Veneficus

It's already a bit confusing in regards to the badge missions. People are constantly asking why they didn't get oro badge credit for running their arc - and it always turns out to be that they ran a badge mission.

As far as completion stars go - for mayhem/safeguards you could attach to the exploration badge perhaps?

Homage *is* a pretty broad term.

Would a gadget using, and otherwise unsuperpowered, richboy who lost his parents at a young age be considered an homage?

For the record: I've never made a character as an homage to an existing hero - for one I don't really read comics.

I did find out that one of my main characters shares a name and powers* with an obscure marvel character. But his background and appearance are nothing like the character in question.

*any character in the game that takes the stone armor set is infringing on the character's power.

[ QUOTE ]
this individual will be responsible for creating and balancing all the powers used by both players and AI enemies in the game, using in-house systems and tools. Also required is the creation of any and all enemies and combatants used within the game world.

[/ QUOTE ]

So does this mean goodbye to Castle?

I think Posi's reponse in the past has been the issue of conversion - and the inevitable data corruption that would result.

There is pretty much no way the conversion would go off without something very messy happening. Tears, crying and gnashing of teeth would result when badgewhores found themselves bereft of their precious. I don't think cryptic is eager to cause a customer service debacle for the sake of fixing the badge categories.

STF.

The good: The Aeon fight, and final Recluse fight are how AV fights should be. Fighting an enemy with 50 gajillion hps that kills anyone that isn't a tanker in one hit is not fun. It's boring. Really boring. Fighting enemies that are always inexplicably infinitely more powerful than us is just annoying. Indigo can trade blows with 8 level 50 villains? Why did she even bother farming out missions to our heroes in CoH? Does every character with a name have to be able to crush us like insects - with no explanation as to why they are more powerful than we could ever become?

Aeon, Lord Recluse - these feel like real superhero fights.

The final battle of LRSF is pretty cool also, it's an unfortunate that it's pretty much requires vengance cheese and nukes - but we actually get to beat down the FP in an straight 8 vs 8 fight.

By comparison - in the STF the signatures show up as insanely powerful level 54s. To kill them we have to resort to pulling. Somehow the other AVs are happy to sit there while their companions chase off after us one by one. If we don't do that, we get annihilated. Often we still do. Lord Recluse has a reason for being super tough in this TF, as does Dr. Aeon - why is GW single handedly annihilating us? (and is it just me, or when the signature villains are presented out of the context of the CoV game do they have all personality drained out of them? I remember in the comic books when Scirrico was presented bearing a Snidely Whiplash grin on his face. What up with that?)


Oh, the little bonus "miniboss" fight in the thorn mission is very cool. I wish we fought more enemies like that in this game.

I think the procs would benefit from a system similiar to what we have with Accuracy, that forces a hit after a certain amount of misses.

I did a test, and though the sample size is tiny in the long run, I went 66 attacks before triggering a 20% proc. The bonuses from the procs are generally tiny anyways - such that I would probably never bother to slot them - but the unpredictable randomization is just the cyanide laced icing on the cake. (overall, in 150 attacks, I got 6 or so of the 20% proc - 3 of them in the last 10 attacks. Expected number would be around 30)

The invention system was probably needed, that said it's really more complicated than it needs to be, and yet not as flexible as I would have hoped. And of course, the rewards for actually using it are minimal. At first I thought maybe it would allow me to prune a few enhancers from some of my powers, but not really. 2 level 50 IOs only put you at 80%, so you still need 3 to get the ED cap. It may sound "uber", but I really expected them to cap out at 50%. (to optimistic perhaps) The set bonuses are often tiny, and disproportionate. 3% damage? Woopty? Even 5 stacked that's meaningless, but 5 x 9% accuracy - nice. or 5x6.5% recharge? That adds up, .58 cold resist? Not so much. (it doesn't help that cold resist/defense is essentially pointless)

As has been noted - there are a lot of entire sets that are just worthless. You literaly can't give them away. (really, put them up for 1 inf, so that you actually lose money if someone buys it - and no one will.)

A lot of sets just have bizarre bonuses, debt protection in a 35-50 set? Why? I don't like debt protection as a set bonus period, but putting in an endgame set is just a bit silly.

Also, we don't actually invent anything. We just create things that other characters in the game world have apparently already invented. As always our C-class hero status is reaffirmed. I'll make another post about STF that relates to this issue also. (not in an entirely negative way)

Complexity wise: trying to balance enhancement bonuses, set bonus, and the effects that exemping has on both of those... driving me nuts. Throw in hundreds of different salvage items that I never know the full use of and the requisite inventory management... ug.

I would really like more inventory space in our storage - it would feel less pointless if we could shove more in the vault than we can carry around in our back pocket. The invention system ends up interfereing with normal gameplay, which I know was not the goal. You do some missions and eventually you find yourself absolutely full of salvage and recipes, and you end up being forced to run to WW and do something about it. Of course, since all your slots are full already this process ends up being incredibly involved and time consuming. It doesn't help that you have to run back and forth between WW, the invention table, and the auction house 20 times during this process.*

I jump in the game to do a few missions - I end up spending 3 hours at WW trying to liquidate salvage and recipes. (and trying to avoid inadvertantly selling something I need)

*Let me give a few scenarios of having to run between table, AH, and storage.

First, establish that you're almost completely full - personal storage and vault included. The salvage info only lists the recipes its used in that you have on you. Even if you do, the salvage doesn't give the level range for the IO it's used in, just the name. You end up having to run back and forth to the vault and the AH/university to check what salvage you need and swap them out.

Then you have things like recipe prices. People sell recipes on the AH for highly unpredictable prices. 60 selling, 0 buying, and yet the "going" price is twice what the university sells the recipe for. People also buy recipes in the same unpredictable manner. Sometimes you get more than the university buying price, sometimes despite great demand no one is willing to pay the vendor sell value. We need an indicator of what those prices are. Give us the purchase price and sale value wherever applicable, that way we don't have to run back and forth between the university and AH (when buying) or the store and the AH (when selling)

And finally, we need "show item" links on the AH. Click on a recipe in your list, or on the AH list and have an option to display the recipe along with all the salvage it requires. As well as the simple ability to quick search for items you're looking to sell. (right click on an item in your inventory, and click "show in AH")

In other words, make information available at every stop in invention process.

Suggestions:
Give us a way to mark recipes we want to make eventually - so that we can always reference what they require.

When we look at a recipe, put in an indicator when we have a required salvage item in our vault. (another column of digits for the salvage list on the recipe)

Indicate the break even price for salvage and recipes. That is, what would get you the same inf as selling it to a store - for common salvage this would say something like "278 inf (250+28)" indicating the sale price to the vendor and well as the market fee. You could also actually put a "sell to store" button on market menu. (or maybe the *option* for a sale to time out eventually - if it doesn't sell than it just gets dumped for base inf value.)

AH terminal for bases, while your at it how about stores for bases as well. A reclamator that will buy salvage, recipes, and enhancers. Possibly BM and WW outlets in pocket D. (would make the 2 apparently redundant vaults a bit more sensical) The only issue is that I'm not sure DJ Zero would actually want illegal black market purchases going on in his club. It could be done a bit more subtly though perhaps - shady individuals sitting at the tables in the villain side of the club. No crates or anything sitting out, just people that are willing to talk business.

On the topic of bases - tab sorting for enhancement storage. (in theory we could use enhancer storage to distribute IOs to our guildies)

Lower the salvage requirements for low level enhancers. Generic IOs of very low level should only require 1 piece of common salvage. The lowest level (level 10) should require "either/or". So it starts out "boresight or luck charm", than maybe boresights for 15, luck charms for 20, and bore and luck charm for 25.

Freedom came in fourth on the list, isn't that rather disproportionate to the actual population of the servers?

So does that make Virtue the official forum [censored] server?

edit: then again, it's likely that a large portion of the people that were not interested in live events probably didn't bother to answer the survey.

The problem with the electric hammer is that it seems very specific. I mean, are there going to be 50,000 thors running around Paragon City each with their own Mjolnir? On the other hand it is extremely iconic.

We really need some way to genericize and customize these things - a power set variants system.

What if we had "hammer" set - non elemental. Then there were a few sub sets. (a drop down menu when selecting hammer) Electric Hammer, Fire Hammer, Tech Hammer, Mystic Hammer, etc.

The majority of the powers could be shared (the actual animations at least) - just 2 or 3 would change with each varient.

Electric Hammer could have a power that calls down a lightning bolt into the hammer. (AE damage and power build up) Fire hammer could have the fire burst power available. (giving them a fairly above average ranged power for a melee) Tech hammer could have a few gadgety tricks - an emp burst that lowers enemy end and recovery and a web grenade launcher. Mystic hammer is similiar in concept to gadgetyness but with a magical flavor - could have a curse power that is a relatively potent single target debuff. (for a melee power at least)

For powers that are basically similiar there could still be some variations - many melee sets have a single target control power of some sort. Hammer could have a hold - debilitating strike for the normal hammer, the others would have elementally appropriate hold graphics. Damage types would vary for most attacks. (some could be purely non-elemental regardless) And the secondary effects of some powers would change.

I'm not saying we need four variants for every weapon power (just "hammer" and "electric hammer" would be pretty cool)

Along this line...
Thorns:
Metal spikes: The spikes would be grey and metallic rather than offwhite, probably bit smaller visually. Secondary damage would be purely lethal - to represent bleeding rather than poison.) (this is essentially Silver Mantis' powerset)
Crystals: Crystals rather than boney/plant spikes - ala the DE crystal beasties.

Claws:
Katars: Blades held in the hands rather than claws coming from the wrist/back of hand. a katar
Talons: Claws that come from the fingers. (essentially these wouldn't necessarily have any graphics associated with them - they would just use the claw animations.) Would be useful for werewolves and such, as well as if someone wanted to make a somewhat esoteric martial arts master.

Assault Rifle
AR/grenade launcher: A more normal looking AR. The flamethrower is gone, but a barrel mounted grenade launcher is capable of a firing a variety of ammunition. Also the "shot gun" powers would be replaced (renamed mostly). Ignite would be basically unchanged but called phosphorous grenade (with appropriate animation). Slug->snap shot (no real change needed, could even keep the name slug - just that it imples a shotgun slug), buckshot->spray (different animation, same basic affect), flamethrower->rubber bullets (cone smashing damage, chance for disorient)
Laser Rifle: Energy/fire damage. High energy lasers have concussive force, so the knockdown effects are conceptually fine. Damage type and particle effects aside, renames would work well. buckshot->wide beam, M30 Grenade->Charged Blast (shoots out a ball of energy that explodes at target), beanbag->stun ray, flamethrower->flare (a very wide angle but short range energy attack - similiar in actual effect to flame thrower), Ignite->Ignite (fire the laser at the ground to start a fire), Full Auto->Overcharge.
Shotgun: A rather ordinary pump action shotgun. Shot gun would have reduced range, but increased accuracy. Burst->shot (not a DoT), M30 Grenade->Grenade (the character would just throw it), Flamethrower->Dragon's Breath (No real animation change needed), Full Auto->Flechette rounds (character fires repeatedly and rapidly, spraying tiny needle projectiles over a wide area - essentially the same effect as full auto) Ignite->tear gas shell (a cone that does mild toxic damage, debuffs to hit and can disorient). Shotgun really wouldn't have a sniper attack - maybe a very short range, high damage and knockback attack. (damage bonus against zombies)

I probably deviated from my original point here... deviated a lot.

There is some Psi mitigation around - dark armor for instance. Logically, willpower would have to have a lot of psi mitigation as well.

I think treating Psi as something completely seperate from other damage types is a mistake. The various defense sets should have their own weaknesses, rather than sharing psi as the universal weakness. Currently they almost always seem to follow the pattern of really high smash/lethal, moderate fire/cold/energy/dark (these could almost all be one damage type as it is), and very low psi and an unpredictable about of toxic. (the toxic damage type has it's own issues)

I'd love to see a set that, in a stunning reversal, was more vulnerable to smash/lethal than anything else.

I wouldn't mind seeing a set that represented the survivability benefits of being a construct (robot or golem, etc) and one for the undead. (dark does work for some undead, but a less flashy simple "undeath" set would be nice too) I imagine both of these would be significantly resistant to Psionic damage. (I would think fire would be the main weakness for undead - contructs possibly energy or smashing)

I wonder - could the vibration set teir 9 be that horribly annoying autopower that Master Illusionists get?

You know the one - the phase shift that pulses on and off and doesn't prevent them from attacking.

As far as other ideas...

I really want to see the various concepts that exist ported around to other set types and ATs.

I really want some weapon sets for brutes. Claws (you may need to slow them down a bit), Katana (absolutely!), also some of the larger weapons that are less obvious choices - give them the axe set, you can compensate the slow speed with fury generation bonuses on the attacks.

I'd like to see full powerset versions of some of the "implied" sets. Psionic assault implies a psionic melee set, as mind over body implies a psionic defense set. (would that be willpower?)

Actually I guess we need some clarification on that. What is willpower? I can see at a psionic defense set, an empathy defense set, or possible something that represents a more down to earth determination.

At the most basic level - there really should be Super Strength scrappers and a SS related blaster secondary. (and probably SS stalkers) Give them a modified/replaced rage if necessary - but the basic concept of SS is to universal to superheroes to leave out in any melee AT.

O Street Fighting
probably the most requested of all, you really need to put this in eventually.
O Electric Hammer
Scrappers need some energy based
O Energy Blade
It's ok. Energy is nice - but it is another sword.
O Psionic Weaponry
psionics are a huge sacred cow in this game, and I'd love see that sacred cow get cooked.
O Dual Blades -
We have a lot blades as is. Their is only one thing I can think of that could make this potentially interesting - having the two blades be seperately controlled. Basically the character would be able to use to attacks at the same time, or overlap several fast attack with one hand while the other performs a slower move. I think that would earn this idea a whopping big "*" though.
O Ball and Chain *
Very cool idea, kudos to whoever thought of it.


O Density Control
kinetics tanker!
O Force Field
We need this eventually, the ballista is taunting us with his FF tankerness. Just had a potentially hilarious idea - the FF tanker could have force barrier - only it stops them from leaving rather than entering.
O Willpower
Empathy tanker? I really thought of suggesting kinetics defense and empathy defense sets - but I decided it was probably to crazy of an idea to post. For the record, I think you could make a very nice blaster secondary out of the kinetics set. (by turning into a self buff set, no speed boost or FS)
O Vibration
sonic tanker? I'm generally in favor of porting around the various elements and power concepts to every AT. (no empathy villians - but a "hatred" set would be interesting)
Or is this something else?
O Growth * - Would this be the archetypical "turns into a giant" AT?

Can't we just have all of those?


O Shield Defense *
It's a cool idea, but I can understand the technical problems.

Yes, I meant I had heard the "other V server" was the roleplay server. I certainly wasn't implying that victory was.

I think Victory is the official violent-hostility-towards-roleplayers server.

I'm vain enough to want to be interviewed... but I can't think of any reason that I should be.


Rather, For victory server personalities I would nominate Satanic Hamster (not everyone likes him*, but he is relatively well-known on the server), LastGunSlinger (current leader of the LoV/FL, the biggest SG on the server, and a generally cool guy)

* though I suppose there is no one that everyone likes

I voted for feature news as a favorite primarily because of this:

[ QUOTE ]

Most students elected to live off-campus and commute. "I live in a tree in Perez Park," said Moondrop (25, Virtue).


[/ QUOTE ]

The other thing I liked was the "From the Experts" sidebar. I started playing this game during the 3-day headstart - and I had no idea that petitions do not automatically include character name and server.

Obsidius
[ QUOTE ]
a whole bunch of clues

[/ QUOTE ]

Alrighty, those were enough for me to get all the ones I didn't have. I actually did have the right 3rd letter for 20 down, I just typed the wrong letter in my post. I actually thought of that - but I was thinking in terms of things heroes "do", rather than the rewards they recieve for doing them.

I have no idea what connection those 2 particular red names have to those costume pieces, and the only server I play on is Victory. (I think I have heard that that server is considered the "roleplay server")

I get the "one L" thing though. I did infact pronounce it as though it had 2 Ls myself... and I still will. Screw you video narrator guy!


3 across - as someone else in this thread posted: another type of game commonly found in newspapers.

17 across: hmm. It's a redname, but of a somewhat different sort than the other red names that come up in the puzzle. If you're stumped read the sidebar on page one.

10 Down, Before you leave the Zig (8 letters)
It's a badge

11 Down, In acknowledgement of your 3 years (4 letters)
You get a badge for playing for 3 years... and some other things.

16 Down, Stay in Character (6 letters)
Not the slightest clue.

18 Down, It only has one 'L' (5 letters)
I *believe* it's a zone name. It's really not much of a clue to go on though, but a zone does fit.

I haven't gotten
3 across: what this puzzle is not
I have s__o_u (I may have 1 or 2 down wrong)

19 across: she who bore the wings (7 letters, last one is t)
No clue.

7 down: first to wear a trenchcoat
I believe this would be the thug enforcers, but that doesn't fit. (or the ppd psi cops - also doesn't fit)

16 down: Stay in Character (5 letters, letter five is 'u')
No clue

20 down: A right of passage for Supers (4 letters, 3rd is 'u')
No idea.

[ QUOTE ]
team buffs have a mechanics problem. Teams vary in size from 1-8 so a buff that applies to everyone on the team is multiplied in effectiveness from 1x to 8x. Either a buff is useless for small teams or godmode for large teams - or both.

What if team buffs had diminishing returns? Say 150% effectiveness for teams of 1-2, 125% for 3-4, 100% for 5-6, and 75% for 7-8 (numbers given are just an idea, the real numbers would need to be better balanced and more complex like (Y-1) X (12.5% + R/2.3).

That way buffs would be more useful on smaller teams and less powerful on bigger teams than they are now. A team buff should still give a bigger total boost on a large team but not 4x on an 8 person team what it does on a 2 person team.

[/ QUOTE ]

They should, they really really should.

[ QUOTE ]
So...
I missed out on 2xp weekend, twice.
I missed out on most of The Cuppa Goodbye party. I just made it to the last 15 minutes.
I totally missed out on The Good by Cricket event.
...
Valentines Day? What Valentines day?

...
Now this.
Boy I gotta NOT get a life.

Have fun everyone.

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh, sadly I missed out on all that (and I'm going to miss out on this) and I don't even have a life.

I did make it in at the very end of the cuppo jo thing in time to win a mug though. But someone actually used it and the ink got partially washed off by the machine...

So now I have a blank off-white mug with "pa jo" on it.

I assume fairly normal acc slotting and such.

1) You have the default To Hit value (ie no buffs), your target has no Defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

Hmm. 75% to hit I think. I feel like I should usually hit, but not always.

2) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has no defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

100% basically. If someone has super accuracy, and I have no defense at all - being hit all the time is to be expected.

3) You have the default To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

This kind of depends... anything less than 25% is intolerable as an attacker. It's a possibly a bit different when the defender uses an "ultimate" defense power or something - but nothing maintainable should make someone harder to hit than that.

4) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

Once again - I think it somewhat depends on how that cap was reached - for both sides.

But somewhere between 25-75%, it really depends how easy it is to hit the caps.


I do think the current mechanics of the system are lacking - its too easy to be invincible against people that don't have +tohit, and to easy to negate defense entirely when you do. There is really a lot of things in this game that have that binary balance problem - mez is either death - or you're immune.

(I also hate the way stealth and perception works)

I would probably pvp alot - if I didn't have to completely respec my character to participate.

I'm just not a power gamer - I play a lot, I eventually to get to 50 just by sheer time investment - but I only have 2 50s and 2 others in the 30s. But I don't PL, I never level efficiently - if I find myself "playing to level" I die of boredom.

Pve built characters just can't participate in pvp, you get owned. Infact, you get insulted and owned. Veneficus has fly, the idea of going into a pvp zone with fly is boggling to most people. I also don't have tactics, and I have AoE attacks... and of course my knockback (essential for my pve game) is completely worthless in pvp. Everything that is effective in pve is totally worthless in pvp, and vice versa.

Unless you're willing and able to crank out a character specifically for pvp - you can't participate. That just sucks.

What he refers is not so much this change as the general issue: buffs are better than debuffs - already true even without throwing resistance into the mix.

Having 10% to hit, or -10% defense are the same in CoH: except that enemies can't resist your tohit bonuses. Same for defense vs. -to hit.* (except that enemies do tend to ignore your defense bonuses - especially at high levels)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
and then they would just starting running around like a super speeder on meth until they regened.

[/ QUOTE ]
Ah yes, be advised ... this is very important.

DO NOT use any power containing an "Avoid" effect on them; ie., anything that signals "leave this area." That includes Freezing Rain, Caltrops, Burn, and any others. Mako, at least, runs like a maniac and afaik cannot effectively be speed-debuffed, so if you drop Freezing Rain on him, by the time he settles down again he'll be half-regenerated.

I've run the States TF twice: one success, one failure. The failure was because we gave up after trying for a half-hour to kill Mako ... as a result of this exact problem. The next time we made sure no Avoid powers were used (having learned our lesson from forum discussion); Mako stayed right on me (the tank) the whole time, and he died in a heap. It makes a huge difference.

[/ QUOTE ]

With that one bit of knowledge we could have beaten the SF.

Somehow I don't see not using particular powers that cause an AI reaction as a valid tactical decision to be expected to make. Why would Mako be any more apt to stand and die just because particular arbitrarily selected powers were not used? If anything he should *always* retreat when he's losing and get reinforcements - and then his powerlevel should be balanced on that assumption.

Maybe I'm being way to idealistic here but enemies should behave intelligently and their (and our) powers balanced on that premise. It just feels so artificial to fight someone who could easily annihilate us all with ease - but win because they are a total idiot.

Of course that is true of the entire game. Our enemies stand around in tidy little packs waiting for us to kill them one by one, while their buddies watch from 20 feet away.

But as for Aeon - that is a cool fight. It also represents how AV fights should be. Previous to this SF I can only think of one worthwhile AV fight - infernal and his portal o' fun*. AV fights are so tedious and monotone. We find the AV standing in the middle of his/her squad of minions, pumping his/her fist while (s)he awaits our arrival. Then we dogpile said AV, after 5 minutes of constant blasting and bashing (with the AV enveloped completely in particle effects to the point where all that is visible is a glowing white ball) (s)he dies. If the game allowed me to set more than one attack to auto fire I could probably make myself a sandwich while this tedious exercise played itself out.

* Which is broken at the moment. It doesn't spawn any demons.


Oh and also - that special little encounter in the thorn tree mission was great - you guys really need to put more stuff like that into the game. Like into newspaper missions and such.

Well I just tried, by the last mission we had 7 left.

1 tank, 2 blasters, and 4 controllers.

We actually got to the last mission - we took out Aeon somehow.

We were royally owned by the 4 signature villains. We could barely scratch them. A few times we managed to get one down to 1/3 their health - and then they would just starting running around like a super speeder on meth until they regened. (which does not take that long, in a few seconds they can get back up to half life)