That's only 660k more than other ATs.

If it's a matter of gaining XP too fast then there's always the option to turn off XP.

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So do you think we'll eventually see a Cimeroran Recluse?

[/ QUOTE ]It's certainly a possibility, although I'm not sure where he'd fit in the Cimeroran story. The big bad is the Nictus and I don't think there's really room for another.

I think to a degree it's a case of the spirits/souls of signature characters being reincarnated through time. With the incarnation of Statesman and Recluse kick-starting the latest age of heroes and allowing the powerful souls of old to return.
So Statesman is the modern era's Imperious rather than Imperious being the Roman era's Statesman... if that makes sense.

I have to agree with Ravenswing's assessment earlier in this thread. I don't believe the game has become easier. Yes, thanks to patrol XP and a trimming back of Debt, the pace at which you can level has increased. This combined with the XP smoothing has made the 15-20 and 35-40 stretches into less of a grindfest.

However the challenge of individual mobs or spawns of mobs has not altered (in a handfull of cases the xp for some mobs has been trimmed, eg Comms Officers).
Based on my experience of playing the game, I do not believe IOs have had that much of an effect especially in the sub-30s.

One thing I find interesting is that we get a request for things to be made more challenging (this is not the first time a thread like this has appeared) and yet, when the nerf bat is wielded by Castle the boards echo with the howls of Doom.
If all the ATs got a blanket nerf to damage, health and end cost it would make things more challenging, but I suspect that the forums would run red with calls the Dev blood.
In the end it all comes down to "fun" a case in point, Kelds have received a number of buffs in recent months, their "kryptonite" enemies have been nerfed significantly and now, at least in my view, they are fun to play, unliked before i11 when I saw them as an irritation at best and a liability to the team at worst.

I started on Defiant and the majority of my active toons, including my main, are on that server.
I have a core of three active toons on Union, one of which has just passed the L49 mark.

Sadly no there is no way of automatically exporting a build from the game into Mids.
I'm sure we could provide advice on your build though.

Durability when teaming is quite suprising now. I discovered on Saturday night, teaming with 3+ blasters can be comical now as Nova is rather sturdy when in has 40% resistance to all.