Samuel_Tow

That's a good point, by the way. Lots of people asked for raids. Lots of people asked for end game. But how many people asked for raids AS end game? Do we know? Do we care?

This is something I've always wanted, as well. I've long held a grudge against the "morality" mechanic in Praetoria, and always felt that the few moral choices you have in actual independent missions were far better done. I'm thinking the choice between arresting a Syndicate suit as a Loyalist or offing him for his crimes, and then the choice between fighting Vanessa DeVore or walking away. This, to me, is where morality questions should have been located. To have separate missions that you do specifically to test your morality seems a bit... Forced, in a narrative sense.

I'd actually like to reference Mass Effect for a moment. Most people will agree that this is a great game about giving you a choice between being a saint and being a dick. The thing, though, is that that game actually has very, very, VERY few actual major morality choices. Most of its morality comes from simpler things, like whether you'll help someone or laugh in his face, whether you'll help your friends achieve inner peace by preventing them from committing a murder or letting them have their revenge, that sort of thing. Shepard was almost never put in a position of having to choose between good and evil with that being the whole point of the mission. The beauty of Mass Effect is that it has a dreadfully linear plot and moral choices just sort of happen along the way.

I think giving us lots of little moral choices peppered throughout our missions would be a great way to help cement our heroes and villains as the people they're supposed to be without necessarily swapping alignment with them.

I have to nit-pick your semantics here. Soloing is almost never "easier" than teaming, it just takes less effort and work, on average. Teaming requires not just the effort inherent in playing the game, but also the effort inherent in constructing, managing and supporting a team structure comprised of fickle volunteers, so the effort in running one has that as a very significant overhead.

But I will never buy the argument that a lone character has blanket easier time with content than a team of eight would have with the same content, even with content scaling in effect. This simply isn't true.

Gameplay at the level cap. This is actually a pretty simple thought exercise. Take a look at the game, and notice it has gameplay. This gameplay scales from level 1 to level 50. Gameplay at the level cap, therefore, can be gameplay pretty much like it, only scaled to be harder. It honestly is just that simple. It might not have been a revolutionary breakthrough in the history of the game, but I, at least, wasn't really looking for one.

I'm reminded of the Spoony One lamenting the tragic fate of the Highlander series of movies: "You know how you make a Highlander sequel? Watch Highlander... Then make something just like it!" That's more or less what I wanted to see as end game: Play the rest of the game, then make more like that.

Thank you. If they can just port the Male gear onto the Female model, I think people would be a lot happier. I know I would be. If this is already in effect and just didn't make PAX, all the better.

Speaking of which, I'm not sure I'd mind porting the female costumes onto the male model, save for the high heels, lets men start to look like Him:



The rest of the female gear, though, will probably work. Yes, even the corset. Remember that batman guy from the old rotoscoped cartoon Fire and Ice? He had his loin cloth briefs come up to his chest. Sure, he looked goofy, but not all that much, considering the princess spent the whole movie running around in a string bikini.

*edit*
Turns out the dude's name is Darkwolf *snerk* and I couldn't find a decent pic of him, but there is this video of him.

Obsidius, please understand that I'm not directing this to your post, but merely using your mention of the topic to address it.

But...

I honestly don't get why we're even having this discussion. What Matt Miller said is the basic truth of any MMO, which is that the Team path will always be faster, easier and more lucrative than the solo path, for the simple fact that teaming is a more involving, laborious process and because taming is what any MMO should encourage. That's how things should be. To ask that the solo path be as "fast" as the teaming path, or - worse yet, faster - is never going to be productive. That's not how an MMO works, and I say this as someone who doesn't team much.

Obviously, the solo path has to be less productive. Obviously, the solo path has to be more productive than to be considered pointless. Exactly where it ends up between these two points is up for debate, but the Merits of the Signature Story Arcs are not what's going to draw the line.

I agree with this completely. I've honestly never seen an actual stylistic reason why women can't get a lot of the male costume items, like the heavy cotes of Baron and Steampunk, why women can't have cigars and so forth. This is neither socially awkward not is it somehow out of character for the genre. It just ends up telling me "Women can only ever use pieces we feel are womanly" and that's just asking for trouble.

Now, I have a pretty good guess that the actual problem is the art team were working under a mandate to make a unique set for women (for whatever reason that seems to always be the case) and may well simply not bother porting costume pieces between the models as that constitutes extra work. That's the excuse we've been given in the past, at least. It makes some degree of business sense, but if those are going up for sale (and they will be), then I'd say it makes more sense to cram in as much stuff as possible so more people have a reason to buy them.

I have no male barbarians. I doubt I ever will. I have a couple of female barbarians. If I don't find any use for the Barbarian set on any of my Barbarian characters, I will have no reason to buy it.

Snark from a red name. Those are always so much fun. Does anyone else have a copy of Jack's old "dead horse" snark on file from back in 2004? That one was classic.

That's more or less what I figured, and I'm not saying that to be disingenuous. When the whole system was announced and people started clamouring for a "solo path," I fully expected to see one, but didn't expect to see it until between two to four years after the fact. Without inside knowledge of the development practices at Paragon Studios, it has just been my impression that that's more or less how long it takes for any player-originated idea to make it into the actual end product. So far, I think the game is well within this leeway, so things are looking good. Besides, now that there are other things coming besides Incarnates, it's much easier to be patient for long periods of time.

Looking at the list of new things with Freedom, I know I, at least, will be busy for about a year before I need anything else.

That's intentional. The point was to get a discussion going, not receive a yes/no or A)/B) answer.

More or less. To be perfectly honest, I'd be content with simply seeing the pieces men get on women. That, and I'm more than a bit disappointed that all female clothes these days have to come with high-heel boots. Some sets these are appropriate for, but Barbarian just ain't it. If anything, the Barbarian set was the right time to add large, thick fur boots for both men and women, and I do mean FUR boots, not fur TRIMMED boots. This was the right set to add actual fur tops and animal skin shoulders, and even maybe a new animal hide cape.

Santa's little helper is sexy, I'll admit, but I just don't think that's something I look at and think "Yor," but more something I look at and think "Playboy's Christmas special" (link safe). It's cute, to be sure, just in completely the wrong theme.

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And, honestly, the realism of the term "barbarian" is irrelevant. This is just a term used by several arrogant nations to refer to anyone else in the world. I just expected a Barbarian set to have a more rugged look, and the costume pieces we've seen only have that for men.

I'm pretty sure it was Civilization 2, actually, but I could be wrong.

Um... Where did you see those? Did I miss something?

That's actually what was spinning around in my head when I made the original post. At the height of the Mafia's power, the lifestyle of a mobster was something of a dream for a lot of people. Everyone knew it came with violence and murder and dirty dealings, but a lot of people wanted the nice flats, the expensive cars, the fancy suits and the attention and money that came with it. No many people became mobsters because they enjoyed making people sleep with the fishes. A lot did it because the pay was good and because it looked like the only real way to making it big time.

Personally, I feel that something along this line would be a good theme for villains, at least as one optional path. Look through the original I6 City of Villains arcs and you'll notice how few of them actually praise your villain for anything in any way. Operative Vargas is an exception, of course, as he's always polite and always positive, but almost everyone else treats your villain like garbage. If you succeed, you get paid with "money" that is to imaginary money what imaginary money is to the US dollar. We don't even get in-game credits for robbing banks. We just get told we stole a lot of money.

Low flash forward a few years and check out Dean McArthur, Vincent Ross and, hell, even the Time After Time arc from your Patrons. Oh, and Terrance Dobbs and Vernon von Gurn and probably one or two others I'm forgetting. These guys and the stories you experience through them are positive. They take your villain and they praise him for his actions. These guys make you feel good about playing your character to his intended alignment - that of being a villain. That's what I mean by "glamour." It's the upside to being a villain, presented while playing down the obvious downsides.

And I generally do try to do just that. Ninjutsu's deliberately inferior defences in favour of control notwithstanding, a Stalker can typically "stand and fight" about as well as a Scrapper, ignoring outgoing damage effects. Well, ignoring Ninjutsu and Willpower and Regeneration, since the latter two cap their hitpoints on their own, but we're talking about raising the the Stalker max hit points cap, aren't we?

What I mean is that if we find Stalkers having to run away too often, I'd consider this a problem that needs to be addressed, not a natural part of playing the AT. If a Stalker is forced to flee, then something went wrong. Even as a Ninjutsu Stalker, I rarely have to do this, and I maintain that when I do, either I screwed up bad or the game screwed me (such as stacking defence-debuffing Roman ambushes on top of me).

But shouldn't we take into account that Stalkers sets generally lose an AoE attack from their Scrapper counterparts when their sets make the jump? Or are you arguing that this is irrelevant and made up by... What, Hidden criticals? What are you saying, exactly? The only reason I bring AoE up is Stalker sets almost universally have fewer AoE attacks than Scrapper sets, and therefore their AoE suffers. The drive of my AoE Assassin's Strike suggestion was to give them back the AoE they lost. I highly doubt this will hurt the AT.

I'm pretty sure that's 60%, but I could be wrong. Either way, do you see it as a problem if Stalkers had guaranteed Hidden criticals on their AoEs, or at the very least a very high chance percentage, something on the order of 90-95%? It wouldn't really help sets like Martial Arts and Energy Melee, but it would help all others.

Furthermore, here's a big problem with low-percentage AoE criticals - it robs Stalker sets of their heaviest hitters. Literally robs them, as both Claws and Spines have their big hitters changed from a cone to a single-target attack. This is done to give them a good attack from Hide, but it comes at the expense of their scrapping performance, and I can attest to just how awesome it is having a high damage cone like Head Splitter or Golden Dragonfly first hand. If we make Hidden AoE criticals guaranteed or at least a much higher percentage, we can give Stalker sets their heavy-hitting cones back. Head Splitter/Golden Dragonfly would become much more awesome, the Claws and Spines heavy attacks (why do I keep forgetting their names?!?) would return to being awesome, Thunder Strike will become even more impressive, and then we can work on adding at least SOME AoE to Martial Arts and Energy Melee. I don't know where, but I'm sure there is room for improvement.

I don't know. This probably flies in the face of good game design (to say nothing of good sense) but I really don't much care to have my characters different from those of other people, mechanically speaking. And honestly, speaking of right now... I can't tell how my characters are actually different. I pair my Scrapper with another Scrapper, and all I can tell is we hit things and they fall down at more or less the same speed, speaking of average build (as opposed to Inventions/Incarnate monsters). Now, that's probably just me being dense and not being able to tell the difference, which will probably be blatantly obvious and very big if I sat down to run some basic statistics, but that's kind of the point - I can't "feel" the difference. It's not obvious.

My idea game has always been one where redundancy of effects doesn't exist and powers come wholesale, not in little upgradable bits. You can either jump or you can't. You can either climb or you can't. You can either knock enemies off their feet or you can't. Think Soul Reaver and how Raziel gained skills. This might limit the diversity of characters somewhat, but it would make the difference between the different characters so much greater.

What really bugs me about pretty much all RPGs I've ever played is this "babysteps" approach. Nothing you do has an immediate, obvious benefit, because everything you take brings just a small benefit. It isn't until you stack all these benefits as a complex system that a difference emerges, but even then the gradual process may still make you blind to it. .5% here, 1.5% there, 1% from that other place and it only starts making a difference when you get, say, 10 of those, making up numbers as I go - that's exactly what I DON'T like.

To be honest, I've always been much more a fan of games that give players basic tools of game interaction and make the game rely more on what the player does and how well he plays, rather than what stats he brings to the battlefield. And for all the talk of "tactics" we've had in City of Heroes, it's still primarily a stat-based game.

Honestly, I'm not disappointed at what we're getting. I'm disappointed at what we're NOT getting. I first made Brutticus around I16, I think, and even then I could barely find the pieces to make her with. Since then, I've really wanted more tribal/barbarian/savage pieces to make her look a little more unique (I'd like to replace that tank top with something better), and this was the perfect opportunity to add this, but once again gender politics rob me of my prize. And if the Barbarian set doesn't have these pieces, I fear I'll NEVER have them at all.

I don't want to make male barbarians. Everyone's done this to death and the concept doesn't really thrill me all that much. I want to make female ones, but the pieces just aren't there for women. Their weapons are smaller, the kit is insufficient and their physical build is just too petite. I'm honestly starting to get the feeling that the art team does not consider women as legitimate strength fighters, and probably never. And that's a cryin' shame.

So THAT'S where she's from... Wow, and I got her out of a Google image search when I was looking for a tribal/barbarian Tauren design for my literal cow girl. Thanks!

I don't know... I realise AoE is king in City of Heroes, but I've seen what happens to attacks that are AoE but are balanced like single-target attacks. I'm speaking of Golden Dragonfly, Head Splitter, Dark Maul and a few others. Sure, those ARE AoE and everyone will at least try to snag multiple targets, but so long as the things aren't actually hurting you for using them on single targets, then I don't really see them as very problematic.

Take, for instance, Slice/Flashing Steel. The power has a DPE that's almost equal to that of single-target attacks. As such, I ended up using it as a single target attack a lot of the time. With AoEs like Whirling Sword or Fire Sword Circle, you're typically burning too much endurance to "waste" them on just one or two targets, so I tend to hold those back, but with Flashing Steel... If it comes up in my attack chain against a single target, I'll use it without actually even thinking about it.

To me, that's the goal of making Assassin's Strike AoE. If you have enemies clustered before you engage, great! If you don't... Well, it's still an awesome power.

Of course, I can't make you like something you don't And I suspect this might also cause some fairly serious balance problems. But, hey, that's why I left it at the back. It's a long shot, but like I said - I'm trying to put together a list of everything we COULD do to Stalkers to improve them, not necessarily everything we SHOULD do to them

On a Stalker? It kind of does, but I guess we disagree on that part. Let me invert that into a question, though - what sets do you feel have great AoE on a Stalker? If we discount Katana, we also have to discount Broadsword, that goes double for Martial Arts and Energy Melee, I assume claws loses its Spin, so that would probably go for that, too, Dark is obviously discounted and... What am I forgetting? I get that Spines is seen as having great AoE, but what else really is there? Energy Melee, that's what I was forgetting!

The reason I bring this up is that's kind of like the Blaster situation. People kept telling me Blasters are just fine and super strong, and then directing me to play specific set combos. When I wanted to play something else, I was told that's obviously not going to have great damage or great survivability or what have you.

My main is a Kat/SR like yours. He's adaquate at AoE and that's about it. Lotus Drop, while a nice chunck of PBAoE, isn't going to win any farming contests. The point is the set itself, Katana, isn't an AoE focused set. It just *can* do AoE. This goes for MA, EM, and DM too. The only outlier to the comparison is Claws which can do GREAT AoE except on Stalkers where it can simply do 'some'.

Well... You were the one who insisted that running away to rehide was a complete waste of time when last we discussed this, and I agreed with you then. Running away to lose aggro takes even longer. In general, yet, it's down to preference, but the thing is that I'm comparing speed of progress through missions. I can grab a Scrapper or a Brute and never have to disengage from a fight. If I grab a Stalker, I don't want my fights to routinely take twice as long because I had to run away. This is the exact reason I gave up on Blasters, and I don't want to do the same for Stalkers. Them I actually like.

If we're intended to occasionally break aggro and attack anew, this should be part of the Stalker's own tools, like Smoke Flash is for Ninjutsu, not effectively an abuse of the game's poor AI. And mind you, I WOULD actually support adding a Smoke Flash like power to more Stalker sets as something inherent. I just fear that making Stalkers take longer to deal with a spawn isn't in their best interest, especially in light of their other problems. If we're looking to improve them (and we are), we should be looking at ways to make them have to run away less.

Good point. I've honestly never understood people's obsession with thigh-high high-heel boots for women, especially the horrible mile-toe ones that the Witch booster came with. Then again, I had a long-ish discussion with a friend of mine over why he actually wants to have his heavily-armoured women run around in high heels. I don't get it, I don't get him, but clearly there's an audience for out-of-place heels. I just wish it weren't in probably the one theme where these really don't apply. Adding high heels to barbarians as the only boots in the set would be like finding a way to have an alien race of floating octopi to nevertheless wear high heels if they happen to be female.

Again, good point. I wanted to quote Red Sonja, myself, but the only pics of her I could find were her in a string bikini, sort of like the Golden Axe lady (and even then, neither wore heels), but your pic is better. It's still gratuitous cheese cake, but at least it doesn't look like it would sink down in soft soil. Thanks!

I want to let it go, but Rian keeps following me around to chastise me for saying anything ill of Golden Girl, even when I'm not even talking about her. For ****'s sake! Is there no getting away from this woman? Is ignoring her and not replying to her posts now enough that now posters have to follow me around and rub her in my face?

I, too, would like to speak of Pax, but can we?

In the post that caused me to ignore her, she was responding to me talking about the muscular female texture, and her response was along the lines of "Not all of us are perverts." I don't have a link to the post because I never want to know what that woman has to say again, so I'm not about to trudge through her post history just to prove something to someone with a mind already made up.

If you want to call me a liar, then please don't dance around the issue and just go ahead and do that.

*edit*
Also, if you have a problem with me, how about you take that problem up with me directly instead of derailing thread after thread with your crusade against everything I've ever had to say about Golden Girl when I don't even read her posts and I'm fairly certain she doesn't read mine? What's it to you?

If I'd called it "restricted to iron age technology" I'd have to go on a tangent explaining why I don't mean full medieval plate armour or flintlock weapons. I'm not that well-versed in the history of technology, however, so I could have gotten my tech wrong

Not if it retains its original Assassination critical and just spreads a more minor damage component, say its out-of-hide damage (which isn't half bad, actually).

I've done what I could to keep the original post updated and at least somewhat realistic, which is where I'm hedging my biggest bets. I enjoy the discussions we're having, of course, and they bring up interesting points, but I'm still putting my biggest hope in the original post.

There's no need to be hostile, Leo. If you disagree, feel free to disagree, but please don't throw things like that in my face. It helps nobody.

My point is that, as compared to Scrappers, Stalkers both lack an AoE delivery power AND have a lower damage mod at that. I'm sure your Spines and Electric Stalkers are good at AoE, but are you comparing them with Scrappers and Brutes? Are you specifically aiming to get your AoEs to hit critical damage? Becuase I tried doing that with mine on my Ninja Blade and Broadsword Stalkers and the results were a lot of squandered Hides.

If you don't see Stalkers as having problems against multiple small targets, then I have a hard time believing you see them as having problems against single large targets, which was the point I was trying to make with that half a paragraph you quoted. Against bosses, a decent Stalker can do wonders, even if said boss is resistant. Elite Bosses are sometimes a problem, but I can say the same for my Scrappers and Brutes and Masterminds.

My point was that when fighting a boss, you can apply a lot of your Stalker tools against that boss. When fighting a large spawn, what do you do after you've used up your Hidden status and your Placate? What do you do when you're fighting Hro and enemies just keep on coming and keep on coming? What do you do when you fight Hector and six boss ambushes stream to you one after the other? What do you do when you take two steps in Praetoria and get three ambushes spawning on top of you simultaneously?

Because, really, the only two options you have are "scrap like a Scrapper" and "run away to regain Hide." The latter is a waste of time and the former puts you at a disadvantage. That's all I'm saying.

I should have posted it here, but when I think Barbarian clothes for women, I think something like this:



I'm not sure what people think of when they think "barbarian," but to me this is nothing more than a rugged individual whose character is based around survival off the land, yet is also restricted to pre-iron-age technology.

What this means for my expectations for what women should get is, essentially, animal hide clothes, war paint... Would this not be the best place to put in a muscular female skin, I ask you? But my personal pet peeves aside, I was expecting something rugged which looked like the clothes of a survivalist and warrior. What I'm seeing in those pics looks... Not like that. Maybe there's more we haven't seen.