Tuft__NA

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5. The current rep and bounty system doesn’t reward new and learning players. Look at changing the reward system we already have to one where you gain just for participating but still gain more for winning.

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May I suggest a Handicapping system that use PVP ranking differences as a base for the to-hit and damage modifiers that normally are based on level differences? This would enable beginners to compete on a more equal footing, and thus keep them interested. Beginners don't want a participation award - they want a fighting chance.

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Soloing, while worthwhile, is not the most fun part of the game for most of us. In other words, this makes us do boring stuff in order to get phat lewt. And a game in which you do boring stuff quickly comes to seem boring itself.


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Seconded!

Solo-grinding your level 50 through the same farming mission again and again gives you so much more in influence and dropped loot that it really skews the game.

The best way to equip a character (or get that really nifty pair of wings you want for it) is to play your 50 for a few hours and get some cash to twink the lowbie character you really want to play, and then in turn take the latter out for some real teaming play, not expecting to earn much.

With the current prices of orange-grade set recipes, ditto salvage, and costume parts, you really need those twinks. Remember, you compete for the same pieces of salvage at the market whether you are 50 or 35, and the 50 has a lot easier earning the cash.

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I like PvP when it is in the spirit of good sportsmanship, "Marquis of Queesnbury Rules", good "clean" fun.

I dislike players that smack-talk (trash-talk, whatever), bait, gank, et al. They make me leave the zone with a bad taste in my mouth vowing never to return.

I royally suck at PvP, I admit that up front. I 'think' I might enjoy it more if the juvenile player attitude wasn't so prevelant.



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Same reasons, but I'm much more pessimistic about people's attitudes, so: No.

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In all cases, from now on the most effective way to collect Inventions Story Arc drops will be to find a SG or otherwise dedicated team of 7 helpers, at the same level range as yourself (ideally level 10). The 8 of you can then synchornise your missions - running a Mayhem/Safeguard together, choosing to be introduced to the same contact, and then simultaneously completing missions and story arcs using the "autocomplete" feature.

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Only in CoV are you given the same contacts to choose among.

In CoH the list of possible contacts given after a Safeguard depends on your origin, AFAIK, so it is impossible to chose the same contact for all team mebers unless you are of same (or close?) origins.

And then you have the problem of many contacts giving a random length segment of random missions before giving the true story arc, giving you a long period of confusion and frustration before you are "on track" on the story arc...

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Except that the reason people are unhappy (myself included) is that they have done all the Story Arcs and so being able to exemp down to a specific level will not solve anything.

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Unless the devs change the reward system, so that everybody on the team gets the story arc completion reward, rather than just the mission owner.

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It's easier to get the same missions in CoV then it is in CoH for sharing completion. If you're not all getting the same stuff from a contact, until you start a story arc then you're not going to be able to do things that everyone can use the completion feature on. Also some story arcs (i've only run into this issue 2x myself) seem to give some of the missions in different order to some people, you can't use completion there either.

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Even in CoV, the contacts don't give all the arcs they offer in the same order. So above the levels where they offer more than a couple of arcs, you quickly get out of synch with others. If they offer any "one-off" missions, it's even worse, as sometimes they offer these before, between or after their SA offerings.

In short, I find cooperative missions pretty uncommon outside of holiday event missions and very low level characters who started together.

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My experience too.

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I do not ask them to run my story arc. I just find it sad that fewer and fewer people are running any story arcs.

Also, if I team with people in the same level range as me, it is fairly easy to run missions shared by multiple members of team. Each teammate has the option of choosing to accept completion of their shared missions upon completion of 1 single version of it. This is the manner in which many people have played CoV since launch. This option has been available to CoH since i8 released. Some people take advantage of the option. Some people don't.


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Nope. My SG have actively been trying to do mission sharing in CoH, and its virtually impossible to do, due to:
<ul type="square">[*]Contacts giving out missions in random order. Makes synchronizing for those contacts in a team larger than three pure &lt;hot-place-below&gt;.[*]The order the contacts are given to you depends on your origin. E.g. after completing a SafeGuard you are given different contact options, so not all members of the team can even get the same contacts to continue with.[*]You dont stay synchronized by level. Post 30, you SK a lot if you play within a smallish SG. Which means the side-kicked character is out of luck as far as sharing and arc competions go.[*]Same with PuGs: They also SK a lot, with the same problem for the SK:ed character.[/list]
It is easier to share CoV arcs. There random order missions are simply frustrating enough to make people antsy and irritatated, and you dont have the problem recieving the same contacts. You still have to make dedicated groups that don't stray in level to play with your friends though, as sidekicking is still troublesome.

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Dr Brainstorm,
I happen to like the idea that story arcs will have a place in the Invention System. Since the release of Police Band radio missions, I have seen fewer and fewer PuGs running story arcs.

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Ah, but why would that PuG run your story arcs?

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We also will be actively monitoring datamining on every aspect of this system through all of Training Room and into Live.

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This part is discouraging because it implies the exact opposite of the other part. Makes it sound like you'll datamine it, as you currently have it programmed, all the way through going live with it. And only then, if datamining on live shows a problem, might you consider changing it.

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The problem is that datamining on test is not going to say anything about how tying Pool B drops to the mission owner only affects teaming, since most people solo on test....

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* No specific anything is tied to doing anything specific. This means that completing ANY story arc in the level 20 to 25 range can get you a random rare recipe from Pool B.


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The problem is that only one person on the team will be eligible for Pool B drops. (Unless you manage to pull off a mission share, something that is almost impossible except in the Hollows and Faultline arcs.)

Only one. And the team leader decides which one.

That's a big difference from all the other pools described in the post.

Big enough that it will, in my opinion, make a big difference in people's teaming habits, once the loot greed sets in.

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When is anyone going to answer on WarCry? It has been a while and Positron hasn't answered anything...

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Positron has put together his answers internally and we are working on getting Statesman's bio and intro stuff together. Depending on how all that goes, the next installment with that information will likely make it up to Warcry next week.

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Which now is "this week"?

True, delays between questions and answers make interest drop rapidly...

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Some have said how hard / difficult it is to follow the story with it hidden in menus...and really only the mission owner has a modicum of a clue of what goes on when we're doing a mission.

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My pet peeve with how the storyline is implemented...

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lolololololollololololoolololollololollololololool ollololololloooll who picked badges as their favorite thing

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Those who like badges?

The costumes were what drew me into the game, and it's what has the most lasting appeal. A friend demoed the costume editor to me, and I was stuck.

The storyline would be a contender, if it wasn't so &lt;mild expletetive&gt; hard to follow when grouping - the clues are hidden away in submenus and popups, and only the mission owner can see what the contact says in conclusion when you return after each mission. I wish there was a simpler solution (e.g. a "story" chat channel like the "combat" one) for following the storyline.

Playing with the base editor is great fun - I could spend hours and hours with it (fortune has it that I'm the architect in one of the SGs I'm a member of). Pity there is almost no reason for the SG members to use that base...

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Jeez...7 programmers...

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Note that those programmers most probably have their very own specialties within the code, so that they are not interchangeable in any way.

This means that every one bug lands within the territory of one or two programmers, or in the borderzone between two diffferent programmers. Each of those programmers thus have their very own priority list, and progress in other areas have very little to do with the progress on that list. Adding programmers to an area of expertice, or shifting programmers to it, helps very little in short-term, as it takes programmers two-three months to get up to speed on an unfamiliar piece of code. (See "The Mythical Man-Month" - a basic truth any programmer knows.)

Good and well thought-out analysis, Cathulu, especially on the reasons that makes PvP very unpopular. It doesn't take many bad experiences in a PvP zone to make people go very negative on PvP. (And it is in the PvP zones players first meet PvP, not in the Arena, especially with the dragged-by-the-nose approach to the PvP zone contacts.)

Still, these zones are very nicely done, with lots of atmosphere. It's real fun to explore them, do the missions and collect the badges during off-hours, when you are sure to avoid PvP:ers. You are reasonable sure to be able to avoid them during primetime too, as low-populated as they are, but why take the risk?...

And, shouldn't this thread really be in the PVP forum?

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As for the smack talk: it goes hand in hand with PvP as a rule.


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So does power balance discussions...

In WoW, where builds are arguably much more constrained than here, there was almost nothing else on the message boards...
Complete with "OMG, teh game is going to die if not class X is nerfed!"

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The big thing is that if you make more powers and powersets PvP friendly, more people may PvP, thus making it an even bigger part of the game.

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I really had to QFTx500000000000

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As a PvE:er who is not *ahem* very fond of PvP, (I found this thread by following the Dev Digest ) I'd like to say that the powersets have absolutely nothing to do with people's reluctance to PvP, but everything to do with smack talk, pwning and elitism.

The fun times I've had with PvP has been mass events (four-five full instances of Siren's Call!), as have been arranged a few times on the Euro servers, because
A) I've been able to fight people of a corresponding skill level with myself (low), as the casual PvE:er have vastly outnumbered the hardcore PvP:ers.
B) There has been no time for gloating and smack talk. Or, at least, it so drowned in the cacaphony in local/broadcast that it wasn't noticeable.

I think the best encouragement for non PvP:er to join in PvP would be:
A) A code of conduct. Yeah, I know, thats is a real pipe-dream.
B) A ranking system tied to a handicap system, as in Chess, Go or Golf - making it fun for less skilled players to meet more skilled ones. Note: That would automatically balance up the any difference between the AT:s, as the handicaps will simply shift until a balance is met! (And co-incindentally, cut down hard on the Forum whine ) I suspect that too, would be very unpopular with the "I pwn U!" crowd...

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As soon as they add that feature I will skip every single hunt mission.

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I know one type of mission I'll definitly drop: "Go see representative for PVP Zone X"...

Don't you just hate when you have to go from deepest Brickstown or Founder's Fall to Kings Row and back, just so that you can be given a lecture about a feature in the game you know about since forever, while your team is badgering you all the way with "Lets get on with a real mission! Aren't you done yet?" etc...

This is an NPC issue and not a player character issue, but I hope this is the correct place to report anyway:

Bald Head Shading Error
http://hastur.net/gallery/costumeBugs/BugForSexyJay02

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Reposted here because I posted it in the costume wish list without thinking:

There is an issue with skirts and the new panties with bare legs. Depending on setting, skirts disappear at range. With old panty options, you could make a leotard, where your panties and chest were one piece. Thus you could look somewhat superheroic at a distance. Now you only have the new model panties, which makes you seem like a flasher at range.

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This should be the correct place, yes...

Yep, that's an issue now that bikini bottom 2 and 3 has gone missing in "shorts and short skirts". That means you cannot make a costume that takes into account the fact that the skirt disappears when you go to a reduced polygon model. (Which may in fact happen at a rather close range, depending on your individual graphics settings.)

If I recall correctly, the skirt may also go missing when immersed in water, and it goes transparent under influence of invisibility style powers (depending on graphics card and graphics setting).

Thus it actually matter what kind of underwear you put on beneath the skirts or shorts...

Ring Strap Shoulder Blade Clipping
http://hastur.net/gallery/costumeBugs/BugForSexyJay01

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I have a really bad bug for you... when I use my gravity powers on LOWLY 5hp Civilians... they don't get crushed into little balls of bloody fleshy goo.

Nor do they burst into flames screaming when my dedicated partner a flame/flame brute attacks or gets near them.

Nor do they collapse into a pile of shattered bones when my singularity lifts them...



How great would that be if you could just obliterate npc's in the mayhem missions like cars and stuff? I know, teen rated... but would love to drop a crushing field on some mobs and watch them implode into ltitle gooey flesh-balls under the pressure.

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Sigh... do you hate this game so, that you want it to end up in the same trouble that Oblivion currently got?

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and siphon speed.... see here's the problem with it. it can miss, draws aggro.... and while it gives you comparable speed to superspeed it gives you none of the stealth. making it potentially dangerous to the user. Don't get me wrong... nice powers... but not real replacements for travel powers.

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Siphon speed is really good for two things: (A) Giving Hover a tolerable speed, now that you no longer can 6-slot it, and (B) slowing down opponents who otherwise run all over the map.