Ultra_Violence

Got to like the new policy of smaller more frequent updates over the old method. It seems like 15 barely went live and they are announcing 16. No more 6 month waits.

Of course now that they have announced it we will probably have to wait a couple months before we even see it in test

[ QUOTE ]
We've looked into this one. Apparently the AI reacted funny to the phase changes. Currently the AI thinks everyone is a valid target, even though it can't actually deal damage.

Code is looking into it, and Bab's might be able to do something to make them a lot more transparent. That should make it much more apparent that the targets are phased out.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually you can use this to your advantage on a solo MM. Phase out mob and tell pets to keep attacking. Aggro continues to build even though they are doing no damage. Afterward you can attack with impunity as you will have a hard time building up enough damage to draw mob away from pets.

I know on my MMs that if I let loose I will always end up getting all the aggro, which can be good or bad.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stalker - Shields or fire melee

[/ QUOTE ]
Shields doesn't mesh with most stalkers sets or the stalker theme. Fire melee functionally double but breaks theme since how stealthy is a man on fire?

[/ QUOTE ]

Where there's fire, there's smoke...and smoke hides just as well as being invisible. I could easily see a Fiery Melee or Fiery Aura Stalker work. Especially if Placate and Hide involved vanishing into a swirling mass of smoke and embers, and then reappearing in a sudden blazing flash when you strike, like a backdraft.

That could be pretty darn cool.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem for me is that like Spines, being a Stalker takes one of the best attacks off the table your Aura attack. You can't just leave aura on as you go into battle without losing Hide. And you can't turn in on once IN combat or you lose Placate.

I see no reason to take Fire Armor as a defense without Fiery Aura.

Now if there were some way to autosuppress auras when in Hide that would really rock.

[ QUOTE ]
I still try to dodge too! lol

You CAN use corners to your benefit. Something I have found so few people doing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Too true. Corner + Ice Slick means a serious reduction on the number of mobs pulled as 2 out of 3 usually don't make it to the far side of the slick where they can see you.

Useful outdoors on new maps so you can go straight to badges/points of interest without wandering about or checking locations.

Don't see why I'd use it indoors though. As stated by others on a kill all mission this would be a killer.

What I really want is a find the next mob power that targets the closest mob on the map (if any) so that kill alls never become bug hunting orgies.

I would think the code in CoH is also effected by the constant revisions. Any program that is constantly revised becomes much more complicated than it was originally, unless you are willing to take the time to completely rewrite it.

Typically no one rewrites everything for every change. They patch and tweak until things get too hard to maintain then they redesign the whole thing from the ground up knowing what they are trying to achieve from the start.

The trick is knowing when to rewrite and being willing to pay for it. Most companies I've worked with (non-software companies) basically wait until the system is all but unusable, complain about it and replace it with a whole new package bought from an outside vendor (which is often inferior to the original system).

The interesting thing that competiion has done is that it has forced Paragon Studios to take on more staff and expand the game in response.

I expected side switching as a response to DC Online/CO a long time ago. It is a natural choice on their part. It generates lots of good buzz among COH players (active and inactive) at a time when someone else is trying to steal them away.

There is a real possiblity that competition will enhance CoH rather than hurt it.

The thing that gets me with SJ is that if I turn it on and run down the bridge from the center of Cape I take falling damage even walking downhill. That is hardly the max of SJ, you take damage from a fall from any height that wasn't achieved by SJ.

So if you make a half size jump and drop down a little further than you started you take damage. Real thing is though in this game unless you fall off a skyscrapper the damage is so minor it isn't worth the effort to worry about.

[ QUOTE ]
I never understood why the Developers decided AE buildings needed to be in so many zones. Out of all the things to put into practically ever zones, they did AE?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I have to agree with this statement. AE everywhere? Why not a second University on Red side instead?

Low level Villains already have to go to a 3rd level zone to get to the tailor (are actually expected to for Arachnos ATs) and noone is wailing about that, so I assume moving the building out of low level zones won't slow down veteran players at all. It could however slow down newbies provided someone isn't providing teleports.

This game is quite hard to learn at first. Keeping the number of things to learn down is a good thing. More than once I've seen a 1st time player drop into the middle of a Rikti Invasion . Imagine thinking that lagfest with dozens of players and mobs running around is the normal game.

I've invited them to team and said "Aliens are invaiding, just fight explain later". They end up with a couple levels of experience (and maybe a badge or two) and totally dazed.

The real answer is players looking out for new players rather than thinking that a new player just wants to play like a veteran would and knows their options.

[ QUOTE ]
Man I love Knock Out Blow on my SS tanker. Nothing better in the world then a wind up upper cut that sends you foe flying.

[/ QUOTE ]

My personal favorite is when you deliver an attack like this at night outdoors and the lights in the building behind your foe go out just as you hit them. LIGHTS OUT! lol

I think poster did the only thing that can be done from player side. Take new players under your wing and show them what is going on.

Overall from game perspective I would say the only thing you can do is provide better game documentation (WITH the game not via on line Wiki-anybodya, IMO you should be able to buy and play a game without going to a 3rd party to explain the basics of the game to you).

The other thing is to make a badge for reaching say 20 the first time (given to all characters once one has achieved it). No one without that badge is allowed in AE. That way you will either get exposed to more of the game or you will have choosen to let someone PL you, which is a poor choice and we all live with our bad decisions.

I have to agree that for the most part the game is quite challenging, based on your character, team, difficulty and mission choices.

If you choose to do easy 8 person missions (at whatever difficulty) you have decided to make the game easy.

On the other hand running a Assault Rifle/Traps Corruptor solo is quite challenging at relentless. (for me I acutally only did Vicious until around 30 because it was too hard)

Doesn't mean you can't team but always playing with the "perfect" team build makes the game a lot easier. Try a team of 8 stalkers and you won't be knocking around groups of level 54 Bosses easily .

Why is it I continue to run into gamers who have never heard of CoH? Actually seems like almost every gamer I meet has never heard of it, whether they are interestested in the type of game or not.

Somehow the word just isn't getting out on this game.

[ QUOTE ]
I think this round it will be color customization, however with color customization down, that means they've figured out some of the hard parts about power customization (from what I remember about BAB's FAQ from a while back) and they should be able to put in the other stuff in there a lot more easily down the road.

[/ QUOTE ]

I remember the same. However doing full animations for all body types and situations takes a lot of time.

Eventually they will be faced with the choice of a new power set or a new set of animations? Remember different people work on the animations (art monkeys) vs those that work on the code (code monkeys). This limits what they can do in either direction. Lots of animations means someone else is sitting on their hands.

So even when they do do this I wouldn't expect 5 different animation choices for every power out of the gate whenever they do it.

[ QUOTE ]
The actual plaques don't tell you what it looks like.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the problem with discouraging people from hunting. If you pay any attention to the mobs running around you would have seen them in Port Oaks, Nerva and St Martial.

Going after the Coralax badge you will get tired of seeing them.

Red side (villains) there is usually a shortage of good healers, mainly because there are so few good heal builds and they are so team dependent (unlike Heros who have a number of healer builds that can also solo well). Blue side I've never seen a healer shortage though.

Dominators and Stalkers are the least played Red side IMO because they both have limitations in a team atmosphere (or at least perceived ones). Brutes and Masterminds are a dime a dozen.

Blue side there seems to be a pretty good mix with Defenders probably the least played due to (perceived?) soloing weaknesses.

Don't think in WoW term though. In an AT you will find that many of the different sets play EXTREMELY differently than the others. So don't think that because you build a Blaster you are all offense. Elec/Cold Blasters have a lot of Control while Fire really is almost all damage. Corruptors can be decent healers or have very lilttle healing at all.

Mostly it is a play between offense and defense. The more of one you get, the less of the other you get.

Welcome to CoH.

[ QUOTE ]
Also whats another hard one to get?

-C.A.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you are used to Blue side then many are hard to get solo (like vamp badge takes a lot'o door mission farming).

One that is particularly harder red side is the Crey Paragon Protector badge. You can find bosses but without a team killing that many solo is like dental surgery. Blue side you have that nice mission with the minion/Leuts that lets you get the badge easily.

Fact is there I don't know if there are any shared badges that are easier to get Red side. Some are about the same though.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Invincible Reichsman?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep, that's a bug.

[/ QUOTE ]

Does this mean it is a bug that it is so hard or a bug that someone actually defeated him?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not so sure it would though. Assuming they used fairly simple RGB color values with 256 values for each color, that's only 3 bytes to describe the color. Double that to 6 if we can use 2 colors. A character gets 24 powers, so that's only 144 bytes to describe the colors for each and every power (2 colors each) that that character has. That means you could store color data for over 7200 characters in 1MB of data. Although I'm not so sure what kind of identifying data they would need to tie the color to the power it's supposed to go with, so that might add more data. I'm not sure how many characters exist in CoH at the moment, but most of them wouldn't be taking up the memory for the full 24 powers, since only characters level 49 and higher would have all 24, and some (a lot?) characters will certainly be left with the default power colors. I also don't know what kind of storage space the CoH servers have, but I would think it's quite a bit, and the color data would be a fairly small fraction overall.

[/ QUOTE ]

The big issue isn't the size of the transfer alone. With MMOs it's generally not the issue. It's more often an issue of the sheer number of transfers that have to take place for the server. Every time you make an attack, the server would have to load up from you and give that info to everyone that can see you. It's also got to do the same thing for everyone that the you can see.

Think of how little space we get with AE for individual missions. It's just like that. What may seem like a tiny increase to you is actually a rather huge increase when you consider multiplying it over a large number of users.

[/ QUOTE ]

Picture a well attended Rikti Invasion/Raid where everyone has their colors for every power set to different values. That is a lot of additional lag to something that is historically laggy already.

And that is if power customization is per character not per cosutme (the only place they currently have for customization to be set up). By costume people will be changing costumes and lagging up the place even more.

There is definitely a volume issue. In a 2 player mission it may not matter, but at events/auction houses it will be felt if they just stack it on everything else.

Just because someone is a lone bidder doesn't mean they aren't interested in flipping the item. Lots of people put out low bids on items in the hope to snap them up at a song then resell them. Maybe there is only 1 bid because they already bought 9 at that price!

To me the real problem is that there is no longer any reason to engage mobs as you run from mission to mission, like there used to be.

For those who remember waaay back to the game's beginnings. There was only Heroic setting (huge huge difference) and you could not get to you next set of contacts doing only missions (including all the hunts) except on teams. There was also no reduction in debt in missions.

All together this meant most people HAD to kill mobs outside to level or killing mobs on way from one mission to next might save you running to 1 or 2 additional missions later. Also since mobs in mission gave basically poor experience (being heroic) fighting outdoors was actually preferred by many.

Now fighting purse snatchers on way to next mission wastes time. They are rarely the exact level you like to fight in missions and they give extra debt. For the most part they have become little more than the NPCs walking by on their endless loops through the zone, window dressing.

I've never understood why hunt missions were removed on Red side. Blue side you can choose a mission or a hunt. If you don't like hunts don't choose them, but at least they have a choice. I see no benefit taking away that choice.

This suggestion seems the very definition of aberent play.

It would allow players to farm mobs for badges but force those who also want experience to keep leaving every day after so many missions. Or alternately just farm mobs till they get badge regardless of exp.

Most badgers really don't care about experience/inf if they can get the badge faster. That is the problem with "count" style badges.

If I had a MA mission with all Master Illusionists (who would all be Leuts on Heroic) in it, do you really think anyone in their right mind would get the Illusionist badge the old way?

If you allow MA mobs to count toward badges they will be farmed, unrelentingly. I'm not saying I agree with the old count badges. Some are just too painful to be fun, or are counter intuitive: why have a major badge for taking damage instead of dealing it (or have it at all)?

I am thinking new ATs are unlikely mainly because Devs asked at one time what ATs we still needed and there weren't any good answers. A new AT would be something that is possible with the game engine, balanced with the current game and reflecting comic book type powers that you can't replicate now.

There are Power Sets that are missing but AT wise there isn't a lot of ATs that can be done and are balanced. You won't ever be getting a Dual Pistols with Armor AT for example.

Some completely new Power Sets would be cool though. Proliferation is nice but not near as nice as new.

The other big benefit is that they are basically "free damage" you can do all your attacks that you would use if you didn't have an aura at the same time as the aura.

For soloing Tanks this is incredibly good. By the time my Ice/Mace Tank could take out a Leut the minions were dead or almost dead just from Aura + AoEs.

I like the idea, the only problem (and I do like it) is that most players don't seem to want to think when they play. The binary nature of END makes it quite easy for them as all their powers shut down and then they realize "Oh I'm out of END". A system where your powers became weaker and weaker the lower your END might be a bit hard for some to cope with. These players will continue attacking/whatever forever and getting a 10% heal because someone isn't managing their END is a bad thing.

Plus in a lot of ways you are just setting the bar in a different place. Instead of using END till you get close to 0 you use it until 10% then don't dare use it or your defenses will "invisibly" drop. It is a soft cap like the Enhancement "soft cap" which no one ever goes beyond, effectively making it a hard cap.

But it does let you do something all the time even if it isn't as useful. Also adds more tactial thought to combat which I always like myself. I am just afraid of alienating others.

That said I rarely have END problems on my characters after 20. Often I don't even fully slot Stamina for a while.