Lord Mayhem

It only re-jumbles the order of my characters if/when I switch server, so my pseudo fix has been to stop playing Defiant and focus just on Union , but yeah I really wish they'd fix this.

Not quite as much as I wish they'd fix the server select screen crash bug though - that is really starting to get old.

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I was once told 'FFS Heal n00b'

Sadly I couldn't being a FF/Nrg defender.

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Sounds like my experiences when I played a TA/Archery Defender back in I5 - I got kicked from several teams for "not healing" - that's on the few occasions I didn't get kicked before the mission for "picking the wrong powerset", or filtered out beforehand by the sadly inevitable "r u healr" /tells. I deleted that Defender in mid-teens and swore I'd never play another.

Admittedly I did cave in and make a Storm/Psy Defender for concept reasons in I8, but he never got past L20 and was deleted in I12 when I could make a /Storm Corruptor and a Psychic/ Blaster. Not made/played a single Defender since, nor been tempted to - I like Corruptors too much

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Erk, don't like this, at least not the Unlock Special Factions and AVs bit.

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I'm not fussed about having to unlock the AVs/Heroes by getting a Dev Choice acknowledgement - at least then the missions including signature characters are likely to be well written. The Devs probably want to protect the image of those characters to some extent, rather than letting everyone have a go at using them - with the likelihood that many would use them in a possibly inappropriate way (I'm not just thinking of Statesman-haters either - the Devs probably don't want Mynx being used for saucy catgirl fan service either, not to mention what some players might do with Ghost Widow, Swan or Ms Liberty ).

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Not too impressed with the limits on Spawn placement either. We'll end up with "custom" maps where you still know the exact placement of each spawn. It really is sounding more like a Customizer rather than a mission Editor at the mo.

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I'm not overly impressed that we can't make custom maps or place spawns either, even though I did expect these limitations. Though I was starting to hope we might get map editing, what with base improvements being in the very same issue (now just watch - I bet the base editor revamp doesn't actually improve the base editor as much as we hoped either).

As I predicted in the other thread, I think we're basically going to be designing the missions from a single page of dropdown menus (somewhat like the costume creator is now), with a few fields to enter briefing/debriefing/boss text. Not overly powerful, though it should at least let us create missions with more complexity than newsies, if not as complex/dynamic as some of the newer CoV-style content - but we should at least be able to make stuff on par with (and hopefully better than) the original CoH content.

I think the limit on how many missions each player can submit is a good idea, though - it will really push you into only submitting your best stuff and not clogging up the list of missions with average stuff that everyone will have to wade through to find content they want to play.

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As I posted above, I generally just hate people, and that is regardless of nationality, creed, religion, race etc. I'm fairly equal with my hatred.

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You can't beat a bit of a misanthropy, and online gaming is the perfect place to reinforce those feelings

For something fun to level to 50 I don't know what to suggest Donna, as obviously you like PvP and I'm not fussed about it. Though I get my PvE fun from doing tons of damage (usually area damage, but not always) so I'd probably suggest most of the combinations in my signature. I like controlling and debuffing too, especially when they open up new tactics (especially ones that let me do even more damage while fairly safe), but doing lots of damage is the main thing for me

You don't like scrappers and you want something heroside - maybe powersets you haven’t played already so the character feels fresh to you - you’ve already got a couple of blasters to 50 so you obviously like that archetype - and I love blasters too because they do tons of damage - so how about a Sonic/Mental/Force Blaster? - that would have lots of control of different types, lots of damage with the stacking -res, some extra cone/pbae damage from the secondary to make up for the lack of it in the primary, varying damage types (psi & energy not being resisted much either), and great survivability from DP and the ancillary pool.

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I think I win, I was told not to tank on my Fire/DM tank by an Illusion troller because it reduced the efectiveness of his PA

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I probably lose, as I was once asked to tank the ITF with my fire/fire brute - that was painful, though at least we had a Kinetic so my Rise of the Phoenix recharged rather quickly

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better fantasy swords
http://www.onstedvillage.com/images/uploads/sw999.jpg
http://theswordlord.com/library/KRT323_P_NWslayer.jpg
http://www.shineyblade.com/FantasySword1.jpg
http://images.elfwood.com/art/j/o/jo...le/swords2.jpg
and some daggers, as someone asked for before
http://www.stellasspecialtyshoppe.co...3e9252867b.jpg
http://www.knifecenter.com/knifecent...ges/uckr3b.jpg
http://www.aceros-de-hispania.com/im...gers-knife.jpg
http://webzoom.freewebs.com/norstar1/1EW-2363.jpg
http://webzoom.freewebs.com/norstar1/HK-506.jpg
http://webzoom.freewebs.com/norstar1/MC2038G.jpg
let's keep it this way for now.

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Those aren't QoL additions - those are content additions. If you want lots of impractical swords with extra spiky bits then there are tons of fantasy MMOs that cater to that need. All of the sword sets here have tons of weapon customisation options already, especially compared to most of the ranged weapons like bows, and even more so when compared to the 80%+ of powersets in the game that don't use a weapon...

In fact that's how you can tell if your suggestion is a QoL change or just a niche desire - if it will make life easier for almost everyone (regardless of archetype/powerset) then it's a QoL change - if it's a personal preference because you want to make more anime fantasy characters then it's probably not QoL...

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7 toggles O.o

Hehe, Sapphic Neko has that, tho i got her consumption down to a total of 0.96 end/sec (4 willpower toggles + tough, weave and hover)

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Yeah but you have QR and probably Stamina as well which isn't standard for most characters, so knowing your net end regain per sec would probably be more useful than your total toggle costs. My L50 Claw/WP scrapper Winter Tiger also runs 7 toggles as well (4 from WP, CJ, Tough, FA), but his include the high cost Focused Accuracy - his end consumption from toggles is 1.35 end/sec, but having both QR and Stamina means his net end regain is 2.42 end/sec, which is still by far the highest end regain of any character I have. Combined with low end cost Claws I don't think his end bar has ever dropped below 80%.

Compare that to 1.98 end/sec net regain on my L50 Fire/Fire brute Lord Mayhem (who had terrible end issues with SOs pre-Inventions, but now has absolutely none with an IO build) and 1.91 end/sec on my L50 EM/Elec brute Powerbreaker - both of whom have end-drain powers that they hardly ever use (unless Mayhem is being end-drained himself, or Powerbreaker is recovering from a power-surge crash) - and ditto with my L48 EM/EA stalker Ghost Spider on 2.11 end/sec regain - again, no end issues and little need of his end-drain.

So I'd say anything around 2 end/sec net regain should have no end issues if the attacks also have reasonable endrdx slotting (usually around 40-60% in the aforementioned characters, thanks to IOs, as my melee archetypes all tend to have 5 Makos or 5 CIs in all melee attacks by L50, depending on whether I want +dmg or +rchg more).

My cause for possible concern is my L35 SS/Dark brute Raven Shadow - he currently runs 7 toggles (3 resist toggles from DA, plus Death Shroud, CJ, OG, Tough) without too many end issues currently, at around 1.5 end/sec regain - but I plan to add 2 more toggles soon (Cloak of Darkness & Weave) for a total of 9 toggles by L50. Only time will tell if he can handle that in the interim - his eventual slotting will have more endrdx in attacks, but net end regain with final slotting will still only be 1.41 end/sec and he has no end-drain power. I expect to need blue insps on him (not such a problem now we can combine insps), but whether that's an occasional thing or a constant addiction will dictate whether I need to re-think his build and possibly tone down his pursuit of good defence to add to his resists (i.e. forget about Weave and CoD).

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The only advantage with WoW is that you can level fairly quick; and there are no teams required to do so.

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I wouldn't say WoW is faster than here and you don’t need a team in either game (arguably both depend on the archetype/class you play).

I used to play WoW, and now play CoH/V, mainly duo'd with the same friend for a similar number of hours per week (20hrs duoing weekly, on average). We usually focus on one regular duo from L1 to the level cap (and only play other alts in our solo time when only one of us is online) before starting a new duo, so I have a fair idea how long it takes to hit the cap with our playstyles in both games.

We took just over 3 months to get a mage/hunter duo to L70 in WoW - in CoH/V we usually get a new duo from 1-50 every 2 months on average (warshade+controller took 6 weeks, crab+fort was around 8 weeks, most of our non-EAT duos tend to take 8-10 weeks). Even taking 1-50 in both MMOs as the metric I'd say there was parity between WoW’s & CoH/V’s levelling speeds - L1-30 in both games takes us 2-3 weeks or so, but admittedly WoW has a lot more time spent travelling around than CoH/V (and mucking about with other non-combat stuff) so if you could/did focus on one area I guess you could level faster.

Either way, WoW & CoH/V are certainly the fastest levelling and most casual MMOs I’ve ever played - sure, in EQ2 (a peer of CoH/V & WoW, all released in 2004) I hit L50 in 3.5 months from launch, but that was in a regular group of four as EQ2 wasn’t so solo/duo-friendly back then. Though that’s still very fast compared to the year it took me to get my first L50 in EQ1, always playing in full teams, back in 1999-2000. Tbh levelling is ridiculously fast in all modern MMOs compared to that.

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as proof of concept take a look a valkryst's beginner level co-op suggestion and his international airport suggestion. Both great ideas, both equal or better (on paper) than the current starting points, now imagine what he could do given the tools and the UI to achieve his goals ?

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It's a frightening thought - the universe would probably implode

Actually you'd think if anyone was bouncing around excited about the mission architect it would be me (yeah I used to be the GM for my long-running PnP RPG group as well), but actually I'm not that thrilled about it yet - probably because I'm a cynic and I suspect it won't be anywhere near as powerful as everyone is guessing/hoping. I'm very happy to be proved wrong, but until we have more information I'm reserving judgement - and perhaps even dreading it a little (it could split our already small playerbase even further, by segregating those who love story over xp/inf rewards in the user-created missions from those who primarily seek xp/inf rewards more than story in the official content).

At the moment we don't even know if the mission architect is going to be macro-focused construction ("pick your mission variables from a dropdown list of pre-made/existing instance maps, factions and existing bosses then bookend it with your own briefing/debriefing/boss text, and let the architect create your mission") or micro-focused construction ("build the map block-by-block like we do with SG bases, use multiple factions and place them spawn-by-spawn exactly where you want, place glowies/ambush-triggers one-by-one exactly where you want, create a boss in the costume creator and place him exactly where you want then write all his text for both first contact and at the quartile HP levels as he is defeated, then add your briefing/debriefing text for the mission") - obviously I'd prefer the latter, but I have an unshakeable suspicion we'll be getting the former.

Plus I could never really work my magic until the Devs gave me the power to create outdoor persistent zones, and that's never going to happen

I definitely want a BS/Shield Brute (concept, name and costume all ready for it), but if Castle is right there probably won't be any proliferation in I13 so that idea will have to wait for I14 or beyond

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If it'll be about grinding the most boring TF available a couple of times to get one decent recipe then it's a meh

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Methinks I'll just play the TFs I enjoy, and hopefully I'll get me a lil' stockpile.

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Ditto - which probably means I'll be doing as many ITFs as I do now, with a few LGTFs sprinkled in here and there - just hopefully with at least one decent recipe for my time, rather than the endless cascade of trash I've had from my last dozen or so TFs.

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Today I learnt that:

* Many people don't seem to understand that information can be realised in several small segments rather than as a complete, exhaustive package.

* The (game) world ends when players get things that they want, get things that they don't want or get things that they aren't sure about - something to do with branching missions?

* I'd been mistyping Chimchimineechimchimineechimchimcheroo as Cimerora for ages.

* No-one is ever happy unless they are moaning... so obviously more brits here than I realised

Thank you forums.

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That was just so Judgemental, Dave

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How about I give 1M to the next 25 Players I team with who aren't carrying 3 month vet badges (If it's convinient)
or I can get in touch with my SG mates and try and convert it for you
Your call

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Well I only have heroes on Defiant and only have villains on Union. There's not much point chucking it at my Defiant heroes as they're drowning in inf and I rarely play blueside anyway. Redside on Union my inf supply is drying up (admittedly I've spent over 200mill in the last two days - the curse of having two characters nearing 50 at the same time and moving into their final builds), but it's not that hard to get more.

I'm not really that altruistic tbh - if you could get it to Union redside I'd snap it up, but really if you want to give it away to newbies then I'm fine with that too. Whatever is easiest for you - your call It doesn't really feel like my inf anyway because all I did originally was spend 30secs typing in a throwaway post.

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Only "perma" on Villains if you do the right missions, and keep redoing them via Ouboros as they run out. Very temporary on Heroes.

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They might as well be perma though - I took no travel power on my Crab Spider (though I did have CJ & 2-slotted Hurdle), but I did make heavy use of travel temps - by the time I reached 50 I'd used up all of my Zero-G pack, but I still had my Raptor Pack, Goldbricker Pack and Sky Raider pack (original, not flashback) with about 3-4 hours left of combined flight time between them.

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Now that my question was derailed, does anyone know if it will be possible to create a farming map?!

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Technically your question was a derail anyway

But if you've read the same announcements of I13 features that we have then you know about as much as we do - i.e. Positron doesn't want to encourage farming with it, so expect user-generated missions to be less profitable than official content. We don't know yet, but there's a heavy inference that user-generated missions might have their own rewards system - i.e. maybe we won't get any xp or inf for them (or perhaps reduced xp/inf), but will earn merits to spend on a limited pool of rewards - I wouldn't rule that out as a possibility.

But really your guess is as good as mine... allegedly

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And you never know, someone who is especially good might be offered a job

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Possibly, but even if that happens (and if it does, it will be rare I'm sure) the US subscribers would be preferred for that - no mucking about with Visas and the like. I certainly wouldn't encourage an obsession with the mission creator as the sole avenue for someone wanting to break into games development - at best that's a naïve dream, and at worst... well it's probably still a naïve dream

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It could do with some serious tweaking though. We need more variety in map tilesets and better AI.

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Yeah I must admit I'd be a lot more excited about I13 if it had tons more instance tilesets (at least one unique tileset or at least a custom skin for every faction) that would be retrofitted to old mission content, and maybe a new faction too (with different AI/tactics to all the existing ones).

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Played an /NRG tanker? I can inform you that with enough +recharge it was possible to do near scrapper level damage just by continualy spamming ET.

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Not to ET level - actually I think I deleted my Invul/EM at around L16ish, but that was back in I5 so I barely remember. But honestly with Tankers/Brutes it was always said that SS, EM and Stone were the big 3 melee sets (on the US forums anyway) - with Stalkers there was just the big 1 - and it was ahead of the rest by a much wider margin.

And anyway most powersets become a little ridiculous with tons of +rchg (I actually wish there was a lower cap on it) - my Mind/Psi dom doesn't have tons of global recharge yet (not til I get him to 50 anyway), but with SB and the base empowerment buff his attack chain is almost PSW -> MindProbe -> PSW as it is. But you can't balance sets around colossal +rchg because, apparently, IOs aren't mandatory and most people can't afford colossal +rchg.

Sure, for parity I guess EM did need nerfs across the board, but by picking EM a Brute/Tanker is making more of a trade-off than a Stalker - they're specialising in single-target damage and giving up the stronger area damage of other sets. For a stalker that wasn't much of a trade-off as they were always mostly single-target (until getting Electric Melee, anyway - oh and I guess Spines to a lesser extent - but there are trade-offs there in that your single-target ability, the main thing stalkers are supposed to be good at, will be sub-par).

Having EM on a 50 EM/Elec brute and a 47 EM/EA stalker I've got over the nerf now, but honestly not all sets are equivalent across all archetypes - the ET nerf certainly hit my lower survivability stalker a lot harder than it hit my brute.

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I’m more curious what people did want in an issue?

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Tbh we're all being a bit previous as this is just the first announcement - obviously they'll have held some stuff back to tease us with and keep us interested as time passes between now and I13 going live. But as I said, I'd like to have seen a new zone or a zone revamp (and yes, we may still get one) - and for that zone to be important enough to the game and the storyline to have received close to top-billing in the initial announcement. As it stands we've had no indication that the storyline will move forward at all apart from the new Cimerora missions. I'm also disappointed we probably won't get any power proliferation (as confirmed by Castle since Posi's announcement).

Oh and btw the new content is being added to Cimerora, not Croatoa

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Ok game over folks.
And the winner is Valkryst.
Pm me any time and date and you can collect your 25M on Union anytime

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Hehe I didn't realise it was a competition - I totally missed your post about the 25m. But I don't have any heroes on Union anyway (and no space to make one) so you better donate it to a charitable cause

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lol so hardly worth taking really

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Yeah, I did the math and decided against it on my EM/EA stalker.

Though on him I have managed to fit in +20% in +dmg set bonuses from IOs without losing global recharge (he has +25% rchg - about standard for my non-purpled melee ATs and he's L47 anyway atm) - I mainly used Mako in attacks and Red Fortune in shields, plus Adjusted Targeting in BU & Undermined Defences in Water Spout, to get that bonus. So that's always an option too if you want a +dmg boost.

I only started slotting him up with those sets last night and I'm still missing a few pieces, though, so I can't say how much difference it will actually make yet - tbh so many bosses seem to have a sliver of life left after his opening attack chain that if I can turn most of those into kills I'll be happy. And my stalker's secondary is so poor that "kill or be killed" really is central to his survival

Honestly I think this is a feature that is far more attractive to the Devs than it is to most players. In MMOs the Devs will never be able to create content as fast as some players consume it, so getting the players to create content is obviously the only solution to that problem. Also the Devs don't have to pay us for it - in fact we'll be paying them (our subs) while we create content - win-win for the Devs really.

User-generated content has been discussed in depth by Devs from all the main MMOs at most of the recent Game Developer Conferences and I'd expect most MMOs will have user-generated content as standard in a few years time. Nice to see CoH getting in relatively early though, as far as mainstream western MMOs go. Not to mention this feature will be a massive PR boost for CoH's adverts/marketing in future - something that very few of the competition have yet.

I love storytelling, but I can't get excited about the mission architect until I see how powerful/flexible it is (or not, as the case may be). It is in the nature of MMO players to wish for more than Devs can deliver and hype things up in our own minds to the point that the actual promised system just can't fail but disappoint. So I'm trying to restrain myself from thinking about this mission architect too much until we have more concrete details.

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I wonder did they get a discount for this one?

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[insert Vin Diesel's Career Prospects Joke here]

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Nah, what we need is SapphicNeko to show up here with a "moist" pun

Last night I saw a Babylon AD ad in Cap au Diable near the hospital that actually had weathering across one corner, so it looked like the poster was starting to peel, right across Vin Diesel's face! I wonder if they got a discount for that one too Though I am glad to see the Devs making an effort to "muss up" the adverts for the Rogue Isles so they blend into the environment better.

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According to this post by Castle we very likely won't be getting any proliferation.

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Oh, that's a shame. Hopefully they'll fit something in, even if it's just slinging broadswords (or axes for scrappers) at the 3 archetypes getting shields, and maybe Psychic Blast at corruptors (to match Pain Dom).

If we don't get a new/revamped zone (and new content in it, in addition to the Cimerora arcs that should have been in last issue) then I13 might actually register as disappointing to me. Systems-heavy issues are good if, like I9, they alter the very fabric of the game and will be used by most players most of the time - I'm not convinced the mission architect will do that yet (not until I hear about its reward system and how flexible/powerful the architect itself is).

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I do think this is what some people are feeling because there isn’t an announcement of a big new zone and when people were told they were getting a massive issue they presumed this would be lots of new zones and missions. Then there were a few of us who were getting excited about new base stuff (which isn’t essential for the game and only plays to a minority of the user base).

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This is my main complaint and the thing that gave me a mild pang of disappointment.

Honestly, even though new powersets (or proliferated ones) are the main thing I like to get, I've also come to expect either a new zone or a zone revamp in every issue and, just as importantly, I want to see the main storyline moving forward. The Cimerora missions I'm looking forward to - but to my mind they're just something that should have been in the last issue, as they will "complete" I12's new zone - but I was really hoping I13 would have its own new zone plus 4 contacts/arcs and a TF as well (maybe it will - I hope so).

New systems can be great, sure, if most of the playerbase actually use them (unlike the base editor) and if they don't change the game for the worse (IOs were a good addition, but brought some undesirable side-effects to the game too). If the mission builder does fast-track more arcs/missions into the game that the Devs can sanction as "official content" (with normal mission rewards) then that will be great, but it could end up being as underused/niche as Ouro is (personally I use Ouro more as a teleport shortcut and vendoring place - I'll do Pilgrim's arc on most characters, but the "task forces" and flashbacks I only do rarely, usually just for badges I need for accolades). I'm glad we have Ouro, but it doesn't feature as more than a very minor part of my playing time (unlike Inventions, or even bases).

Obviously the reward system the Devs tag onto the mission architect, and the power/flexibility of the architect itself to let players make interesting missions, and then easily find the best missions by other players, will make or break it as a gameplay feature. I just hope the mission architect doesn't end up sidelined by the playerbase, so that it exists mainly as a draw for marketing to put on CoH adverts.

All that aside, all I really want and expect from new issues are:
- new (or revamped) mission/zone content
- new powersets (proliferated, or totally new)
- new costume pieces (hopefully we won't have to buy all new stuff in "booster packs" in future)
- bug fixing
- QoL improvements

If the Devs deliver all of that each issue then they can tag on whatever new systems they feel like adding.