Samuel_Tow

My problem with Praetoria's morality isn't that I'm not allowed to do everything like I can in Alpha Protocol (probably the best example of a "do anything" game we're likely to see for some time), but rather the choices I'm allowed to pick from. A binary choice doesn't have to feel like a false binary logical fallacy if it manages to account for a wide enough scope of possibilities, such that either option "fits" as many more specific ideas people might have. This isn't the case, because Peaetoria's morality is intentionally simplified and robbed of sufficient scope.

Adding choices to a system with as little consequence as City of Heroes should be an opportunity to include everybody by making both options in a binary choice appealing to as many people as possible. This is achievable by making the choices very broad and the morality behind them very abstract.

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An artefact of great power has been found, and you HAVE to go secure it. Once you do, you have the choice of keeping it for yourself to use it in the future, or destroying it so it can never be used again. Neither option is strictly heroic or villainous, as it all comes down to how and when you might choose to use it, or what your justification is for destroying it. The game gives you choices, but it does not tell you which choice has what morality to it.
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My main complaint about Praetoria's morality is that I think involving such strong faction identity was a mistake. The elseworld hero-and-villain morality as depicted in Tip missions is far, far superior to that, in my eyes, at least. It does somewhat force your hand still based on what alignment you want to be, making you pick choices for that alignment, not choices your character would strictly believe in, but it's still FAR more appropriate for a morality system. For pure weight of options, I find morality systems like Alpha Protocol and Dragon Age to be superior to those of Mass Effect and Knights of the Old Republic, simply because you don't have a karma meter telling you what's good and what's bad. All you have is actions and consequences.

And idle example: If I choose to help free Killdozer, then I have to battle an extra rather heavy PPD spawn to break the guy out of jail. If I choose to go back on my word and let the guy rot, then I don't fight that spawn of PPD, but I have to fight an extra boss fight with Killdozer right after the fight with LeoKnight at the final box. Neither option is good and neither option is bad. They're just options. In fact, every time I come to that choice, I'm forced to sit down for a minute and decide WHY I'm choosing what I am. Let's take the option to let Killdozer rot - for which you are never given an in-game reasoning - and try to imagine why my character might have chosen that.

*For MageKiller Po, she did that because she's not a bad person, just misunderstood, and she wasn't about to set a villain loose on the streets.
*For Akili, she doesn't give a crap about the Freakshow and figures Killdozer deserves what he got.
*For Duriel, she enjoys seeing people suffer because she's a malicious alien bug lady. Intentionally screwing the guy over brings her joy and happiness.
*For Lord Cedric, he doesn't care about promises and honour. He's there for himself, and anyone else is for him to use as he pleases.

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I don't mind Praetoria's lack of choice. I mind that the choices were given this little scope and that they were so marred in faction warfare. We're intended to see them as choices between right and wrong, but they are what they are tagged as - choices between the Resistance and the Loyalists.

She's being completely irrational. Like any person convinced he or she knows everything, Golden Girl just "knows" what constitutes life and that souls are the key, and she is not interested in actually having convincing reason to believe so.

We don't really have Saturday morning cartoons, but I've had access to the Cartoon Network, as well as Fox Kids -> Jetix -> Disney Channel for some time, so I've seen a few, I think.

Come to think of it, Po does remind me a bit of characters from the Centurions, as well as possibly Swat Cats. I suppose I could have made her slightly less colourful but still bright by using a white key, but I liked the interplay between yellow and cyan.

I remember there being a bug like this, actually, and now that you mention it, I remember seeing this in person at one point. It shouldn't work like this, since being able to attack a target that you cannot target via AoE doesn't break the Placate until it times out or the target attacks you, but there could be some kink in the code that's the culprit here.

I do know that the Hidden portion of Placate is interrupted if your target manages to key an attack in a specific time window where he hits, suppresses you, but is still placated and won't attack.

I remember Yahtzee saying something along the lines of "I stopped snickering at Spotted Dick by the time I was 9" when talking about how people will see profanities where others have gotten past the profane meaning of a word or a term.

Personally, I intend to use WTF because I choose to. I don't hound people for using the term "IOs" even though there is no such thing as Inventions Origin, and that Dual and Single Origin enhancements are called that because they affect two or one origins, with no such thing as Training Origin enhancements since "Training" is not an origin. It's like taking the term "dual wield weapons" for a class of weapons which can be dual-wielded, and extrapolating this to "Onyxia Wield" weapons for single weapons dropped by Onyxia, or "Crafting Wield" weapons for weapons which can be crafted by players. It doesn't work that way.

But you don't see me getting indignant when people use that kludge of a term that is iiO, do you?

I remember Yahtzee saying something along the lines of "I stopped snickering at Spotted Dick by the time I was 9" when talking about how people will see profanities where others have gotten past the profane meaning of a word or a term.

Personally, I intend to use WTF because I choose to. I don't hound people for using the term "IOs" even though there is no such thing as Inventions Origin, and that Dual and Single Origin enhancements are called that because they affect two or one origins, with no such thing as Training Origin enhancements since "Training" is not an origin. It's like taking the term "dual wield weapons" for a class of weapons which can be dual-wielded, and extrapolating this to "Onyxia Wield" weapons for single weapons dropped by Onyxia, or "Crafting Wield" weapons for weapons which can be crafted by players. It doesn't work that way.

But you don't see me getting indignant when people use the ******* of a term that is iiO, do you?

One ambush is. I would not have made this thread if I were having to fight one ambush at a time. I made this threat after fighting three ambush waves at a time for mission after mission after mission.

Last night, I said the following to a friend of mine: "FFS! Even on Primal Earth I still can't escape from ambush spam!" This was said in response to the mission to capture Eddie Crush, where upon saving him, ambushes begin to spawn. This was a knee-jerk reaction, however, as that consisted of just three ambush waves, one spawn per wave, each ambush staggered to trigger about 10 seconds after the previous one was defeated. Eddie was unexpectedly weak for a Tank Smasher and did almost get killed, but at no point were we actually overwhelmed by 20 people like I was in Praetoria. And this was +0x2 ambush spawns (I'm 24 now. I can handle myself.), to boot.

Maybe it was that this was the Council ambushing me, with minions and lieutenants, maybe it was that this was just one ambush spawn at a time, maybe it was because they were staggered, maybe it was SOs, but I didn't feel like the game was cheating when this happened. I was so jaded on ambushes at the time that just the NPC text pissed me off, but the actual fight wasn't so bad. This is how I feel ambushes should be done - add pressure on the player, but don't drop a bridge on him.

This was based on someone's suggestion. I really liked the "light sabre" looking sword The armour itself is a bit bright, I'll admit, but this is a more positive character in general, so I wanted a brighter colour scheme without having to use a black or white key.

While DC and, from what I understand, Tera, are blurring the border between action game and MMO, ours is strictly the click-and-kill kind. It's a very elaborate, fast-paced click-and-kill RPG, but it can't be something it's not. What that means is that most of a player's "skill" goes into preparing for fights via research, character building, experience gathering, gear acquisition and so forth. There really isn't a whole lot a player can do once he's in the fray, other than whatever strategy said player has prepared in advance. I do appreciate "Press X to not die" AV fighting mechanics such as seem to be popping up recently, but they do little more than complicate the process.

That's not to say action games are all about fast reflexes and situational awareness and thinking on your feet (I played co-pilot in Battlefield 2 with one hand off the keyboard supporting my chin), but by and large what defines action games is what you do on the spot, then and there. Some may involve limited preparation, such as if you managed to bring enough ammo, get the right gun or heal up beforehand, but when games like Halo start giving you regenerating health and unlimited ammo on some guns, that begins to wane, as well. For the most part, preparation isn't as important as what you do when the fight starts. The fight is decided on the spot.

Your typical MMO actually time-shifts its "combat" in the past. You do your "fighting" in the spreadsheets, on the Market, in character planning, in crafting, in team compilation, such that by the time you're ready to go, you've already just about won. People very rarely go boldly into fights that they don't have a good faith that they're going to win. That's not to say it doesn't happen, but it's not common.

That's why I have a problem with challenge. "Don't you want to be challenged?" people ask me, and my response is "No, I don't." Why? Because being challenged just gives me more homework. It doesn't require me to be a better player, it requires me to bring a better build. Can I fight multiple ambushes? Yes, I can. Can I fight multiple EBs? Not at present, but if I made a better build and snaggted some Inventions, I would. Can I fight +4 enemies for the new TFs? Flat no, but I could, with the right build, temps and team-mates. But that's not because I'm DOING anything special, it's because I'm simply forced to bring a bigger gun.

I don't mind challenging content as such, but when people tout it as factually challenging is when I roll my eyes. All "challenge" does for the most part is raise the "You must be this ---> tall to ride" bar. It doesn't make me feel like I'm DOING something special. It makes me feel like I'm doing pretty much the same thing, but my gun just shoots bigger numbers.

I don't think that something much of anyone will agree with me on, but it's also something I'm immune to changing my mind about. That's just how it goes.

And all I can say to that is "unfortunately." I've made and played more characters and spent more time in the game since XP smoothing than I ever did before, for the simple reason that I actually felt I COULD actually complete them all, now that it doesn't take bloody ages to do so. I haven't done that yet, but I'm still on it. Throwing time sinks at me hasn't improved my game play. All it's done is piss me off.

Maybe I'm an anomaly, I don't know. I know I'll be here until I run out of powersets, which won't be any time soon. The Market, far from making me more likely to stick with the game, is the only other time in the game's history when I came close to throwing it all away, because I didn't like where that was taking the game. And, no, I have not changed my mind. In fact, recent events show me that I was absolutely right.

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But, yes. I preferred "Influence" when it was undefined and left to interpretation.

OK, you get major points for that one, Tech

Call of Duty, Halo, UT3 as I mentioned earlier and so forth tend to be famously played for their competitive PvP, something that never seemed to catch on in City of Heroes even in the heyday of PvP. That's what these games are played for, but even then there are people like me who don't play them for precisely this reason. Hell, I no longer play Battlefield 2142 these days, either, simply because people started getting too good.

Not everything needs a huge challenge, however. I never found Spore to be all that challenging, for instance, and I don't think a "hardcore" mode would have made the game suck any less... I mean, would have made the game any more popular.

I may not be a big fan of Jack these days, but one thing I'll hand that man - he kept his lore straight. Things made sense, things had an explanation, things had a story behind them. It felt like a living, breathing world. The story hasn't been as... Complete since the guy jumped ship.

To me, however, it's just physically impossible to see abstract power over other people bid in a blind market environment, unless we want to say the Market is somehow influential enough itself. The original vision behind trading Influence was the concept of endorsement - an influential hero backs up a less influential one, so shops give the less influential hero credit as a favour for the more influential one. On the flip side, a very influential hero couldn't afford to hand out too many favours before his welcome wore out and he had to earn more respect by saving the city some more.

I could buy that. I've rationalised it. But when we started paying "Influence" at the Market and being charged listing fees and being taxed a trading fee and... No. My brain cannot compute that. I spin out and call it money, if for no reason other than because then I don't have to think about how much they've perverted the concept.

The only thing I want to say to this is I never wanted a market to work in this game, and my opinion has not changed since I9.

I suspected it was 10%, but I had no way to verify this. Thanks.

That I forgot, yes. Stalkers share the same self damage buff mod with Brutes and Tankers, which means Build Up is an 80% damage buff, as opposed to Scrappers and Blasters, for whom it's 100%.

It's not a tactic I "refuse to exploit" because that's precisely what I did. And that's precisely why I say it's pointless. Placate doesn't "hide you period." It gives you stealth radius, but that stealth suppresses if you're hit. Since the dozen or so enemies around you at the time don't lose aggro when you placate just one, you WILL be hit.

But it's not a question of being seen or not being seen by enemies. Most of the ambushes that pissed me off took part in empty instances that I'd cleared out before. It's simply the fact that enemies don't give you enough time to rest, especially if you need to rest from low health. You can't pull enough ahead, or at least I couldn't with Super Jump thanks to narrow doorways and low ceilings. I'd always be no more than about 10 seconds ahead of the ambushes, and Rest eats up 6 of those just activating. And that's when it's even recharged.

Furthermore, it's imperative I defeat ambushes FAST, because the next one will spawn on a set timer, not when I've killed the previous one. If I dilly-dally, I'll get mobbed by 20 people, as I have on multiple occasions. At that point the only thing I can do is hide around the corner, score one critical and run away, at which point a Repair Companion will just heal the damage I did and they'll keep chasing me. If I do manage to down one, a Construction Companion will just rez him. Again and again.

Even when this tactic is successful, it takes FOREVER, and at that point I already consider the mission a failure. If it were just one mission I'd shrug and move on, but when three arcs back-to-back had ambush spam, that got to me.

Scrappers don't actually have a higher critical chance. I can't check Staker critical chance since it's listed as "Special" anywhere I can check, but I believe they have the same 5% base chance plus some percentage extra for team-mates in range, out of hide. Scrappers also don't really have better defences. Scrappers and Stalkers have the same defensive numbers, and Scrappers often have better Defence numbers (by a bit) due to Hide. In the case of Energy Aura, the Stalker version is actually superior to the Brute version, believe it or not.

That said, Scrappers have a slightly higher base hit points mod (Stalkers have Blaster hit points) and a 1.125 melee damage mod to Stalkers' 1.0. The differences are there, they're just not very meaningful. The biggest drawback Stalkers suffer isn't in survivability, it's in their lack of AoE, since they typically trade a PBAoE power for Assassin's Strike, Electrical Melee notwithstanding.

My apologies, then. I did not think anyone still held to that interpretation, but if you can, then I can respect that.

Look: I do not like the fact that Inf is money. Believe me when I say this. I liked Jack's original interpretation, and everything they've done with it since then has been a mistake. I want you to be right, I want to agree with you. But I can't. The developers simply made sure that Influence is money. They don't call it money, but then Final Fantasy games don't call Gil money, yet it IS money.

I'm not saying you're stupid. If anything, I'm glad you can accept that. But I can't. Not with the rampant disregard with which Positron has been treating lore and canon while jackhammering his new systems into the game. Invariably, they smash some cool idea in the process of going in, and the fate of Inf was one of those.

I simply cannot suspend my disbelief enough to accept "influence" being bid in a silent auction. This IS wrong, and if feels wrong.

I've seen more people opposed to the general spirit of the system, such that it seems designed for and around teams, much more so than people are directly opposed to teaming at all ever. Once or a few times ever, I'm sure even hardcore soloists will concede, but it's the principle of it that bothers me, in particular. Large-team raid grind is something that doesn't sit will with quite a few people, and forced teaming - a prospect which seems like it will only get more pronounced - is a large part of that.

Furthermore, the Rares and above require not "just teaming," they require very specific teaming for very specific tasks. I have a friend of mine with whom I team half the time simply because we often end up playing at the same time, but just teaming with him won't get me a NotW, because it's not the right kind of teaming. It's not just the act of socialising and playing with others that's required, it's a specific TF every week, and usually not a very good one. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the WTF will stop handing out NotW once the proper Trials show up, which means it will require proper raid grind to get.

My personal stance has always been this: I want to team. When I feel like it, for what I feel like, when I feel like doing it. That, it seems, is not teaming enough for the end game.

"Influence" has not stood for literal influence ever since we became able to bid it at a consignment house. "Influence" has not meant influence even since before that when City of Villains got "Infamy," which is a different concept entirely. It's a kind of fame, not power over people. And now Praetoria has "Information" (check your system messages), which practically represents a direct equivalent to physical currency.

INF is money. It may not have been at one point, but with the advent of the Market, it became money. Trying to pretend it isn't is on the same level of wrong as the Church of Unitology continuously trying to pretend that the Markers aren't evil.

Actually, that's not true. The Placate Hidden status and stealth bonus suppresses when you are hit. In fact, in most fights it will suppress before the power animation has even played out if you don't time it JUUUST right, and even if you do time it, you usually have no more than a couple of seconds to strike before it gets suppressed anyway. Yes, I know that for a fact. That's how I got killed multiple times.

Furthermore, running from ambushes is pointless. They will follow you to the ends of the earth. They'll open doors, ride elevators, use emergency staircases and they WILL find you. You need to travel pretty much the full length of an entire instance if you want to put enough distance between them and you so you can rest. And even if you manage to do that (I found a ceiling pipe that was out of reach of the Ghouls), you'll get one shot at the ambushes. When you get damaged THEN, you are out of options but to leave the instance.

Leaving the instance, by the way, cuts aggro to even permanent ambushes and makes them wander back to their spawn point, which may be a usable tactic... But feels pretty cheap. Beyond that, however, these ambushes have the tendency to strike when you're escorting an NPC, at which point not only can you not Hide for fear of losing the NPC, but they can kill the NPC, as well. I barely got Dr. Helix out alive (all the while wondering why she has Kheldian powers).

Again - I admit that options exist, but they're not as good as they may seem.