Samuel_Tow
-
Posts
14730 -
Joined
-
Wow, I never thought someone would set out to troll me specifically. I must be moving up in the world.
-
Quote:To be honest, I can't say this is the case, or at least not ENTIRELY the case. I've run plenty of successful TFs that were done by sheer weight of numbers, where every fight was solved by just hitting the closest thing to me until it's dead in melees big enough to where I lost track of where my team-mates were. But that didn't matter, since we just blazed through everything. I've done TFs where the leader sat down, told each of us what to do, and we just played out our roles, and even that hasn't felt all that satisfying, since it didn't feel like my intelligence as a human being was all that terribly relevant when my task consisted of "Stay there and keep taunting the Healing Nictus."Originally Posted by Furio
This does seem more a case of a team meshing well and winning, rather than "challenge done right". I think one would get the same feeling on most of the TF's/Trials given similar circumstances. Well, maybe not the boring original TFs
Hell, I even ran probably the most fun TF I've done a week ago. It was an ad-hoc Numina TF comprised of only four people - Myself on a Brute, a Defender, a Mastermind and a Tanker. For some reason, it fell to me to be the primary damage dealer, and as such set the pace of the TF, and the Defender was kind enough to focus the bulk of his efforts on me, so I de-facto led the team around the instance end even ended up tanking Jurassik. It was a very fun TF that actually made me feel useful for a change, and all the people there were decent and agreeable who worked together as a team.
None of those successes come anywhere even close to the Sewers Trial, because this is the first task in a LONG time which made me feel like I - the person behind the keyboard - actually played a role in the encounter. It's the first task in a long time which felt like it took more honest-to-God literal skill than just the right build and right team make-up. Sure, we needed a team which could handle +4 bosses in large numbers, but like I said before - even the best of teams could not have done this without the right PEOPLE involved. And the right people didn't need any superhuman skill beyond basic intelligence and cooperation.
This, to me, is what makes a decent challenge. I've failed this TF four times in the past, and at a time when it was EASIER as we finally beat the trial at level 41, which you can't do any more, and at no point did I rant and rave about how the Trial sucked. I knew what we had to do, and what we had to do was work faster and waste less time standing around wondering what to do. Not a single time have I felt that the Sewer Trial was badly designed, including the very first time I did it with almost no preparation or forward knowledge and failing miserably by running out of time with over half the Head's health still remaining.
This is what newer TFs and Trials need to measure themselves by, not Reichsman or the RTF or even the ITF. -
Quote:I would have, actually, because I know how the Trial works. I understand that someone approaching the Sewers Trial for the first time with no prior knowledge is going to tear his hair out, but when you have at least one person who knows what needs to be done (and in this case we had at least two - me and Zamuel), there really is no excuse as to why the Trial should fail miserably, other than "other people."Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Okay, I don't want to devalue your experience or anything, but please imagine for a moment that instead of a team of players who work together well and are willing to report back, you had three or four prima donnas who don't need no stinkin' communication because *they* know what they need to do and if the rest of the team doesn't fall in behind them, well, too bad for the rest of the team.
Do you think in such a situation, you would be able to correctly pinpoint the source of your failure? Would you say "The Sewer Trial is difficult, but I think we could have done it with a better team and more communication", or would you say "We wiped again and again, it was frustrating and unfun, this is another example of why I hate TFs"?
One of the single greatest accusations I can level against most City of Heroes content, the "challenging" type more than anything else, is that it teaches people that they don't have to think. If you've run one ITF, you've run them all. Just blitz through the whole thing, blitz through Romulus, bada bing bada boom. Until you find out that you CAN'T blitz through Romulus, and then half the team turns into petulant children who rage-quit the moment everything isn't going great instead of trying something else or communicating with other people.
The game teaches us that it's OK to be a buffbot, that it's OK to be a mindless Scrapper, that it's OK to just push buttons and rely on Pavlovian reflexes and if you just bring enough debuffs and enough DPS, everything will be fine. The developers throwing more numbers at us just means we throw more numbers at them back, and I enjoy challenges that cannot and should not be solved by bigger and bigger numbers.
Yes, it comes down to micromanagement and yes, it comes down to finding agreeable, communicative, responsible people. Zamuel pulled those people from team search and channels, and I have it on good authority we were all perfect strangers at the start. Hell, one player didn't even know where the Abandoned Sewers were, and he still did perfectly fine on the Trial.
If "find non-brain-dead players" is the prerequisite for a decent challenge, then that's a prerequisite I can respect. This isn't a question of doing math, of min-maxing or even of being a great player. It's a question of being willing and able to read, and if that's too much of a challenge for people, then I feel sorry for the world. -
Quote:You have something on the order of around 20 seconds between when you kill a generator and when it gets repaired. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. That's nowhere near enough time to kill them one by one. You need to split your team of eight into four teams of two, spread them around the generators, damage them to about below 50% and then wait. As soon as everyone's in position, give the order, kill them all at the same time and shoot the head. It's really the only way to do it.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
I think the thing that got to me was the combination of a somewhat viscious time-limit when fighting +4 bosses, the mobs around Hydra and the Mini-Krakens, AND the ambushes that spawned at the generators whenever their health came back up. It was a case of "Ok, killed that bit, now we- oh not you lot AGAIN!" Needless to say, we didn't even scratch Hydra itself during my run. Mebbe if I run it again with a slightly less impromptu team.
-
What I want out of the game, in no particular order, includes:
1. More power customization, including pool and epic power customization so my red electricity dude can have a red electricity epic. Further additional animations for older powers, ideally allowing us to pick which hand to shoot blasts from FOR REAL THIS TIME, as well as adding customization to the powers that didn't have it already.
A. At least a couple of new generic ATs, such as an Assault/Defence one, a Melee/Control one or a Melee/Summon one. There are a fair few extra concepts that can still be accounted for, and it'd be a shame if it never happened. Really, combining Blast powers in some fashion with personal protection in some fashion that's not all the way one or all the way the other is probably the biggest thing I want to see, system-wise.
I. A muscular female texture that's worth its salt. I've already discussed this at length multiple times, but of all the things I want to see, this is THE BIGGEST ONE, by far. Getting more muscular arms as an option for Robotic Arms would be a good idea, as well. As an extension to this, more costume items in the categories often forgotten, like Monster Heads, Monster Feet, Robotic Arms, Tails, Armoured tops and bottoms, tights with skin, hats and so forth.
α. Incarnate content which doesn't require a team, and indeed allows us to "stretch our legs," as it were, and show off the power's we've gotten so far, making slower, steadier progress than in those punishingly hard TFs. In the same vein, Incarnate TFs which are hard not because they are cheap and cheating but because they require more coordination and communication.
* More powerset proliferation already! I want sword Brutes, Axe Scrappers, Ice Stalkers, Dark Blasters and so on and so forth. There is so much more that can be ported around. -
Quote:I haven't bought a box since 2005, so probably. But even so, an I14 manual is still very out of date and excludes systems, powersets, locations, enhancements and lists a lot of things that have changed, most specifically the difficulty and sidekick system.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I'm sorry Sam but you haven't read the manuals recently. They aren't that far out of date. They include information up to Issue 14.
-
Quote:I know, ForbinOriginally Posted by Forbin_Project
The OP's forum account wasn't created until January 2010 so he couldn't have possibly made this post on this account in 2004. Sure he could have cut and pasted a post made on another account from 2004 but he still only did that yesterday.
But I'm pretty sure that if you travelled back to, say, September of 2004, you can find pretty much the exact same post somewhere around Suggestions and Ideas.
-
Quote:Each powerset and each power has an internal system name that the system calls it by and an external public name that we see and can call it by.Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
My guess is that they actually have different entries in the database, for different values on the powers, so they need different names or the game would be confused. But that's just a guess. Could also be just to make things a bit more unique, for flavour.
Their being Masteries makes them distinct from every powerset in the game, and it's as simple as citing which AT that particular mastery you're reporting is for. It's no different than trying to report a power from Energy Blast and having to specify if you mean Blasters, Defenders or Corruptors.Quote:Originally Posted by Vanden
The different names across the APPs certainly makes it easier to report bugs with the powers.
Personally, I'd rather see their names unified, since I can never remember which synonym corresponds to which AT. I keep saying Fire/Fire/Pyre Blaster, for instance, when it turns out the Blaster version is Flame Mastery. It's just random. -
Quote:The price of versatility is far too high, when there's almost no place in the entire game where a stun is better than a hold. Dual Pistols pays far, far, FAR too much for supposed versatility that doesn't come into play nearly as often as people seem to think it should, ESPECIALLY in Suppressive Fire. Make it just a hold and give it a decent duration. Right now it's just a particularly crappy control power with no real upside.Originally Posted by Vanden
That's the price of versatility.
-
Quote:That mission doesn't have spawns of irregular size, but it has the tendency to stack multiple spawns on top of you between overlapping ambushes and regular spawns placed so close together you're just about guaranteed to get multiple aggro. And, yeah, the ambushes have the tendency to fall on you just as you're fighting something else.Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
I am not sure exactly which mission it was, but it was near the end. The NPCs were not Family, they were PPD ["rogue" PPD?] and I don't know about you, I do not need multiple PPD Ghosts glue-trapping me at once. I just don't.
I was Hovering above them, looking down and counting 7-8 NPCs in one wave. If I managed to kill a few, another wave would come running up and etc. That is just too damn many for a solo level 20 troller on +0/0. A wave of three would have been fine, not FUN true eough, but fine. Eight is too damn many.
And thanks to Glue Grenade, Acid Mortar and Flashbang, your ability to kill things quickly is greatly diminished, meaning you're that much more likely to be beset with multiple spawns at the same time.
Suffice it to say that I do not like that mission. Why does it ALWAYS have to be ambushes? Seriously, developers, use another tool!
"That ghouls mission" from Dr. Steffard is pretty much notorious for being... Well, disliked. It has on the order of 20 ambushes that come in about 10 waves of increasing numbers and increasing frequency. Towards the end, you get something like three or four ambushes spawning simultaneously, just to up the pressure. You're supposed to use the Syndicate spawn, I assume, but they're simply no match for the Ghouls, and as soon as they start stacking and spawning multiple simultaneous ambushes, the Syndicate go, you go, then Dr. Steffard goes.Quote:Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
My level 15 +0/0 troller in Praetoria is having the exact same problem with ghouls and Resistance. Seriously, whose bright idea was this, anyways? Are there people who find this fun? I don't find facing level 50 threats at level 20 "fun." I don't have the enhancements or the slots to even be able to begin to deal with that sort of thing.
Of course, the mission never fails, so you can just keep coming back and chipping away at the ambushes, but that makes it all that much more useless as a storytelling device. -
Quote:Heh, only a littleOriginally Posted by Zamuel
Well, Samuel Tow deserves credit for being a good side man since that helped smooth things out to. You had the wisdom and organisation, I essentially played the drill sergeant who was always going "OK, move!" "Keep together!" "Generator clear! Move to the next!" "People, report!" "Generators down! Attack the head!" and so on. A lot of the times, I said things people essentially knew, but I felt I had to say them just to keep the team from slowing down, because the Trial is on a timer, after all, and I've failed the thing multiple times for running out of time. You're the one who put the team together, made the briefing and organised us to the end, though, so you deserve the credit on this one.
Pretty much this, and that's why I like it. A lot of the time, even "elite" trials in this game can be done on auto-pilot, essentially, with people just pushing buttons and watching their own *****. I've complained about just that on the Tin Mage TF and with big teams in general - all I ever seem to do is just auto-target the nearest enemy and cycle my attacks with no thought of the bigger picture beyond that. Communication in those is only ever necessary if someone needs to do an infodump at some point, and then you go and click buttons in a slightly different way.Quote:Originally Posted by Zamuel
I think the listening part is where communication breaks down. Sometimes running sewer trials is like trying to herd cats with lasers. Adding on to that, it's one of the few parts of the game where you can outright lose as opposed to feeling overwhelmed and deciding to give up on your own. I think these two reasons are a lot of why some seem borderline scared of the trial. Good buffs/debuffs obviously help but it doesn't guarantee victory like most other parts of the game. People have to pay attention. I think it's also one of the few TFs you outright can't solo.
The Sewer Trial is the first time I actually had any idea what the hell was going on on a team of eight, and that's because you HAVE to know that, or you fail the trial. You can't just sleep-walk through this thing, expecting that the catchall solution to every problem is to just kill it with fire until it goes away and if you close your eyes and recycle your attacks, everything will be fine eventually. And despite all the bosses, the game never really threw spawns all THAT big at us, at most around 7 or 8 enemies, roughly 4 bosses to 4 lieutenants.
The Sewers Trial doesn't come down to the fights, it comes down to the coordination, and it requires people to wake up and be alert. It doesn't matter how many times you've run this, you can't run it on auto-pilot. You have to think, act and react, and this is what makes team play... Well, into team play, as opposed to just five people soloing a TF and three people playing healer. It's more than just one more mosh pit and one more mountain of hit points. It's a situation where people have to be aware of not just their own selfish selves, but of the team at large, and more content should be built like that. -
Quote:I disagree with you here on a fundamental level. The level of communication required isn't nearly on the level you present it, and I say this because I managed to kind of userp Zamuel and co-lead the Trial with him, and the level of communication I had to send out wasn't anything out of the ordinary. You certainly almost never need to chat in combat.Originally Posted by Nihilii
When you think about it the level of coordination required for the Sewer Trial is ridiculously low (albeit higher than on most other tasks ingame). What can make it hard is the tools we are given to communicate are vastly inferior to real life equivalents (i.e., simply talking outloud).
Because of that, basic coordination can be challenging, but that's challenge in the sense that you have to fight against the clunkiness of a videogame interface - by which I mean not only typing is slower than talking for most people, but you can't play/fight at full efficiency while doing so, and worst of all there's no guarantee other players are reading your text at all and/or reacting nearly as fast as they could.
Things that need to be said are announcing where the glowies are so the team can gather on you, clear the surrounding spawn and click them, announcing what to do with the generators BEFORE a fight, announcing what to do to the head after they are down, and then simply doing it. About the hardest part is getting people to do status reports so you know who has what and who's where, since you have no map and no way to tell who has which temporary power. Is that a limitation of the system? Yes, it is. It's not insurmountable by a long shot, because all it requires is people who pay attention.
Really, that's all it comes down to. You don't need so much good leadership to win this Trial as you need people who actually read chat and follow instructions, and we were blessed with a team of communicative people yesterday. And I'm sorry to say, but people not reading chat is not a failure of the system. It's a failure of the people. Yes, when people don't listen and don't cooperate, the Trial turns into herding cats, especially since it's so easy to fall off the catwalks, get lost or just wander off. But that's where the challenge is - organisation, coordination, communication.
Someone once said that, in war, if you know where your own forces are and where the enemy is, you've won half the battle. No other task in the game makes this more true than the Sewer Trial. If you go off on your own, you die and your team fails. If you kill what you weren't supposed to kill or do what you weren't supposed to do, your team fails. This is not a Trial which requires self-awareness, it's a trial which requires TEAM awareness, and this is what teaming should be all about.
I can tell you one thing: I've teamed a lot for a lot of TFs, and I couldn't remember the name of a single person even after a four-hour Shard TF. In just a little over an hour and a half of Sewer Trial, I knew the names of all my team-mates, because their names were relevant and because knowing who was who, who could do what, who had what and who was where was relevant to the task at hand. THIS is what teaming should be like: Not a question of stats and Internet guides, but a question of people's teamwork. -
One of the reasons current temp power jet packs embed themselves in the backs of Huge characters and hover off the backs of Female characters is that they're power effects no different from Fire Sword or Stone Fists. It's the same problem that weapons used to have back when they had to have only one look and size and location that fit all models and sizes. This is because power effects can't really interact with the costume system, so they HAVE to be a one-size-fits-all.
If jet packs are made into costume details and actually put on an attachment point, they should be able to follow the back of the character much more closely. David mentioned there being a technical issue with them, but never specified what it was. Whatever that issue is, it can't be that.
One issue with jet packs, at least the current Raptor Pack, is that they're very big back pieces that extend all the way down to the pelvis, meaning that either they have to limit spine curve (which they can't) or clip with your character's butt a lot. This problem, however, is solvable by using smaller jet packs that don't extend that far down and instead have their operating parts shifted back and to the sides like the Goldbricker jet pack, or the Jingle Jet.
Another problem I can foresee is the need for jet pack engines to actually face in the direction of movement, which current jet packs don't do, and it's very annoying and distracting. Currently, jet pack jets face "down" on the pack itself, where the direction of "down" is determined by the position of the back, and the way characters hunch over in combat mode, their jets usually fire backwards at an angle, looking like the character should be constantly sliding forward. A perfect jet pack would be one with vectored thrust that would account at least for basic combat mode and vector its thrust down when hovering even when the actual pack is at an angle. I'm not sure if anyone but me cares about this, however. -
Quote:One of the first things I did when I got the game was go to bed "with a good book" and read the manual from top to bottom. It's not a hard read, really. It's all of about 50 A6 pages, a lot of which are taken up partially or entirely by unnecessarily large pictures.Originally Posted by Auroxis
I don't see the need for it.
1. How many people actually read the CoH manual, anyway?
2. If you need to read the manual, you're most likely a new player and your character won't be optimized to face purple cons.
That said, the manual is so out of date it would be pointless to try and update it. It simply is not relevant. I still love seeing Elude described as a power which prevents you from attacking (I assume "only affecting self") when that wasn't the case even by the time I got the game, and I've had the game since a month after release. -
Why does the date of the original post say "Yesterday" when this was clearly posted in 2004?
-
Quote:Oh, certainly. What I was talking about was sort of... Call them "secondary travel powers." For instance, a grappling hook that can climb you up to very tall ledges would be useful to someone without much vertical movement ability, such as a Super Speeder or one of those "natural" folk who used to use Swift and Hurdle before they became inherent. As would climbing, actually.Originally Posted by ShadowsBetween
Right, but that whole game clearly had two major design criteria for every area. First, look gothic and scary enough to possibly creep out even Tim Burton. Second, make sure the Bat Gadgets will actually work. The whole island is Bat Friendly. In fact, if you could somehow play through it as a flier or speedster, that whole game would be a nightmare. Superman would have to walk or get hung up constantly on all the Gargoyles and gothic details, and trying to use superspeed in there would make people think of the Circle of Thorns caves with actual fondness by comparison. And even on an island built from the ground up to be a playground for Batman, going outside mostly means that you're walking from point A to point B.
I believe DC Universe Online allowed jumpers to sort of cling to walls and jump off them. That's what I mostly foresee a grappling hook being used as - getting to inaccessible places without having to run around for a mile to find the on ramp. -
When it comes to awkward stun powers, I believe Hand Clap is up there in "What were they thinking?" land. PBAoE knockback in general is about the worst application of knockback in the entire game, twice so on a melee AT that's usually surrounded by enemies and often draws buffs from enemies around. And the tradeoff for that is very poor. Knockback, which is decent but not all that, especially given the power's recharge, and short, unreliable stun.
People often suggest using this as a cone. Well, if we're going to be using it as a cone, why couldn't it have been, you know, a cone. Maybe then its stats could suck a little less if that's what we use it for anyway.
The most use I've had of Hand Clap was on a Sewer Trial today, where I used it to knock bosses off the catwalks so team-mates can snag Thermite and Particle cannons, and then later to knock respawning Rikti out of the generators they spawned inside, in both cases using the power as a directed cone and disregarding its stun component entirely.
Normally, I almost never touch it because it instantly shuts down all benefit I get from Invincibility. -
Quote:I don't think the Kraken are GM level, at least not in terms of what GM actually means these days. They're more like particularly hard-hitting AVs without much of any status protection. Most of the ones we killed, we did so while they were perma-held, so I honestly couldn't tell you how hard they'd be normally.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Aurgh...
+4 Rikti Bosses? That was painful.
GM level Kraken 'Hatchlings'? Oh Christ alive that stung...
I remember the Sewer Trial. I woulda liked to have been a LOT more prepared.
It was good, yes, but I objected to the enforced +4. At that level, that really hurt.
As for the +4 enemies... Yeah, that sucks, and their being only bosses ever. I'm still not sure why enemy level is being used as fake challenge, but to be honest, that's doable with enough support. About the only time I got seriously killed was when I rushed ahead to grab aggro a bit too far before the team or when I got smoked by the Hydra head.
Really, though, it could lose the enemy strength and it's still be an insidious Trial to run because you're on the clock and you NEED coordination to so much as stand a chance at victory. The fact that the Hydra Head's shield is still bugged and doesn't show after ALL THESE YEARS is a problem, of course (they fixed the Mole Point interiors, but not that?), but other than that, it's the coordination needed to take down the generators simultaneously, hit the head with Particle cannons that root you down for I believe five seconds AND protect the Particle Cannon Wielders that make or break the Trial. All the added difficulty really does is necessitate a fairly strong team of characters, but you can have the best characters around and you'd still fail without proper communication and leadership.
If you want to make something challenging, that's the way to go. -
Quote:The worst part about the forums logging me out is that it unignores Golden Girl until I relog.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Oh child, I'mma smack you up alongside the head so damn hard...
-
Quote:Pretty much, yeah. When I swap level brackets, one of the things I look forward to is that infusion of performance, and I just don't get that when I have to stagger that over days or even a week. Now, once I get to "the end" and there's nothing else to look forward to, enhancement-wise, than a slow upgrade into better enhancements, sure, that I can deal with... Maybe. But as for normal levelling, I'd sooner pay more and get my stuff right now.Originally Posted by Slashman
I honestly think that the biggest weakness of the market is the fact that if you're into a toon now, you have to keep waiting a few days to make him more awesome each time you level. If I don't get a result from a bid within a day, I'll pay more just so I don't have to put 'placeholder enhancements' in slots that I want to slot with specific sets. That grinds my gears.
That sounds pretty good. I tend to buy level 50 Commons (when they're available at all) for around 500 000, so what you're listing sounds very much manageable, even on my more modest budget, and especially if I try to space it out. This is encouraging news.Quote:Originally Posted by EarthWyrm
I bought 10 full sets of Thunderstrike shortly before the market merge, just to see if I could. They were all crafted, and I paid 650,000 per piece (because I don't like paying less than the crafting fee). When I've been too lazy to raid a base bin to find the right piece of Crushing Impact, I don't think I've ever spent more than 2-3 million crafted, and recipes can be had for even less.
The goods are out there at level 50, they're pretty affordable, and they will improve performance. -
It's been brought up before, yes, but as far as I'm concerned, it never hurts to bring a good idea up again. And again and again.
However, if you wish to do so, I'd suggest using David Nakayama's All Things Art thread, as that's what it was made for. -
I'm currently starving, I'm tired, it's 1 AM and I've been at the PC for hours, so if I'm a bit incoherent or spastic, please forgive me.
Recently, we've gone over what "challenging" means time and again, especially in relation to how we feel about the new supposedly more challenging Incarnate TFs. Most of us can agree that having some challenge is a good thing, but I happen to be among the people who don't believe that what's being done in the new TFs is the right way to achieve it.
Why bring this up in yet another thread? Well, because I want to talk about something completely different - the Sewer Trial. I personally hadn't done a Sewer Trial since some time in 2004 when Samuel Tow was still in his upper 30s and the it wasn't a TF, but rather a mission given out by some woman in Founders' Falls that anyone of any level could join, but could not pick up Thermite or Particle cannons. I hadn't, that is, until tonight. I can safely say that this is one of the hardest fights I've fought in this game in quite a while. I can also say that I have not been happier with the game in YEARS.
I want to thank and give credit to Zamuel for putting this TF together essentially on the fly, basically from people he got together through globals and team search. Well, and me, since I'd been complaining no-one does them any more pretty much for as long as I've been in the Victory global channel.
So why the thread title? Well, I've done a lot of the supposedly challenging TFs in this game, and I can tell you that they can't hold a handle to the kind of challenge that the Sewer Trial presented us with. Most TFs tend to go without a word being said, and if there is need for explanation, it's usually enough for someone to quote ParagonWiki and off we go. If things aren't going well, it's usually because we didn't bring enough DPS or enough debuffs or whatever.
The Sewer Trial is different. Sure, you're fighting spawns comprised entirely of +4 Rikti Bosses (that's a dozen at a time) and a series of AV-level Hatched Kraken, but that's really not what the Trial is about. The Sewer Trial isn't about bringing the right characters or the right powers, it's not about explaining it beforehand. It's about coordination on the fly and thinking on your feet. It's a bout a team working as a team should - with organisation and discipline.
This run of the Sewers Trial reminded me of something I remember fondly - this is the only task in the entire game that has ever made me say "Team, report!" and actually have the team report their status back to me so I know where we stand. And the Sewers Trial requires a lot of that. Why?
You need to know who already has what temporary power. You need to know is at which generator. You need to know when each generator goes down. You need to know who has the Particle Cannons and who you have to protect, or be protected by. This requires communication and coordination in order to do in time and without dying a zillion times, and I am eternally grateful to Zamuel for putting in the effort of leading it, while I essentially did my best to rush the team as much as I could
Let me put it this way: I have never before had to ask a team-mate where he is right now, what he is doing and when he will be done. Having to have that kind of situational awareness and being able to get other people to communicate their status so everyone knows what everyone else is doing even though you're scattered all over the map is, in my opinion, a true test of the player and indeed a true challenge. This beats the fight with Reichsman hands down. This beats a fight with a buffed-up Bobcat so hard it's not even funny. This one TF beats practically every other piece of content I have ever attempted, for the simple fact that its challenge does not stem from just throwing big numbers at you, and indeed from not throwing what is effectively quick-time events into a fight, such as Protean's power syphon.
And you know what? It was actually fun, and fun because it was involving. Feeling the need to type "Keep shooting!" in team chat as hordes or Rikti beamed in, desperately begging the Particle Cannon wielders to keep shooting the head and trust the rest of us to protect them is a feeling I don't get out of ordinary, or indeed even extraordinary content. This involves me, as a player, into the game in a way that no amount of planning, research and building can supplant.
The Abandoned Sewers Trial needs to be an end game TF, because it's more fun than anything I know of in the end game. -
Quote:That's kind of like where I started, only I actually started with things like the Swat Kats, the Centurions, the Real Adventures of Johnny Quest and, of course, the 90s X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons. I was born in 1984, so the 90s is when I was watching cartoons the most. From that I moved on to video games, and in the early 2000s into anime, more specifically movies, such as Ghost in the Shell, Fist of the North Star, Spriggan, Armitage III and the Battle Angel Alita OVA, the latter two of which inspired one of my favourite characters way back in 2004.Originally Posted by Kallandra
As to the other matter of liking comic books? I never really got in to them, but I always loved watching superhero/supervillain cartoons when I was younger. Not just Superman, Batman et al, but Dangermouse, Hong Kong Phooey and Battle of the Planets. I think those are what got me in to the super hero genre.
I know very little about actual comic books, but given the feel of other games which cite themselves as being "comic book style," I can't say I regret it. I don't know what age, era and style of comic books these games seek to ape, but they always come off as corny, campy and silly, which is not something I look for in a game. City of Heroes, despite the occasional appearance of frankly out-of-place full-tights characters like the Statesman, seems to be written more like a live-action movie in the spirit of the 2000's X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk and Iron Man movies, and that's nothing but a good thing. -
Quote:Of all the characters I've ever made, Crash (my SS/Inv Brute) is easily in the top three in terms of importance, if not right at the top, so if I'll be investing the time and energy into making a build I may never want to replicate, she would be the right one to put it on.Originally Posted by Leo_G
But the general consensus is, sets are only as costly as you let them be, as useful as you want them to be and as necessary as you feel they should be. Set IOs aren't necessary for certain builds and I think SS/Inv Brute is one of those builds. I think you'd be perfectly happy with just common IOs. Why not hold off on set experimentation on a character that you want set IOs bad enough on...like a main character you want specifically to feel more powerful or a more unique build.
I realise that the cost and benefit of sets can vary depending on how I want to use them. The question here stems from the fact that I already know how I WANT to use them. It's now a question of what that will cost and if that will make enough of a difference to justify that cost.
The way I'd like to use Invention Set enhancements is as a substitute for my current Common enhancements, not as an addition to them, which is to say I'd like to try to shoot for a build which is entirely made up of level 50 frankenslotted Invention set enhancements, or at the very least retain the ability to give all powers with "comparable" slotting the same kind. Truth be told, powers like Resist Physical Damage don't really benefit from frankenslotting, since they only have one effect anyway, so obviously it would be impractical to slot ALL powers with some frankenslotting of sets, but at least all attacks and all toggles would be a good goal, and with seven attacks and three toggles, perhaps a manageable one.
I say "perhaps" because I have no concept of what such a thing would cost. -
Quote:Last year (that is to say, December) I deleted one of my oldest 50s, a Scrapper I wanted to remake as a Brute so she could have access to Super Strength. If ever we get access to an Assault/Armour set, or indeed a Ranged/Armour set, then I will be rerolling all three of my 50 Blasters as that, including a collection of other Blasters in their 30s and 40s, because THAT would be what I'd have always intended them to be anyway.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
If we were to get a new normal AT, it would need to have Ranged/Armour, or some variant of. Not being able to make a Dual Pistols/Super Reflexes character, or a Fire Blast/Fire Shield character, or an Energy/Invul character is kinda annoying, and locks down some very cool concepts.
I've pitched the suggestion to Castle in the past, and he wasn't very receptive to it, citing such an AT's lack of a role on a team, but I still hold out hope for such a thing at least at some point.