Sword_NA

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In case people haven't seen this yet...

OPERATION: Statesman's Strike

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We have received confirmation from Manticore about Operation: Statesman’s Strike. The greenlight has been given, and the mission is a go. The Longbow tactical assault teams will launch at 7:00 CST (8:00 Eastern, 6:00 Mountain, 5:00 Pacific).

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Probably a dumb question, but hey I didn't that dumb time-system of yours , is this PM or AM?

This must what it's like to read a CoH thread if you've never played the game

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I5: Overpowered but fun. (Sorta godmode fun, but still fun)

I4: Overpowered but irritating.

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Pretty much agree with you Sword...but aren't these backwards?

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GAH! Yes, that was written the wrong way around. Grrr, damn my lack of proof-reading.

I4: Overpowered but fun

I5: Owerpowered but irritating.

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For instance, there are issues with Defense builds; we’re going to look at that problem more carefully (the Damage Resistance Inspirations are a step, but there's a little more to come).

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So that means Invulnerability is being looked at, right? After all, it's more a DEF set now.

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I was so thinking that!

Some points:
[*]The new area is cool, but it's too split up in level-avaialblitiy. By that I mean that I went into the area with my lvl25 and started doing the missions. I had just reached 25. As I reached 26, I finished a contact and discovered that to unlock the next contact I had to be lvl30!
Might you consider changing the level req for the contacts to soemthing like this:

First contact: lvl25

Second Contact: lvl26

Third Contact: lvl28

Fourth Contact: lvl30

So the "downtime" in the zone is partitioned up into smaller blocks? Having to get one or just a healf a level of exp each time you get a new contact would be a lot more palatable than suddenly having to gain 4 levels. I still haven't done the second half of the Croatoa stuff becasue of this. Don't want to grind 4 levels and I've done the normal contact missions too many times to be inspsred to do them again.

[*]The "Stop 30 Fir Bolgs from entering portal mission" REALLY made clear to me how irritating supression is. I hadn't really given it much thought before. It seemed reasonable at the time and didn't really effect me (don't usually fight with travel powers on anyway). But in this mission, the mobs were constnatly running away from me and towards the portal. Trying to keep up with them while attack felt a LOT like bad lag. Constantly slowing down to crawl, then exploding forewards, then slowing to a crawl again...
Don't have any good solutions to suggest here. Just an observation.


[*]Defiance was cool for my lvl25 Blaster. My playstyle really fits to the mechaninc (I'm the guy who refuses to run and survives with no visible HP left in my bar). But that's at lvl25. It might not really be what Blasters need at higher levels. Honestly, the logical inherent power I'd envision for blasters would be som inherent un-enhanchable Ranged Defense.
Range is not defense when your enemies have longer range than you and no melee attacks anyway. Like a lot of the enemies in the higher levels. A simple dash of Ranged Defense would reward blasters for playing into the "Ranged Specialist" role.


[*]I agreed with the overall idea of the Global Defense changes. Hell, I was jubelant when I saw the liist of changes. I mostly play Invuln tankers and I KNOW how overpowered they are. My main (lvl42 Inv/Axe) has been stuck at lvl42 for a long time simply becasue things started getting a bit tedious during normal missions. Fights were either "I'm undefeatable" or "Lots of Psi... oh I'm dead" (was stuck for ages with the Psi Clock King mission trying to get a team).

I fully agree with the overall goal of lowering our overall survivability. Understand that. most of the Invuln tankers complaingin about I5 do agree with this. Please do not lump us in with the people who complain becasue they aren't *litterally* Inulnerable anymore.

The problem is that the difference for me from I4 to I5 is this:

I5: Overpowered but fun. (Sorta godmode fun, but still fun)

I4: Overpowered but irritating.

We're STILL overpowered in my book. It's just not fun anymore. You took a set that most of all considered a Resistance-based set and turned into a Defesne-based set.
Perhaps your vision was this all along: The Invulnerablitiy was Defense-based. But gee, wouldn't it have been nice to inform us of this a year ago?

I like playing big strong guys that like to hit things. It's not complicated. I'm not after unbeatable Hulk/Superman powerlevels and playstyle. I just want a hero that stands there, gets hit hard and then hits hard back.
This was perfactly emulated by Invulnerability (allthough a bit overpowered). So that's why I made most of my heroes Invuln. Now a year later you tell me that I have jsut mis-percived the set and that it's supposed to be a set that I would probably not have played at all?

You've taken away the set that fit about 90% of the hero/villain concepts i want to play and not given me a viable option instead.
I could understand this change if you'd simply concluded that Resistance as a whole was overpowered, but then I look at Fire Armour, Stone Armour (with GA), Dark Armour and Kheld Dwarfs and see them having EXACTLY the playstyle and feel I wanted for my heroes all along.

A lot of people have been complaining that there's no way to play a punchy hero ala Cap America without either pink glowing fists or darkness powers. Now you've made that situation true for TAKING hits as well. You can't be a tought guy that shrugs off hits without beign on fire, wrapped in rock, use darkness powers or turn into an alien.

Please, give me back my heroes. I dont' care about power levels. I just don't want to rely on Invincibility for my survival. We never liked this power. We never wanted it. We wanted RESISTANCE. Invincibility was, and is, what makes Invuln overpowered. And most of us don't even want it. So please, can you cut this down and give us back resistance?

The Skyway Troll Rave was very cool! I've been waiting forever for Gargantuan Male Build Trolls. Any chance of making all Troll bosses, or atleast Elite Bosses like Atta into Gargantuan Male Builds? It just fits soooo well.

One thing about the Rave: As Supa Trolls spawned, they just ran willy-nilly out into Sky. And it was a LOT of Trolls. Isn't that just a bit too dangerous for the players? It's basically like getting trained by the game. Wouldn't comment on it if it wasn't for the fact that there were so many Super Trolls spawning.

Virtue has been the unofficial RP server since beta. Doesn't mean there's RP all over the plca, but the chance of running into RPers is generally higher.

Please add this to the guides:

Invulnerability for Tankers. The basics. by Sword

Hm, I think it's Maverics goodbye post on the pre-beta boards. (For those of you old enough to remember that :P)

Add to tanker guides:

Invulnerability for Tankers. The basics. - by Sword

Jesus Chirst on a [censored] bicycle! Talk about necromancing a thread!

Hm, how irritating would it be to fight a full team of Mind Controllers? Does the confuses stack?

*ghasp!*

The Giant Tapeworm! I'd clean forgotten about that!

I remember when Boxhead and his site was the all knowing god of CoH info. His word was gospel

I remember Yankee Daring. He's still my favourite player-created hero. Ever. Remember the "What villains say about Yankee Daring" thread? He was ina class all by himself. Guess he quit after he realized his super strong character couldn't move and did piddiling damage :/

I remember a guy named "Ryushu" or something making a post about how pissed he was for not instantly getting a beta invite. Since he had registered to the forum several months ago. Never mind that he hadn't posted before.
I remember the forum errupting like volcano in that thread and people flaming him in Haiku

Lots of good suggestions. Only one I've wanted that hasn't been mentioned:

Let the SG leaders be able to invite through E-Mail. Or something like that. I've had problem with the SG leader playing at different times. So if you get recruited through a forum for example, you don't have to keep logging in in the hope of being on at the same time as the SG leader.

I'm wondering, what secondary would work best with the Divine Avalanche scrapper?

I'm guessing SR would be poorest. Since the set can max out your Def, you don't need the extra bonus from Avalanche.

Invuln would benefit now that ranged Def is out.

Regen benefits from any damage mitigation I guess, allthough Res is probably better for regen when you get up in levels. Dunno, never played a Regen scrapper.

Dark Armour is what I'm trying out now. This might work very well. You get Resists from DA, but they are lacking compared to the other sets. To "make up" for this they have AoEs. If you combine this with Avalanche, you should have good defenses and AoE powers.

Am I way off?

Some good suggestions so far. Allthough I'm still having problems coming up with a justification for him having a secret ID.

I've loved this game since beta.

I'm loving it even more now.

The only game that can pull me away from this would be: City of Heroes 2

Mmm, pretty much the kind of thing I'm thinking off. Actually, Force Field is one of the things I was considering. Perhaps giving him more of a Green Lantern (From the new JLA animated series.)

Sneak-peekd in the rulebook in a store today, and the force field power actually goes like this: Covers your body in a protective shield. You can upgrade it to also be able to create a wall your team can hide behind. So it could fit very well.


Got any ideas about a secret ID and reason for it?

Hiya. A friend of mine is contemplating brushing off his "Abberant" books and starting a super-hero campaign. Since I'm the one in the group with most experience when it comes to super heroes, I've been given the job of leader of our little SG. So I'm considering what kind of hero to play and what kind of background to give him.

For those not familliar with the Abberant setting (Not that I'm too familiar myself): It's set in present day. A sattelite explodes and irradiates the people of earth. This makes some (possibly all) people able to develop super powers. The powers will "errupt" in a moment of extreme stress and will be highly flavoured by the persons wishes at the time of erruption.

Example: A skydiver jumps out of a plane. His parachute won't open. So he suddenly errupts and devlops the power of flight. His flying power is shown by a pair of burning wings from his back.

So, the world is pretty much as it is today, but with these "Novas" as they are called, mixed in.


So, I need to make a character that can lead the group. The campaign will be high-paced and action-oriented (We're playing another game called "In Nomine" at the same time which is allmost no action, so we'll use Abberant for "letting off steam") so my character needs good combat abilities.
The GM has also stated that he intends for us to have secret IDs, so he needs a real life role and a reason for wanting to hide his identity.

My clearly preferred AT in CoH is a tanker, so somthing in that directin seems like the most suitable.

So, for powers I'm thinking something superman-ish, allthoguh slightly more flashy. Probably the equivalent of an Inv/Em tank. What kind of powers I'm taking is still pretty uncertain, since I have a lots of ideas and I'm going to make something that fits in with the rest of the group.

Now, the real problem is who he is/was?

What kind of life has he had that gave him the qualities to lead the team?
I'm thinking of a military career. Maybe never reached any high rank, but experience in leading a team in combat and education in startegy on a team-based level.

Why does he feel compelled to use his powers to protect people?
No real certain ideas. On thing I have swirling around in my head is that he once failed to protect somone (perhaps a loved?) and will never let that happen to anyone else.

Why would he keep his indentity secret?
Perhaps he has enemies and he tries to protect someone close to himself?


Anyway, with all the creative juices flowing around in here, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas. All suggestions are welcome. I'm not asking for a detailed novel of his life or anything. But anything you can come up with. Just general story outlines or plot twists or whatever.

Thanks to anyone who replies.

This is something I've had numerous discussions about before. Here we go again...

Something is seriously messed up with the difficulty in this game. My tanker doesn't fight his way through missions anymore, he just herds everything into a room and slowly whittles it down. That's not fun, that's plain boring. No risk, no fun. Only reason I do my missions is because I'm a big fan of the stories and the game world setting. There's never any sense of danger. Only time I died in recent times, is when I ran into my first Rikti mezzer and he chain-stunned me while on soldier whittled away my health. Not the epitome of excitement.

BUT, make a new character. Solo the missions through the first 10-20 levels. That can get challanging. That gets downright near-impossible at times. The first time you run into a Bonedaddy and he shadowmauls you to death? The first time you run into one of the Damned and he fries your a**? That can be frikking hard.
My hardest and most memorable fight, was with a Fire/Dev blaster I made for Issue 2. He ran the Hollow arc missions solo. Fighting Bedrock (boss in the second Outcast Base) was frikking intense! I was chucking web grenades at him, running around, eating Inspirations, raining fire down on him, getting held, allmost dying, running out of end. I won with a sliver of life left and knew I was pretty damn Hardcore for doing it.

THAT is what is missing in later levels. And it's what they are trying to achieve. At level30, if you run a solo mission, it's going to be hard. You'll need your wits about you to survive. If you meet a boss, you better have some Inspirations to to use, or he will very probably have your [censored]. That's challange. That's fun.

See, you can take on big groups of enemies and totally dominate them and know you're way superior to them. They are known as GREY cons. How much exp do you think Wolverine gets for fighting a bunch of thugs with baseball bats?