Samuel_Tow

If you want equality between the Epics, why not go the other way and scrap the nonsense that is the Quantum and Void idea? It would make me hate Kheldians slightly less, at least.

I don't disagree with the idea of "ammo." I've gone on the record before as wanting to introduce alternative versions of a power cost mechanic to simulate different types mechanisms, such as ammo, batteries, physical fitness, fuel and so forth. I doubt it will ever happen in this game as it is right now, but it's not a bad idea in general.

What I take issue with is how you butcher the entire set of Assault Rifle to achieve it.

I can: I already did the legwork on that idea

I actually want to say something about this, because I keep seeing it used as obvious advise, and I don't think it is. "Pulling" as defined by some seems to consist of pulling one enemy out of a spawn, which to me is consistent with "pulling my hair out" through sheer boredom. How I define "pulling," on the other hand, is pulling an entire spawn, which is done either to cause them to walk over trip mines all at the same time, or is otherwise caused to make sure I fight this spawn, but not the one directly adjacent to it. In such cases, it is important to aggro the entire spawn, and single-target attacks don't always do that.

In my opinion, there is nothing as frustrating as wanting to pull a spawn around a corner, cause them to bunch up then AoE them to death, only to keep pulling them one by one by one. It wastes time, it's frustrating and it's BORING.

Did you somehow fail to read the "otherwise competent" part?

I have great respect for self-rez powers (more respect for the aggressive ones), so I'd definitely take one if I had it. The problem is that, off-memeory, the only self-rez powers Brutes have access to are Rise of the Phoenix, Soul Transfer and Resurgence. Two of those belong to powersets I REALLY don't want to make more of yet, and the third one belonds to Willpower, of which I made two last week, one of whom was Cedric and I don't want to repeat powersets at least within this specific group.

I'd take Revive from Regen, but Brutes don't get Regen, so...

I just want to touch on this: The problems with the Khan TF in particular come down to very simple basics, not high-cost development stuff. The problem with the TF is that it was written by someone who apparently didn't know the first thing about 5th Column lore and botched the story up SO BAD that it ain't even funny. The other problem is that Reichsman is a realitydefyingly boring fight. The dude has a million zillion hit points and a lot of resistance. That's basically it. The "dimension disruptor" gimmick is actually interesting (for what it is), but it's so woefully underused that it might as well not even exist. The game essentially pauses itself every once in a while, and you're expected to unpause it, QTE-style.

It had new maps which are really cool and have propagated elsewhere (such as the new cape mission) and Reichsman's M. Bison inspired costume is pretty sweet. And while those would have been great additions to a half-decent TF, writing and choreography sink the Khan TF so fast it's scary.

Furthermore, I highly suspect we disagree on what "good" arcs constitutes when it comes to the Architect. I haven't played too many, I will admit, but I've tried to almost exclusively play high-rated arcs that people have been raving about and praising very highly. I have never been more disappointed in my life. Not only are the majority of them unplayable for my characters, but I have yet to appreciate the "humour" in anything the Architect has to offer.

Again - if more of the Architect "best" is what you want to see, then literally: "Whatever." But I still feel that it would be a gigantic waste, much in the same way as I feel I wasted my time writing my arcs. At the very least I would hope these things are not unrelated standalones.

You know, this makes me realise something. I enjoy being in command of my own characters (and who wouldn't), but a lot of the time I think what makes me the most satisfied in a story is... How should I put it?

Basically, a lot of stories and especially cash-in movies introduce characters who may start out unlikable or rebellious, but are eventually "convinced" to conform to that which the author assumes the audience will expect, or at the very least to that which the author believes (and it's a sign of bad writing when I can spot "beliefs" straight through characters). I, personally, find that to be unsatisfying.

What I much prefer is a story which manages to "convince" ME to switch over to the character's side, rather than arm-twisting the character to "grow up" into my side. So maybe your protagonist is a loud, obnoxious idiot who's rude to people and womanising, to boot, bot God damn it! His passion to do the right thing, the way he is able to summon drive from his boundless enthusiasm and the way his stupidity won't let him do the "smart" thing and be blackmailed by the bad guys simply sells me on his way of heroics, even if I don't necessarily approve of his personality.

I enjoy a character who's strong enough to make me a believer in his philosophy, rather than being meek and wrong and needed to be converted to mine.

This is interesting for me from a writer's perspective, because I realise this, in large part, is how I've been writing my characters for quite some time. I tend to let characterisation run away from me, and so when I end up with a character who's not only completely different from what I originally have in mind but also completely inappropriate for the story I wanted to tell, I simply change the story to fit him. I find it's much superior to changing the character to fit the story, because that's essentially dumbing him down, not to mention how out-of-character it ends up feeling.

In fact, I have a particular character - one Ezikiel Bane - whom I let City of Heroes write for me. I had the basic idea of who he was, but it was only after I played him as a Stone/Stone Brute was I inspired to retrofit him into the unstoppable, unyielding force of measured conquest for whom time is always on his side that he is today. And I feel he became a far superior character for it.

Thousands of arcs by the sheer number, but a great many of those are unfinished, not even worked on, test arcs or, again, farms. And yes, people do farm the ITF, but it is, in fact, a decent TF. A large map filled with Comm Officers is not, and yes, I'm aware that that got fixed.

If the Architect is your argument for good content, I will concede there is some good content there. If the Architect is your argument for the ease of creating good content or the propensity of good content, then I disagree. Almost everything in the Architect is garbage, including most of the top-rated stuff. No offence to the developers, but that includes the Architect arcs THEY made, as well. I tried them, and I'd pick BoneFire over that.

Considering it was the return of the 5th Column and featured a whole slew of new maps plus a unique AV PLUS a series of unique mechanics... That's rather far removed from an Architect arc, I dare say. And even then, at least the hero 5th Column TF is actually really bad. Boring to an extreme, a complete bastardisation of 5th Column lore and featuring one of THE most uninspired final confrontation that it has been my miserable misfortune to take part in. I would take the original Positron TF over that. At least that one had a story which made sense and it didn't feature a 45 minute fight with the same guy.


If you don't see the immense ways that some of the popular AE arcs influenced Going Rogue, then we need to team up in the AE sometime. That being said, I think you -missed- the point. I wasn't saying making TFs was easy, I said it didn't -have- to be a massive draw on resources. Mini-tfs or new dev-made AE TFs would satisfy many, many people if they knew that they were coming out in a semi-regular basis, and still allow the "real" content of things like true TFs and Going Rogue, etc. to occur.[/quote]

This is one of a VERY few cases where my response is "eh, whatever." If you're satisfied with mediocre, rushed arcs with corners cut for a fast turnover rate, then that's your prerogative. I prefer high-quality material that extends the lore of existing factions and storylines, myself. I want to see Primal Earth's Tub Chi, I want to see more stories about the Family, I want to see a story explaining the Possessed Scientists, or explaining what is up with the Nerva Sepcters, I'd like a deeper look into the Goldbrickers and the Luddites, I want more lore around the Cap Au Diable demons, things like that.

I utterly DO NOT CARE about "elseworld" equivalent stories, and it seems a lot of Architect stuff is exactly that. Keep your prodigious custom factions. I prefer to stick with the established NPCs, myself.

Even if we assumed that "a single developer" has super powers that allow him to write text into text boxes faster than a player with too much time on his hands, you can never call unique maps and new artwork a "minor resource investment." It isn't. If you want something that's a minor investment, what you'll get is a custom arc like the hundreds of thousands that players made, only made by a developer. Personally, if that's what we're shooting for, I'd rather let them subsist on guest writers and not waste artwork resources on unrelated, unimportant stories.

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You know what really bugs me? You're basically asking for more filler. And I HATE filler. I hate it when a series I'd been following suddenly swaps settings with something completely unrelated and introduces a cadre of new characters that last all of a few episodes before the manga catches back up with the anime. It is, in its bare essence, dead air. It's a kludge to fill up spots where there isn't ACTUAL content. And the work this produces has never, ever impressed me.

I would sooner have NOTHING new added, than having filler put in to "tide me over." Quality before quantity in all things is something I firmly believe in.

HOWEVER

If we MUST have filler added into the game, then I want it to expand on existing factions and storylines, not be a "one-shot." I HATE one-shots.

While this is true, consider the subjective circumstances - my henchmen fire attacks of their own choosing and of their own volition. I cannot command them to do, say, Burst. I can only command them to attack. HOW they attack, I have no control over. And with six of them, I genuinely DON'T KNOW what it is that they do and how much damage each one inflicts. I can't keep track of individual attacks on individual pets. All I know is how much all pets together do, because all pets together is what I always see.

By contrast, I know what MY attacks do. Almost every time I've tried fighting on my own with my Masterminds (which is usually when I meet a lone minion roaming around), I feel like an utter gimp, because I'm almost fighting for my life. Even survivability notwithstanding, taking on lieutenants by myself is not just a bad idea, it is pointless as my damage barely even registers.

Now, I'm not saying that this means my attacks deal too little damage, but more that I'm much more aware of it than the fact that my pets' attacks deal little damage. With them, I can't "feel" it. With me, I'm keenly aware. Again, that's not to say I want more damage, but rather that if I'm aware my attacks suck, but I'm also aware they have strong debuffs, then they no longer "feel" like attacks and so should no longer LOOK like attacks.

Do you know how much of a cocktease the Robotics Pulse Rifle is? That thing has AWESOME attacks... Only I know they'll never be decent

Endurance reduction of the attacks only, yes. In fact, let me pose the following question - if Mastermind attacks cost 0 endurance like Brawl is, how much would that "break?" Honest question here. Because from where I'm standing, this would turn attacks into a "sure, why not" sort of deal, where even if they're not terribly useful (and they're not) at least, hey - why not use 'em anyway if they don't cost anything?

Hyperbole aside, I just don't think Mastermind attacks have enough worth as they are now. If we can't improve their value (and we can't), then the least we can do is lower their cost. I mean, discount games usually suck, hey - if you can pick up a mediocre game for a dollar, why not? All I'm saying is that Mastermind attacks, at the levels of damage they have now, don't really deserve the cost they have been given.

I actually like this suggestion a lot. Personal attacks rally do become redundant with a full cadre of henchmen, but it comes at the price of your Mastermind feeling utterly useless when alone. I'm not saying Masterminds should feel STRONG, as they really shouldn't, but being able to at least pretend to be a thread would be interesting. And I'm not even talking about going solo or recovering from a henchman wipe. I mean just walking down the street, commuting from mission to mission, when suddenly you aggro a blue-con minion or two. Why NOT take out your rifle and shoot them?

I mean, seriously - with three attacks, the lowest health of any AT and no self-protection powers, how much can we worry about Masterminds going solo?

As far as encouraging a Mastermind to not summon henchmen... Well, I liken this to the Defender damage buff. It's not so much incentive for them to not team as it is a little bit of help when they invariably find themselves solo. A Mastermind will, for various reasons, end up petless from time to time. I don't see a problem with giving him a little boost in these situations.

In fact, such a boost might make the low levels a little less boring. I can't tell you how tedious levels 1-6 are, just sitting on your hands watching one henchmen cycling one attack. Ugh! And even with two henchmen and an upgrade, there's still a lot of waiting around. I always try to pitch in, but it'd be nice if I could help out more while my henchmen are still few and weak.

In fact... You know what else? Sometimes, just for fun, I'll summon only my boss-level henchman - usually the Commando - and walk around with just him as my bodyguard. He's strong enough to cap stray minions and tangle with lieutenants on his own, and it'd be nice if I could pitch in with my own Redding Rail Rifle.

I prefer the set as it is now. I do not want a zillion powers that consist of "shoot rifle off shoulder." Assault Rifle is boring enough even now that it can shoot fire, grenades and five different kinds of ammo. It would put me to sleep, not to mention utterly ruin one of my favourite characters, if it were turned into a run-of-the-mill automatic rifle.

Just to point out - I'm not against improvements to the set. Single-target damage on Assault Rifle is bollocks, but I'd sooner see Ignite get the Burn treatment and focus on improving the set, not gutting it and turning it into something completely different. It's not an Assault Rifle? Fine. Rename it to something else.

I'd rather not. I dislike games that try "encourage" me to get the "delux" membership because that's just a clever way to turn the entire game into one giant adware. Right now, we have booster packs, but they aren't "necessary." I never run into an NPC in-game that tells me "Sorry, I can't sell you this Cavity Press unless you're a Gold Member!"

Right now, the Booster Packs in City of Heroes are cosmetic extras, things that the actual game doesn't really make much of a push for. I would not, however, want to see this turned into a "free" to play model where the game is constantly pimping itself out to me to get me to spend more money. "Buy quadruple experience!" "Buy in-game loot!" "Buy gold!" "Buy access to this and that dungeon!"

Right now, if I pay a subscription, I get practically everything. I enjoy that feeling and would not like this to turn into a game where the amount of fun I'm having is controlled by the amount of money I put into it.

This is something I want to comment on, because I agree with you. I never tried to make "myself" in City of Heroes, but I did try to do this in a story I was working on once a long time ago. This was easily ten years ago, and after much effort and toil, I realised one simple fact - you can't put yourself in a story AND be the writer of it. This never works out and all it does is produce a Mary Sue.

For me, the central problem was that, when I write, I am god, creator and game master of my imaginary world. Things in a story don't happen "on their own." I have to make them happen. If characters fail, I have to intentionally make them fail. If disasters occur, I have to choose for them to occur. If someone is wrong, I have to intentionally construct a critically flawed argument. I cannot, therefore, afford to play sympathies with any one character.

The author of a story can, if he so chooses, warp the world around to serve the fortunes of one particular character, his in-story surrogate. That character is always right, always triumphant, always successful, always cool... And always utterly boring, if not insulting, to read about. That character is, in fact, a Mary Sue. A decent writer will know to avoid it, but to avoid, the writer will have to dissociate himself from the character in order to make the world around him seem realistic and not charmed to carry that character through on a golden pedestal.

I approach every character I make here as a story to be written. I realise I don't HAVE to, because I'm not Lord and Creator of the world here in City of Heroes and I can instead play myself struggling against another person's rules... But at the same time, I tend to write my characters as distinct from the world with their own stories in their own pseudo-world. And any character I intend to write a compelling story about CANNOT be me. The truth here is entirely very simple: I cannot be objective about a story when I am the protagonist. I want my mini-me to win hands down at everything, which makes for a boring story.

You know, I tried giving you the benefit of a doubt (I was tempted to stop reading two sentences in), but all I get out of this is "O noes! They don't play like I think they should play! Noobs!" Not only is "noob" a low-brow insult that I fully believe no self-respecting intelligent person should ever resort to, but your definition of "noob" seems to be entirely too abstract.

Let me put it this way - are they getting the job done? Are they completing missions? Are they getting decent experience? Are they levelling up well enough? Because if the answer to the above is "yes," then WHO THE HELL CARES HOW THEY DO IT? I don't know about other people, but I didn't buy this game to impress you or any other random stranger. I bought it to kill stuff. If that means dropping every now and then, then so be it. Long as I don't have to hit the hospital, it makes no difference.

Insisting that I should go out of my way to spread Ghouls out and knock them back, that team-mate casualties are tragic and blablablablablabla is borderline insulting. All teams I've been on have done just fine fighting Ghouls by force. It's not rocket science and it doesn't need to be made any more complicated than it is.

True, but they have allowed more flexibility in bringing off-level team-mates to level-gated content. Sidekicks, exemplars, auto-SK-EX, the removal of Hazard minimal levels, exemplaring for TFs, that sort of thing. Content is still level gated, but you can still bring practically anyone to practically anything you go to do.

I... Don't really have an answer to that, to be honest. I originally pulled this character together by the seat of my pants, almost as a joke. I'd already done Iprit and Shaffakoom, so I took it mostly as a joke, in the sense that "I can't seriously come up with THREE concepts at once, can I? Nowai!" Well, as it turns out, wai. So I basically just slapped on "everything" and went with it. I suppose my original inspiration was the Bride of Frankenstein in terms of look, and the Wild hair is the closest we have to that.

But you have a point - insects with hair don't really make much sense. Nor do robots with hair or rock creatures with hair and so forth. That's kind of why I've been trying to think outside the box with them. The Wild hair, in actual practice, does not look like hair. Trust me - I played around with this character and it seriously doesn't. It's one more oddity on what is already a VERY odd character. I don't think it detracts from her concept as a weird bug lady as much as tech does simply because it's a bit of weird biology, which while possibly inappropriate, can still be chalked up wonky evolution. But tech parts just really ruin that. If they contrast, they alter the concept and if they don't they just make me scratch my head.

But to answer your question: I don't know. I liked the look when I originally put the character together, so I kept it The bulk of the contrasting hair works really well in my eyes.

You make a good point here, but I have a couple of problems that are really my kinks showing through. For one thing, I HATE Cloak of Fear. Seriously. I dropped it off my Dark Scrapper and I never saw a reason to pick it back up. It's too costly, it does too little and it's highly redundant with Oppressive Gloom, which costs next to nothing. Compounded is the fact that I don't actually like Dark Armour itself very much, chiefly for its lack of knockback protection, and have historically been very reluctant to use it unless I had no other choice. I ended up using it on a sword-wielding vampire, because let's face it - what else could I have used? But on a bug lady... I'm hesitant.

And there's another problem with the Stalker concept, as well. You can't tell from the screenshots because there's no frame of reference, but Duriel is big. Not HUUUGE big, but big. Around 6'6'' - 6'7''. Moreover, those Dragon wings very much are HUUUGE big, and those swords are outright absurd. I couldn't tell you WHY I originally made her so big - like I said before, I was freehanding a concept and that's just how it came out. The thing is that while I COULD just make her smaller, I... Kind of don't want to. Providence only strikes once, and the way she played when I tested her (up to level 4, actually) really felt much more appropriate to a Brute.

Duriel is a large aggressive creature. She has a wingspan bigger than a car and swords that probably weigh more than most men - and TWO of them! In fact, it occurred to me when I made the comment last night that "Stupid Infected! Why would you follow the large bug lady into the back of a truck? You deserve to your insides sliced up!" Right there it occurred to me that what I liked the most about her was that she really WAS big, scary and threatening.

All that said, I decided that I want to go Brute. I can keep the Dual Blades as the developers had enough foresight to give those things to EVERYBODY, but I can't keep Regeneration, which presents me with a problem - what else can I use? Ideally, I'd like to use something which has a NoFX option to it, but I can't really think of anything other than Willpower (which I used twice in the last two weeks) and Super Reflexes (which is "eh" in this case). If I can make a good argument for it, I'll still use something with auras, most likely coloured Dark black/black, but the problem is that Dark black/black auras turn solid VERY fast, especially against a dark body, which just turns her into a giant black blob. I'd actually like to avoid self-stealth powers if I can, as well.

Well, to be fair, you ended up being right. I'd rather go Brute with Duriel than keep Stalker. I play-tested her up to I think level 4 last night (as I may have mentioned), and while I was very impressed with her costume and her blades, she... Really didn't feel like she should be a Stalker. She's too big and too cool to be hiding. I really shouldn't just take any fighter and make it a Stalker "just because" even if it doesn't fit. I need to design my Stalker characters as intentional stealth fighters, not just fighters who happen to be stealthy.

*edit*
Oh, and just to state one more reason why I hate unlockable costumes - I got excited about Duriel and got her a couple of wing recipes just to see what those looked like. Now I'm about to delete her, which not only means I just wasted two wing recipes for almost no reason, but I'll need at least one more for Dragon Wings AGAIN. I certainly hope I don't have to remake her a third time, because I'm THIS close to punching people.

Oh, and in case it seems like this could have been avoided... No. No, it very much could not have. The only way I was able to tell if Dragon Wings, Insect Wings or Demon Wings would look good in actual practice was to make a character with them and try them on. And it was in part because of those wings that I realised the character I had made with them was not fit for the AT which I picked. In essence, I needed to use the recipe in order to realise that I should not have used the recipe. Catch 22.

I will take Booster Packs over unlockable costume ANY DAY!

I doubt it. Historically, when out "Epic" status has been reset in the past, all we have needed to do was only log in a level 50, never actually get a new one to 50. I have no reason to believe that acquiring the right to an Epic AT will work differently, specifically since when these were introduced, those of us who already had a 50 were allowed to use one out the gate, I assume after having logged said 50 in.

Then again, others have already pretty much confirmed the speculation that hero and villain ATs unlock hero and villain Epic ATs regardless of character alignment. Which makes sense, but is... Odd. Now that it's level 20 and THIS problem presents itself, why not unlock BOTH with either 20?