Taallyn

Nice! Thanks, Positron!

I checked out the Empowerment Stations briefly this morning. I like the size of them. They are compact and easy to fit in the room. I do not think they should be limited to Workshops though. A starting SG needs to be able to put one in the entry room as they might not have the prestige to afford an additional room at first unless they load the SG up with unneeded Alts for the membership bonus. Requiring an additional room effectively adds that room's cost to the empowerment station for a starting SG.

Secondly, as mentioned by previous posters, the salvage costs of the buffs are too high for the intended users, i.e. small SGs. As they stand currently, the are unduely cost prohibitive to small SGs. Since there are many different buffs listed, it is assumed that the developers intend for people to be able to use multiple buffs at once. Right now, I couldn't even afford one buff. I'm sure part of that is because I've had to build items for my SG base on Live already. However, I find the current costs entirely unreasonable for any kind of use. It will be more cost effective for me and my SG to stock up on inspirations rather than use the Empowerment Stations.

As the Empowerment Stations provide buffs for individual players, I suggest converting the costs to Influence. Salvage is currently a very rare commodity which would be better used for base items besides Empowerment buffs.

The cost is doublely dubious due to the 15 minute time limit. Under the best case scenarioes I can think of, a minimum of 1/3 of the buff's duration will be "wasted" during travel time as it takes 5 minutes to get to anywhere in the game and be ready to fight again. In practice, at least 1/2 of the buff will be so wasted if not 2/3rds of the buff's duration.

If Empowerment Stations are really supposed to provide small SGs useable base items, the salavage costs must be drastically reduced. Right now, buying a stack of Inspirations is both more cost effective and more convenient since you use them when you need them. Empowerment buffs by comparison are expensive and the beginning portions of the duration are wasted in transit. Empowerment Buffs will be luxary items for larger SGs that have completed base constuction.

Hmm. My dominator got a group teleport temp power ... on a solo mission. It's neat, but not something she's going to use in within the 24-hour limit.

I played my level 23 mind/ice dominator for three missions tonight. One was a story arc mission I did to clear room in my mission queue. The next was a newpaper mission to fill up my broker's awareness bar. The third was a Mayhem Mission from the broker. These were all done solo and the lowest difficult level. Therefore, the only I7 change that really pertains to this is the reduction in Domination's recharge time and the change to Confuse's animation lock-out.

The change to Confuse's animation is most welcome. I don't feel like I'm frozen for an eternity waiting to take my next action.

I found that I did use Domination more now than I do on live. I didn't use it everytime that it was available, but I wasn't as concerned with wasting it earlier in a mission. In these missions I always had it available when I "needed" it, and could even use it occassionally when I just wanted to. Before I would always save it for the end-of-mission encounter.

Where I noticed it helping most was in the Mayhem Mission. Mayhem Missions really don't seem to have been designed with low damage ATs like Dominators in mind. The primary way of increasing the timer is to destroy things, and Dominators as a general rule don't do a lot of damage outside of when Domination is active. Having it active more often did help with the goal of the Mayhem mission. I should note that Confuse was very useful here as well with the animation change. I couild confuse police or citizens to cause mayhem for me. As a matter of fact, if it had not been for the combination of the Domination recharge reduction and the Confuse animation change, I do not think I would have been successfully completed the mission. As it was, I did complete the main goal, and partially completed one secondary goal before I simply ran out of time.

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Part of it is I just hate level 40 Spec Ops, but the bank should have guards in it, not Longbow just sitting around drinking soda or whatever waiting for a villain to show up.

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Why does this remind me of a guy several years ago who attemped to rob a bank in New York city. The bank was across the street from the FBI offices, and he planned his "heist" to occur at lunchtime ... on the FBI's payday? He realized his mistake as he heard the sounds of a couple dozen 9mm clicking their safeties off, and as many agents shouting "Freeze! FBI!"

Domination's recharge time was reduce to 200 seconds for both PvE and PvP.

The increased buildup from secondary attacks is only for PvP.

The first thing that came to my mind as I read the various powers is why is this set called Mace Mastery? None of the powers let you hit something as if you were using the thing like, well a mace. Where are the melee attacks for "Mace Mastery"?

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More info for you castle. I was on a low level defender last night. used a snipe attack. I got no miss or hit confirmation. The power activated and I saw the animation and nothing... Never saw anything like it before. Sounds like a similar problem.

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Someone over in the Dominator's forum mentioned something similar happening with Ice Sword Circle. Hmm ....

Regen's only "resistance" power is a passive, i.e. Resilience.

My concern with this design is that it will be very inconvient for pick-up groups. In a full group, all eight people would have to go to their bases, if their SGs even have one, craft their buff, regather, recoordinate, and try the encounter again. This won't be so bad in CoV where there are base portals in every zone. It will be unwieldy in the best of circumstances in CoH where there aren't base portals everywhere. Add to that pickup group members that don't have SGs, or don't have SGs with a base, and this will be a big problem for the non-SG social aspect of CoH. It would cause people to only want to group with those in their SG or others they know that have the resources to create the buffs.

When the empowerment stations where first mentioned, I'd thought they would be like the temp powers we can get in Pocket D. Nice, temp powers with heavy useage restrictions/charges/etc. Basically, I envisioned it as Q giving James Bond his one-shot, laser wristwatch at the beginning of the movie and Bond not using it until he was caught in the archvillian's nefarious shark pool where he uses it to cut through the bars of an underwater tunnel to swim out to sea and to safety. Or, James' famous jet pack he used to fly away from the henchmen chasing him. Or, any of the one-shot gadgets that Batman pulls out of his utility belt. Sure he had to craft them in the Batcave, but none of them with the exception maybe of the famous buttermilk had a time-limit on them.

I'm not opposed to the the time limit concept. It is a good idea in the proper context, i.e. particular high power/usefullnes abilities. However, I don't like that it seems to have been applied enmass to all of the empowerment station buffs. I was expecting more diversity and flexibility than that.

The current design appears to me to be assuming people are only going to be grouping with those in their SGs, when that really isn't the case in the game. Quite a few people group outside of their SG. This time limit design will prove to be very inconvient to nearly impossible to integrate into social pickup groups.

I think Defiance is the Dev's "fix" for Blasters' secondaries.

I just want to say that the AV spawn change is a great change all around from the way you and Positron have described it. Elite bosses can be very challenging solo, but are certainly doable with some luck and strategy. They have always felt more "heroic" to fight than AVs to me anyway. AV fights usually all end up being the same long, boring series of encounters. AVs are really aren't particularly fun to fight in my opinion, and they were "blocking" too many story arcs for small groups and soloists.

Increasing the rewards for the AVs makes the change good for everyone all around. People that solo or have small groups can get the elite boss versions; while larger groups or more hardcore players can fight the AV versions with better rewards. And no one gets "stuck" with two story arcs they can't complete because they each have AVs in them.

Thank you.

P.S. I'm looking forward to all of the costume pieces showing up in CoH too. One of the Starburst split capes will really fit my invul/em tanker

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Every fire/fire/energy tanker in the game now is going to get asked if they're really CuppaJo. Just watch

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Yeah, that's one combination I'm not going to make now. Glad my main is an invul/em/pyre tanker.

I think Positron's vertical stabilisation system has gone wonky. Either that or Sister Psyche is giving him a telekinetic wedgie ....

Oooo. She'd an Arbitor. Neutral to the machinations of those around her.

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As for changing the way defense works...eek. That's not really an option. There's simply too many things that would break...It's just not do-able.

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It was changed before.

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And look what happened...

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Right, my point is that history shows its not hard to change, so I don't buy what Statesman is trying to sell in that statement.

Its simple. A hose on your car's engine spring a leak, do you patch it with a band-aid and forget it ever happend? Or do you replace the hose?

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Why you change the transmission of course!

CuppaJo, I know you're only the messenger. However, I have some questions and they may seem pointed or petulant depending on your point of view.

1) Why have we now had three different explainations for this change in this thread whenever after th playerbase punches holes the the logic of each one? Are the Devs really trying to pull a fast one on us here? Because at this point it really does seem like it. The same logic can easily be applied to all of the other debuff types, yet none of them were adjusted. Why is Enverating Field the one one that was a problem if all of the other defender debuff types remain at pre-I5 levels?

2) Why is it only now that the devs are responding to us about this change as being a change? The previous comment we had gotten had basically called the playerbase liars. The change was pointed out in mid-July. The devs said, "Shut up there was no change you ungrateful punks." Then they said nothing about it until today? Why did it take a concerted campaigne of several defenders PMing and e-mailing devs to get any kind of response? Why did it take you begging and pleading with them for a month to get this response? So, if this change was intentional, then does that means the devs did lie to us in mid-July when they told us we were wrong about it being different than it was on live? If it wasn't an intended change, why call it one now unless you just can't figure out what the problem is?

3) Why are they leaving this to you instead of have the guts to come to us themselves? Are they afraid of being caught with their pants down again?

The handling of this one change is a complete diaster on the part of the devs. In the end they are now saying the change was intentional, when in fact they told us it wasn't in mid-July. It sure sounds like they had intended to try to get a stealth nerf past the AT they were "most pleased with".

This is something I expect form certain other MMO companies, not from Cryptic. However, it seems that more and more, they Cryptic devs are making the same sorts of decisions and communication mistakes that those companies are infamous for.

I don't mind the nerf itself. I dislike how you as a company have treated the playerbase in regards to it. You owe the people that brought this to our and your attentions an appology for essentially calling them liars in mid-July.

All I ask from a company I give money to is honesty. Frankly, you have been less than honest as a company on this issue in particular and in your limited dealings with the defender community in general. Realize you have lost a lot of goodwill with this situation as well as your handling of the AT in I5.

Then why weren't accuracy debuffs similarly decreased to compensate for the lower defense values globally? Something does not sound right here.

Increasing the recharge time so much on so many of the set's powers will make the set less tactical and more boing to play. Increasing recharge times is not the only tool you guys have to balance out powers, but it sure seems that it is the first one you use to the point that it really being over used now.

I have just finished testing Defiance on my only blaster, a level 11 fire/fire blaster. On live I play the character very cautiously, so I changed that a bit to try Defiance out. My results were more debt than any character I've gotten to the same level by an order of magitude. Defiance just doesn't work. It's problems as I saw them:

1) Trigger level too low. By the time Defiance gets to the 40% trigger level, the blaster has usually decided whether he needs to run or can make it through the fight. With no defenses to mitigate incoming damage, the low health levels needed for Defiance are just not feasible to a blaster to stick around in a solo fight.

2) Accuracy. Defiance does nothing to boost accuracy. On several occassions tonight, I missed four or more times in a row in the Defiance mode. The damage boost is useless to a solo blaster if he can't hit.

3) Damage ramp-up too slow. The damage ramp up curve is too slow to make a difference. By the time the blaster has gotten to the hp levels where he gets a noticible damage boost, he has probably already lost the fight.

4) Defiance and recharge. The damage boost of Defiance is wasted if a blaster dies waiting for his attacks to recharge. This was a cause of a couple of my blasters deaths when being "Defiant".

5) Defiance causes recklessness. The Defiance ability promotes reckless solo and team behave on the part of the blaster who wants to eek the most damage out as possible. Many people already have an aversion of blasters that "shoot-first and die second". It can cause needless teammate debt, and at worse can be consider antisocial in some extremes. Defiance does nothing but promote the wrong kind of teaming behaviours.

6) AT synergy. Defiance does not mesh well with other ATs. It will cause tankers and controllers to loose aggro/control via a reckless Defiant blaster. It muddles the waters of healing defenders and controllers who don't know if they should even heal the blaster(s). It also confuses the issues of buffing defenders/controllers in the timing of their buff, i.e. should they give a blaster defensive buffs before or after or sometime during the Defiance period.

7) Blaster AT theme. Defiance does not fit thematically with the blasters I'm familiar with in the comic books. The only characters that I can point to off-hand that have a Defiance feature are a certain select group of "feral" themed scrappers. In comics and even other MMOs, what CoH is calling Defiance is usually called Beserking, and that has never in all the fiction I've read ever been associated with blaster. It has only been associated with melee warrior characters.

In conclusion, Defiance doesn't seem to work for blasters in the intended role. It is more fit for either scrappers or tanker who will be able to survive long enough in those low health areas than it is for a ranged class that has low defensive capabilities. As a feature it does nothing to address any of the "issues" raised by the community, and even tends to perpetuate the negative stereotypes of blasters being hot-headed suckers with no regard for teamwork or intelligent gameplay.

Manticore is an equal opportunity, multi-product promoter.

Kinetics has a pet? You mean besides the melee types they group with?

Bah, I was crazy. I'd mentioned it in a previous thread. The one about "Since when are Defenders not needed" or whatever it was called. The two threads are nearly identical though, so that's the story I'm going to stick with

From that thread:

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Part of being so self-sufficient is how many inspirations you have to work with as you get higher in levels. Inspirations can cover for the lack of a support class in many instances, although certainly not all of them. Inspirations can't debuff mobs, but they can raise your damage, defense, accuracy, replenish your endurance and can even mitigate status effects. Now, I love inspirations for soloing, but it almost feels like people can have way too many of them for a given situation.

/shrug

Just an off the wall observation.


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I know. I was just poking fun at the length of the thread.

I mentioned that earlier in this thread as well.

Ignored again.