Samuel_Tow

Except that's not how it works. Whenever I've tried to use it, I'll click a button, then sit on my hands for 45 minutes because I can't enter an instance, and then eventually join a pre-formed Trial team I hear about in Broadcast or over Global and go join that. I don't know if the tool is just broken in some way or if people simply never use it unless they have a full team, but I WILL NOT put my game on hold for 45 minutes in the vague hope that something happens.

I'm really not cross about the winter event itself, though. I hate events as a general thing. I didn't run a single Halloween Trial and I think I trick-or-treated by accident once when I clicked on the wrong door. Events don't interest me in the slightest, so the Winter Realm being gated behind multiple teams is as irrelevant as iTrials being gated - who gives a crap? I wasn't going to run that one way or another.

What bothers me is this mentality of crowds, in that all the best stuff is always reserved for all the biggest crowds. It also bothers me that the game is vacating its persistent world and migrating into instant teleportation from instance to instance. I like having contacts, I like having overworld doors to enter instances, I like having to travel a bit. With this over-reliance on the LFG Queue, City of Heroes is changing from what used to be an open-world game, into a hub-based online arena style game. We still have our old content, obviously, but so much of the newer content is this kind of lobby-style arena type that I really don't enjoy the prospect.

No, it's not brilliant, it's terrible. If I were to make a character who turns into a werewolf here (and I have), I would want this to be a werewolf of MY OWN design, not someone else's vision of what constitutes a werewolf, what powers a werewolf should have and what vulnerabilities a werewolf should suffer from. City of Heroes is a game that emphasises character creation, as opposed to character selection, and this is by FAR its primary strength. I don't want to be "given" a werewolf to play, because I'm not interested in using someone else's concept. I want to make my own. And if my own werewolf happens to scientific instead of magical and happens to favour using a sword and a shield as opposed to claws and fangs, then THAT is what I want, and a traditional werewolf will not do.

Suggestions have been made about shapeshifting powersets or entire archetypes in this game already. I've largely supported most of them, as Kheldians already kind of sort of work. I'm sure it's doable, but I'm also sure that, like Mastermind primaries, it's also a hell of a lot of work to make work, and might end up either inferior or superior in an unballanced way. Never let it be said that I or anyone else here has ever spoken against shapeshifters, though. Sure, it's a Standard Code Rant nightmare, but then so was power customization and Incarnates, and we got those eventually. I'm sure a shapeshifter is not out of the question. Until such a time, however, I will use the existing tools at my disposal and utilise alternate costumes for this purpose.

What I DO NOT WANT, however, it to use someone else's concept. I didn't come to this game to play other people's characters. I came here to make my own. I came here to make my characters how I like them, to play like I want them to play, to look like I want them to look, to have the powers I feel are relevant to their concepts. I came to City of Heroes for MY concepts, and the last thing I want to pay money for is to buy other people's ready-made concepts. I don't need more complete characters. Give me the tools to make my own, and I'll make them far better, at least for the person who's going to be using them - me.

Add me to the list of people who lost respect for you, then. As long as we're making you comfortable, why not go all the way?

No, it won't. These "demands," as Sir Straw Man likes to describe them, are not in regard to our ability to ignore other people's pleas for help. We are fully capable of doing so now. It has more to do with team requirements, and for better or worse, those are written into the encounters themselves.

For what it's worth, I do hope they will release an offline version of the game when eventually it has run its course. I know it would be mostly unballanced as class balance is designed around team roles, but I'd play that. Up to a point, at least, that point being the end game where the encounters themselves require multiple people to complete.

I actually agree with this wholeheartedly. Once upon a time, I was a great proponent for travel time in this game, insisting that having to move from zone to zone and travel from place to place within those zones gave the game a sense of having a persistent world. Travelling actual distance, running across places where people congregated and generally having a reason to see more of the city is always a good thing. Being teleported from mission door to mission door makes the game feel like an arcade, taking us from level to level and never showing us the outside world.

For what it's worth, I'd love it if all LFG Queue tasks had a contact somewhere in the world that people like you and me could visit if we were so inclined. The LFG Queue itself is valuable for its convenience (when it even works), but it does take much of the suspension of disbelief away. I've always found it difficult to describe how much more immersive a game can be if when it actually asks you to do things personally, as opposed to editing away everything that's not punching people in the face like you're watching a YouTube music video. Sure, sometimes it's irritating, but it's one layer of interaction that I do actually miss when it isn't there.

I'd pay for that. Or I would, if I weren't already

On this note I agree. I'm a big supporter of putting everything in the LFG queue just so that we can queue for all forced teaming tasks, but I would really like it if those tasks had actual contacts to start them, as well.

Yes, they made the wrong choice, that much I admit. And, as is our right as players, we are appealing a bad decision. It's really quite simple when you stop to think about it. Will we get what we want? No, probably not. That doesn't mean we won't try. You browbeating people will change very little.

Are you suggesting that if the developers of Hard Reset offered to include a multiplayer mode in that game, people would object? Because people here are suggesting single-player activities and you're tossing out self-deprecating sarcasm at them.

As well, I'm aware of Hard Reset. I'm aware of Paranoia: The Dark Descent. I'm aware of Unreal II: The Awakening. The point still remains - shooters these days include multiplayer nearly every time. Being able to quote one which does not changes nothing.

The basic factor here that you're glossing over is that single-player games like the Prince of Persia, Darksiders and Crevures lack a multiplayer option via a hard limitation, not because some self-important ponce on the Internet ordained the games too elitist to permit the multi-player mentality. MMOs are perfectly capable of supporting and indeed rewarding solo play. NOT doing so is not a technical limitation. It is a question of choice.

And you do not get to make that choice.

And that.

Pistols, rifle and bow Epics should exist for all ATs, as far as I'm concerned.

As per Matt Miller from a Ustream, SGs and bases are intended to be team content, thus they will make no changes to make solo use of bases easier and might - I infer - move to make it harder. With that in mind, I feel really any suggestion for a solo-capable SG base is wasted.

That said, if I could have solo-capable bases, I'd like those to be per character, not per server. Few of my characters are "together" so to speak, and it wouldn't make sense for all of them, hero and villain, to share the same crib.

I'd suggest more, but I doubt we'll ever get it.

How do you figure that? I was a brand new player once, back in 2004, and I never met with a mistake that couldn't be fixed by gaining a level or two. The first time I used a respec EVER was post I6 when I had to fix my slotting for ED. Expecting new players to mess up and thus burn a respec just to get their enhancements is not a safe bet. What happens if they DON'T need one? Do they burn one anyway?

Before Inventions, I have never, not ever, not a single time, been able to afford even half my SOs by the time I hit level 22. Every single time I'd spend the entirety of 17-22 in permanent debt just so that I'm not so monumentally ****** when I get to level 22 and can only buy around half the enhancements I need, watching the others go red and being stuck on an endless treadmill of trying to catch up before I got to the next round of enhancements and my new-found purchases turned red, themselves. And it's even worse now because Trainings and then Dual Origins stop dropping from enemies after a certain point.

If you want enhancements to be "work," then they shouldn't expire. Inventions don't, but Free accounts don't have access to those.

That's good to hear. I remember there was quite an outcry when they released it, but quite a few people have praised the system and the various tweaks done to it. I'd actually be interested to play P&P, myself, but I don't have enough friends nor enough patience

Welcome to the World of Nonsense. An MMO is a game in which many players share a persistent, common world and are free to interact with others if and how they choose to do so. If I should so choose to interact with other people via chat, trading and the forums, then you have no power to tell me to go find another game. Furthermore, of all the MMOs out there, City of Heroes is one of the most solo-friendly ones, and this is both an acknowledged and intended feature of the game.

If you feel incapable of playing a game without other people, perhaps a Pen and Paper RPG would be more to your taste. I hear D&D Fourth Edition is very well balanced, but I don't have first-hand knowledge of it.

The WWF - or rather the WWE after their initials were claimed by the World Wildlife Fun - survived just fine. WCW tanked, and the WWE bought them up. TNA was purchased by Dixe Carter and then went ahead to employ people like Hulk Hogan, Eric Bichoff and a whole bunch of wrestlers a good 10-20 years past their prime, and went on to become a joke that people have actually taken offence at me for mentioning. WWE is not in any danger of competition, nor has it ever been in that serious a danger at any point.

If your analogy is that City of Heroes will fail like the WWE/WWF which didn't actually failed and is doing just fine, and it will fail in the face of competition like WCW which tanked and got bought up by their competition, then no, it's not a very good analogy at all. We should be so lucky as to have even a fraction of the success and popularity of the WWE, as opposed to what people like Kevin Nash, Sting and the Sand Man have become just so they can get a pay check and stay relevant. We should all be so luck if the WWE is our measuring stick, because that remains the dominant wrestling company in the Western world.

"People like you" have preached doom for this game since before I got here. People like you have been claiming the game is too easy, the game lacks depth, the has no challenge for seven years straight. We have failed to fail yet, and I see nothing to suggest we will. This game has lasted for seven years now, and our nearest competitors are struggling just to keep afloat. If every I had less reason to put stock in warnings of imminent disaster, then I simply can't remember such a time. Back when NCsoft pulled the rug from under the game and the development team was down to 15 people? Yeah, then I might have seen it, but now? I've seen enough games come and go and end up belly up in the time this one has plodded along just fine that I need more than simple warnings that "They are coming!" and "10 10 10!"

Your complaints are not new, nor are they rare. Lack of depth and lack of challenge have been constant companions of this game since its creation. What makes THIS one different?

It's always weird when people talk about the pre-Inherent-Stamina days as having an amazing degree of choice in much the same way as people talk about the pre-ED days as having more choice. No, we didn't. We didn't have a choice AT ALL. There were things we were supposed to do and things we were supposed to choose. NOT doing them and NOT choosing them was a provable mistake.

This is no more choice than "Your money or your life!" is. It sounds like a choice when you phrase it as one, but it really isn't.

I can agree with this. Travel powers themselves are now open directly to level 4 players, but the fourth and fifth powers are not. So if I picked Teleport as my travel power but chose to take neither Teleport Foe (because it sucks) nor Recall Friend (because I rarely team) and chose Hover, instead (so as I don't drop out of the sky if I lag a bit), then taking Zone Teleport would require me to take a wasted power just to have it. If, by contrast, I say "This character is a teleporter!" and have teleportation powers open to me, that would help greatly.

Of course, this opens the other can of worms, in that Group Flight, Group Teleport and Whirlwind are... Not very good, while Acrobatics is pretty good for non-melee, meaning that this initial choice is loaded with mechanical advantages, as opposed to being conceptual. To be honest, I'm really not sure if putting non-travel-related powers in travel pools was a good idea to begin with, as it couples a concept-defining method of locomotion with mechanical benefits that could, in some cases, override conceptual choice. I guess... Swap Travel Pool fifth and fourth powers so you can open up the new travel boosts straight away, but not the bigger boosts? I don't know...

One of the reasons that this WILL keep cropping up from time to time is that's how Champions Online did it. I know that's bad form to mention, but another game offers its players a travel power choice as a character-inherent attribute. So long as this exists, the request will keep being made.

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I'm not sure this eliminates any real hard choices, to be honest. At least not from where I'm standing. Short of Dark Armour, I haven't had a character who didn't take all 18 of his primary and secondary powers and two pool powers related to travel, for a total of 20 choices out of 24. This really isn't a choice to me, that's just how I build. The last four power picks are the real choice. Which Epic do I go for? Do I go for an Epic at all? Which four of the five Epic powers do I pick?

Being able to spare myself a travel power pick wouldn't really spare me this choice, as if I don't pick a second pool power before 30, I'm forced to take one then, as I run out of primary and secondary powers, and Epics don't open until 35. It is, therefore, functionally impossible to pick 9 primary powers, 9 secondary powers, 1 pool power and 5 Epic powers. I can't GET to Epics without having taken at least two pool powers.

That said, I'm not against having more options of powers to pick, both from pools and from Epics. I'd love to see more pools added to the game, more powers added to existing pools and DEFINITELY more Epics added. Scrappers still don't have an Electric Epic, after all.

You say that like it's a bad thing

You infer what Stalkers are supposed to be based on what Rogues in D&D are, and when the actual game implementation of Stalkers does not correspond to that assertion, you call this a mistake. I call this working as intended. While Stalkers may have been intended to be "like Blasters" (which is to say, suck), that hasn't been the case since Castle improved the AT, and Stalkers these days are not intended to play as you describe them. They have no imperative to have Support of any kind, nor do they need to hit-and-run, nor, quite honestly, do they even need to target high-value targets if the Stalker doesn't feel like it.

The truth of the matter is that regardless of what principle role you could argue Stalkers as fulfilling, what they excel at the most is the same thing Scrappers do - killing stuff. A Stalker brings with him a relatively high burst damage capability, but once that's expended, a Stalker is a Scrapper in all but name. He has just about Scrapper hit points, he has Scrapper defence and resistance numbers and while he lacks the Scrapper damage mod, the Stalker has a 10% critical chance on every attack, which grows higher with more team-mates present in melee.

As a point of fact, everything that's wrong with Stalkers can be traced back to the idea that they should be either like Blasters or like Rogues, when the game is kind to neither design. Everything that is bugged and broken about the AT is bugged and broken because it's trying to hammer a square peg in a round hole. Assassin's Strike is a borderline waste of time not because it's a bad power, but because it's a twice-limited melee snipe in a game when interruptible sinpes in general have never been a good idea. Placate is bugged because it tries very hard to work in hiding against an AI which cannot be hidden from lest we break game balance over our knee, and their lack of AoE is a direct result of the need to add gimmicks to the AT, thus replacing genuinely useful powers in quite a few sets.

Trying to put Rogues in City of Heroes was a mistake from the word go, because the game system does not support stealthy gameplay with AI being as omniscient as it is. Building an AT to require hiding in order to function, therefore, is tantamount to building an AT that is inherently inferior. Castle understood this when he gave Stalkers better ability to scrap it out like actual fighters, but even he didn't go far enough to fix the actual bugs that plague the AT. It took a completely unrelated patch to fix corpse blasting and lend a hand by proxy.

*edit*
As for the alterations: While I agree with making Hide inherent, its replacements stem from your belief that Stalkers should be more like Blasters, and hence gain more support powers. I vehemently disagree with this. I did not pick a Melee/Support AT and I do not want to play one. I picked a Melee/Defence AT, so if Hide will be replaced with anything, then it should be replaced with more Defence powers.

Additionally, and this is something Leo suggested elsewhere, I'd like to see the Momentum mechanic of swapping powers on the fly used for Assassin's Strike. When used out of hide, make this power behave like whatever the set needs it to be, be that AoE, control or single-target. When used from Hide, let it work as it does now. This way, Stalkers gain an additional power for Scrapping which many sets sorely need, and they gain a power custom-tailored to their set, as opposed to the one-size-fits-all ill-fit of Assassin's Stike AND they get to keep Assassin's Strike, as well.