Stormfront_NA

Hi:

usually when I go in an alignment run, I try to get as many tips I can, before I actually do the tips themselves. While I have no issue with the 5 Tips doable per day, I have an issue that one can not store no more than 3 tips at any time. I can understand, that if you allready had done, say 3 tips that day, that you should be limited to gain 2 new tips so you can get the 5 a day. But when you done none, why not let me harvest 5 tips?

Stormy

After last Tuesday's patch Sep 30 2011:

I noticed the continues lag spikes have stopped :<)
I also noticed the periodic mini-DCs have stopped :<)

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm

Wonderful observations, but I would think if you are a villain going hero, you would go thru being viewed or even thinking as a Vigilante first, and similar set up for heroes going villain with the rogue attitude. Its actually illogical for a villain to go all the way to hero to wind up vigilante.

I like the Vigilante class, for many my character concepts are based on divenly gifted humans with powers, the great majority from Norse Gods and Goddesses. While they are very lawful, the problem is they follow their God's mandates and laws, over those of say Paragon City or Rogue Isles.

Thus having Vigilante as an alignment is great, to accomodate my role playing needs.

The suggestion I made, was a simple observation that there should be a logical continum from red to blue or vice-versa. and I view Rogues and Vigilantes as a less red or blue manifestation; thus the recomendation to allow an evolution from pure red or blue thru the other color transitions.

Stormy

Mmm...

I tend to agree there are some kind of mob creation issues with tips. I had set my difficulty to -1/x0 /No Bosses/No AVs for my Emp/Psi Defender to Solo through. My build is more directed for group support, so I knew I was in for long tedious shooting-fests with minions and lts.

There is a mission where I am supposed to steal some weapons and defeat a Crey leader; I done it with my Shield/Electric tanker and was hard pressed to get more than 4 Crey tanks to pull together for a mass grave in the entire area with same settings; but when I went in with my defender, OMG! The very entrance it had 8 Crey tanks, a mix of LTs, Minions and "bosses". Needless to say I was very angry at this. Come on! My melee which is built for that could not get a foruth as many mobs, and my pathetic Defender with ultra nurfed damage and no protections get that kind of a load? Come-On!!!! I was able with my Defender to defeat all 8 Crey Tanks at a time, I do build good Defenders, my 4-6 billion build paid off on this one, but it was a long and needless battle.

I can see a problem with the ambushes, since they are likely pre-wired; but not sure its a problem onto itself.

Hugs

Stormy

Greetings:

I am not sure were the complaint part in the forums is located at, so I am placing mine here. If this is not the correct place, please feel free to move this thread to its correct location.

Since GR has been released, I been experiencing frequent waves of short lag spikes, also frequent stoppage of activity with a disconnect message that last briefly, then I get to catch up on what happened for those 15 seconds or so, mainly what the mobs did to me for those 5 to 10 seconds. Then when there is any load, such as during an RWZ mothership raid, Hami, or ITF it seems we are plagued with Map Served instances across team players gallore.

For awhile, I thought my computer was at fault, or my router, or my internet connection , or my internet provider. But then I have a near state of the art computer, with near stat of the art dual video cards in SLI mode, dedicated internet line, checked my connection with the service provider, and determined that it was not me, nor my provider.

During the game, at a lark, I asked my team mates if they were having the same problems I was experiencing at the moment, and the great majority of the team concurred they were. Not only that validated, it was not me, but it had to be a common cause; what else could it be but the server itself?

Now I am not sure if the software code is giving the server heart-burn, or the server hardware is simply worn-out or antiquated. Many in the game refer the Champion's server itself as a Commodore Vic-20 in a derogatory fashion. I am not a hardware/software expert, so I can't tell you what the problem is, but as a customer I have a reasonable expectation of the game I pay for: To operate reasonably well.

City of Heroes as a game in its genre, is quite likely the best game of its kind; I want it to stay that way. I would hate for players to walk away from it, because of consistent apparent server issues, which steals away from the exceptional work of the CoH staff.

Hugs

Stormy

Thank you for the support...

Actually my thoughts have been that both Rogue and Vigilante are in the path anyway...

Let me explain...

I see a Villain commencing to "see the light" would transition to behaving like Rogue, still somewhat all about me, like a Villain, but becoming mercenary like and thus commencing to evolve a code of ethics. Once a Rogue, they begin to evolve a sense of social right and wrong, and thus limit the mercenary activities to "good causes" yet the ends does justify the means, ergo Vigilante. After awhile, they realize that "there is a justice code for a purpose" and become a part of the legal system and thus evolve into Heroes. The same de-evolution can be told for a Hero, where something happens, a crooked politician sets her up, and she becomes disillusioned with the system, and turns Vigilante, punishin those that "deserves" to be punished. Then she realizes that she needs to eat, repair her costume, pay rent, and Vigilante work is not that well paid if at all, and thus commences to sell her services for a price, and in time she learns to convince herself that whatever job she does is for a good cause; thus becoming a Rogue. Finally she decides, what the heck, I have all these powers, why am I living out of a value meal menu at McDonalds? and thus turns Villain.

I agree with a previous poster, that some cosmetic work to the mission's dialogue would need to be updated, after all its all a state of mind. A Rogue can go an steal the books from Mr. Pitner cause she was hired by Longbow to do so. A Vigilante would steal the same books, because she believes the Freaks if educated would better meld into society. A Villain would steal the books, just to annoy Pitner; while a Hero would "rescue" the books to help the poor people in the Rogue Isles. In all cases, the scenario, runs just about the same in practice.

I would also suggest, that when one reaches level 20 at Praetoria, we should be able to choose which of the four states we would want to be as well, not just Hero or Villain.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I tend to make alts themed based, and in most cases their background has mostly been that of a vigilante type, regardless if they were hero or villan side.

I imagine some folks may have concepts that are Rogue in nature, as well.

So when I a have a Hero who wants to be a Rogue, I would have to go Hero-Vigilante-Villain-Rogue.

If I have a Villain who wants to go Vigilante, I would have to go Villain-Rogue-Hero-Vigilante.

It would be nice, to have a choice instead of going Hero or Villain in the process to have an alternate choice of Vigilante or Rogue accordingly.

Thus Villain-Rogue-Vigilante could be a path, as well as Hero-Vigilante-Rogue another.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmmm...

Interesting and informing posts...

In general the mobs are a bit moe potent than CoH or CoV mobs, they seem to have better ranges to begin with, can take a beating and keep on ticking better also or at least appear to, and they tend to hurt more, at least so it seems.

Now is the above bad? Frankly I don't think so, it does add to the challenge. Now is the challenge equally increased among all the AT types? Or some ATs experience the challenge a bit more than others? I believe support gets it far worse than melee, despite that, is it bad? I see support ATs as a "pseudo handicapped" set of ATs (once more I am not judging them one way or the other) the benefit, in a way, is that support ATs are much greatly challenged to play and require much more skill and care than a melee; thus their excessive vulnerability to damage and status effects are actually the challenge and thus the enterteinment value of playing them, thus succeeding in an enterprise is by far more rewarding than achieving it with say a tanker who never was in mortal danger, never suffered significant damage, never came close to be status effected, etc. So from that aspect GR is an improvement, and increase in challenge.

Now what I feel is the problem with GR?

1) Ambushes: They are silent, no warning
2) Ambushes: They spawn and reset very quickly
3) Ambushes: The are very persistent in chasing you and killing you
4) Ambushes: Never stop spawning, never ending supply of ambushes
5) Ambushes: Too large a spawn for team size
5) Mob Group Placement: Too many mobs per room, too closely spaced

One could say, this is challenge, and thus ok. On the other hand water is good for you; until you drown.

I really like the feel and ambiance of GR, its really cool, but the 6 problems above does need to be looked at and somehow mitigated. I suggest limit ambushes to no more than 3 waves; scale the ambush size to the team size; and the spawn no less than 3 min from each other or as fast as say it happens at the Terra Volta respec mission. Half the number of mobs groups per room, or at least double the distance between them.

A little bit of sanity check on mostly mob group placement and ambush management can make the difference from a great time to a "you just torqued me off" experience.

Hugs

Stormfront

I love the idea

Stormy

This is mostly a QoL suggestion...

I do not have an issue with the time it takes to activate the power, nor that it can be interrupted. I have an issue with what counts towards interrupting it.

I do agree, that using the mission transporter, base transporter, WW, and oro portal as an "oh S..." I am about to get owned, lets get the heck out of here, is not appropriate. Therfore reasonably long transport times and interruptable makes good horse sense.

Now, I can see you getting mezzed, melee or ranged struck as a means of being interrupted from teleporting.

I can't see having another player run by with effects, opening a portal, stumping the ground as a bonafide reason to interrupt. Sure, we can justify why it could be possible, I am sure lots of jerks who go out of their way to spoil other player's transports would be quick to point those out. Yet they are essentially inappropriate.

I would suggest limiting transport interrupts to solely one being successfully damaged or mezzed.

Also I would like to question the times to log out, and even transport to an extent. I agree with the 30 second timer to log out to avoid using it as an exploit to avoid defeat. But if you are in a safe environment, say inside WW, Municipal building, Vanguard Building, etc, why the 30 seconds?

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm

Praetoria is beautiful, and so clean too. I love the manicured parks and the overall look of the zone. The plots are actually interesting, and for a change intelligently conceived; they actually make sense.

The use in excess of ambushes, reduced the enjoyment and immersion of the story basically to nothing. I made the error to try Praetoria for the first time with a Defender, it was death after death after death. The ambushes see through stealth, they never give up chasing you, their accuracy is terrific, and their ranged attacks made my snipe feel like a short ranged attack; I never been in a situation where we had so many complete team wipe outs; and my fellow players were all game veterans of many years. We knew, what we were doing. In one mission, we just gave up trying to do the mission, and simply waited at a distance from the door and chose to farm the ambushes as they came; we had little choice left to us; that turned out to work really well for us, we gained levels quickly and then were able to easily complete the mission. But somehow, I would believe, that is not the intent of the game or the developers :<)

What I believe made the Praetorian ambushes so lethal, is the lack of warning. In CoH or CoV, ambushes always had a warning, a leader would always say something, such as "get the itnruders" so if we are paying attention to NPC chat, we at least can somewhat prepare; Praetorian ambushes are totally quiet, no NPC chat. I also noticed that the ranged attacks of Praetorian ambushers can out-range snipe, for I was being struck by their attacks well beyond my snipe range; perhaps this should be looked at.

Also the ambushers chase us till dead or left mission, very persistent, which denied teams from retreating and reforming. This much, I do not object, I do consider it fair challenge.

I do believe these mobs are too tough for entry level characters, would love to see them though against our upper level alts. At low levels, we essentially have no significant defense, not much resistances, and preciously little endurance. Also at low levels there is not much IOg going on either, nor do we have high level alts being level lowered either.

I do like Praetoria, but the mobs need to be toned down, ambushes need to be re-looked at, perhaps even limited to no more than 3 waves, to avoid farming, and also to let the team do the mission with some level of enjoyment. I believe if the mobs themselves are toned down, the mob spawn numbers would not be so rough and perhaps the ambushes less ultra-lethal, also maybe looking at the spacing between mobs should also be considered; I believe they are too closely placed in many situations; yet not a major issue with the zone, if we pull with ranged attacks.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I am only requesting this as a QoL, and not as a must be.

Is it possible in the future to upgrade the Oro Portal with both blue and red destinations, and bases to be able to have both blue and red destination transporters?

I am requesting this, not only, as a convenience but as a courtesy to other players in the team. Often when doing either TFs or SFs, since they are multi-zone per force, players often use Oro portals or their bases to travel from one zone to another, with the advent of GR, mixes of alignments is now possible, and thus a travel capability differential has been created. I often as a courtesy to my fellow players open Oro portals so the entire team can move to the next zone so we all could move together and not have to wait for players to eventually arrive to the destination or worse off, get caught while "travel-split" by ambushes. Also many of us allow team mates to use our bases to also expedite inter-zone travel, obviously with bases not having both faction sides, their use can become pointless.

As a QoL, why not set Oro and Bases to have both zone transportation access?

I understand that not all players or alts can "naturally" travel across both zones, since they need to have GR and the correct alignment; yet on the former there is no work around, the later can have a work around.

The Oro portal will only provide both destination sets if your alt is either a Vigilante or Rogue, same situation with a base transporter; it will only function if you are of the correct alignment or a hybrid (Vigilante/Rogue).

Hugs

Stormy

Wow, awesome guide.

You can imagine from my name sakes, my main is a Storm Defender, and more specificaly is a Storm/Dark Defender. Obviously her specialty is ACC debuff, which she does pretty well.

To make her even more survivable and not being totally dependent on Hurricane as an immediate ACC debuff, I had capped her Lethal/Smash defense, which is rather easily accomplished between the two powersets (Storm/Dark).

My Stormy when soloing has no issues with being an "on your face" type character or when in groups she is comfortable being one who sits at the back debuffing enemy mob's "ACC" through her dark powers, while debuffing other attributes thru Ice and Snow attacks (Slow and defense debuff); also team mates do appreciate the little perception, endurance and heal boost that comes from O2.

The reason I tend to stay away from the mobs in groups is to prevent the hurricane's dispersion attributes and degrade the tank's ability to hold aggroe. Yet at a distance Hurricane is active, and I maintain my Lightning cloud as a safety measure from the increasingly common rear ambush spawns. Thus smart Blasters and Controllers using range as defense can be within my hurricane radious and enjoy the benefits of it's enemy acc debuff properties and my Steamy Mist providing allies both def and res as well.

Stormy

Mmmm...

As I have said so many times, TFs and merits make an uncomfortable bed partner...

I say this for a simple reason, there are three reasons people will do a TF:

1. Get exp to level
2. Get badge for Accolade
3. Get merits for over priced recipes at WW/BM

Now let us think, what the approach towards speed or kill all would be for players of the three mind sets or goals:

1. Get Exp to level...

Well at first glance, kill all is an obvious way to go, and many inexperienced players or un-informed quickly goes for this attitude. But, it had been proven to me, amuzingly by a Stalker, that nearly half of the exp in a mission is given by the completion bonus. So one should do the math, spend 1 hour and get 100% of the exp a mission could yield, or spend 15 min and get 65% of the exp a mission could yield? Do the math, maybe your attitude towards kill alls may change a bit... But never the less, those who came to level, want to max experience and that makes good horse sense.

2. Get the badge for accolades...

Lets be honest here, if all I need is the badge so I can get the accolade, why would I want to kill everything that crawls or moves in a mission? What benefit is there for me? truth is, I just want to go in, kick bunns and get out as quickly as possible.

3. Get merits to afford recipes...

I have terrible luck getting drops and even worse rolling, unless you think getting chain drops of turtles, hunters and ghost widows lucky... Since I do not get good drops, I am therefore forced to look for what I need at the market, but when you look at those prices, I would need to adventure for weeks to maybe afford the recipe. That simply does not make sense, but then, the devs perhaps sought to kill two birds with one stone... Nobody wanted to do boring, tedious TFs, and folks could not get the recipes they wanted. Solution, merit system and TFs to get them. So myself as aplayer trying to build my perfect scraper, defender, etc. Can go do TFs for the sole purpose to earn merits to trade for the recipes I need, if I had to roll, I would just go ahead and give up on the game (I would never roll what I wanted). So here I am and many other players, we want the merits exclusively for the merits to buy recipes. Why would we want to kill everything that moves or could possibly consider moving? It plainly does not make sense.

So the problem, many folks are arguing about and complaining is what happens when players having diametrically opposing goals are kinda forced into the same path. You want to kill all so you can level, and I want my merits so I can buy my recipe. It is very arrogant of players with leveling in mind, to demand those who do the TF for merits to kill all so "they" can level faster, and then wish them ill when they do not. Same can be said for a merit focused person with regards to the exp player.

Now, maybe, just maybe, we should take a step back at the TFs themselves, and perhaps we can find a way to stop throwing stones at each other...

If we look at the composition of a TF, we have a mix of Kill Alls, Defeat Bosses, Glowies, Hunts, Patrols and Fed Exes. If we look closer, nearly half of all the mission in a TF are kill alls, about a fourth of the missions are defeat bosses which are placed in huge complex rooms where you wind up killing 40% of all the mobs anyway; and finally the balance of the TF has the others.

Now is it too much to ask the experience gaining focused players to "live and let live"?

After all there are lots of all Kill Alls, that is good for the experience mongers, and a pain for the other focused players.

The kill a boss, they are in a huge complex room, way too many mobs in that area,its almost a kill all; would it be too much to compromise a little bit in behalf of the people who the TF for the merits?

Glowies, come on, you got to give something to the I came here for the merits gang, if you came for experience, you got your kill alls, do we have to be so greedy?

So if one thinks about the TF structure naturally lends itself to a fair compromise, half of them are kill alls, and another 4th is ghostable, in a way is not as equitable to those who came for the merits. My attitude as a leader, which I often do, is we ghost what we can, and I announce this during team formation, so if you don't like it, you are free to leave and form one of your own, and no hard feelings.

Please consider we all play this game for fun, what is considered fun, varies from player to player, it is helpful if we try to be mroe accomodating of each other. The level 50 really has no good reason to assist you (unless you are in his super group), so through their participation this TF is possible, a little gratitude towards the level 50 should be accorded...

Now with regards to new Positron, indeed it gives too few merits, its much tougher, has excessive ambushes, and has enough missions between both of them to easily be worth 40 merits as Citadel awards. Unfortunately Devs are stuck with the time in jail for reward mentality and are quick to punish good tactics, teaming and practices. After all would you all not agree that a well put together team, with good leadershp, good tactics and practices would complete the mission/TF faster? And as a result why should this be punished, only because it took less time? Kinda dumb in my opinion...

Hi:

I am aware that the Kinetic Combat set has only 5 recipes and the benefits provided by the set are at this time limited to having up to 5 enhancements.

I am asking for another choice of a recipe for Kinetic Combat. We still can have that it is pointless to slot more than 5 to get all the benefits for the set, and that is ok.

Let me explain the why of my suggestion:

First let me list the set:

1. ACC/DMG, 2. DMG/END, 3. DMG/RECH, 4. DMG/END/RECH, 5. Knock Back

I happen to be a player very focused on accuracy, after all what good is to hit hard, when you do not hit?

With that in mind, look at the set, and one will quickly realize its rather great at enhancing damage, but it really is kinda weak in ACC.

So why not simply add another choice: ACC, pure and simple.

As I said, while there is no advantage to a sixth Kinetic Combat IO in the set, it can allow the player to better balance the accuracy and damage properties of this recipe set.

I understand that I could simply add one more slot to my power and place an accuracy IO in it, which I most normally do, but I have come with several builds, mostly brutes, where the demand on enhancement slots is great and I much rather use those enhancement slots elsewhere, and frankly I would not be in that situation if the enhancement set would offer me a choice to go heavy damage or good accuracy with not so heavy damage.

My choice if available would be:

1. ACC, 2. ACC/DMG, 3.DMG/END, 4.DMR/RECH

I have resonable accuracy gain benefits and still very good damage gains which would notlikely suffer from ED. I avoid knock back because as a melee, I hate to hit and then chase the target I knocked away to try to hit it again.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm...

The changes to fiery aura are a great step in the right direction in bringing the fire tank back into the mainstream as opposed to the closet...

There are two critical short falls fiery aura has at this moment that makes a fire tank suspect:

1. No Knock Back Protection
2. No Toggle based Immobilization Protection

Burn has been improved from a "scarecrow" power back to an attack power, that is excellent, it helps the fire tanker with their mission to hold aggroe for the team.

Burn atm provides very time limited immobilization protection, I have found myself often in a span immob situation, and frankly burn just don't cut it, the immob break free seems to only work within the field of fire, and as soon as I step out of the fire I can be immobilized again; this effect seriously questions my ability to move against mobs attacking my fellow team mates and getting my taunt in range to help the belaguered Defender...

While Knockback protection should really be a standard, I can live with this short fall, because I can buy IOs to help with it, the cost of them is painful, but one can a gal do?

But the immobilization is a real problem in allowing me to perform my mission as a tank in my group, and there ar no IOs to protect me from it,besides making the time I am stuck shorter; which is of little solace to the Defender getting two shot killed, because I failed at my job as an aggroe magnet.

I would love to see were Fire Aura would give me KBP MAG 12, and Plasma Aura give me Immob mag 12 resistance.

Stormy

Ps: I want my Fire tank to be a real tank

Mmm

Despite of the 90% forced hit at every other time, that is simply not enough to compensate for essentially a defective randon number generator (you are being artificially corrected to 50% to hit); after all if you have a 95% chance to hit, you should "nomally" hit 95 times and miss 5 times within a reasonable standard deviation, say 85 times out of 100 sets of 100 rolls. I don't think the random number generator performs within a standard deviation performance of about 85%.

Having grown up in the days of paper and dice, I have seen the game masters generate ahead of time "roll tables of 4, 6, 8, 10, 20, and 100" which ensures that all the numbers are used once, they have used dice to actually generate the tables and ignore repeats. Perhaps CoX should abandon the random number generator, and simply have a table approach, in which your number look-up in the table is updated each time its used to the next number, till the entire table is used,and then subsequently the pointer goes back to the first table entry. It may not be needed for the game to keep up with were it was in the table, whn you left the game the night before and thus start you were you left at; but it would be a good thing.

With the comment about, one does not stab oneself in the eye with a fork once in twenty tries, I can easily agree with; but lets re-look at the situation from a peaceful sit at the table and eat, to a eat your dinner in an airplane when it hits turbulence, I would be willing to bet that the odds of poking oneself gets to be better than one in twenty, despite that eating is such a casual activity.

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: I get confused, but can someone please explain whats the difference between "To-Hit" and "Accuracy", mechanically how do they differ?