Sylph_Knight
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Posts
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Joined
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I get where you're coming from, especially with the reasoning. The visual queues were most important to me because iTrials tend to be rather sparse on story content for sake of gameplay (larger groups of players tend to focus more on Scrapper-lock than Lore-reading), so we must rely on what we see to tell the story most of the time. Story Arcs have the benefit of expanded lore so they can take it a step further to demonstrate what effects those visual queues represent, and that's a good thing.
This is important since the Devs are loathe to stop making Incarnate Trials, which I still believe are the worst content addition ever made to this game because it reinforces the elements that oppose the openness and accessibility which makes CoX unique. As such, visual queues are a nice first-step into explaining why our godlike powers do not feel as godlike when engaged in these activities.
To explain my reasoning: Dungeons and Dragons had levels representing character development as well, but it also had creatures operate on a CR system. Stronger enemies were more visually and/or descriptively impressive in scope to more accurately represent the illusion of progress. Never was there a Goblin that could challenge a level 10, who likely was taking on young Dragons by that stage (and if you did encounter one, he was probably a Demi-God among his kind or similarly empowered far beyond his physical limits).
Video Games have generally lost sight of that sense of Scope, granting phenomenal power gains without increasing the scale of visual or descriptive queues of new foes to provide a justifiable sense of progress. I would blame Dragon Warrior, but this probably goes as far back as Wizardry or Ultima. For that reason, I've always found it troubling that one Warrior minion could very easily wipe out every Clockwork and Hellion in Atlas Park if he so chose when he's basically just a guy with a sword against psychic-empowered automatons and a demon-summoning cult. But if you throw him in some enchanted plate mail with a magic sword and glowing red eyes, then I might be more convinced.
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In spite of all the above, perhaps the most welcome change I saw was - *gasp!* - Power Makeovers for upgraded opponents. This is something I have ranted and raved about since the first iTrial where we fought level-shifted Warworks with only paper-thin hand waves to hint why our level-shifted characters were suddenly fighting against opponents that were neutralizing or flat out surpassing our shiny new scaling benefits.
This arc demonstrates how a few subtle costume changes or auras can make a familiar enemy's sudden performance boost feel more justified. Finally, we are relieved of the palette-swap failures that have endured for nearly two years. Let's hope they keep it up.
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Quote:My problem is that I for one despise raising the level cap in games, especially with those that possess a scaling system, because it breaks the end-game effectiveness of existing gear and content by rendering their end-game benefits ineffectual. If I had things my way, every MoB in the game would run on GM-scaling code. This would work because the stats and powers available to the enemy which is scaled are not even among all level ranges - Paladin has exponentially weaker stats compared to a DE GM from Monster Island for example, and a scaled Hellion is a wimp compared to scaled Nemesis or Carnival of Shadows enemy groups.Originally Posted by DarkSideLeague
Here's my problem with most of the Level/Incarnate shifts - we aren't actually moving forward.
But I digress. I personally see Level Shifts by themselves as an awesome idea to emulate exponential power gains without outdating content - but when applied only to PLAYERS. When you start applying them to enemies as well, you merely invite the concept of palette swaps - another no-no in efforts to maintain the illusion of progress. I also need not remind everyone of the rock-throwing civies in the TPN trial. Besides, NPCs have already had the benefits of level-shifting (up to level 54, as the standard is level 50), so adding more just neutralizes our own progress.
In addendum, more powerful or upgraded enemies also deserve upgraded graphical representations, or at least a power makeover like what we've seen in SSA 2.1. Several existing iTrials notoriously missed this and had us fighting upgraded Warworks with no discernible visual queues for their power enhancement (and please don't get me started on that "Cole powered them up" excuse; it's paper-thin at best). -
Quote:Indeed.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm the next person after that and I don't like tough fights forced on me. Isn't that what the difficulty slider is for?
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Quote:Emphasis mine. Good PR on the wording.Originally Posted by Positron
We currently have no plans to go beyond Empyrean.
Now let's keep things that way.
EDIT: (Reads the rest of the thread) Darnet. Zombie Man! You beat me to the punch. -
Quote:He was still level 50 (-4) with his powers intact after we cut off his connection, so either he was temporarily weakened or some part of his original power level was compromised. Regardless, he's still got the Zeus.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It's not clear yet if cutting him off from the Well simply removed his extra power as its champion, or if it totally removed all his power, as that also came from the Well - it's quite possible that Tyrant has been reduced to the status of a normal human now - in which case he could be taken care of by a couple of PPD officers and a set of handcuffs.
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Quote:I'm afraid you lost me.Originally Posted by Aggelakis
It was a specific reminder of who you were chatting with.
And seconded on Mr_Grey.
And speaking of morally ambiguous characters - compared to my example, Lady Grey is a complete monster. She is probably still in that Vanguard Cell torturing the everliving crap out of Darren Wade even as we speak and yet I think there's still the general consensus that she's on our (or at least humanity's) side. Manitcore (thought he) killed Protean. He's still in the Freedom Phalanx. Good people do bad things, that's just how the world works. We try to make ourselves better people tomorrow for the things we failed to be better people at today because large and wide we are creatures of passion first and logic second, in spite of how we struggle against that nature.
And if you think Lady Grey is bad, just imagine how they torture people in Arachnos. Now THERE'S a whole different sense of scale for you.
But let's be honest people - Tyrant was a despot. His fate is pretty clear: our government has captured and executed despots as recently as half a decade ago, so no moral higher ground to be found there. The only reason Tyrant might still be alive in 6 months is because they can't find a way to kill him since a ground-zero nuclear blast sure as hell didn't do the trick. Twice. And I'm pretty sure the last time he was captured they had a rough time just keeping him contained at all. Even without the power of the Champion, he's still one of the most powerful metahumans in the multiverse barring ourselves and he's not above murder to enforce his twisted vision on the masses. And this scenario is considering that Prometheus and his "organization" don't want to keep Tyrant shackled on their own turf due to the threat he represents, which could lead to some... interesting political ramifications. -
You know what - if they really wanted to fix Tankers then they'd quit breaking Gauntlet (or quit having Gauntlet break everything else for that matter) in test and then releasing those same patches with it still broken on live servers before repairs are made. Gauntlet got broke again in I23 and I have yet to see if they actually fixed it this time before releasing the issue. It was adversely harming proc rates again last we checked on test.
If Fury were ever breaking things like that, you'd see heads roll. -
Quote:Faultline was the perfect example of a Tanktroller, so I would assume Penny is a Contrapper (Scraptroller? Dominapper? Scrappinator?), but she's still no Omega Slot though.Originally Posted by EvilGeko
She appears to be Psi Melee/Willpower, but I'm not sure of the AT. Scrapper? Brute? Any ideas?
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Quote:DODGE!!Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Moral: lrn2dodg
Snow Globe and I shared a good conversation about this topic. I am of the opinion that the Trials stand against everything positive that has made City of Heroes superior in ways its competition has yet to duplicate by introducing new content barriers with specific requirements and various ranks of difficulty where as difficulty was once largely even across the board even if the challenges themselves were unique.Quote:Originally Posted by Shubbie
As trials get harder, there arent enough players to run easy and hard trials at the same time, so one of them is going to to stop being run.
It also doesn't help that their upgraded mooks (averted with the bosses in most cases) featured therein are nothing but palette swaps with no visual queues for their enhanced status (although the new Pandora's Box story arc addresses this problem.)
I feel the development time spent on Incarnate Trials should have been invested in generating more repeatable open-world events and raids to promote the game's spirit of cooperation and to reserve the bulk of the story as a set of task forces (Neo DA did the latter example well, only with Story Arcs instead of TFs to provide soloing capability.)
Raiding in general typically leads to the development of tiers of power grinding where you ultimately just do raids to get better raid gear so you can do more raids, ad infinitum. I don't know about the rest of the community, but the trials have always been a means to an end for me - getting Incarnate Powers to bring back with me into the standard game.
Furthermore, when enough tiers are developed in the aforementioned example, a system of haves and have-nots becomes evident as all the veteran raiders are too busy doing the latest and greatest raid while it becomes almost impossible for someone new to break into the raiding scene seeing as how they're usually restricted to starting at square one. While CoH is not even remotely close to this territory yet, this is affecting that third Super Hero MMO which just came out a year and a half ago right now. -
Quote:As I recall, that's not entirely accurate either. There were complaints about difficulty, but there were just as many if not more complaints about how anticlimactic the scenario was. Many players were expecting a few surprises and cutscene at the end like the Underground Trial. What they got instead was a boss rush with a single-phase final boss when they were probably expecting a One-Winged Angel scenario. The fact that Tyrant seemingly did this right off the bat knocked out some good exposition, IMO.Originally Posted by Zombie Man
No, you're both wrong.
There were no 'hard core' elite demanding it be harder. The feedback was that it was too easy. And it was *demonstrably* too easy when Tyrant was easier to defeat than Black Swan. Numbers don't lie. And the number of seconds to defeat Tyrant was less than the number of seconds to defeat Black Swan.
And Black Swan isn't difficult at all.
It was empirically too easy for the second most powerful being in Praetoria.
That group may have been mistaken by the Devs as fitting in with the Difficulty complaints crowd, which is why the buffs leaned toward the heavy side. But that's admittedly just conjecture. -
Quote:Hardly. I've probably been around longer than you, actually.Originally Posted by Aggelakis
Are you new around here?
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Quote:But you just said that such people are permanently morally questionable, never again to be trusted.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
There's no such thing as fate - bad people can be saved, so the effort needs to be made to save them.
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Quote:No, SOCIETY is inherently good because it fosters cooperation. Take two children who were never raised within civilization and starve them for a few days, then put them in a room with an apple between them and they will kill each other for that food.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Actually, it's the opposite - we're inherently good, which is why bad people are an exception rather than something normal.
That's why evil people like Tyrant and any other loyalist prisoners we might have need to be treated properly.
Humans are animals and will do what is advantageous unless otherwise trained, but thousands of years of evolution within society has taught us to be more receptive to learning concepts such as sacrifice and mercy because it uplifts the species.
I'm no fan of Neitzsche, but he makes some good points despite the fact that hopelessness had nothing to do with getting humanity where it is today. -
Quote:By that logic, anyone who's smudged their reputation should just try to blow up the universe because any state but perfection is meaningless.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
It makes you open to more evil, and makes you permanently morally questionable.
Humans are inherently evil, more so because we grasp the concept of inflicting pain upon others on a conscious level. As children, we were little more than parasites. Humanity is something that we learn and acquire through our lifetime, and fail to uphold at one point or another - it is not a single hit point to be demolished upon squashing the first fly that lands on our monitor.
No one has lived a perfect life. Do good you can where you see it and amend for your mistakes where you are able. -
Quote:Oh I never said it was morally acceptable, but one bad act doesn't make one evil.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Torture in any form is totally morally unacceptable.
Just because it was a daily fact of life under the loyalist dictatorship, that doesn't mean we have to give loyalist prisoners a taste of their own medicine - we're better than them, so we treat them properly.
Case in point - the crowning moment of awesome in the new Avengers movie is when Loki gets in Hulk's face as though he has some kind of authority over his fate. The Hulk, who could have knocked him out then and there, instead proceeds to beat him senseless. Is it moral? No, but I'll be damned if it doesn't feel a little bit good to see a scumbag get what's coming to them.
This isn't the Star Wars Universe where one bad deed puts you on the Dark Side forevermore. Flawed characters aren't always the best role-models, but they can be more easy to relate with. And we as players should always understand the difference between a power fantasy and what is acceptable in reality - but that doesn't mean we have to play our roles like we would in reality. That's why it's a fantasy. -
Quote:That's a very black and white perspective of the world. Good people do bad things all the time, and vice-versa. But there is definitely a moral event horizon that they will typically avoid.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Only bad people would hurt someone they had in their power - cruelty like that isn't soemthing good people would do.
I've personally imagined that my character broke Tyrant's arm before knocking him out cold and bringing him in as firm a reminder of what pain feels like, since his virtual omnipotence clearly denied him the ability to empathize with the people he betrayed and murdered in Nova Praetoria - people who clearly still had faith in him in spite of all evidence to do otherwise at this point - with his Nagasaki Temper-Tantrum to fuel his Tartarus Power-Boost.
That said, not every Hero is an absolute Paragon, though their moral code still puts them a step above a Vigilante who may not have any qualms killing someone. -
Quote:That doesn't always ring true.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Hurting people who've fallen into your hands is the mark of a villain, not a hero.
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Quote:This.Originally Posted by Shubbie
The problem is his regeneration becomes unbeatable if you dont time your pets right, dont have enough debuff and damage or dont have proper class balance.
Victories seemed to shuffle today with the ebb and flow of participants. There's a threshold at around 30% HP that requires a very hard push to break. The sustained lightning nuke creates an artificial time limit of around 30 seconds knock him down the last 20% before dodging disrupts the attack cycle and allows Tyrant to recover. Team make-up seems to deeply affect the outcome at that point, although I could be missing something. -
Quote:Not sure if it was a promise or not, but the idea for Fury originated as an extension of the Tanker archetype before the City of Villains expansion.Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
When did they promise Fury for tankers?
I for one am not jealous of Fury. Sure, Brutes are stronger out of the box, but being tethered to the momentum needed to keep it up does not always sync well with general Tanker behavior. -
Quote:Always happy to stick my neck out for someone to prod.Originally Posted by DarkSideLeague
A nerf to Super Strength, maybe. Then have the rest of the AT fixed.
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Why is there a smaller box over his longer box?
Why does he even have a box?! >.< -
/signed for more Zone Events.
The Rikti Mothership is still the pinnacle of open-access group content with minimal preparation and maximum fulfillment. -
Quote:If I recall, the issue was it deleted all purple sets on a build if you just went to the trainer instead of respecing to get the slots. I never did understand how that worked. Not sure what the current problem is, but if it's the same issue then locking out the method for picking them up from the trainer and defaulting to the standard free respec each issue would fix that problem in a heartbeat. I believe a similar strategy was followed with legacy Fitness.Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake
maybe they will find a workaround, but they actually tried and it caused major issues.
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Quote:Be VERY careful of what you wish for.Originally Posted by Redoptic
So late last year Synapse indicated interest in looking at Tankers, which despite being fairly balanced as is have had their role muddled with the crossover of brutes.
But after player summits, interviews and the usual beta leaks over production intentions, I haven't read a whisper of any movement. Granted minute changes to any AT take extended time, but have I missed anything, aside for Aett Thorns thread in the tanker section has their been a hint dropped?
Given the love Tankers got when Archetypes went global, I am extremely leery of wandering eyes. The only change I can possibly foresee to our archetype is a nerf.