Sibilant

Hi,

thanks for all the advice, it is truly appreciated. I don't have a huge budget but I have a much better idea of how to develop him, even if it takes a while.

Grateful regards,

S.

Hi,

I have recently returned to CoH after a 12 month break. I have been having fun running around with my Kat/SR scrapper. He has one full set of Mako's Bite and the rest standard IOs. With his main defenses toggled and the +15% melee/lethal from Divine Avalanche he is already pretty robust in close but suffers from AoE attacks. With all those juicy set bonuses out there, he could be a lot better.

I have had a read of all of the Kat and SR guides I could find, but there wasn't anything recent on kat/SR as a combo.

So, what is the current thinking on the best way of improving a Kat/SR survivability? He is capped melee/lethal without any set bonuses so I assume I should focus on the other positional defenses (Mako's Bite and Red Fortune for Range? Siroccos Dervish x2 for AoE?), and maybe pick up a bit of accuracy along the way? Four-slotting some of his defenses with Luck of the Gambler seems worthwhile, if a bit expensive.

Any advice?

Cheers,

S.

I have recently returned to the game after a 12 month hiaitus. My latest toon is a level 13 AR/Elec blaster, something of a concept character: spy with a silenced rifle plus electrical gadgets for non-lethal takedowns. The combination seems amusing so far, but without any great synergies between the two powersets.

Any thoughts on how to develop this combo in the mid levels? In order to keep to the stealthy concept, I'd like to avoid using the fire-based attacks if possible.

Cheers,

Sibilant

I think that MA has the potential to satisfy three different goals:

1) provide story-rich arcs, with a focus on character, motivation and narrative
2) provide missions with above average rewards for those working their way through the elder game content
3) provide challenges that are tougher than the standard content, to challenge and satisfy the players looking for something fresh in terms of the core action gameplay

Clearly these are not mutually exclusive. I would argue that the farming content takes care of itself (perhaps a bit too successfully). The story content is already catered for, although finding the good stuff isn't always easy and hopefully I15 will help with that. The ability to make tough enemies is already there, but there is no way of rewarding players for taking on the rougher enemies.

Now, it is perfectly fair to argue that the reward for beating the tough foes should be the excitement itself. The problem is that the satisfaction depends on having foes that are just the right level of difficulty. How do you find that content?

Allowing players to add rewards to an arc would give players a chance of "throwing down the gauntlet". It is building on the existing practise of costume contests. Combine player funded rewards with the rating system, and the tough-but-fair content will float to the surface.

Another way of thinking about this is to imagine you are trying to form a team to do some AE missions. "Hi, AE team forming, looking to do some really tough missions. Might take a long time and you might die a lot, but we should find some fun as well". Hmmm... how many takers will you get? Instead, you say "Hi, AE gauntlet team forming, going after a 500K prize. I have a good 4 star gauntlet map."

The idea of having a prize is really a way of flagging this kind of content to the players and to create real incentives for the players to create something that is in the sweet spot of difficulty. If the map is too easy, it will be beaten immediately, and all of the prize rewards will be consumed. It will no longer be a gauntlet map. If it is too hard, it will be rated badly, a big warning sign of "AV ambush" or whatever evil tactics the players invent.

This is not a trivial addition to the game, and I am the first one to admit it creates its own set of issues, but I think there is a genuine interest amongst players to tackle tough and surprising content, but this is undermined by the difficulty of finding it, the ease with which we can make unbeatable enemies and the lack of tangible reward and acknowledgement at the end.

Of course, one of the nice things about suggesting things as a player is that I don't need to worry about the budget, or the technical risks of implementing it, but I still think this is something worth considering. What are the exploits? What would prevent it from delivering on the third type of gameplay? How could it be implemented to make it as robust as possible?

Cheers,

Sib

Hi,

I have been enjoying MA since its release, and even if a lot of the content is a bit rough, there is a core of really satisfying content if you can find it. I have even been levelling a vampire-hunting themed character by just doing vampire arcs. It got me wondering: how do you detect, and reward, good MA content? The interest is both professional and personal: until recently I designed and developed MMOs for a living.

The rating system is a start but it can’t solve everything. As a player, I want to take on tough but fair challenges, but I also want to be rewarded in proportion to the risk, time and skill required to defeat the challenge. I want to beat enemies that have new tricks, but I want to be rewarded for doing so. Perhaps even more importantly, I want to create tough-but-fair content and reward players who beat it.

It got me thinking: would it be good to allow players to spend their own influence or tickets to add a bonus reward for the first team/s to beat their map? Let’s say I spend 500K to add five 100K bonus rewards. That would allow players to search for missions with a reward. There is a bit more at stake, but it also means that as a player, I know that a mission with a reward will be worth the extra risk and effort to beat it.

There would clearly be room for abuse (e.g. a player who makes a mission with a huge reward but filled with unbeatable AVs) but the rating system would give players a chance to vote with their feet. The negative side would be that good missions could get swamped by mission builders with deep pockets, so there would need to be some kind of checks and balances, but there still seems to be some "design goodness" in the idea as a way of luring more players into non-farm MA content. You could easily extend the idea so that players could restrict who can get the rewards e.g. only members of the SG or coalition, which could add a lot of new dynamics to the SG part of the game.

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Sib

Hi,

I am struggling to find the best discussions on the ways we might extend or improve MA so that it works as a storytelling and RP mechanism. I know there has been a lot of discussion about farming, but it seems to me that AE is one of the best implemented features in CoH, but missing a few key features to make it actually work for the more story and socially inclined players.

Any suggestions for threads that I should check out?

Cheers,

Sib

Many thanks for the prompt advice. It is appreciated. I look forward to adding to my meat-shield effectiveness.

Cheers,

Sib

Hi,

I have been playing CoH almost 5 years, but never taken the IO stuff very seriously. I get distracted and make a new character about the time it starts becoming important. I have a much-loved SS/INV tank that I haven't played for a few years that think would be fun to try and boost. I have had a look through the forums and there is a lot of good general advice, but I can't seem to find advice aimed at a SS/INV tank per se.

Can anyone suggest any good player guides, or basic strategies for this powerset combo? I can probably scrape together 70 to 100 million between my various toons to kick-start the process. I tend to play a very traditional "meat shield" tanking role - get aggro and hold it, heavy use of taunt.

Cheers,

Sib