Vexus

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I wonder if ol' Emmert will actually be in front of the computer or if Statesman will just be an NPC. WOW that would be cool to open unlimited bottles of kick butt on the lead designer of CoH.


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You'll have your chance - I'll be playing the one and only Statesman!

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OK, I got my chance. I'm playing a level 32 Dark/Invuln Brute in Mercy 4 approximately 515 yards due west of the Base.

Spotted Statesman about 50 or so yards behind the front lines, going toe-to-toe with another Villain. Yeah, I immediately informed the team, but being a villain character myself, I decided 2v1 sounded fair. It was extremely laggy, so I flew way over top of the battle. After about 25 attempts I was able to lock Statesman as a Target and select Follow. Statesman never moved, but the lag was so bad that I couldn't do much. It took me about 20 or so seconds to reach statesman, and in that time I wasn't able to get even a single power to respond ... so I went in toggle-less (except for Unyielding which I Fly with normally).

I arrive at Statesman (sans Temp Invuln because it wouldn't turn on in the lag) and decide "What the heck, I'm here, might as well start attacking!" Well during the next 20 seconds I never once saw Statesman turn around, but with that lag, I didn't really see much more than a random frame here and there. I hovered there waiting for my first attack to fire off ... it never did. I tried quequing up different attacks like Shadow Punch, Brawl ... nothing ... nada. It was like trying to PvP in a Hami Raid. Eventually Statesman must have conquered the lag, because I got smacked for about 80% of my health (remember, I couldnt turn on my Smashing/Lethal Toggle), so I figured it was a good time to try Dull Pain ... or Siphon Life .... nothing happened ... nada. After about 10 more seconds of frantically spamming those heals to no avail ... BLAMO! Statesman floored me.

Now, in fairness, he'd have probably kicked my wee villainous buttocks even without lag. He's an Invuln Tanker and there were 2 of us around to fuel his Invinc, and I'm confident he doesn't have any Accuracy Problems (I'm guessing he has Focused Acc) or Endurance Problems (I'm also guessing he has Conserve Power ... never could get his info during my approach, and was too busy trying to attack once I got there), so killing him might have proven an exercise in futility. BUT, the lag prevented me from getting a "fair shot" at him ... and I'm the villain ... oh the irony!

Still, I can honestly say I saw and fought Statesman ... and prolly dying "because of lag" is almost as good as getting my butt kicked by Statesman ... but I like to think I coulda done better. I certainly wasn't going to wait until he was finished with the first guy to get my 1v1 with him . I am proud of a few things though ... I'm definitely taller than Statesman, and I think I have more muscles too. But man-oh-man that red spandex hole in the back of his metal helmet looked so tempting to SMASH!

Well done Statesman. You may have won round 1 ... but this is not the end of it! We shall meet again. Muhahahahahaaaaaa!

I haven't read this entire thread, so please forgive me if I'm just piling on. IMHO, the typed defenses are whacked. In PvP the Lethal powersets are virtually useless. While Smashing is equally well resisted, those sets seem to have built-in advantages to overcome that. Axe Tankers ... useless, AR Blasters ... useless. Only the Scrapper lethal sets can compete. By comparison, Super Strength Tankers are fine, and all the Smashing Blaster attacks have another component such as Energy or Elemental which helps them out.

I'd like to see the whole Resistance scheme changed. I'd like Resistance to become Resistance to all damage regardless of type. Eliminate the Smashing, Lethal, Energy, Negative, Elemental, Toxic, etc. Just change 100% of it all to Lethal and put everyone in the same boat. If you want to leave Psionic separate, I'm flexible on that one, because the Devs have carved out a niche for Psi damage as the exception to many rules, but otherwise, don't gimp people in PvP because of this typed damage thing.

In PvE it's just not fair to hurt the new player who logically assumes that more Defense powers/slots will help him get hit less. Only the savvy veterans know how to 'tweak' the system to get the right results. So the only people the Devs are harming by this are the new people ... that's the growth portion of your fanbase.

Honestly, I'd prefer to see Mele Defense and Ranged Defense, and that's it. Roll AoE/Cone into Ranged. The whole discrepancy of typed Defense and Typed Resistances just messes things up on many levels, and causes frustration to non-veteran players. Eventually, they just give up choosing powers entirely and come to the board and say "what's a good build for me?" That often leads to smug, trite veterans who think its fun to make fun of the new poster by posting exactly the wrong information. This is not a good thing. It's not a healthy community dynamic.

Sure, the attention is rightly on CoV now, just after I5's release and as CoV is in Betatesting phase, but still, the sooner the Typed Defense and Typed Resistances are addressed, the easier it is to fix.

It's not all that hard to re-adjust the numbers. I've advocated changing Super Reflexes since shortly after release, when it became obvious to me that Defense without any Click-Heals, Health-Regen, or Resistances was just a recipe for disaster. With only Tough offering help in the Power Pools (because Aid Self is interruptible), Defense-only sets are suffering enough anyway. The Devs aren't shy about tweaking Regen and Invuln, they should step up to the plate and fix the Defense sets Reflexes and Ice Armor.

This sounds good, but I have a few suggestions from my previous experience in other PvP games.

1. Mute Observers:
When players are in the Arena, there should not be any way an active participant can receive any messages from, or in any way detect the Observers. If you add observers as a killable obstacle it will imbalance the gameplay and distract the participants. This will frustrate players more than it will bring enjoyment to the observers.

2. Observer Channel:
If you allow observers (a good idea IMHO), then limit their outgoing chat to SOLELY the Observer channel, so that they cannot spam overload the players playing. This allows for observers to interact with other observers without hampering the players.

3. Maximum Number of Observers:
Some players have systems that slow down when too many characters are in a zone. For these players it would be best to limit the number of observers somehow so that the low-end systems wouldn't suffer degredation from the Observers. Even if there is no degredation, players will incorrectly perceive any performance problems as being caused by the Observers, so setting maximums helps solve this problem.

4. Observer Mission and Chase-cam Replication:
If it is technically feasible (and I have no idea whether it is or not), it would be nice if the players spawned into one Instanced Mission, and all the observers spawened into a SECOND Instanced Mission. Thus, the second mission would be relayed with a mirror of the information from the first mission, without actually bing IN that mission. It would be simple enough to send the information from each participant player to not only the player, but also the Observer Mission, so observers could switch between various player's views while observing. Even if the Observer Mission (second instanced mission) were not quite instantaneous, it would convey the same usage for those who want to observe.

5. Teamplay:
PvP is far more complex than PvE, but the greatness of MMORPG's is their ability to convey teamwork among large teams. If possible, I think it would be great to have 8v8 combat with team goals, such as CTF. This becomes two different games if you institute various modes such as A) Single-Death, B) Instant-Respawn, and C) Penalized-Death [such as 30 seconds to respawn, etc.]. Chatty observers or physically intrusive observers would utterly destroy the beauty of teamplay IMHO.

Thanks for listening to our input, and I'm very eagerly looking forward to Team PvP.

I'd like two things:

1. Global Chat Names on the SG menu.
In most SG's each person has multiple characters, so I'd prefer to have a column that only displays them by their Global Chat Names, thus making the menu significantly shorter and easier to use at a glance. It would be neat if I could do the same thing with my Friends List. Also, it would immediately let me know whether a new SG member was an alt or a new member. I suspect that some people may want to have an alt not associated with the SG from time to time for whatever reason, but I hope that's not a stumbling block.

2. Movable Columns on the SG menu.
I usually only look at the names to determine who is on. If the columns are actively movable, I could reduce the size of my SG window to only show the names. Then, when I wanted to check other things, it would be easy to adjust accordingly.

Thank you Statesman. This is a well-reasoned solution and it sounds like a good one. Thank you for listening, and more importantly, for continuing to improve the game.

I haven't read all of this thread, so I appoligize if this is redundant. My observations on Live Servers is that Boss Changes have essentially made 6-8 person teams unrealistically difficult and far too unrewarding xp-wise. Teams of 4 are fine. Teams of 3 or less (or even soloing) are THE way to get xp. IMHO, this is discouraging large teams, and is counter to the general preference of playing an MMORPG.

I'd suggest that the HP and damage changes NOT go only to the Bosses, because Bosses already have higher chances to hit. If the Dev's don't want to do that, then I'd suggest dramatically increasing the reward for fighting bosses, and/or reducing the cost of debt in large teams.

Farming minions is now like cutting the grass--no risk--whereas building a large team to fight Bosses is often suicidal. I understand the Dev's intent to make soloing possible (thus no bosses), and to make the missions more challenging for teams (thus uber-bosses), but IMHO, these changes miss the mark. There is an obvious penalty for forming a large team because the challenge, xp/time reward, and high probability of catasrophic debt-xp really discourages large teams. Luckily, most of CoH hasn't figured this out yet, so if I want to play in a large team, I can find people with which to team. But, I'm increasingly feeling like I'm tricking/using them when the team gets large because it becomes a lose-lose scenario. That's probably not what the Dev's intended, and certainly now how I'd like to feel when joining/building a large team.

Look, at this point there needs to be some consistency IMHO. AoE's are the damage kings. That's why Electricity Blasters will always be inferior to Assault Rifle Blasters, and why there are so many more AR or Fire Blasters than Elec Blasters.

Similarly, I think the distinction between Scrappers and Tankers should be that Scrappers should be the AoE kings, while Tankers should be the Single-Target kings. Make Tankers AoE's weak (well actually, they're already weak) but give them the strongest single-target attacks. The Scrappers then use their AoE's to take out 5 mobs in the time it takes a Tanker to take out 3 mobs (so the Tanker is only 60% as effective and efficient as the Scrapper ... not even 75%), but the Tanker now has a purpose. They become the Boss Killer. The slightly higher single-target damage helps keep that boss aggro'd to the Tanker. The Tanker then uses his punchvoke or Tauntvoke to maintain aggro of the rest of the mobs.

If the Tanker damage is not significantly raised (doubled would be more appropriate frankly, but I realize that's not being considered), then at least remove the post-animation delay from Tanker attacks so that Tankers can attack more often. That's a sneaky way to raise DPS without many people even noticing. (Let's see ... crap damage x 1.3 = pisspoor damage ... that's a nice upgrade!).

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Right now, Tanker changes have highest priority. The Design team tested some stuff last week while I was in Philly, and I'll personally test some more things this week. I'll post an update on this stuff on Friday.

We're still analyzing the numbers for Defenders & Controllers. We need to get a better picture of the impact of the mob hp/damage increase. If we make any changes, I can't say whether it'd be an Endurance decrease or a Damage increase or both.

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Tankers needed more damage and lower end costs BEFORE the increase to mob HP's. If these options apply to Defenders and Controllers because of the increase to mob HP's, they should also apply to Tankers, because Tankers cannot get groups at higher levels and are forced to solo. Controllers easily get groups and can solo well with their pets. Defenders are always in demand. Tankers were and are left out in the end-game. The extra mob HP's exacerbates the problem.

There needs to be a way for Tankers to significantly improve damage. Anything else requires nerfing Controllers and Scrappers to make the Tanker the only aggro manager.

In the end game Controllers manage aggro and Scrappers tank, the Tanker is a ball-and-chain for team xp, and is unwanted. The Tanker AT needs to increase its damage to change that perception so as to be able to tank without being perceived as a ball-and-chain on team xp.

Boomtown is good as is.

Faultline should be a zone of comparable level to Brickstown, when everyone's travel powers should have matured. If you're still using Super Speed (a free pool because Hasten is practically mandatory), then yeah, I don't have much sympathy for you in your 30's. But at Faultline's current level of mobs, it's very challenging for some because of its vertical richness. As also noted, the entrance area to Faultline is too hard to access it, so it needs to be a higher level.

I also think a Faultline Trial would re-aquaint people with the zone. But until the level of the zone is changed to a level appropriate for its verticality, it will never be a popular zone. I love it, but I don't go there, because I enjoy teaming, and nobody else is there to get a team. When I've had successful teams there, I've recruited from outside the zone and dragged my friends/recruits into the zone. It shouldn't be like that.

Thanks for the updates Statesman!

My Questions concerning the following things that IMHO need upgrading:
1. Tanker Damage
2. Blizzard Functionality (too difficult to get the DoT b/c they run out of the AoE)
3. Super Reflexes (lack of resistances and high endurance costs pre-Elude)

I have more but those are the top 3 you haven't spoken about. Thanks again!

Suggestions to Devs:

1. Combine Range and AoE/Cones (discussed ad nauseum).

2. Add +Resistance to the set. Suggest adding a small amount +Res to all powers. This would prevent people from unintentionally gimping themselves. Alternative would be Absorb--a sort of "rolling with the punches" idea.

3. Fix Endurance issues (e.g. boring down-time of Elude, too many toggles--FF, FS, Evasion, Tough, Travels, etc.). Suggest lowering toggle costs.

4. Add Healing power. All other Scrapper secondaries have a heal. Fitness Pool's Healing doesn't significantly effect health in a battle. Medicine Pool's Heal Self is interruptable and not practical in battle. Suggest Dull Pain. It's tried, tested, common and effectively scaled.

5. Fix +Def scalability. SR is possibly too strong against low level mobs and too weak against bosses and higher level mobs. If other game fixes push Inv/Regen/Dark Scrappers down to fighting same level mobs, this would not need fixing, but I highly doubt that this will happen, so giving SR the ability to survive the higher level mobs would be fair. Suggest a slight boost of 5% +Def for every level above your own and a -5% for every level below your own. Not much, but it would smooth the disparity.

6. Reduce the number of necessary slots, powers, and Pool powers. It's not viable to have an SR scrapper without Fitness (Stamina to run the toggles), Fighting (Tough), and Speed (Haste is far superior to Quickness). Unless you are content with Super Speed, the Travel power takes the remaining Pool power set. There is no option for Leadership, Concealment, Medicine, Presence, or any of the other great Pools that we'd like to take. Suggest combining Elude with Focused Senses and replacing Elude with a more creative but less slot-intensive power. Also suggest combining Lucky with Agile and replacing Lucky with a less slot-intensive power.

7. Improve Quickness. Right now its a decent power, but it's far overshadowed by Hasten's fully slotted ability to recharge powers in a nano-second (hyperbole ). If Quickness were superior to Hasten (or at least as good), then there would be many more options for an SR scrapper other than a Travel power. Power set powers are supposed to be better th an generic Pool powers right? Regen: Quick Recovery is superior to Stamina, Fast Healing is superior to (Fitness Pool) Healing. Invuln: Temporary Invulnerability is superior to Tough, Invincibility is superior to Weave. Why isn't Quickness superior to Hasten? SR is already too slot-heavy, but we should at least be able to slot Quickness to Hasten levels and choose to skip the Speed Pool. Suggest allowing recharge enhancements to scale Quickness higher than Hasten is currently. This reduces/eliminates the need for Hasten and the Speed Pool. There would still be a small benefit from taking Hasten, much like there's a small benefit now from taking Quickness (~3% recharge increase over the other fully slotted). It would allow SR to feel better about their secondary and also provide more flexibility in Pool selection. As it is currently, the few SR scrappers that exist today look disappointingly similar (Pools: Fitness, Speed, Fighting, Travel). Let's give the RP'er an equal choice.

Just my $0.02