SkeetSkeet

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If you are gaining levels faster than 1 per hour (beyond level 5), it's abuse.


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I've been on plenty of random PUGs that exceeded a level per hour just doing radio missions or whatever random missions. Good teams aren't "abuse"

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Since absolutely NONE of what I just mentioned existed 3.5 years ago much less 5 I want to know what the same OLD grind is. I haven't even Added the new RWZ or Cimeroroa which gave players 35 and up new content and 2 new TFS.

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Based on the player commentary so far, anything beyond auto-50 at character creation is a "grind" that will make them cancel their accounts.

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in 6 months we hopefully will have 2 patches. But perhaps more importantly we will have 6 months of learning what can be done in MA.

Are our arcs now:
about as good as they will be in 6 months?
noticeably worse but not embarrassingly so?
embarrassingly bad?

I am guessing that today's arcs will look embarrassingly bad in 6 months. The best ones may just be noticeably worse.

But I suspect that we will come up with enough tricks and new features that 6 month old MA content will be like playing through the Striga arcs (not another kill all in a boat)

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Embarassingly bad by a mile.

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I have about half a dozen characters that I can't delete due to Anniversary badges, but simply aren't fun to play. I managed to get a Defender (Dark/Dark) that had been stuck in the mid-teens for close to 4 years, to level 37 this weekend. Now she is somewhat interesting to play, still not entirely "fun", but I would like to get her to 50 for another tick towards the goal of getting a 50 of each AT.

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All the things you talk about as game goals are also things you say aren't fun or involve characters you don't enjoy playing. You might do well to Costanza your gameplay for a month and go with the opposite of whatever your instincts are.

One difference not mentioned so far, the hero heavy is very vulnerable to knockdown, with a very lenghty climb to its feet animation. The villain heavy has the arachnos spider knockdown animation which for practical purposes means it ignores knockdown.

In either case, the heavy mez, like all the npc mez in pvp now is just stupid. Thanks devs.

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I beg to differ. 2 or 3 stars I'd agree, but there are too many confessed preference, difficulty and theme one star bandits going around to mark that up to bad arcs.

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Preference... difficulty... theme... all sound like good things to consider for a subjective rating.

Creating worthwhile, fun content is harder than it looks. A lot of stuff is getting one-starred because it's simply not very good.

Issue 13 pvp has marginalized inspirations. This is a win.

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I think it is fair to say that the devs in this game do a good job overall, but they have no direct competition and they are still only able to garner approx 200k subs? When they have two direct competitors that are shiny,new, and participating in active marketing, the cox team is going to have to step it up another 10+ notches.

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If the fantasy genre is any indicator, the most likely outcome is the market will be elastic enough to accommodate all three games. The established games all continue to exist and be developed even as newcomers elbow their way into the space. Even the 800 lb gorilla of WoW didn't cause the extinction of existing fantasy MMOs. An MMO with an established subscriber base that paid off the initial development/launch costs is extremely hard to kill.

Should times prove too tough to support all three, the risk of one of the new games falling by the wayside is far higher than for the established one.

If history is any guide, some version of "going rogue" absolutely will happen at some point.

It's vastly cheaper to recycle (or, to drink the koolaid, I could say proliferate) existing content than it is to make anything new. It happened with costume pieces. It happened with powerset recycling. It is reflected in the lack of new hero-only or villain-only zones.

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So, that’s the background. There is no other solution that we are currently able to implement at this time.

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You could implement the status quo. Somehow we've gotten by for almost five years now with the players being pretty happy with it. Now it's a crisis demanding a change? Not just a change but a detrimental change.

You're not improving the game with this change. If you need some constructive ideas to fill your time with, every single AT forum on these boards has lists of things that really are broken and can be addressed without nerfs. How about knocking that stuff out instead of throwing yet another "it's for your own good even though it's detrimental" spin job at us.

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what's a countermeasure to elude besides pff and run like a [censored]?

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Debuffs can bring you hit rolls at least out of "don't bother" territory against elude.

I've never seen a roll with more than a 7 or 8 percent chance against even a heavily debuffed dom in pff.

Elude is strong but the countermeasures are at least somewhat within reason and spread across a wide range of powers, sets and ATs. One can argue whether it's balanced properly but it's definitely not broken to the point of being retarded.

PFF = retarded.

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Hi,

I'm not new to the game, but very new to PvP. I decided to take out my Storm/Energy Defender to RV tonight to see what the I13 changes were like.

I didn't expect to be able to take out anyone, but I did assume that my full set of Dark Watcher's Despair in Hurricane would debuff enough to shield me from a lot of unbuffed melee attacks. Did not. :P I was also a little freaked out that Hurricane suppressed my travel powers including Teleport.

How do other Stormies play in PvP? What are some strategies?


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As others have pointed out, storm is greatly diminished but still playable in i13. Don't expect to be able to run around solo handing out heads--not going to happen. As close support though, you can still bring a lot to the table.

Having the energy secondary, take power push as your main knockback tool, skipping gale. A well-timed knockback is great for stopping runners and often the only way you can get an opportunity to land a freezing rain.

The energy attack chain may only be defender dmg but against a debuffed or damaged target it can close the deal so don't skimp on the single target attacks.

You'll get AS'd through hurricane like it's not even there so get used to staying on the move.


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Uhm.... also as a general PvP etiquette question, is it taboo to utilize the NPCs in the zone to your advantage? I started a fight near a group of Longbow and the person seemed very upset about it.

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Someone will always be complaining about something in pvp zones. Do what you want, when you want and have fun.

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He is right, but wrong. Defense in large amounts isn't OP. Elusivity though is.

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High amounts of defense is still powerful because tohit caps at 30%. Admittedly it's with the addition of elusivity that it becomes a problem, but if you can get a lot of defense build up, it becomes meaningful.

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The same DR that stops you from getting a lot of to-hit stops you from getting a lot of defense.

Overall my experience in i13 pvp has been positive.

The changes to mez were fantastic. Lockdown mez never, ever contributed anything positive to pvp and it's a much better system now.

TA was a set that people said was doomed. They were wrong. Both from the controller and defender sides I've had better success closing the deal for kills than in i12. Even with slows taken out of the game, stapling people to the ground and debuffing them still gets them killed.

Empathy was another set the crowd was wrong on. It plays differently now but overall still useful. Healing takes more strategy and buffs aren't as strong but the presence of an empath still incites the other side to cry "unfair" as much a it ever did. People who completely ignored their secondaries are going to have to go back to the drawing board. This is an improvement.

Blasters are much more balanced on the whole now.

I've got a couple bones to pick on the negative side but that's for another thread.

Selectable maps
Cross-server PvP
/pvpcount

These three have my vote.

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O2 boost and steamy mist protect the team more than they protect you. The stealth component of steamy mist (which, conveniently, extends about as far as the perimeter of mist--for teammate coverage--and is good for about the radius of the mist, meaning, as long as something is outside the mist and has a typical vision range, it won't see you. Rikti drones, and snipers, obviously, having longer vision range, and this rule of thumb doesn't hold true for them. Perception adjustments also complicate this).

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Steamy mist really needs to be called out for some attention here. For starters, the benefits apply equally to you and teammates. If anything it is more useful to you since you're the only one guaranteed to always be in range of it.

Completely omitted from the discussion are the benefits it provides on top of stealth. Resist to fire/cold/energy is highly useful covers a broad swath of the incoming damage vs a variety of npcs. Slotted for resist, it takes a noticable bite out of those dmg numbers.

Steamy mist also grants you a small amount of defense. Taken alone it's not that significant but if you're getting defense from other sources it all adds up and on top of -acc from hurricane makes you that much more untouchable.

Taken together, the stealth, resist and def from steamy mist give you great bang for the buck even if you're solo and the benefits just multiply as you add teammates.

In two years of play I've done probably 80% or more of it in pick up groups. I like the variety and unpredictability of it. Sometimes the surprises are bad ones but mostly it's pleasant things like meeting cool people, seeing toons built and played in ways you hadn't seen before, etc.

When I put together a pug, which I have done a lot in building my latest defender, I only a couple sensible guidelines--not rules because there is enough flexibility in the game to succeed in a lot of different ways, no rules! When followed the groups have always been good to excellent.

1- Keep the level spread tight. After everyone is exempted or sk'd as appropriate the highest level person in the group should be no more than two levels above the lowest. PUGs work best when everyone is high enough to contribute and nobody is so high enough to eliminate the challenge.

Dead weight kills PUGs.

2- Balance the ATs. A PUG is like a basketball team. A well-rounded one will have forwards (scrappers, blasters), a center (tanker) and guards (controllers, defenders). A proper mix of forwards and guards will ensure a good team. Throw in a quality center and you might contend for a trophy. The larger your team, the more important this principle becomes. Don't lose sight of balance as your grow from duo to eight-man juggernaut.

There are no required powersets or ATs.