Starsman

I dont think Arcanaville's point is the one you took. Perhaps that deserves a rephracing, though: powers are REbalanced based off datamined player perrformance.

If after a unspecified period of datamining, a set is only seen to "underperform" by ~1% to ~5%, then it may be considered "OK". If they see a huge 20% performance disparity, then they may look deeper and try to find the root of the issue but small discrepancies are expeted.

Note that devs dont balance sets based only on damage, when doing this. They look at many things. We dont know the full list but it's understood that they look heavily at things like speed of reward aquisition (xp/inf/drops,) something that is heavily affected not just by damage output but also by survivability.

A set like Fire may be extremely damage inducing, but also more likely to die often due to no active mitigation. Weapon sets, loaded with knockbacks and knockdowns may do less damage (depending on sets, katana was doing amazingly well last time I checked) but lie way less and suffer no XP Debt slowdowns or hospital travel time. Etc etc.

As far as direct power balancing goes, powers are actually balanced in isolation on how they perform with themselves. The devs dont go out and say "ok so how does a broadsword/regen compare to a martial arts/fire using dark epic pool?". They just say, "lets look at how this set performs relative to this other set".

When you balance powers this way, you do not consider redraw time simply because it's not part of the equation. If redraw time actually hurts performance drastically, it will [not may] be visible in the datamining balance test (I understand they do look at set combinations when datamining.)

The main reason I think it will not need a rebalancing of any set is because redraw time, as annoing as it may be to the min-maxing in this game, it really does not add all that much penalty and removing it wont add that big of a performance boost. It will, at the highest degree of impact, allow sets like Broadsword to leverage epic pools like Gloom more effectively, though.

My understanding is the last time they looked at weaponsets it was that datamined numbers proved the sets were indeed underperforming heavily, due to their insanely slow attacks. Not only was weapon draw removed from intra-set chaining, but many powers also had their animations swaped and recharge times adjusted to balance DPS properly, without breaking the cottage rule. Weapon redraw removal was attempted at the time, since hands were already in the project, but not possible. Since subsequent datamining has not proven drastic issues with the sets, it never got revisited.

If you approach redraw from a balance perspective, you will need to be extremely lucky and find the devs with some free time (wont happen) or really do a comprehensive thesis backed up with heavy numbers displaying a precise point of failure in the balance mechanic, and then the devs will look at their collected data, focus a report on that direction and, should your information match an issue that was not obvious at first, then they may consider looking again at redraw. Mind you, you will need some one to have enough time to look at that.

If you complain, though, about how you feel your character is dong nothing and the game slows down or almost pauses for 2 seconds while redrawing a weapon... thats an easier path. It is not guaranteed to get the devs to do something, but its more likely than any min-maxing arguments. It's also a real issue.

I recall that thread and mentioned it. Also keep in mind, although for us BABs is the most recognizable name working with animation and art in this game, he was never the only one nor the job position he had when he left since the start.

He was not always in a position to even look at this, and, there is also an apparent rare dinamic between BAB and Castle where they would work very tightly together for balancing. His views were exceptionally biased towards balance due to this dynamic.

I am not sure if the current team has such a close dynamic.

Also BABs was also a perfectionist, he refused to do many things just because they did not "transition" as smoothly as he would like them to. Example in hand: Ninja Run stance. From my perspective, It looks perfectly fine for you to attack while in Ninja Run. There is nothing that looks odd.

I personally requested him if it was possible to get a Ninja Stance power that cost no end and would let us keep the stance during combat without any movement bonuses, and he said no because attack animations are not designed to blend properly from such stance. It seems, for him, allowing you to attack at all from the stance was a "necesary evil" and he likely thought the same about eliminating draw animations.

I am dare put money in saying that he did need convincing consider it a problem he should pursue a solution for. That convincing just may had happened inside the company.

Unless anything changed (and a lot has) in the way of thinking from the design team, you are more likely to convince them to accept art clipping with capes and always keep your weapon visible in the character's back than you will be of just making a weapon simply appear out of thin air without any action in the part of the character.

Note that even elemental weapons have a insanely short draw time (that I understand does not benefit from chaining like weaponsets do) where the weapon grows out of your hand.

First note I dont think the devs percieve this big enough of an issue to actually bother doing any elaborate solutions that may take much time, even if just from the power team. However, if done, you can set a fixed damage per second it can allow, and enable it only if this cast forced a redraw in the last .5 seconds.

Let's assume a .9 DS per second, then a 1 second redraw would just result in .9 bonus damage.

Mind you, damage is not the only option. You can add other bonuses tied up to the redraw so it does not feel like a penalty. In fact, the main cases where you are actually forced to redraw are where you must use your defensive set to self heal, so when you are in defensive need and you opted to lower dps to begin with. Like a broadsword/regen scrapper having to heal himself as part of his survival ritual. By picking a weaponset, a regen scrapper suddenly penalizes himself to be survivable.

That kind of situation are the ones that bother me about the "redraw penalty." I dont feel the need to defend a case of min-maxing offense by combining outside attacks like epics, vet rewrds and pool attacks (unless you are talking about blasters attempting to use their secondaries.)

So, for those situations you can in theory tie up all melee weapon set redraws to add a non stackable resistance or hp boost for about 5 to 10 seconds after a redraw. Ranged weapon sets can have a 5 - 10 second hasten effect.

Just examples, point is, the "penalty" of being forced into redraw does not need to (and perhaps should not) necesarely be compensated with replacement damage.

Those don't "bypass" redraw animations, and what I will say now may be drastically wrong so I may need Arcanaville to correct me:

Technically every power can have a "draw" animation. Like when you first activate a melee attack out of melee and you see your character take a new pose and ignite his hands in fire or something like that. These are insanely short animations though and am not even sure if they actually root, but it's the most visible in Fire Sword attacks, where due to the size you can see how the elemental sword grows out of your hand (it does not just pops there.)

That being said, the only way you would be able to get such a treatment for Bow would be if they made Trick Arrow a sort of energy bow that would be able to easily grow out of your hands without much animation work, or if they made a high-tech mechanical bow that extended from a small hand-sized device but using a lot of animation resources.

Given that either approach would require drastic changes to the existing aesthetics of the set, it will just never happen.

You will have to simply convince the devs to either ignore aesthetics and allow weapons to litterally flash out of nowhere (and remember, they dont even do it for elemental weapons,) or convince them to make faster versions of the Bow Draw animation.

Note: It is my understanding that elemental weapons never got any pass through the draw/cast animation splitting process. Even if the elemental draw animation takes .1 second, its' not a 0.1 second you save when it's already out. You will not save any ticks by chaining together elemental weapon attacks. They simply work as all other weapon draw animations used to work. It's irrelevant, though, due to the insanely short time it takes.

-Resistance!!!.....

...to mez effects and debuffs (speed/rcgh/-def)

"Every brutal blow of that huge sword messes with your head, making it harder and harder to cope with everything that comes your way (but damage, 'cos thats would be broken)"


I would like to see more content injected into the game (whole game) that adds more focus on single target damage. At this point my lazy mind thinks on things like random Elite bosses (for teams only) tossed accross maps instead of just big groups just having big bunch of enemies.

Depends how far you take the definition of the word. But if you keep it at "lack of empathy for fellow human beings", then it gets easier. Many (not all) of the actions we consider "evil" are result of lack of empathy.

There are problems, though, since you can train a dehumanization of others. With years of "braiwashing" you can honestly make a person believe others that dont meet certain standards (sometimes that can be "is that me?") are just not human enough to deserve your empathy.

But in theory you can attempt to minimize inherent lack of human empathy.

From my vague understanding on the topic (and endless lecture of a psychiatrist major friend of mine) every single personality trait is based of chemical balances in your brain.

Genetics have a lot ot do with these balances, and in theory, that can mean one thing is tied to the other. There would be very likely no "one gene" that defines such preferences, though. You are as likely to find a "sexuality gene" as you are to like a "chocolate over vanella" gene.

Underage drinking is not seeing as "Evil", its seeing as "Wrong". The logic behind it is that at too young of an age, you are likely to lack the responsability to set your limits. A young irresponsible kid is more likely to get drunk and then hop into a car and run every red light they see.

It is true that you cant easily measure maturity evenly accross all ages, but thats also why the legal drinking age is high, its the "safest" margin that will cover most americans based on... some one's research... or guess.

Anyways, piont is: its not about evil, its about carelesness and potential repercussions.

On a similar grounds: drinking and driving is not evil, its just horribly irresponsible and extremely dangerous for everyone in a considerable large radius of the driver, but not evil.

Just one note: a sociopath does not necesarely goes out on a killing spree. Many researchers put the percentage of sociopath humans between 1%-4%. Even at the lowest 1%, thats a LOT of sociopaths.

Just like the starving man that robs to eat, a smart and educated sociopath that is aware of consequences will likely never go about killing other humans even if he has no symapthy for them. They are very likely to become very successfull businessmen that dont care who suffers in their path to success, though.

I bet Wallstreet, high ranking government positions and the corporate world are all full of a higher than average percentage of sociopaths.

If you think about it, being a sociopath can make you great at business since you dont have to dehumanize "the minions" or the masses to make harsh choices.

You implying he is a regen tanker?!

But seriously, they often seem to paint the walls with his blood no matter if he is alone or in team.

What state? If you want a Calvin and Hobbes collection, go to a commic book store. They are likely to have stuff that B&N themselves will not carry.

If you want a WH40k book, go to a game store, again, you will be blown away by the amount of stuff they carry a B&N wont.

As for books, you can endure a few minutes in a store that does not have the most expensive lighting possible in the world.

Just because you rather go to a bigger brand store, with better light but less inventory in any given category, does not mean its a monopoly.

Despite it's size, B&N has a lot of competition.

It does mean they have a lot of pull with publishers (if they refuse to carry titles you are out of a huge chunk of the market) but there are lots of small chains selling books.

Calling B&N a monopoly is the same as saying Target and Walmart are the only places you can buy your groceries.

Do expect, over time, for B&N's brick presence to fade and slowly turn into a completely internet based business, btw.

Being the only major chain is not the definition of a monopoly. Monopoly would be if you had no alternative to buy books.

Disclaimer: been YEARS since i been out of the comic business.

As far as these chains go, they barely make any money out of American comics. The bulk of their comic based income comes from selling manga books. Those sell insanely and is evident by the amount of floor space they are given over American comics in almost every store. So cutting on DC comics is nowhere near as big as cutting on Stephen King for them.


To be honest, most people that drive to a B&N to buy printed material is very likely wanting to avoid online orders, be it because they like to get their goods the same day they pay, or because they like to browse through pages to see what catches their eyes. It's more likely such a consumer may Google up a nearby comic book shop than go ordering from Amazon.

From a personal stance, I also dislike the exclusivity Kindle Fire deal (even if I am planning to buy one.) Comic books are in too weak of a position right now to fragment eShopping with exclusivity deals anywhere. They should attempt to offer everything in as many digital retailers as possible.

This means Comixology, Kindle, Nook, Zinio and iBooks. They should proactively push their product to these and other digital newstands and not sit waiting for anyone to approach them.

This is more of an issue with writers. As far as character concept and background goes, Wolverine is meant to be deadly and hard to touch. He is a frigging ninja, assassin, and more.

However writers feel that because the guy has heavy regeneration factor, they have to either show it in the story (getting him wounded) or use the character to display gory scenes that have little consequence.

Another fact worth noting is that this AoE formula, although rarely broken in newly implemented sets, is not enforced as strongly as single target attacks.

Foot Stomp is not the only exception to the rule.

For the most part the formula is a useful one to use as leverage while asking for a buff, but not while asking for a nerf.

That being said: why would anyone want to change Super Strength in any way?

I dont think he would see much difference. He can already, without training, do things that go beyond most martial arts disiplines. He has the agility, flexibility and strengt to pull out moves way more extreme than any martial arts can, and his spider sense means there is no such a thing as a "non telegraphic" attack that you can use against him.

In some ways you can say he already practices "spider style school of martial arts" :P

Superman is the one I would love to see get into martial arts. He constantly goes toe to toe with the lkes of Dark Seid who would likely be thrown off by some of the refined moves.

I just came back to the forums recently so definitively missed that threa.

Although I liked the movie timeline best, I guess it makes sense to keep the TV shows in their own timeline separate from the movies. Would make it easier to make movies without worying about what the tv production team is working on, and the other way around.

I would guess a new series would take place in the new timeline from the last movie, but I ponder if they would attempt to use the same cast, or consider them too expensive for the small screen.

The argument against and pro immobs has been so long lasting that I no longer bother commenting on it when people dismiss them. A lot of people hate them, a lot of people love them, and a lot of people miss use them big time.

I am growing used to many pretending they dont exist.