PRAF68_EU
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Quote:Yeah, the battle to take Bedlam that people are whining about is awesome. You have a whole bunch of Black Knights charging into battle, as well as some who follow you. If you stick with them and support them you get a real sense of army vs army. And it doesn't take long to plough through the enemy hordes.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
Not gonna lie. I haven't done any of the Night Ward missions, because I'm generally sick of low level stuff. But what you guys are describing sounds awesome.
ALT TIME!!!
My only disappointment was the final boss fight was a bit to quick and I didn't feel I had to contribute much - NPC allies did most of the work. -
Eh, no, Dark Astoria is just the same as every other story in CoH and in comic books (with added Lovecraft cliche factor). The writer might have more successful in disguising the story mechanisms for you, but I wasn't impressed.
It might have been more to your taste, but it certainly wasn't better writing.
And I think the actual character you are playing influences how you view a story. If it suits the character you rate it more highly. I played DA as a robot, so was obviously completely unmoved by threats of soul sucking and bodyshock scenery. I've played other arcs as a rather dim thug, so prefer ones that treat me that way than those written for a scheming evil genius. -
The answer is simple:
If you don't want to face a range of different tactical challenges, stick to newspaper missions. -
Quote:The final battle in the RWZ is significantly harder, since they are scaled down AVs (or actual AVs, depending on settings), and thus have purple triangles.Originally Posted by Blue Rabbit
I like to work hard and grind it until I reach the climax as much as the next person, but that final battle was way over the top.
The final battle in Dark Ward gives you a whole bunch of NPC allies, so even a support type should be able to handle it.
A problem easily fixed by setting "Fight bosses when solo" to on. You are level 30+ and don't have that on already?!!!!!!!Quote:What this means is that, if you're fighting on the lowest difficulty, and solo, your allies are downgraded to Lieutenants while the enemies remain as Elite Bosses. Leaving you with a significantly harder fight than if you'd had your difficulty set higher
If you can't solo bosses, you might as well give up on soloing zone story arcs, since they pretty much all have EBs in them. -
Quote:Which wouldn't matter, if you felt the writer actually had some answers...Originally Posted by Deacon_NA
To those hoping a Prometheus sequel will provide some answers, you better hope they have a different screenwriter. Wrapping up open issues with a bow is not in Lindelof's wheelhouse.
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Quote:The trouble is, it's very difficult to write such an arc without imposing a personality and motivations onto a villain. An arc written for the Joker would be quite different to an arc written for Lex Luthor.
All you need is a story arc in which the narrative acts as though your player villain is in control of the situation, even if the game still makes the major decisions for you.
And some villains are happy to be lackys - so long as their orders give them lots of stuff to smash. -
Quote:Comic book writing isn't necessarly bad writing. But there are certain tropes which are required in order to tell an entertaining story. Villains have to have stupidly complex plots. Heroes have to walk into the traps. Otherwise everything will resolve itself one-way or another on the first page, and you have no story. If you haven't been using the tropes, it may be why your AE attempts are getting criticised.Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Now my best friend, who also plays the game, keeps telling me to accept any plot holes as "comicbook writing". And I hold nothing against her but I honestly HATE "comic book writing" being used. Comic book writing is NOT a blank check for bad writing, it should be the bottom rung standard you avoid like rats and other flea baring creatures during the Black Plague. "Comic book writing" is what's been causing problems for people to get into and enjoy the comic book industry. It's as bad as when Joe Quesada said "It's magic, we don't have to explain it."
As a funny note, when I presented a story arc for the same friend to look at, she immediately called me on my bad writing, I called her own letting the devs get away with it and the response was: "I don't expect good storytelling from the Devs anymore, I still have hope for you."
If you want an explanation, Terry Pratchett's explanation for why vampires follow the "rules" applies. Heroes walk into obvious traps because if they didn't the villains would just kill them. -
It's been floating around on Dr Who Rumour/fan sites for months. But there is no pictorial evidence, only "insider accounts" which sometimes are true, and sometimes are hogwash.
I like the Ice Warriors, especially when they are not being evil, so if they do appear, I hope they are done well. -
It's an old rumour, and the Daily Star is not known for the quality of it's journalism...
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Quote:Never had problems with either arc.Originally Posted by ResidentBaka
Night Ward, and also First Ward when I think about it.
Obviously, climactic battles should always be a pushover.... -
Quote:Yes, according to interviews, it's Earth, although exactly when, the writer didn't seem to know. Bad research and plotting is bad.Originally Posted by Dark One
Hmm...after seeing it, I could see how it can fit and still allow AvP & Predator 2 to be canon. Other than that bit at the beginning, was he on Earth or what? A sacrificial lamb to bring another species into existence?
As for 2001, that deals with the same "big ideas" much more effectively, and did it 40-something years ago.
I really dislike all this "working around" Alien. It should either address that film, or not. -
Quote:This would be the sensible thing to do, and in some cases would just mean undoing earlier nerfs, but as you can see by subsequent posts, "sensible" and "blaster" don't really go to together. I wonder what they think "manipulation" sets are actually for?Originally Posted by Madadh
What about making the blaster secondaries more controlly? Making blasters more like inverted Doms, like Def and Corrs are currently mirror each other.
This would necessitate changing several sets, but not a whole lot, since blasters are sorta limited in number of secondaries to choose from. And it would modify only sets that no other AT uses.
Would that help blasters secondaries enough? Would that be able to be made balanced?
It seems that buffs/debuffs are shared among 4 ATs. Blasts shared among three (I'm counting Dom secondaries and mostly blasty here). Melee attacks and armour each shared among 4 ATs. Control sets are only available to 2 ATs at present. (And of course, only 1 AT has pure pet sets). It shouldn't be be too much of an imposition on other ATs 'thing' if blaster secondaries became more control focused. That would certainly up their survivability, too.
I'm thinking that if each secondary had 4 or 5 control powers, 2 or 3 attacks, and 2 or 3 utilities, that might really help out yet keep the feel of blasters similar to what we have now.
It is quite a labour intensive thing to do for the developers though, since it means fixing secondaries one by one, rather than doing one thing that has a global effect. -
Quote:Given that Synapse has already alluded to upcoming blaster buffs on the beta forums, we can conclude that they are officially still behind.Originally Posted by UberGuy
Only the devs can tell us authoritatively if Blasters are still behind their peer ATs. However, they have already told us that being behind, at least by some threshold amount, is a reason for change. ATs are not allowed to lag one another by too much. -
I think most of the criticisms of SSA1 are based on it doing too good a job of aping standard comic book writing. Most heroes are genre-blind and walk into obvious traps all the time. Those that are genre-savvy still walk into obvious traps, but make some witty coment about it.
As for the seemingly arbitrary way major character was killed off, may I point to the introduction of Doomsday and Bane?
Penny Yin is so much Jean Paul Valley that I think her hero name must be Azrael-Girl.
Maybe the writer is also someone whose comic book experience is grounded in the early 90s? -
My method involves less copy-pasting in the database.
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The US sure is big!
I consider the 4 mile trip into Croydon a bit of a drag... -
Quote:Yeah, well, good luck with that!Originally Posted by Reppu
These two points) Blaster ST damage isn't that high. Not remotely Scrapper worthy. They COULD increase it to be Scrapper level, and thusly not on Stalker level. 1 has NEVER held water with the community, because we knew better than to swallow this. Blast set ST is pretty middling. Why CAN'T they be competitive to melee?
Thus, increasing the survivability of Blasters would indirectly increase their damage.Quote:3) Dominator damage is only so high because they don't roll over and die. This is more of a 4 issue than 3 issue.
Corruptors are currently in the sweet-spot. So they aren't going to do anything to blast sets that might impact Corruptors.Quote:And the crappy design of Blast sets. -
Quote:Have it look at a big table for all powers, with a "double hit fix factor". Most entries would be 1.0, but powers which don't follow the normal rules would have an adjustment value.Originally Posted by StratoNexus
Hmmm. Good point. The calculation is likely occurring on the fly, which would mean they wouldn't be able to adjust it for individual powers. This could make fixing the tanker version much more difficult.
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Have you tried adjusting the head sliders?
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Quote:If you think no protection against Fear, Confuse and Taunt is no holes, then you haven't played Dark Ward.Originally Posted by JohnnyKilowatt
no holes in the mez protection.
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Quote:^^ This.Originally Posted by Reppu
A lot of it comes down to the following: The Blaster AT is one of the only ATs that cannot comfortably sit at a higher difficulty multiplier (not modifier, anything above +0 doesn't really count for 'balance' in this case), and yet gains nothing unique in exchange for this.
Most of the other ATs, with most of their powerset combinations, can do something like, say, +0x6 with very little issues, even pre IOs (Depending on enemy group).
A Blaster has a far, far harder time. And with no benefit to offset it. Their damage is lesser than the Melee ATs, Dominators are on their heels often for Damage, Controllers with proper builds are too. Corruptors do Enough and erupt with Scourge, and Defenders bring their superior supportive numbers.
Blasters struggle, with nothing unique to warrant it.
And the purpose of of this thread is to discuss what to do about it.
If your answer is "do nothing, I like it that way" that's fine, but you really have no reason to post in this thread.
It seems to me that these are the factors that can be looked at:
1) ST damage. The devs have said they really don't want ST damage going much higher, so a significant change in this area seems unlikely.
2) AoE damage. I can't see this being increased enough to compete with Judgement. Maybe an increase in maximum targets for nukes?
3) Mitigation via CC. I don't believe the argument that this steps on Dominator's toes holds water, since they stamp all over Blaster toes in terms of damage.
4) Mitigation via "shields". I don't believe the argument that this steps on Scrappers's toes holds water, since they stamp all over Blaster toes in terms of damage.
5) Utility. ??? I don't see any way to add significant amounts of this without fundamentally changing the class. -
Another difference: Tankers still don't get Broadsword.
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The reason for the similarity is simple, originally they where just going to be one set: Medieval Weaponry.
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When Positron was in Dr Who... -
Quote:Jackson? Like many who read lotr first, he hated The Hobbit. It's really a much more off-kilter book when first encountered as an adult.Originally Posted by Chazzmatazz
I liked it, and give it 4/5 stars. It is well crafted and the performances by the principles were strong. I am actually a bit disappointed that Scott elected to revisit the Alien setting intstead of exploring something creatively new. It is the George Lucas "I must explore my created universe!" ego trap. Cameron has fallen into it, as has Peter Jackson. It is sad how short the journey from auteur to institution seems to be. At least Chris Nolan knows enough to disconnect from Batman after three films, and Guillermo del Toro seems to be stretching his legs a bit with Pacific Rim.
Nolan? I don't think overseeing the new Superman, and potentially a whole family of DC films is "letting go".