Samuel_Tow
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Quote:I merely meant to say that enemies placated with debuffs will chase you quite a bit and not lose aggro, exactly as if you never placated them. They will simply lose ability to attack you for a short period of time, and then resume attacking. Placating enemies without said debuffs causes them not only to stop attacking you, but also to lose aggro completely. If you then walk away and hide out of line of sight, they will never come after you even when the Placate wears off.Originally Posted by Leo_G
Not sure if this problem even exists. I've witnessed targets chasing you even after you're unaggroed but never beyond a certain distance from their spawn point (however they'll occasionally try to hit you anyway). Is that the one you need? I'd say removing placate resists from any mob would do the trick.
There's a marked difference between the behaviour of enemies placated with and without debuffs on them, and I want to see that difference removed, so that debuffs have no effect on the behaviour of placated enemies.
Yes, I'm aware of the numbers, but it just... Bothers me that this is how they chose to balance Stalkers. They're supposed to be a high-damage melee AT, and a burst-damage one at that, and they have the same Build Up value as Tankers and Brutes, who are intended to be "sustained" ATs. To me, even if it doesn't help much, Stalker Build Up should just say 100% to be on an even keel with Scrappers and Blasters. Plus, it would help a bit.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
100% +dmg on BU is an effect of the scrapper's AT mods for melee dmg buffs. Tankers, Brutes, SoA, and Defenders all have a 100% mod for that attribute while Scrappers and Blasters have 125%. I say that's a feature of those ATs.
I could go for that, sure. In fact, I'll append it to the original post when I'm done. A longer build-up duration would both be unique to Stalkers AND help them be extra-lethal for longer, making them feel like they suffer less of a sharp dropoff in offence after the initial rush of overkill. It should also serve to patch up their damage quite nicely. Even if the addition to overall DPS isn't all that great, with Stalkers it really helps to make those first few attacks count, and longer Build Up would help cement that.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
For BU itself, the extra 20% dmg is nothing to cry home about. The hindering part of BU is its duration of 10sec. With the oft better DPS option being thrown out (the likes of Soul Drain, Follow Up and Power Siphon), a similar change that Dual Blades could fit. The Empower combo lasts 10sec for other melees but can be kept up while Stalker empower lasts 20sec because it can't. If I were proposing a change that would aim to help the AT, it'd be to extend BU's duration from 10sec to 15-20sec. This is mainly to help with DPS. But if you're aiming to focus on aiding Burst dmg, I'd say there are better options
Plus, it will help them scrap better, which they currently kind of fall behind in, and yet which they currently end up doing the majority of the time thanks to how limited Hide is.
That's more or less what I had in mind. In a lot of situations, there's just no real way to make use of Hide, especially after a placate. It's all too common for something silly to break your hide, like an errant mook shot, and even more common for there to be simply no meaningful way to hide, such as when fighting Thorns wardens or Spectral Demon Lords or Silver Mantis or having a red crystal positioned next to a narrow door with enemies on the other side. It does take away some of the AT's intricacy, but it also helps make the AT's gimick a lot more consistent and in so doing makes its damage a bit better, in turn.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
Can't argue with that. It does remove alot of the need to be situationally aware but since a lot of those instances aren't easily avoidable even with awareness, it'd be killing multiple birds with one stone.
That's what I had in mind. I'm not picky about what that is - hiding, damage buff, accuracy buff, healing, extra defence, whatever. It just seems that with an AT so focused on killing stuff fast, it would make sense to incentivise the act of killing, itself. And not like Scourge where it makes you look for weak opponents, either, which is why I insisted that the Stalker do the bulk of the enemy damage.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
It'd be nice if we got some type of 'killer' buff from defeating foes though...
And I actually do think that may be possible. The game already has a system in place to decide whether you get "kill count" credit for a critter you and a player not on your team took down together. I'm not sure what the algorithm behind that is, but if the game can decide whether to reward you with a +1 on your Defeat 30 CoT in Perez Park mission based on how much damage you did to that particular Mage, then it can decide whether to give you a buff based on how much damage you did to that particular enemy.
I'm not sure if that won't cause other people's damage to interfere with Stalker buffs, though. Perhaps just some kind of non-stacking buff every time something dies within 15 feet of the Stalker regardless of who or what killed it? Call it "Blood in the Water" or some such.
I did. Fixed.Quote:I guess you meant Scrappers in some of those spots...
I hadn't thought of that, but it's not a bad idea. To be honest, I'd prefer more frequent criticals of some sort, but stronger criticals is not a bad idea. I actually retold my original post to a friend of mine who came over to visit a couple of hours ago and he remarked that in most games he's played, Critical Hits usually do something like 5, 10, 20 times normal damage and REALLY make a big difference. Giving Stalkers double critical damage seems like an easy change to make.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
I'm always against giving Stalkers Scrapper melee mods, if only because that's their schtick. That and melee dmg. Instead, critical damage is Stalker's schtick and should be focused on. The more I hear for improvements to Stalkers, the more I think crit dmg should be upped for Stalkers. With the ability to have seperate PvE and PvP numbers, simply changing a 50dmg attack with a 50dmg crit to a 50dmg attack with a 75-100dmg crit is simple number changes. I'd even go so far as to sacrifice the scaling team crits for just plain bigger crits. This scales for AS and any critting power btw.
In fact, I wonder if we can't use some kind of combo mechanic that built up to a certain level, with each level adding a higher chance to score a critical, and a critical clearing that "combo" entirely. What this means is that the longer you fight, the more likely you are to score a critical. Think of it like the Streakbreaker for critical hits. In fact, can we not actually the Streakbreaker itself for that?
'S why I left them for lastQuote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
Those are all pretty radical changes though. I doubt any of them would fly. Now I can get behind AS being auto-hit from hide in PvE or some such but any of those really just changes AS into an every day melee tool. AS should be more for utility with great dmg being its boon, not its only redeeming feature.
Personally, I'm biassed here, in that I hate seeing a power recharged and unused so much of the time, and I'd just like to have more reason to use my Assassin's Strike out of Hide. It doesn't have to be awesome, just as long as it's not a complete waste. A partial waste - like it's not good DPS, it takes too long, it doesn't do enough, those I can deal with. But physically not being able to use it because it keeps getting interrupted? That bites.
I'm not really married to any of these ideas, so sure, that works, too. I've always wanted to see Stalkers have more reliable criticals and more reliable sources of damage in general. Those don't have to come in the form of super-assassin's-strike, and your suggestion is not a bad idea, as a general direction.Quote:Originally Posted by Leo_G
Instead of trying to refit in powers that were dropped, I'd suggest adding features to the sets' current make-up, just like Kinetic Melee has 100% crit with Burst and insta-recharge BU from a hidden Concentrated Strike. -
Quote:Well, what you describe seems to me like a pretty rational villain. There's a difference between being "misguided" and flatout being "wrong," is where I draw the line. A misguided villain lacks the ability to perceive the world correctly, or the ability to think clearly. What you describe is more a villain who's well aware of the world around her and who has made her choices consciously and rationally. If I were a person living in her world, I'd argue that she's wrong, but I wouldn't argue that she shouldn't be allowed to form her own opinions.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
This really depends on the strength of said villain's convictions. For instance, I have a villain that truly believes that humanity is doomed through its weakness, and in order for the human race to survive the weakness must be burned out of us. The weak must be culled and the strong made stronger. Yeah, sure, if you convinced her she was wrong she'd probably try a kinder, gentler approach...but the point is that you never will.
When I say "misguided," I more mean... Let's use an ad-hoc example. A character's parents were murdered by criminals, but he thinks they were murdered by heroes, so he hates heroes and wants to kill them. Society cast him out because he was a murder so he had to live homeless on the streets and believes it's their fault. This obvious villain can be reformed if you reveal the truth to him and give him an opportunity to save a city or two. Instant hero.
If a villain has room for redemption into a hero (or a hero room for falling from grace into a villain), I'll usually write that into their backstory. In order for me to swap a character from hero to villain, I need to change my mind as to what I want the character to be. I'd never write the swap into their real-time storyline, because my characters DON'T have a real-time storyline. Their plots happen off-screen. When they're on the screen, they kill stuff.
And I agree with you completely. There's something I can't quite describe that I find really alluring to a self-aware, responsible villain. "Yes, I realise what I'm doing and yes, I realise the consequences. No, I don't think I should be doing anything else. Why? I have my reasons." There are villains you can't bargain with, there are villains you can turn over to the light side, and then there's this. This is a villain that you CAN reason with and he'll usually listen and argue, but this is ultimately also a villain that you cannot convince away from his crimes, because that's what he willingly and knowingly chose to do, and because he has very strong personal reasons to do it.Quote:Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
I actually find perfectly rational, logical individuals who fully understand the consequences of their actions, know what their alternative is and choose to do them anyway to be the most despicable. They can theoretically be redeemed, or at least reformed, but they make a deliberate and conscious choice not to be.
THESE are the people I make into actual villain characters. In a sense, they are indeed the worst of the lot, but not because they rip the heads off innocent civilians, but rather because they functionally cannot be redeemed. These aren't so much "disgusting" villains so much as they're "sinister" ones. To some extent, I'm digging my own dichotomy into the ground when I say this, but I just now realise I enjoy quite a few villains who aren't necessarily "glamorous" but more so sinister, consistent and irredeemable.
Someone spoke about "goals" and "purpose" before. I guess that's where the "glamour" aspect comes in. If a villain has a purpose and sticks to achieving that purpose, as opposed to stopping to commit every unthinkable travesty along the way and savour the malice, that is a cool villain. So long as the purpose itself is glamorous, or at least not disgusting (rule the world vs. kick puppies, destroy all existence vs. torture people, etc.), the villain comes off as "glamorous" by my definition... I think
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Quote:It still makes me chuckle a little bit how seriously players took that, and yes, I do agree with having fun with itOriginally Posted by Arcanaville
Yeah, I remember. I was just having some fun there. It was never official: it was a rumor started by the players before the big HO nerf. "Hami disease" was the idea. I think the Hamidon was one of the earliest "hot topics" in the game, at least that I can recall off-hand, and some of the arguments around it still astound me to this day. After the arguments ED and GR, that's saying something.
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Thanks! I've appended your suggestions to the original post and credited them to you.
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Quote:I tried to start with the ones that would sound more reasonableOriginally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Quick agreements to making Hide inherent, the placate bugs, etc. and hit point boost.
Well, I listed a huge list of suggested changes. I'd be surprised if any one posted couldn't find something he or she dislikedQuote:Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Aside from not knowing if it's doable, I don't find this situation such a big deal (yes, I do play stalkers.) I might not get the AS (though, if it's something like a mayhem and I can duck through doors, I get a free shot anyway - target as soon as the door opening animation starts, AS will go off before the NPC can do anything,) but I can usually use terrain to break LOS, pick a target, and get a good, solid crit on them as the fight starts. Scrapping the rest, really, just isn't that big a deal IMHO, especially with the occasional placate. If you're solo, the ambush probably isn't that big. On a team, you've got others to help deal with it.
More to point, though, I agree that this is not a big deal. However, ambushes more than most circumstances serve to rob Stalkers of their AT-defining mechanic, and they really run counter to what Stalkers should be good at. As a Stalker, being able to dodge a fight and attack my enemies from behind should be my "thing," and ambushes really serve to interfere with that.
By contrast, location-triggered ambushes have been a lot of fun, even when they stack. I remember one particular fight that had I think no less than five TEST ambushes, all stacking on top of each other, all of which I fought and won against with my Stalker. How? Every time I heard a new ambush coming, I moved away from the area and pulled the fight with me. When I was done with one ambush, I'd attack the other and watch for the NPC dialogue for the next one, then move away when I heard it. It was a rewarding, cool fight that actually had me think on my feet and put a fair amount of pressure to both act and react.
Player-targeted ambushes that just make a mockery out of my inherent seem... Cheap.
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I don't want to defend these ideas. I'm well aware some are controversial and others just... Ludicrous. I just wanted to list them. And if you have other ideas, be sure to let me know and I'll add them to the original list with author credits
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Quote:No, no, you're right, especially that there is no one general rule that everyone's going to follow. I'm just saying that at this point, I honestly don't think there's anything that can be changed on this subject.Originally Posted by ItsJustJake
I am not "arguing", nor am I trying to change anyone's mind. I was merely Reminding them that while their opinion is perfectly valid, it extends no further than their own game play, and voicing it as some sweeping "unwritten game play Law" was misleading.
I don't think there was ever anything to be worried about, and I'm pretty sure the implication was never official. Some people simply felt that if these enhancements were as strong as they were (and they were very strong), there had to be some drawback to them, and corrupting player's level 50 characters was a meaningful drawback... Yeah... Luckily, that never happened. They just reduced the Hamidon enhancements' effectiveness when, like with SOs, they realised people would be making whole builds of the things.Quote:Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Fortunately, primal earth Hamidon seems incapable of operating a camera phone, so this worry was a bit overblown. -
Fair warning ahead of time: This is a list of things I'd like to see done to help make Stalkers a better, stronger AT, but I don't pretend to want ALL of these changes. Some of them, as you'll note, may come off as ludicrous or overpowered and would alone constitute a significant upgrade to the AT. All of the changes together would be completely broken, obviously, but my goal here is not to forward an upgrade to the AT so much as to look at what could be done for it, and I want the list to be as exhaustive as I can make it.
*Fix the Demoralisation bug: That one's already been fixed in Beta, actually, but I wanted to mention it anyway. For those unaware, that's the bug where the Assassin's Strike's "Demoralisation" effect (i.e. fear and to-hit debuff) only triggered if your assassination target survived, but fizzles if it died. This is being fixed to where EVERY successful assassin's strike will cause Demoralisation, which is a great change.
*Fix the Hide enemy AI bug: When the team a Stalker is on attacks a spawn, that spawn will not just aggro on players the individual NPCs can see, but actually on the entire team list. What this means is that a Hidden Stalker who has done nothing to reveal his presence will still be attacked if a team-mate causes aggro. This should not work that way. Invisible players should not be valid targets for NPCs until they are spotted.
*Fix the Placate bug: If an enemy is suffering from any debuff from the Stalker, when that Stalker uses Placate, that enemy will not lose aggro, just lose the ability to target the Stalker. Once the Placate effect expires, that enemy will chase the Stalker across the map, around corners and to the ends of the Earth. If the enemy is not subject to any debuffs from the Stalker, however, that enemy will forget the Stalker existed, either walking away idly or proceeding to fight another team-member. This means that the Stalker can disengage, rehide or even rest. Considering almost all Stalker attacks come with some sort of lingering debuff, this is highly unlikely and makes powers like Smoke Flash significantly less potent.
*Fix the OTHER Placate bug: When the Placate power is used, the Hidden effect of it is activated almost immediately. What this means is that you are then locked into a power animation for another 1.5 seconds, all the while said hide can be broken without ever giving you a chance to make use of it. Either the Hidden status needs to be moved to the end of the power (and possibly delayed past that), or the Stalker needs to be given a second or two after Placate where Hide cannot be broken by incoming damage. Otherwise, the Hidden status restoration in Placate is useless more often than not. And if that weren't bad enough, the enemy you are placating has a chance to hit you after you placate but before the power animates, breaking your Hidden status before you are able to attack, if you are unlucky enough.
*Fix the "ambush bug:" When a player-targeted ambush spawns, it immediately knows where the Stalker is, and heads over to attack him, making Assassin's Strike and Hide pretty much useless, reducing the Stalker to a somewhat gimped Scrapper. Make a special exception for Stalkers where player-triggered ambushes head for the Stalker's last known position, instead of heading straight for the Stalker, or alternately make ambushes unable to attack stealthed players that they cannot see. We can't attack invisible things ("Target too hard to see"), so can't the AI be made to do the same?
*Up the Stalker hit points cap to just below that of Scrappers: Right now, the Stalker hit points cap is so low that pretty much any set with a max hit points buff will meet and exceed the AT's own cap. The point of both ED and the GDN was to prevent characters from hitting their own caps for the most part, so this seems like a logical change.
*Up Stalker Build Up to at least 100%, more if necessary: Stalkers are intended to be the one-hit killers, focusing all of their damage on those first few attacks and crippling their enemies enough to be finished off more easily. To this effect, their 80% damage buff Build Up just doesn't cut it. It needs to be stronger, if not much stronger.
*Make Hide retain some of its stealth radius when it suppresses: Brute and Scrapper stealth does not suppress. Ever. Blaster and Pool stealth suppresses, but still leaves the character slightly stealthy. When Stalker Hide suppresses, it suppresses completely, making the Stalker highly visible to ALL enemies around. If not full strength, then Hide needs to retain half or a third strength even in combat. Remember - enemies you have aggroed already or others of the same spawn will keep attacking you even when you're stealthed, so this does not give a combat advantage. What it means is you won't be seen by all other spawns in the whole frikkin' room. For an AT that can't really pull very well (no Provoke, pulling suppresses hide and prevents the use of Assassin's Strike) that would be a great help.
*Giver Stalker random criticals a chance to occur from hide, possibly resulting in double criticals: A "double critical" Assassin's Strike would produce a 2.5 base damage plus a 4.5 Assassination critical plus another 2.5 random critical. Most normal powers would simply hit for triple damage instead of double. Considering how rare Hidden criticals are as compared to normal attacks, I don't think adding a chance for a double critical if you're really lucky would upset balance too much, but it would be awesome when it happened.
*Make Hide only suppress when you attack, but not be suppressible when you receive damage (only in PvE): This would allow Stalkers to assassinate enemies with constantly running damage auras (like Spines Wardens), not fear Red CoT Crystals, be able to fight in Caltrops and generally be screwed out of their Hidden criticals far less often. Right now, running away to re-hide for a hidden critical is statistcally pointless as you waste so much time. Considering how rare it is to be hidden beyond that - which is basically just Placate when that's available, it should make Stalkers quite a bit more solid as fighters.
*Make killing enemies, or having enemies to whom the Stalker has done the highest percent damage, cause the Stalker to immediately Hide: Either then make his Hide not suppressible by incoming attacks or give him a leeway of at least two seconds to score another Hidden critical. This should make up for their lower damage mod and lack of AoE. Speaking of which...
*Up the Stalker melee damage mod to 1.05 or 1.10. Possibly more: 1.05 would be equal to that of Dominator melee and 1.10 would be close to the Scrapper damage mod of 1.125. Considering Stalkers are listed as having comparable damage to Scrappers in the new Beta and they seem to be intended to be the melee shock damage dealers, it would make sense for their sustained melee to be better than it is.
*Make Assassin's Strike uninterruptible when not Hidden, or possibly uninterruptible period (in PvE only): Right now, Assassin's Strikes have a base damage of scale 2.5. This is just tangentially less than the 2.62 or Head Splitter. What this means is they're solid attacks which could help Stalkers out in a scrap, but they are useless in a scrap because they're so easy to interrupt. Make them uninterruptible and you give Stalkers an extra tool to make up for taking a power out of his Scrapper-ported attack set.
*Make Assassin's Strike animate faster: Let's face it - Snipes and Assassin's Strikes have never been good DPA because they animate so slow and even worse DPS since you can use them so very rarely. Assassin's Strike would not be a very good attack out of hide even if it didn't suppress, and it's only marginally worth the time and risk invested in using it from Hide because of its high damage. Making the power faster (not necessarily TOO much so) would help with that. I'm thinking somewhere between Head Splitter and Total Focus speed.
*Alternately, make Assassin's Strike hit harder: Right now Total Focus hits for a scale damage of 3.67, for a critical of around 7.32 scale damage, or actually higher than Assassin's Strike itself. Now, probably for this reason, Total Focus doesn't score a full Critical and Energy Transfer (base 4.5 scale damage) doesn't have critical hits at all, but instead just removes the self-damage on a successful critical. Now I hear that a Street Justice power has the potential to out-damage an Assassin's Strike on a critical hit. If we're this careful of having Assassin's Strike outshined, perhaps it's time to up its damage, and somewhat significantly. Not enough to one-shot AVs, obviously, but enough to do serious harm to an even level boss, and close to one-shot the thing if used with (a possibly stronger) Build Up.
*Make Assassin's Strike AoE when out of Hide, or possibly AoE with a critical hit occurring on just the selected target: One big complaint Stalker players always have is that they lack AoE of any kind, having given up an AoE from their ported set to accommodate Assassin's Strike. So make the thing uninterruptible and give it a lower-strength AoE component when used out of hide. Assassin's Blade/Sword/Blades/Claw could cause a Head-Splitter-like narrow cone where you shishkebap multiple foes with a single stab while Assassin's Shock/Blow/Squat/Whatever do an AoE around the target. This doesn't have to deliver full damage, but having SOME AoE to it would be nice, and would give Stalkers back some much-needed AoE, especially on sets like Martial Arts.
*Make Stalker Hide an Inherent power like Dominator Domination and instead either give them back what their defence sets lack, or alternately give them a "Disappear" power which recovers Hidden status without placating anything and is on a fairly short recharge (30-60 seconds). Alternately, call that power "Escape" and turn it into a cheaper, faster version of Smoke Flash to be used for escaping from a confrontation gone wrong.
*Make Build Up recharge faster: Similar to Leo's idea below, but in the opposite direction, let's improve Build Up uptime by making it recharge faster. Considering how huge of a benefit Stalkers draw from Build Up - more so than any other AT I've played - it's a bit irritating to be faced with just not having the power recharged so very often, and that's with recharge slotting. So, what if we made Build Up recharge faster for Stalkers and Stalkers only, such that they had a reasonable chance to have the power available at least once for every fight. If I had to eyeball a time, I'd say 60s, so that we can sync Placate and Build Up more easily without having to let one or the other sit unused.
*Give every out-of-Hide critical a chance to recharge Build Up: This is sort of Leo's idea again, but I'd suggest giving the Stalker, say, a 20% chance for Build Up to recharge every time the Stalker scores an out-of-Hide random critical. This should both make Stalkers feel less "wrong" for straight-up scrapping and it should also make said scrapping feel a like a little less of a damage step down if we could have Build Up available more often to help with dealing damage.
*Make Stalker AoE attacks score guaranteed Hidden criticals like single-target ones or give them a higher chance to score one: It's a well-known fact that Stalkers have somewhat lacklustre AoE potential. So why not up their AoE potential by giving them better chance to score Hidden criticals with AoE attacks. That should help everyone aside from, what? Martial Arts and Energy Melee? Dark Melee, maybe? Moreover, it would make using powers like Head Splitter and Thunder Strike a much better choice as a Hidden attack, and it might help Spines get their heavy hitter to become a cone once more. A lot of Scrapper sets were built with cone heavy hitters, it seems, and when these got ported to Stalkers, they effectively lost their heavy hitters since those have a low chance to actually score a Hidden critical.
*When using an AoE from hide, always guarantee a Hidden critical against the one target that the attack is aimed at: This should allow us to still use our heaviest-hitting powers like Head Splitter from Hide and score bigger Hidden criticals for more shock damage. If this is even possible, it should give Stalkers more tools to use from Hide without unballancing their AoE situation much.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Remember - all of these changes all at once WOULD be too much, but at least SOME of them in SOME combination ought to be decent.
*edit*
And now for a few poster contributions:
AzureSkyCiel
*Add "Wounding" to Assassin's Strike: Basically the idea is that 'wounding' would be an effect placed on a target that survived an AS power from hidden and make the remainder of their short existence miserable. Wounding would be a massive debuff to the victim's defense, resistance, recharge, damage, tohit, speed, regen, recovery, and special.
The idea being that after a target takes such massive damage in one instant, they're left in a crippled state, requiring every bit of willpower they have just to try to limp away. This also would add a teaming element for stalkers in tough fights against major AVs and such.
AzureSkyCiel
*Add Bonus Damage for attacking from hide: This is inspired by Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's chain kill mechanic. Basically, upon landing a hit from hidden, you get either three seconds of plus 80-100% damage or three seconds 100% critical chance. The idea being to sort of finish the trifecta of scrappers doing consistent DPS, Brutes building up to higher levels of DPS, and then we would have stalkers able to open up with heavy DPS before normalizing a bit more throughout the rest of the fight.
Leo_G
For BU itself, the extra 20% dmg is nothing to cry home about. The hindering part of BU is its duration of 10sec. With the oft better DPS option being thrown out (the likes of Soul Drain, Follow Up and Power Siphon), a similar change that Dual Blades could fit. The Empower combo lasts 10sec for other melees but can be kept up while Stalker empower lasts 20sec because it can't. If I were proposing a change that would aim to help the AT, it'd be to extend BU's duration from 10sec to 15-20sec. This is mainly to help with DPS. But if you're aiming to focus on aiding Burst dmg, I'd say there are better options.
Supernumiphone
One fix I'd like to see is to have Placate suppress enemy affecting toggles the same way hide does. As things are right now the toggles will break Placate almost immediately. We have to choose whether to run the toggles or have Placate work properly. Especially with Stalkers getting another armor set with such a toggle soon, this could really stand to be fixed. It kind of feels like the change to suppress the toggles while hidden was put in but never fully tested. That or maybe there are tech limitations preventing it from being fixed, I don't know.
*edit*
I don't believe this! I got logged out of the forums BETWEEN EDITS! I didn't even reload the frikkin' page! -
Quote:It's actually interesting that hero-side vigilantes come off as MORE villainous than villain-side rogues... If I had to make a "scale of evilnessnessness," it would go something like:Originally Posted by rsclark
That may explain why I can't really play my hero/rogue - a basically heroic person who isn't above a little monetary self-benefit. to run the rogue missions you need to be limited to only having the option to run your own villain missions - which are pretty negative. And if you go hero, you can't take the rogue missions. The only option for gray morality is to edge towards violent sociopath...I mean vigilante.
I guess by going hero, I'm expected to be pampered and never be tempted to steal that car.
Villains
Vigilantes
Rogues
Heroes
I'm not sure why this leapfrogging of morality occurs, but I've seen it in Praetoria, as well. Almost all of the Praetorian morality missions actually make staying in your current alignment the less appealing choice, so that either characters end up flip-flopping between factions, or they are forced to make difficult choices. -
Quote:And your post is an almost word-for-word recreation of the exact same argument we had all of 2004 and have had around once per year since. The names of the people involved are different, but the arguments are pretty much the same. If you see anyone with a forum reg date of 2004-2006 or thereabout, I can pretty much promise you that nothing you say will change their mind regarding "blind invites."Originally Posted by ItsJustJake
I was just disagreeing with the general notion that ALL players feel that way.
I mean, you've been around long enough to have seen most of these threads. Do you honestly feel there was ever anything to be gained by arguing in them? -
More specifically, you can find the Suggestions and Ideas forum at this location.
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Quote:Ah, those were fun timeOriginally Posted by Arcanaville
Don't get too used to all those HOs, though. Are we referring to the impending "nerf" to Hamidon enhancement percentages or to the rumour that exposing yourself to the Hamidon too much would have negative consequences in the future, though?
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Quote:You call it a non-answer, but I see it as a very good answer to the underlying question of "What villains do you like and how do you want their stories told?" Maybe I'm biassed in that I agree with you, but I really like your answer. It's not as important to see the villain being violent and brutal as it is to KNOW that he is up to no good and needs to be stopped. I brought up the "horror movies vs. torture porn" dichotomy specifically to illustrate that sometimes NOT seeing the danger and violence and gore makes for a better horror story. In much the same way, not seeing the evil overlord eat people but kind of suspecting he does makes - to my eyes, at least - for a more sinister villain who's nevertheless much easier to swallow, pun not intended. And it also means that if you want to sidestep into a sudden tonal shift just to make a point, it's much more effective when the rest of the story hasn't numbed the audience to the horrors of villainy.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
I have a non-answer response to the question: more than glamorous or disgusting, I think villains need to be entertaining. This is also where I break with a number of other posters in terms of the importance of realism in story lines. Super-heroic stories almost never present the realistic consequences of violence, so any hope of presenting realistic violent people is lost. I don't consider this entirely a loss. IMO it is possible to "characterize" without necessarily being "realistic," in the same way it's possible to cartoonize a person rather than produce an exact portrait. Actual evil actions are less important than the idea that the villain is up to no good. This is what allows Universal Studios theme park to build a Dr Doom slingshot ride without having to apologize to victims of actual crimes. The character is a "fun" representation of the concepts of fear and destruction, not a literal example.
But you said it very well, and I agree with you there: To me, it's much more important to convey how much of a threat a villain is without necessarily doing so with the realistic portrayal of tasteless violence.
This is another point I agree with, and this was also an argument I kind of didn't want to make as it can come across as accusatory. But... Yeah, I agree with it. A misguided villain is just a face turn waiting to happen, because the villain isn't really a villain, but actually a good guy forced to be a villain. Remove the compulsion and he'll return to his natural state of not being evil.Quote:Originally Posted by Starflier
I find the 'misguided' type of villain a cliche change of heart just waiting to happen. You know it's coming, so why even bother belabouring the point. Building a character with a built in 'escape hatch' just seems kind of lame.
Something I may not have quoted but which also applies: Responsibility. I have a problem with "crazy" and "deluded" villains because they never take responsibility for their actions, and this is a big problem I have with building decent villains. Now, that's not to say that all villains should realise that they're evil and accept it, but to me, a decent villain should at least know that what he's doing is bad, but have a reason for why bad things need to be done.
Take, for instance, one of my more irrational villains. Keen Tyler believes that all humans need to die to make room for the next step in evolution - thinking, intelligent machines. He realises that killing people in itself is not a good thing, but has weighed his options and is convinced that it is the only way for humanity to evolve, as our physical forms have reached their limit, according to his understanding. He is actually assuming far more responsibility than he deserves, deeming himself the only person intelligent and progressive enough to do what must be done for the future of humanity.
Let's try and use a simpler illustrative example. A villain is about to kill you. If he takes responsibility, he may say something like: "I know you don't want to die, but your death is necessary." If he doesn't take responsibility, however, he may say something like: "You don't want to die? By Jove! What a novel concept!"
Villains who don't comprehend the consequences of their actions are being given a convenient excuse that they don't deserve. Villains who do comprehend the consequences of their actions and choose to do them anyway, though, are rotten bastards that need to be taken down. These are the guys who deserve to be called "villain by choice."
*Slight aside* I have a very hard time making villains who could be redeemed, since if they CAN be, they WILL be, and that will have happened before I even make the villain at all, so said "villain" will just end up being a hero with a past of tragedy and redemption. I very rarely tell character's stories in real time. Their stories are ALWAYS done by the time they set foot in City of Heroes.
You should view my original question as just a general guide, and I'd edit the title if I could. If you feel you have a better idea on how to class villains, then by all means, use that. I welcome itQuote:Originally Posted by InfamousBrad
I like the question, but it feels to me like comparing apples to oranges. Specifically, you're asking about two of three different axes: glamorous vs gritty, altruistic vs selfish, and tries-to-be-harmless vs callously cruel. That I see them as three different axes makes it hard for me to answer your question as asked. My only real desire here is to foster a discussion about the various types of villains, but if you want to discuss it in a different framework, then you are welcome to it, and I appreciate your feedback either way.
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I edited the below quotes slightly.
That's actually a very real problem I've had pretty much since I6, 2005, though it's one I don't really want to spend too much time on since it has the tendency to derail. I'll just say that I agree with your concern - City of Villains really doesn't lend itself to glamour. The whole place is a giant dump, a ghetto for the scum of the planet where you go if you couldn't cut it as a hero. Everyone's a primal thug, everyone's a monster, everyone's just a no-name nobody looking for a big break and never getting it. The whole of City of Villains is a misunderstanding of why people actually LIKE some villains, because it's a giant monument to all the ways in which villains fail in life. And while that may be realistic, it doesn't make me want to play a villain more. In fact, it makes me feel like the developers actually disliked villains and intentionally wanted me to dislike them, too. Like I should feel guilty for playing City of Villains.Quote:Originally Posted by InfamousBrad
City of Villains really sucks at offering you chances to play glamorous characters. If you're a villain, you came out of Darwin's Landing (or, now, Galaxy City) and you never get to live that down. I really feel like the Crey Corporation side of supervillainy goes under-developed in City of Heroes and City of Villains. If you want to play a character who's more like Lex Luthor than the Joker, if you want to play a character who's more like Dick Jones than Clarence Boddicker, this is not a game that will let you scratch that itch -- not without extensive use of Mission Architect, anyway.
I think Dean McArthur's arc is the only one in the Rogue Isles with any dignity, though Vincent Ross does come close. Neither of the two is particularly EEEVIL or even all that repulsive, but they are both quite a bit glamorous, because they give our villains reason to have at least a shred of dignity and self-respect. Most of CoV is specifically designed to humiliate and demean our villains, like they are the pathetic, hollow garbage of the planet and we SHOULD feel sick for playing them. How do you play a "glamorous" villain when he has to live in a slum and pancake himself out for lunch money, sucking up to his much more influential contacts?
Crey, honestly, have the right idea. Or had, at least, before they were flanderised into moustache-twirling obvious villains who no longer even seem to hide behind lawyers and the media. As an example for a glamorous villain, Countess Crey probably trumps even the Nemesis. She's rich, she's pretty, she lives a life of luxury and comfort, she has tremendous personal, political and financial power and she's nigh-on untochable. Oh, sure, her company murders people, clones corpses, destroys the environment, controls minds and breaks the law in numerous other ways, but DAMN if Clarissa Von Dorn isn't awesome! Pity we can never be that cool.
Interesting that you should mention that, as it seems like City of Heroes is the exact opposite of that. The heroes are all provided for, cared for nice guys who live comfortable, easy lives and have wide-ranging support from both government and private businesses. Villains, by contrast, are homeless reviled scum who are eternally indebted to Arachnos of having broken them out of jail with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, forced to claw their way up by tooth and nail into greatness, and even then the only greatness is serving people in Arachnos that are slightly higher up the chain of command.Quote:Originally Posted by InfamousBrad
I miss the inherent class bias of 70s and 80s era Marvel, where rich people, politicians, and government officials are usually villains and the heroes mostly grew up in slums or working class neighborhoods. But, then, i would, wouldn't I? But yeah, no, that's not how it works in City of Villains, and there isn't even very much of it in City of Heroes.
I actually do remember a time when villains always had it easy - they had the money, power and authority, and were essentially cheating. By contrast, heroes always had it hard - no-one listened to them, they never had enough evidence, they never had enough money or power and they always had to juggle job, rent, bills and crime-fighting. Villainy was the easy way, heroism was hard. In City of Heroes, these seem to have been inverted. Heroes have it easy because non-profit organisation jostle for position to be the ones to help them, while villains are living a hard life because everyone hates them.
This, I think, is a pretty good example of where glamorous villains give way to... Shall we say "unglamorous" ones. Rather than having a secret lair, a super scientist and an army of faceless goons, they have to live in a shed without plumbing and kowtow to slimy, self-absorbed contacts. Even in the absence of actual disgusting violent crime and gore, that's still about as unglamorous as villains get, sleeping with the rats and the stray dogs. -
Wait, what's a City of Heroes CCG?
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Quote:Good to know. I'll keep that in mind when looking for patch notes in the near future. Thank you.Originally Posted by Lemur Lad
I know you got a Zwill answer Sam, but I'll add that based on the Stress tests on Live and Test and the nature of the changes of the last few weeks, you can probably expect several more patches like this.
There's a lot of back end map stuff they're working on, which is a good thing.
Also, though it may not have come off like it, I do realise it was my own mistake to not look at the server downtime announcement. I did actually look at the Announcements forum, but I was looking for Patch Notes threads, of which there were several, just all old ones. -
Quote:Call me crazy, but I don't usually go into downtime announcements expecting to find patch notes in them. This is the first time I've ever seen a downtime announcement explain what the downtime is for in my seven years here, at least that I can remember. Usually, they just list the times when the servers will be down, which I typically don't care about since I'm at work at those times anyway.Originally Posted by Texas Justice
Had it been me, I'd have looked at the Announcement made yesterday by Freitag.
That section of the forums is called Announcements for a reason. -
Quote:Ah, here's an interesting hook to pick up on - general purpose reason. I've found a lot of the more chaotic, basic characters of fiction to bug me, and that's not a criticism of those characters or of your preference, just a remark on my own bias. And I think I finally realise why. As Gregory House once said: "It's a mystery. Mysteries bug me." That's what I generally feel towards "He just IS" villains. I want... "Need," perhaps, is a better word, to know why bad stuff happens to good people, and when the answer is "it just does, deal with it..." I flip the channel.Originally Posted by Beastyle
That being said I do enjoy playing around with these types of character concepts. While I enjoy writing villains that have some depth beneath the surface, I also like characters who simply are the way they are, just because. As an example, an idea for a villain I had spawned out of an idea for a piece of dialogue: "I don't need a reason. I just need conviction."
This is something of a clash between reality and pretendy-fun time. In real life, there's very rarely a real, tangible reason why people suffer. To cite house again - that one infamous suicide is deliberately left with no explanation just so as to show house that he cannot figure everything out and needs to let go sometimes. Which is fine in real life - we face situations and we deal with them. But entertainment (and entertainment I pay for in particular) doesn't have to be like this. In fiction, we can know EXACTLY why an evil person is evil, we can know EXACTLY why good people suffer, because whoever wrote that did it for a reason.
I guess where things break down for me and cause me to find another game/movie/book are that if the author doesn't give me a good explanation, then I already have one - "because the script said so." And if that's the only explanation I have, I don't like the story. ESPECIALLY when it's the only explanation I have for why something I really, really don't like happened.
Many moons ago, I asked if games should take us out of our comfort zone, and the response was mixed. I, however, walked away with the conviction that so long as I pay for my entertainment, I don't want it to do that to me. What this means is that if I pay to experience a story and that story attempts to "hurt" me, I always have the option to rebuff that, which is precisely the safety margin that exists with fiction which isn't there in real life. Story too hard? Stop reading! Problem solved. It's not quite as easy to go "You're broke? Stop living! Problem solved!" now is it?
Again, I'm not dissing that approach to writing. It's all a matter of taste, preference and opinion. But bringing it up makes me realise how vital it is to me that a reason exist for why villains are villains. Note that I don't specifically have to be TOLD what this reason is, as long as I'm reasonably sure it exists, that someone sat down and thought about it.
Cards on the table, I actually had a few characters whose motivations I described as being "unknown" or "unclear," and they were unknown and unclear even to ME... And I wrote them. The reason I did this was I liked a costume, I liked a powerset, I liked a general concept but never quite got around to finalising the concept and writing out a full biography. Most of those characters are either gone, rerolled or re-written these days, and the ones that I still have which are unexplained still exist because I move through my roster very, very slowly and can only really work on about a dozen characters per year with any seriousness.
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Oh, right, topic! Um... How that relates to glamorous villains vs. disgusting villains is actually pretty simple. If a villain is fairly glamorous, I'll be less likely to demand a reason for why he's a villain, since I'm less likely to question the things I actually enjoy. As such, a cool villain can typically get away with being mysterious. On the flip side, a disgusting villain I'll almost always want a reason for, just because I tend to need a VERY strong reason as to why I should be sticking with said story. -
Quote:Originally Posted by ItsJustJake
Some of you people really need to stop acting like you speak for everyone. I've never really cared if an invite was 'blind' or not. Some people just like teaming. I accept invites I get, talk for a minute, then decide if i want to stay or not. Your preferences are NOT automatically everyone else's.Woah... I got a sudden case of deja vu, like I fell over backwards in to 2004...Quote:Originally Posted by Daemodand
Good riddance to this very stupid piece of this game's culture. "You invited me to a team in a multiplayer game! How rude!" always struck me as very WTF. I do put teams together when the mood strikes, and this cultural quirk always made it much more work than it had to be. Just join the dern group, if you're not into what we're doing, just say so and part ways amicably. It isn't hard. With this aspect of the game's culture dead or curtailed, I just might put teams together more often rather than soloing so much.
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Quote:18:36 seems a tad long, but not unreasonable. I think when I did this, I clocked it at around 15 minutes, but I was travelling Faatim to Perez (no speed-teleport by leaping off islands). I picked up a lot of time not knowing where the pancake I was going because geysers weren't on the map when I tried it, and I used Super Jump for my travel power of choice (was my only 40+ character at the time).Originally Posted by Katie V
Just for giggles, I did this. Perez SG teleporter to Faathim's toes on a Claws/SR scrapper using only inherent, primary, secondary, and pool powers, and only the old travel system. Total elapsed time: 18:36.
Still, I remember treasuring the Faatim souvenir back when the developers took souvenirs out of ALL TFs because they couldn't get them to award to all people. Those were... "Fun" times
And FWI - the Shard maps still don't show all geysers. Most notably, they don't show geysers that shoot you straight up between levels of floating islands in the same lateral location, such as what you need to do no less than three time to climb Crimson Falls. -
Quote:Thank you. I just like knowing what happened, even if it's not in explicit detail when it concerns systems we don't really know anything about to begin with. And while some people may make fun of patch notes that just say "Some stability changes." I still appreciate those, because at least there are patch notes posted.Originally Posted by Zwillinger
We didn't receive any public facing notes for this particular publish.
I'll double check, but usually if that's the case it was optimization improvements (which I can confirm was part of today's build...ITF and BAF should be *much* improved at this point), back-end changes that don't have an immediate player facing impact and updating the WST.
Thanks!
-Z
Also, I can stop worrying that you guys nerfed accuracy now. -
Quote:I expect that Free players will be marked as such in Team Search, which will give me a good enough reason to be snobbish towards blind invites anyway. That said, I spend the bulk of my time in instances where I can't be invited anyway.Originally Posted by UberGuy
That said, I will almost certainly continue to avoid PuGs and ignrore blind tells/invites.
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Quote:I stand corrected.Originally Posted by FlashToo
You're mistaken. GG only sees the Wardens as the de-facto good guys, not the whole Resistance. I remember her saying so shortly after GR came out.
I'm not saying the Resistance are the bad guys, so much that the Praetorian story is designed to where there ARE no good guys. Not even the Wardens, no. In the course of following the Warden storyline, you end up releasing not just a hardened criminal, but one who made a career out of throwing people out of high-rise buildings and throwing cars full of people around, you dismantle the city's most reliable crime prevention tool and you destroy the city's sole source of drinking water for the next year. I'm sure those are all justifiable actions, but that's not the point - in the Praetorian storyline there are no good guys and bad guys. They're all shades of grey.Quote:Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake
look the resistance was originally set up as the ambiguous good guys of gr. they also wanted to show that there were shades of overlap between the two, thats why the resistance has crusaders and loyalists have the responsability path. both do some things that are good and some that are reprehensable. but given what the ingame setup was, yes cole was set up to be bad and those opposing him were the less bad that were working with the earth's heroes. if i recall, player feedback influenced the decisions to have those 2 extra branches, and it was originally to be just loyalist and resistance, likely war dog would not have been there had the extra layers not come in to add the "bad" good guys.
Or shades of jerk, as it too often transpires. -
Quote:I probably dropped the ball on this one (won't be the first time), but your line of thinking is kind of what I was after. I have a tendency to put my questions in absolute terms, more or less expecting that most people will fall somewhere in-between, hoping that they'll explain exactly where they fall. I should probably consider wording my questions less strictly in the future.Originally Posted by Basilisk
Ultimately, I think the disgusting/glamourous question has to be more a matter of a spectrum than of two discrete points. Where a character falls on that spectrum then varies by the story being told.
But your example is a pretty good one for what I'd dub a "glamorous" villain. Sure, he's a bad guy, he's possessive, he's insecure, he's violent... But that's not what you focus on. You focus on the fast cars, the pretty ladies, the high life... It's evil hiding behind coolness, rather than than just evil standing behind more evil.
Outside of that and Venom, but yes, I agree with you completelyQuote:Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
Aside from That famous crazy clown, I think the rest of them are what Sam defines as "Glamorous" Villains. Even the Clown is debatable depending on who is writing him. These are kind of sort of the people I think of when I think "super villain." That's probably something worth looking into - you'll see a lot of villains in comics and other stories, but not all of them feel right to call them by every term. Some are naturally super villains. Others, however, are naturally murderers. There's a fine line between the two, but it's there.
Though, yeah, these are the sort of people that constitute glamorous villains in my eyes. They're evil, no doubt about it, and they're neither redeemable nor sympathetic, and their evil is pretty dang unpleasant... But a the same time they're such cool villains that spend so much time doing such cool things, I can't help but not like them. A little... Secretly...
I was out of ideasQuote:Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
I agree on Phipps, but I don't really see him as one of this game's Major characters. Truth be told, though, if you want a "disgusting" type villain, how about War Dog of the Praetorian Resistance? He kidnaps a man, tortures him, then has you kidnap his family, threaten them to get information out of him, shoots the guy when he talks, then orders you to murder his family anyway. I don't care if the resistance are seen as the de-facto good guys (by Golden Girl, at least), that guy makes me sick. War Dog pretty much ensure that I'm never running Crusader content ever again.
I'd call War Dog "disgusting" for the simple fact that his entire story centres around unpleasant, intentionally revolting business, and his entire character is built to be a damn rotten *******. If ever there were an option to "kill contact," he's one of the few people I'd have used it on.
In fact, the whole of the Praetorian storyline is designed to make you feel dirty for having taken part in it.
Pretty much. I'm lenient enough to class any villain who focuses on his goal first and foremost and doesn't stop to murder and torture people along the way as a strong candidate for being glamorous. That is, of course, unless the writer goes out of his way to weave the path to his goal through murder and torture, but that's where the vagaries of personal style and taste come into play.Quote:Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
If I'm reading you right, then I think I can say that I mostly play "Glamorous" villains, in that all of my villains have some overarching goal they are trying to achieve and, depending on character, are willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve it (i.e.they act with some measure of ruthlessness) That mean they occupy ever last second of their free time purposefully stomping kittens and puppies into puddles of blood. -
Quote:Keep in mind that I'm speaking mostly about presentation and narrative, or how a villain's story is being told, as opposed to exactly what that story is:Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus
Instead, I'll ask you to provide some examples of both types of Villains as they fit your own opinion of your own definitions laid out in the first post.
A disgusting villain would be the now-infamous Westin Phipps. It's not that what he has you do is so colossally bad or cruel (even though it kind of is) as much as that he's written specifically to shock and horrify. Westin is the response the developer team gave to the people claiming that City of Villains wasn't "evil enough." Again, he's a bad guy, but the point of his story is for the player to be exposed to something really uncomfortable, and all for not a lot of gain.
By contrast, a good example of a glamorous villain is the Nemesis. On the scale of bad things he's done, he's worse than Phipps a thousand times over. Nemesis has wiped out entire worlds, he started the Ritki war, he's killed numerous people, over thrown governments and who knows what else. But Nemesis isn't ABOUT that. Sure, he does bad things, but oh, man! He has an awesome base in another dimension! And he makes ray guns out of steam technology! And he can make psychic robots! And he has taken over entire worlds! Isn't that cool?
It's really not so much how bad a villain is as much as how much time we spend focusing on the cool things he's done vs. how much time we spend focusing on the horrible crimes he's committed. With Westin, torture porn is the point of the entire character. With Nemesis, it's more a case of stupid jetpack Hitler! It's still undeniably bad, but also kind of amazing. -
Quote:I'll see what I can do. What I meant when I wrote that was that the NARRATIVE is focused on showing the villains doing amazing things and hiding the grimmer of their deedsOriginally Posted by Texarkana
Perhaps consider a revision to your description of "glamorous" villains? I think that might be a bit of stumbling block since you describe as those villains focused on doing amazing things... I don't believe in "good villains" so much so in "cool villains," and really, the coolest ones are those that show you their glamorous side while hiding the torture chamber in the basement behind locked doors.
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Quote:By the way, speaking of villain-side, it always pissed me off that if I wanted to visit the Market, I had to trudge across the entire damn map and dodge potentially red and purple con enemies. Heroes, on the other hand, have to just look right and Oh! There's Went's! Same with the Tailor - if you want to access an early one, you either trudge all over creation, Fery to Port Oaks then ferry to Cap Au Diable then trudge all over again to get there, or cross Mercy Island, Ferry to Port Oaks and then use Pocket D. If you have a VIP pass. Heroe-side wasn't too much better with the long Steel Canyon trek, but at least the hero-side D entrance was easy to get to, as the Atlas Park station is close by and pretty safe.Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Just to emphasize how many quality-of-life boosts we've received in the transportation sector, the shortest path is on Blueside via the tram -> Founder's Falls -> RWZ entrance, a path in which the Vanguard base is literally next door to public transportation. (Founder's Falls is also convenient from both Ouro and Pocket D warps.) On Redside, it's just ferry -> North Cap -> RWZ entrance (similarly nearby). Neither of those are obvious for a first-time player, however.
Sure, it's a lot better now, and with Villains starting in Mercy City, it should be easier still. And yet, I can't help but complain about the villain low-level game being a bit more inconvenient.