Nalrok_AthZim

Says the guy who's participating in a political debate in a thread originally meant to ask about moderation. Threadjack much?

You've obviously never seen me yell at someone about crafting 3d meshes for costume pieces and/or getting pissed about someone suggesting that UI work is "easy"

Except those are outlines, not cel shaded areas. The outlines are not affected by lighting or environmental hues or powers. I'm not saying the game is completely cel shaded, I'm saying those outlines are most certainly not cel shading.

No, it's not. Please look up cel shading.

Well there you go then. Still, Energy Shield seems to be the premiere Block for melee since it has balanced high resists and the advantage of working while attacking.

Which makes it very impractical for its own themed set, Power Armor, which is largely ranged attacks. Bizarre.

I'm aware, and those Secondary effects are nice and varied-- some of them are more practical than others, though, and some of the purchased Advantages are significantly more desirable. Compare Energy Shield to Force Shield in purchased Advantages: Force gives a few seconds of block after you stop blocking. Energy gives block every time you attack. That's a pretty big difference, and it makes Energy WAY more practical.

Eldritch Shield gives 300% Resist to all but Physical (250%)
Telekinetic Shield gives 300% to Physical, and 250% to all others
Electric Shield gives 200% Physical, 250% to all others
Energy Shield (Power Armor) gives 270% to all
Most other shields are 250% to all.

These shields are most certainly not created equal as far as hard numbers go, and some of the advantages they get are miles better than others.

Broadsword was still usable though. It could still stand on its own and while NB was faster, the numbers were functionally the same when it came down to damage, debuffs,etc. Head Splitter and Golden Dragonfly did the same damage unenhanced, both were cone attacks, both had the same crit chance. NB was just faster. It wasn't marginally better and it came down to personal choice. Blocking in CO? Not so much.

... okay?

I understand this conceptually, but I simply can't apply the mechanic of blocking intermittently. If I'm not blocking when my opponent attacks, I take a lot of damage.

Yeah, I was ecstatic when I found out I could skip the tutorial and hit level 6 with no fuss after completing it once. I promise you that if I'd had to fight Black Talon and his Bullsh*t Artillery™ every time I wanted an alt I'd have A) only made one character and B) quit.

Yes, but those were level 10-12's versus level 5-8's. Getting buttstomped by something ten levels your senior in any game is never fun, but it seems especially painful in CO since there's really no 'barrier' between the level ranges in Canada. Directly outside of the Canadian Wilderness base are level 16's. Further out are 22's. But if you go out of the CW base and hang a right and go 100 yards, bam, level 30+.

Chalk that up to another thing that irks me: Why are some blocks significantly better than other blocks? They're functionally the same power. I get that each 'flavor' of Block has its own special perks consistent with the theme of said Block, but you can get more mileage out of a few Block powers than you can the rest of them, and that doesn't sit right with me since they should all be doing the same thing. If you buy a car for $15,000 and find out there's a car with better horsepower and better fuel economy for the exact same price from the same manufacturer, I'd feel gypped and confused.

This is honestly solid advice, but even when you look at the detailed information of powers you don't know what's going to suck. I thought some powers from Unarmed would be powerful from the hard numbers and description-- wrong. I thought some powers from Force would be helpful in my survivability-- wrong. I'm still getting used to the CO forums so I'm not quite settled in enough to hunt down all the info I need, but the trial and error of picking powers in the Powerhouse and hoping they're useful outside is a big turnoff.

That's great. My highest character is level 25 and I've been playing the game for a month, and everyone I've teamed with has agreed that blocking is essential.

Not only have I never seen this, it's not mentioned in any in-game information. How long do you have to be idle? In my experience, standing still while being attacked gets you killed. Care to point me in the right direction here?

And while I'm busy attacking, the two nearby Villains tear me apart with their attacks and I die since I wasn't blocking.

Then I'm spending my time mashing heal buttons and hoping those invulnerability powers save me in time. Are we playing the same MMO here?

The reasons I've seen for people 'thrashing' CO are legitimate, especially when you compare it to its superior, CoH. There's a lot of things CO doesn't do right if you're a CoH vet. Blocking, for example. You don't block? You die. No questions asked. Either block or get stomped. Blocking doesn't let you attack, and I can't tell you just how much I hate having to sit there with the Block key held down waiting for 2-3 enemies to stop attacking long enough for me to get a shot in. I feel like all of my characters are constantly on the ropes with no opening.

The tutorial is rubbish, gives no information, and pits you against an enemy so powerful he'll waylay you anywhere from ten to twenty times before you wear him down enough to kill him. Thank the stars he didn't have health regeneration or I'd have quit the game immediately.

Another problem I've found is that there are "great powers" and "terrible powers" and no real middle ground. Some builds will be rampantly overpowered because of one or two powers, while other builds are nearly useless. Example: Power Armor is freaking absurd and makes playing other "tank" powersets look like wasted effort. Archery is to Munitions as a shotgun is to a straw and spitballs.

I really, really have a problem with games that have skills/powers that're so much more powerful than the rest of the game that they render the other choices obsolete. It's bad game design.

On top of that, the level-to-zone progression is so ridiculously unclear it's not even funny. Mill City, Desert, Canada, Vibora, Canada, Desert, Mill City, Desert, Canada, Vibora, and no way of knowing where to go next without talking to half the NPCs in the game for some kind of "go here now" quest. Always fun to go to Canada at level 22 and wind up trying to escape level 32 ice demons because you decided to explore.

Furthermore, the gear level drop system is baffling. At level 25 I have 9 pieces of gear for 35+ that dropped off of level 20's. What the ***** am I supposed to do with those and how the hell did they manage to be on the loot table for things 15 levels lower than they are?

Yes, I get that the CO players are being sympathetic. Please reread my post: I stated that THB praising the CO community for being so non-snarky was ironic since he spent the first 3/4 of his post being a jerk to someone who was honestly having a tough time with the game. If that post melted your heart I really don't have anything to say other than "wut?"

You can't be a jerk for 3 paragraphs and then somehow redeem yourself by praising someone else.

EDIT: The praise wasn't even made with good intent. Rather than saying "You know the CO community is really trying to help us out" THB opted to use the charity of CO's players as ammunition for berating Bad_Influence. Real heartwarming, let me tell you.

Yeah, that's a great rhetoric and all, but you weren't there to read their chat either.

"where do i buy inspirations"
"what are enhancements"
"Why doesn't hurricane do AoE damage"
"stop pulling them together you'll die"
"the orange inspirations don't do anything"

Trust me, these were not players who'd been in the game long. I specifically remember at least two people getting stuck in a mission because they didn't know there was an exit button.

The irony of the above quote being in the same post as the below quote is palpable. Way to be a jerk.

It really did, especially because it drove a great deal of good players who were ALSO good roleplayers from the game. Here are a few of my fondest memories:

-The Grav/Cold who kept using Wormhole to pull an entire second spawn onto the team while fighting our first, only to Dimension Shift them (which usually killed any characters who had armors powers that relied on enemies in melee range).
-The AR/Energy Blaster with Bonfire who dropped Bonfire every spawn and thought Power Push was a great idea when trying to fight a Boss.
-The Plant/Psi Dominator who kept yelling at us for breaking his AoE sleep and had almost no powers from Psi.
-The Invul tank without Unyielding "because it had crap resistance".
-The Claws/Regen Scrapper who said Regen was too endurance heavy and refused to use any power other than Shockwave
-The countless masterminds who didn't purchase the Upgrade powers "because they cost too much end to use and the pets always die anyway"
-The FF Defender with no bubbles and a constantly-on Repulsion Field/Force Bubble
-The Fire/Kin controller with no Flashfire and Repel always running

Teaming was impossible.

Hate to burst that bubble, but way back then, almost all of my global friend list went dark for that very reason. I even asked, and they said they were tired of trying to play with AE babies. And you know what? I almost quit myself. Every ******* team had 2-4 AE babies who had no idea how to play the game and would wipe the team every single pull.

You never played the old tutorial if you have to ask this question. I actually missed the old tutorial when it was gone because it went so far out of its way to explain things.

I'm still amazed I was able to level in issue 6 while fighting Arachnos. Hell, sometimes I'd die so much I'd actually reroll my character to get rid of the debt.

In a world of "Save our game" you shouldn't be an outward jerk when someone calls you on holding the "why bother" flag. I understand your arguments logically. But please, don't lump this entire forum into some crowd you want to condemn just because people don't share your view.