Lightfoot

Were we disagreeing about something? I have found your position in this thread to be perfectly reasonable.

On that note:

I'm all for alternate animations. On quite a few of my low level characters, I have to "suck it up" in regards to the ninja run animation. Don't get me wrong, I love the animation. It's just that it doesn't really fit for all concepts. So, for those characters for whom the animation does not work, I can either deal with the snail's pace that is Sprint, or add Ninja Run to my powers tray and get around faster until I decide I have room for my travel power.

Most of the time, I take Ninja Run, and simply deal with the fact that I have to wonder why my Science Necro Mastermind homage to the Reanimator is running like a character in Ninja Scroll.

Which "stealth changes" would those be?

The reason I keep poking is that you don't even acknowledge the other side of the argument as you change and restrict your own position more and more. We have (repeatedly) shown you how the current travel options can be explained for natural heroes and still be within the limits of your points of reference. Over the course of the discussion, rather than opening your mind, you have dismissed everything we have said, narrowed your criteria, dug in and prepared for a siege. Since your position was weak to begin with, this course of action doesn't help your case.

Where? I just read through the text of both arcs, hero and villain, and there is no mention of alternative or natural travel in either arc. The closest is Marshall Brass talking down to a non-natural villain because he (paraphrasing) "took down a dozen of your type before coming in to work in the morning while you were flying around the City."

Neither Manticore nor Brass discuss "natural travel" fondly. Both are proud of their achievements in a world populated by supers, but nowhere does it imply that either eschews the travel powers already in the game. Manticore hacks into the mediporter system to get around, and Marshall Brass has you steal a Goldbricker rocket pack because he noticed that the tech is remarkably similar to something Arachnos has in development. It certainly doesn't sound like they are unhappy with the travel options in the game.

The game doesn't need more travel powers, for any origin. The ones we have are perfectly serviceable for any origin, provided you go through the effort to rationalize it, if you even care. There are many people who just want to play the game for whom origin is just another button that must be clicked before they get to start.

I would love to have jetpacks, rocket boots and piston boots as normal costume options in the character creator that animate appropriately for the travel power used, just like wings do. These would completely satisfy travel for any natural concept I have.

I am trying to poke holes in everything you say. It is the only way to demonstrate to you that your arguments lack a solid foundation

The ninja in Ninja Scroll are VERY supernatural. If you accept their powers as natural "ki training," you should be able to accept any of the travel powers as natural. The good ninja used Super Jump, if not outright flying, and could cross incredible distances in a short amount of time (Super Speed). At least one of the bad ninja could teleport through shadows.

Now I know where your goalposts are for action movies, at least (Lethal Weapon), which means that you consider things like the James Bond movies and the Bourne movies to be science fiction. If the previous statement is not true, why are you limiting your natural concepts to the lowest tech of all the action blockbusters, despite the fact that most of the tech in both the Bond and Bourne movies are at least in the developmental stage RIGHT NOW? Considering the advances in technology in the 23 years since Lethal Weapon came out, you might as well be complaining that helicopters are too advanced for your natural heroes because they didn't exist in Gangs of New York.

So, if you can overlook the fact that your "natural" hero can take a hit from a rocket in the face and still be at over 80% health, why is it so hard to accept that the normal tech level of the City of Heroes universe is (at least) slightly higher than our own?

Jetpacks, rocket boots, piston boots and teleportation technology are all relatively common in the City of Heroes universe. It should cause no disconnect if one of your natural heroes should decide to avail himself of this technology to get around. However, if you make the choice to live like the Amish, you don't get to complain that the cars of the heathen masses go faster than your horse drawn buggy.

Let's talk about that, then. James Bond has always used theoretical tech 10-20 years in advance of what is readily available. In the late 60's, James Bond was using a jetpack to get around (From Russia With Love). While the Bourne movies don't use theoretical transportation tech, they certainly use surveillance tech at least 5 years ahead of what is on the market.

Most anime plays fast and loose with theoretical tech, too; the stealth suits in Ghost in the Shell, the androids in Gunslinger Girl, the gadgets of Lupin the 3rd.

If you are using movies and anime as your guide to what is "natural," I still don't understand where your goalposts are. I suspect that you don't know where your goalposts are either, except to move them further out as you are shown examples within your boundaries that you don't like.

But now you are moving the goalposts again.

The only reality that matters is comic book reality. If you are going to accept that a natural hero can be shot numerous times at close range with shotguns, machine guns and flamethrowers and emerge nigh unscathed, why do you have trouble accepting that a higher tech level than our own is the normal tech level for the setting? The government in the City of Heroes universe has reverse engineered Rikti tech for their mediporter technology (available to all supers and the crooks they "arrest") and makes personal flight readily available for their paramilitary and superhuman forces.

That you cannot accept jetpacks, rocket boots and the like as readily available to your natural heroes is your hangup. Don't blame your inability to get over it on a deficiency in the game or the game design.

What does "regular working reality" matter? In the City of Heroes universe, the technology is common enough that anyone who stops the Atlas Park bank from being robbed is gifted a working jetpack by the City.

In Paragon City, the technology is just that common. Let your hangups go and have fun.

When the War on Drugs was a huge deal, there was an arc called Streets of Poison where the Super Soldier serum in Cap's blood began to fail, and Cap started to weaken. The idea being that the serum itself was actually a performance enhancing drug that was beginning to show negative side effects. At the end, Cap received a blood transfusion which cleansed the Super Soldier Serum from his blood. In the end, it was determined that Steve Rogers could have reached that pinnacle of health without the serum with enough time and effort, and the serum simply accelerated the process. From that time on, Steve needed to work just as hard as any other human at the pinnacle of fitness does to maintain his physical abilities.

Alright, then let's do this using two of the more well known "natural" heroes.

Captain America (Steve Rogers version, thanks to Bucky's cybernetic arm, I might qualify him as more tech than natural) - His shield was created using an alloy process that was not repeatable, using two "science fictional" metals (vibranium and adamantium). When Steve needed to get around, he used either a motorcycle (modified by Starktech to exceed the specifications of a normal motorcycle) or used an Avengers Quinjet (also Starktech) or S.H.I.E.L.D. transportation (mostly "superspy" tech level). Captain America's equipment definitely crosses into the "tech" arena without hurting his status as a natural hero.

Batman (Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson) - Waynetech is so far beyond what is natural that it isn't even funny. All of the Bat-vehicles certainly qualify as high tech, as does most of his gadgetry. Using his cape, he can glide, and when he needs to cross the globe instantly, he makes liberal use of the JLA teleporter. In the end, Batman isn't defined by his high tech equipment, he is defined by his rigorous training and brilliant mind, therefore, he is a natural hero.

If you really want to do it the way heroes in the comic books who don;t have travel powers do it, you need to have a teammate with Group Fly who can carry you while they use their travel power, otherwise, you cross into your own, forbidden, "high tech" area.

Use the power of your imagination.

Since you have already self limited by saying that your character would not use devices, even a swingline shooter is out of the question (vehicles would be out of the question, too, by the same limiting factor). Your only option is to take Swift and slot Sprint and Swift. Unfortunately, if you do the math, this will still greatly exceed the speed that a normal human can achieve, so even Sprint and Swift are unacceptable for a "natural" hero.

I have plenty of "natural" heroes who use the travel powers, thanks to the power of imagination.

Major A. Salt uses the city Mediport network to get around. U.S. Archer has an antigravity belt given to him by one of the many scientists he has rescued. The same internal energy that enables Lady Crane to punch out robots enables her to make astounding leaps.

A couple of things before I get to answering your questions:

1) Welcome to the game and forums. Since you are new here, some of us may give you posting etiquette advice (like my next two points). This is meant to be helpful, and not mean

2) If you have an active topic already, you can ask followup questions related to that topic (like, how your characters powers work) in the same thread. It keeps the clutter down, and if your topic title is generic enough, those of us inclined to help, such as Aett and myself, will read through the whole thread and answer new questions as they come up.

3) The fact that the character is a Mutant has almost no bearing on the character's abilities aside from the fact that you got the Mutagen power and it will affect your 33 Month veteran's reward. More helpful when asking these sorts of questions it to let us know which Archetype (which you have done) and Powersets you are asking about.

The reason we need to know about Powersets is because no Controller Primary grants access to Phase Shift, which is Pool Power from the Concealment Power Pool, and only affects the character using it. Gravity Control grants access to Dimension Shift.

If it is Phase Shift, your teammates are taking damage because you are the one "out of phase." If it is Dimension Shift, it is a targeted Area of Effect attack. A to-hit roll is made against each target in the area of effect, it can miss one or all of the targets. If you are attempting to shift a large group, the maximum number of targets who can be affected is 16. Anyone you don't hit can still attack. This is why your teammates are taking damage.

There is a graphical cue to which enemies are shifted. If the graphical cue is missed, when you attempted to attack a shifted enemy, the words "unaffected" will appear over their heads.

That being said, Dimension Shift, in my opinion, is best saved as an "Oh! Crap!" button. Since it is AoE rather than single target, if you use it early in a fight, you could shift out the very target that your team really wants to get rid of first, and who has now become untouchable for the next 60 seconds (granted they aren't doing much, but it is unlikely the whole team will be focused on them when the shift drops). Dimension shift is great for when the group is starting to get overwhelmed. Drop Dimension Shift, and have the group fall back around a corner. The enemies you miss will follow the group and continue to attack, but the number of attacks should be drastically reduced.

Phase Shift is part of the Concealment Power Pool, and available at level 20 if you have two of the three previous powers of the Stealth Pool. But this does not provide the power that you want.

There is no power that lets you Phase Shift and still attack (or buff / debuff, for that matter). This would quickly become an optimal power that it would be stupid not to take, as it would render the enemies trivial. Phase Shift inflicts an "Only Affects Self" condition on you for that reason.

P.S. I'll echo Aett's advice that you respec out of Dimension Shift (unless you solo a lot) since it seems to be causing more problems than it solves. On the plus side, tomorrow (Wednesday the 28th), the next Issue (game update) goes live. With that update, we are being granted a free respec ("freespec"). A respec will let you rechoose your powers and slotting (but not your origin, archetype, primary or secondary powersets) from level one.

What about vigilante says "bank robber?"

The Punisher doesn't rob banks. He'll kill the pushers and take their money, but he doesn't walk into the First National Bank and rob the vaults. The Moon Knight satisfies his own self hatred and mania by punishing the wicked and taking vengeance on them for their crimes. Scourge executes criminals who have either escaped from prison or whom he feels did not serve enough time.

Vigilantes work outside the law by taking the law into their own hands. For a vigilante, the ends justify the means, in their own twisted sense of justice.

As far as I'm concerned, a vigilante who takes to casual robbery has taken another step into becoming a villain.

Why?

I don't see anything here that negates the "need" for travel suppression.

The OP isn't complaining that his legitimate story got hit. He is complaining that his Samurai Farm "Story," that he runs repeatedly for tickets and influence, got nerfed. No farm that I know of is packed with noncombat allies purely for dialog or escorts. If they have a destructible object, it is only for mission completion, and it isn't an "allied object" that enemies will attack.

The OP is complaining about the loss of his exploit, pure and simple. He claims to have interjected a story, probably in some lame attempt to avoid the "farm" label that gets Architect slots locked, but he does not run and did not create the mission because he wanted to tell that story. I am writing him off because he deserves to be written off.

I agree with everyone who says that the current nerf went too far because of the collateral damage. My own stories got hit by this and will be revised come Issue 17. For now, they are being brought down until I can figure out how to keep the story elements I want and still have respectable XP. I have sympathized with you, personally, on other threads. I know your subscription has been canceled, and will be sorry to see you go. I hope you come back someday.

As for the OP, if he leaves, I couldn't care less.

And if your mission got nailed by this nerf, it means that you had a number of buffing / debuffing allies in your "farm story" that trivialized the enemies. You exploited the system to break the math of the game.

And those same comic stories don't have Batman backed up by bunches of guys throwing forcefields around him so that they can't hit him or nailing them with radiation so that they are weaker than kittens so that he can beat them down repeatedly for PHAT LEWTZ. This would be the equivalent of Batman fighting enemies that conned gray to him, something to pass the time, and not something that he gains experience from. In those stories you so cavalierly reference, the enemies were a threat before they got taken down, and usually become an even greater threat after they get back up. Unless your samurai farm simulated this, there is no comparison.

Even if your "story" was worthy of Shakespeare (or Bacon, depending on who you believe), you should feel glad that you weren't banned.


You don't get to cry that you don't get something for nothing any more. The Devs have a strict risk:reward ratio they have based the math of the game around. You found a way around that and abused it (rather than bringing it to the Devs attention). Now that the Devs have discovered how it works, they have closed down the loophole (or, made it unattractive for now).

The Devs cannot and will not allow the Architect to break the math of the game. We are supposed to be able to make any content we desire, within that math (and within the EULA). It is because of people like you who are breaking the math that the Devs have imposed the limits that are hurting legitimate creators.

You have no one to blame but yourself and others like you.

Weren't the Samurai farms nuked something like 8 months ago?

The latest AE nerf, as near as I can tell, should have had no effect whatsoever on the Samurai farms. Samurai farms went out of style with the custom critter power controls and custom group minion / lt / boss rules.

It just sounds like this particular rant is about six to eight months too late.

Just saying, is all. How do you expect to be a good little exploiter if you can't even be bothered to stay on top of the most recent exploits?

AE is supposed to be our stories, populated with our critters (if the story demands it), as an alternate leveling path to 50. It was never supposed to be used for farming (not for tickets, and not for XP), and the Devs have been very up front about that from day minus one (from the moment it was announced, in fact, long before it hit beta).

The reason AE keeps getting nerfed is because people keep finding ways to exploit the system to make XP and ticket farms, limiting it's usefulness for its stated purpose, the telling of stories by players to be appreciated by other players.

None of those farms are stories, nor do they even make a token attempt to be. So, all I have for you is the world's smallest violin, playing the world's saddest tune, that only you can hear. That's about all the sympathy I can muster for your plight.

On the other hand, if you are a legitimate creator whose story has been hosed by the latest nerf, I feel for you, and will strike up the whole band with normal sized instruments.

I'm curious why, after five years, this is the straw that broke the camel's back?

We've seen hotfixes and temporary solutions come down the pipe before, often with a much longer promised wait time for the "permanent solution" (see: PVP 2.0). In this case, we are being told that the permanent fix is coming with Issue 17, or shortly thereafter (definately before Going Rogue), which is supposed to release later this month.

Some good stories are adversely affected (the amazing Teen Phalanx story, for one ), but there was no way they could have let the jelly bean exploit stand once it got out how to remove the attack powers from your custom critter allies.

The alternative is bringing out the banhammer again, which I'm sure no one wants a repeat of from last year.

Just curious. I can see being hot about it now, especially if one or more of your stories was adversely affected. I tested one of mine last night, and it was hit, so I removed it for now and saved the file on my local drive to be brought out again when the permanent solution is in.

Here's hoping you decided to stick around after all. Don't give away all your stuff quite yet.

I'm PST and I don't care where the servers are located when I decide which of my many alts to play. If I feel like playing on Victory, I'll play on Victory, and if I feel like playing on Champion, I'll play on Champion. I haven't noticed a discernible difference in my play experience between the east coast and west coast servers.

The best advice has already been given. Go to the Victory forum below to learn about the Victory chat channels and learn how to form your own teams (Westley has a fantastic guide for how to do this, anyone have the link?). The chat channels will give you access to lots more people than you see, and forming your own team will get you the players who, for whatever reason, are afraid of "The Star."

I was at HeroCon. I was the one who asked Brian Clayton about the possibility of an Issue 17 before Going Rogue came out. He told me that if they could get UltraMode and enough other features in our hands before Going Rogue, then they would. And I was the one who reported such on the forums on the Monday after HeroCon.

UltraMode was never promised as a Going Rogue exclusive.

Rubberlad, you have no legs upon which to stand for complaining about UltraMode being a part of Issue 17 being a "bait and switch."

Your memory of events does not stand up to the facts.

If you are the leader of the team, open the missions tab underneath you nav bar. It should show you all of the missions currently held by all of your teammates. Click the mission you want the team to do. At the bottom of that list of missions, there should be a button that says "select task."

Click that and it will set the mission for the team. Only the team leader can select missions for the team, so if you are not the leader, ask for the star or ask the leader to select the mission you want them to help you with.

At HeroCon, one of the new powers guys said that Electric Control was his first job on the Powers Team, and that the set was almost finished (at least, the powers coding, BAB was not there, so no one could ask about the animations).

Electric Control is coming, it is probably just a matter of finishing the animations at this point. It will probably be released with the issue release that accompanies Going Rogue (Issue 18), since the two major new Powersets (Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning) will have already been completed and tested before Going Rogue goes to beta.

So, exactly how many people were logged on when you tried, and on what server?

What's that? Don't know? What were you doing to let teams know you were out there? Were you trying to form your own teams?

My guess is that, while you may have played in the CoH Beta, you have not been playing SINCE the CoH Beta. If you had been subbed and playing for all that time, you would know how to find and put together teams in the modern, super heavily instanced City of Heroes. Broadcasting "L34 Healer LFT" in Atlas Park may have worked in Issue 5, but it doesn't work in Issue 16, and it hasn't worked since Issue 9 or so.

Use the search function. Join the global channels on your server. Don't be picky about your levels (you earn xp while exemplared now, you retain powers selected five levels above you new exemplared level, and none of the zones are level restricted, so you don't have to worry about whether the lowbie on your team can get into Dark Astoria anymore.).

In other words, it is apparent to me that you have been away for a while, and what you used to do to find teams is now "doing it wrong." Instead of ranting about it, you could have politely asked how teaming works nowadays, and your answers, including this one, would have been far less snarky.

You've been gone over a year. Why in the world would you want to sit in a zone and grind instead of play with the new toys that we have gotten over the last year?

There was another round of Powerset Proliferation, which means there are at least ten powersets which weren't on those respective ATs when you took a break.

If you prepurchased Going Rogue, you can play with the Dual Pistols powerset on Defenders, Corruptors and Blasters right now.

You probably barely scratched the surface of the good content in the Mission Architect (Try the Dev Choice and Guest Author missions, most of them are as good or better than a lot of the Dev created missions).

Even Power Customization can make your old characters feel new again.

There is a new Task Force and a new Strike Force for your level 35+ characters.

Maybe we just have a different definition of "grind." To me, "grind" means boring and repetitive task, i.e; a job. The last thing I want to do when playing a game to relax is do something that remotely feels like work.

Eh, maybe it's just a part of the accepted MMO scene that I just don't understand. Probably why I have so much trouble playing any of the fantasy MMO's (but the beauty of the Shire in the LOTR game is holding my interest there for the time being).

Arcs with standard enemies will give double standard experience in AE just like they would in the real world.

I don't remember the battlemaiden farm, but the samurai farm got nerfed in Issue 16 over six months ago when they made custom critters give less xp if they had few than the minimum required or were missing key powers from the hard and above classifications. (As I understood it, the samurais had their obligatory ranged attack removed by the farm creator, which, after Issue 16, meant that they were worth 0 XP).

If a critter gives more XP than the risk or effort expended to defeat them should suggest, expect that it's XP has been, or soon will be, reduced.

As long as you aren't farming custom critters, your double xp will be just as good inside the architect as it would be outside of it.

Not that you are supposed to be farming in the architect in the first place, but if you insist...

It depends on what you want out of your character. The attribute modifiers are different. The Defender will do less damage because their damage modifiers are lower than a Corruptors. Even if the modifiers were the same, Corruptors would still win on damage thanks to Scourge. On the other hand, the Defender will buff / debuff better because Defenders buff / debuff at a higher magnitude than a Corruptor.

If you primarily want to be Kinetics, get your powers in Kinetics faster, and buff / debuff better, then go Defender. If you primarily want to do damage, then you might be better off with a Corruptor.