Lycanus

awwwww, my testimonial in Medusae's character didn't get in.

Sniff

how long will the actual invasion event last?

I mean, I know that the War Zone will have this permanently,

but how long will the attacks on Atlas and other city zones last?

To the weekend, I hope?

unfortunately, my current software gives me limited options since I'm just using the shareware version of the DivX codecs.

so I can't get my videos down to what YouTube likes to deal with.

if you watched youtube....it's quality is pretty bad

if you watched mytoon...the quality is a bit better, but still not as good as the version on my computer...

some quality in audio and video is lost in the encoding process unfortunately

which means I better put up the youtube version too

bleh

Mytoons has better audio and video quality.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DKzKuOqRm7s

anybody see this?

http://www.mytoons.com/animation/play/3308

There were going to be more tankers involved, but the disappearance of effects and weapons in demoes made some of my footage useless.

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I don't remember "most" people leaving when the PvP zones had their issues; in fact, this is the first I (and most of the people in the myriad of SGs I play in) have heard of it.


[/ QUOTE ]

Ditto here, never even knew there ever were zone problems in the PvP

my only problem with PvP is that there is no way to do a realistic simulation of conflict.

There are no consequences involved.

In real life, if the hero falls back, people get hurt.

If the villain falls back, weeks, if not months, of preparation are ruined.

In CoH, if a hero falls back....nothing much happens. If a villain falls back....nothing much happens.

In real life, people in battle often have to get involved in battles they know or think are going to be losing (reference the 300 Spartans, Bastogne, Coral Sea...etc) because even a tactical loss there might avert a more important strategic loss.

PvP turns into a bunch of random ganking where people do not get into battles that they don't think they can win.

There is no reason to hang around if you're losing.

There is no reason to push it, because nothing all that bad will happen if you decide to run away.

It turns into a frustrating give and take that never quite goes anywhere.

Battles are meaningless and unimportant and, over all, forgetable.

There are occasional exceptions, there are always exceptions, but in general the PvP is unsatisfying.

If there were something REAL at stake, even something like Recluse's Victory NOT being reset, it would be a little better. But even that is not nearly enough to make people decide to fight it out instead of flee.

After all, who cares if an isolated zone/reality is left in the control of the enemy if it has no effect on the world at large.

By the way, your assertion that school is out is not all-encompassing.

My classes have this last week to go...then lots of teacher wrap up stuff.

[ QUOTE ]
this sounds great!
what a great way to involve the community. i like being able to photoshop my pictures.. that means i'll be able to really get those colors to *POP*!

now.. i just have to decide which character to use.. hmm..

(i have two accounts, so i'm assuming i can enter once per account, yes?)

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Heh, I actually had the perfect character for this:

who better to talk about and face the Warriors than Medusae?

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umm level 50=begining of next character

and they say im the glasses half empty type

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Heh, until recently, there wasn't much further I could go upon hitting 50.

Even now there's not much storyline after that. My 49 has all the souvenirs, has done every mission in the central story archs (meaning I still have to go back and do some of the TFs and Trials).

All that's left after this is inventions and PvP, which, I is enough to keep me interested in running her, but otherwise, a level 50 character is a stagnant hole filling a slot I could put another character in.

***********

As to the power from any set thing: yeah, they did try that.

Originally, CoH was envisioned as a semi-point buy sort of system like Champions is, but point-buy systems, while having the advantage of flexibility, have the disadvantage of requiring a lot more GM involvement to make sure that the characters are balanced and that they will work as the player hopes they will.

Instead, they went with a template system (also called a class system) which is basically the same as a point buy system save that the points have been pre-spent by the game-maker, or at least the GM.

Yes, none of us are against new powersets, but we are against barring power sets from ATs because of their special effect.

I can understand barring Fire Blast from a scrapper, but not Fiery Melee...it does the same thing. (I'd probably give them the Brute version, however). About the only melee type that fire melee does not fit is Stalker because it would be a bit more flashy than a stealthy type might want.

Since Tanker and Scrapper are no longer stepping on each other's toes nearly as often, it would be very, very appreciated to see them share their power sets completely.

[ QUOTE ]
COH/COV is going to have to make major changes to compete with the upcoming release of both Marvel Comics and DC Comics own MMO's.

I would like to see these powers available to heroes:

Blaster Primary Powers: 1. Dark Blast 2. Psychic Blast 3. Radiation Blast

Blaster Secondary Powers: 1. lasso

Controllers Primary Powers: 1. Plant Control

Controllers Secondary Powers: 1. Dark Miasma 2. Poison 3. Traps 4. Cold Domination 5. Thermal Radiation 6. lasso

Defenders Primary Powers: 1. Poison 2. Traps 3. Cold Domination 4. Thermal Radiation 5. lasso

Defenders Secondary Powers: 1. Assault Rifle 2. Fire Blast 3. Ice Blast 4. Radiation Blast

Scrappers Primary Powers: 1. Battle Axe 2. Electrical Melee 3. Energy Melee 4. Fiery Melee 5. Ice Melee 6. Stone Melee 7. Super Strength 8. War Mace

Scrappers Secondary Powers: 1. Electrical Armor 2. Energy Aura 3. Fiery Aura 4. Ice Armor 5. Ninjitsu 6. Stone Armor 7. lasso

Tankers Primary Powers: 1. Dark Armor 2. Electrical Armor 3. Energy Armor 4. Ninjitsu 5. Regeneration 6. Super Reflexes 7. lasso

Tankers Secondary Powers: 1. Broadsword 2. Claws 3. Dark Melee 4. Electrical Melee 5. Katana 6. Martial Arts 7. Spines

Here are some Villain powers I'd like to see available:

Brute Primary Powers: 1. Battle Axe 2. Broadsword 3. Claws 4. Ice Melee 5. Martial Arts 6. Ninja Blade 7. Spines 8. War Mace

Brute Secondary Powers: 1. Ice Armor 2. Ninjitsu 3. Regeneration 4. Super Reflexes 5. lasso

Stalker Primary Powers: 1. Battle Axe 2. Broadsword 3. Electrical Melee 4. Fiery Melee 5. Ice Melee 6. Stone Melee 7. Super Strength 8. War Mace

Stalker Secondary Powers: 1. Electrical Armor 2. Fiery Aura 3. Ice Armor 4. Invulnerability 5. Stone Armor 6. lasso

Mastermind Secondary Powers: 1. Electricity Manipulation 2. Empathy 3. Energy Manipulation 4. Fire Manipulation 5. Ice Manipulation 6. Kinetics 7. Radiation Emission 8. Sonic Resonance 9. lasso

Dominator Primary Powers: 1. Earth Control 2. Illusion Control 3. Storm Summoning
Corruptor Primary Powers: 1. Archery 2. Electrical Blast 3. Psychic Blast

Corruptor Secondary Powers: 1. Electricity Manipulation 2. Empathy 3. Energy Manipulation 4. Force Field 5. Poison 6. Trick Arrow 7. lasso

Under Ninjitsu, I'd like to see Caltraps replaced by Web Grenade so you can have a character with Danger Sense and Web Grenade.


[/ QUOTE ]

I see that I am not the only one extolling the benefits of spreading the old sets around to other ATs.

Perhaps with just minimal tweaking to better suit the AT (I still think Tankers need more AoEs and Scrappers need more high damage or fast recharge single target attacks)

Okay, first, I do want more weapons...

I really, really, really do...

but seriously guys...can Scrappers get some power based stuff first?


Psy weaponry (so long as we aren't saddled with a device that focuses it) is a good idea.

Energy Blade could be good unless it is the light saber gadget style, same with Electric Hammer: if it is a hammer made of electrical powers, cool...if it is an electrified hammer...same old same old...

Now, I'll tell you the special effects we need for scrapper now that you're offering us Psychic:


Fire

Ice

Energy

Electricity

Radiation

Give us two or three power sets from those special effects (we don't NEED the ATs to "own" any special effects any more, their roles are well-defined enough that we can finally escape that limit) THEN go back to the plethora of weapons.

Weapons are easy, just look to real life, but they're also the same thing as what we got already.

I don't care if it is a whip, a spear, a shield, a pair of knives, a pistol or even a pair of kamas....

A weapon is a weapon is a weapon is a weapon.

Look at the ATs and their pool of special effect in the primaries:

Blaster:
Skill/Weapon-User x2
Fire
Ice
Electricity
Energy
Sonic

Controller
Energy (gravity)
Fire
Ice
Earth
Psychic x2

Defender
Psychic
Air
Radiation
Dark
Skill/Weapon-User
Energy (kinetics/Force Field)
Sonic

Tanker
Skill/Weapon-User
Earth
Ice
Fire

Scrapper
Skill/Weapon User x4
Toxic
Dark

Blaster: 6 special effects, Controller 5 special effects, Defender 6 special effects, Tanker 4 special effects, Scrapper 3 special effects

Throw in secondaries:

Blaster
Skill/Weapon User
Fire
Ice
Electricity
Energy

Controller
Radiation
Energy (kinets/force field)
Skill/Weapon-User
Air
Psychic
Sonic

Defender
Dark
Psychic
Skill/Weapon-User
Electricity
Energy
Radiation
Sonic

Tanker
Skill/Weapon-User x3 (includes super strength)
Energy
Fire
Earth
Ice

Scrapper
Skill/Weapon-User x2
Dark
Regen

Now: Blaster 6 special effects, Controller 9 (NINE!) special effects, Defender 7 special effects, Tanker 6 special effects, Scrapper 4 special effects

Now look at ratios skill/weapon compared to total sets:

Blaster: 3/12 (25%) total power sets dedicated to skills/weapons

Controller: 1/13 (7.7%) total power sets dedicated to skills/weapons

Defender: 2/16 (12.5%) total power sets dedicated to skills/weapons

Tanker: 4/11 (36.4%) total power sets dedicated to skills/weapons

Scrapper: 6/10 (60%) total power sets dedicated to skills/weapons

SIXTY PERCENT OF THE POWERS ARE THE SAME SPECIAL EFFECT/FLAVOR!!!!

SIXTY PERCENT!!


So...give me my fire, ice, energy, electricity, radiation, psychic, vibration and so on special effects for scrapper

THEN start giving me more weapons and unarmed styles

ahhh...these things always happen on my regular gaming nights.....

Oh well, someone has to man the tabletops

got a few more up now, as well. Total (including those above) of seven.

do a search on Thrythlind, should find them all

Some videos I've had around for a while.

One is recent, most have been around a couple of years.

PARTY!!!

Snippets of scenes, some going as far back as CoH beta. First attempt, some say also my best.....*sigh*

Are you ready?

Second attempt, shares some snips with Party, but not many.

Whereever I may roam

My wereshark at low level before I rerolled her, way back before you could have weird skin AND clothes.

Shark's Fin

My wereshark in the mid-20s

Just a Girl

My controller vs Terra....incidentally, Medusae's real name is also Terra, so, basically....Terra vs Terra

my BS/SR scrapper uses Swift 3SO/Hurdle 3SO/Quickness 3SO

She's nowhere near SJ or SS for speed or height, but she gets along at a very good rate. By the way, the Jump enhancements are predominantly Jump Speed rather than Jump height. I was barely able to equal CJs height going straight verticle with 3 Hurdle SOs, but speed is much better. This means that, while you stay at the higher altitude for the same amount of time, you pass ground much quicker, making the timing for clearing obstacles much less tricky.

SS is much faster, though harder to control.

SJ is much better all around for strictly travel, but can get you into trouble faster as anyone who ever decided to jump over a rock in old-Faultline can tell you.

Fly still offers phenomenal manueverability compared to everything else and unmatched security as long as the ceiling is high enough.

Teleport is the absolute fastest and also allows for the outright avoidance of areas altogether...of course, it is difficult to get used to, and long-range porting is troublesome even for those used to it.

The main advantage that slotting Swift, Hurdle, Sprint, Quickness, Combat Jumping and Hover offer is that these powers DO NOT SUPPRESS when you attack. The result is that on a runby with my wererat BS/SR she can be about 20 feet away from the target by the time the shot lands and be already moving soon after.

And do not think that hover is a bad choice. A properly slotted hover equals unslotted fly, which, considering the manueverability and stability of hover, is not shabby for combat speed, or even travel speed for that matter. (some among my play book have considered dropping Fly altogether and relying on hover, but I'm not sure I'd go that far.)

My sniper faces this same problem due to the anti-sniping AI.

For those that don't know, back when sniping was an issue, they put in a code that said that if the mob couldn't get in attack range of an enemy by a certain time, then they would come to the conclusion that it is an impossible fight and try to run.

The situation my sniper has is as such:

Line up enemy boss or elite boss at max range, build up, sniper, hasten, sniper, anti-AI triggers, boss starts running (usually about the time he reaches my short range), player begins muttering and cursing as he has to chase the friggin' coward through the entire map.

This only generally changes with enemies that have long enough range to equal my max short range (right now it's just council marksmen, family gunners and skyraider assaults).

Similarly, enemies with a single slow (sledgehammers, vahz, similar such) attack have their Anti-sniper AI triggered when fighting my Ice tank because the time between their attacks is so long that it triggers.

However, I know this is the way it is supposed to work, and most of the time I try to make use of it...I also use the "must get as close as possible" AI and do stuff like hover over light fixtures so that people like the tsoo will waste more than half their time jumping up instead of attacking.

I remember playing Regen when people thought it was weak

I remember my first "non-political" supergroup which disbanded with no warning a few months after going live

I remember complaining that my inhumanly skinned characters were virtually forced to be naked because there was no way to put something on top of the skin level yet.

I remember the cows, of course.

Farm Aid and Brahma especially

I remember being telekinetically given flight by Farm Aid

I remember the Afro American who was impressed with my no-ugly-armor Ice/Strength tank build

I remember discovering demoing (have since demoed pretty much every door mission and a lot of major out-door hunts, ambushes and monster fights since going live)

I remember Speedball (a name I thought then, and still does, screamed for a scrapper variation of force field)

I remember going ga-ga over the costume editor

I remember my first look at Faultline

I remember the very....ugly martial arts animations and the inappropriate Katana animations

I remember being surprised with tails

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Issue 10 is a ways out, but it will bring us an update to an old familiar villain group. This group will have their power center altered

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, let's list all the villains that have a power centre.

1) The Council
2) ...
3) Er
4) That's it.

[/ QUOTE ]
*Cough*Fifth Column*Cough*

[/ QUOTE ]

Circle of Thorns

and if you go on to those dominated by single individuals:

The Family, The Warriors, The Tsoo, etc

[ QUOTE ]
I didn't reread the transcript, though I do remember the interview distinctly...but here's my take on bases:

They give players their own property...not exactly new ground for MMP's...however, they do offer an unprecedented level of customization.

Clearly, that customization, as well as the several gameplay benefits that the base provides hasn't been perceived to be worth the cost (i.e. Prestige/time played)...hence, Posi and several others (including myself) have taken a spin at making bases more accessible at an earlier stage.

It isn't the popularity of bases so much as the fact that our programming & art team did a phenomenal job of allowing players to generate their own lairs. Maybe not enough players have experienced this content to comment on it, though hopefully Posi's changes will help.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know I have fun with it, but one thing I'd like to suggest:

Can we have an official sticky similar to Jay's Costume Suggestion thread for base items? While the utility stuffis great, I have a number of suggestions for decorations and such.

I do hope that they DON'T change the map, because Faultline IS a difficult zone to travel through and it should be. It is one of the more visually well-designed zones out there.

Unfortunately it, like all the other hazard zones has no real point to it.

It needs to be redesigned on the standards of the semi-hazard zones that the devs have added since the beginning of this game.

Hollows, Striga and Croatoa are well designed, interesting zones.

Eden and Terra Volta at least has some interest with the trials there, but it is otherwise devoid of interest.

The Sewers, Perez Park, Boomtown, Faultline, Dark Astoria and Crey's Folly are visually unique and interesting zones (especially Faultline and Dark Astoria) but are otherwise useless. There's no reason to go into them save when missions send you there. There is nothing there to bring players in for their own purpose, (unless you include monsters).

All of the zones need to be redesigned along the lines of Striga. Each with their own contacts, storyline and missions and probably Task Forces or Trials.

In conversation with my brother, I heard the most plausible explanation.

When they put in the top limit of 15 taunted, some bug got into the code.

My brother says that his aggro problems are at their worse in a long spate of furious battle, but, if he is given a minute or two between fights, that he's back to normal. His guess is that there is something wrong with how the program is resetting the taunt cap, so, when we try to taunt something, the program thinks we're already at cap and refuses to work.


And Heavensrun is right. The CoH tank is not, never has been, nor will it ever be an equivalent to the classic comic book strong-character, aka (thanks to Champions) the Brick.

The comic book Brick has a combination of intense offensive power and nigh untoppable defenses that are balanced by a variety of limits that have little to no effect on the gameplay of City of Heroes. The classic Brick is too thoroughly unbalanced when one considers the gameplay limits set by the game. Thus, there will never be a true equivalent to them outside of NPCs such as Infernal.

Tanker is a really misnamed AT...it should have been named Guardian or "Defender" or something like that. As for Defender...that name doesn't cover the variety it has, but no name really could. Defender, despite being rather useful, is still something of an after thought AT.

He is also right that Super Strength should be given to scrappers.

Of course, I have long been in favor of crossing over similar power sets to all ATs (melees, defenses, ranged, buff/debuffs, etc) and that there are too many ATs at the moment.

Scrappers and Tankers will always be stepping on each others' toes as long as the game goes on. When (and I say this with a fervant hope) WHEN it becomes possible to switch villains to heroes and such, then Brutes will be doing the same and, to a much lesser extent due to the variance in their powers, so will Stalkers.

Defenders are a hodge-podge AT that has no unified purpose. Which is NOT knocking defenders, defenders have saved my keister many, many times, but look at the ATs, for a moment:

Blasters, hit things at range
Controllers, control and support
Tankers and Scrappers, hit things up close

Defenders...well, some buff, some heal, some debuff, some control, they hit things kinda too....

The hodge podge nature of Defender is the reason that their inherent is so sucky. An inherent that is equally useful for such a diverse arrangement of sets is difficult to come by.

They really would have done much better with just basic: ranged, melee, support...and then allowed the player to define for themselves what they did with that...

Fewer ATs with more powersets, would have made more variety and still been difficult to gimp yourself. Virtually an impossible change at this stage of things though.

The closest we're likely to get is for them to slowly start translating various power sets over to other ATs...

for example, battle axe or energy melee scrapper, Psychic blaster, Assault rifle defender, etc...heck, I'd even be happy to see defender get Dominator-esque assaults instead of pure ranged...a good defender is usually in the middle of things anyway and a good tank will hold aggro (assuming it starts working again)

we've already seen them translate claws, katana, martial arts, spines and dark into Stalker sets....certainly they could convert super strength into a scrapper set, or Regen into a tanker set (would need a taunt-aura though)