Thunderspark

The trouble with statistics is they're all based on chance. Sure, you might get some good recipe drops out of it, but there's a fair chance that every roll will be terrible and you end up with a handful of useless, underselling recpies and wasted those merits.

I've never had a random roll which didn't completely suck. The TF rewards always gave me rubbish, and the random rolls aren't doing any different. Given how long it takes to obtain merits, it might be better for me to just save the 220 merit needed for my specific recipe. At least then I can choose the level of the IO and use it immediately.

The reason there's so few recipes on sale is probably because people are getting the drops THEY want and using them on THEIR characters. You no longer get the most powerful recipes by chance, they're all traded for merits. People are only likely to do a random roll for pools which have the recipes they're looking for (or at least a decent chance of getting an expensive one), because anything less would be a waste of those merits, especially given the time needed to amass a decent supply.

Until they make merits easier to obtain, I have a feeling Wentworths will remain pretty dry when it comes to rare IOs. And the few that do make it to the markets will be snapped up in moments.

Mmm... dreamy. What? Oh, sorry... just getting all excited about the mission architect and started designing projects in my head again. I should start comitting some of these to paper so I don't forget when they finally release the update.

...expect LOTS of lag when it's released

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the upcoming Architect. After all, if you want challenging missions, surely the best way to do that is to create your own?

I think playing other people's storylines is going to play a big part in the future of CoX, and add hugely to its longevity. It should also quiet the challenge driven crowd as they strive to create missions which test their resolve.

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Many players DON'T have more than one account, the only people that do are dedicated farmers and PvPers for two very different reasons, farmers so they can pad their farms and PvPers so they can PL a character they fancy trying out at high end PvP.

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I have two accounts, but with a good reason. My brother also plays CoX, and we started sharing the same (single) account. When I got another account, that ended up becoming shared as well. It can be a bit of a fight to decide who gets to play as their current (or favourite) character, but it's worked fairly well.

So no, not all of us are hardcore farmers or PvP'ers.

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Gently, accurately, buff underperforming sets
Gently, accurately, Nerf overperforming sets.

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The problem is its easy for us to say the powersets should be more balanced, but the reasons for them being unbalanced in the first place are numerous. You have different damage categories, different resistances, different types of mez or holds. If you balance too much, you render different types useless in the long run because they'll all function exactly the same.

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Tip: Optional additions to the game won't bother -you- if -you- don't turn the options on. Nobody's asking for a total difficulty increase, they're asking for more -optional- stuff to do that's actually challenging, like the LRSF or STF.

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Tip: Optional additions to the game always affect other players either directly or indirectly as other players will be more inclined to use whatever suits them best and chances are you're going to be joining their teams at some point. So unless you solo everything, you're going to be affected regardless.

Anyway, calm down, your post is over aggressive. It's clear the OP was intended as a joke, even though he does make some valid points.

While I agree that some aspects of the game can be fairly easily overcome and new challenges are always welcome, nerfing power sets is a bad idea. All that does is punish the players who might already be having a hard time on various missions or SF's.

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Are you implying that if set on heroic, inexperienced teams find things to hard? That has not been my impression (LRSF, STF, and possibly ITF/Sewer Trial excluded).

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That would depend on the mission. There are plenty of missions which can be difficult, even on lower difficulty settings. But the fact is most people don't play on those difficulties, and not because they don't want to succeed, but because the rewards are scaled with difficulty. Would you join a team fighting mobs scarcely over your level? Hardly, you'll wait for them to up their reputation so you can get some decent experience.


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Also, it is perfectly doable to nerf particular combinations with minimal effect on individual sets. Fire/Kins, for instance (if one was inclined to nerf them - as per forum rules Im not asking to nerf this highly effective and powerful combination) could have hotfeet damage unbuffable, fire imps immune to recharge modification, or make containment give a +100% damage bonus (or something other than the mechanic which allows you to double the damage cap). If you were inclinded to do so, of course. I pick this extremely powerful combination purely at random.

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Let's take your example, however. Changing containment would also affect Gravity Controllers, Ice controllers, Mind controllers etc. You've effectively BUFFED them because they receive a constant 100% damage bonus rather than only receiving their double damage when their targets are held. Also, making Hot Feet unbuffable weakens Fire controllers who don't have Kin as a secondary as well. Congratulations, you've nerfed those players!

See what I mean? You can't just change one aspect of any powerset because it will affect every combination which uses those sets. Many people choose powers in tandem with another because they work well as a combination. That is something which should be encouraged not punished. The difficulty should be in the targets, not with the individual players because there's too many variables which can affect gameplay.

I suppose my big point is that until difficulty becomes separate to experience gain, we'll never see players doing anything but the hardest settings. People want to get experience (or inf) in the fastest and most economical way possible, and that's generally through doing missions which involve either defeating a lot of reasonably higher level mobs or storming your way through a base filled with bosses. Unyielding "farming" missions and Invincible story missions respectively. Add another difficulty, and people will only want to play on that higher level for the bonus experience rewards.

It doesn't have a simple solution; there's no black and white here. And if you can figure out the best way to increase the challenge without suddenly making newcomers feel overwhelmed, then perhaps you should apply to NC for a job

They still have the -regen on travel suppression though, it just no longer affects Regeneration power sets (so far as I can see).

Still renders Regen IO's and IO set bonuses completely worthless though, so perhaps this topic should still stand as a reminder to Cryptic that some of us like our regeneration during combat.

Bah, never mind. They secretly fixed it sometime since I last played my Regen...

...sneaky devils.

Never liked the old MoG, still don't like the new MoG.

The old one killed regeneration and wiped your HP to a minimum, going against everything a regen stands for. The new one lasts a mere 15 seconds, rendering it useless for anything but very short assaults. I'd like to see it revamped somehow to make it more useful, but it seems im in the minority of players who dislike the new MoG.

Of course, none of this makes much difference because Regen is now the most worthless PvP build ever thanks to the -regen property of travel suppression.

Truth, Justice and the American way...

Thank goodness G.W. Bush wasn't in power when Superman was on the rise...

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To allow our players to customize their character in ways that have not been possible before.

[/ QUOTE ]Could it be...?

...Pink mastermind robots?!

Mary Grace's new years resolution is to go easier on the perps. It makes interrogations much harder for the police if they have to stop every five seconds to remove wobbling teeth.

Little Jenny's new years resolution is to go easy on the candy, but we all know she'll never keep to that one. She also wants to find a can of pink paint and give her robots the once-over with a good brush.

Alacrity Burst's new years resolution is to avoid running past women in skirts. Apparently the draft caused by her extreme velocities has lead to some embarassing 'wardrobe malfunctions'. She also wants to qualify for the 2012 Herolympics. Apparently she's a shoe-in for the gold in most of the running events.

Thunderspark's new years resolution is to use her legs once in a while. Faeries are well-known for flying everywhere, and she's rarely been an exception. It might do her some good to stretch her limbs once in a while rather than rely on her enthusastic wingbeats.

I would think the mission architect on it's own would be a mission impossible. Considering the almost insurmountable work that needs to go into making such a thing as user-friendly as possible, I'd be impressed if they even had the staff to work on power customisation.

Still, we can always cross our fingers for I16 eh?

Pink Mastermind Robots

Regen working with travel supression

New free-for-all level 50 PvP area

Pink Mastermind Robots

Two new costume headpieces for the girls - Ribbons and flowers.

Valentines day aura -- Love Hearts!

Pink Mastermind Robots

Group Fly speed enhanced to match Fly

Mission Architect

Fighting my character nemesis as an archvillain

...did I mention Pink Mastermind Robots?

The only time music ever bugs me is when I end up with two songs playing at once. Some of the areas in CoV have very long one-off tunes, which then overlap when you enter new areas, such as Pocket D for example. Otherwise, I find the music quite acceptable.

Been playing for a while now and I have amassed a whopping 4 merits... joy. Could take a while to save up the 1100 I need for those harder-to-obtain IO's I've been after.

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Base salvage drops were removed from the game with Issue 13. You can convert your existing base salvage into brainstorms and brainstorms can in turn be converted into invention salvage.

[/ QUOTE ]How would I go about converting it then? I've checked the workshops in my base, but there's no mention of coversions as far as I can see.

Um... for the unintiated, what's a 'brainstorm' and how do I go about making them? Also, what benefits do they have etc etc... never heard of them, and I can't find any info on them.

/e waits for the hillarious comments about spider diagrams...

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Not a bug, same way it was on test.

[/ QUOTE ]Test is a really bad comparison, since it's usually full of bugs. That's the idea of a test server, to weed out the little problems with any given update. Therefore, to assume it's not a bug because it was the same way on test doesn't really prove much.

In my mind it makes no sense to render multiple powers useless because they no longer work while under attack, especially when the whole point of them is to be used WHILE under attack. They work fine in PvE, thank goodness for small mercies, but in PvP it renders regen-based characters rather obsolete.

For the most part, I welcomed the PvP changes since the old system was woefully unbalanced in favour of a select few AT's. But there's one thing I simply can't remain silent about, because it directly affects several archetypes.

Yes, im talking about Travel Suppression. Firstly, I think it's a little crazy that healing yourself slows you down to a crawl in the first place, but the biggest issue I have with it is the complete removal of all regeneration.

For archetypes like Regen scrappers/stalkers, that's basically a death sentence. You've effectivly taken away their secondary powers when under attack, making them extremely vulnerable to enemy attack. Dull Pain and Reconstruction work just fine, but as anyone will tell you they're not to be relied on wholly in a fight because your HP can and will dip quickly.

This renders powers such as "Fast Healing", "Rise to the Challenge" the Health power pool, any regeneration benefits of IO's and, of course, the click-power "Instant Healing" on the Regen set, completely useless. I really hope this is a bug, but if it isn't, can you kindly remove it and let regens be regens once more?

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Another problem is a blaster standing still in a pvp zone should not be able to take a AS from a stalker and still be standing with almost half health, this takes away the whole point of a stalker and the one advantage they had, this new system to seems to reward the lazy and the cry babys, you know the ones who come on here moaning that stalkers are over powered and its not fair that they AS me.

The other side of this most blasters are now a bunch of girls in pvp there damage is just a joke, again rewarding those who dont want to put time in to inprove there pvp skills after they have been killed by a blaster back in i12

[/ QUOTE ]To be blunt about it, both of those jobs you've mentioned could effectively 1-shot some players in the old PvP system, which doesn't take any massive amount of slotting to pull off. Between Energy melee stalkers using Assassin's Strike and perfectly accurate blasters using Inferno, they were basically the kings of PvP. It's not like stalkers were handed a raw deal on defense either. Given almost the same secondary sets as scrappers, they have ample ways to dodge attacks or heal lost HP. And blasters often pick Hibernate, which is about as cheap as self-regens come.

I think PvP needed a drastic overhaul to get people of out the 'ideal AT' mindset they locked themselves into. You shouldn't have to pick exactly archetype, with exactly the right powersets in order to enjoy PvP without becoming a stain on the tarmac. In order to actually populate these zones it needed to be opened up a little, because lets face it, they've been mostly dead except for perhaps RV and even then often one-sided.

I'm looking forward to trying a multitude of other AT's and seeing how well they can PvP. My newly created Pain Dominator will find it interesting im certain

If I recall correctly, a change was made to TFs to prevent people making TF's laughable by exemplaring to the lowest level member, then removing the exemplar and wiping the floor with the resulting low-level minions.

I remember doing the ITF with an exemped level 50 Mastermind. We briefly unexemped for one mission and the next was full of level 53-54 mobs that the poor level 35's couldn't possibly defeat.

Everytime someone makes a new Zombie mastermind, expect the undead to come crawling out of the woodwork. Mwahahahargh -cough-...

Sounds like an interesting theory, Liz, I might go test that in a short while and see if it really works. Besides, I wanna go mess up some undead

Two words. St Martial.

The glow from the Golden Giza pyramid and the lights of the city can be seen from miles away and it's, I think, one of the most wonderful areas in the game.

Though, I have to say, Cimerora is beautiful. You don't need the glowing neon lights of casinos to appreciate the breathtaking views on offer there. I spent ages exploring it, if only as an excuse to take in the views as much as possible.