PoptartsNinja

Hah, the Arachnos boards are great.

A no-animation version of Psychic Blast and Psychic Assault, and maybe a no-animation Mind Control as well. They can still do a flashy build-up of power, but a subtle idle animation or crossed arms or simple glare or angry stare rather than the current wavy-hands and psychic sneezes would be awesome.

Also, could we get a Psionic Dart that looks less like a Psionic Sneeze? I'll still never use it for anything but pulling, but the current animation looks awful and makes me want to say 'Gezundheidt' every time I see it used.

Trouble Always Comes in Threes
By @PoptartsNinja
Arc ID: 433675
Length: Long (3 missions)
Morality: Heroic
Enemy Groups: Custom, Crey, Vanguard, Paragon Protectors
Level Range: 35-54
Description: When an enigmatic Ex-convict approaches you for a mission to recover some stolen police evidence from an elite group of Outcasts and uncover those responsible for a heinous crime, the biggest question may be how much of his story you can really trust...

Creator Notes:
Contains archvillains (one of them is an optional fight), so check your settings and be prepared. Soloists may want to have a status protection toggle for the final fight. The arc also assumes you're a hero with a love of Truth and Justice, so if you're not the type you may want to skip it.

I'd love feedback on this. I've tested it pretty thoroughly and everything seems fairly balanced, but I've only been able to test it with my Level 50 brute, so I hope it's not too extreme for the level 35s.

This is actually a really good idea. They could even run a contest for the playerbase and let the best entrants' 'advertisement art' make it in-game.

Here ya go, Siergen, you just didn't have the right options enabled.

I have only one response to this.

I usually look forward to the slot levels more then I do the power levels. >_>

Meh, in a thread that is asking players their opinions on why they don't like certain powersets, I've given my reasons to not enjoy playing Forcefields as a defender when coupled with electric blast. It's boring and does nothing that my secondary takes advantage of in any way. I have done builds where I've taken nothing but the shields and d-bubble and pool powers that have performed just as well (or, in some situations, better) then when I have taken every power in the Forcefield set. If you've had different experiences with controllers and masterminds, that's great! I don't personally enjoy the set and I won't personally be playing it again, and perhaps that's for the best.

I don't personally enjoy the 'rage' mechanics and won't be playing Super Strength either. Neither set is 'bad' but, as I said, I was playing up my perceptions of forcefield's weaknesses for humorous effect. That my attempt flopped is something I'm willing to apologize for.

TL;DR: "I don't enjoy Forcefields. If you do, kudos. I don't feel the set is bad, but I do think it's bad when coupled with Electric Blast." I'd even challenge you to try it with electric blast yourselves, but I honestly wouldn't want anyone to bother. The combination just doesn't seem to play well together.

Bubble teammates outside the mission (if they'll stand still long enough to let you) and again on entrance for 90 or so seconds of double-bubbles. Maneuver to keep them in bubble. Blast as needed. Drop Repulsion Bombs whenever the knockdown might be useful. Pin spawns to corners (or, in extreme cases, ceilings) with Force Bubble (until they get a lucky string of resistance that lets them break through far enough to reach me before getting repelled off at an odd angle). Det-field one-off semi-dangerous mobs that are a threat to certain allies (Voids, mostly--you don't want to det-field a sapper because your teammates will typically give up trying to kill it right around the time when the det-field wears off and he saps all their end), etc, etc.

You haven't played with me. I don't personally find Forcefield's buff cycle fun. Click a person, bubble, bubble; click next person, bubble, bubble; rinse and repeat for 50 levels. I could write a macro, but those will eventually get stuck or miss someone if they're not in range and aren't a great solution.

After level 12, there is pretty much nothing to really look forward to in terms of non-situational powers. Everything is great situationally, but nothing is as reliably useful as D-Bubble. Even Repulsion Bomb, which I personally loved, was pretty much never in any serious builds prior to the improvements that made it an AoE knockdown.

Additionally, because Forcefields is a rarely played set, most teams don't really know how to leverage a forcefielder to any great effect.

I also likely would've been much happier playing Forcefield/Sonic blast (because nearly everything's better when your blast set debuffs something in a useful way), but for thematic reasons I went with electricity instead and have always regretted it. In a set that lets you blast as freely as Forcefield does, electricity blast's comparatively anemic damage and 'weak' secondary effect never felt like it was accomplishing anything; even properly leveraged with epics such as power boost and/or power sink.

So, maybe I am 'playing it wrong'. Very rarely did any teammates ever come close to death, so I'm not disputing the usefulness of the shields, I just question why the set needs so many powers that do essentially the same thing (forcing things out of melee with you. Something which, in many situations, is accomplished just as easily (and, in the case of R-Field and F-Bubble, at less endurance cost) by turning on 'hover').

Forcefields is killed by itself. By the entire powerset.

There are precisely three useful powers in Forcefields, and you have them all by level 12. Once you reach level 12, you have basically every truly useful power in the set, and can spend all the slots you would've spent picking up leadership, stamina, and heck, why not get 'whirlwind'? It's marginally more useful then Repulsion Field.

After level 12, the Forcefield set basically turns schizophrenic and isn't sure what to do with itself, and therefore fills itself with powers that are either borderline, redundant, or in some cases directly harmful to team survivability.

That said, Deflection and Insulation Shield are great and Dispersion Bubble is downright amazing for what it is. The two shield powers have a fairly long duration that makes re-applying them slightly less tedious then re-applying speed boost (or it would, if there weren't two of them).

The rest of the set just lets the three good powers down.



For example:
Personal Force Field is a huuuuuuuge offender, because it actively kills Forcefield's contribution to the team. Not only can you not bubble or blast through it, it also kills the effect of Dispersion Bubble for teammates, potentially cripping your own buffing potential. Even worse, once PFF's on (which can happen accidentally, if you're not paying attention), it's potentially very difficult to notice that it's working if you're running any of your big bubbles. Also, it's great that PFF let you survive the total party wipe! What're you going to do while you wait for the rest of the party to run back from the hospital? For PVP reasons alone I dont' suggest removing PFF, it's iconic and not bad for what it is--it's just awful when taken in the context of Forcefields as a whole. PFF actively hamstrings your contribution to the team.

Force Bolt looks like a damage power. It pretends to be a damage power. But it's not a damage power, it's an anemic soft control that's marginally useful while soloing at low level and you need to keep a melee boss away from you and can't be bothered to turn on hover. Force Bolt tends to annoy melee-centric teammates who now have to chase that very same melee-centric boss half-way to the next spawn, and doesn't provide enough (read, 'any') alpha control to make up for not being a force multiplier. Knockback is basically the second-most maligned form of 'control' in the game. Force Bolt is anemic, situational, and pathetically underpowered

Detention Field is a phase shift. Another control power of dubious merit; and one that can potentially be indirectly harmful to a team's survivability as people can and will waste time and endurance attacking the intangible target. Even better, with D-Bubble up, D-Field becomes basically invisible and only the most canny of teammates will notice the string of 'unaffected' floating above their target's head and switch to a new one--usually just in time for the phase shift to wear off. Also, it doesn't work on bosses, EBs, or AVs which means D-Field is hilariously useless for taking a tough target out of the fight while the team cleans up the minions. D-Field is only useful for removing from the fight (a single) mob of minion or lieutennant level: aka types that your team will simply eliminate during the first 3-4 seconds of combat anyway.

Repulsion Field Hey, remember Force Bolt and PFF? Well, R-Field the reason PFF exists. It's a PBAOE Force Bolt, so it's great at uncontrollably scattering a mob to make combat take longer, tossing mobs into other spawns so your allies AoEs will agro them, and attracting so much agro to you that you'll need to hit PFF to save yourself from the adds. Repulsion Field is both directly and indirectly harmful to your team's survivability; because you can't count on the knockback pulses triggering when you'd want, which makes it really easy to accidentally throw a melee-centric boss at one of your blaster friends rather then into the corner like you'd been aiming for. R-Field is situational, redundant, will piss off your entire team after a few minutes of screwing up their AoEs, and it is, in terms of reliability, outperformed by Force Bolt.

Repulsion Bomb for defenders is a great soft control. It's a targeted AoE knockdown that does reasonable damage. For everyone else, it's a targeted AoE radial knockback which means it's like Repulsion Field but more annoying because you can use it before anyone else can fire off their attacks to scatter a mob all over the place. As a defender power (i.e., performing at its absolute best), Repulsion Bomb renders Force Bolt and Repulsion Field utterly redundant and useless. Once you get Repulsion Bomb, you'll probably never use Force Bolt or Repulsion Field again.

Force Bubble is the final nail in the coffin for Force Bolt and Repulsion Field, and renders Repulsion Bomb a bit less attractive. It's a huuuuuge area repulsion effect that's of a circular shape, so unless the mob you're affecting with it is in the corner it'll simply scatter all over the map. Even better, Force Bubble is simply so huge that it will agro things you can't see due to corners and boxes, which makes running it in a mission (or really, running it at all) an iffy proposition. Even better, it's just as good at making mobs hate you as Repulsion Field, but on a faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar larger scale, which means after running it for a while you'll probably need to use PFF to save your own butt while the rest of the team dies due to the seven or eight spawns you just accidentally aggro'd. That said, Force Bubble is still infinitely more useful then Repulsion Field, since the two basically do the same thing (keeping mobs out of melee with you), but Force Bubble is actually almost good at doing that, while Repulsion Field will just make them (and the rest of your team) punch you in the face. Force Bubble will still typically make your entire team want to punch you in the face.



And that's why Forcefields is awful. It can still be leveraged right, but it has four powers that do basically the same thing (Force Bolt, Repulsion Field, Repulsion Bomb, Force Bubble) and no powers that debuff, boost team damage, or otherwise render the team more potent. If the +defense from the bubbles isn't enough to save people, Force Field has literally no other way to assist them. GG on that PFF, buddy! Now play some solitare while the rest of the team comes back from the hospital.

And yes, I've got a level 50 FF/Elec Defender. I will never play the set again.

And yes, I'm being overdramatic. This entire rant is my opinion, not gospel truth, and if Forcefield has been improved recently I honestly wouldn't know. When I last played it, however, Forcefields was (and likely still is) the Martial Arts of the Defender primaries. It has so much potential that I want to like it, but is typically played so poorly (or is simply usually so unfun to leverage correctly) that it doesn't get used in favor of the more universally effective sets like Dark and Kinetics (and for good reason).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, by CoH's origin definitions, wouldn't be mutants. They were four normal, non-ninja, unmutated baby turtles that got flushed down a toilet and then doused in a strange glowing chemical that a big bad evil corporation flushed down the toilet as well. Science origin, not mutant, by CoH's very loose definitions.

For that matter, most of the "animal-human hybrids" you see in media wouldn't really fit in a 'mutant' pack either. They are also largely science experiments, science experiments gone awry, magical mishaps, etc.

For example:
Beast: Mutant
The Lizard: Science
Wolfsbane: Natural (not a mutant anymore, she, Wolverine, and Sabretooth got retconned into genuine wolf/human hybrid people. Yeah, I think it's dumb too.)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Science
Monkey Fist & Gill (from Kim Possible): Science
Hybrids from the Isle of Dr. Moreau: Science
Street Sharks: Science
Thundercats: Natural (they're aliens)
Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew: Natural
Battletoads: Science (or Alien Space Magic, I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure it was sceince)

So, it would be far more appropriate to see animal/human hybrid items in a "gene splicing" pack or a "science experiment gone wrong" pack or an "I Escaped from a Crey Genetics Lab!" (just like Mynx, the game's first iconic animal/human hybrid) pack.



Still, I'm sorry y'all didn't get what you want. I can't play the game at all right now (since Hughes.net is the worst ISP), so I can totally understand your frustration for not getting what you want. That said, all you can do right now is come up with a plan to convince David that animal/human hybrid parts are in more demand than he realizes, because it's fairly clear that it will take some amount of convincing in order to show that there is a demand for such a thing. Likely, he's basing 'demand' on how often the current "manbearpig" animal heads actually get used and, since they're ugly as sin, coming to the wrong conclusions.



It may be worth the art department's time to put up a list of a half-dozen or so possible "super booster ideas", complete with a rationale and general explaination (in advance) of approximately what each booster would contain, and then let people vote on which interest them from "most interested" to "least interested" (and then linky the quiz right on the game's loader, so people who care can have a say and people who don't can be surprised/whine on the forums about it).

Un-anounced police chases in most appropriate Paragon City zones.

Since cars are already slower then players, they could follow a scripted path and even low-level characters would have a decent chance of stopping the chase; and two chases per zone (following one of 3-5 or so different scripted paths) would prevent them from showing up too often. A chase every 5-15 minutes (provided there aren't currently any chases going on) would mean everyone would have a chance to stop some robbers every so often.

Chases could easily be:
Hellions and Skulls for low-levels
Outcasts and Trolls for low-levels
Sky Raiders, Warriors, and Family for mid-levels
Freakshow Sportaurs (a freak tank with a car for legs) for mid- to high-levels
Carnies in a clowncar for high-levels

The cars themselves could easily be a lieutenant to boss level mob; and spawn a small to medium spawn of the appropriate enemy group upon defeat.

Even better, the police chases could eventually be linked (perhaps on a random chance) to a "save the bank" type mission against the appropriate enemy group.

Mobs have been updated, so the arc should now be full EXP.

Edit: Arc has been re-tested, and all mobs now give experience. I didn't realize they'd drop down to 0 exp in some situations.

Indigo and Crimson would both give each other some fed-ex missions that take them to every zone in Paragon City on a timer.

Black Scorpion would give Silver Mantis a solid steel whip.

I'm sure someone would give Reichsman some new jackboots.

Hm... I didn't notice that in my pre-publish test runs (no xp at all in the test runs makes it hard to tell if mobs are working as intended, I'll have to remember that in the future).

I'll have to see if there's anything I can do to mitigate the xp loss; especially since Admiral Silverback's still tough since all I did was remove Rage and Build Up from an elite boss that doesn't need either. >_>

Are there any other tweaks I should look at? I don't want to re-standardize the powersets since I don't want everything to be dropping robots like they used to be... perhaps I'll just have to give in and replace all the robot masterminds with energy blast; which is a pity because the energy rifles are just so thematic.

... I'm also surprised the Irradiape gives nothing, since I actually went out of my way to make him a bit more powerful then he used to be. That's actually disheartening, since none of my powerset choices are particularly weak.

An Ambulance Ride of Malta

If you get the chance, I'd love to see how the team saves the world from The Invasion of the Space-Ape Armada (Arc ID 356628).

Even at its height, the original version only got about 18 plays, so I doubt anyone's been through it before.