Samuel_Tow

I'm going to sidestep the numbers discussion because A) You are correct and B) This is what it ultimately comes down to. Yes, you're right that I make the assumption that Brutes (and indeed all CoV ATs) started low, and were then given something to compensate when they went TOO low. Of course, I could well be wrong, and I'll take you on your word that the other way around was a lot more likely. That puts my argument down right there, and I can admit it when I am wrong. But let me explain what causes me to feel as I do.

When CoV rolled out, there was not a single AT with a decent damage modifier, and from what I saw, not a single AT with any really impressive modifiers of any kind at all. CoH-side, if I wanted to deal damage, I could always pick a Scrapper or a Blaster and just out and out deal damage. CoV-side, I had to choose between Brutes with 0.75, Corruptors with 0.75, Dominators with... How much did they have before the changes? Stalkers with 0.9 or Masterminds with something like 0.55, though for them this isn't terribly relevant. Yes, some of them could kind of manage it by use of their inherents, but in actual gameplay, this played out as much like a gimmick as it did like a direct strength. Now, of course, these days we have Stalkers with 1.0 and Doms with 0.95 ranged and 1.05 melee, so we sort of do have direct damage dealers, but this about my impression of original intent, rather than current reality. As we've all seen, the original intent for City of Heroes was something very different to what it mutated into by player disregard.

Secondly, the changes and additions the CoV ATs have undergone over the years directly depict, in my eyes, that the original design put a little TOO much faith in gimmicky inherents and a little too little in decent, strong AT modifiers. I'm not sure what led to Masterminds getting Bodyguard, so I'll skip those, but let's look at Stalkers. By everyone's admission, their design was really, really not what it ought to have been. They are, in fact, one of the instances I can point to and define "decent," as they could both solo AND team somewhat, but no-one really ever picked them, because they could do neither decently, and the fix for them was a straight-line buff. Stalkers got more damage, more hit points and then more damage besides via additional criticals. They went from a gimmicky AT that more or less HAD to hit and run to one which probably ought to, but can also stand and fight in a lot of cases, simplifying and strengthening them in the process.

New paragraph, same topic. Next in line were Dominators, whom I never played before the changes so I can't really comment on their playstyle back then. However, from what I've seen and heard, I believe the problem was that the AT itself rather underperformed outside of Domination, driving a lot of people to seek the so-called "permadom," driving the bar for Dominators into min/max territory and, in the process, penalising more casual players of them. Granted, this could very well be a problem of an exploitable inherent, but the net result is that, outside of double- and triple-stacked Domination, Dominators lost no degree of control and only gained more damage, outside of one specific powerset, which I'm not familiar with. They were given more solid and more direct performance at the expense of their gimmick.

And even if we look at Brutes, Fury is an interesting mechanic, but also one which causes its own slew of problems by rewarding a very specific subset of factors. The easiest limitation I can point to is precluding Brutes from ever wanting to use Slow effects, on the one hand eliminating the possibility for Ice-based powers, and on the other hand just slashing one tool out of the toolkit. As well, it rewards taking on many weak things over taking on a few large things, and even though it's supposed to build faster from bosses and up, it does not. In fact, at the difficulty setting I'm set at, I can't sneeze without getting a ton of Fury from the many, weak enemies I've set to spawn, but as soon as I face down a lone elite boss, I have to more or less fight him without Fury, because he won't build any at all. It also rewards fast, small attacks over large, slow ones, which causes people to whine about things like Battle Axe and War Mace, and not entirely unreasonably. This whole thing does limit the circumstances under which Fury is truly useful, and if "just don't use Battle Axe" is what makes a player smart, then I'm proud to be a dumb player.

Some of the CoH ATs have also been retrofitted with gimmicky inherents as well, sure. Blasters used to have Suicide as theirs, but right now they have a damage buff for doing damage, and in a very specific way, if you pay attention to your Defiance numbers. Scrappers have a non-committal one, but Controller Containment actually does really matter. Defender and Tanker Inherents have been squabbled over for years, but I wouldn't describe either as truly character-defining in the same sense that Fury is.

I just wish that there were a hybrid character who could perform well without the need for gimmicks, but I have little hope that will ever happen. Even if Going Rogue brings us new ATs, which I hope it will, but it probably won't, they'll likely be even more gimmicky.

Purely numerically speaking, Scrapper damage is 150% Brute damage (which would put Brute damage at 66.(6)% Scrapper damage), but that actually gets quite a bit more serious in difference with damage slotting. For the sake of simplicity and because it's 5 AM, let's give a Brute an attack that deals 100 points of damage and give him 100% damage slotting. With that, he deals 200% damage, or (100% base + 100% slotting)*100. A Scrapper would deal 150 damage with the same attack, and with 100% slotting deal a total of 300 damage, or (100% base + 100% slotting)*150. For a Brute to deal that, he would need an additional 100% damage buff, or 50 Fury, or indeed (100% base + 100% slotting + 100% Fury)*100.

50 Fury is not out of the question, granted, but it's still more work than a Scrapper has to put into it, and it gets even more significant once you factor in Build Up.

But I'm not complaining about Brutes. In fact, they're one of my favourite ATs, especially ever since I went to -1x3, as Fury builds itself with enough enemies. My point was combo ATs seem to be balanced conservatively. Arcanaville makes a good point, but again - it's 5 AM and I don't have the time or opportunity to respond to that right now.

Yeah, but my responses have so far not been directed to you. I'm not against a buff to Fiery Aura, though I doubt Rise of the Phoenix could be left as-is if it were usable when not dead. It wouldn't be autohit, for one.

That's one thing I've always hated about colour sliders with no way to type in my own colour numbers - you can't really get the same colour twice in a row, or at least can't realistically expect to. And again, a colour slider presents the same problem we have in City of Heroes, only in an even bigger way. Your typical colour is comprised of three linear variables, either RGB or, let's see... HSL? Hue, saturation and luminance, at any rate.

Here we get a box with Hue on the vertical almost exactly with the first row being zero saturation and the rest following suit. Each row starts with maximum saturation and minimum luminance, and increments through about mid-way luminance at around the mid-point of each row, with the rest of the row being saturation dropping down from there. At least that's what it looks like from looking at the colours. This gives you a split-screen faux 3D colour selection that, while it doesn't give you full use of all three variables, does give you a good decent choice from a most meaningful variants of the three.

A linear slider, by comparison, only really gives you the ability to play with one variable, and while it might have more numerically unique colours, the number of ACTUAL colours is vastly inferior. In fact, looking at the Champions slider, it looks like maximum saturation, medium luminance and with you only varying the hue. This is decent if all you want to use is colouring marker colours and variants thereof, though with Champions' cartoony, colourful graphics, that may be an intentional design choice. Or it may come down to the fact that they only have one sprite transparency model - additive (or "Bright) and low-saturation colours don't work well with it, so they've stuck with only saturated ones.

We, on the other hand, have both additive and subtractive colour models (for MOST things), which gives us the ability to use all colour types and produce a variety of effects with them. I still feel that, purely based on colour, our customization of it is superior.

As for emanation points, yes, that is a very cool idea. I'm somewhat dubious as to how this is applied in practice, but it doesn't detract from the fact that it's a good idea. It's something to possibly think about in the future here, I suppose.

I believe where I stated I didn't need it too much was interpreted to mean that I can cap my defence without it, which isn't actually the case. I very much can't cap my defence without Elude, and can't really go much above 30%, but for most of the things I tackle, that and an aggressive approach is more than enough. It isn't needed as often as one would think, but that's no different from Rise of the Phoenix, Soul Transfer, Revive, Resurgence, or indeed Revive, Mutate, Elixir of Life or Howling Twilight. For the most part, we don't die so much, or indeed get very close to dying (none of us with self-protection powersets, anyway) which precludes both self-resurrect and god mode powers from being too frequently used. But in the odd complete disaster that can happen when teaming with strangers or just out of nowhere, they still help.

And, frankly, if I'm left standing at the end of the fight and all my enemies are down, I don't care if I fell along the way, as long as I didn't have to hospitalise myself in the process.

Uh, yeah. I know it helps. I also know that, outside of the occasional Elite Boss, I don't generally need it enough to risk a 1000 second timer on a power when I might get in over my head next spawn over. The opportunity cost of Elude is so great it rarely gets used exactly BECAUSE it recharges so slowly. That, and I rarely have a need for it in normal content. Same for Unstoppable, same for Overload. These powers are great, but even at the best of times, I'm not using them more often than once every 17 minutes or so, and I don't need to use them even this much.

And, no. The only way to die is very much not after the crash. I've been killed through Elude more times than I can count, and by a variety of different things that overcome or ignore defence. I've been killed by the Envoy of Shadows' autohit aura, I've been killed by Soldiers of Rularuu overseers, I've been killed by Greater Devoured standing near Quartz eminators, and I've even been killed by your run-of-the-mill Gunslingers and Master Illusionists. Remember - you can't bring any enemy above a +1 minion down to the base of 5%, and when some hit hard enough to take out half my health in a single hit, I can die. I've also died plenty, plenty, PLENTY of times just watching the hoppity hop double flip animating, because it seems to take bloody ages and I didn't think fast enough.

And, no. I don't see firing off Elude before I die as that much superior to firing off Rise of the Phoenix after I die. I don't have the habit of playing Tankers, so I couldn't give two dead rats about who has aggro, which may skew my perception, but Fiery Aura is available to more than just them.

That's a big leap of faith to assume I did nothing before dying, that Rise of the Phoenix does nothing as I rise, and that I'm going to be facing the exact same things I was before I fell. Whenever I've had to use Soul Transfer, that's after taking out a big chunk of the enemies, with what's still left alive stumbling around in a drunken stupor for some time after I get up, giving me plenty of free shots besides, anyway. Outside of remarkably stupid situations where I got so far in over my head I got one-shotted before I know I'm even fighting, I have not had an instance where I went up via Soul Transfer and was put down again. Not a single instance, not once, not at all, not ever, not, not, not. Has never happened. Every single time I have gotten up, I've been able to mop up what's left of what put me down, without fail, without exception, and without any real threat, either.

If you feel Fiery Aura underperforms, then by all means, suggest improvements to it. But suggest improvements that don't completely negate a functionality some of us love and adore. You don't get to veto my preferences, I'm afraid, and I dare say I was here first.

Pretty much, ironically enough. In terms of final balance, the ATs stack up, but a lot of that comes from their Inherents, which are purpose-designed to be unreliable, fiddly or otherwise limiting in new and creative ways. Easy example:

Look at Brutes in the absence of their inherent. They have damage WORSE than a Tanker, defence numbers identical to those of a Scrapper and slightly more hit points. By and large, they're straddling the boundary between Scrapper and Tanker, only they aren't quite in the middle. If you look at them as modified Scrappers, then they lost a LOT of damage and gained almost no survivability. If you look at them as modified Tankers, then they lost survivability AND LOST DAMAGE. Either way, their baseline performance is in the pits.

BUT
OF
COURSE

This isn't the whole story. With Fury, Brutes can do respectable damage, sometimes even rivalling Scrappers under certain circumstances, so in terms of final design, they at the very least break even. I won't get into the comfort of the mechanics since this isn't really the point. The point, in this case, is that Brutes give up a lot of damage AND a lot of self-protection as a trade-off for doing both, and while they do get a mechanic that can sort of help them make up for that, it's designed to be limiting in its own right, giving host to a whole other load of arguments, complaints and disagreements.

That's what I meant. Balance-wise, the developers weren't quite adventurous enough to give them seriously serious numbers, but couldn't quite afford to give them seriously laughable numbers, so we have their very important inherents, which I see as a next best solution that doesn't give them quite the baseline performance that a half-way cross of two ATs ought to have, but still lets them shoot for it if they try hard enough. I don't believe that balance is bad, as from what I've seen, it works well enough, but I also do believe it was more conservative than it might have been in the absence of CoH's specialists and their current performance to act as a benchmark.

I wonder if I should be flattered that I am interesting enough, or disappointed that my topic is so boring that it makes even ME interesting

Well, certainly, but the Rogue Isles could really use a little more variety. I'm beyond asking for Arachnos to be injected with any sense of believability, as they play the role of the Combine crossed with Darth Vader and with a bit of Sauron sprinkled on top, but I do take slight with EVERYTHING being under their boot and, for that reason alone, downtrodden and depressing. I'm not sure how it turned from rumours that we will be able to join one of many villain organisations (an idea bad in its own unique ways) into a game that's basically all about Arachnos, and occasionally Longbow. Arachnos are a decent design, but they don't have nearly enough thematic variety to make an entire world all of their own. With them, you can basically pick between overt evil, crushing depression and overt evil.

I've long since clamoured for a Nemesis Island somewhere out at sea, where life is seemingly idyllic, clean and orderly, but hard dictatorship exists beneath the surface, and it seems I'll get just that in Going Rogue. Well, minus Nemesis, who is apparently dead over there, but beggars can't be choosers. I've also long clamoured for villainous settings where we are bad guys in a GOOD place, and while Going Rogue seems like it will skirt that, in the end it's still a hidden totalitarian state which will likely have a lot of "But they deserved it!" undertones that kind of undermine outright villainy.

I keep wondering if it wouldn't have been a better choice if the Rogue Isles weren't a collection of islands all controlled by different groups, instead of all controlled by Arachnos. Mercy and Grandville can stay Arachnos-controlled, sure, just to maintain the needlessly railroading overarching plot. But beyond that, why NOT have a Nemesis-controlled island of cleanliness, oppression and sinister evil? Why not have a Crey-controlled island of soulless consumerism with civilians leading visibly good, but empty, soulless lives driven by mind-control advertising and a cut-throat employer? Why not have a Council island reminiscent of an old Soviet state of overt repression where people are safe from crime, but never from the state? Hell, why not have a GOOD island controlled by GOOD people and populated with GOOD people, where the skies are blue, the grass is green and everyone is living the perfect life, only for us to pray on their lax sense of self-preservation ala the Demolition man?

Diversity is there to be had, yet they instead chose to plaster Arachnos over everything like the price tags in a supermarket run by a complete slob. Arachnos come with their own pretty overt theme, and I can't fault their design for this. How many enemy groups do we have that are as diverse as they are? But they are still one group with one narrow theme, and building an entire game around their theme leads to a bunch of problems that irritate me to no end. Co-op zones do help break the endless monotony of evilnessnessness that the Rogue Isles exude, and I'm sure Going Rogue will bring more variety still, but that still doesn't make me a fan of the Isles' original design. It just makes it more bearable now that I have options. And I'm still stuck in Sharkhead during levels 20-25, watching the same damn volcanic ash...

I see what I see, and I do not accept people telling me that my eyes deceive me. If I see something as brown, I'm not prepared to be told it's actually green, and if I see something as yellow, I'm not prepared to accept that it's actually grey. I have been tested for colour blindness, and I am not colour-blind. My monitor may or may not be completely accurate in how it is tuned, but I am capable enough to tell one colour from another. I am not prepared to be told told that things I can see with my own eyes are not what I see, because I trust my eyes before I trust other people.

I am, however, prepared to accept that while we do see the same thing, we each interpret it differently, emphasising different things and ignoring different things. To me, the whole of the Rogue Isles, and I have seen everywhere there is to be seen, is drab, dreary, depressing and all-around greyish-brown, and I see a large part of this being that this is how it was apparently DESIGNED to look. If someone can offer me an alternate explanation of how it was designed, then perhaps I can see things in a new light, but I seriously doubt anyone would. The most of what I've seen is apologetic that, yeah, the place is a dumb, but look! It has neon lights! On the other hand, I see those neon lights and feel them more a colourful distraction from the grey, depressing reality, designed specifically to give the place a look of hollow glamour and a mask of high-life hiding the crushing depression that the REST of the area provides you, with abandoned warehouses, collapsed roads and an an outright demolition zone. That is interpretation.

And again, why are we discussing me? Am I truly that interesting that I merit such introspect? Of course, I am honoured by this, but again, I question the point of all this. You ask me a question, but do you actually care to hear the answer, and will you be satisfied by it? So far, I have rarely seen people asking questions for the sake of getting answers, and instead seen plenty of examples of people asking rhetorical questions as a means to say something without actually having to lay tangible accusations. I am more than willing to answer all of these questions, certainly, but I have to wonder if these answers are in the slightest welcome. You asked why and how I do things, but do you honestly care to know? And, yes, that is a genuine question in search of an answer, because at this point, I have my doubts.

I have no problem with people quantifying their positions with facts, but I do begin to take slight when this involves questioning my place to even hold opinions on the matter, or dismissing mine as irrelevant by reason of unpopularity or other such technicality. Argue against the point, and I will not bat an eye, as I have no illusions Sam is smartest there is. But argue against the poster, and I WILL defend myself, even if that makes a fool out of me in the process. Actions and consequences and all that.

Man, I thought it was a myth, but it seems a man is truly capable to talk out of his ***. And I thought all those people demonstrating it are ventriloquists... The more you know, I guess.

Let's compare Soul Transfer to Elude. In your typical five-hour gaming session, I will have used precisely 0 (that's ZERO) times, because by and large, I don't really need it either way, and it's on a long enough recharge to where I'm reluctant to use it even when I do. And on the off chance I do use it, I die anyway, which makes me a combination of giddy and mouth-foaming mad, if you can picture that. By comparison, of the time I've had Soul Transfer, my use of it will fluctuate between "no use, as expected" to "Oops! I died. Time to get back up!" So I get more use out of Soul Transfer, the power that resurrects me, than I do out of Elude, the power that prevents me from dying... Sometimes.

As far as inspirations go, if you do NOT carry any awakens, then you are, quite frankly, wrong to do so. You are going to die, and when you do, your choices are limited. You can beg for a resurrect, which may or may not be within your team-mate's capabilities, unless you are solo in which case you don't have team-mates to resurrect you. You can go to the hospital, causing team-mates to waste their time sitting on their hands and, in the absence of such, wasting your own time with aimless, pointless retreading travel. You can beg for an awaken, or waste inordinate amounts of other inspirations just so that you can make an awaken, but I'm sure a proud man like yourself would find this distasteful. Or you can get up ON YOUR FRIKKIN' OWN and save everyone the hassle and the wait. Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, who does not carry at least one awaken and at least one break-free is officially a pain in the *** when they die. And they WILL die, I don't care how macho they are.

Self-resurrect powers are like that, only they don't run out, so when you get trapped on that disastrous Respec Trial or ITF and find yourself carrying the rest of the team on your back and biting the dust right along with them, you won't be one of the whiny gits who spend the bulk of the fight dead or travelling to and from the hospital, but rather you will spend most of your time up and fighting. What's more, most of the time when you die, it's either to something big or to a massive wave of enemies, so having a self-resurrect power that damages them while putting you back in the fight is a major boon.

If you don't like it, then fine. You are not forced to take it, or indeed play Fiery Aura or Dark Armour. Suffice it to say that there are those of us who DO want to play the sets just as they are designed, and if you don't like that, you can go to hell. What's more, if you're going to argue against self-resurrect powers not protecting you, would you similarly argue against ally-resurrect powers that don't protect allies when they're alive and suggest they be replaced with MoG, too? Because I'd love to see how that goes.

Face it - some people like Rise of the Poenix as it is, and you don't get to tell them they are wrong for feeling that way. Unless you have an argument more meaningful than "You are stupid, I am right!" then you are not going to make any headway. About the only point I would concede is having a self-resurrect power remove debt upon activation, but that's unlikely to happen.

Huh... Well, phoey! I would then, naturally, suggest that this restriction be lifted. Or, let's man up and give villains actual Epics already, and unlock those at 30.

No-one is forcing anyone to put junk punctuation in their names. This is a player-made choice to degrade their own names.

To the topic at large, this only really works if global names are appended to chat. This is fugly and I do not want to see it in any game I play ever again. If you can come up with a way that does this without appending junk to my character name ANYWHERE yet still make it unambiguous EVERYWHERE, then I will gladly sign off on it. However, this is a Catch 22, so I have my doubts.

Nothing of the sort, actually, and this sounds like the observation of someone who hasn't played Champions Online, but has heard that it does, indeed, have something defined as "power customization." It is, however, nothing in the slightest like what we have here, and I dare say nothing quite as good and expansive.

See, mechanically, I might be inclined to ALMOST agree. If we're looking for something to level the playing field, it would need to threaten Scrappers more than Blasters. In terms of gameplay experience, however, I couldn't disagree more. Cheap enemies are never the solution to anything, least of all challenge. We have defences for a reason. Enemies ignoring them is not fun and not a challenge. It's Nintendo hard, if anything, but that's rarely a good thing. The reason I bring up my Diablo anecdote is to show an instance where I TORE MY HAIR OUT over aggressively crappy design, to the point where I was ready to clothesline my monitor with my keyboard. This is not fun. Voids are not fun. They're hard, just... Not in the right way.

Let me explain - I like the Warriors as a concept. They're tough, at least to physical attacks, and their outgoing damage is SCARY. Tanks probably still laugh at them, but I know an unattentive Scrapper aggroing two Hewers is going to blink and notice 2/3 of his health bar gone before his Build Up is finished animating. A Blaster caught in the slaughter would be dead, of course, but a Blaster on the ball will stay out of melee range, and so away from those gosh-dang axes. The Warriors DO have ranged attacks, but come on now. They're far from scary, and your average Blaster has enough pure hitpoints to just tank the arrows and bolts and simply shoot them all. The Rogue Vanguard are a lot like that, as are the Cimeroran Traitors, though to a lot smaller extent. Enemies strong in melee and weaker at range is not a novel concept, and while they ARE cheap sometimes, especially when they deliver enough damage to one-shot you (I got pummeled for 1200 by a Noble Brute), but they are still a bigger threat to melee than they are to range.

As far as I'm concerned, any rebalancing of solo potential or difficulty should not come via cheap, annoying, obnoxious enemies, especially those that simply stay out of range. One of the reasons I LIKE the City of Heroes AI as it is is that it ISN'T terribly smart, and as such isn't cheap or annoying. Annoying enemies still exist regardless, but I'd still choose dumber enemies who don't constantly pull off cheap moves. Marcone Snipers, for instance, are just so annoying they shouldn't exist. They're not fun, they're not a challenge, they're just pests that are hard to swat. They are, essentially, the human variant of Doddamned Bats.

Frankly, I consider the inclusion of Void Hunters as a constant irritant to Kheldians to be a major mistake, and I consider NOT including such a thing for Soldiers of Arachnos to be an acknowledgement of that fact. And I'm happier for it. Cheap enemies are probably the worst aspect of any good game. CURSE YOU, MALTA!!!

Look, I have no illusions that I'm some kind of saint, or that I'm always right and everyone should always agree with me. If you feel I've overstepped the line and moderator action is in order, then by all means, report me. I don't hold grudges, I don't blame people and, quite frankly, I won't disagree I deserve it in this case. I'm not on a crusade to prove that you're wrong and I'm right, or that you are somehow victimising me. I take slight is you mixing what I assume is a genuine desire to enlighten with, quite frankly, pretty basic, unpleasant put-down, which causes your intent to come into question. I say again - if and when you do to genuinely and objectively bring something to light for someone else, do endeavour to do so in a way that doesn't crush them in the process. That pretty much writes sarcasm out, to put it bluntly, but it's hardly as simple as that.


I "victimise" myself not through criticism of my opinion. That can hardly be unexpected. I take slight, however, when I am faced with criticism of my RIGHT to hold that opinion. You may or may not have noticed, but a great many here are very quick to discredit a poster over a post they disagree with, and that, to be perfectly honest, is what you are doing right here. The problem isn't that you disagree with me, or that I fail to agree to disagree with you, the problem is that my argument shouldn't exist because of meta reasons. I am not trying to order you around and tell you that you are wrong, but understand that I'm not very much willing to just be told that I am wrong when I don't agree. It is no discussion if all sides merely restate their opinions and refute the other side's, as that is simply not interesting.

I express disappointment in a lot of things. It's kind of what I do for fun. If I could find some way to rant AND be paid for it, I would live life in heaven on Earth, but I have so far been unable to achieve that, partly because I don't feel I have enough talent for it. The point is that while I agree I can easily be criticised for complaining about everything which isn't as I always dreamed it should be, that's not the reason I'm put in a position of having to defend my right to hold an opinion. I react not with shock and bewilderment when someone handwaves me away with "Bah, what do you know?" or "Yeah, but that's just YOUR opinion and nobody agrees!" or "So you think, but the harsh reality is different." bur rather I react with an eyeroll and a sigh, because THAT'S NOT THE POINT.

Here's what bugs me: You know how sometimes people will make suggestions, and be immediately deluged by arguments that "I would rather they work on something else?" Who god damn cares? I'm sure everyone has their own pet peeve they would rather the developers work on, but that's not the point of a suggestion, now is it? Discuss THIS suggestion, or simply go away. If you want to discuss another suggestion, post about it in your own thread. This is sort of what raises my ire here. I started a thread that was half hypothetical and half unlikely retrofit. I am well aware of why it cannot be put into the game, I am well aware of the arguments of why it is a business decision like it is and I am well aware that not everyone holds my opinion. I am WELL AWARE of this. Beating me over the head with restatement after restatement of this has no point, because this isn't the point.

I understand that phrasing the title as a question: "Why Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer?" does sort of suggest people tell me why, but the title was more thematic than it was the actual question. My actual question, rather, was "Why that and not this other thing?" So far, a lot of people have told me that they don't like this other thing, which I respect and have no problem with, and indeed enjoy conversing with them because we can compare contrasting opinions. I have also been told that an unspecified other
majority does not like my idea which, to be blunt, I don't care about since I'd rather people speak for themselves and which serves as nothing more than a showstopper. And I have been told that I'm wrong to insist on this opinion because I'm selfish and want to turn the whole game into my own baby (which I do, but obviously can't), that I'm arguing against everybody while trapped in my own little world and so on and so forth which has absolutely no point whatsoever because I'm just going to ignore it and keep going anyway. And I'm not going to wake up tomorrow feeling a bit of shame.

If you disagree with me, fine. A discussion where everyone agrees with me isn't very interesting. But don't be surprised if I don't just shrug my shoulders and go "Oh, well. To each their own." I'm not averse to doing that, but I reserve that option for when we have cleared up all misunderstandings and find a point at which we plain and simple cannot agree. Since people are still accusing me of contradicting myself and I have still not been entirely able to explain myself, partly through foot-in-mouth disease on my part, partly through people reading diagonally and seeing boogie men, I feel there is more to be said on he subject. I don't see why this has to attract ire to me, but that's just how it goes.

*sigh* See, this is what I'm talking about. You're still missing my point. Do Defenders solo just fine? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It comes down to what each person defines as "just fine." Do Defenders solo just as fine as, say, Scrappers? No. No, they do not. And, to be perfectly blunt, I would question to validity of anyone who claims otherwise, because that I see as uncontroversial fact. Not all ATs solo equally well, because some are designed to solo and not do much else while others are designed to do much else but not really solo. THAT is the point which I contest, and I am frankly amazed that I have to keep explaining it and still have it fly over people's heads.

The thinking behind current design is simple. As anyone what each of the of the original ATs was designed for, and they'll paint Scrappers as the "soloist" AT. This, to my eyes, is a mistake in its very inception, as "solo" should not be a skill given to just one class as their one and only specialization. It should be a baseline skill given to all classes IN ADDITION TO their specialization. I frankly don't see why that is so unacceptable to people, as most of the arguments against it seem to boil down to "then everyone will be the same," which I don't see as the case. Not, specifically, since I have seen it work in other games and it worked just fine. I go back to Dungeon Siege for that, where everyone could be a Warrior AND something else. A Warrior/Archer was deadly to foes of all types, while a Warrior/Mage was outright scary with some of the self-applied buffs and offensive spells.

But what if people want to specialise anyway and don't want battle prowess? Even though I disagree with that prospect, it is reality, so I don't see why over-specialization shouldn't be an option, as long as combat prowess is still there to be chosen AFTER character creation. Basically, most MMOs ask you this question once and only once - what do you want to be? If you pick something that really shouldn't be fighting on its own, then that is a choice made and a choice that cannot be unmade without starting a new character. And I don't like that.

You see, this is what I take slight at, because it insults my intelligence. And your own, to be honest, because this is only one step removed from a wilful misreading of what I have actually written. This isn't a question of what I, in my infinite wisdom, deem as the appropriate level of solo performance, and to try and dismiss an argument by insulting me in that way should be beneath you, honestly. As I explained before, this is very much quantifiable in a direct comparison between the ATs. Currently, such a comparison is telling, in that the difference in solo performance is vast and great, and that is a fact. This I do not approve of, and while other people seem to approve of it, I'm trying to question if it is the inequality they want to retain, or if it is class uniqueness and specialization that they want to keep. Because both can still coexist with equal self-sufficiency, just in a slightly different system.

Instead of a system where everyone is defined as "he can shoot," "he can block," "he can jump," I'd describing a system where everyone is defined as "he can shoot and jump," "he can shoot and block." Specialization still exists, baseline performance still exists, and I have actually removed the one thing I'm constantly being accused I want to turn everything into, ironically enough. I have little hope there will be much interest in discussing my actual point any more, however, as discussing ME seems to be a lot more interesting. It is what it is.

I regard my observations as nothing more than that - observations. If I came off as trampling people along the way, I apologise. It wasn't my intend. But by the same token, I find myself incapable of seeing things other than what my eyes tell me I see just because someone insists they are completely the other way around. I tend to avoid speaking about things I have no personal experience with, and while I'm perfectly willing to accept alternate interpretations of things, few seem to want to offer that. For the most part, people like to question my direct observations and experiences like I'm blind or stupid and I just don't know what I'm talking about, and simply contradicting me as nothing more than your word against mine, I tend to not be very receptive of this. Especially when it comes to things that I have seen.

You'll note I offered an interpretation of the intended look of City of Villains and why I feel it has the effect I feel it has, several times, in fact, yet all everyone wants to question is my colour perception and my monitor settings. As I said before, it doesn't come to the number of colours found in carefully selected screenshots, it comes down to atmosphere, but that's harder to argue because it's so abstract.

While I appreciate the sentiment (and I do), you really should consider a better vessel for it. I'm no stranger to doing the same thing, but the backlash I've taken over the years has taught me that there IS such a thing as a good and a bad approach to it. I'm perfectly at home dropping self-righteous put-downs on people and letting them sort it out, but then I hold no illusions that that makes me anything more than a jerk with a good vocabulary. To be perfectly honest, I find it quite pretentious to presume to pass down wisdom and judgement just in itself, and bordering in hypocrisy to do so while delivering put-downs and snark and talking down to people like they're petulant children. I can certainly see the argument that it's on me to gleam the wisdom from your words, but it strikes me as the same order of feedback-loop rhetoric my Linear Algebra teacher was trying to give me when, for some inexplicable reason, he started talking about metaphysical gods and auras and such. His words were pretty but dismissive, and it all boiled down to "If you are enlightened enough, you will understand, but if you doubt, how could you see?

See, I call nonsense to that, because it's a self-sustaining illusion. You don't see because you can't see, and you can't see because you don't see. Or maybe he's just full of crap, but then it seems most mathematicians eventually grow "eccentric" and believe they can explain love with Ring Theory. Makes me wonder when I'll flip my lid, if I haven't already.

The point of all of that was to say that, yes, it is partly on the listener to make sense of the speaker's wisdom. But it is also on the speaker to both motivate the listener to listen and deliver his wisdom in a non-opaque way, and approaching me with snark and put-downs does not, to be quite honest, put me in the right state of mind to humble my spirit and learn. It puts me in a state of mind to sigh, roll my eyes. I still appreciate the sentiment, but I say again - perhaps you should look into mine. I'm not here to slam my dick on the table, I'm here for the interesting discussion. And while I'm well narcissistic enough to want to discuss nothing but myself, I know this is interesting to no-one else, and the character assassination is starting to wear on me.

Thread, topic, point. Not me. I'm not interesting.

*edit*
Like an idiot, I'd messed up half my quote tags and didn't bother to proofread. Oops!

Actually, as of... Some point in the recent past I can't place, you don't need to do the Patron arcs to get the Patron pools, and you can freely respec between them. The arcs are still there to do, and you can even do Arbiter Whatshisname's mission to examine the Patrons, but I don't believe Patron pools are limited. I don't see that as a problem, either. Let us pick Patron powers at level 30 and, if we really want to, send us on a trip to Grandville to learn about them first. The dock, customs, plaza and tower are completely safe of any danger, and the hospital is in the tower itself. Sure, you can probably argue against it, but I would personally not find it problematic.

I doubt it. Look back at Epic history. I1 added 10 more levels, 40-50, and players screamed "So, what, then? Take all the powers I DIDN'T take until then? That's lame!" so the developers added four new power picks to cover the four new power pick levels. When they swelled them to five, actually appending powers was not the plan. They intended to replace powers, but players complained loud and hard, so instead of removing the powers being replaced, the developers appended them, and subsequently appended powers even in the sets that they didn't intend to replace powers in.

That is the history, and while you can certainly argue that, despite coincidence and eventuality, it was still their intent to limit these powers, I'm much more inclined to argue that there are sufficient circumstantial reasons they are how they are, and unless told otherwise, don't want to assume there are other, hidden reasons. It's possible, but I can't say how likely, and it would personally kill my groove, so better not.

Bringing up "clerical skills" is hypocrisy of the highest order, when all that's being asked here is basic readability so we know what the hell you're trying to say. You will almost never get hassled for spelling, grammar or sentence structure (outside of pedantic jerks like me) provided your posts can be read, which yours are hard to. Make it easy for people to understand so they don't misunderstand and they're not pissed off at having grappled with a post for not a lot of return.

By player request. No, really. By direct player request.

Far as I know, all powersets and all effects are affected by the PvP changes. If you have any specific qualms with PvP balance, bring those up, and possibly post them in the PvP forum where people won't be constantly shrugging their shoulders and appending "but I don't PvP, so I don't know."

This is where ambiguity strikes. "Blappers" get the benefit of both what? Melee and ranged attacks? Blasters don't have melee as a secondary, they have support, with most sets lacking more than a couple of melee attacks, and some sets having not a single one. Blasters, furthermore, don't get the benefit of self-protection sets, which Tankers, Brutes and, you know, Scrappers, do.

That said, simply giving ranged attack to Tankers is not tank-mage anathema as much as people will have you convinced, as it comes down to damage mods, actual range and, primarily, AoE, which doesn't have to be Blaster-size. But that's a bigger discussion for another thread. Suffice it to say it's not that simple.

How you manage to pay more for three expansions than you do for one I'll never know, but if you have a look at the PlayNC Store, the first thing you'll notice is [url=https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-bin/Store.pl?dnv=1037007880&action=viewItem&item_id=12 2]City of Heroes Architect Edition, which offers both CoH and CoV and sells for $20. By my calculations, that's less than four times $10. Additionally, I know there is only a single $15 subscription for both games if they are both applied to the same account, though you may additionally be charged a sales tax, which is state-sanctioned and out of PlayNC's hands entirely

I'm not going to quote my bank statements to you, but suffice it to say that I'm paying $15 a month, and if you're paying more than $17 a month, you are ripping yourself off.

No matter what I may have ever said to you, I love you for this

Personally, I'd avoid signature pics, but that's largely because I think they're gaudy. If you DO decide to use one, then listen to Ph... I mean, listen to Westley and shrink it down so it doesn't stretch your posts too much.

If you want to go with an Avatar, I would advise you to go not with a full picture, but crop a box out of one that's... How much does the forum take? 100x100? Don't let the software auto-scale it for you. It squashes non-square images in a bad way, and you don't need to force people to load an image larger than it has to be. You can do what a lot of people do - take a screenshot in-game, crop your character's mugshot into a square, then optionally rescale it to whatever is the biggest acceptable, upload it to something like Photobucket and drop a link to it in your User CP.

This quote right here ended my interest in the study, though I read down to the end, anyway. I guess I'm just an exception, as I never, not ever, tried to insert myself into any of my stories, dreams or indeed games. I don't make characters that resemble myself, largely because I'm constantly trying to reshape myself into something I like better, and so my characters simply never reflect me in any intentional way. I do have a character, my namesake, in fact, who was designed as sort of an image of myself long, long ago, whom I have retained as something of a snapshot of my state of mind then, but whom I have also flanderised to such a point that THAT particular aspect left with the early birds.

While I know this isn't interesting to anyone whatsoever, I hide nothing and pretend nothing in my "online persona." Who I am, act like and introduce myself here on the forums and in-game is who I am in real life. Physicality doesn't really matter around these parts (part of what makes the SWG kid's story so touching), nor does normalcy, as we can tell the stories we know would never happen, so I tend to not care about what people look like in real life.

All I know is I don't have an online persona, with all of my characters designed as puppets in a puppetmaster's interactive theatre. They don't represent me. If anything could ever be said to represent me, it is the narrative, itself. Which no-one reads, anyway.

The problem with City of Villains is style and presentation, though in four years I've never met anyone who cared to discuss it but state their own facts. You are presented with a slum from the get go and taken through slums from then on, with plenty of instances focusing on that, specifically. St. Martial may be a beautiful peace of heaven, but when Hardcase continually sends me to that one ghetto section, that's what I'll remember. The town of Mercy is a decent, upscale if a bit rustic place to live, though intentionally made to look and feel hostile to preserve the feel. The rest of the zones follow suit, with, really, Nerva being the only place that isn't painted as a hell hole, and that's not under overt Arachnos control. Why couldn't we have had more islands like it? And they still had to jam Arachnos operatives in it, anyway. That's like sticking Longbow in Grandville, which I'm surprised they didn't do.

The whole style of CoV is designed to beat you over the head with the doom and gloom of a tyrannical dictatorship, a crime-ridden craphole, a cesspool of scum and villainy. A city of villains, if you will, where every man, woman and child is a villain and there are no heroes. True to its name, it was a city, sort of, that was made up entirely of villains. And then people complained that other villains were all their villains fought. Well I am shocked and amazed! In making City of Villains a literal city of villains, the developers stepped on the very point of being a villain, which was to mess up a NICE work. Pretty much every game about being an irredeemable bad guy from Stubbs the Zombie to Prototype to what have you puts you in an idyllic world that you get to watch burn around you as you progress, providing a cathartic sense of perverse achievement. City of Villains lacks that, as there is no way things could get any worse in any way that anyone would notice. Fat load of good it does you to be a villain when someone beat you to it. It's as good as showing up to the bank when the vault is already empty. You can have a pointless shootout with the cops, but the point is already long gone.

You have a point, but you shouldn't confuse "frustration" with "challenge." A lot of games do that, with game developers believing that as long as players CAN'T do something, it's automatically hard. And not, you know, a cheating, cheesy insult to the player's intelligence. Back to the old standby - Succubi in the original Diablo would shoot Blood Arrows at you from range, then back up as soon as you approached and ran at the same speed as you, which meant a melee fighter could NEVER catch them short of forcing them into a corner the limited AI couldn't get out of. This is, in fact, the thing I'm trying to AVOID by stating my opinion here - instances where a player is faced with a situation that is either flatout impossible, or at the very least so cheap it costs you years off your life every time you have to get through it. Self-sufficiency is key here, in that you should, ultimately, never face anything that you can't handle, mechanically speaking.

Now, granted, variety is good, and I do vouch for it, but it won't solve this particular problem I have. For one, instituting Scrapper-killers, or more aptly Scrapper-annoyers, is exactly the wrong way to go about levelling the playing field. The ideal here is not a game where EVERYONE faces something that they cannot handle, but rather where no-one does. I have nothing against enemies more dangerous to Scrappers than they are to, say, Blasters (the opposite of 99% of the rest of the game), and the Rogue Vanguard actually do a pretty good job of that... Kind of. Their melee is DEADLY and their ranged attacks, while dangerous, are not nearly on the same level. Of course, Blasters possessing melee attacks as they do and not always possessing ways to keep out of melee unless they fly (which not all Blasters do) still do get shafted by the same, but it is what it is. That's not such a bad thing, since the Rogue Vanguard are still killable by Scrappers and they aren't so much cheap as just damn strong, but you're getting dangerously close to the Void Hunter effect, where a cheap enemy acts as a crutch to keep an otherwise decent AT down. That is NOT good design.

Well, that's generally what difficulty settings are for, as you can pick between few but tough enemies, or lots of cannon fodder, but Purple Patch level scaling being what it is, I don't consider it a viable option, personally. That aside, enemies do indeed have PLENTY of tricks up their sleeve, but the nastiest ones are reserved for the highest of levels. Malta have control out the wazoon as well as a LOT of serious outgoing damage, Carnies have end drain enough to break infinity and loop back to start, plus psi damage AND nasty control, and then you have the Rogue vanguard, who eat melee for breakfast. They have plenty of tricks, but as long as self-sufficiency is so cosmically different between the ATs, just more tricks won't work, unless they're tricks that harm Scrappers but avoid Blasters, say. As a general rule of thumb, anything that can threaten your typical Scrapper has already eaten your typical Blaster for breakfast, e.i. the I3 boss buff redux.

Here's how Malta go, for instance. Your typical Blaster faces terrible, dangerous status effects that can easily keep him permaheld, a lot of outgoing damage, and even endurance drain, all coming from a variety of targets. Your typical Scrapper, on the other hand, can simply and passively resist status effects because he has status effect resistance, absorb most if not all the incoming damage thanks to an entire powerset devoted to self-defence, and using his serious offence, take out the ONE AND ONLY ONE Sapper before any meaningful draining can occur. The only time a Scrapper really gets in the thick of it is from over-aggro or careless play. Giving Malta even more toys could potentially inconvenience Scrappers enough to make them unwilling, but by that point you'll have written out everyone else but Tanks. The point to having more tricks is to bring diversity such that some are better against some things than others. With the possible exception of Tsoo Sorcerers (annoyance factor up to 11), harder enemies just means harder for everybody, and not everybody expressly needs to face harder enemies.

Game design to account of and encourage teaming is fine, but yet again, this doesn't have to be done at the cost of discouraging solo play. And while it's entirely true that any encouragement for one thing can be seen as a discouragement for another, there is still a world of difference between lack of encouragement and actual denial of access. Difficulty can scale with team size, enemy numbers can scale with team size, rewards can scale with team size, and even content can be locked behind a mandatory minimum team. All of those are methods for encouraging teaming by encouraging teaming and NOT by discouraging solo play, and all present within City of Heroes right now. Granted, a lot of those were added after the fact, whereas AT composition has been pretty much force-locked since Launch, and for clearly obvious reasons, but it is a point worth considering nonetheless - solo play and group play are not mutually-exclusive in a game, and encouraging one doesn't have to come at the cost of penalising the other. Options exist, as the many people quoting other game systems that do exactly that have already attested.

You mask this as courtesy, but use it as a cudgel to beat me over the head in an attempt to claim the moral high ground while simultaneously still dismissing my point as "just opinion," neatly forgetting that that's all anyone whose name isn't red has on these forums, specifically on issues not numerically representable in any practical format.

You want the moral high ground? You can have it. Opinion is all I have to offer, and if all you're interested in discussing is explaining how my opinion is wrong and I should be ashamed to have it, share it and defend it, then by all means continue. I won't stop you since, quite frankly, I'm tired of defending my right to hold an opinion and not instantly "agree to disagree" whenever an opposing opinion is stated, like we're on some kind of show and tell. Even though I am put into a position where I have to defend my opinion every frikkin' time AND pegged as intolerant and egocentric just because I refuse to drop it.

Showing me carefully selected screenshots of the zones changes nothing in what I see when I log into the game, and I am quite frankly not prepared to accept spin and re-interpretations of what I can plainly see. Feel free to paint me as an ungrateful jerk if you want. I'll survive. But do take my benevolent advice in term. Next time you try to offer perspective, try to do it in a less cynical, condescending way, and you might end up eliciting a better response.

Have it your way. You don't want to hear my opinion but to use it as ammon against my other opinion, then fine. You won't hear it.

That's what I had in mind. Balance for these powers already exists, presumably so since the powers are already there, and the way the enemies ramp up in difficulty in the 30s, it makes sense to get them there, with how useful they are. As well, the way Epic pools were recently redefined, you can NEVER take all the powers from any one pool, even if you skip things in your primary or secondary. You have five powers per pool and four power picks to take them in - 41, 44, 47 and 49, and the last power you take will always be shafted with three slots. If you get pools to open up at 30 and unlock at 32, 35 and 38, then you have those three, plus the next four to grab powers in, which gives you seven picks for five powers, and, potentially, six slots each to five of those powers. The best of both worlds, even if just as a means to not run against the slot-jam at the end.

In addition to that, a few of the powers there would really, REALLY help Blasters work their way up the levels, specifically the requisite control and the the requisite shield. It's not enough to make a world of difference, trust me. I've tried it, and it isn't. But it's more than enough to make SOME difference, and a few of the other powers do help out. Compare that to, say, what Scrappers get. Focused Accuracy aside, as it is no longer as godly, what else? A rare-use endurance discount, which is rarely useful, Web Grenade, which Blasters get at level 1 and even then it isn't THAT great, and a couple of ranged attacks that cost a lot, don't do much and, above all, aren't terribly useful to an AT with an already full attack chain. Scrappers getting these things earlier might be convenient, but it won't do anything to make them much stronger. Nothing that they won't get, anyway.

In fact, look at how levels progress. At level 6, you open up your first pool tier, at level 14, you open your second, and at level 20, you open your third. Then what? 20-40, absolutely nothing new, and then AAAAAAAALL the way to 40, THEN you get something new which, by that point isn't very useful if you're not a Blaster. Why not allow it earlier and liven up the levelling curve a bit?