Samuel_Tow

It's not just Ghosts, though. Siege's robots were running all over the place, too, with both lieutenants often taking off running at the same time. And just now, fighting Marauder's troops, they tended to run a lot, too, though admittedly not as much as ghosts.

OK, I've been around the block a few times in City of Heroes, so I'm not usually taken aback by suddenly surprising perfectly normal behaviour, but something is starting to feel really odd here. Let me preface this with a two-sentence rant: The Praetorian minions are far too frikkin' powerful, with each one possessing the kind of powers you'd usually see on a lieutenant, and they come in large packs. I certainly hope they get tweaked and normalised with Going Rogue and/or Issue 17, because some are horrid while others are "level 50 Hellions."

Well, something I've been noticing while fighting these very powerful enemies utter cowards. In fact, their cowardice has saved my life probably as many times as my actual skill and powers. This has to be a new thing, because I've been fighting enemies in this way for some time, and I've never seen them scatter like cockroaches like this with such consistency. Yes, this is a post about enemies that run away. But, look. I'm aware that this is normal. I know that if you wipe out a boss and his four minions, the fifth minion will usually turn tail and run. That's normal, to the point where I've learned to spot the one who'll run and either shoot him in the back or prevent him from running in some fashion. But this is... Much more pronounced.

Here's what we'll do: let's look at an example. I'm fighting Diabolique's minions (right now, in fact), and the spawns consist of between 6 and 12 ghosts, typically with two lieutenants and the rest being minions. I'm playing an Energy/Energy/Force Blaster who is basically able to spawn-wipe the things on a good day, or just lay into them if Aim and Build Up are still recharging. I know for a fact that if I let all that rabble of ghosts get close to my character and all slap her with Midnight Grasp at the same time, I'm teleporting to the hospital. But this almost never happens, and it's not because I just that damn good.

Now, fights go one of two ways. Either Boost Range + Power Boost + Aim + Build Up + Energy Torrent + Explosive Blast + sweep up after myself, or Repulsion Bomb + Explosive Blast + wing it from there. The former tactic rarely leaves ghosts lying around, usually a lieutenant or two, but they ALWAYS turn tail and run. Absolutely, positively always. And on the rare occasion I leave a few of them behind, like say four or five (it happens), they all take off and run away with a sliver of health left. Now, I can KIND OF understand this logically, since they're hurt and probably scared (do ghosts get scared?), but it doesn't make sense with AI behaviour at all from what I remember from before.

But OK, even if we give the game the benefit of a doubt and say overwhelming damage is what scares them, what about when overwhelming damage doesn't happen? I don't always have Aim and Build Up recharged and I don't feel like waiting 50 seconds between every spawn, so a lot of the time I'll go without them. I'd expect this to mean that I'd get ghost-swamped, but I don't. I hit them with Repulsion bomb, they all flop, I hit them with Explosive Blast, they fly next to me... And then turn tail to run away. At one point no less than six ghosts, some of them undamaged, just... Left. They could have killed me, but they didn't. I didn't scare them, I don't have any sets that could be doing Fear and I'm not doing too much damage that, say, a full-tilt Scrapper couldn't do if he felt like it. So why are they running from me?

And I know ghosts have that thing where they run away and turn invisible, but it's not just that. I fought Evil Bastion's minions yesterday, and they did the same thing - take out, say, three out of seven and the rest will try to run. Maybe I notice it more because ghosts and flying robots move so fast that if they decide to run, they REALLY run, but it's been bothering me even with something as simple as Crey. For the most part, doing anything to a spawn will cause Tanks to turn tail and run like little girls, but if it's not the time, the ACTUAL girls will turn around and run away like little girls. In fact, fighting them on my Archery/Devices Blaster, I think I had more mines time out than got stepped on, because enemies would never approach to fight me. They'd always run away after taking a single pot shot. And it's not like they're just backing off like an Eagle or a Mook Hitman would. They run WAY AWAY. On Diabolique's street map, I spotted a ghost fly across two blocks at which point he went out of Target range, and I've seen Tanks and Evil Bastion's goons run through rooms and rooms and rooms, like they're looking for the lifts to run in and rest.

Now, I don't necessarily mind this, as it does keep my Blaster alive, but when I'm literally leaving behind two enemies each spawn because they ran away and I didn't feel like growing a beard waiting for them, something feels wrong here. I know "enemies are running away more" is right out there with "they nerfed accuracy" on the scale of "By the way, did I mention I was an idiot?" but come on now. For the past two weeks, I have literally not been able to finish a fight without having to either chase someone or wait for someone to return. And now I had to fight Diabolique to top it all off...

Call me stupid, but I don't have any problems with the game that I can recall outside of specific precedent.

Let's make a distinction here. The term "whip" covers a LOT of ground, and a lot of that seems to be getting mixed up.

A bullwhip like what Indy carried around is largely used for cracking said whip to make a loud noise to either train or herd animals. While you can probably give an enemy (or yourself) a nasty sting or a minor cut, this isn't a weapon, and isn't actually used to "whip" things with. This looks pretty, but unless you make it some kind of cutting whip like a laser/fire whip or the traditional anime "segmented sword on a chain" deal, it won't really look right.

I'm not aware of the proper term, but there is subset of things called whips, but which are basically long springy sticks used to whip horses into a gallop or, alternately, whip people into arousal. Most often seen carried by your stock Nazi colonel just to make him look all the more evil and all the more stuck up.

Then there are the variety of whips actually used for flogging things, which is what people are typically beaten with when they get "nine lashes." These come in a lot of varieties, but the one I've seen most often is basically a clump of leather straps with metal balls at the end attached to a handle. I'm not sure if this one can do any real damage, but I do know it really hurts and is designed for inflicting pain. However, with this, we get into the category of something completely different, which is:

The Flail. Basically, this is a mace head chained to a wooden stick, and is most often depicted as a morning star head with a basic chain. I don't know what the design intention behind these things is, but I've heard it's intended to curve over shields and wrap around swords and pikes while still dealing damage. What Simon Belmont uses is basically a flail that gets called a whip until it's fully upgraded.

Personally, if we were going with this concept, I'd prefer to go with either an energy whip or a wrecking ball on a long chain.

All of these level cap raise threads suffer from the same fatal flaw - they aim to increase play time and play time only while never really giving any thought to WHAT that play time should be filled with, or indeed if a longer playtime is strictly necessary. First of all, making "a second game" to fill in the next ten levels that would take even longer goes beyond a new expansion and into the territory of... Well, a whole second game. One for both sides.

Secondly, I cannot and will not agree with the notion that the game should never, ever end in the amount of time a sane player could be willing to put into it. "Ever Quest" this game is not. I enjoy games which end and must be started over for the same reason I enjoy series that end, as opposed to going the route of the Bold and the Beautiful and running until the people responsible for making them die of natural causes. Or the world ends. I enjoy stories that have a beginning, a middle and, most importantly, an END. Any game which lacks an end, or has one so absurdly staggered that I'm never ever going to see it in a million years is a game I'm not even going to BEGIN. Never start what you don't intend to finish, as it were.

Basically, I feel that the need to increase the level cap of the game is missing the entire point of the whole design. Diversity of visuals, of technicalities and of experiences is what this game is really all about, and despite it actually getting repetitive in terms of instances, the scope of stories and concepts it lets us dive into is incalculable. I don't agree that turning the game into a grindfest is a good way to build on this.

This one doesn't feel like a Controller set, though. It feels more like a mish-mash of a control and support set. I'd say it either needs more control and less debuff to make it a true control set, or more debuff and less control and we can punt it off to Defenders.

I have a bit of a problem with "aging" powers, as well, because they assume the passage of time would inherently hurt all things, and hurt them equally. Even ignoring the "I am eternal!" argument, certain characters could easily benefit from ageing. Ageing Fiusionette by, say, 20 years would actually be a GOOD thing. And again, we get into the concept of what "greatly" stands for. Ageing a person 50 years can turn a teenager into a somewhat elderly man who may yet still have the bulk of his power, as Jim "Thunderbolt" Bartlet well shows us, and aging a middle-aged man could put him over 100 and probably kill him. On the flip side, ageing something like Boulder really shouldn't produce any effects at all. It's a pile of rocks. What's gonna' age on it?

And ageing zombies would be just hilarious

I don't really like a summon self mechanic, simply because summoning yourself really isn't cool enough in this context. Besides, as the Magic Man shows us, it's also a bad idea. I much prefer a random entity pulled from the time-stream to assist you. It'd have a certain degree of randomness which would be really cool. As someone mentioned - maybe a cowboy, maybe a future soldier, maybe a dinosaur, maybe a knight, and maybe some kind of god. It has a lot of possibilities in the same way Propel does, and I like that.

First and foremost, the Shard needs to be "fixed" before any and all expansions to it are planned. First of all, drop the quasi-paper crap and put in a series of REAL story arcs that clue me into the story of the Shard without putting me through an 8-hour marathon with strangers who don't care about the lore anyway. They don't have to be the same as the TFs, but do share some of the same story with me otherwise. Once there's something to actually DO in the Shard, then we can talk.

Secondly, get rid of the cop-out teleporters. Just get rid of them completely. They're fugly, they're out of place and they are... Well, a cop-out to a better system. Get rid of the cop-out teleporters and expand the Mole Point network, while simultaneously making each Mole Point unlockable by visiting it, not by requiring that you be given a mission to go visit it. DO NOT unlock them all unless the person visits them first, but just have the scientist at the teleporter sign you in and that's all.

After that, fix the geysers. They're perfectly good as a travel medium, but it seems every day more and more start shooting off to the side. Just off the top of my head, the chain that leads to the farthest island in FBZ where the Horta Vine for the Cascades is located always shoots short on the second to last jump. It's supposed to take you from the previous big island to a small geyser island, which then takes you to the last island, but you don't land ON the small geyser, you land on the steeply slanted rock face of the small island, and unless you're VERY fast and VERY lucky, you simply slide off into the void. Several other "small island" geysers do the same, specifically the ones that take you on the chain to the Chantry. Go over them, make sure they shoot straight.

Then mark all the REST of them on the map. Currently, any geyser that shoots straight up to take yo to an upper island, like the ones in Crimson Falls, is not marked because it has no travel line. Mark those as just a circle so I know where to climb. Also, mark the borders between separate islands floating partially over each other better. Currently, such islands look like a single uniform island on the map, making all of the Cascades look like one land mass, whereas it's more like four levels of floating plateaus. Easier to tell where islands overlap and where you need to jump up to switch levels.

Only THEN can we talk about expansions of the thing.

One possible way to expand the Shard and share it with villains without going co-op or PvP is to institute "shadow zones." Suppose Villains get an entrance to it in a new zone, that goes in another new zone which then links to the Chantry, and potentially back to FBZ. Except, and here's the creepy part - you never actually meet any heroes as a villain. At first you think it's because the place is so big and there are so few heroes, so you venture closer to the hero outpost. You visit the cascades, but there are no heroes there, too. Cautiously you stride over to FBZ, but there are no outposts on the islands there. And the big bubble isn't there. And, in face, there is no FBZ. It's just a bare rock.

Huh? How is that even possible? If you log into a hero and go there, FBZ is where it has always been, but if you head on out to look at the villain base, THAT isn't there. What the? Well, the Shadow Shard is big. Possibly so vast that villains and heroes just ended up in places that look a lot alike, but actually aren't. Who says the Horta Vines always lead to the same place? Who says there's only one Cascades Archipelago? In fact, who says that each location of the Shadow Shard has only one instance? Who says it doesn't morph and change?

Think back to Silent Hill. You come from a school yard into a basement, go forward 20 feet, come out the other side and come out in the SAME yard... Only it's not the same, is it? You go into a room, turn a corner, hear sirens, go back and realise there is no door where you thought you came in. Only a solid wall that looks like it's been there for the past 50 years. You go into a lift, go through all three floors it has buttons for, but when you go back inside in deperation, you notice it goes up to the fourth floor. Was that there before? Why don't you have a map of this fourth floor?

Now think about the Shadow Shard in the same light. Each time you pass through a Horta Vine, you end up in a place that looks familiar. But is it always the same place? How can you tell? Is the whole of it always the same as you left it? You go through a teleporter to get into the Chantry, but are you sure that takes you INSIDE the actual structure? If the Horta Vine can take you across potentially thousands of kilometres, who says the Chantry teleporter doesn't take you to a completely different place, somewhere in the heart of an island? Are you sure those islands don't rearrange themselves after you've moved on and left them miles behind? In fact, they always look like they're stationary, but who says they aren't moving? Who says the whole Shard isn't always caught in a constant storm of relocating islands? As far as scientists have been able to tell, there is no bottom to the Shard. Who says Horta Vines don't take you to different planes in space? In fact, is there any guarantee that space works the same way in the Shard that it does on Earth? I mean, it looks like it does, but are you SURE that walking all the way around the Chantry puts you in the same exact place?

Some of that isn't actually even just creepy-voice speculation. Take something the old Build Engine could do. (Duke Nukem 3D). Let's look at two stacked rooms lined with a U-shaped corridor, a little like this:

Well, I'm hardly an expert at these things, since my standards tend to be low, I avoid using Set Inventions and tend to not go for the BEST possible build. That said, I did just run some numbers on Energy/Energy/Force that I can share if anyone cares.