Samuel_Tow

Yeah, we're discussing art with David Nakayama, the concept artist, in a thread he started about art, prompting us to ask him questions and discuss things with him. I don't know what we were thinking.

Seeing Stalkers as a "stealth" AT is a mistake. They're not. Stalkers are fighters who use stealth not for sneaking around but as a combat supplement. Stalkers could ditch their Stealth altogether and still be pretty much as good as they are now, so long as they keep their Hidden status, which has nothing to do with being invisible and all to do with scoring criticals.

Stalkers are not Rogues or Thieves, not in PvE anyway. Their "role" is not to sneak around the battlefield and look for targets of opportunity, their role is not to "explore the map," their role is not to skip fights. Based on how the game gives out progression rewards, none of that is rewarding, thus none of that has a point. A Stalker's role is to kill stuff, with their AT gimmick and definition coming into play in regard to HOW the Stalker goes about doing this. Brutes and Scrappers kill things in a straightforward fashion by walking up to enemies and cycling through their attacks. A Stalker kills by using and abusing his critical hits, therefore any change to boost Stalker damage without turning him into a Scrapper should boost the Stalker's ability to require his Hidden status.

I suggested a while ago that a successful kill in which the Stalker did the majority of the damage should cause a Stalker to immediately regain his hidden status and score a critical on his next hit. If that hit is another kill, then the Stalker should regain Hidden status once more. This would be a good way to reward them for single-target damage with even more damage for being the ones to kill single targets.

If Stalkers need more damage, then I don't think this damage specifically needs to come from AT mods ore buffs, but instead from very many more criticals. A Stalker dealing double damage criticals very often stands the potential to do a HELL of a lot more damage than a Scrapper, damage mods notwithstanding. In fact, I'd say up Stalker criticals from doing an extra 100% base damage to dealing an extra 150%-200%, so that Stalkers are HIDEOUSLY DEVASTATING when dealing criticals, but just average in a scrap.

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When Stalkers were created, they were given a gimmick - critical hits while they were hidden. While this was a great idea, this gimmick was SO limited as to be next to useless. The most a Stalker could do was assassinate one person one time in PvP and essentially grief people, but once that ONE critical was gone, the Stalker was naked. Running away is a waste of time and a waste of performance, and without running away, Stalkers cannot use their hidden mechanic almost at all. If anything should change about them, this is it. Their Hidden status should be much easier to achieve, much easier to maintain (i.e. being uniterruptible by external forces) and much easier to exploit. Give Stalkers criticals they can rely on and their damage WILL increase.

You're right for two reasons beyond just that.

1. Any AT designed to be able to kill enemies before they can even respond is simply broken by design. Simple as that. Killing enemies before they can respond and kill even a squishy trivialises content in an extreme fashion, therefore no AT can be allowed to do this consistently.

2. Any AT designed to be able to kill SOME enemies before they can respond SOME of the time, but gives up the ability to do almost anything else is broken by design, because said AT is screwed when it can't kill enemies fast enough. By design, the game has enemies who are intended to not be easy and quick to kill. I speak of most 40-50 bosses and elite bosses, specifically. There are also scenarios where enemies cannot be killed fast enough to stave off their ability to respond, such as in situations with ambush waves or stacked spawns or enemy-summoning critters. The fact of the matter is that any AT designed to kill or be killed will suffer, because sometimes killing fast is impossible by intentional design.

This has always been a great source of ire for me. In order to be even moderately competitive, Blasters have to rely on tools that for any other AT would be just "nice to have," and that aren't in any way part of their specialisation or AT design. A Scrapper survives on his defence set and works on his offence set, but a Blaster survives on his pool powers, Epics and secondary effects. That's one reason why powerset choice is so important for Blasters - because you need the right secondary effect to survive. Either that, or you need to pick a set with broken-overpowered animations. Some say that's "variety," but I call it poor design forcing players to scavenge for useful powers.

This is actually the right mess that Blaster secondaries are. What are they supposed to do? Are they melee like the game called them in Beta? Are they support like Devices is trying to be? It seems like a Blaster secondary is "supposed" to do whatever it looks like it should to in your eyes. Some powers from some sets help us a lot while some powers from some sets feel completely pointless, like Blasters got whatever was left over when the other ATs were done. And I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

What I find the most unpleasant about them is Blasters are the ONLY AT I've ever played for whom an essential, vital, game-changing ability only exists in their Epoc poos - personal armour. And even then, this is weird. For instance, Force Mastery Temp Invulnerability only protects from smashing and lethal damage, making my Energy/Energy Blaster meat on the table for Siege's old minions, yet Charged Armour from Electrical Mastery provides the same smashing/lethal resistance AND as much energy resistance on top of that.

Blasters' biggest problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that they're just thrown together, more or less requiring players to break the AT's intended design, because the AT's intended design is broken at its core.

You know what would make ME play Stalkers? And, mind you, I already do play Stalkers. What would make me play Stalkers more is if they fought better. If they died less and killed more. What would make me play Stalkers more is if their gimmicks weren't bugged and if they were usable more often. If I could hide easier and score Hidden criticals easier, if I could assassinate easier, if I could placate and not worry about the AI bug, if I could take damage and remain hidden and so forth.

I honestly don't care how Stalkers stack against the OTHER ATs in terms of role, just so long as it doesn't feel like I'm levelling up much slower or have a much harder time winning fights than a Scrapper would. As long as Stalkers can SOLO as well as Scrappers and Brutes, that's all I, personally, care about. Right now, they ALMOST do, but still suffer a bit in the damage-dealing department. In ever quite feels like I can outdamage my Scrappers consistently.

After bringing three Blasters to 50 through blood, sweat and tears, that's precisely what I ended up learning the hard way. In theory, a Blaster can kill stuff so fast he's never in danger. In practice, a Blaster dies LONG before he has the time to pump out even a fraction of his damage. Even as fast as it is, a Fire/Fire Blaster trying to use Fire Breath + Fireball + Rain of Fire in any order against a regular spawn is dead long before the enemies succumb to the damage. And that's non-resistent enemies, unlike Malta, Crey, most Praetorians, Longbow, the Arachnoids, Arachnos, the Rikti, etc.

I've been trying to argue a meaningful change to Blasters pretty much since Defiance 2.0 (which helped a lot, just not enough), and I've just about given up on the AT, having rerolled all three of my level 50 Blasters as other, less suicidal ATs. I get what the idea behind Blasters' design was, honestly, I do. But for the life of me, I will NEVER understand what the person designing the AT's power selection and stats (Geko?) was thinking. Blaster primaries are sometimes suspicious, with nukes and ESPECIALLY snipes being of questionable value vs. their drawbacks, but Blaster secondaries in particular are just a complete, frightening mess that I don't ever foresee being straightened out.

If we're being realistic, my list of ATs that need a revamp would have Blasters in spots 1 through 10, and probably have Kheldians on spot 11 and Stalkers on spot 12. However, BECAUSE my list looks like this, I simply do not play either of the ATs most in need of help, but I do play Stalkers because they don't die all the time, hence the first AT I actually want to see beefed up is Stalkers, which is what's happening.

"Trading off survivability" is not the same as being gimped. Stalkers being solid fighters is good design and I would NOT want to see them return to the days of being squishy. No, Hide should very much not be their main form of defence. In fact, I don't believe Hide should be a form of defence at all, but rather a form of utility. What Stalkers sacrifice is out-and-out performance in return for greater burst damage, and I'm honestly happy with that.

This is also very well said, and it brings to light two specific discussions.

One is of MMO large teams and the "effects soup." I know that when I team with more than about three other people, I start to lose spacial and situational awareness, developing tunnel vision and being able to process only my direct target I'm attacking, ignorant of strategic goals. Too many people, too many enemies, too many effects make a scene so chaotic that my brain is incapable of processing it in real time, thus I'm incapable of functioning, or at least functioning well in this environment.

Attention fatigue is a major buzzkill, and it's what's kept me off large teams for the past seven years. Well, one of the major things, anyway. It partly has to do with flashy colours, but it also partly has to do with just an overly-busy game. Some people - like me - like to keep their situation and surroundings in mind at all times, and when we're incapable of doing this, we more or less shut down and just hit things.

The other discussion is one of specific design, and in particular stylised design vs. costume complexity. So far, David has vouched for complexity, but here's the thing - you can have a costume that's complex in graphical details but simple in colour scheme, or a costume that's complex in colour scheme but simple in graphics details. Once you have a costume that's complex in both, people become incapable of comprehending the costume, thus they become incapable of seeing the costume as anything more than an amorphous, multi-coloured thing. Think back to Michael Bay's Transformers movies and think about how the Transformers - who resembled alien bugs, as a friend of mine put it - were so complex, busy and colourful it was next to impossible to tell what the flying Dutchman was going on when they transformed.

A good costume needs to be simple in at least some way so that people can actually comprehend it, remember it and be inspired. They must see more than "a costume" and "some colours," they need to see the idea behind the costume, as communicated through some factor of the costume that they can understand. Factual complexity and practical appearance don't matter, because if the costume is too busy for people to "get" at a glance, all they'll see is shapes and colours that they can't reproduce.

Think back to the Arachnos base tileset. This is one of the game's most repetitive-seeming tilesets, despite being one of the most varied and detailed. Why? Because while a pipe may be different here or a grate in a different place there or this incomprehensible machine different from that incomprehensible machine, to my eyes, it's all just stuff I don't understand that all looks the same. In an office map, I can tell the difference between a hallway, a cubicle farm, an executive office and a rec room. In a sewer map, I can tell the difference between a tube, a large square room with a suspended platform and a large cross-shaped room with a stone truce in the middle. But Arachnos maps are almost ALL square corridors with props I can neither remember nor tell apart.

In this way, a good costume needs to have SOMETHING about it that's memorable and easily comprehensible. Maybe it's the colour scheme, maybe it's the silhouette shape, maybe it's the specific choice of costume pieces, but it has to have SOMETHING that I can see, comprehend, remember and feel compelled to later reproduce. And the thing with overloading your costumes with fidelity and little details is you're more or less forcing players to shoot for complex detailing, thus in turn forcing them to shoot for simpler colour schemes, lest they come off like an unidentifiable blob.

Time and again, I've tried using different primary and secondary colours on newer items, and time and again I've found I simply want to pick both colours to be the same. The costume pieces are so busy that me putting loads of colours on them just makes them incomprehensible.

Huh... OK, I admit, that's very well said and an angle I hadn't thought of. Congratulations, David, you've convinced me

I'm serious here. For the longest time, I've been looking at this in the micro aspect of a single character and how that character's colour scheme can be made to be loud yet still believable. But you're absolutely right that when you get a team of them, especially a team of them in all different colours, it starts to look very goofy. And, yes, it looks goofy even to. I fully understand your position now that you've explained it like this.

OK, counter-question: What about a team of brightly-coloured heroes with a matching colour scheme which resembles a uniform?

The problem with the X-Men, at least circa the 90s Fox cartoon, is that they had loud uniforms, but everyone hos own colour scheme. Cyclops was mostly blue, Wolverine mostly yellow, Rogue was green and yellow, Gambit was purple and blue, Storm was white and so on. They look like a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, to quote the Rock.

On the other hand, look at First Ward's Carnival of Light: They're white and yellow and intentionally very loud, and they're intentionally asymmetrical, yet their look still feel both logically and aesthetically pleasing, because they all conform to the same colour scheme. They're colourful individually, but they're monotonous as a group, which provides a good sort of balance and contrast.

To swing back around to my question: How do you feel about teams of colourful characters that share the same consistent colour scheme with each other?

There isn't a whole lot of wiggle room. If I remember correctly, unhidden Assassin's Strike will be 2.76 scale damage, for a double of 5.52 scale damage with a critical which can easily be guaranteed with just a bit of prep work. The actual Assassination critical is a 7.0 scale damage hit. Even at those values, the Assassination critical isn't that much stronger, just shy of 1.5 extra damage at the cost of needing Hide and being interruptible. I guess we could factor in Demoralisation, as well, but again - there isn't much room to drop the damage of the Assassination critical before using it from hide loses its point.

Furthermore, I feel that Assassin's Strike from hide could stand to be a tad more powerful, at least good enough to down or almost down even con lieutenants, which it starts coming short at in the later levels with so many enemies resistant to so many things. I don't feel there's a need to drop its effectiveness.

I'm just tossing ideas around, really. I don't foresee Stalker self-damage buffs growing this high, but if they WERE intended to be the burst damage kings, then moving much of their damage potential into Build Up seems like a good idea. Personally, I feel as you do - 100% should be enough. Still, I'd like to see that happen AND see Build Up sped a tad, at least down to 75 seconds, if not 60.

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Frankly, with this change to Assassin's Strike, I struggle to think of what else I could suggest. Build Up is a fairly minor point, and Placate activating its Hide component at the END of its animation, as opposed to at the beginning is about it before we walk off the deep end.

These changes are amazing stuff, and I quite literally cannot wait!

I've always had a big problem with this, because most MMOs' approach to this is something akin to Chineese zookeepers locking two giant pandas in a cage and hoping they mate so as to save the endangered species with no concept of whether the animals actually feel up to it.

I can say one thing for absolutely certain - forcing people to interact against their will is not productive. Speaking purely for myself, when I'm forced into finding a team when I wanted to do something by myself, instead, is not only going to ruin my fun, it's going to ruin the fun of whoever it is I'm teaming with because I WILL complain and act surly.

Frankly, I see forced teaming in the same way as travelling on the bus. Yes, there are many other people around me, but I have no interest in making friends with any of them. I don't ride buses for fun, I ride them to get places. In much the same way, forced teaming encounters are encounters I run because I want the reward, not because I care about the people I run them with, for the most part.

The truth of the matter is that I have friends online, and if I feel like teaming with them, even teaming with many of them at the same time... I will. And not because the game cut the legs from under me, but because I simply wanted to. Yes, many of them I have indeed met over Task Forces, which is why these things are worth having around. Definitely. But not as a soul means of progression. TFs help me make friends when I feel like running a TF and go looking for one. When I'm strongarmed into one, such as if I need a respec or I need the damnable Roman gear, I'm much more likely to just want to get it over with, get away from the people I didn't mean to play with and go do my own thing.

So my wish for "monster arms" under Robotic Arms is about to come true, then? Thank you!

Now how about those titanic, muscular human arms for Robotic Arms to make our ladies a tad more buff when the situation calls for it?

Speaking of which, I'm sure you'll love 13



To be honest, I think that a costume which is ENTIRELY just one bright colour is much easier to take seriously than a costume that's a mishmash of rainbow colours.

That said - and I agree on mixing bright and muted colours - "cinema photo-realism" doesn't always conform to that. For instance, look at Superman Return. Superman both got a pattern on his "tights" and his costume had much more muted colours, both the red and the blue. Now, granted, a vivid red and blue costume does look very garish to a modern audience (and more so to me), but the costume failed to provide the kind of colour contrast which once upon a time made Superman pop. Instead of redesigning his costume to provide contrast another way, such as a darker, more washed-out blue "undercoat" against vibrant red panties, boots and cape or some such. What results in is a costume that, while it may be realistic, is actually quite boring.

It's very much possible to use muted colours and still come out with something that is, for all intents and purposes quite garish, yet still looks at least somewhat believable. Like so:



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Separate from that, I actually do have a question for you, if you find a moment to answer:

Do you consider WHITE to be a bright colour? That's actually something I'd really like to know, because it's been my experience that the monochrome colour range can often be used to supplement "actual" colours and add contrast to a costume without making it more... Fruity. For instance, a costume which is predominantly white and has only trace elements of colour... Like this one:



Would technically be "bright," as white is 255,255,255 in actual fact. In practice, however, this costume doesn't come off as garish, as white doesn't really "feel" like a colour. Similarly, a costume that is inherently garish like this one:



Still doesn't come off as absurd, even though I have NEVER seen anyone use that vivid blue for as long as I've played. It's one step removed from being fluorescent, yet because it's a secondary colour to a black base, it comes off as not feeling fruity. The costume comes off looking dark, despite the bulk of it being bright colours. This costume is almost entirely monochrome, as well (by accident), combining blue, teal and purple - all colours in the same general hue - with white and black which meld into the blues.

I say all this to illustrate my question - do you consider white to be a bright colour, and do you consider white and black to be colours when you talk about "colourful" costumes?

While this concerns me a bit, I can let that slide for the moment, and instead pose a counter-question:

If Stalkers are intended to be the best BURST damage dealers, shouldn't their Build Up damage buff (and entire melee damage buff scale) be upped to match that of Scrappers and Blasters? Hell, shouldn't Stalker Build Up be actually stronger than that of other characters? Say, like, 125%?

I know why it was left at the Brute/Tanker 80% self damage buff - back in the day, Stalkers weren't supposed to deal all that much damage outside of Assassin's Strike (they had a damage mod of 0.9) and be squishy (they had Controller hit points), but if you're beefing them up to be actually decent characters now with burst damage as the focus, why no up the power which contributes such a great part of their burst damage?

Alternately, if Build Up can't be made (much) stronger, why not give Stalkers faster recharge on theirs?

*edit*
Fixed a few typos that changed the meaning a bit.

This I could go with. So long as gambling provides a possibly cheaper by uncertain ALTERNATIVE to regular-price purchases, then it can only be a good thing. So long as gambling provides the ONLY means of access to an item, then that's just bad.

I wish they'd explained it, as well, but realistically... What could they have said? "We deliberately omitted a solo option so that we could condition the player base to run Trials." That's what they did, we all know it, but can you imagine that being actually officially stated?

I say this, because as soon as they brought up the "battle of armies" concept, smartasses like me would have gone "Well... Any battle of armies has room for solo action, too. Just look at Modern Warfare!"

Still, it makes sense. So long as an alternative exists - and that's yet to be seen - I'll give them that one.

Hmm... I actually like that one. A lot. It's probably the first idea I've seen that I feel would be great as a consumable, but not overpowering if someone dropped $100 on it. Cool!

That's where I am. Gambling with my money is not something I want to do, and not something I will do. I don't care if you put the key to eternal life in there at 0.00001% chance to drop, I'm not gonna'.

On the one hand, I agree with you. Solo content that most people (say... ME!) can't solo is "solo content" in name only, and is actually just as bad as more raids.

On the other hand, soloable Incarnate content should still have some kind of progression, such that the Incarnate powers we earn are relevant. Just more level 50 content, but with an Incarnate storyline might be good for a while, but once we get level shifts (I'm assuming we'll be able to...) and fancy powers, this content would need to scale up with us so that our progress is meaningful.

On an artistic level, I feel that's a waste, myself. Please understand that I'm not a fan of Golden Age or even really Silver Age tights costumes, but that's mostly because I feel tights costumes themselves look goofy irrespective of colour scheme. I really don't think colours have anything to do with it, not intrinsically. It's a question of colour scheme and how these heroes are designed.

Yes, if you try to recreate a character whose costume is a base purple, secondary cyan and detail colour red, you'll end up with a Christmas tree that WILL appear goofy, but that doesn't mean "bright colours" as a concept can't be employed. It's mostly a question of employing them well and contrasting them against more faded colour so what results in is both iconic and visually impressive. I mean, look at the original Star Wars trilogy, for example - most people wear earth tones or black, most tech is white, black or grey an it's overall a monotone world, yet every time a jedi pulls out a light sabre, it's a bright pink or lime green or fluorescent yellow or some such. Yet these don't stand out and ruin the aesthetic because they make sense and complement the otherwise muted colour scheme. It's why the skittles aliens in the prequesl, animated and 3D movies stood out so much.

JUST bright colours are goofy, yes. That doesn't mean they can't be incorporated into more photo-realistic, cooler designs.

I want to point something out: There's a pretty hard limit on how dark you can go before you start losing players BEFORE said resolution. You guys have pretty much entirely lost me on the SSAs with the third one because I'm simply not going to trudge through more "dark themes" and cliffhangers for the hope of resolution, which will still include a signature character dying, and you've just about lost me on Praetoria with how depressingly First Ward ends.

I wouldn't call it a "science," specifically, but it's a balancing act to give people both drama and release so that the story comes off as tense, but people are still compelled to keep coming back. Remember: This isn't real life. We can - and often will - walk away when things become too heavy to be worth it.

That's only ever been player rationalisation, never an official stance. I hope that with the changes to make Stalkers more effective out of Hide, people's insistence that they're "melee Blasters" and "only ever stealthy" will be blunted some.

Dear Arbiter Hawk: I love you. I don't know what involvement you had with those changes, but I still love you for telling us. My love letter is in the mail as we speak.

Seriously, though - this is amazing news. Long ago, I made a thread (several, actually) about things that I wanted to see happen to Stalkers, and much of what we're getting is in those new changes, plus a little more I hadn't even thought of. This is very good news, and just what I needed to make me want to play my Stalkers again.

Thank you!