Stormfront_NA

[QUOTE=Thirty-Seven;3241290]And what metric do you propose? I can't imagine there is one that is "fair" and would please everyone.


I suspect you have a less than optimal grasp of the meaning of that word.[/QUO

You have a good question, not sure the need to add insult is needed to give validity to your statement...

There are several ways at looking at how merits can be awarded, with out being time based, after all, it is the final product that matters and not the time it took to accomplish it. For example if you were to tell a painter you pay him by the hour instead by the job, you can reasonably expect the painter to take his time... Consider you go to a hamburger joint, and the price of the burger is based on how long it took to prepare, they guy before you has a shar p cook who gets on it right away, and the other members of the staff prepares the condiments, bunns as the cook fries the meat, in mere minutes the burger is completed, placed in a platter with fries and given to you. When your turn to get the same burger happens, there is a crew shift, and the cook is more interested in hitting on the new cashier, the other staff preparing the condiments are joking and horsing with each other, and eventually your burger is put together and given to you. Do you really think it is appropriate that you should pay twice as much more than the guy in front of you, because it took twice as long for you to get your hamburger? Or conversely, just because the staff worked hard and did it in half the time, they should only be paid half for their work?

So the question to ponder on, is what activities is worth what...

1. Completing a complex mission in a TF: 1 Merit
A complex mission is your normal defeat boss and get some clikies or rescue somebody along the way. These may be the good ole kill all or one that has several objectives along with the defeat boss.

2. Glowie or Ghostable Missions in a TF: 1 Merit per 3 Ghost Missions
Getting clickables is not always easy, some are actually guarded, but then you don't have to clear the map either.

3. Hunts, Patrols and Take something to contact or talk to Somebody: 0 merits, these are unchallenging and are simple time sinks.

4. Defeat Boss Missions in TFs: 1 Merit per 2 Missions
These can be ghosted, yet normally these bosses are in complex rooms and you wind up defeating over half the map anyway. Thus 2 defeat bosses would be roughly the same as one kill all.

5. Ambushes in TFs: 1 Merit per 2 Ambushes experienced
This number could be tweaked, depending onthe nature of the ambush. For instance, if the ambush spawns away from you, thus giving you time to prepare its not worth the same as one that spawns instananeously a top of you. I would suggest for the insta, on your face type ambushes a rate of 2 to 1 to be fair; while those that are defensible perhaps a rate of 4 to 1.

6. Defeating an AV in TF: 1 Merit per AV defeat
TFs or threads with multiple AVS would receive 1 Merit per AV defeated. A merit multiplier for the defeat would be applied when facing multiple AVs at a time, the multiplier is simply the number of Avs confronted at a time. For intance in an ITF, the third mission you square off with both Requiem and Romulus, thus a multiplier of 2, hence that particular mission would be worth 4 merits for the combo Requiem-Romulus, and since it was a complex mission with several generals to take out, its worth 1 more Merit; Also this mission has about 7 ambushes 1 per general and 1 per arch; these ambushes are not quite on your face, yet they are not one you could easily prepare for them either; they are kinda in the middle, so would use 1 merit per 3 ambushes, hence 2 merits due to ambushes. Thus this mission alone is worth 7 merits.

7. If a TF, you may want to give a merit or more based on TF length, short 4 mission = 1 merit, medium, 8 missions = 2, Long, 12 missions = 3, extra long, 16 missions = 4, and would add a bonus merit for each added 4 missions.


So finally just tally all the merits per mission and the TF/SF/Thread bonus, and presto you got a value which is free of time dependency.

Stormy

Ps: This is only a potential way to go about this

I just give up, some of us can't see the forest for the trees...

Stormy

Mmm...


Lets relook at this...

I suggested, that at the worse, and underwater setting could be used as a means to add challenge to a game, many do complain about being too easy.

Then I suggested for each power that could be negatively affected, a simple work around could be exacted, such as a force bubble (that you could get at any friendly agent station, a recipe for a temp power), the force bubble could be identical to the bubble already placed around you during the Terra Volta trial (no new extensive coding), thus with that it puts an end to the costume and power look massive change lame excuse against underwater. Same force bubble, by some form of fancy osmosis removes the co2 from within your bubble and exchanges it with fresh air from the water...

Let me see, oh yes fire does not work underwater, and electricity dissipates underwater, any other Newtonian smart excuses there? Mmm, my powers are magical, the same magic that gives me my powers ensures they work just as well underwater. Mmm, I am technology, the quantum field that polarises the air between me and my target, polirizes the water instead... As I said, if we want to be exclusively negative, that is easy, all you have to do is say anything, stretch an interpretation and add sarcasm or insults to make your point valid. Why not accept the challenge, and be positive? Why not suggest ways of making something possible?

Now please don't get me wrong, with any new idea or concept, there always are issues or difficulties that needs addressing. I do agree it is a good thing to identify these as early as possible, its sensible. But from that point is where I depart in opinion with many of you, simply stating there is a problem, therefore its a bad idea, I give up! In fact many, simply do not even judge the idea's worth for itself, we seem to easily be blinded by mechanics that we automatically give the idea a thumbs down with out even thinking the meaning of the idea. Let me try to clarify, what I am trying to say, a player may suggest "let me choose the colors of my powers", folks imemdiately realizes that the work load for the devs to do just this simple thing is huge, so as a result, we imemdiately judge the suggestion to be bad, dumb, come up with all kind of negative judgements and sarcasm - while all along we never stopepd and thought "hey it would be cool if we could colorize our powers". If you all search the suggestion archives, you will find such a suggetion, and you will also find all the thumbs down it received and the loads of sarcasm the various suggesting authors received.

If we look at the postings above, many have valid points with regards to things to watch out for, but precious few deals with how to handle those concerns; instead of solving problems, we fall back into ridicule and sarcasm.

Let me take one of our posters above, say Penny, while she is not consistent, I seen her post many positive comments to ideas. Her note worthy posts, begins by describing the weakness or flaw with the suggestion, but what sets her apart, is that she actually suggest a way to ovecome that flaw and accomplish the intent the suggestion poster was after. She had an intellectually sound foundation, and had no need to resource to ridicule or sarcasm to give her thoughts credibility. We all could learn from that practice.

So once more,please re-look a the suggestion, and this time a bit of objective thinking on the idea itself would be greatly appreciated, and yes it can be followed by your perceived weaknesses or faults; but do challenge yourself to also come up with ways that they can be solved...

Stormy

Mmm...

I see the large number of folks simply saying "no" because of their perceived mechanical causes; their ample programming experience, and personal relationships with the devs.

So I guess, no underwater adventures forcoming...

Something I do find ironic, is how often I see the posts of people bragging how ubber they are, and how much they wish the could be challenged. Underwater may actually provide such an across the board challenge by having certain powers degraded or perhaps not even working; but I guess those wanting challenge, as long as the challege is limited to spam status effects, its ok.

With regards to BaBs statement, perhaps he does need to be let go. Other games have gone thru such a transition quite effectively and dramatically, such as Dark Age of Camelot, so its not like we are talking about an impossible task, with excessive work to do. You know a little use of Grey Matter could circumvent a lot the issues with regards of being underwater; for instance a magical or device force field which keeps an air bubble about you, would simply eliminate the need to redesign all the costume textures (red bubble at terra volta reactor), a magical aura or a new "quantum" field could allow powers to operate udnerwater...I guess when it comes down to it, if one wants to simply be negative about things, its easy, takes little effort as opposed to being open minded and trying to do new things, and despite that those things may have baggage of their own, if positive minded, one can find practical ways to get around those difficulties.


Stormy

Indeed you folks were right about bosses and tips...

I needed to kill fake nemesis for the badge, so I went to PI and harvested Fakes for the tips, and I mean harvested, I only killed fakes, giggles...

By the time I killed about 5 or 7 of them, I had all 3 tips in the bag...

Hugs

Stormy

Mmmm...

I remember long ago asking for this, and other players wanting it as well, but after all these years nothing ahs happened.

I remember being teased over the new game engine that would allow for underwater adventures to take place, after all when the new game engine and Cimerora were introduced a teaser cave section has a pool where you could actually swim underwater!

Thus I thought, that was a pre-cursor to what wonderful things were to come!

Well? I am waiting...

I just can't wait to see underwater adventures at Independence Port, Talos, Peregrine Island, and just about all the zones in red side.

At the worst, just have some TF mission entrances underwater...

Hugs

Stormy

Can you imagine taking on Lusca underwater?

Hi!

Being the shop-aholic that I am, and they way I look is so important to me, after all why be a hero or Villain if you can't look good while doing your thing?

So I thought, would it not be really nifty, if the devs created some form of wearable jewelry (medals come to mind) or very special costume pieces that can only be acquired through alignment merits?

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

I am sure most of us have "Game Mastered" one time or another, and often we would modify the game's rules; thus the age old practice of house rules.

I have found a veritable challenge when trying to make things real and yet keep the game playable and enjoyable.

Some games, approaches quite a great deal of realism and detail, and a single fight takes hours because we have a thousand and one charts to go through... At the end, the game is hardly played, because not only was it too real, it was too slow! Then you have the oppsite end of the spectrum, all playability, but so fake the content feels odd or contrived. So where would this happy in middle would be? That varies from playing group to playing group.

In the case of CoH, ha ha ha, it does not make sense for baddies to run when engaged, with a few notable exceptions. The main reason they should not run is for playability, higher playability = fun, less playability = tedium = less fun.

I did mention notable exceptions, now, did I? Here is one, it is a reasonable AI tactic to go to the closest mob group of its own alignment for re-enforcements, That is a Skull would run towards another group of Skulls, kinda have her tell the other group what is happening and get them to return with him. It would be stupid! if the Skull ran towards the Hellions a rival gang.

In general for playability purposes, mob groups should be amply spaced and not placed next to each other as if holding hands. A mob out of the group, when the group gets pounded would run towards a friendly faction mob group for re-enforcements and bring such re-enforcements with her. The go get help mob should be a minion taking the message, not a LT or Boss who is directing and leading the battle.

But perhaps the mob running, has little to do with realism and more with developer attitudes. lately I have seen a notable increase of player received "grief" like attitudes given by likely a small group of developers. For instance you may have noticed that TF entrance missions have been changed to randomly be increased to be at far end hazard zones, higher use of the long rectangular maps such as sky,ip, and steel, and it so happen the actual entrance is as far away as possible from the logical entry point to the zone; another form of grief is the noticeably increased to SS and Flight drift; and we go on. Some mentally challenged individual may find this forms of grief to be excusable as "challenge", but the truth is its not challenge is tedium and annoyance.

In someways, I wish the devs would simply stop wasting time in such endeavors and spend more time fixing broken stuff.

Stormy

Mmm...

I have noted this in forums in the past, but I do not believe accuracy has been tempered with, but actually I suggest you actually have your chat screen display your combat rolls. I have noticed from time to time, my "random" number generator tends to get stuck in a relative range; I especially hate it when it seems to get stuck exclusively rolling between 90 and 100. And to add insult over injury the attacking mobs are also stuck rolling between 1 and 25...

While this aberrations do happen, its not frequent and are quite rare. When I see the so called random number generator mis-behave; I simply log out of the game and call it a night. By next day, it will be better...

Stormy

Ps: Of course the aberration has work for me as well, and I must confess to milking it.

Mmm...


I love Penny's idea, it seem simple to do as well,if its outside the map, its defeated. The only reason I placed this post was to deal with mobs defectively placed, and Penny's idea is a rather elegant solution to the problem.

Stormy

Hi:

I know that the core subject of this thread has been addressed before, yet I believe it needs to be re-looked at some.

Long ago, there was a pretty good crowd for a number of reasons, some good , some bad, that kept suggesting to do away with kill all missions.

The developers at one time, actually did take them away, and then brought them back in different sizes and flavors. Thus creating mini kill alls, for instance, it could be just the boss, or kill the boss with spawn with him, kill the boss with all spawns in tiny room, to the kill boss, friends and family rooms. Which in a way were forms of compromises to the player demand against kill alls.

Personally, there is one reason, I dislike and oppose "kill alls", and all of us have experienced it at one time or another: "Miss Spawn"

A miss spawn is when a mob is formed below the floor, inside a wall, or what not, and it is simply unfindable and unkillable. Even after all the otehr mobs have been killed, and the location of the last mob is highlighted for you.

Incidentally, the reveal the location of the last mob, is actually an effort by the devs to deal with some of the arguments of the stop-kill-all player base. Unfortunately, having a mob location that you can not engage, is not of much help.

When you get the "bad spawn", you have 2 options; contact a GM and hope you get lucky and get support before your team disintegrates; or have everyone log out of the game, and come back so the mission respawns in the case of a TF/SF. While either can be by some considered perfectly reasonable and acceptable, I bet others find it annoying and would wish for a better way.

So why not have the "Kill All" complete when you have defeated the boss and say 90% of the chaff in the room? Of course, you could still remain and kill all in the room, despite the mission had completed.

Stormy

Mmm

Now that may be a very important revelation, I was lead to believe that the class of mob killed had no significance in the cnace of getting a tip. Am I interpreting the above posts correctly, in that they are saying that LTs have better chance to drop a tip than minions, and bosses over Lts, etc?

Logically that would make a lot of sense, but as I said before, I thought the coding was set to a fixed percentage change regardless of the nature of the mob.

Stormy

Mmm...

I like the idea of fitness going inherent, mostly because it frees-up an auxiliary power pool and thus it allows me to acquire powers that may be more team enhancing that I usually chose to disregard when trying to get my builds to achieve specific effects.

Thuis I can get teleport friend :<)

Stormy

Mmm...

Not sure this suggestions needs to go here, or should be a thread of its own, what you all advice?

I noticed that many of the TIP missions, especially Hero class, are escort missions. While its a no big deal when I play my melee alts, it is a big deal when I am playing support types, particualrly when I am forced to turn off all forms of stealth so the aggroe gaining crazy "rescued victim" can follow me. Having my Stalker, Fortunata, Defenders, and Controllers having to give up their very few protective powers is simply said: Wrong. It would be like demanding the melee types to turn off their protection toggles or the victim they are supposed to escort to the exit would refuse to follow (as if they are saying, you are not handicapped enough to rescue me, I will not go).

My suggestions with regards to this:

1. Escorted victims, can see and follow you, regardless of your stealth status.
2. Escorted victims, are considered part of your team, and can be teleported to safety with the rest of the team.
3. Escorted victims, are set to defensive mode, and only attack when attacked and struck, instead of attacking anything in the room, regardless of how remote they may be, after all; I thought they were being rescued and they would quietly follow you to safety and let "you" rescue them.

Hi:

I tend not to be very good at finding information in these forums, they tend to confuse my old and senile mind.

1. Which forum and subforum must I go to read about patches done, more specifically, I tunr on my computer on wednesday afternoon, I start the game, I see it updating the client, where do I go to read about what was this patch for?

2. Which forum and subforum must I go to read about power "adjusting", I understand that powers periodically get re-adjusted, and that is fine with me. But I want to understand clealy what it was changed from and to what. Where do I go to find out about it?

3. Same as the above, but focused on changes to IO performance, such as the correction to Blessing of the Zephyr, I am sure more changes will occur in the future, where can I go to read about thse changes, and to learn what these changes entails?


Thank you

Stormy

Giggles, I tried some changes as suggested...

I made sure to get Syphon as early as possible, also I am utilizing Will Power's Warrior's Challenge. Then opened up my engagements with a Syphon, followed by the PBAE melee attack, then the light damage brusing attack, followed by my heavy hitter attacks; and the performance was indeed much better.

At the moment I have slotted syphon with 2 Acc Buffs and 3 Recharge, and that also helps a lot; are the ACC buffs not really needed in the power?

My Mace/WP is a tanker, not a brute, and does satisfying levels of damage. Mace, like Axe, is a failry good DPS set, as tanks goes...

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm

Will try power syphon, it could be a perception thing. I have a fire/axe, mace/wp, elec/shield tankers, and I am fairly satisfied with their damage output. It just seemed kinetic melee was a bit on the weak side.

I will respec to make sure I get syphon power as soon as possible.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I recently rolled a Will Power and Kinetic Melee Tanker, thought it would be a good character concept and also a way to try the new power set.

So far, I made it to level 38 with her, and frankly I am very disappointed with the damage she does. It feels like her mightyest attack is at best a light damage blow. Long and cool animation, decent cost in endurance drain, and jinsultingly bad damage for my time and trouble.

I am unlikely to blame the power set as opposed in blamming the player, that would be me. I am pretty certain I am doing something really wrong, so I am asking for help in 2 areas, what I am doing wrong combat wise, and how should I slot/build my Tanker. Please do not recommend Purple or PvP IOs in the design, any other IO is game.

At the moment all of my attacks are 5 slotted with 2 ACC Singles, and 3 DMG Singles, but they might at as well not be slotted, judging by the pityfull damage they do. Lately, I stopped using those wimpy, long winded attacks, and strictly use my vet powers (Sands of Mu, Blak Wand and Nemesis Staff) and Kick from fighting pool also 5 slotted and doing significant more damage than my kinetic melee ones; I do much better.

So please help me, the really bad performance of my alt, just does not make sense.

Hugs

Sue, Aka Stormy

Mmm, Giggles...

I had a lot of difficulty with my Emp/Psi Defender and the TIPs that envolves ambushes. The Panther 952 is very tough, mostly because of the fast coming spawns, and the hevey handed use of Snipers with questionably long range zapping, are these snipe ranged? It sure appeared to be.

What I have done to mitigate the aweful Zapper range, is to instead of fighting in the middle of the room, I stay in the same lab area where the Longbow Commander is originally located, and go to the right side edge of the door that provides access to the room. Frosfire, will follow you and stand between you and the ambush mobs, thus giving you a little bit of a buffer from being ground zero for all the attacks. I also engage hover and fly beyond melee range; that also decrease the number of attacks on you, and giggles, places more on Frostfire. That so far, has been sufficient to let me focus first on the 4 Malta Zappers as they come, and then deal with the other nuasances as time allows. So far this Strategy has been very effective for me. At least for this TIP mission, the ambush spawns elsewhere and the mobs have to travel to you. You could take advantage of this feature, to go to another room, use Super Speed and Celerity Stealth to stay away from ambush, which will eventually go to the final room defeat Frostfire whose survival is not a requirement and stand around there, wait for the raid leader to spawn, use a snipe to kite-him out of the room and to your area and then its a one-on-one event.

Sadly there are a few TIP missions, where spawn occurs right on you, freaking me out so much, but also its very nasty when you are a Defender and a mass of status effect spammers appears on your face out of the blue.

Hugs


Stormy

Ya, happening a bit to often imo...

I tried going back and forth thru ferry and train, with no luck; once stuck always stuck.
I tried logging out of the game instance, re-log in, and still stuck.
I tried logging out to another alt, and then return an pets are gone, and life is ok

What has worked for me before:
1. Another player teleports me, that seems to move the pets as well.
2. Enter a mission, that seems to work from time to time.

Hugs

Stormy

Would love to try CoP, never done one before, so I am a total newb :<)

@Stormfront

Would like to bring my Shield/Ma Scrapper if possible, but I can adapt to fit the team best.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmmm...

Is it me, or a case of "switcheroo" going on here as well?

I was doing a TIP and had to take on the Carnival of Shadows, they are tough, but my Emp/Psi Defender needed the tip...

I was set to Defender standard, -1/x1/No and No.

I must admit, this time I encountered no boses, but did I not?

I find myself fighting Illusionist Masters posing as LTs, yet they had the full power sets of a a normal Illusionist Master which frankly are bosses. I feel kinda like someone is pulling a fast one on me or something, its kinda annoying to be forced to fight a mis-labeled boss and received the goodies of a LT, kinda adding insult over injury.

I do confess, this is a no big deal at all when I play my melee alts, their resistance to the spam Status effect attacks is a given, something my Defender (by developer design) is made to be absolutely vulnerable to.

Also I have encountered LTs that are frankly much tougher than the "normal" LT I encounter on the streets, I know my blaster can kill an equal level LT with her snipe enhanced with aim and build-up in a single shot; that does not happen within TIP missions. I am not sure, this is a problem for high damage alts, but for low damage ATs such as Defenders can be, it is.

Hugs

Stormy

Thank you Zortel...

I did not made an observation on drop rates, it appears to be quite random. There are days I look at a mob and I am getting a tip, and others I have nearly wiped the entire criminal population of Brickstown with out receiving a single drop. So I can agree that the so called randomness should be re-looked at, perhaps have a fail safe number of mobs that guarantee the tip, kinda like our to hit dice rolls which guarantees a hit after 4 tries. What the number of defeats should be to get a tip, I'm not sure, but perhaps I would venture 20 mobs based on that is the standard number used for regular hunts.

With regards to the bag of 5 tip storage, its a convenience, for often where you go do the tips and where you go collect them are usually a different location. For instance in the "go-in" time, I go to Independence Port, because it has large numbers of clusters of mobs, thus you can aoe yourself to the 3 TIPs faster than doing singles or couples. But you got to be out of your mind trying to do TIP missions in large, rectangular maps such as Independence Port, Skyway, Steel Canyon or Talos where mission entrance location can be most assuradley ridiculously far. In my case, I use Brickstown, a nice compact map, where I can hit mobs in between tips with the hope to get the next 2 tips I need for my set of 5 for the day.

With regardds to getting tips while doing a tip, it has happened to me, but its a very rare event and not one as common as a poster made it out to be.

Hugs

Stormy