Sorciere
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Huh? Please reread my post, that's NOT what I'm talking about. At all. I have no clue how you come up with this strange notion when I'm talking about a lack of quantity of content to level from 2-5 through missions, and you advise me to avoid more mobs (which will reduce the amount of content even more and exacerbate the problem).Originally Posted by The_Alt_oholic
It's not deficiencies.
Zones are created with villains for you to avoid. This gives you a sense of fear of these enemies and, as you level, thrill of victory when you can finally defeat them.
At the low levels, you will pass by mobs that are both too difficult to fight and ones that you can defeat. Picking an choosing your battles is an important skill to learn.
The game isn't about just running head-first into every encounter and neither is life - regardless of what some may say.
If you take time to be alert about your surroundings and plan things out, you can make it from one mission to another. -
Quote:This is WoW balance now. After every single class was pretty much redesigned from scratch. Repeatedly. It wasn't even remotely like that in WoW 1.0 or even in the first expansion.Originally Posted by Max_zero
This is WoW balance. Does this sound like the kind of game where characters spend large amounts of time be wildly more powerful then other classes?
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Quote:No (especially since most of them are at a level above me where this is ineffective), and even then I'd have to have defeated 33 minions (more if I hadn't completely cleared each mission).Originally Posted by Clouded
Do you fight random critters on the street while you run to/from your missions?
That could be one possible explanation.
Please note that this is not about me. This is not about ways to work around this (I know how to get to level 5 just fine -- these days, if I solo at low levels, I'll generally try to do story arcs in the MA). This is a situation that a new player can find herself in and one that simply should not be allowed to happen. After completing the missions from your initial contact, you should be safely at a level where you can get missions from the next contact, pretty much no matter what. You shouldn't have to work around deficiencies in content design, especially as a new player who doesn't know that they need to be worked around. -
Quote:Note that I am not actually defining what constitutes bad taste and bad manners and am not telling you or anybody else what is good and bad. I actually have a much more optimistic view of human creativity than Theodore Sturgeon, but I don't think that every human being has an inner Rembrandt just waiting to come out, either.Originally Posted by BigFish
Bad taste and bad manners are not hard and fast rules. They are personal opinions, which you are entitled to. But you're throwing them around like you own the place, and that strikes me as 'bad manners' in it's own right
What I'm claiming is that instances of bad taste and bad manners will occur, regardless of what you or I personally think what these constitute. I don't make any specific value judgements here, I'm putting forward a statistical proposition (not quite "90% of everything is crud", as Sturgeon put it, but I'm wagering on a non-zero percentage still).
By the way, I also happen to think that putting up with this is worthwhile because of the many significant benefits the freedom of character customization confers. -
Quote:You may have gotten one of the contacts that actually hand out enough missions for level 5. There's at least one origin (possibly two) where it works out.Originally Posted by Lazarus
Started a new hero last night, I haven't even finished my origin contact and I'm already level 5. No street-sweeping required.
However, consider this. This was with me cleaning out all the missions completely (several had mobs that you could easily skip by accident). -
Quote:No, it isn't. Or rather, neither of those options is "valid". Choosing something for the express purpose to offend is not acceptable, and neither would be me policing what other people do (which would be ineffective, anyway).Originally Posted by BigFish
Their desire to have 'shock-value' is just as valid as your opinion of what makes makes an overall costume 'look good'
There's no policing going in here (nobody has the power to police the costume choices of other players). But the total relativism you advocate is a cop-out, too. Some people put together ugly costumes or color combinations because they don't know better. Some even do so intentionally, because they enjoy the irritation they cause. They still have the freedom to do so. And I have the freedom to say that they lack taste (and in the latter case, good manners, too).Quote:noone here has ever shown me a valid Fashion Police badge yet -
Quote:Yeah, you do have an inherent (and frustrating) problem at the low levels with the D&D-ish design of the game. Still, it's not impossible to overcome: The key problem that you have to overcome is that playing at the low levels needs to be more interesting so that you don't feel the urge to level up as quickly to get past that. Obviously, veterans may still want to skip ahead if they've done it a thousand times, but it would help with giving new players a better starting experience.Originally Posted by Clouded
If I want "interesting content" I'd run the story arcs, not a sewer team/radio missions. I don't think you can have it both ways in the low levels...the pace of leveling up is just too quick.
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Quote:There must be some misunderstanding here, because I've never said anything about judging the game-world rationale behind colorization schemes (or other aspects of character customization), tying them to backstories, or whatever.Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
I know a lot of people in game that doesn't give a damn about back stories for their characters. They play the game because they enjoy the leveling system. Because they enjoy the enemies. They enjoy the Dev created content. They enjoy the ability to customize their outfits. They enjoy the social life. They enjoy all sorts of different things, none of which requires you to give a damn about the reason that your energy blast is green instead of blue (because, you know, energy is blue!... oh wait, no it isn't! energy is every color and no color at the same time, 'cause every single thing in the universe is comprised of energy and nothing but).
I am talking, quite frankly, about players who create the visual equivalent of Vogon poetry. If you look at the particularly weird colorization scheme some players choose for their powers (neon green sonic effects, shocking pink electricity), maybe 1 out of 10 has chosen that scheme because they knew what they were doing. The others will have done so just to be different, to specifically create shock reactions, or because they simply lack the ability to translate a vision of their characters into an actual costume. -
Quote:Exactly my point. If this were interesting content, you'd not be raving about how fast you got PAST it, but what you experienced doing it.Originally Posted by Clouded
I joined a 6 player sewer team over the weekend and it took me less than one hour to hit level 5 once I hit atlas park after making my character and I didn't even do the tutorial.
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Quote:The I16 experience boost, as far as I know, only raised experience from level 5-24. (That is what the official patchnotes say -- I haven't tested it yet myself.)Originally Posted by Mr. NoPants
I thought this was fixed with the I16 exp boost.
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Quote:Which contact would that be? All the 5-10 origin contacts are located in Atlas Park, Galaxy City, or Kings Row, and Montague Castanella shouldn't open up until level 10 (and even if you talk to him earlier, he won't give you missions until level 10).Originally Posted by Tayla Ewa
I actually did try this weekend to start a toon and level without the sewers.. and my scrapper was sent running across Steel Canyon at level 7 to talk to a contact who sent her back across Steel to the other side of the map to try to get through a door with a level 15 mob in front of it..
I didn't say that. In fact, I thought I was pretty clear: I think the current low level game is a mess that needs to be fixed. Consider, for example, that going through the hero-side tutorial and then following your normal origin contacts arcs from level 1, you will for most origins not gain enough XP to get to level 5 without street sweeping. This is a pretty elementary oversight, has been in the game for years, and still hasn't been fixed. Even now, in I16, for some reason they adjusted XP gains for level 5-24 and left out levels 1-4, where they could have fixed that.Quote:this is valuable experience?
But sewer teams are not a solution. They are a stopgap fix. -
Quote:I may be the odd person out here, but I don't really consider sewer teams to be a noticeable improvement over AE farms. I don't consider either to be a valuable location to spend your early levels on.Originally Posted by Tayla Ewa
On Virtue yesterday, I was running through Atlas to a mish and I saw in broadcast..
"Sewer team forming- 4 spots"
It made me smile since it'd been forever since I'd seen a sewer team form. Guess people are starting to trickle back to the real game.
But then, my view has been for a while that the low-level game is in dire need of improvements (both where game mechanics and content are concerned). -
Quote:You can also paint yourself with thick layers of eyeshadow and mascara if you think it's cool. That doesn't mean that other people will think the same. Nobody is stopping you, but your efforts may not necessarily be appreciated and may elicit unfavorable comments. Nobody is infringing on your freedom to make your character and powers look as you want, but that doesn't mean that there are good and bad ways of doing that, and an easy way of getting it wrong is overdoing it, or colorizing something just because you can.Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
My point is mainly, reason be damned if you want. If you think a character looks cool, then that's good enough. It doesn't need to really make sense in reality... this is fantasy and a game, after all.
Eh. It may be relevant at this point to consider that roleplaying existed long before MMORPGs and was largely a non-visual medium (and in this form, still is). I'm really not happy with the sloppy terminology that calls everything that isn't raw game mechanics "roleplaying". Visuals or game lore are aspects that can contribute to a roleplaying experience, but can also be totally separate from it. Warcraft games had lore long before there was either an MMORPG or RPG for the world, and video games, regardless of the genre, have actual graphics instead of stick figures, yet that doesn't mean that you are roleplaying. These very forums allow you to customize your avatar, yet we are not roleplaying here.Quote:They're both intrinsically connected. Somebody that's only playing this game because they like designing outfits and all that fun-jazz (wanna be fashion artist?), isn't necessarily going to CARE why their character is firing hot pink energy blasts. It's when you begin on the path of roleplaying (that doesn't mean hard core RP where you speak in character or do EULA violations in Pocket D in the corner) that you feel the need to develop reasoning's behind your character's actions/appearances/etc. It may not be playing the role, but it is inherently linked to the essence of what roleplaying is.
Personally, I rarely ever roleplay in CoH (I find the environment to be not conducive to creative make-believe games, and prefer tabletop games instead). But I still appreciate the visuals, for completely roleplaying-unrelated reasons. -
Quote:No, but they do lack the verisimilitude of a well made "normal" movie.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
So, what, does that mean that animated and 3D movies are inherently inferior?
I'm saying this as somebody who considers "The Incredibles" to be one of the best superhero movies of our time.
Why can verisimilitude be important in an MMORPG? Basically, to facilitate immersion. It's easier to immerse yourself in a world when it's not too difficult to suspend disbelief. That does not mean that over-the-top characters or power colorizations lack artistic merit (character models based on a Picasso picture would clearly have artistic merit, yet lack verisimilitude), simply that they keep reminding your brain that this is an artificial world. -
Quote:If you want a different analogy: There are good and bad ways to use makeup. And the bad ways can be very bad.Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
IMO, the analogy doesn't really apply too well, as you'd be using the exact same amount of special effects whether or not you have an RP excuse. Sure, having a reason is great, but it's really not required...
That said, to each their own. If somebody wants to look like a clown, that's their prerogative (and, in the case of a certain famous supervillain, it's rather the point).
I'm not sure where the reference to "roleplaying" comes from, though. Roleplaying and a thought-out visual appearance are unrelated concepts in my book. -
Quote:Team/Team, usually.Originally Posted by joshx
What Primary/Secondary is the must OP vs PVE content.
Spelling/Grammar is one of the most powerful vs. RL content, though. -
Personally, I find the story unconvincing. The terrible spelling is overdone and the ending sounds like a variation on the theme of "... and then I saw them coming out of the hospital after I had left the team."
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Quote:Well, looking at Synapse's post, he only said that ticket drops have not been reduced in the MA. That wouldn't by itself seem to preclude that (through a bug, or maybe even intentionally) recipe drop rates have changed.Originally Posted by Ironblade
Drop rates have NOT been adjusted. Synapse said so.
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Quote:Well, my point is that putting together teams is much less of a chore (or "drearily boring", as you put it) now. Somebody has to do it, and if you just rely on others to do it for you, you may be out of luck. There are only so many players willing to form a team, and if that falls significantly below 1/8 of the player population, teaming may just not be in the cards for you. That has little to do with the absolute size of the server population, and a lot with the relative sizes of the server population who are (1) interested in teaming and (2) willing to organize teams. If the relative sizes of (1) and (2) are too far apart, then it becomes a problem.Originally Posted by MasterJediJared
Yes, yes I know how to put together teams. It's also drearily boring to do so for me. It's sorta at a point for me that if in a team-oriented MMORPG I can't readily find teams on the two most populated servers (building or getting invited to one) then what's the point?
There were some MUDs in the 1990s that had minimal populations by modern MMO standards (less than 100), and yet they still had substantial teaming going on, because they had made it easy to form teams. And, in fact, I've sometimes found it easier to find a team on the less populated CoH servers than on the big ones.
In general, if there's a problem with it being too hard to find a team, then that is probably not because of the server size, but because it is too hard to build and maintain a team. I16 took an important step to make that part easier (though I'd still like them to improve upon it, say, through a better LFT/LFM interface, open teams or open slots on teams, etc.). -
Quote:Interesting. My experience is the exact same opposite. Yesterday, I ran Montague Castanella's arc, beginning to end, "The Eternal Nemesis", also beginning to end, on two different servers, and all on teams.Originally Posted by MasterJediJared
I love CoH for teaming. Before issue 15ish I could find teams very quickly and I ran tons of TFs. About half-way through issue 15's life cycle folks started dropping off or did mainly farming. Searching, asking in /b and LFG channels I will run around for two hours now on Virtue and Freedom without finding a team that isn't farming.
SSKing has made putting a team together and maintaining it much easier. It used to be a chore that I did only when unavoidable (and, of course, you still have people not responding to tells even though they're flagged as LFT or not understanding that now they get XP when exemplared), but since I16 it has been a pretty straightforward exercise. Set up your macro (such as: macro query "tell $target, <polite message asking whether they want to join a team with a given objective at a given level>"), use /search to find people with roughly the right powerlevels (e.g., SO level for 40+ content), and invite anybody who is interested. The key difference is really that you can invite just about anybody to just about any team (high levels may have objections exemplaring to very low levels, and really low levels may be ineffective at high levels and high difficulty ratings, but you've still got a LOT of leeway). Augmented by the occasional shout-out in /b, and it's really easy to put together teams now. -
Quote:Yeah, I never quite understood why the word "god" is filtered.Originally Posted by Oliin
Also caught by the filter last time I tried it:
"Oh thank god you saved me!"
Luckily, that's one of the easiest to work around. There are plenty of other phrases that express the same emotion (e.g., "thank goodness"). -
Shrug.
It's not that they can do much about that. You stumble upon it, because you're using individual words in context where they are pretty harmless.
Strung together, all these words could be used to write a steamy BDSM novel.
The servers don't have the natural language parsing ability to tell the difference. -
My forum handle is the name of my first seriously played CoH character, who is an Illusion/Empathy controller. She is basically built based on the concept of a classic white witch, hence the name.
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Quote:Out of curiosity, how exactly does the spawn size setting work on teams?Originally Posted by TBoxer
I've gotten addicted to the +4/x8 difficulty setting on Test. Now to find fellow Tankers on Freedom who want to do the 3rd Respec and/or ITF at +4/x8.
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AoO is a perfectly fine taunt aura these days. Initially, it was weak like RttC, but has since been buffed to the same level as Invincibility. Briefly, while most taunt auras have a 13.5 second duration at level 50, Invincibility and AoO have a 16.875 second duration (25% longer and therefore also 25% stronger). That is perfectly sufficient to hold aggro over everybody who don't have a strong taunt aura of their own (such as Shield/Invulnerability scrappers or non-Energy Aura/Willpower brutes). Against players with strong aggro auras, the issue is generally not that you need a better aggro aura, but that you need to add damage to the mix (the strength of your aggro is proportional to damage caused times the remaining taunt duration on your targets). Shield Charge or your secondary can provide that.
As to whether you "need" Taunt, that is really not a question that can be answered. You rarely "need" anything in CoH. Powers tend to be layered: when you don't have one, another can function as a backup. Having more powers of the same type gives you additional failsafes, whether it's for aggro, buffing, debuffing, damage, or healing. That doesn't mean that any single one of them is "needed".
For example, my Sonic/MM blaster has both Shockwave and Siren's Song for soloing, and in most cases really only needs one or the other. Neither is needed, but it's still useful to have Shockwave for sleep-immune mobs such as robots and Siren's Song for those situations where knockback is ineffective as a mitigation tool (or to drop toggles). Neither one is needed, since in the worst case I could even do without either at the cost of being more careful (and on teams both powers can go untouched for entire missions), but by having both I have multiple layers of defense.
Similarly, Taunt gives you another layer of aggro management. It provides you with more reliable aggro against archvillains (against whom it is auto-hit, unlike taunt auras and Gauntlet), allows you to manage aggro at range (useful for range-tanking when staying in melee is dangerous or when you are snared), an additional aggro boost if you are dealing with scrappers with strong taunt auras, and for certain powersets (Fiery Aura and Dark Armor) an auto-hit aggro tool. Whether these matter to you more than the benefits of other power choices is entirely a judgement call, and different people will make different decisions.