Oneirohero

I can understand that if you're looking for per-enemy numerical rewards like XP, INF and drops that speeding through Task forces can be a real dampener on your own personal goals. But as for efficiency it's actually the BEST way of handling any situation.

Let's consider the ITF, the main objective seems to be trying to take back Cim. from Romulus and the Cim. traitors. It goes from saving Sybils on an island to destroying shadow cysts in a cave to messing up a 5th column partnership with a giant robot to taking Romulus down personally after he combines with a Nictus. If I remember correctly, the last two missions actually contain a 'defeat x traitors' objective which means you cannot speed right through and expect a mission complete right there at the objective site.

Why do you need to waste time beating on the traitors when there's Sybils in danger? Why do you need to waste time when there's Shadow Cysts bringing forth dangerous nictus from the other sides of the galaxy? The first two missions in a serious, realistic view demand focusing on the objective only. Heroes wouldn't risk having the Sybils harmed because they provoked their captors' allies. And I believe both heroes and villains wouldn't let a crystal that spawns more threats remain intact any longer than necessary.

Third mission I think needs 100 traitors taken down as well as five generals, Romulus and his control panel thingy that most likely controls all the giant robots around the place. It's inevitable that if the big-bad has an army you'll have to take them down and his personal guards before you've sufficently foiled his plans for conquest.

Final mission needs you to beat 300 traitors and Romulus again, although powered by nictus so he's essentially super-powered now. It's not enough to just kick Romulus' fused **** because the traitors can simply go flip the f88k out and go wild. So taking down an ENTIRE army is needed to ensure that Imperious and his people can return to the city without being ganked.

All in all, while the first two missions can be sped through, the latter two do show resistance to just rushing to the objective. But in terms of priority, it's better to take out the primary cause first and then take out the resulting threats afterwards.

The last improvement to Tankers boosted their base HP and gave them the bruising feature to their mandatory secondary melee power to debuff the resistance of their target in such a way that it bypasses the purple patch and any resistances to resist debuffs.

Tankers have base 0.8x damage modifiers, with the -20% resist debuff from bruising this make their damage equivalent to 1.0x. Sure it's not mega but the fact it passes through the target's status resistance and that the debuff can be taken advantage of by other allies, I think it works out quite well.

As for replacing Build Up for an 'All-or-Nothing' frenzy power, the massive survivability drop is not a good idea in this case. And the stacking damage mechanic is pretty much what a Brute does already, minus the ToHit buffs.

I read only halfway through the first page because I felt this should be said.


Scrapper envy? Giving Scrapper mechanics to Stalkers? Turning Stalkers into Scrappers?

Scrappers don't have the ability to get consistent critical hits from any mechanic of theirs, except the occasional enhanced-chance critical attack power. Scrappers do not get the ability to get an assured critical hit from working their other powers, no, because all they have is a random 5-10% chance. A mere fluke in comparison.



I ain't smiling Joe, Scrappers are virtually irrelevant in comparison. Other than they came first and happen to have Critical hit as their inherent power, what is it that Stalkers are really getting from them? More HP? Increased base damage? Critical hit? Other than the HP cap increase, they're not getting any of that. They're getting something that makes Scrappers envy, on-demand critical hits.

Stalkers have always been seen as specialists who work into hitting the enemy where it hurts most, not just merely smacking them about until they fall over. Scrappers only 'occasionally' hit their target's weak point, Stalkers actively seek out weak points, line them up and then take them down in one-fell swoop.

Assassin's Focus is going to allow A.Strike to be effective in AND out of Hide and teach those Scrappers whose the real critical-hitters in this game. Stalkers are going to be Burst-damage Melee AT kings because of this change, and it'll be up to the Scrappers to try to keep up when it comes to trying to out-damage single-target toughies like E-Bosses.


The only thing I'll regret when it goes live is that rare out-of-hide A.Strike that ended up critting, causing a out-of-hide Assassin's Strike bonus as a result. But x2 damage is still good nevertheless.

For me, Caltrops has been a godsend and I blame myself for not taking it earlier on my signature StrJus/Nin Stalker. It really does work wonders as damage mitigration since at least the Ninjitsu version of Caltrops has a mag 50 fear effect. Everything except purple triangles and GMs will step on the patch and slowly run away from me, giving me breathing room and the chance to temporarily go one-on-one with groups.

I usually do this:

Target boss > Use [Build Up] if ready > Charge [Assassin's Strike] and then queue [Caltrops] to catch as many people as possible > AS hits, a brief moment as the mob notices and attacks me and Caltrops starts making the lot of them crawl away.

If my target's still alive I beat on him until they're down and work on the rest of the group.

Like everybody here, I too agree that P-Points or P-Market rewards for getting Lv50 is too much and too easy for the dedicated players. And this is coming from a player who took 2.5 years to get his first Lv50.

The idea of rewarding free players with minor premium content would be a major sign of goodwill and possibly encourage free players to spend to get the better content, or at least add one more plus point to those thinking of trying the game out. But the level cap is not hard to get with mindless farms and power-levelling. To improve on this idea I would recommend exchanging Reward Merits and earning Badge Milestones as a means of free players earning premium material, if only in small amounts or time-consuming play that encourages players to explore the whole game.

With Reward Merits it would encourage players to finish story arcs, play TF/SFs and defeat giant monsters. You can't earn these Merits with the DFB or simple farms, so if you want to be able to get some premium stuff you have to stop running around in smelly poo-gas sewers and be a real Hero/Villain. Unlike power-levelling in general, diminishing returns prevent a single piece of content from being re-run over and over in a short space of time, meaning if they want merits fast they need to try a whole range of content to keep the flow going.

Badge milestones could be a one time reward per badge per account. By reaching each milestone you could get a small amount of P-Points equal to the amount of badges it reflects. Another Turbine MMO used a system where small point amounts could be re-earned through game play but required a lot of time an effort to achieve. Maybe by attaching point rewards to such milestone badges like Trailblazer's 200-badge requirement will encourage players to explore all the content and participate in as many things as possible. 200 badges is no easy feat, even for the badgers who have spent years working on their collections. And not many badges exist for being power-levelled or farmed, you could get the level milestones and Inf earned badges sure, but that's not a lot. I could even say this reward would occur at Seeker (500 badges) but I don't think that's possible without being able to use the alignment system to switch and collect both cities' badges, aka, premium content.

That's my two inf on the situation. Encouraging players to explore the entire game content for premium content is MUCH more rewarding for all involved than it is to powerlevel to Lv50. Since it seems these days a lowbie sewer trial can get you to Lv50 with no incentive to step even a foot away from Ms. Lib. I'm also aware that free players don't get Reward Merit access, so I'll say that for R-Merits to be used as an incentive, those would need to be available for free players beforehand.

Prometheus is a cruel reminder that the character scale sliders don't go nearly far enough for some of our characters :<

Shield Assault/Melee
You may consider it a joke BUUUT there /is/ historical and comicbook proof that using a shield offensively is effective and viable. Mix a few close range bashes and include some shield throwing and returning attacks for distance. May also have some synergy for Shield Defense.

Size-shifting Pool
Simple premise, being able to enlarge or reduce the size of yourself and potentially others. It would alter the damage, defense, HP...etc of targets corresponding to the advantages and pitfalls of unusually large or small sizes that represent. Shrinking things could work in all maps though enlarging may have special capped character scales to avoid people being halfway through the ceiling of indoor maps and caves.

Gun and Sword Assault
In an effort of coolness factor and the chance to introduce a 'put on the bus' CoH character. This set would have left-hand pistol, right-hand broadsword setup where close range attacks would be sword swipes and pistol-whips with distance attacks being gun-shots and perhaps even Kinetic shockwave sword swipes. This will allow Spark Blade to make a return as a functioning NPC.

I created a thread about the next two but I'll repeat those with my thoughts on the remaining three:

Genesis
One tree specific to your character's Archetype. Contains special upgrades for your character's respective AT through extra benefits from Inherent powers and additional benefits to their primary and secondary powersets. Genesis roughly translates to 'Beginning, the origin'. Since Origin is fairly useless, AT is one of the first choices you make for a character.

Hybrid
Many trees regarding all other Archetypes. Grants the character the characteristics of chosen AT's inherent abilities. Becoming an unofficial Dual-Archetype with your original AT as base. Hybrid generally means the combination of, combining the abilities of two ATs would be able to give some characters an interesting boost.

Vitae
Vitae means 'pertaining to life', so considering that Destiny seems to be about protecting, it could be a self-affecting version of special buffs, perma-regen/recov or even a special self-revive power.

Mind
A tricky one to think for in-game, but the definition means 'The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel'.

At this point all the combat stuff is pretty much over the top. Mind could be viewed as a chance to give yourself some unique convenience powers like Long-Range Teleport, being able to find the location of objectives instantly, creating unusual objects like walls so enemies can't pass it. Manipulating reality through the use of your mind? It's intriguing to think about.

Omega
So tricky to consider that I may have to jokingly say it'll be powers like [Limitless Radial Freeeem], [Divine Core Oscillation] and [Paradox Core Eternity]. God powers. Though for that to work it would only be able to work in specific events which then would make it useless everywhere else.

Someone else in game mentioned about being a seven story tall god-avatar of yourself. Which sounds REALLY fun to me actually, and could incorporate some of the above incarnate-memory powers (to a lesser extent). But to have such avatars, even in holographic-seethrough-armour varieties would require a lot of art time and a need for some good customising to please everybody.

-----

Oh, and while not exactly on topic. I'd also like to see the Alpha ability being exemplared below Lv45, treated like an enhancement so even though they diminish at Lv31 and lower, they still give you benefit at all levels.

Would be nice (and for some, funny) to get as hairstyles. Only the Pencil-Eraser hairstyle looks silly, I think the females get a version of the 'Emo cut' style and I think we already have the Faux-Hawk.

Mullet and Perm styles would be nice to see, such a lot of hair in CoH is all neat and tidy which adds to their plastic-lookingness. Even dreadlocks is just a bunch of pointy bits like when you let your little sister try it.

As for Anti-Virus, Firefox with NoScript for me, if there's any scripts running viruses they're blocked by default. I could see the images just fine.

The fear effect is kind of like a soft control effect, like Sleep but it reapplies itself when the duration is still up. It causes enemies affected to cower in place, not attacking you. Some will even try to move away from you as if afraid.

If you hit an enemy it briefly snaps them out of it, causing them to attack you, however if they're still under fear effects, they will soon cower/flee if left alone. It simply doesn't work like a Stun or Hold, you use it on a group of enemies to stop them from attacking you and lasting longer as a result.

To clarify this detail completely, I'll quote the ParagonWiki:

Most of the time I just say that I'm not interested in teaming, sometimes it's just unfortunate that I set my LFT flag, do some roleplaying and then I get a tell asking me if I want to team, those are the most embarrassing ones since if the story I'm involved with it good enough, I have to apologise for the false flag. >_>

As for invites, if they keep popping the invite window up after I decline so many times, I just move the window to a corner that won't obscure me so much and be on my merry way, can't invite me if I'm still deciding.

When I first read the OP and then the replies I went "Why is everybody posting dumbfounded/disgust face meme animations" Then when I zipped up to the top and re-read the thing, the seasons! HAHAHA!

I'm also 'pro exclusive means getting it first', I hate the idea that I can miss out on content merely by not spending enough money or not being here or around long enough to catch up. I enjoy the Going Rogue style of 'being able to have it before anybody else does' exclusive because it means the ones who don't get there in time merely have to wait, instead of forever be reminded of what could have been.

If that means certain costumes get to be bought with tokens months and months before it ships to the store (at an inflated point cost), then so be it, I will spend those points after the others have flaunted their bling at me knowing that I wasn't shunted to the side by 'exclusivity'.

I'd buy $15 of points to get Celestial if I really wanted it, if it were any more expensive than that I'd be more picky about it.

N'th'ed (en-thh-ddth)! to the degree.

I would be even cooler if in-game locked costume pieces told you how to unlock them, name of the badge and what to do to earn it. Ways to buy it outright is also something I'd go for too.

Edit: Buy the costume piece, not the badge! Buying badges is a can of worms I do not wish to open!

I think there's a command to list all your purchased items, but it is a clunky output to your chat window, not a proper graphic user interface. I'm kind of hoping Issue 22 does something to improve the Paragon market because the initial 5-second freeze while it loads the market up on first click bothers me.

It also feels kind of slow and things like not being able to preview items without having to start from the beginning of the list makes me feel like it's Paragon Market Beta to me. My memories of Dungeon and Dragons Online shop felt so much faster in rendering and user-friendliness than P.M. does.

Time to explain this issue directly, instead of veering off into the farming issues.

Why do tips have a 20-hour cool-down? Each tip mission you complete earns you one fame point towards the alignment you wish to be. This is considered to be a portion of the world who has heard of your deed and still remembers this. Apparently in the world of Paragon and the Rogue Isles, the populace can remember up to five things you've done in the recent past with impunity, then after that anything more you do simply gets ignored or forgotten by your other deeds.

The reason why a lot of news stories get stuffed in small columns in the middle of the paper or even left out entirely. Your first tip missions became the headline and secondary stories of the newspaper and there wasn't enough space to put in the several other deeds you could've done that day. Doing more tip missions isn't going to make that newspaper bigger.

You have to wait til your fame for the alignment becomes 'yesterday's news' before the figuative newspaper has space for the rest of your deeds and the breaking news story that finally puts everybody's mind that your character has turned (Morality mission). Outside of the game, the devs specifically stated that the alignment switching is NOT a light-switch you can turn off an on, that is also factored into 20-hour cooldown. As well as controlling the rate to which people can gain A-merits which can be quite lucrative to some folks.

Is the 20-hour cooldown fun, why put it in there if it's not fun? It's not supposed to be fun. There, I said it. It's not supposed to be fun it's supposed to stop you from earning too high a reward vs. time. There's going to be a new 'instant alignment change to Hero/Villain' token coming soon(tm) so if you ever wanted to do something similar in the future you can spend points to change your character's alignment without even having to do a single tip mission. It perhaps won't help you right now but it's in beta on the Paragon market right now if you don't believe me (Beta server, not Training).

--

Oh, and before I forget. How would I feel if there was a 20-hour cooldown on XP gains? I'd be alright with it. GASP! WHY?! Because I play this game to have fun, not faff about and cry about numbers on a flickering screen. Most of my most enjoyable moments in the game came from things that didn't earn me a single point of XP, INF or even badge credit. Plus it would give me reason to finish all those obscure arcs that get neglected because of out-levelling content. Bonus for me since I haven't seen everything this game has to offer in my 2.5 years of playing.

I'd be pretty damn happy about it!

I think one of the quotes in the Pocket D track goes on the lines of "Techno music it's, it's, everything...!", just before it goes into heavy trance/techno part of the track.

I am signed to this, although the devs have stated that a whole zone needs to be reworked to use the phasing tech (a la new Atlas Park/Mercy). I'd love for some enemy spawns to be replaced with something different. It might make street-sweeping afterwards harder but most things are instance-based anyway.

Though the mission itself can't simply be 'defeat x units in zone' because that sounds too much like a hunt mission that we've all seen before. I think for it to work there has to be some escalation into a climax. Maybe an EB who is the 'boss of the neighbourhood' shows up to stop you from taking down their subordinates after you fight through a bunch and THEN after beating them, the remaining enemy group become untouchable and run to the nearest exit door. Next time you talk to your 'take back the city' contact and return to the zone, the spawns are populated with things like civilians talking to each other or maybe more joyful activities like musical hobos or something.

Another thing could be that if you have an active mission that's hunt based, the 'cleared' flag for that neighborhood/zone would be temporarily suppressed, allowing missions to be completable even after you saved it from the enemy group. I'd definitely think TF/SFs would be included too for flag suppression. Perhaps Null the Gull may be granted another reality-bending power to turn rescued areas back to their original state, if you just don't want to deal with the annoyance of not being able to complete some hunts because you already saved it for yourself.

The minor detail that makes all the difference is that whatever the enemy groups are replaced with are numerous and interesting enough that it's not merely copy and paste. Things like the Praetorians talking to one another or playing ball might work in the appropriate areas. I'd even say maybe enemies should still spawn every once in a while, however far more rarely as they do now to show that you haven't wiped them out of existence, just took their dominance off the streets.

I'd be impressed if after clearing all the zones you'd be rewarded with an accomplishment badge 'Saved the Day', with the description text "The day is saved thanks to <character name>! You have cleared villainy from every street of every zone" Then when you run and fly around Paragon City you'd see the city how it should look like normally, peaceful until evil shows it's face once more. Come to think of it, wouldn't that mean you completed the game too?! O_O...epic.

I believe that despite it's origins, the energy blast effects are similar to kirby dots, they're round and vary in size when used. But I can see kirby dots are usually always pitch-black too and also energy blast is just an effect of a power, not a visual effect in other powers.

Would be cool if they could make an aura which used this effect, maybe having each of the dots appearing, overlapping and changing size in a static position (as opposed to the energy blast moving around like bubbles) and then having the dots a safe distance around the body as not to clip into the body itself, as shown in the reference.

Classic would be pitch-black, but tintable ones would also be very fun though I really hope they'd take a 50/50 primary/secondary colour approach to such an aura. I find it pointless when the secondary colour is barely perceptible because it only makes 5 or 10% of the entire effect, or having it just ONE colour which means it sends up looking plain, relatively speaking.

I'm fully aware that what I'm suggesting may already past halfway done in development, but after talking about it with people, I decided to post this on the forums for posterity. I've had my own ideas of how Incarnates can progress beyond the normal means of Lv50, most particularly the next two slots in line to be produced. Hybrid and Genesis.

Given that Alpha boosts act as additional/ED-resisting enhancements to your existing powers, Judgement gives you a great AoE attack, Lore gives you pet summoning, Destiny gives you a massive buff/heal and Interface gives all your attack procs, it may seem like there's not a lot left to expand on in terms of combat. And also seems like it's giving everybody the power to do what a lot of ATs specialised in pre-incarnate. After looking at the names Hybrid and Genesis so long, it finally clicked in my head. ATs, are the answer!

--

What if Genesis was a single tree directly connected to your character archetype? Genesis Blaster, Genesis Brute..etc. But on the two branches, they improve and expand on the inherent core abilities of the Archetype itself! Genesis means roughly 'the beginning', and one of the first choices in creating a character was what archetype they would become. Therefore Genesis Incarnate would be to strengthen and expand what makes your AT different to the rest of them.

Genesis Blaster could have the Core branch that enhances the stacking damage buff that is gained from every attack, either by increasing the damage per attack or giving it other qualities like ToHit or -Res. The Radial branch could enhance the anti-mezz component of their inherent, maybe allowing more and more powers to be used while slept, stunned or held?

Granted, some ATs don't have two component for their inherent powers, like Brute's Fury, Scrapper's Critical Hit. But you could say the two branches for the brute could be broken down into Core:Increased Dam/New-buffs to Fury ratio or Radial:Boosted Fury production and retention. The Scrapper could be Core:Increased Critical Hit chance and Radial:'Special effect' per critical-hit.

--

And what about Hybrid? Well if Genesis focuses on your character's own inherent abilities, then the only other thing you don't have is /other people's inherent powers/. Hybrid would have many trees each attributed to the existing ATs of the game, even the Epics, named something like Hybrid Blaster, Hybrid Brute...etc. It's here you can create abilities that mimic those of other archetypes, effectively becoming a hybrid AT (while still being your natural AT).

Back to Blaster again, the two components to their inherent is 'stacking damage buff per attack' and 'using powers while normally being unable to use powers'. Let's also say they exist as Core and Radial respectively. I could say that I really want my Defender to be able to deal more damage in a controlled way, so I go down the Core path which slowly grants me additional damage buffs increases per attack for every tier I reach. And like how the very-rares tend to be dipping a little into both sides of the tree, maybe once I reach V-R I'd be able to have maximum damage stacks per attack and also have my very first powers ignore mezzing too?

--

Regardless of whether it would happen or not, how does this all sound to you? Does the idea of Archetype-affecting incarnate abilities enhancing and dual-typing characters sound like a good one? Do you think any sort of powers like this could work with any other name than Genesis and Hybrid?

I think I remember reading in ParagonWiki that the Cognitive proc gives a two second confuse. Yes, two seconds. It's perhaps so short a time that enemies are more likely still recharging powers before they resume to beating on their real enemies.