Silverblade_NA

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I've seen a lot of posts from you about how you want us to play the game.

You really, really, want to think carefully about forcing the players to your vision.

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Lets clear something up here. Statesman is not trying to make players play the game how he wants. He's making the game into what HE wants and players have the option to take it or leave it, its been like that since launch. If you read the PCGamer UK interview several months ago you'd realise that Jack Emmett is infact very very unimpressed with the games industry in general.

No innovation, no attempt to break the mould and whats more is that alot of these development teams are making sub-standard games because they aren't enjoying or have a passion for their work. Why don't they have a passion? Because they're not making the games that they themselves want to see.

Passion for your work is what drives you. It means you strive for excellence not because you're paid by the hour but because YOU WANT something polished because YOU want it. Jack is making the game as he wants it to be, he likes risk vs reward. He doesn't like games which let you powerlevel through the content.

Ultimately the game is better because of it, the fact that CoX is in the top 3 best MMOs on the market shows that his way of doing things works. Whats more he's not making any kind of mistake because his vision of the game has no changed for the past 12 months and more. If CoX was going to fail, it would have done so by now.

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Watch the date, Tal_N. Archon pulled some thread necromancy.

Isn't he a contact in the hollows?

Pat yourself on the back just for being Mattman, and making this thread.

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Also note that one of Statesman's greatest nemesis is... ahem... Nemesis, the 'Persian Prince of Automatons'.

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Prussian! Not Persian! There's a few hundred miles and two millenia between these two!

Destroyable Buildings?!

AEGIS phy ... what?

<------ Check location. Don't receive the comic.

But thanks for the info. That makes a whole lot of things a whole lot clearer.

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Synapse is definitely a blaster. Keep in mind that the Signature Characters all have Signature Powers that may fall outside their normal power sets. The power to call Zeus' Lighning reflected on Statesman's Heroclix figure and Sister Psyche's Mindriding ability (the power to bounce her mind into someone elses body) are good examples of this. You will see these fairly often in our videos, comics and other licensed properties.

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Zeus' Lightning?

How'd States get a hold of that? Cole ventured "to the far east" and "unlocked his inner will" IIRC.

Weilding Zeus' Lightning seemingly breaks with that theme. What connection does States have to the greek pantheon now?

Just curious. Statesman was always so non-magic and non-"demigod" - he's a "natural" hero, something that makes the CoH universe unique in itself.

Or is he really a descendant of one of the greek pantheons deities, thus a "natural" (just like aliens) - which would make sense given Satesman's (designer this time) obsession with history and his pet theory of superheroes being the modern equivalent of mythical heroes.

Would also explain the helmet/mask - it kinda "breaks" with his costume too.

Which is it Manticore?

You wouldn't want that. Toggle powers (like *many* defenses) have a recharge, too.

If they get knocked off for whatever reason when rage has just run out, it can take ages to get them back up....

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FYI Hasten does not completely halve recharge times - it gives recharge times a divisor of 1.7. So essentially an attack that does 100 damage and a 10 second recharge timer will do 1000 damage over the course of a 100 seconds on its own, 1700 damage with hasten and 1800 damage with rage (assuming you aren't running rage + hasten together).

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Yes, but it does with Damage enhancements included. A Power with 3 damage SOs still gets the full 1.7 multiplier, whereas Rage just adds to base damage, not enhanced damage.

Especially as Hasten is superior to Rage in damage gain.

Hasten almost halves recharge time, and thus almost *doubles* DPS (enhanced damage that is, not just base damage!). Rage raises base damage by 80%, ignoring Damage enhancements. Depending on slotting, the net gain of Rage is far smaller than Hasten's in terms of DPS.

Complete End drain at the end will make the power even less useable for the casuals.

A complete end drain will cause people to stand around, waiting for the crash. That's a minute of standing around doing nothing, and waiting for the end bar to rebuild afterwards. IOW, a whole lot of waiting.

I don't think that rage will be used often that way.

Just halve the duration (or bring down by 2/3rds), and lose the end drain at the end with a little smaller activation cost than Buildup. Then it would be more akin to Buildup and the like, a bit weaker in the boost, but longer in duration to compensate.

Seems fair, imho, less immediate gain than Buildup, catches up and outstrips it later. Just like every other damage power works - a minor damage power *will* outstrip a high/superior/extreme level damage power over time.

OK, applied.

Although I wonder what exactly needs beta testing.... The game itself will be the same, right? Just the servers will be different?

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....as if they were almost grateful to me for bringing them in. I tell you this: something has them spooked.

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/em sigh

Ok, what did they break *this* time? I somehow find myself saving 5th column from their own masterplans as much as I arrest them. Pffwt.

They should retire from villain-dom. They're just not up to the job.

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Then the perception needs to change. If it's stronger, it's stronger. The perception is where the problem is, not in the proposed change.

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No it's not the perception where the problem is, cause the perception *is* the game.

Because of things like this, Levels in a game will never be any more than a crutch. This whole discussion wouldn't happen if "power" wasn't measured on this arbitrary scale - and *must at all times be preserved*.

Up to now, the "overscaling" of the heroes relative to the mobs did a nice job to play down the shortcomings of the level system. If the paradigm 3 minions : 1 hero is held to no matter what the cost, that's no longer the case. People start to "perceive" their heroes differently and many might have less fun ultimately.

Also, the level scaling in CoH makes little sense - a level 6 hero could take on level 4 hellions safely, level 6 hellions with some risk, level 8 hellions with great risk, and level 10 hellions with no chance. And all the time, each hellion punches, shoots and swings just like the next hellion. There's your perception.

Nothing makes the level 10 hellion more "special" or "different" than the level 4 one.

This is true for every faction of course, across all levles, cause we're deadlocked in the -2 level to +4 level range to earn XP at all. *This* is what people see, this range is their "relative challenge" from their viewpoint. The true level difference at level 38 to the level 1 hellion is meaningless subjectively.

Level is what gets you new powers, con color is the "threat" or "challenge". Once you're able to move up this subjective *challenge* level (NOT the level difference!) is when you feel like making progress.

Kind of high-horseish to demand everyone's perception to change, cause you see it differently....

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But the mobs you're fighting one year after day 1 are far more powerful than the mobs you were fighting on day 1.

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Says the level. And level only. Not the sheer number of mobs around the character.

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Go back and fight the mobs you were fighting on day 1, and you can wade through them like they were nothing. Why? Because YOU ARE MORE POWERFUL.

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Yeah - WAY more powerful. At level 35, level 1 hellions fall over if I sneeze at them. That's not the case with even con mobs, and I don't see what's wrong with being able to take on a greater number of same level mobs - makes the fight more "dynamic" imho.

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I don't get why being able to take down hugely powerful mobs compared to what you were fighting when you started out isn't enough to make you feel more powerful. Why does taking out 10 mobs make you feel more powerful than taking down 2 that are each 5 times as powerful as any single one of the previous 10?

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Cause it's cooler?

Maybe only psychology is at work here - anything that has a number (level) lower than your own is by definition "weaker". Anything with a higher number is by definition "stronger". Doesn't really matter whether it's actually a true "weaker"/"stronger" or not - the perception is what makes the difference.

And you perceive this seemingly different than me....

But why not let the 3:1 ratio scale up somewhat?

The manual says (yeah i know, it's the manual, so old news - and I'm paraphrasing): "[The number of minions] you can take on solo rises with level."

And I personally thought this made a lot of sense. It's fun too - but mission design is heavily biased to the 2 minion, 1 lt. + 1 minion, 1 lt. + 2 minions, 2, 3, 4 minions. If a hero can fight 15 at once - heck, let him fight 15 at once. It's fun dangit! and "heroic"!

*Heavy* Emphasis is on *fight* not annihilate in 10 seconds, mind you.

Being locked into the 3:1 ratio your entire career doesn't seem very heroic, imho.

Maybe introduce a rank between boss and lieutenant - or one above boss and below archvillain/monster, especially for the higher levels.

IMHO, there's nothing wrong with taking on armies of minions - as the LotR movies proved - cause it's just "epic".

Locking people into the 3:1 ratio destroys the feel of progressing, imho.

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Mebbe when the self-buff damage nears peak, there could be some screen shake, similar to the effect of a Stone tanker attack ...

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Quoted this cause I love it - the longer the fight takes the more it goes

*boom* - *Boom* - *BOOM* - *BOOM* - *WHAM!*

That would rock. The screen.

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Statistics is not the same as hard data.

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?? What's "hard data" as you understand it?

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There are alot of random factors involved.

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Which makes the use of statistics so essential....

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A Tanker who is acting as a groups tank standing immobilized using provoke is going to do alot less damage then a Scrapper running around doing as much damage as he can, even if they actualy did the same damage else. So statistics cant be used to prove much here.

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A tanker being rooted is doing less damage *statistically*. You're confusing "potential damage" with "effective damage" here.

Potential damage can be claculated easily (as in DPS = (Damage of a power)/(Recharge Time in Seconds).

Effective Damage is much harder to nail down, and you *need* statistics to find it.

I'm having a mjor deja-vu to about 2 months ago?

"Statistics can't prove anything"? Uh - what?

This sounds absolutely awesome...

Will you quit quitting this discussion now?!

How'sabout waiting for the change being announced, and then deciding what to do? After all the posting you've done here it's kind of a waste to lose you in this...

Everytime he responds, he makes me feel bad for critisizing the Tanker AT so much.

Errr... yay?

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Honestly, I’ll have to see how it goes. Not having Unyielding Stance in the 40-50 game may require me to change my tactics, or rely on the abilities of my group members more. If the only way I can do it is by picking up Unyielding Stance, then this is a broken game in my opinion.


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That's what Krunch has been saying for some time now. In a broader sense, sure, but still.

Yep, but we *pay* for a PBAoE. The endurance cost is higher because it is a full 360° "attack".

Thus I'd say make it a short range cone with damage and knockback, similar to buckshot, gale or shockwave. Since you create the "blast" in front of your body a cone makes more sense anyway, your own body is in the way behind it. Lower end cost to that of a "true" cone attack.