SpittingTrashcan

A while back, my usual gang of cohorts and I tackled an Apex TF. I was on my thoroughly villainous Plant/Elec/Ice Dominator, and we had a pretty decent smattering of melee beef, ranged damage, and team support.

Well, we get down to the last fight with Battle Maiden, after she disappears and reappears, and the blue patches, floaty swords, and swarms of minions start doing what they do - inflicting casualties. Until, at one point, I realize that I, the squishy blasty dominator, am the only one left on the field. Against Battle Maiden, quite a few of her pals, and an endless supply of heat-seeking pointy bits of metal. So, I start dancing. I have a lot of recharge and permadom, so I start throwing Seeds at any large clutch of enemies I see. Immob patches on the swords. Carrion Creepers and Fly Trap summoning as fast as they recharge, just to take some of the heat off. Dropping Sleet patches hither and yon, one finger over the Hibernate button. The whole time bouncing like crazy to keep out of the fire, away from the swords, and out of BM's line of crossbow doom.

Two minutes later, the team's back in action, and I'm still alive.

Oh, and then there was the time I was tanking for a STF, accidentally pulled all 4 lieutenant AVs, and when the team said "run?" I said "nah". We beat 'em.

Let me clarify my stance regarding Trials and leadership.

Any content where:
- At least one person must know what the Right Thing To Do is in advance, and
- That person must accurately convey exactly what that Right Thing To Do is, and
- Everyone else participating must read, understand, and follow what is being said, and
- If any of the above fails to be true for anyone, the result is failure for everyone

... is not content I want to play.

Or to be pithier: if one person can break it, and one person can't fix it, it's not for me.

This has nothing to do with difficulty per se, either. The crucial factor is whether one person's success relies on another person's actions. I don't want to rely on strangers or be relied on by them as part of what is supposed to be entertainment.

I'm not arguing that the trials as constituted shouldn't exist. I'm just laying out why I don't play them, and why I appreciate the forthcoming solo alternative. The open question is whether there are enough players who do enjoy trials to support trials as they increase in number and difficulty, and I don't have an answer to that.

Apparently not yet mentioned in this thread: there is a technical reason why the starting content was revamped. Instances add load to the server. Replacing the instanced missions from the old 1-5 contacts with the new arcs that have fewer instances reduces the server load from the expected influx of Free and Premium players rolling new characters.

As for my personal opinion: the old 1-5 arcs were bad, and the new 1-5 arc is bad. But the new Sewer trial is fun and easy.

Cool villains live by the motto: the means justify the ends.

It's wrong to deface other people's property. But if your wall is going to be vandalized, it's more fun to have it vandalized by Banksy than a random fool tagger.

It's wrong to steal. But if you're going to be robbed, it's more fun to be robbed by Danny Ocean than by your average gun-toting punk.

It's wrong to kill. But if you're going to be killed, better a ninja blowdart than an IED.

I actually play a villain who decided that the best use of his fortune was to be the most entertaining and flamboyant criminal mastermind he could. It's fun! And while he is a narcissistic jerk who does a great deal of harm and absolutely should be stopped, battling him makes for some great stories. Not every villain needs to be that much of a showman, but I think every interesting villain needs to be more than purely evil. The single most dangerous, terrifying villain I have ever played is one who is motivated purely by universal, altruistic love.

By the way, the last I checked, "Justify the Ends" was an available character name on Virtue.

(Also, threads like this is why GG genuinely makes me fear my fellow humans.)

Don't stand in the debuff auras.

There is no mystery here as far as I can see:

1. Street's attacks are unusually fast, so you can deal damage - and consume endurance - faster.
2. Shin Breaker costs more than other comparable attacks. In fact, it has the endurance cost of a 12 second recharge attack, but it's only an 8 second recharge attack. I have PMed Synapse about whether this is WAI and last I heard he was looking at it.

I was just looking over some of the powers in Street Justice and attacks with the same damage and recharge in other sets and noticed something a little odd.

Street Justice - Heavy Blow: 5s recharge, DS 1.16, 6.03 end
Kinetic Melee - Body Blow: 5s recharge, DS 1.16, 5.82 end

Street Justice - Shin Breaker: 8s recharge, DS 1.64, 11.86 end
Broadsword - Hack: 8s recharge, DS 1.64, 8.53 end

At this point, I'm accepting on trust that there's a reason for this. But I'd sure appreciate it if someone with insight into the design of the set could offer an explanation for the additional endurance cost of these attacks. Particularly since Initial Strike and Rib Cracker are on par with other 3 and 6 second recharge attacks, respectively, and Rib Cracker at least has a rare and useful secondary effect.

Again, not complaining, just want to know the reason. No complaints about the set overall.

What I noticed was that his last name means "two eyes". Which, given his eyepatch, is either ironic or a hint that something is not as it seems.

Presented for your consideration:



Arc Name: Albeniz Challenges The World
Arc ID: 523743
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @SPTrashcan
Difficulty Level: Challenging
Synopsis: The notorious international criminal Lubond Albeniz has invited the world's top fighters to a tournament on his private island. But what is he really up to?
Estimated Time to Play: 2 hours or so.

It's a lighthearted classic adventure with an old-school dastardly villain, armies of goons, deathtraps, island fortresses, mad science, and kung fu fighting. What's not to like?

Note that the arc is also designed to be a moderate challenge for soloists and teams. In particular, be careful with higher difficulty settings, as some of the custom factions ramp up in difficulty quite quickly with numbers.

Feedback is, of course, appreciated.

I think the new tutorial is a good beginning of a story - it's dramatic, visually exciting, more pleasurable to play through for me than the prior tutorial, and over quickly. I can see a lot of good stories beginning there. So far, I've been having fun creating characters whose story begins (or begins again) with the bombardment of Galaxy City. When I stop having fun with that, I'll not run the tutorial anymore, as is still an option.

I'll admit that the old tutorial was a better introduction to the realities of the game than the new one is, for better or for worse. Punch some dudes outside. Punch some dudes in an office that makes no architectural sense. Run around a lot. But if you had the choice, why start people off with the game at its least interesting when you can start them off with the game at its most exciting? As I asked a friend who was considering rolling a new character in the days immediately prior to Freedom, "Do you want to beat up sick people in a landfill, or do you want to fight a giant alien monster while everything explodes?"

I have a preference. Yours may differ.

(Is it good at teaching you how to play the game? No. City of Heroes is and always has been terrible at teaching players how to play, and I'm not surprised they still don't get it. Part of the blame lies with the fact that the game is not designed to be teachable; if anything, it is deliberately designed to be unfathomable. And part of the blame lies with the fact that when you ask someone who is paid to know everything about something to teach you about that thing, it is very hard for them to remember what it is like not to know about that thing. Teaching well is not an easy skill. But I digress.)

I can't believe I'm saying this, but OP has a point.

Now that we are buying sets a la carte, people will choose to buy or not buy sets based on the qualities of those sets. To ensure that the most customers possible are happy with what they buy, it does fall upon the devs to provide as complete and accurate information about the product as possible before purchase.

There are many ways that this could be done in the future, as new tech is implemented: allow a character to be built all the way to the registration step with an unpurchased set before requiring purchase to continue, allow characters with unpurchased sets to be created on a test server with the accurate live numbers, or whatever other solution meets the needs of the customers and developers.

However, there is one thing the developers can do right now, with only the tech that is live at this moment: when a new powerset is released, post a list of all the correct in-game names of all the powers for every AT that gets it, so that we can pull up the existing in-game information sheets on those powers. It's not an ideal solution, but it can be done immediately, and I think it should.

I would like to use the "President Marchand's Office" map and place a boss fight in Marchand's office. I have not had any luck in getting this to happen. Instead, my four boss details all appear in the second and third floors of the map, and only generic enemy groups appear on the top floor. Is there any way to make a boss detail appear on the top floor? If not, can anyone suggest an alternative map for an assault on an office building?

Elided much of a larger comment to focus on one relatively trivial detail:

From a business standpoint, the balance point between adherence to an aesthetic and accommodating diverse ideas is the point where adherence to the aesthetic drives away more customers than it draws. Paragon Studios can make reasonable estimates of how much it costs to explore diversity versus expanding on the core aesthetic, but contrary to BrandX's position, I don't think they have as strong a grasp on how much each direction would earn.

I can offer this, though. I can't prove the two are correlated, but I see that mainstream superhero comics continue to hew to their "core aesthetic" as regards their portrayal of women - and I see their audience dwindling.

I'd like Paragon Studios to innovate beyond their source material in this domain. And I would pay actual cash money for any products they offered in this direction. How many others would? Well, they're now in a position to find out. And knowing where their audience wants them to allocate resources, and what products they're interested in, is valuable in and of itself.

I will state this firmly: if PS ever, as an experiment, offers the frequently requested female versions of male-exclusive costume items, or male versions of female-exclusive costume items, and these items have disappointing sales figures, I will not ever ask them to do such a thing again. Nor would they listen to me if I did.