Samuel_Tow

Thing is, the Alpha Incarnate Slot will not go public when Closed Beta ends, because it won't be in closed beta at the time. Do we count it as being public because it WAS part of Beta even though it will probably be part of the next Beta pretty much unchanged? That's kind of what I wonder.

Soddenly, I don't feel like I missed out by not getting those in the mail.

Not by much. I couldn't find the mod for health, but I know Blaster health is only marginally behind that of Scrappers and Blaster health is actually equal to that of Stalkers. Blaster defence and resistance modifiers are 0.7 to Scrappers' 0.75 and their heal mods at 50 are 120.476 to 133.862, Blaster to Scrapper. The only thing Scrappers have over Blasters is their status protection, which they need much more because pretty much every enemy post 40 has some kind of high-mag status effect on their melee attacks, where as not too many have that at range.

If you're of the opinion that Scrappers are somehow intrinsically tougher than Blasters because of what they are, you are mistaken. The only thing that makes Scrappers more sturdy is the powers they get in their secondary.

Oh, and that, by the way, gets even more skewed with things like Epic shields which, according to City of Data, provide 19.25% resistance to smashing and lethal damage, as well as some exotic elements here and there. Blasters are not as weak as people make them out to be, and they're STILL squishy. You have to work pretty hard to convince me that a MELEE that doesn't have at least Stalker level protection is going to be in any way viable, and so far, I'm not seeing it. It's a good idea, but I just don't see it as being practical.

I have a character who's supposed to be an unstable pile of cancerous biomass. He swaps body shapes (i.e. swaps costumes) in real time, in the middle of combat, for no reason whatsoever. Regardless of which costume he swaps to, it's still the same character with still the same skills, because all he swaps is basic body shape. It makes no sense for this character to have different buffs on different costumes, and moreover, it would be a big turnoff for me if I were to face a limitation because I decided to swap a costume on a whim.

If this has nothing to do with costumes, then why does it have to have anything to do with costumes? Why not make it independent of costume slot and let us switch it with a costume change only if we wanted to?

Not control TIMER numbers so much as my proposed control BAR numbers, but here's what I'm looking at:

For your run-of-the-mill minion, I'd have a control bar of 9-12 magnitude's worth of bar. That would be three to four mag 3 holds like Char or Block of Ice and 5-6 mag 2 controls like Thunder Clap or Whirling Mace. I haven't thought about lieutenants and above yet.

Now, keep in mind that the reason to have a bar instead of just invisible magnitude is sort of an extension of an old idea I had to remedy the binary nature of status effects in general. One of the things that has always bugged me about control effects is how strong they are perceived to be (and they are) because in almost no situation do they actually build up with repeated use, meaning you can't "hold him harder." The enemy is either hurt or he's not. My old, original idea was to have holds last longer the higher your mag was, so if you double-stack Tesla Cage, it'll last longer than JUST its duration since last application.

The point with this is to give Controllers a meaningful choice - do I want to hold several enemies at once and Brawl them to death, or do I want to focus on one enemy and hold him multiple times, either defeating him or at least taking him out of the fight for MINUTES?

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Let me give an easy example: Fossilise from Earth Control has a 22 second hold duration and an 8-second recharge time. Even with just minor slotting, you can stack three holds on a minion before he wakes up. Now, suppose that minion had a "hold bar" of 9 that's split up into three sections and decays at 0.135 points per second. That's about 22 seconds before the mag runs out and the enemy wakes up. However, suppose you wait 8 seconds and slap another hold. In 8 seconds, you're down 1.08 mag to 1.92. With the next hold, you're back up to 4.92, only because you are now in the middle section of the hold bar, it now recovers only 0.1 mag per second. 8 more seconds pass and 0nly 0.8 mag has recovered, for a total of 4.12. Another hold down the line, and the enemy is looking at a total mag of 7.12, which is now in the third section of the hold bar, where mag recovers at only 0.5 mag per second. Another 8 seconds down, and the enemy has only recovered another 0.4, for a total of 6.72. Slap one more hold, it hoes to 9.72, which is higher than the mag 9 cutoff line, and the enemy is permanently defeated.

That's more or less how I see it. There are ways to account for lieutenants and minions with different sizes of hold bars, different recovery rates, different hold effects and different cutoff rates, both high and low. For instance, lieutenants could wake up once their buff bar falls under 3 (but it will still register hold up until it reaches 0), and the different holds could apply more or less mag depending on how long or strong they need to be.

I don't know. I just want to see hold effects done such that they are a little less binary and that stacking holds is a viable alternative to spreading holds around.

That's something we'll have to deal with in the coming months. As Closed Beta expands, more and more common forum folk get invited to it and this notion that everybody knows becomes more prevalent as they get used to the Beta forums. You're bound to see slip-ups in the rest of the forums and in-game.

For instance, a couple of days, a friend of mine goes: "I can't wait for Going Rogue! My character can so use this and that Incarnate thing." and I'm like: "Dude... Did they actually announce that?" and he's all like "Oops! "

Anyway, keep an ear to the ground. That's pretty big news, even to me, and there's bound to be more chatter on the way.

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Say, here's an interesting question: Will the Going Rogue Beta NDA hold even after the actual Going Rogue beta is over? I mean, those who have played around with the Alpha Incarnate slot will have that knowledge all throughout I18, are they supposed to keep it secret the whole time? Because if it's not in the game and won't be for, what? Another five months (purely eyeballing)? Does it make a difference?

I actually intentionally went beyond 8 Sometimes, and this is not very frequent, but you'll get a team which will just sit around and spam Ready! for something like three cycles, to the point where it feels like they're saying Ready!!! as in "I'm ready now! Move yo ***!" This is part of my never-ending scorn for people who refuse to use their words and assume I'll just guess what it is they want to say based on a years old bind.

What's more, this bugs me exactly because if you're that insistent on starting the next fight, then start it. If you can't dive into the next spawn, corner-pull. There are options. The Tanker WILL wake up when enemies come in. I mean, he's Ready! and all.

Unless you get a red-name to explain, which you probably won't, then all of the people who are able to tell you won't because they aren't allowed. As the man said - Beta feedback suggested that the "sneak peak" wasn't worth it on its own and that it was liable to create more problems than the benefit it would bring. I'm not sure I agree with that, but Positron clearly does.

I disagree. I LOVED confuse effects when they were meaningful (i.e. lasted more than .1 of a second). One of the most fun things I've done, I think, is smacking a Stalker on my team with Seismic Smash. I couldn't quite kill him, but I came close Back before, there was a legitimate danger to the effect. Now... Not so much. It may as well not even be there. The worst part of Succubus confuse is the fact that you can't hit them for the next ten seconds.

Me, I'd rather have a bit of uncontrollable chaos here and there, even if it means getting wiped by a friends' Blizzard from time to time. Seriously, how many of you so much as suffered from Confuse even when it was at full strength? I actively tried to murder my team-mates and I couldn't do more than just scratch the surface.

Actually, this is something I meant to comment on but kind of forgot about. I have a very lax attitude towards people who run off on their own when I lead teams. Basically, "you aggro it, you kill it." If a loner gets in trouble and gets himself killed, tough. He chose to go on his own, it's his funeral. If he can consistently survive, then more power to him. As long as he's not robbing the rest of the team from stuff to do and isn't causing massive aggro on the main group, then meh.

Most of the time when people rush *** over tea kettle, they do so with the expectation that the team will be in tow and "heal them." All this does is getting other people into trouble they didn't bargain for. People die, people become upset, it's no good. The solution isn't really to make an argument about it. The solution is simple: DON'T follow him. DON'T put your *** on the line to enable his suicidal tendencies. Let him go out on his own, let him get in over his head, let him die. Repeatedly if need be. Sooner or later people learn to check that the team is really with them before they spaz out in Scrapperlock.

Or they rage-quit. Either works fine. If you're not gonna' work with the team, then you damn better well be willing and able to handle team-size fights alone, because the team will not kowtow to your every whim, Mr. Random Stranger. Again, I have no problem with it. I have a problem with people who feel entitled to rush off on their own AND have constant team support when they do it. Um... No? Who died and made you boss?

Basically, people who rush take their lives in their own hands, myself included. If I go off to start a fight, the team doesn't join me and I die, I accept it. It's not a case of "Why didn't you heal me!" and more a case of "Sorry, that was totally my bad."

That's actually kind of why I prefer a team of soloers to a team of, err... Teamers? Basically, I like to know that everyone can be responsible for his own survival, at least for the most part, and so people can be held to task when they whine about not surviving. People who play mostly solo and are used to mostly playing solo WILL NOT kill themselves like this. We're used to having no backup, we're used to relying on our own merits, we know our strengths and our weaknesses, and we will not jump into a fight naturally expecting the team to be with us. It's the kind of leeching players who are used to being babied by a full team that outright EXPECT you to play nanny, and get prissy when you don't. Better to have everyone be responsible for his own neck, rather than trying to offload responsibility on the tank or on the healer.

Thing is, it's very rarely a question of "can't" or "don't want to," but rather a question of "can't be arsed to show initiative." Whenever I've "rushed" and not died a lot, people have always tended to remark on how surprisingly well we're doing because we're tearing through missions at a frightening pace without actually team-wiping.

When I see people waiting around and doing nothing, almost every time they're just waiting for someone to make the move, and City of Heroes players are always so damn patient. OK, if you're a Blaster or a Defender, I can kind of see you being apprehensive of just running in and eating a 6-man-team alpha. I understand that. But when the Tanker is sitting on his ***, sucking his thumb until you ask if we're doing anything three times in a row to deafening silence, then there's no excuse.

Know what bugs the hell out of me?

Ready!
Ready!
Ready!
rdy
Ready!
Ready!
redy
Ready!
REady.
Well any time now, sweethearts!

I KNOW you guys are ready! We're all ready! I'm ready. You're, ready. We're all ready. So... Shall we go? Today, preferably. Still waiting, huh? Well, OK, as long as you're ready, then I guess I'll volunteer my suicidal Blaster *** to that huge pack of monsters if it'll get you to uproot yourselves and actually move.

This is what kills me. Everyone's ready, everyone is prepared, we're all buffed up... And we're waiting. I guess we're waiting for someone with a bit of initiative to wake up and keep the pace up.

Know what I want from Foreshadow? His arms. He's using Robotc Arms 2, only his arms aren't robotic. They're human. Why can't we have human replacement upper arms? I mean, there's no reason for it.

Good god... Who drew these? Is that a professional comic book?

I have to disagree because of precisely this statement. I do not WANT the feel of equipment in this game, and the reason I'm still here and not playing Champions Online or World of Warcraft is just this particular reason. As such, I'm staunchly against anything that feels like gear. Sorry, I just don't like it.

Moreover, anything, even set up by me, which gives me a functional reason to pick one costume over another, is a no-no in my book. I enjoy the fact that our outfits have no effect on our performance, and giving costume slots meaningful boosts negates that.

If you really want to have a system of swappable "builds" with minor boosts and penalties, then I can't really argue against that, but have that separate from costumes altogether. That way, you can make binds or macros that swap both boost build AND costume but they are not hard-coded to go together.

I don't complain about slowness. Ever. I generally don't complain about anything on teams. I'll ask if we can't start without the people who will take 10 minutes to arrive if it looks like we'll manage, and I'll make sure we're not waiting around if the team feels like it isn't in any danger. If people have a problem with it or the team still isn't moving much, I will simply finish the mission and bow out. I don't hold it against people who don't want to play like I want to play, but I don't feel obligated to stay on their teams.

But again - it's not a question of rushing. I only consider it rushing if it's done at the expense of safety or performance, or if people are trying to do something else but are interrupted, such as exploring corners or chatting. But I simply will not stand for empty waiting when people are just standing in place and fidgeting for no reason other than because no-one has any initiative. That's not rushing in these cases.

Hey, if you ever have more time, do tell. I am interested to hear about it

Huh... I didn't think to use the slitted skirt, but I didn't think you use that one, yourself. Either way, what bugs me about the skirts is they don't have the right texture and their shape is too clean. I mean, yeah, they have leather, but more the stylish, tailored leather than the rawhide look I have going. A loin cloth, in order to be proper, needs to feel more like animal skin, possibly with the fur, and be misshapen. In a way, the tattered make kilt is actually more appropriate for this

Oh! Oh, OK, I see what you mean. A motionless tail as a hunter's trophy, rather than a wiggling tail as a genuine spine extension. To be honest, I like it better as a real tail, even if I don't necessarily like the look. I like the implication that she actually DOES have a tail. It makes her a little less real and a little more fantastic, and I like that. That's kind of the interesting thing - despite not liking the look, it's growing on me

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Aw... Aw, great... Right as I'm typing this, an annoying colleague of mine has been speaking in a loud voice for the past hour or so, so I put on my headphones and play some Nightwish. And right away, my imagination starts giving me pictures of people like that running and jumping through terrains like what you'd see in Conan the Barbarian. I can't help it, it's just how my head works. But that's kind of the mental bridge I needed between just seeing a character alone transected from any background or world, and being able to imagine that character in her own world. Actually without the context of the game itself, which can sometimes be limiting.

I guess that's what passes for inspiration with me, but that sort of thing is what makes the game and the characters so much fun. I'll have to stew on this for a while

Pretty much. There's a different between being patient for people to go about legitimate business like selling and training and "patience" for waiting for people's brains to engage. Are we all here? Are we all ready? Then what are we waiting for?

On another note, the one thing that kills me is waiting for everyone to zone, especially if the team can proceed without the whole team in the instance. OK, so Joe Slow is taking 25 minutes to train up. I can respect that, I've done the same. But do we REALLY need to sit around and tell knock-knock jokes until he's ready? I mean, it's not his mission and we already have seven people in the instance. Let's go already. Joe can catch up when he's ready, or possibly join us for the next mission.

Blasters are beautiful like that. One Blaster is OK, two or three Blasters are actually kind of behind the 8ball thanks to their larger spawns, but four Blasters or more reach the kind of critical mass where spawn sizes actually no longer matter. By the time my Fire/Fire has gone through Fireball, Fire Breath and is about to cast Rain of Fire, the spawn has also eaten Explosive Blast, Energy Torrent, Explosive Arrow, Fistful of Arrows and Ball lightning, and I can see a dude heading in to deliver Thunder Strike.

You don't NEED buffs, control and mitigation. They help a lot, but you can do without them.