Samuel_Tow

So, what? EU vs. US is the new CoV vs. CoH? I live in Europe, myself, and if "your" future is bleak as EU version players, it's only because the EU version of the game in general was an incredibly unnecessary and frankly STUPID idea. Personally, I'd expect to see both sets of servers opened up to each other in the near future.

P.S. I still subscribe to the US version of the game.

Well, it's your call, really, but again, this is not something I'd use even if it were permitted to me. Maybe you spend most of your time playing over your 50s, I don't know, but to me part of the fun is seeing the set evolve with new powers and new slots. Just out and out getting a new set on a 50 character is no different from using one of those character editors for Diablo 2 to make myself a max-level character I didn't play all the way up there.

Or, more specifically, the same as being level-boosted on Test. I've seen this for Dual Blades, I've seen it for Dual Pistols and both times I used a secondary I'd played before. In the end, I simply saw no point to having a set at 50 if I didn't play it all the way to 50.

That's just the thing: This is the only MMO I've played that ISN'T tedious for me, because playing the game is never the cost to an alternate self-serving agenda. I almost never sit down and play as work for the goal of achieving some objective through it. I sit down to play because I honest-to-God just enjoy playing the game for the sake of playing the game. On very, VERY rare occasions I may end up needing something specific, like a Romulus Sword, or a Redding Rail Rifle, or an aura, at which point I'll sit down and devote an hour to it or so, get the thing and glisten with glee for another hour, but by and large I want to play the game, not get things over with and out of the way.

All other MMOs feel like work, their ultimate goal being to watch numbers steadily increase like I'm the sort of person who takes photos of my car's odometer every time it clocks another thousand miles. The actual gamePLAY is the actual COST and WORK in this supposed game, and so something to be skipped, sped through and avoided as much as possible for the sake of things that, taken on their own, are actually utterly meaningless. I don't play to win. I play to play.

This reminds me of an experiment I've done in every RTS game that offered a map editor, which was to design a map with no enemies, where I'd start myself off as a single lowly worker and build up a base with all units from there. What I realised very early on was that, despite me building a big, cool, awesome base, having a powerful military force just wasn't satisfying without enemies to use it on. Combat units sat idle, more getting in the way than actually helping, and military upgrades were made without any real satisfaction to them.

The fun is in the using, not in the having, and the more time I spend acquiring, the less time I have to spend actually using the things I already have.

It's been there since Grandville came out, yes. And it's not swimming, not in the slightest. It's identical to walking, you just use the swimming animation. You're subject to the same physics, including jumping, and using powers will still put you in a standing stance.

Oh, and the one in Cimerora has a vertical water surface underwater on one end of the little tunnel, that's a one-way texture with a water shader on it. The whole thing is basically an environment fog swap and view distance cut with ONE altered animation. That's the only thing differentiating it from walking.

And, just as a fun fact, it is no different from regular surface swimming, because even then, we still run along a floor that you can see just under the water's surface. In Cimerora, the "cosmetic" water surface is just higher off the floor.

Well, there's the Rogue Isles Police, and presumably Arachnos as the ruling government have a "justice" system of their own. Likely run by the Arbiters, similar to Stalin's Commissars. And I'm not trying to open up a can of worms here. Recluse's Rogue Isles really is modelled after a cross between a communist and a fascist state.

*edit*
As to playing villains who are secretly heroes - no, I don't. It's a cop out in my eyes, as there's a whole other city for them. Getting over my moral high ground and making a villain who is both clearly evil and still cool as an antagonist is something of a challenge to my writing skill.

That's the big thing for me. People constantly tout the set's versatility as a major advantage, yet constantly cite Incendiary numbers only. Under the assumption that you're only going to be using Incendiary ammo because it has better damage, then swapping ammo is actually a PENALTY that one has to suffer in the rare cases Fire is resisted, or mitigation is mandatory. Under these conditions, the "versatility" to swap ammo is not a benefit. It is a drawback.

I'm with Umbral on this one. Incendiary Ammo should be above average and the rest of the ammo types should be average, at least. You can't use all ammo types at the same time, so at any one particular time, you're weaker than all other sets AND you're under the gun to have much greater knowledge of your enemies and much greater situational awareness.

Here's the funny part: Dual Pistols requires a lot more work and a lot more systems knowledge JUST TO BE ALMOST AVERAGE! Every set needs to excel at something if its user is skilled or knowledgeable, and I've no problem with Dual Pistols excelling at adapting to any situation. But adapting to a situation only allows it to just about break even, never excel. And that's a problem.

Right. If I combine this post and the old one, then I ought to look at theoretical numbers as a guide, but focus on the powers I use the most first and foremost. OK, I can roll with that. I'm not sure it's easy enough for me to judge how often I use certain powers, since I don't always watch for their recharge, but I'll keep an eye out.

While that's true as an option for the Architect, I'm unaware of any actual developer-made missions that use this, outside of specific unique tasks like the 5th Column TF, and that's just as likely coded with specifics, rather than "just ramp down."

That used to be a common part of the game back in the day, with "front loaded" missions being commonplace, but they removed that YEARS ago, and I've not seen it since. Recently I've seen a few head-scratching missions that spawn enemies 2 below their level (below the actual mission level, which makes then -3 to me O.o), but I'm not sure if that's intended. I can't imagine why someone would do this intentionally.

Either way, if a mission is SPECIFICALLY designed to scale its levels, then I have no problem with that. Well, I do, but I can understand the design and don't want to dispute it. But at least for missions which AREN'T designed this way, I'd really love an option to lock enemy levels. They've done it once before. Ye olde old missions used to ramp enemy levels up a BIG way if your team was large enough, and they no longer do that. They just up spawn size.

Since the forums keep insisting on bringing me back several days into the past and refuse to acknowledge that I've read certain posts, I keep finding posts that I haven't actually read

This idea is actually not too bad. Invent what I can whenever I pass by a university and dump everything else at the market, essentially getting a few free Inventions here and there. Huh... Not a bad idea. Not really something I can do at 37, since I can't wait a few levels for me to randomly get enough Inventions, but definitely something I can do at 47.

Cool

I've not had a problem upgrading SOs ever since the Inventions system came out, because pushy people buy my salvage for millions. Easily enough to "buy it now" SOs, but not nearly enough to do the same to Common Inventions. With Inventions, it always has to be a major pain or staggered over several days.

And maybe that's just me, but I've no problem with my enhancements going yellow. I never let them go red because I always get a new stack when I hit the next milestone, so the only thing I have to worry about is a slight drop in performance, which I can just establish as my baseline if I REALLY had to.

Trust me, I'm the last person on Earth who's going to welcome MORE maintenance over less, but I'll take a little pain every now and then over the pain of death even once. Upgrading to a new level of Common Inventions is easily THE WORST thing I have to do in the entire game. This is the absolute upper limit of fiddly busywork I'm willing to commit to. Anything more than that gets filed under "dog."

And I'd pay money if anyone gets the reference.

If I remember correctly, both Empty Clips and Bullet Rain have an extra gun twirl pause at the end of the animation which, honestly, serves no practical purpose but to slow the set down, both practically and functionally. I would very much like to see those go completely. The pause at the end of Dual Wield can't be taken out, though, as the power has an enforced 1.67 second animation time as part of the Defiance format.

While we're looking at needless twirls, the gun toss in Piercing Rounds makes it longer than it needs to be. I don't mind the tossing of the guns itself (even if it's silly), but they just spend too long flipping through the air. They get the kind of air time that reminds me of something like Total Focus. They could just flip faster.

People did examinations of the Executioner's Shot animation, and many felt there was nothing to cut out. I'm not too sure of that, since it seems to have a pause right at the end before you can chain another attack that feels longer than it should be. What makes the attack feel even longer is that sometimes you draw your pistols before firing it, which gives you THREE separate gun twirls.

Personally, I'd still like to see at least one of the two twirls native to the power go. It's a gun twirl. Do we really need to play finger-juggling with the thing?

Yup. It looks like a ploy to make people use standard rounds, too, or possibly to combat the misconception that lethal damage is worthless.

The problem is that if the numbers are not good, the set ends up playing poorly, and not all of us are prepared to admit "Well, this character utterly sucks, but because it looks so cool, I'll keep playing anyway." That's not to say Dual Pistols is like that, but certain powerset combos have been, and certain remain that way even now.

Put it this way: If a character is so weak I die every other spawn, I'm going to play something else no matter how "cool" that character might be. There's nothing cool about a wimp who dies all the time and there's nothing fun about playing a character that makes me neurotic with apprehension of every damn fight.

Sets can be as cool as they want, but they still need to play well. And this myth that they can somehow have incredibly poor numbers and still play well because numbers are for number crunchers only only serves to keep underperforming sets underperform. Currently, Dual Pistols is not as good as it should be, on account of its annoyingly long animations. They may look cool, but just like sitting down to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in a triple-feature, they're still just too long.

It's complicated to predict reliably, but it's not that complicated to build towards. You don't actually have to shoot for the absolute cap of 95% final to-hit, you just need to get over 90% and get into the highest bracket of the streakbreaker. From 90% to 95%, the survivability of your enemies drops by a little over 5% on average, which really isn't very much indeed. However, the WORST you could see goes up from one out of three hits to every other hit, even if the RNG hates you. Given that a single fairly common enhancement can get most powers past the 90% mark and many past the 95% mark (at least even cons), accuracy is easy to account for. Just single-slot for it in every attack and you'll be fine.

This is especially true since you HAVE to slot for accuracy anyway, as unenhanced, your accuracy is very poor and cannot be made up with self-granted buffs that I've seen. So accuracy is vital, but it's easy to account for. Endurance reduction... Not so much, since it's much harder to cap that.

Well, there you go - empirical subjective evidence that I'm utterly wrong. Well, I can admit it when I am

Thank you for insulting me, but you are missing the point. My idea is to tailor my builds to the difficult I expect to face. No more, no less. I don't enjoy building for irrespectively maximal efficiency, simply because over-performance takes the fun out of the game and I have to look for harder difficulties just to provide a fun playing environment. Well, instead of looking to up my difficulty, I end up lowering my capability through build choices because that's the difficulty I've chosen to aspire to. I fail to see how this is your problem, or indeed any of your business.

Furthermore, my idea of "hard" very much IS to fight even-level minions if there are quite enough of them. My builds are not in any way optimal, but that's OK, because the game allows me to lower my difficulty. I refuse to be ashamed of this, specifically when it's a supported function of the system.

Finally, this isn't a question of hard or easy. It's a question of tailoring my own experience to what I ideally want to see. And when that experience deviates uncontrollably, this is made more difficult because I either have to build to be stronger than what I expect to see (which I don't want) or I end up ganked by enemies stronger than what I built for (which I also don't want). This is my idea of fun, this is my ideal difficulty. I don't question your choice in difficulty and I don't try to impose my idea of challenge and performance on you. Why do you feel obligated to impose yours on me?

Vindictively concluding that this isn't necessary because I'm a big baby is highly unproductive. So what if I am? It's my choice, after all. Look at the very idea behind the expanded difficulty settings. They were just as "unnecessary," because everyone could just go up to Invincible/Ruthless and stay there anyway, so +0x8 was pointless. Yet many people still preferred fighting many weak enemies over few strong ones. The point of the difficulty settings wasn't to give one more stop on a linear difficulty curve, it was to give players more spacial control of their difficulty, be it more enemies, stronger enemies or both, bosses, no bosses, no bosses but with AVs. The key word here is "control," and giving us more control over our experience is goal here.

This game is the best about letting players define their own playing experience. If I feel it's too hard, I make it easier. If I feel it's too easy, I make it harder. If I don't like fighting certain enemies, I don't. If I don't feel like power-gaming, I stick to basic supplies. When I cry foul and say "Wah! It's too hard! They're killing me!" the developers don't spring into action to tell me to shut up or go change the game to suit my whim. They simply give me the keys to keyboard and say "Don't like it? Fine. Change it to something you like. We don't mind." And instead of me hoping and praying for a patch that makes things the way I want them, I can go and change things into how I want them RIGHT NOW, and only for myself without taking other people's status quo away from them.

The mantra of City of Heroes, as repeated by its players, has always been: "More options is always good." And I agree with this. I'm merely asking for one more option.

I'm just fooling around

Seriously, though - I can't wait for Going Rogue, when I will hopefully get BIGGER PISTOLS for my Blaster. I know Zombra is somewhere right now, laughing at me, but I do!

That's kind of why I had to ask - my instincts told me to attack what felt like the most, but my math told me that my instincts were blind to the bigger picture. To be completely honest, I was all but convinced my instincts and, by extension, my 6-year-old practice was just plain wrong, but these are the cases where decisions are a little too big for me to make on my own. It may sound weak, it may sound submissive, but I really feel better if someone else can just basically TELL me that, yes, even though it doesn't seem to make sense, it does. Do it.

I probably will, and see how that goes.

Understood. I have sort of a follow-up question - what of attacks that I don't use very often, like Lightning Clap? Or, indeed, Charged Brawl, since it's a melee attack that isn't always appropriate to be used. Wouldn't that end up lowering the expected benefit of slotting endurance reduction in the power if I end up not using it as often as I could (and probably should)? I know using powers less often than their cycle suggests would drastically lower their EPS, but even though it won't affect EPA, won't that still be less of a difference?

"Small" powers end up costing more than "big" powers in an attack chain simply because fast powers add up in a long string, but if I always emphasise the the big powers and end up often all but neglecting the small ones, wouldn't this lessen the impact?

Yeah, that's always an option, but it is insufficient in two prominent aspects. First and most evidently is the question of which powers I slot first. The most expensive ones, obviously, but since I'm somewhat not confident as to which are the most expensive ones, that's a problem. Secondly, once I get around to multi-slotting endurance reduction (and I do, sometimes), then the question becomes what gets that extra reduction, given that I don't have slots enough to dual-slot everything.

Look, I'm not trying to squat on your begonias. It just reads a lot like the other thread. By all means, make it, but expect a few people to make the connection.

OK, that I can see, come to think of it. I know it's given me plenty of problems. I can usually see someone at the head of the stairs to shoot and pull down, though. Worse comes to worst, I can always pop my head up for a second, then quickly backpedal down the stairs, which usually only pulls down SOME of the clump up there.

But, yeah, I concede to that annoying problem.

That's assuming you don't WANT to upgrade your enhancements, which I actually do. One of the chief problems I've always had with SOs isn't availability, cost or bother, but rather the fact that once I hit 22, that's as strong as my enhancements were going to be. If I could only slot one endurance reducer in a power, that's as much reduction as I was going to get for the next 28 level. With Inventions, this isn't the case. Inventions grow stronger as levels increase, so placing one at, say, 25 and forgetting about it is, to me, missing the entire point of Common Inventions.