Samuel_Tow

Hmm... You're worried that if an axe were anchored to the belt and to the upper back, it could act like a backboard? You have a point there. I think I can come up with theoretical solutions to this one... Possibly. Not really sure on that one.

What I do know, though, is that carrying the axe with the handle sticking too far up doesn't appeal to me. To be honest, I actually feel shorter weapons look best when worn on the belt, one way or another. They don't strike me as long enough to be worn on the belt. I mean, don't get me wrong - the Legacy Battle Axe is HUGE. It's just more chunky than it is long, unlike a sword which even when it's big is still long first and foremost. Well, some swords, anyway, but that's getting off-topic.

Either way, though, I think I have a fairly good idea of what that would look like from a distance, which is what my imagination was really lacking. It's so much easier with just a single broadsword

Well, the be fair, the Architect exploits are the first time the developers themselves came out and said "This is wrong. Don't do it." Wolf farms, Dreck farms, bridging, TV farms, egg farms, portal farming and so on, these they just fixed and swept under the rug, left for players to squabble over whether it was right or wrong. In this case, however, there has been official word on what is and isn't acceptable, so there isn't any room to argue.

Even more simple: Treat Swift, Hurdle, Health and Stamina as "stats" you can boost, like Strength, Dexterity, Vitality and Magic were in the old Diablo. You have the stats, and you can choose whether to increase them or not.

Hell, I think they should add stats for more stuff.

Which hurts you how?

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you, though "compulsive duality" keeps me from having rogues, as well. Villains and heroes are just so well defined and at the same time so loose for interpretation that I like the prospects, but rogues and ESPECIALLY vigilantes are... Eclectic.

I'll keep my heroes as heroes and my villains as villains. It's what they do best.

This actually tells me two things:

1. They need to account for the need to do emergency patches not including the new Issue if the need for them arises at a time when the next build IS the Issue.

and

2. Maybe the need to fix that exploit will push I19 to tomorrow! Glee!

If War can sheath his sword, I will keep trying to have Brutticus "sheath" her axe somehow

However, in this case I don't view the weapons as oversized, simply because so many of them aren't. I disagreed with BABs vision of what weapon size should be, but he did ensure that our weapons are, for the most part, of realistic scale in relation to the character. Which is why I don't tend to see oversized weapons as exaggerated, but I rather see them as just that big "in reality."

Brutticus was build, almost entirely, around that one huge axe. That was the sum total of her concept - huge savage woman. As such, regardless of how the game treats them, I interpret her weapons as both very large and very heavy, fitting for a woman who is herself very large and very strong. In fact, just the other day I swapped from the very small Targe to the significantly larger Spartan shield.

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I do think I can have those be capable of being holstered, though, and with no alterations to the costume. Here's what I have in mind:

The shield can hook onto the chain at the back and possibly somewhere on the shoulder. The axe can then hook onto the belt with the spike on the head and the the handle can fit into a ring along the chain, sort of like how the cover on a TV remote's battery compartment clips into place. This should actually give me a symmetrical look, as well, with the axe actually largely resting on the butt cheeks with the flat of the blades.

I think I like that setup

I actually see this as a sort of arms race. Players look for new ways to break and exploit the system and the developers look for new ways to keep them from doing that. I agree that players exploiting the system is a bad thing overall, but I actually find that the drive to LOOK for these exploits is actually healthy for the game in the grand scheme of things. More than just raw players, what a successful MMO needs is passionate, driven, excited players. Yes, exploits are not a good thing to get excited about and they should be fixed, but at the same time I don't want to burn people's enthusiasm at the stump.

In a very simple sense, I want to see people encouraged to experiment, venture and explore all of the possibilities of the game. They should WANT to find a better, faster way to do things. And this simply won't happen if we instil in them the fear of penalties for even trying. I feel it's all "good game" to let people push the boundaries of what's "working as intended" and have the developers plug up the holes where players manage to push too far.

I believe it's human nature for people to have no moderation, but even for that reason alone, game management should work WITH human nature, not against it. Let people invest that drive to "exploit" in the actual game rather than stamping it out entirely. Let them exploit JUUUST a little to where it isn't a big problem, and just keep an eye on where they go from there.

"It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye." Well, I just don't feel there's any need for anyone to lose eyes here, as I'd rather keep it all fun and games. This isn't a battle that's winnable, and fighting it will just make things work for everybody across the board.

*edit*
Historically, the developers have actually let exploits go when only a few people know about them, such as the Wolf Farms. When it was just a few random guys and a few of their friends, no-one really minded. It wasn't until the population at large caught wind and made a big smelly mess on the forums and in-game that someone had to put on the nose plugs and clean it up.

And what I was saying that while this is perfectly acceptable for Rogues, it's really the sort of thing vigilantes should be doing, as I'd like to see vigilantes show greater moral fibre than rogues, being that vigilantes are still tagged as heroes and rogues as villains.

All of those are ROGUE tips

Just want to restate that I am NOT in favour of banning people or taking away their stuff. This is a BAD way to do things, one which the developers ought to have been burned by last time. It will do little to "discipline" people, were discipline even relevant in the context, and it will just make the Architect even more useless for its intended purpose than it already is, and that's saying something.

I don't feel people should be punished. If anything, I feel a "good game" is in order. Good job, guys. You found the exploit, you exploited it, you grabbed your earnings. Party's over now. Move along. Go back to the game, and we'll try to plug these things up faster in the future.

I tend to adopt a "no harm no foul" policy with these things. Yes, an exploit is harmful while it's actually active, but the solution is not to punish people but to fix it. No, the developers can't predict every exploit which might happen, but they should still close them down as they come up. Nobody has to lose and nobody has to leave angry.

Truth be told, I have nothing but sympathy for the people who got levels off these bugs. So long as the exploiters did so with the full knowledge that it wouldn't last forever, I bear no ill feelings towards the guys and gals. Let 'em keep their stuff, now that they already have it, so long as they aren't big babies about a clear exploit being closed up.

*edit*
I.e. if you got "toons" deleted, I would moan about it

Off the top of my head, there's one mission that has you save Scrapyarder leaders from Arachnos, one mission that has you find a cure for a mobster and one mission which has you save a wealthy man from the Family. I don't recall seeing a single mission to save anything in any of the vigilante tips I've seen.

So the arguments people made where they powerlevelled to 50 where the game was supposed to begin were justified, then? We should have all new players just get powerlevelled to 50? And the claims people made that they couldn't find a decent team which wasn't door sitting and were constantly badgered with bridge and mid requests weren't justified?

Please don't insult my intelligence. If you let people ruin their own fun, they will, and that's a fact. Don't believe me? What do you think would happen if the developers instituted a "Level to 50" button at character creation for every player to use? How long do you think the game would survive? You may or may not be perfectly happy just replaying the level 50 content, but I can tell you this for a fact - the general community will collapse.

Want a very practical example of how people powerlevelling are hurting ME? The prices at Wentworts' are absurd. Yes, they mean I can sell high, but they also mean I can't buy squat. I'm just fortunate enough that I've been playing characters too low for inventions. But that's just on the verge of no longer being the case.

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As far as cats go, yes, to allow a cat to overeat to that level constitutes taking poor care of the animal. To allow players to "overeat" constitutes precisely the same level of poor care of the players. And let's not flatter ourselves. "The players" are not better than this. I've seen this more than enough times in the last six years to know better.

And, yes, my grandmother did indeed take care of cats. She never owned any. She was a peasant woman with a large yard where stray cats took shelter and whom she fed. Need I remind you that I don't live in the US, nor did I 20 years ago?

That's more or less the description I was looking for. I'm looking at the character now, and according to my MKI Eyeball, the handle - as measured from the where the head ends down to the tip - is slightly longer than the character's upper leg. Hung off some sling from the belt (or above the belt), the handle would drop down to perhaps slightly below the knee. Would that constitute a trip hazard?

The head, though, is bigger than I remembered. Because I'm using a female character with the Legacy Battle Axe, this produces an axe head that's wider blade-to-blade than the character is at the shoulders. That's more or less why I picked it What I worry about is if it won't be awkward to have a foot of axe blade ahead and behind, potentially cutting into anything (or anyone) you happen to run into. I assume when you talk about axes worn on the belt, you mean more hatchets and tomahawks than what amounts to a truck tyre hub on a stick. With a head this wide, I may need to come up with an alternate mount.

You mentioned axes worn on the back, head down. Is that even possible? Won't that just slide out if a person jumped down hard enough? I mean, I guess it could be strapped or clipped in, but that really only works for a belt holster that you can unclip with your hand. How would one hand an axe on his or her back, head down, without it slipping out?

Though, now that you mention it, this does give me an interesting visual. I can picture a large shield hung from the back either from above or from the side, and an axe tucked in behind it either head-up behind the shoulders or head down behind the waist. In either case, the weapon can be drawn by grabbing the handle close to the head mount, drawing it out like that and then sliding the weapon into a grip more towards the back. I've never held an actual axe, myself, but I've held plenty of hammers and I know how easy it is to switch grip like this just on the dead weight of the head.

Hmm... Not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. OK, I think I have a loose picture in my head now

*edit*
I figure I should include a pic. I didn't want to do so before since I've been posting that pic literally all over the forums, but it might help instead of me explaining it in text. This is Brutticus, and I had to cheat only ever so slightly to get that pic.

It gives Stalkers one more attack to use in an attack chain since it doesn't interrupt, and it might make it easier to line up shots from hide when movement doesn't break it.

Personally, I find Stalker balance as regards to their hidden criticals and assassinations to be far too cautious, and should be loosened up quite a bit. We've already discussed how that might happen upthread.

It's just what it says on the tin - lots and lots of raw data. A lot of the time it's more accurate and more real than the "real" numbers we get in game, which often actually lie and even more often omit vital information.

I don't play the game as a sport. This isn't the kind of game that lends itself to being treated like one. Something like Street Fighter, Unreal Tournament or StarCraft I can see treating as a sport to train for, but City of Heroes just ain't it. Were I so inclined, I could just run HeroStats and get a nice little timer to tell me exactly when it's happening, but I just don't play the game like that. When my Unstoppable crashes, I want to be out of combat. If I'm in combat, I run away. It's as simple as that.

What you're suggesting is technically possible, but it's no less out of the norm than Inventions slotting is. You're relying on the kind of precise timing that the game really isn't "about." I've used the power a lot. I have I believe three characters with that particular God Mode, as well as quite a few with comparable ones. I just don't feel confident enough to chance getting one-shotted mid-combat, just as I don't feel obligated to use it whenever it's on, or indeed to slot it for recharge. It's a last resort solution.

I feel Granite Armour just sucks as a power. It offers you far too strong a buff and it disables much of the rest of your set. People keep taking it and building builds around it because it really is the strongest T9 protection power out there. BY FAR. However, it is a child of a long-outmoded design principle, that of mutually exclusive toggles.

Once upon a time, all Stone Armour toggles were exclusive to each other. This meant that you could either have smashing/lethal protection OR Psi protection, but never both at the same time, and never fire/cold or energy/negative energy protection with them. I'm not sure what the goal was behind doing this, but people didn't like it, so all the other toggles were unified, but Granite Armour was left as is. I still maintain that this was a mistake.

What would balance out Granite Armour is not debuffs, but spreading its protection across the rest of the set. It would still give people their "defensive mode" as before, but at a much higher actual cost - that of running more toggles, something which is actually a chore even without Granite Armour's cost.

Granted, then we walk into the Instant Healing toggle problem of people just building for more endurance and running it that way, but at least it doesn't make the rest of the set pointless. Any time you split a character into "modes" such that people can choose one and ignore the other, people will.

In general, City of Heroes is not a game of modes in this way. You can use multiple builds to tailor your character to the specific incoming mission or faction, but there's very rarely any specific need to swap modes on the fly. If your Stone Brute, say, gets invited to a team to act as a Tanker, then you have no reason to turn Granite Armour off, something mine has been asked many times in the past. And if you join a team with a tanker-equivalent, will never actually need it.

I firmly believe that Granite Armour's drawbacks aren't nearly enough to balance out its benefits, as evidenced by the fact that they never seem to make people want to turn the thing off. However, that's not my problem here. My problem is the power's basic design and how it replaces the rest of the set. That's not right, because the rest of the set isn't actually very good without it. Stone Armour in general needs to be improved, and at the cost of Granite Armour, as well.

In everything I do, I tend to build out-of-scale god-mode characters. Call it a character flaw. So in EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER I've ever made, there is some kind of hard limit on power and potential that I put in place specifically so I could write a decent story about them. Some are actually pretty interesting, some are silly and some are just plot devices, but there you go. I think the two most interesting (from my perspective) are those of my flagship hero and villain.

Samuel Tow (flagship hero, obviously) has some pretty cheating powers for a guy with a sword, specifically the ability to cut anything in pretty much as wide of an arc as necessary and move fast enough to evade any attack. In theory. In practice, he doesn't do that, because to do it, he'd need to tap into the power of a specific creature that has melded into him and constantly tries to take over his conscience. So the stronger he becomes, the more he loses his mind. So he just doesn't use his power much if at all possible.

Ezikiel Bane (flagship villain) on the other hand is just absurdly strong, with almost total control over the Earth. He tends to not use his power because he doesn't believe in getting his hands dirty, and so he delegaes and avoids super-powered confrontation. In pretty much anything I've ever written for him, I've never really explored the full scope of that power, simply because I always find a way for him to have plan more interesting that "go on a rampage."

So, yeah, I have no real problem "re-explaining" incarnates to suit my needs. Sam can easily just gain better control of his alternate self and Zik can just... Try harder

Not all powers you can take cost endurance. Not all powers you can take cost a meaningful amount of endurance. Some powers actually improve your ability to be endurance-efficient.

Furthermore, this was never a change to help people who had Stamina before. This was a change to help people who didn't, as well as people who felt pressured into it, but wanted other powers, instead. This is to help people between levels 1 and 20. A lot of us fall into one or more of those categories.

If you just happen to be the kind of person who had Stamina before and already has or doesn't want any of the powers I mentioned at the start, then simply take three more powers, don't slot them and don't use them. How is that worse than what you had before?

The "let me farm/powerlevel/exploit/whatever, what does it hurt you" argument does not hold water, and never has. I've seen the results, back in the days of rampant, universal powerlevelling. Everyone was sporting dozens of 50s and crying about how CoH had no depth and how it needed end game and how it was so easy to get to 50 and blah blah blah. All the while, people looking to actually play through their story arcs and get something more than just levels out of the game were left holding their dorks in their hands with no team worth a crap to join.

My grandmother used to say that no matter how much you feed a cat, it will always want more and eat more, until it becomes sick and throws up. This, more than any other analogy, is what I feel applies to the situation here. If you let players ruin their own fun with broken gains, THEY WILL. They'll jump at the chance and break the game not just for themselves, but for people around them, as well. And when they burn out, we all burn out, and we all complain. Rules exist for a reason. You can't just dump everyone at level 50 with everything unlocked and call it a day, no matter how much "fun" someone out there may have with that particular setup.

Exploits need to be fixed. And if people grumble about it, then that's their problem. I would never support bannings or punishment, but I DO expect exploiters to be fully aware that they are, in fact, exploiting a broken game mechanic. Bless their souls for having their own fun, and I wouldn't try to insult them for it, but it WILL be fixed and closed up. And it's not like they don't know what they're doing.

My stance on this is the following: OK, fine, you had your fun, you grabbed your levels, you took a gigantic dump on the Market, fine. That's coming to an end, and you knew it would. Deal with it.

This.

I'm sorry to say this, Sensei, but you are wrong. Badly. The game is balanced around SOs, which has been stated by the developers numerous times in the past, most notably when Inventions came out. What Castle said back then was that the game would not be rebalanced to assume everyone would be using Inventions, but SOs have been the expected norm in the game ever since ED and the GDN. The entire point of ED was to control people's use of SOs.

Secondly, you have to account for enhancement values, because especially in the case of Invulnerability, slotted defences meet and exceed caps, wasting much of their percentages. You picked Brutes, which is a loaded example as Brutes have low defensive numbers but high caps. Everyone else with access to Invulnerability, which is to say Scrappers and Tankers, can almost cap their physical resistances with just the toggles and passives, thus making Unstoppable largely wasted. This is even more true in the case of SR, where JUST Elude on its own puts you past the defence soft cap, and where the toggles and passives can put you about two thirds of the way there without factoring in extra powers.

Finally, you can't cite buff and debuff numbers in a vacuum, because their interaction with enhancements is very important. A 30% damage debuff does not reduce a Brute's outgoing damage by 30%. It simply subtracts 30% from the Brute's buff/debuff count. But a fully-slotted Brute will have around 100% damage enhancement and at least 100% Fury damage buff, for a total of three times base damage. Taking out 30% from that reduces his damage by a tenth. And that's assuming the Brute doesn't have even more Fury (more than 50) and isn't using Build Up, at which point the debuff is even less than what Umbral posted.

You can't ignore these things.

The point isn't that it's overpowered. The point is that you ignored it in your calculations, and regeneration has a SIGNIFICANT impact on survivability, especially when combined with high resistance values and the ability to boost your own maximum hit points, which is what Earth's Embrace does. Earth's Embrace, furthermore, is both a heal and a buff that's usable under Granite Armour.

False on both accounts. The icon does flash, but it flashes for a good ten seconds, a time which I typically don't have to spend staring at an icon in combat. And while you CAN develop a feel for when the buff will crash, you CANNOT develop a feel this precise. Maybe I just suck, but I've been using God Mode powers almost constantly on the characters who have them, and the most I can "sense" is when it's about to drop within about 30 seconds.

Furthermore, you DO NOT HAVE time to react from when Unstoppable drops to when your toggles drop. Umbral listed half a second, but that's a generous estimate, assuming the drop catches all your toggles just after they cycle. In my experience, toggles drop pretty much simultaneously with the crash. And, yes, I've been killed by the crashy many times in the past. Once by Energy-Transfering myself to death, in fact.

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One more thing to mention: There is a marked difference between raw numbers and mitigation numbers. You can take the direct translation of numbers to mitigation, or you can use my "proof of concept" test of calculating the time it would take to kill an unprotected character of your hit points vs. the time it would take to kill a characters with all toggles running. That's when you notice that mitigation doesn't really behave linearly with defence and resistance values. Off the top of my head, going fro 0% to 5% defence increases your survivability time to double the original. Going from 40% to 45%, on the other hand, increases it about 20 times or thereabout. I'd have to run the numbers to be sure.