Samuel_Tow

So, essentially, start crunching numbers I have no idea the meaning of and try to rabbit-out-of-a-hat conclusions on them, or I'm some kind of lazy git who wants everything handed to him? Yeah, why don't I turn my back to mathematics and start doing meaningless calculations because I have too much free time and not enough to fill it with.

TonyV obviously has an idea, or he wouldn't be doing this. I can sort of grasp his idea, except other people seem to be operating off completely different ideas, and as long as that's the case, it's like speaking two different languages. You don't tell an English speaker to just start reading that Panjabi manual or wait for God to deliver the instructions in English on a silver platter. Unless you know what the data means, it is, by definition, MEANINGLESS. And doing the math on meaningless data has no purpose.

Can't you just pick the Tights texture for ears and have them match the colour of the mask? Or are you talking about removing the ears as a 3D model?

Then you should get your ears cleaned. I'm pretty sure I had somewhere in there that the power suppression field is not canon in any meaningful way outside of providing a basic convenience in places where powers aren't needed in any way. If you can cite ONE place where total power suppression is in effect in a location where powers are expressly needed for the achievement of a goal, then we'll talk.

Also, you earn major points for quoting a post two weeks old and followed by at least four other posts on the same topic which addressed your needless snark pretty much in the exact same words I'm having to re-address it now.

Err... Do you realise what you're saying? Essentially, in your opinion, 13.231 is less than 12.030, which is not subject to opinion to begin with. This is trivially provable fact that cannot be argued against.

You are free to dislike the power, by all means, and no-one is going to hold you accountable for why you dislike it, but when you state factual reasons, it's good practice to make sure that the facts are correct. If you want to state an opinion, you don't need to back it up with facts, but if you should choose to, expect the validity of those facts to be questioned.

That... Doesn't even begin to answer my question. TonyV stated, and his link confirmed, that these are quarterly earnings. How does this translate into box sales only not earnings from subscriptions? This isn't about analysing the numbers, it's about pinning down what the numbers represent. I mean, idle number-crunching IS fun, but context is what gives it meaning, and right now it seems like everybody has a different idea what the numbers mean.

The numbers aren't the question here. Their meaning is.

See, conceptually speaking, this I can get behind. It doesn't take away my powers, but it gives me a reason why I don't want to use them. In fact, I've done as much in... Very nearly every story I've always written. That's actually one of the most exciting parts in a story - inventing reasons why otherwise super-powered characters find situations they should be able to deal with easily problematic. One-size-fits-all power detectors might be a good idea, but there are other ways to go about it, as well. For instance, trying to pass yourself off as a weaker hero so the bad guys think they have the wrong man and stop their surveillance on you or don't ventilate your contact or trying to traverse an area on foot so your enemies don't know you're coming.

There are possibilities in there, provided they are written well, as opposed to just slapping down a power suppression field.

Who says he started without them at level 1? What about "the power to even exist" suggests to you that he lacked this in the tutorial?

I still have a choice - I take my ball and go home. I don't do live roleplaying for this precise reason - I have no control over other people, and in so doing am limited in what I can have them do. My choice, however, is to simply ignore it and do what I want anyway, because the game doesn't force me through other people's RP. Here, however, is someone else's RP suggested as an addition to the game, and as long as it's not a direct mandate from the developers written into the game, you can damn well bet I'm going to argue against it.

In fact, Arcana, I would have expected a more reasonable position from you. What the developers say has nothing at all to do with this suggestion, because it is a suggestion for something which does not exist in the game, but is suggested to be added. As far as I'm aware, I'm not arguing against canon yet, and so far as it matters at this particular point in time, I have every right to pit my narrative against that of the suggester.

Fact of the matter is, "power suppression" in this game is almost always used for narrative utility and almost never for narrative concept. The Architect Studio B suppresses powers because a studio without the power clutter was needed, and as such, it's merely utility. We don't explain it, because it's not a big deal. Prison cells prevent teleportation, because it's pretty frikkin' cheap to just Recall Friend people out of cells as soon as they wake up. You have to go get them, so that's an easy excuse. We don't explain it, because it works to dramatic tension. A mission that has all of my powers suppressed in a situation where I expressly need them, on the other hand, gets no such excuse.

Precisely what I mean. If this is to make any sense whatsoever, the character would have to cease to exist. He has ZERO reason to behave like a human being. At this point, we're not talking about a power nullifying device and we're talking about a humanising device, constructed to specifically affect a specific character's power in such a way as to NOT kill him, but modify his powers to be identical to those of a human being. This makes absolutely no sense, and while (like anything else) it can be justified with RP, it is, to my eyes at least, a very, very fat kludge designed to use for a specific type of character and hand-waving an excuse as to why it should affect other characters that don't fit the description.

It comes down to the simple question - if you can prevent, for instance, a deity's avatar from having deific powers, why don't you simply make it stop existing? Explaining this is where things get fat, and where I roll my eyes. It's a forced system currently restricted to instances where it doesn't really matter, and all the better for it. Besides, look at the other side of the coin - we already HAVE a system in place specifically and purposefully designed with the express use of robbing super heroes of their powers. It's called endurance drain as used by Malta Sappers and a few others. The game goes at length, explaining how these effects nullify and sap powers, and from a narrative standpoint THIS ACTUALLY WORKS. Your powers cost energy to use, and lacking this energy, you can't use them. Believe it or not, that's a LOT better than "Deus Ex Machina says you're human now." I don't enjoy these effects, and I don't enjoy the concept, but I'm a lot more willing to accept it than a power suppression field.

And, at the end of the day, I can still argue against the system on principle. I DO NOT LIKE having my powers taken away from me. This is the primary reason I never exemplar (5 level rule notwithstanding) and why I dislike Sappers and Electrical powers as much as I do. If I were given a choice of new mission types I'd like to see, a full depower would be the LAST thing I choose, right after getting a three-day ban from the game, but right before a simu-click mission. As long as this is not written in stone, I reserve my right to disagree with it completely and utterly, both as being needlessly disruptive to the narrative and as being one of the worst aspects of gaming since the sewer level.

Are you serious? Blazing Aura is more endurance-efficient than most any Scrapper attack, and Fiery Melee's attacks only outstrip it if their additional damage components fire, which isn't always the case. It's far too late for me to do the math to show it, but it's there. Basic Scrapper attacks are balanced at 12.030-12.031 DPE, while Blazing Aura gets 13.231. It's not worlds better, but it's far from "minimal."

This is pretty much the direct definition of a straw man. And that's pretty sad.

Yes, the "real" reason, indeed.

That would explain his boastful City of Heroes dis in that article from way back when. It also explains why all the boasting fizzled in light of yet another WoW clone, that even has silly things like "copper, silver and gold" tiers for "resources" and several inventory bags. It might have ended up being a decent game, and I honestly expected it to be one, but things turned out exactly as I expected them to. The things they boasted about were all there, but the things they never mentioned that everyone assumed would naturally be there... Just aren't.

I never really got a good idea of what that was, since I pretty much kept out of that trainwreck of a thread. Far as I saw, the game was running just fine and I saw no reason to debate theology. Mainly, I don't know what they have as I haven't played high enough in the game to actually know. From what I've seen and heard, though, player characters can span the whole gamut from utter gimp to totally overpowered and, knowing me, I'd probably end up with something that sucked and die a lot.

Champions Online is a game that is simultaneously very easy to solo everything in if you know what you're doing, and very difficult to solo anything in if you're not very good at this which... Is actually the exact same problem which has been cited as why City of Heroes scrapped the "Champions-inspired" points buy system and instead went with locked ATs and power sets. I'm not sure if I'd call this making the same mistake twice or just the (probably mistaken) belief that you can fix it if you just tried the same thing again, but I'm not confident City of Heroes Pre-Beta 2 will meet with as much success as was predicted.

No. A friend of mine lost his WoW account to someone who used one of these things to lock him out of it (he regained his account and all items taken, so it was all good) but I've not seen them have any use.

Plus, I'd need to actually acquire one from PlayNC, which, being that I'm a US version player who lives in Europe, is neither cheap nor easy, and the added fiddle is NOT something I enjoy. Finally, we're not a game that's a prime target for account stealers, as the most valuable things on accounts (bonus packs and veteran status) cannot be traded anyway.

I cannot agree here, and never have. There's nothing worse than thinking "Oh, hey, these two pieces I've used on two other characters would look REALLY cool together!" only to open up the editor and realise they actually clip too badly for anyone to wear. And then you go into the game, spot someone who DID wear them anyway, shake your head, and then everything in the game looks twice as ugly for the rest of the day. As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather they kept as many of the clipping pieces out of the game as they could, because, ultimately, I expect a high-quality game that does not PERMIT anything which looks technically bad. I'd rather leave it up to the players to pick what looks good, not what merely works at all, and work off that much smaller pool of options.

To be quite honest, it always bothers me more that I can pick an option that SHOULD look good, but doesn't because of clipping, than it satisfies me when I find an option which shouldn't work but does. Yes, that means I am more pissed off that my long-haired characters should be able to use capes but can't thanks to clipping than I am that my High Collar cape characters have access to exactly two sets of shoulders that don't look terrible with that cape. "Let the players sort it out" is probably the worst policy a developer can have, as far as I'm concerned, because allowing the players to create horrible ugliness is simply bad for business. With every crappy clipping piece I find in this game, I like the graphics that much less.

As far as using trenchcoats and wings or multiple cape systems, that's a performance concern. I've not enough knowledge to guess how justified that is, but I don't think simply dismissing that is a smart move, especially since we're only guessing. It amounts to accusing the developers of utter ineptitude or outright lies, and that's not a step I'm prepared to take without some solid evidence behind it.

As far as the rest of the thread goes, those are, and it pains me to say this, minor problems. Quality of Life, one might say. Mis-matching colours and textures are always going to be a pain, but I'm not terribly upset at being limited in terms of colour. I honestly have no use for a hundred shades of red that all look the same, and this would just make matching colours exactly anywhere between impossible to needlessly cumbersome. I wouldn't be against opening up a few of the forbidden shapes and even allowing skin colours, but I doubt that'll happen. Between purists and juvenile idiots, that's just a bad call to make.

I can't really disagree with anything here, but on the grand list of things I want to expand on, they are pretty low in priority. I'd put more basic things like more costume pieces (jet packs, say), dynamic lights and a better text editor higher up, and that's with me thinking while half-asleep.

To a large extent, yes. I don't know enough about Ninja, but having seen Mercenaries through to the end, I definitely feel a few things need to be addressed.

1. Serum. At its current numbers, this power is worthless. It recharges far too long, and even when you use it, it doesn't do enough. Just a minute of effective time per 1000 seconds? That's an uptime of 6%, barely. If anything, I'd say cut the recharge to 600 seconds AT LEAST and double duration, otherwise the power is a no-brainer skip.

2. Control effects, yes. Spec Ops control is cool when it happens at the right time, but with ZERO control over when they actually use the powers, they're far too rare for them to matter. And they end up wasting 'em, anyway, so they really don't need to be on that long a timer.

I wouldn't actually complain about damage too loudly. Mercs have a bad reputation as having too little damage to go around, but to a large extent that's poor karma on their part. They WERE very bad in terms of damage because many of the henchmen didn't use a lot of their attacks, but right now, they're not half bad. They're not the best, certainly, but they're above decent.

I wouldn't complain about survivability, either. Being all ranged and with respectable resistances, they do well enough. Survivability comes down to secondary a lot, as well.

To be fair, I do the same thing here. No, I'm not joking. I'll pick up a new character, typically play that new character until I'm somewhere between 25-35 and then go play another one. During that time, I may have teamed, or I may not have. It depends on which server I picked, which side I picked and what the people I know have planned.

"LAIRS" are the moment I slapped my head, rolled my eyes and turned aroun to leave. Talk about WoW in tights. This is my LEAST favourite way to promote teaming, to be quite honest.

And I believe what you say, trust me. I still feel it's crappy design choices pooping all over teaming more so than JUST the ability to take care of yourself. As people who have explained the system before have said, it comes down to class balance, or lack thereof as may be the case. No reason to team, no benefit for teaming, no convenience to team well. Why bother? Here, this is a TEAM game that gives you the option to still go solo if you really want to. There... I've no idea what that is.

Three days, actually, but the point remains.

I completely misunderstood what you meant, and there is no point in me making a long-winded argument why I agree with you here. I agree and recede my previous point.

I'm not talking out of the air here, Arcana. I admit I may come across as a right fool, but there is method to the madness. I know full well what my characters can typically handle, what they can typically not, and where the "maybe" area is. I can see it a mile away when I get in over my head, accidentally trigger three ambushes onto myself, walk into a spawn convergence or aggro something that's incredibly dangerous. I know when the chips are down, and I know that those are the times some powers can save me, and some simply won't. When I walk into deep trouble, Elude WILL save me, but Total Focus will most decidedly not.

Here's the thing - as a Scrapper (or a Brute or a Stalker), I can extend my survivability past the point where, by my estimate, I should already be dead or high-tailing it. At the very worst of times, I can bring myself back to life and carry on. Blasters really don't have that option, not until pretty much the end of the game, and even then only sometimes, and even then only kind of. When a Scrapper walks into trouble, he has additional performance he can call on that, by virtue of its design, is otherwise saved and hoarded. A Blaster, by comparison, has no such reserve, so when he ends up needing a little bit more, he has nothing to draw on.

That's what I define as "when you need it." In the situations where you need to surpass what you can normally do, a Scrapper can pull out all the stops and survive anyway, at a cost. A Blaster is pretty much BORN without any stops to speak of. I guess if nukes were on a 1000 second recharge but almost always killed almost everything (unlike how it is now, when they sometimes kill most things), then I guess I could count them as a final line of defence, but as it stands right now, they're better used to just skip a spawn than when you're backed-up against the wall.

I agree with you, but I wouldn't call enemy behaviour as it is right now brain-dead, insomuch as it feels, at least to me, to be the intended result. Melee enemies fight in melee, and fire ranged attacks only at range. We don't have any explicit penalties for ranged attacks used in melee, which is all the better for players, but critters have long followed designs which are more aesthetic than practical, so for them to avoid shooting their fire blasts point-blank and instead fire-punch you is, at least to my eyes, intended. As such, certain enemies seem to be designed to be explicitly more dangerous at range than they are in melee, and it's not just Zeus Titans that do this. A LOT of enemies can be forced into a melee stance where not only will they not use their ranged attacks, they will actually CHASE you and try to use their melee attacks even if you hover out of range. The reverse is also true - it's possible to lock an NPC into a ranged mentality and have it plink away with its one weak, slow-recharging ranged attack while ignoring its three devastating melee attacks. I can't tell you how many times that has happend to, say, Champion Swipers.

A lot of critters are designed with a melee framework on top of which a single ranged attack exists just because everything needs at least one. Certain other critters, however, have been quite clearly designed with a RANGED framework, and have had a single melee attack, usually a basic Brawl, thrown in just because. In fact, a variety of enemies exist that do not possess ANY melee attacks, such as Nemesis Dragoons, of which I'm sure you're well aware. Basically, enemy design means that while some enemies are safer to keep at range, some are actually more DANGEROUS to keep at range. Easy example - Chief Mesmerists will perma-hold you if you stay at range, but will exclusively sword-slash if you close in. Also easy example - Malta Tac Ops will not approach to throw stun grenades, but will pull out a rifle, instead, and will only grenade you if you approach. A variety of enemies do this, and I have, quite honestly, not seen a great many that use their entire arsenal in any one situation.

All of that is to say that "range as defence" only works against certain enemies, and fails SPECTACULARLY against certain others. And even in cases where it's still safer, it's often not safe ENOUGH, when enemy ranged attacks are just as ruthless as their melee ones. Crey Power Tanks abusing Power Burst are just evil. At the same time, Crey Voltaic Tanks abusing Thunder Strike are no less sinister.

But you are right - any direct increase in enemy toughness, smarts or otherwise difficulty will sink the lowest-hanging fruit first - Blasters. This was demonstrated beyond question during the I4 boss buff, and it has been demonstrated every time something "challenging" is found since, up until the point where the Rogue Vanguard were designed seemingly specifically to shut melee up. Even Malta, the ones designed to kill overpowered heroes, are STILL rougher on Blasters than they are on Scrappers.

This exactly why I don't believe fiddling with difficulty will ever be a solution. Any change which affects all ATs at the same time will arm the most vulnerable first, and in a lot of respects, that is always the Blaster. Personally, I feel they should have been left as Ranged/Melee and given some better tools to thrive in melee, rather than the enigma they have become these days. Even something as esoteric as a Mastermind is easier to figure out, and that's saying something.

*edit*
I managed to close my tab by trying to copy all text in it. Oops! Let's see if I can say it with fewer words this time.

I agree with this completely. City of Heroes has focused teams that have a point and stick together, where enemies scale to make the whole team needed. Most other MMOs I've played have a disorganised rabble that roams the world one by one, hoping they'll randomly kill something that accomplishes someone's quest. Well, I can be by myself on my own just fine, I don't need a team to be alone with.

Yeah, why don't we port over Dark Miasma AS IS while we're at it? Or Necromancy. Or, heck, why not Dark Blast as a secondary?

Blaster Manipulation sets have certain functional requirements, and while we don't know exactly what they are, we have PLENTY of precedent to be able to tell what they are NOT. And what they are not, among other things, is direct-port melee powersets. They are tagged "Support," so unless you can put in enough powers to at least technically call it support, this will not fly. It's like giving Scrappers a Blaster primary.

Making a cohesive, and above all USEFUL Blaster secondary is more than just dumping a bunch of melee powers a Blaster would outright DIE before getting full use of, not to mention the fact that Martial Arts is not a hard-hitting set, and would be even LESS hard-hitting for a Blaster thanks to AT mods. That, and Blaster melee powers are significantly stronger than their counterparts in other ATs, just on base damage, which would, at the VERY least, necessitate a rebalance of power stats. The dreams of a "pretty much straight port" are pretty much an illusion.

Who doesn't like dancing emos?