Samuel_Tow

A fighting game is a very different beast to an RPG, though. Playing preference aside, RPGs depend almost entirely on preparation. Sure, knowing what to do is important, but having the right skills of the right level is is critical. City of Heroes is more forgiving than most, so a variety of skills can do the same job, but all too often NOT having a specific skill can be crippling in a way that "tactics" just can't overcome. Having an enemy that can kill you faster than you can kill it and is immune to any incapacitation you can give it is a good example. A Blaster, for instance, survives on killing things before they kill it, but killing an Elite Boss fast is simply not an option. My only other alternative is to overdose on purples, fire up all my damage buffs and hope I can deal enough before I run out of crutches. It's a clever little trick, but it comes at the cost of completely and totally breaking the game as it is designed to be balanced.

And while I DO enjoy fighting games, I HATE cheating enemies. And cheat is the only thing the AI in those games can do, to the point where it becomes obvious. Move reading is a no-brainer, so you just have to wait for the AI to use a long-recovery move that it can't block from, or which can be interrupted. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has the Incredible Hulk constantly trying to jump in on you with a heavy kick, leading to him eating a lot of anti-air special moves. Basically, your only choice is, again, to exploit the AI. I wouldn't call that a true victory. I also hate cheating enemies in terms of stats. Marvel Super Heroes Thanos and his stupid auto-filling supers is just cheap, as is Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter's Cyber Akuma, the ******* with high priority instant-cast attacks with no recovery that hits like a train.

Fighting games are only ever fun with other people, partly because the computer is dumb, partly because the computer cheats, but mostly because people you can interact with. Other people make human mistakes, which are the most fun kind to deal with. While computers do make mistakes, themselves, theirs are either deliberate or require me to play cheap, neither of which I enjoy. Humans I can count on to just plain old screw up, and that's what makes it fun.

That said, City of Heroes is not an action game. It depends far too much on preparation, has far too diverse encounters and relies on far too many factors. Fighting games are fun because there aren't that many options, so it's a question of timing and reflexes. In City of Heroes, it's far too easy to have an ability that is rendered useless or lack an ability that you really need, or face a situation you are simply not equipped to handle. Considering there are a fair few characters who depend on AoE for their solo game, simply taking it out of their hands has the potential to make certain missions anything from NOT FUN to unwinnable.

I view anti-herding measures as those that prevent enemies from bunching up in the first place, whereas anti-AoE measures are those designed to scatter them. The fact is that enemies congregate naturally, and indeed spawn clumped together naturally. To force them to spread out and possibly scatter is too big a gameplay shift for this late into the game, but making it harder to pull big trains is not something I feel could be detrimental overall.

The problem with these missions is that, all too often, they are unwinnable. Stopping Biff from escaping or, better yet, stopping Agent Crimson (an AV immune to immobilization that has super speed and can root you in place) are just insulting to me, especially since I never have access to enough control, and doubly so because City of Heroes is not designed for mobile combat, what with all the root times. I wouldn't mind the mission if I were guaranteed the tools to finish it, but I'm not, and that just means I'm given an impossible mission.

As far as the Sewer Trial goes, people tend to be afraid of it because it's very difficult, on account of head-scratchingly awkward design which intends that you fight spawns of a dozen or so bosses +3 to the entire team all the time, and gives you an aggressively small timer AND hidden clickies to go through. I actually enjoy the Sewer Trial a lot, but that's simply because it's rarely cheap and never impossible. It's not even all that annoying once you know what you're supposed to do.

Basically, I don't want to be put in situations where I simply lack the tools to get the job done, and while people who don't play Scrappers are no doubt vindicated every time a Scrapper player complains about being unable to do something, I still don't consider it good design.

Heh... I wish I could have said it as well

The bane of any game that has you play a villain is when you start injecting morality into it. Games like Prototype and Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and, yes, even Evil Genius, are fun not because you are EVIL, but they are fun because they are FUN. Once you start trying to punish the player for being evil and trying to make him feel the emptiness of villainy, you lose your audience. Well, you get to keep the self-loathing depressives, but that's besides the point.

Camp has its value because it takes refuge in audacity. It takes themes that would normally be very unpleasant and makes them FUN by sidestepping the morally questionable issues and focusing on the AWESOME issues. So, villainy isn't about the brutality of a police state, the mass murders of genocide, the book burnings of censors and so forth, but is instead about flying aircraft carriers, faceless goons with laser rifles, implausible and impractical death rays, tunnels to the centre of the earth and aliens who want to destroy all humans, as it were.

If I'm going to be playing the bad guy, I want the game to be fun, not an accusatory lesson in the folly of real-life evil.

You know, for someone who's usually always on the ball, how did you manage to let THAT go so far over your head? Seriously, dude, camp value is half the fun of this game. The fact that I can look at something patently stupid like walking plants fighting a marching band in another dimension or mobsters having a firefight with aliens or secret underwater bases that hold alien technology and take it completely seriously is the very reason I love City of Heroes.

Camp value? You bet! I'd take something awesome over something reasonable any day of the week. It's why I watch anime and follow the Nostalgia Critic's reviews and why I avoid the news and reality shows like the plague.

Actually, that's the day you start writing your own comic books and making your own video games. Until then, you're playing by canon set up by Rick Dakan, Jack Emmert and the writers that succeeded them. You can twist things all you want, that doesn't give you the authority to redact game fiction and retag existing factions.

We're never told where those underwated bases actually are, and I don't see them on the map. Since the game never makes it a point to explain, I don't believe we can draw conclusions on them one way or the other. I've never seen Longbow on St. Martial or Grandville (yes, seriously) but I do remember the ones on Mercy Island. Hmm... I'll have to look into this. Seems I overlooked those. Per chance, would you know what their idle dialogue is?

Longbow's presence in Nerva is legal, that's all I was saying.

Feel free to dislike them all you want. I don't like them, either. But you're projecting your hatred onto their actual writing and warping canon to reflect it.

Where does Freedom Corps get its authority? Where does Hero Corps get its authority? Where does the Midnight Squad get its authority? If you start trying to get down into the nitty-gritty of high-level beurocracy, we'll be here all day.

As far as Longbow "interfering" with Vanguard, the only time that actually counts as interference is the instance when Miss Liberty calls for Vanguard to be disbanded, and you'll note Gaussian agrees with her. And with good reason - Vanguard have spawned a faction of extremely dangerous rogues who threaten to tear up the fabric of the universe. If I suddenly caught soldiers of a faction trying to blow up the world, I'd call for that faction to cease and desist all activity, as well. It's the sane thing to do. True, there is an explanation to this, but you'll note Gaussian doesn't want to just broadcast the existence of the Rogues if he can help it.

About the only instance of "take my ball and go home" actually comes from Levantera, who despite written to be reserved is clearly and intentionally written to be a *****, apologies for the choice of phrase. I've been trying to avoid saying it from the start, but that's what it comes down to. It's Levantera that has a problem with Longbow, more specifically WMD, and it's WMD that has a problem with Vanguard. The rest of Longbow, namely Lt. Sefu Tendaji, not only have zero problems of tolerance, but are written to represent the futility of these kinds of inter-faction tensions. Tugging on the heart strings is basically the only reason he exists

So, you didn't say they were bad guys, just that they were bad guys? How does that work?

Sure, why not. I doubt this will make enough of a difference for players to notice it, though. The way aggro is handled, either they'll be on the "tank" or you'll be playing solo in which case it doesn't matter. Still, I agree.

No. Under no circumstances. Chain aggro is never a good idea, especially with the spawn sizes we face here. Just now, playing my Mastermind, I managed to simultaneously aggro two spawns of fireball-happy Circle mystics and even on that overpowered character, I was in serious trouble. When I play my Blaster, a minion runs EVERY SINGLE SPAWN. Either this will turn the game into one big never-ending melee (which I don't want) or it will keep dumping multiple spawns on me at the same time (which I REALLY don't want). It's realistic, but it has the potential to break the game for a lot of people.

Anti-herding, sure. Anti-AoE, I'm not sure I'm a fan. Anti-herding measures can typically consist of enemies not following blindly around corners or not wanting to approach or clump up too much. That I can kind of see. But causing enemies to scatter? Not sure I enjoy this. Ignoring the fact that this will send them dropping over ledges, into other spawns and probably into geometry, knowing our AI, scatter is just not a good idea. At most, it will make the situations where AoE is useless even more so while not really affecting situations where it's useful. For instance, right now I went through a full Oranbegan map of pretty much nothing but corridors, where each spawn was upwards of 10 mystics, myself and my six rather large demons. We could barely FIT let alone think about dispersing. And at the difficulty I play at (-1x3), there isn't often room for enemies to disperse anyway.

I don't mind this from special encounters, but as a general practice even for specific factions, it'd be far too irritating.

That's not really an AI tweak, though. That's just adding more enemies to existing groups, essentially turning all enemy factions into Malta. Frankly, one Malta is more than cheap enough to suffice for the entire game. I'd rather not have every faction be the Soldiers of Rularuu.

You know, the rest I could see, but that's just cheap. So basically you're suggesting that if a team ends up having a useful team member, the game should alter to all but kick that team member off the team? Have a Granite Tank? Next mission will cause his connection to fail. Because that's what it amounts to. Any change in the game designed to specifically and deliberately take a player out of the game with no option for retaliation other than logging in a different character is not well designed. Void Hunters and Quantum Gunners are currently just about skirting the line, and even then I think they're just cheap. At least hey no longer deal unresistable damage. Doesn't stop them from doing lots of knockback and stun, though.

If you're talking about bosses that run AND FAIL THE MISSION, then ugh... That is probably the WORST mission mechanic in the entire game, and I'm counting the visits to PvP liasions and simu-click missions in that one. I'm tired of being beaten over the head about using the slows and holds I don't have on these, so let me leave it at this: I HATE THESE MISSIONS!

On more general running enemies, what bugs me about them isn't that they run, it's that I have to chase them. In, say, Assassin's Creed, a guard who runs away just disappears into the distance, never to be seen again. In City of Heroes, a guard who runs away moves to a different place, then returns, either forcing you to wait (which sucks) or forcing you to backtrack (which also sucks). I'm usually committed to killing everything I can target, but even I will tend to go "Ah, screw it!" and move on. I don't always have the option, however.

A solution that keeps enemies running away but solves the dilemma of having to chase them is this: Have enemies who run away run away for the instance entrance and LEAVE. Enemies who left award partial experience equal to the percent health an enemy had when he left, just the same way as if someone else had finished him off. That way, not only will running enemies be much more realistic (enemies fleeing in fear ought to run AWAY, not run in circles), they'll be significantly less irritating, becoming sort of self-disposing villains. You're still only earning for the damage you do, so it isn't exploitable, I wouldn't think.

I don't see why saying you like the visuals of Champions Online would be unpopular here. I believe everyone will agree that their graphics engine is better, objectively speaking. What some of us HATEHATEHATE is the art style in the game, and since that's a matter of taste and not absolutism, I see no reason to argue. I mean, I hate the game, but I also hate Big Brother, and plenty of people LOOOVE that pile of fetid garbage.

Ahem... Excuse me.

You know, I don't care what's in City of Heroes 2 if I can play both games for the same subscription fee. At that point, I wouldn't really complain. I might grumble if they cut support to the original, but then I've been saying for years that I'd play the game even if it added nothing new, and sooner or later I'll have to put my money where my mouth is. Literally.

Again, as long as we don't lose this game, then adding another game to the bundle can only be a plus. I have to wonder if the studio can afford that, though.

You're trying to argue reality in a fictional world. If "real" comic book heroes do it and are still judged heroes by the narrative, that's precedent enough. And if you'll note, the City of Heroes narrative treats Longbow as Heroes practically every time. You may disagree, and you are within your right, but if anything is ever unquestionable in a game, it's its disembodied narrative. This isn't given by any one character whose integrity you can question. It's given by "the game." And if you start questioning the game, you're basically re-writing it, which is outside the scope of in-canon discussions.

Furthermore...

You quoted two PPD appearances red-side, admitted that both cases were outside of their jurisdiction, and you ask where they show up? I'm confused.

Look at red-side and note where Longbow show up - Nerva and nowhere else. You'll also note that Nerva is not officially part of Recluse's Rogue Isles, and Longbow, being sanctioned, are well within their jurisdiction to set up bases there. If anything, Arachnos' presence in Nerva is illegal, but given that they're Arachnos, there's little point in holding them to task for it.

You're just begging me to bring in real-world politics with this one. I do not want to go there.

Name one military that employs alien werewolves, soul-sucking demons, convicted mass murderers, genocidal dictators, international criminals and eldritch abominations and I'm sure I can name several that don't employ people of questionable morality. Seriously, Vanguard taking in any villain that's made it to 50 is like the the US Army putting Saddam in charge of Jack the Ripper and the Boston Strangler, with Imhotep and Mola Ram in reserve. Don't most armies hold psychic evaluations, at least? I mean, I need to have signed documents for psychiatric health to get a job sweeping the streets around here. I have a really hard time anyone would take, say, Two-Face in the Army.

Again, this is why I don't want to get into RP debates. Everyone is free to view any aspect of the game however they please, which is why these debates are pointless. The only thing that can be argued is mechanics and precedent, and Vanguard Merits are given for Rikti killed. The more Rikti you can kill the faster, the more Merits you get. This is very much the definition of combat prowess. Dedication would require going above and beyond the call of duty, which our game system simply does not support, as it either lacks or ignores additional, non-mandatory objectives. And the narrative never even suggests that these are a badge of honour in any way. When Borea talks about them, the way she describes Vanguard Merits strike me as basically military rations.

Hence, the Hardcase effect. You dislike them because the narrative is botched and because of how they were introduced more so than because of how they are actually written. Longbow were introduced into the game in I6 along with City of Villains. Back then, there were no Mayhem missions. Three/Five paper missions would lead to an old-style bank robbery, usually of the LSSL. There was a grand total of ONE mission in Paragon City back then - distributing the Outbreak virus - and making a full, 1-50 faction for a single 10-15 mission was not, is not and will never be economical. Of course, now that we HAVE the PPD, it makes sense to update it, but development resources being what they are.

Basically, Longbow are shoved down our throats as the only heroes because they ARE the only heroes. Literally. One single hero faction existed in the game that went above, like, 20, and that was Longbow. For reasons unknown to me, the Legacy Chain and Wyvern simply don't have anything above level 30 and back in I6 there WAS NO PPD. Longbow was all you had, so Longbow is all you saw. This is perhaps the strongest reason for their omnipresence, and while I hate them for it as much as the next guy, I wouldn't try to vilify them over technical limitations. It'd be like trying to commit Angus McQueen when he tells me I stopped the second Rikti War, when the second Rikti War is going on RIGHT NOW. His content is old and his missions simply haven't been updated. Same with Maria Jenkins still insisting no-one has seen the Statesman in a long time when he's chilling out aboard the Longbow carrier.

And here I will agree with you. There's too much Longbow crammed in too many places and basically used as the catch-all for de-facto non-player good guys. I dislike this, but I don't try to justify my dislike, because this is a systemic problem, not a conceptual one. We need more good-guy factions and we need to ret-con some of the older content to include them. The Legacy Chain are a good start.

That's a matter of debate. First of all, I don't recall Vanguard ever being issued the exclusive rights to fighting the Rikti, nor do I believe such a move would be prudent. Secondly, if Vanguard let all manner of heroes and villains roam around the War Zone unsupervised (and, no, you don't HAVE to join Vanguard to be there, as you CAN'T join Vanguard until 35, but can roam around the zone 1-34), then I see no reason why Longbow shouldn't be allowed to hold their own operations, other than because Levantera has an axe to grind. If you listen to Gaussian, you'll see a much different view on Longbow. In fact, why does everyone treat Longbow like how Levantera treats them? Even Borea handles it a lot better.

And again, this not only has precedent in comic book history, but is in fact the status quo for practically any two organisations big enough to have their own name who share the same universe. SHIELD and the US Army are always at each other's throats trying to decide who gets to take pot shots at the Hulk next and it seems to me like the US Government can't seem to go a year without having some problem with Superman and people with super powers in general. Heck, the various hero groups and even individual heroes are constantly bickering and undermining each other, and that's mainstream comic books. You don't proclaim Tony Stark to be the bad guy just because he refused to turn in his Iron Man suit to the department of homeland security, or because he muscles in on US wars, can you?

Again, I'm not saying you should LIKE Longbow. I don't, and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't, either. But there's a step between not liking them and proclaiming them to be bad guys that I feel people take too easily. We let our dislike for the faction colour our perception of their action.

If heroes can have closure without drawbacks to it, then so can villains. Furthermore, I happen to disagree with your view of what villainous life is like. Yes, Recluse has to be ever-vigilant... Because he had the bright idea to dump all of the Zig into his front yard. But Countess Crey faces no such downsides. Sure, she's a criminal, but so what? With every judge that matters in her pocket and her own police force, who cares? Yeah, heroes are a problem, but aren't they always? That's basically what they do. But look at her dealings and you'll realise that the vast majority of her problems come not from the inherent suckitude of evilnessnessness, but rather from the inherent coolness of good and justice.

Think about it this way - in a world without super heroes, Countess Crey would be completely and utterly untouchable. She doesn't face danger from within, she doesn't have to worry about traitors... OK, she gets the odd one here and there, but Crey are quick to dispose of those. Basically, there is nothing inherent in and of her status quo that poses a danger to her. The danger comes from the outside, from the forces of GOOD.

If we are ever given closure to our villains, I don't want it to come with a dozen caveats, such as constant betrayals, misery, unhappiness, rotten luck and so forth. If I am ever given closure as a villain, then I want it to be just as satisfying as if I were given closure as a hero. Not the next best thing, not the least horrible outcome. Something that ends up with me feeling proud of myself for having achieved it. Time After Time qualifies, because it is an utterly unmitigated success. Lots of things go wrong along the way, but right at the end, you have beaten everybody, you have shown the world how strong you are, you have suffered no permanent damage and you are trading NOTHING off for that victory.

I cannot accept that villains should be more miserable than heroes as a general practice, especially when you compare people like Spider-Man, a hero who's life keeps finding new ways to suck, to Dr. Doom, a villain who wins even when he loses.

Put an end to crime IN THEIR CITY. Though some cruel twist of fate, villains were shunted off in their own, separate city off into the distance. They can have idyllic lives, too, ruling atop their mountain stronghold, just... Not casting eyes at Paragon City. Maybe send them to Europe. Or Africa.

Point is, if the game has to end, why not leave it at a HAPPY end? Look at the Teen Titans cartoon, for instance. Every time it has ended, it has ended with the Titans victorious and everything safe. At least until another evil rises out of the ground. Personally, I'd be REALLY pissed off if the game just up and killed all of my characters out of spite, because it just couldn't end well. I'd much sooner they told me "Well, all of your guys are done now! They achieved their goals. You can't play them any more!" and shut down the servers, rather than killing them all out of spite.

Seriously, if we DO get a final end of ends, I want to get the GOOD ending.

No, but the PPD do. Multiple times. Plus heroes keep barging into Grandville to beat up Lord Recluse. But this is all RP quabble that anyone can spin either way. I don't want to get involved in it because there's no winning that particular point.

Vanguard are written more as hero content, granted, but they ARE a morally questionable organisation because they employ convicted murderers, complete monsters and general jerkasses, to whom they proceed to hand over weapons, armour and future tech on the sole merit of combat prowess. They have excuses, obviously, but that doesn't make their actions justified, merely acceptable given the circumstances.

The Midnighters themselves, while largely portrayed as Lawful Neutral, still end up working with villains and sending said villains to steal artefacts for them. I know Sheldon has her reasons, but asking me to break into a bar, beat people up and take her artefacts back, especially considering the people I'm beating up have done nothing illegal, is not clear, obvious good. In fact, I was utterly surprised when she asked to speak with my villain the first time.

Generally, any content that is co-op is going to slide into moral ambiguity just by default. That's one reason people have been asking for an end to the co-op content. It can't be allowed to be heroic enough because it seems odd from a villain's perspective, it can't be allowed to be too villainous or heroes would refuse to participate, and it ends up being just bland. In fact, the entirety of the Vanguard storyline carries itself through on fact and revelation and almost never on the strength of its narrative. The scant few moments that DO manage to shine, narratively speaking, are decidedly heroic.

In fact, Vanguard content feels like a bunch of hero arcs that were adapted to villain use by throwing in Levantera, otherwise known as the Mender Tesseract fangirl.

As far as "grey but not nearly so much as Longbow," the more I listen to it, the more it sounds like bad blood more than anything else. I hate Longbow as much as everyone else, if for no reason other than because some double brain decided to stick them in EVERY SINGLE MISSION post 30, villain-side, but their presentation is largely positive in BOTH games. They protect civilians, the fight crime, they guard labs, they swoop in to save the day. Granted, there are more than their fair share of Longbow traitors and double agents (seriously, did we need THIS many?), but then the Vanguard have the Rogue Vanguard who did much more damage than that one Longbow jackass who sold stolen tech, the Midnight Club have Darryn Wayde and the Menders have... Well, everybody.

Again, this sounds like bad blood. Miss Liberty butts into Vanguard business which, because we work for Vanguard, makes her our enemy and WMD spends the majority of the game badmouthing practically everyone she lays eyes on. Thus, what I feel we have here is the "Hardcase effect." That is to say, an entity generally regarded as undesirable and bad because of a few specific, isolated instances and a general ill attitude.

Well, the "humans are evil" approach to storytelling isn't morally grey at all. It's about as black-and-white as it gets. Outside of the few specific humans on the good side, "humans" are still drawn as very much cackling evil.

Personally, I've always been a fan of "humans are evil" stories because they play on our preconceptions of good and evil. It doesn't blur the line between them so much as fools us as to which is which. There's a difference between moral ambiguity where good and evil are so much alike they end up being interchangeable and moral misleading where good and evil are very much iconically different, but the story tricks the spectator into believing they are the wrong way around.

I especially like these when they rely on "wrong symbolism." Something that came up in discussion recently was the impression a spectator would get from seeing a cadre of knights in shining armour attacking a monster. A casual observer would see a fight of good against evil, but a crafty storyteller would turn it into an exercise of zeal and intolerance against the misunderstood and hated. You don't have to be ambiguous about it, you just have to present a carefully-crafted first impression that just happens to be wrong.

Just as a random example, the last level of Braid, stupid as the rest of the game may be, is a good example of this.

I always thought "empty" meant the character was deleted, but not necessarily banned. I say this because I still have e-mails from my friend from a LONG time ago which are "empty" since they deleted the characters who sent them, but I know their accounts are not banned.

To be honest, I'm kind of disappointed that every faction introduced since CoV has been morally grey. Moral ambiguity is good and all, but we need to counter-balance that with clear-alignment organisations. Sure, Arachnos is puppy-kicking evil and the PPD are puppy-petting good, but the rest... Vanguard, the Menders, even the Midnighter Club are squarely "grey."

Apparently forgetting that the Vanguard employ villains...

This is EXACTLY what I disagree with. Why? If this were an impartial movie or story, then obviously villain would have to either fail or pay a high price. Bit this isn't it. This is a game where I play the villain. Why should it suck for me even in victory? This is precisely the kind of thinking that creates all of CoV's problems - the notion that the game should teach some kind of moral lesson and always make villains suffer no matter what they do.

No. This is not what I want. Why can't it be COOL to be a villain? Why can't villains ever be successful? Not partially, not at a cost, not with a catch. COMPLETELY successful. Satisfied, vindicated, victorious. No doubts, no regrets, no lingering problems.

This is not the real world. Moreover, this is not a moral stand. Here, we very much CAN let the bad guys win, because that's the whole point of the entire game. That our villains can't is the root of the problem. That the game's writers felt that they SHOULDN'T give us closure and that they SHOULDN'T give us unmitigated success is the core reason that so many people are so pissed off at CoV.

Look, I'm no stranger to nasty, downer stories from the so-dubbed "murder porn" to the various Japanese depravities. I know they suck, and I know that's not a good thing to have in your game. This is why I'm advocating for less vile, less disgusting evil and more comic-booky, more iconic villainy. Less poisoning children and abusing school teachers, more taking over the world and building death rays. Less selling people to slavers and butchers, more robbing banks and stealing ancient power. If anything, disgusting evil is a drawback to the game, because it creates exactly those kinds of reservations - that evil CAN'T win, SHOULDN'T win and that even when it does, the player MUST hate himself for it.

The game should encourage you to make a villain you actually LIKE and encourage you to WANT to win, not depress you a feeling like there's no winning this so you may as well go play a hero.

See, this I can get behind. Because of how attacks work in this game, it's not just possible but probable that your enemies will react to your attack, turn and shoot you BEFORE your attack even hits them. In fact, I've had instances where I'll snipe an enemy from 100 feet away and he'll be able to turn around and shoot me before I can move A FOOT to the right and duck behind a corner. At the very least, I like to give enemies around a second's worth of reaction time after being hit. Even superhuman monsters will need to look around for what shot at them after being blindsided.

And, yeah, having enemies prep for battle would be a cool idea. The buffs themselves may be problematic, but I don't think it'd be by too much.

See, that's the kind of AI improvement that I really like - not necessarily adding more challenge or making things harder to do, just making the enemies a little less frustrating a little more believable. I actually like how sometimes you'll aggro something but not exactly aggro it, so the enemy will be standing there looking at you, going "Who the hell is that?" If you stand around long enough he'll attack anyway, and even if you run, he'll often still come after you, but it's a nice little touch.

If anything, I'd like to see some enemies that won't attack us on sight like the Praetorian Clockwork are said to. That way you can put overpowered enemies in missions that the players need to avoid attacking, like a level 40 Greater Devoured in a level 30 missions that you just don't want to bother if you can help it.

That used to be the sole purpose of Fear powers (and I scratch my head at the thought), but once you get this on a kill-all, it quickly becomes tantamount to a bug. Enemies will run away, sometimes when you're not looking, run back where you came from and where you won't think to look for them, stay away for five minutes, then return to their point of origin after you're two floors down and around the corner. Then when you get to the end of the mission and it doesn't complete, the problems start popping up. The new feature for highlighting "things" on the map when you're almost done helps, but it has a minimal critical range which isn't more than about 300 feet and far less than you'd need on an outdoor map, and it doesn't work across different floors.

I don't mind enemies backing up. I don't mind them running away, like, 50 feet. What I DO mind is them running and running and running so far away that you may as well not bother waiting for them. Considering this happens to enemies who give a high experience reward and whom I've hurt for 9/10 of their hit points, you better believe this irks me. Taunt and Confront help... Sometimes, but not all ATs have access to that.

The concept of work in a game notwithstanding, there's challenge requiring some skill and thinking, and then there's challenge that's just cheap. You mentioned the woes of Dominators and Controllers when faced with the purple triangles of doom, and I agree with you completely. When an enemy, be it via stats or AI, is capable of completely negating what is essentially a core feature of your skillset, it may be challenging, but it's not the good kind of challenging. It's a handicap. And if there's one thing I HATE in video games, it's handicaps. Don't crap on my abilities, developers. Please. If you're gonna' let me do a Final Atomic Buster on every enemy in the game, then don't be dicks and make Onslaught immune!

It's not so much moving out of AoE range that's the problem as general scatter. I play at -1x3, which means I always see between 8 and 12 enemies per spawn. If I'm unfortunate enough to get two spawns, I can easily get over 20 people on me. To have this many people scatter is just unthinkable, especially if I'm playing a Blaster and rely on killing them before they kill me. Seriously, having enemies scatter just means certain factions are immune to nukes. If it's going to cost me my entire endurance bar and 20 seconds of suppressed recovery, it better damn well kill most of 'em, which it won't do if they scatter.

I don't believe this is a question of efficiency. I know it isn't, not for myself. It's a question of fiddly irritation. On a Blaster, having my enemies scatter would simply make the game completely unplayable. No, I'm not exaggerating. On my Scrappers, having my enemies scatter would do nothing more than force me to chase each and every one of them down and kill him individually. Yes, obviously that adds time, but more importantly, it's ANNOYING. It's not any more difficulty, it's not any more challenging, it's not any more impressive. It's just more running around and more busywork. And, to be honest, large groups of enemies tightly packed just LOOKS damn cool, and is probably the ONE aspect of it that has never failed to impress people, even non-players. Every time I point to the densely-packed dozen or so Council soldiers I'm about to beat up and go "Look! Look! This is what I'll be fighting!" people always go "Woah!" I'm serious. Having them scatter just diminishes that effect.

Actually, I don't, but suppose I do for the sake of argument. Which tactic are you referring to? It sounds to me like you're trying to propose the act of "using AoE powers" as a tactic in and of itself, which I have to disagree with. No, there very much does not need to be something to counter the ability of a character to use a power as it was designed to be used. In fact, I specifically went to -1x3 so that my AoE powers would have a POINT. I got sick of the one +1 lieutenant spawns Tenacious was giving me.

If you're looking at HERDING, however, then yeah, I can see THAT having counters put onto it. I do agree that it's kind of odd to see supposedly veteran soldiers follow you around a blind corner into a killing field time and time again, so I guess THAT is something to look at. There is no power (that I'm aware of) that herds. It's a tactic achieved by combining multiple factors and abilities, so I could see this as something AI could address. After all, the old days of Dumpster Diving do suggest SOMETHING may be amiss here.

But AoE powers themselves? No. I don't feel they need to be countered. In fact, I don't agree with most of the counters for most other powers. I agree with the Avoid effect on "patch" type powers, but only because the developers gave them such huge damage they're overpowered otherwise. I don't agree with the drawback of control powers, in that sometimes they just don't WORK. I maintain that control powers should have been treated like another kind of damage depleting another kind of status bar and eventually lead to defeat via control, like turning someone to stone... Permanently! I don't agree with the drawbacks of support powers, in that you can't use them on yourself because the game exclusively prevents you from targeting yourself. I just don't like that design.

I believe you're looking for reductio ad absurdum, but it actually isn't. I don't remember which game that was, whether it was EQ, DAOC or that one Final Fantasy MMO, but there was a class which was considered so powerful that it basically suffered an XP gain penalty. I don't know what double brain came up with THAT idea, but aside from having these players simply fall behind on set teams, it also suffered from being a terminally stupid idea to begin with. So the concept of forcing an overpowered class out of the game as a balancing feature is not as outlandish as it seems. It is just as bad as it sounds, though.

No offence, but I intend to neither hike nor bike nor go out of my way to inconvenience myself. In order for progress to take root, sooner or later we're going to have to give up on our complete independence of technology. If you think you're going out into nature and leaving civilization behind, you're kidding yourself, because you bring civilisation without, just less of it. Your clothes, your supplies, your navigation tools, even your basic knowledge and education are a product of modern technology and science. Unless you go out into the wild naked and empty-handed, you're enjoying the conveniences of technology. And I see nothing wrong with that.

Leaving aside the question of how a Blaster survives if he can't kill things fast, yes, I am just so steeped in convenience that having it taken away from me is not something I will stand for. You talk about how much efficiency is not needed, yet you keep suggesting we make the game harder, thereby NEEDING efficiency just to survive. The reason I got into City of Heroes and the reason I've stayed with the game for as long as I have is because it doesn't treat me as harshly as all the other MMOs. All the others seem purpose-designed to piss me off, with death traps, cheap enemies, harsh penalties and unfriendly design. City of Heroes is the one MMO I can play COMFORTABLY, and I'd rather not lose that comfort because someone else feels the game isn't uncomfortable enough.

I have nothing against people who go hiking. More power to them. But I have A LOT against people who insist on taking me with them and then try to browbeat me when I refuse like I should be ashamed of myself for not wanting to be tough enough. If I wanted to be tough enough and abandon the conveniences of City of Heroes, I'd play Aion or Lineage II or any other Korean grindfest MMO. That's not what I want. What I want is City of Heroes. No more, no less.

Do you realise you're advocating "balance by annoyance?" That is to say, whatever perks something has, it's balanced by that one particular drawback that makes it infuriatingly annoying to play. In a video game context - which is a context where things are designed to be the most satisfying and pleasurable - instituting deliberately annoying aspects is a terrible idea. You can't look at a piece of game design, discover it infuriates the players of certain characters, then just shrug your shoulders and go "Well, serves 'em right." This is not good game design.

I realise this is probably going to sound incredibly silly, but the point of a game is to have fun. For some reason, I it feels like so many people overlook this aspect when they get down to the nuts-and-bolts of design implementation, weighing options and looking for perfect balance. We keep cursing Jacks name like he kicked our puppy, but for all his faults, the guy at least always had an eye on what makes the game fun. Mind you, fun for HIM, which just didn't happen to be fun for many of the rest of us, but ideally, "fun" was the end goal. No matter how vague and unachievable this goal may be, I do not want to see it dropped completely. I do not see game mechanics that could have been designed with the sole intention of pissing people off being looked at as legitimate game design tradeoffs.

Simply put, accepting an annoying aspect of gameplay as a justified part of the game because the players who experience it face other advantages is no better than causing the game to crash on people who play Masterminds because Masterminds are otherwise too overpowered. This is NOT the way to solve problems.

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Let me give what I feel is a good example of better AI. Currently, enemies afflicted with "Avoid" effects will use what is basically a copy of the "Afraid" system, in that they'll be hit with an Afraid effect with a certain duration. Hitting enemies with, say, Burn, will cause them to run for, like, five seconds, irrespective of whether they're still taking fire damage or not. Instead of this, I'd like to see enemies hit with Avoid effects just back out of whatever it is they are avoiding and STOPPING there. If I ignite the ground beneath a War Wolf's feet, don't have it run five miles down the street and into the neighbouring zone. Have it run five FEET to the side, step out of the Burn patch, then turn around and hurl rocks. It has the benefit of both looking smarter AND being less annoying. It also retains the balancing factor of things like Burn, Ignite, Caltrops and such, in that things will step out of them, but it removes the annoyance of enemies running way, way away.

On that note, could we make more enemies immune to "avoid" effects? Certain unthinking enemies just look awkward when they start trying to run out of burning fuel fires when they don't really have much intelligence to speak of. I realise that would probably make them FAR more susceptible to these kinds of powers and take more damage, but at least they'd have distinctly different behaviour.

Again, if we do see AI tweaks, I want them to target diversity, NOT difficulty.