Samuel_Tow

Why, do you? Check again, bud. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that you have mittens, too

This I will agree with. I love the War Walls to death, but they are so woefully behind times it's not even funny. My fingers have more polygons than a typical War Wall pylon AND I DON'T HAVE FINGERS!!! Not to mention that their textures are horribly low-resolution, as well as horribly non-specific.

"Look, son. This is a war wall. It's made of... Grey stuff with vague shapes on it. See those tall rectangular pillars? That box thin that's protruding is where the alien tech is. They just keep it enclosed in a square box to keep it safe."

I'd like to see the war walls get much higher-resolution textures and much more 3D detail on their flat concrete surfaces. I'd like to see the pylons drawn with much more detail and the field itself be made a little more interesting and vibrant, and possibly forced to render at a higher distance. The things glow. They shouldn't darken at night.

I'd love to see the walls painted, as well. Possibly with different colours in the different zones. I wouldn't mind seeing billboards, and murals on them. And I'd like to see much more detail. Someone mentioned entrance hatches, so let's go with that. Put in a bunch of service doors along the the ground level, then hang air ducts and vents here and there, place a few outboard machines on balconies jutting out from the walls and so forth. They can be made a lot more interesting than the low-poly mess they are now.

As I've said many times before, one of the things I like THE MOST about Paragon City are the War Walls. Both the Isles and Praetoria look incredibly boring without them. The game needs big stuff, and outside the War Walls, there is very little truly big to be see. The buildings are, kind of, but not really. The Atlas Statue is, kind of, but it's a statue. Even Cole's Tower isn't quite as impressive. I mean, sure, it's tall, but it's restricted to an embarrassingly small footprint. About the only truly impressive things we have are the War Walls, the Rikti Saucer, the Terra Volta Reactro Complex and the Faultline Dam, which is no longer nearly as impressive since they flooded 9/10s of its total height.

When I first logged into City of Heroes and looked around, I saw a city that was... Kind of boring, actually. Sure, there were buildings and streets and cars and all that stuff I see when I walk out of my house. But that's not interesting. That's just a backdrop. Then I caught sight of my first War Wall. It looked really impressive from a distance, but I really couldn't grasp just how MASSIVE it was until I walked right up to its base and looked up. Few things have taken my breath away the same way that the War Walls did.

In fact, it wasn't until some time later, I think when they made them draw at a much higher distance, that I was truly gobsmacked. One day I was flying around above the buildings when I looked into the distance and I realised something: I wasn't just in some sprawling city that just disappeared in the distance. I could actually see the boundaries of the surrounding walls. That REALLY impressed me. I've always been a sci-fi fan, and I loved the idea of a city divided into sections like this. It looks, in some ways, a lot more like a space station or some such, which I honestly much prefer over Rhode Island. It actually reminds me of City 17 and how it looks like my own capital city (seriously), but it's bounded inside these completely alien walls, checkpoints and structures, with the MASSIVE citadel visible from practically everywhere.

It's the melding of the old and the new that makes the city so interesting. This is why Paragon City and the Rogue Isles are so interesting ans why Praetoria City is honestly so completely boring. It looks like ye olde cite and that's about it. The only interesting sections of it are the BAF and Keyes Island, though I must admit that Neutropolis has a good look going for it, with the suspicious green tech and glowing streets and the heavy wall surrounding it.

Try to avoid posting multiple ginormous pictures, especially if there's no reason for them to be that big. It stretches your post and makes it really hard to read. Just rescale or crop your pics down to around 800x600 or 1024x768. There's no need to make them any larger.

Ideally, I'd like to see Tip (and paper/scanner) clues persist until you actually leave the mission instance. If that's able to be done, it would solve all problems of this nature.

On the one hand, I'd like to see these buffs go up ever so slightly. Call it five minutes instead of four. I'd also like to see very short-duration buffs last longer, as well. I more or less gave up on ever using Thaw because I WILL NOT recast a buff every 90 seconds. Bring that up to four or five minutes and then we'll talk.

On the other hand, these buffs have a cost, and recasting is part of that cost. I run them double-slotted for endurance and I still tax myself significantly when I recast them. It also takes a not insignificant amount of time, especially if you have to do it in battle. Rebuffing seven people with two two-second buffs runs up to 28 seconds, probably around 30 with ping time and finger slips. That's a lot of time to do nothing in the middle of combat.

Finally, you DO NOT NEED to buff other people's pets, especially Masterminds. Looking after henchmen is the Mastermind's job. If you choose to buff them, then you DO NOT get to complain about it. You chose to buff, you live with the consequences. As an owner of both a Forcefield and a Thermal Mastermind over the level of 30, I can tell you that not only do I not need you to buff my henchmen, I, myself, will not buff them when I am on a team. Team-mates tend to have a much higher contribution than any one henchman.

Sometimes, it's operator error. However, other times people tend to forget that difficulty got royally screwed over when the new settings were introduced. Just because you're happy with your increased "challenge," guys, doesn't mean you have the right to talk down to those of us who were pretty happy with what difficulty settings used to spawn back before. I was personally told by I think it was Mod8 at the time that the new difficulty settings did not and could not correspond to the old ones in any combination.

The fact that so, so many bosses spawn is new. It didn't used to be like this on Tenacious. You would occasionally get a boss here or there, but missions comprised entirely of bosses were exceedingly rare. After the changes, one of the first things I played was an outdoor instance in Moth Cemetery, where nearly half the spawns consisted of a Dark Ring Mistress or a Master Illusionist. considering how many spawn points that map has, I must have gone through at least 50 of the things. The very next mission, I turned bosses off and have not looked back. Seeing an almost all-boss mission has not been a rare sight since. In fact, every Tsoo mission I'm on these days seems to have at least six Chi Masters, sometimes two right next to each other. I keep being reminded as to why I chose to turn bosses off.

I also dislike how spawn size and spawn level became divorced. Before, the old difficulty settings would give you large spawns at difficulty level and small spawns at difficulty level +1. Right now, that pair-up is no longer valid, so it's not uncommon to see large spawns at +1 and small spawns at difficulty level, which creates a much more massive a difficulty variance. And, yes, boss + minion IS a large spawn, the larger variant of boss alone. It should not be spawning at +1, but it does.

Ideally, if I had a choice, I'd like to fight the level of enemies I actually picked to fight. If I chose to fight +0x2 enemies, I would ideally like to fight +0 enemies. I do not want to pick +0x2 and then face an entire mission of +1s. If I wanted to fight +1s, I would pick +1x2, only then the entire mission will be crammed with +2s. I'd pick -1x2, but then the computer will choose to spite me and give me all -1 enemies despite me wanting to fight even cons. We have a choice, but we don't REALLY have a choice because difficulty varies so damn much that the choices blend together.

I'd ask people to stop browbeating others about wanting the game to be easier. It's not a question of easy or difficult. It's a question of spawn rules. You say pick an easier difficulty, I say I ALREADY DID! I picked +0, but it's not +0 when all it spawns is +1, is it? I don't need it to be easier. I need it to be more consistent with what I actually picked.

I want to restate that Rage has a REALLY nasty defence debuff when it crashes that's really not evident unless you know to look for it specifically. It may or may not say so in the power description, but I know it's easy to miss in actual practice, especially if you're used to "perma Rage." Remember - perma Rage is not perma, it's just stacking the thing - you still suffer the crash, and if you've put it on Auto, WHEN you suffer the crash can be out of your control.

I have no problem with outlevelling content in general. I wouldn't want to see 40-somethings running around busting up Hellion pep rallies. However, I DO NOT WANT to see outlevelling take place in the middle of a continuous story.

Personally, I'd like to see all contacts in Praetoria be impossible to outlevel. If you're too high level for a particular contact, he just won't be introduced to you, but if you already HAVE the contact, he'll still let you do missions. I mean, everything in Praetoria scales up to 20 anyway.

This actually extends to Primal Earth stories, as well. For instance, the Faultline storyline - this one should not be broken up in two parts, especially at level 20. This way, when I leave Praetoria at level 20, I'm thrust in the middle of the Faultline arc at 21. Which would be fine, except Dr. Delilah immediately goes "Oh, hi you person I already know! Glad to see you made it out of that base we were in together! You know, despite the fact that you weren't even ON THIS PLANET until just now!" And then Sands goes on about things you did together that you never did, and Nocturne reminisces about how you defeated her, even though you never did and so on and so forth.

The Faultline story should not be broken up into two contacts in two level ranges. It should be extended in the entire 15-25 range the same way that the Agent Nancy/Agent Adair storyline is presented.

The problems with PvP are always the same and will always be the same - expensive build and cheap tactics. The PvE game I can play casually, cobbling together builds that aren't very strong, but look and act really cool. The PvP game requires an investment, and when it comes to my leisure time, I prefer to not be required to invest.

This isn't specific to the I13 PvP changes, to the I12 PvP rules or what have you. It's specific to PvP in an MMORPG. This is a stat-based game. You win based on powers, slotting and Inventions bonuses more than anything else. Not only is this not something I care for when fighting other people, it also shifts the actual confrontation away from the battlefield and into the spreadsheets. Every time I've fought in PvP, I've felt like a Pokemon trainer, bringing in this character I've evolved and trained before the fight and seeing how well it does.

When it comes to PvP, I'll always take games designed for it, such as UT or Battlefield. Moreover, if I had a choice, I'd always take a cooperative game above all of those, such as Alien Swarm or Left 4 Dead.

Protean's Power Syphon seems to have slowed down its activation considerably. I remember when I'd get hit with the thing before the warning pop-up had even faded, meaning that if it caught me animating ANYTHING, I was SOL. Right now, he gives around five seconds' worth of warning, which is enough to actually give us a fighting chance. For instance, a couple of days ago, his Power Syphon popped up mid-way through my Knockout Blow, and I still managed to back clear out of range before it fired.

I will disagree, however, with calling it "the most fun EB fight," since I disagree on that definition of fun. I am perfectly content on pressing 1 through 5 and basically ramming my way through tough opponents in what is essentially a stat-based game. I appreciate the attempts at clever design, I really do, but Protean is really skirting the line between "clever" and "cheap" in a big way. Much more "clever" than that and you start getting irritating.