Samuel_Tow

Well, I don't want to get into another mess about that, so let's just say I don't want to deal with Sets and leave it at that. I'll get into trouble if I get into discussing it anymore.

Is that 99% accuracy enhancement? As in, three SOs' worth of accuracy? That seems like a little overkill, though I guess you may end up needing that if you fight anything over +2 on your minion class henchmen. It's still not something I'd do, though. I just don't fight that high.

Well, let's just say I see things differently. You see extra performance to be had and think "I can raise my difficulty." I see extra performance to be had and think "Oh, sweet! I can relax and enjoy the ride!" Suffice it to say that pushing the difficulty is not something I really want to do. I'm comfortable with the difficulty I face. If I ever grow too strong for it, I can always cut some more slotting and invest in non-profit projects, like the Presence pool or slotting my powers for exotic effects. It's never going to be too easy, only easy enough.

Dual builds are kind of expensive to support, though, especially when I get into even Commons. That hurts my wallet just thinking about it And, yes, I do know that Supremacy is a to-hit buff. Years ago I would have said there's no such thing as an accuracy buff, but ever since they did what they did to Focused Accuracy... If I said otherwise, I was mistaken. My head's been all over the place today.

I'll take you on your word, though. One accuracy, no problems. I doubt you play against levels as low as I do, so you not having problems is very good news for me. If you see no problems against, say, +1s and +2s, I'll definitely not have any problem against -1s and even cons. Groovy

The problem is that level and spawn size seems completely detached now. Before, each difficulty setting had the chance to give you small spawns of high-level enemies or large spawns of low-level enemies. Now I see small spawns of high AND low-level enemies, as well as large spawns of high AND low-level enemies. Essentially, it's simultaneously easier AND harder, which makes for a truly schizophrenic difficulty curve. One moment you're cleaning house, the next moment you're asking for the license plate number on that truck because the universe decided to give you a HUGE spawn of high-level enemies.

Which would put it at roughly the same land area as a 15-foot-wide AoE. Yeah, large cones can compare to AoEs pretty handily.

I don't dislike Claws, just the flat blades. With all the slashing that takes place, the blade's edge ought to be orientated along the plain of the forearm that goes from the back of the hand to the front of the hand. The flat blade is situated perpendicularly, with the bulk of its edge facing to the left and right of the hand, and we don't have any left-right or right-left swings in Claws. I could work with just about every Claws option OTHER than the flat blade, because you can really only stab with it, and slap people across the face with the flat side.

Essentially, the Flat Blade has a different orientation to all the other claws. So if it comes down to Flat Blade or Martial Arts, I say go Martial Arts because I wouldn't go with the Flat Blade.

Well, how do you explain all the gauntlets, then? I ought to be able to wear only two gauntlets, one on each hand. Not, you know, 15. Even if I shoved them on my hands, gauntlet over gauntlet, there's a practical limit to how many that could be while still giving me use of my hands. Hell, I can barely function with two sets of cotton gloves on, let alone with 15 gauntlets on each hand. Rings I can sort of see, even though there ought to be some upper limit to how many you can wear and still be able to bend your fingers. And I'm sure I couldn't fit too many helmets over my big head.

Well, it works, but... Let me put it this way. It's sort of like the solution in the doctor joke. "Dr, it hurts when I lift my arm." "Then don't lift your arm. Next!" I mean, yeah, I found a way around it, but the game is still spawning way too many bosses. I got another mission like this recently that had a Paragon Protector in every spawn on the map, minus maybe two or three. And this was a huge map. Even downgraded, with their MoG they just dragged everything out.

I wouldn't turn bosses back on even if they stopped showing up so often, mind you. I like my big crowds of blues and whites. But still, it remains a problem.

Eh, why not? Have the name search feature query all the servers and give you back a list, like:

Freedom: Available
Virtue: Taken
Victory: Taken
Pinnacle: Available
Guardian: Taken
etc.

You can do the same thing manually, anyway, and it might help people. It won't help me, since I pick my server first and my name, like, third, but it might help other people.

Well, as a consequence of this thread, I turned off my bosses (back when I talked about it) and went to -1x3. I'm not sorry I did so. Sure, the bosses themselves are easier, but the actual fights aren't, and I face much fewer interruptions and sudden jumps in difficulty. This is probably the best thing I've done for myself since I started this game, and certainly the best thing I've done for myself this year.

You exaggerate. I've been with the game for over five years now, and a couple of weeks ago, I thought "Hey, why not make a Panda Girl?" And so I did, and I snagged the name Pandala on my first try on the first server where I tried it. It's not in the slightest unique or creative, but I still got it. This has been the case with most of my new characters recently. I don't always get the name on the first try, but if I play around with it, I have a name within 15 minutes.

Getting a good name does not require insider knowledge or unusual skill. It just requires the ability to let go of the one that didn't make it through.

An alien's abilities are natural to him, so there really is no way other than to train those abilities up. Since Natural enhancements, specifically SOs, are all techniques and training, I don't see why not.

That, and enhancements are far more specific than they ought to be. A character with pith power gloves and a utility belt is forced to implant two dozen eyes in his skull, which is completely out of character.

That's as opposed to every Blaster with the pistol powerset using a pair of guns? Or every Scrapper with the Broadsword primary using a sword? Or every Scrapper with the Pyre mastery using fire? In fact, having guns allows you to mix weapons, so every swordsman is no longer JUST a swordsman while still not branching out into elemental powers. I don't believe this argument holds.

Why? I can guarantee you one thing - most of the people who want dual pistols would be perfectly happy to deal with redraw. In fact, precedent already exists. Archery Blasters face redraw when using Munitions powers. And, in fact, any weapons character faces redraw when using anything outside their primary. Eliminating redraw is appreciated, but not required.

There are no existing pistols, therefore nothing for the ancillary to work like. And even if you count the all of three Thugs Masterminds attacks as "existing pistols," there's no reason why it can't work like that. Or do you mean the upcoming Dual Handguns set? Why couldn't it work like that? We don't even know how this is going to work.

Since when is an AT that has the least amount of Epics one that "doesn't need anything at this point?" Really, it's bad form to pull the "cost and workload" argument in a suggestion, because it's so very relative, and because it doesn't actually apply to the merit of HAVING the set, only to the merit of making it.

In name only. "Weapon" mastery has precious little to do with weapons at all. It's Devices Mastery, if anything. It has ninja shurken and Devices power. A handguns epic has nothing at all to do with "Weapon" mastery at all. Scrappers already have something like two dozen "weapon" sets already, and "Weapon" mastery matches not a single one of them.

Only insofar as Dual Handguns have less depth than other Blast sets. Your argument seems to hinge on this (as you mention it twice), yet the very fact that they are adding an entire handgun powerset seems to suggest that the developers do not feel this way. The conceptual and interpretive depth for dual handguns is limited only inasmuch as people's ability to conceive of two-handgun-using characters is, and I dare say two handguns plus a melee weapon is much more liberating than just two handguns on their own. I don't see "just fire" as being any less restricting than "just guns," myself.

That, and if this is a central point in your argument, how does that account for CoV Patron pools, which have precisely ZERO depth to them by design?

I want to step in and say that that's not true in the slightest. Martial Arts was NOT adjusted, it was very much almost entirely reworked, in the process having a FULL animation switched. Almost every attack had its animation time cut more than in half, and not just by shortening the "rooted" timer, but by altering the animations, themselves. Easy example - Crane Kick used to go like this: stance -> wait -> kick -> wait -> recover. Right now, it has no waiting or stance holding, it just goes "stancekickrecover." Even easier example - Storm Kick used to be a flurry of kicks to the face, ending up with a big kick at the end. And it was LOOONG. Longer than Shadow Maul. Right now, it's a jumping spin kick that's incredibly fast.

Now, you mention Katana, but as Katana/Broadsword, which leads me to believe you're thinking of the wrong changes. Back at Launch, Katana shared the EXACT SAME animations as Broadsword. It even had the same power names. I3 came out with a complete reworking of Katana from the ground up, with new animations for ALL attacks. This shortened attack times significantly and gave the set its unique look, but still left it with draw times written in.

The changes you're mentioning weren't anywhere on the level of the Martial Arts changes. All that happened was that the "rooted" time of attacks was altered to extract the draw time from them, meaning that they were faster if your weapon was out and exactly the same if you had to draw it. First of all, animations did not have to change for this, only timers. Second of all, this only affected draw times. Nothing else.

Granted, there are a few exceptions that work to your advantage. Back when draw was being removed from Battle Axe, Beheader and Chop actually switched places. Intitially, BABs just flipped the animations to give the smaller power a faster swing, but then switch the names, as well, to keep them consistent with the animations. That wasn't exactly a big change, but it was a change. Claws were reworked several times, and they DID trade animations. Originally, Swipe had the same animation as Barb Strike (I think, the multiple fast slices) and Strike had the "baseball pitch" attack from alternate Eagles Claws/Stun. Claws WAS reworked. War Mace was seen as underperforming, so BABs fiddled around with its animation times, removing draw, and at some point Clobber became a high-damage attack, but lost most of its stun.

All that is to say that, yes, things CAN change and have changed, but not nearly as much as it seems. And while there is precedent of control-heavy powers being given more damage, it has come at the cost of their hard control.

Which is also bugged at the armpits. Or was on women, last time I checked.

Here on the forums? Most likely.

Ah, this takes me back I remember a couple of games that I just laughed my *** off back in the day:

Wages of Sin: I think me and three of my friends must have spent hundreds of hours playing the same bank map (at least I think it was a bank) that had a bank building, a couple of streets, a couple of rooftops and a sewer. I have laughed so, so much over the stupid things we've done in that game. Like walking through a door and into an explosion. Wages of Sin had this big weapon that made a HUGE explosion. So I'd walk into a set of automatic double doors and DIE. As my camera moves back, it shows a wall of fire from the big weapon entering the buildings. Apparently, someone had shot it outside and I opened the door just in time to let the flame wave in. Oops! Or the time I saved myself from a hoverbike through the ingenious manoeuvre of DICKING IN A CORNER! Apparently, the bike's front was too wide to fit inside the corner from this angle, leaving just enough time for me to stand safe. Not that I could shoot the rider over the windshield, and we were eventually both blown up, but the point remains. Or, hell, panicking, jumping backwards off a rooftop and landing IN AN OPEN MANHOLE. Bonus points for being laughed at by my friend who was chasing me at the time, saying "I dropped down to chase you, but you were gone. Did you fall in the sewer? Ha!" Fun times, and I didn't even win all that much

Wrestle Mania: A buggier game I have not seen, but it was just these bugs that made it so damn fun. When you attacked, you could NEVER be sure who you were actually going to hit. And whenever I swung, I usually hit my team-mate. I played Doink the Clown and he the Bam Bam Bigalo, who had fire powers for some reason. I smashed him with that oversized hammer so many times a friend of mine joked that it must be heat seeking. On the flip side, because the Bigalow's throw had such priority, he'd often toss me clear out of the ring completely by accident. I've seen Yokozuna jump off the ropes butt-first and be intercepted by an uppercut from the Undertaker. I've done a combo on someone when my team-mate just ran in mid-way and I finished the combo on him, laughing too hard to stop punching him in the gut. And even my favourite - my friend just came back inside the ring and got grabbed and tossed by Razor Ramon on the OTHER end of the ring. His response? "Where did he get me from?" like the guy pulled him out of his pocket

Win or lose, when the game is fun enough or, alternatively, just downright funny enough, losing can be as much fun as winning. And maybe I grew up in a time when no-one was really any good at video games, so my basic knowledge of them put me on top, but back in the day games were not serious business. You played them to have fun, kill some stuff, have a few laughs and go home. This... Professional style of gaming is what ruined competitive video games for me, and it first started with Counter Strike. With everyone playing to win, goofing off was just no longer as fun. I'd just die, die, die and accomplish nothing. And MMOs are a big step in the WRONG direction on this one. Instead of constantly playing to win, you're constantly playing to GRIND. Where's the fun gameplay gone? Why is there only work for a reward? And challenge... That's the buzz word around here. All "challenge" means in an MMO is "you must be prepared." The actual encounter counts for very little. Flying by the seat of your pants is probably the MOST counter-MMO thing in today's MMO market.

I just fear games are growing less and less fun and more and more work.

I have two things to say about this. Maybe three, I'll let you know when I say them

Firstly, my own opinion on gear is "I don't like it." Gear, as it has been implemented in almost every RPG, is a source of randomness and chaos. I can't just have THE Fire Sword, I have a random Deadly Sword of the Stars, which may have good stats or bad stats, depending on what the RNG gave me. Granted, most MMOs seem to give "the" epic loot attainable from specific raids, but I've never played high enough to know how that works. The point is, when I play a game, I don't want to have gear that is "just better" or even "the best." I like to have a FINITE selection of gear, all of which has some purpose. If gear upgrades, I like to have a linear progression of upgrades. Sword II is everything Sword I was and more.

Secondly, I just don't like random drops for what they mean. On the one hand, once you get a really good drop, getting another, better drop is exceedingly rare, which leads to a lot of "vendor crap" that you just sift through looking for that one holy grail. On the other hand, what you use is largely a product of luck and chance. Will my sword have health stolen per hit and poison damage, or will it have fire damage and extra mana? I don't know. It's not up to me. It's whatever drops, or whatever my recipe says my weapon should be. In fact, City of Heroes Inventions are a lit like that, and this is why I don't use them. Unlike SOs and Commons, what a Set enhancement does is a crapshot, subject to the whims of whoever it was that designed the set. If I want an enhancement that's Damage/Endurance, I could probably fin one. But if I wanted one that's Stun/Hold? I don't know. I DO know there isn't one of every combination available at every level, so my build is even then controlled by circumstance as much as by me.

Lastly, here's something I thought might be cool. Let's look at a classic item-driven RPG, let's say something like Fallout, because that sort of fits the "modern" theme. Suppose you had a perk called "Favourite Weapon." When you pick it, you are given a weapon of your choice that you made yourself. It's pretty strong, but from this point forward, it is the ONLY weapon you are ever going to be able to use. You can upgrade and enhance your weapon as the game progresses, but you will never be able to fire another weapon at all. This still gives some sense of gear progression (and of the kind I like) but removes the randomness of it (which is a progression I dislike). I'm not sure if this hasn't been done by a game already, but that's usually how I treat my weapons in an RPG, and it's actually what I did with Torchlight - infinitely upgrading the weapons I have instead of replacing them with new ones.

I don't believe it's so much a "killer" thing, because to me the goal of any game has never been to actually win, but rather to make the game look spectacular. I think Benzaie's Let's Play God of War III Demo video is a perfect example of what I DON'T want to see. I was able to watch probably no more than a third of the movie, and shut it down the third time he said "OK, I'm using only this same attack because that's the most efficient." Who the hell cares?!? Efficient for what? Completing the game in the dullest, most banal way possible? Efficient for being bored? Do I REALLY want to complete a game by pressing the same button a couple thousand times and end up with gaming footage that looks like crap?

I play games for the visual flair. If I can put on a good show, I can handle dying. I played my friend in Marvel vs. Capcom, constantly trying to find cooler and flashier ways to fight. Instead of reducing myself to a Street Fighter II mentality and winning by just hitting him with a heavy kick 20 times, I'd always rush in for combos, abuse my supers and try to make use of ALL my special moves, no matter how impractical. Because pressing the attack with a seemingly slow but deceptively fast Jin Saotome just looked so damn cool (and annoyed the hell out of my friend, but that's the name of the game ). He looks so slow, but if you think on your feet and keep him moving, he can be evil. And he's one of the flashiest characters there is, as well, shooting fire even on his regular attacks.

The point is to make the game, in its in-game gameplay, look cool. To my mind, NOTHING can come before that. Not min/maxing, not stats, not gear, NOT EVEN PLOT! It's much easier for me to play a dumb game with cool gameplay and flashy fights than it is for me to play a game with an Oscar-winning script but gameplay which makes me pull out my hair. And that's one big problem with MMOs in general - it's very hard to make them look cool, AND NO-ONE REALLY TRIES any more. City of Heroes is a bit of an exception, because almost every one of our animations is cool, and most of our effects are impressive. Something like WoW, on the other hand, has short, spastic attacks, animations which are basically one set of waving your hands with different colours or the same repeated auto-attack, and effects that are barely even there.

One of these days, it'd be cool to see an MMO that's designed from the ground up to be just cool. Yeah, items. Yeah, stats. Yeah, levels. But holy hell! Did you just see that?!? Oh, many, I wanna' do it again! I actually have a few things to do in City of Heroes to achieve that, but so far this is largely something you can only find in action games.

I log into the game to play a game. If I want to socialise online, I come to the forums. I am highly intolerant of in-game gameplay that has me sitting on my hands with nothing to do BUT make lemonade an socialise. Socialization in the old raid wasn't the intended activity. It was the consequence of a LACK of activity.

Put it this way - reward notwithstanding (I didn't care about Hamidon enhancements anyway), the old Hamidon raid was just a lot of standing around even at the BEST of times. And I'd rather kill stuff than stand around.

Good point. I always forget about colour blind people, probably because colour perception is one of the easiest things to take for granted. I do, however, remember the many times people have asked for a write-up of all the colours with names given, complained that the pink experience bar looks the same as the blue patrol experience bar and so on and so forth.

Largely, colour-blindness-related complaints have been cosmetic. Telling people apart is NOT cosmetic, so going by colour alone is not a good idea. That's even IF we change the name colours system to not be based on the ASCII of the name.

It's the same as in every RPG ever made.

Blackmith: "Thank you, hero, for saving my daughter, defeating the monsters destroying my shop, freeing my wife from the demon who possessed her and clearing out the mines from trolls so that I can get iron again. But don't expect any discounts! I will still sell items at ten times their actual cost and buy them from you for nothing more than pocket change. End of the world or no end of the world, I have a business to run. I'm sure you understand. Now, go hop down that hole into hell and defeat the devil. Good man!"

---

As for the topic at hand, I'm going to say once again that the prices for Vanguard pieces are absurd. It's a costume set. Why do I have to work at it for weeks? The powers I can see, but the costume pieces? I'd say either slash their prices significantly, or bundle them up in the same expensive purchase. 250 for the whole set is still a lot, but reasonable to actually GET on more than one character.

Is it any more weird than a chick named Tex?