Vox Populi

Last one out turn off the lights.

Like I said early in this thread, all new games are trial and error- new players are going to make mistakes. What's important is that there's enough information for the players to make informed choices, a lot of players run into trouble because they choose to ignore a lot of information.

I'm going to post my Enhancement revamp idea on the suggestion board when we switch to the new forums, because I think it deals with that issue: new players are told to use Enhancements to lower End use, increase Accuracy, etc. but those early Enhancements are doing very little.

Adding slots and putting Enhancements in them is the right way to make a power (and your character) more effective. I don't think we need changes and new systems to help the early game, we just need to make the current system work the way it should.

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Most mace tanks would doubtless be giddy with some Thor-like alternates. Double handed over head Shatter please.

Better yet, enable auras on weapons (flaming swords, electric mace..), and the double handed over head Shatter. Thank you.

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Knowing BaBs, we would have to be astronomically lucky.

I actually like the current SS animations, I'm not sure if I'll be using any of the new ones. I'll have to see how they "feel" in-game.

I think the new Martial Arts attacks look pretty cool, though. I've never been able to get into an MA Scrapper before, maybe I will now.

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How often it happens is a debatable topic highly tainted by one's point of view and anecdotal experience. It happens. It happens to and bothers some people more than others, but so does being kicked for not being a healing defender.

I've been refused invites to SG teams that simply didn't want any tanker at all (boy did I quit that SG). I have been refused an invite to a TF because the team already had a tanker. While it problably saved me heartache from teaming with idiocy, I've never seen or heard of that issue with anything other than a tanker.

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My Mind/FF Controller has got tells asking if I heal a couple times (no invite came after I said "no", of course), and on teams the same Controller is often asked for Speed Boost. This doesn't mean I think Force Fields should get a heal or Speed Boost, it just means some players have a very limited view of the game.

So yeah, I agree with the "save you the heartache" response.

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Vox, many suboptimal teams in this game work, but they are still suboptimal and in many dual or triple tanker teams, the main reason to have them is because you just need some one to fill in so you can get more critters to spawn. Only reason you "need" the tanker in those teams is to fill, and most (not all) content in the game is easy enough that you just don't care who you invite.

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Whether Tanks have a place on min/maxed teams seems pretty irrelevant to me. For one thing, it's more of a forum exercise than something that actually happens in-game, and also because min/maxing teams is more about what combos are overpowered rather than who's underpowered.

I just don't see any issues with Tanker stacking. I've been on teams with multiple Tankers and it's worked great. I did an ITF with two other Tanks and we'd pull three groups of enemies to one spot for mass destruction.

And it's not just the rest of the team wiping them out- some Tankers have very good AoE damage. That's one reason all-Tank teams are rolling balls of destruction.

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For the pre-Stamina levels in question, rest is often needed after every spawn.

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I generally only see this when new players forget to turn off Sprint.

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If you try to take down a white lieutenant and minion standard solo combination, a tanker will surely need to rest if the lieutenant of that combo is a Tsoo Sorcerer. The same goes for a 3 minion spawn of CoT spectres. Leaving aside whether your hit points will carry you through such a fight, the end game of any such single spawn will consist of waiting for enough endurance to fire off an attack and hoping it hits; and you will need to rest when it is over.

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This why my usual advice for early levels is "Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy!"

What I think may be a problem is that new players don't realize how weak those early Enhancements are. While slotting a mix of Enhancements like Accuracy, Damage and Endurance might seem like a good idea, they're barely effecting the power. That's why I'm all for more effective Enhancements early on.

I missed this reply from earlier:

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I'm replying to this again as an excuse to float my idea for a streamlined Enhancement system. Part of it is much improved Enhancements at level 1 (though not quite SO level.) I'll keep it short and sweet (numbers are approximates):

Origin Enhancements: These are the standard power Enhancements, equal to the current SOs. They become available at level 15 and you can only slot your own origin.

Training Enhancements: These Enhancements represent basic power training and are only 75% as effective as Origin Enhancements. However, they are quite cheap and available right from level 1 to 50.

Invention Enhancements: These are crafted Enhancements which increase in effectiveness by level. They start at level 10 equal to Training Enhancements, at level 30 they're equal to Origin Enhancements, and they continue to increase in power from there.

Note: Training and Origin Enhancements expire and need to be "refreshed", Invention Enhancements do not.

This would mean a boost to power levels early on, and enemies could probably get a bit of a boost to compensate. However, remember that slots are still limited.

Feel free to poke holes in this idea. Should I post it in the Suggestions forum, or just forget it?

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It's not a bad idea but why 75% effective? Why not just go the whole way? Balance wise there is virtually no difference for the content we're talking about.

Also changing over to all SO's is logistically easier (just rewrite the values for current TOs and DOs) and also covers price scaling since it's already in place.

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Training Enhancements would be less effective because they are essentially "discount enhancements". They're cheap enough that new players should have little trouble slotting them, possibly just what TOs cost now, but effective enough to keep up with the veteran players.

I don't think this idea is that work intensive. It improves the numbers on TOs (and low level IOs), removes DOs, and bumps SOs up to level 15.

Another plan would be to rebalance offense sets, lowering Endurance on the lower level attacks, and increasing them on the higher level attacks.

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Suggested Fixed: Do away with TOs and DOs and make SOs available at L1. This would alleviate much of the frustration and tedium that is the current mode of play in the L1-20 game (imo).

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I'm replying to this again as an excuse to float my idea for a streamlined Enhancement system. Part of it is much improved Enhancements at level 1 (though not quite SO level.) I'll keep it short and sweet (numbers are approximates):

Origin Enhancements: These are the standard power Enhancements, equal to the current SOs. They become available at level 15 and you can only slot your own origin.

Training Enhancements: These Enhancements represent basic power training and are only 75% as effective as Origin Enhancements. However, they are quite cheap and available right from level 1 to 50.

Invention Enhancements: These are crafted Enhancements which increase in effectiveness by level. They start at level 10 equal to Training Enhancements, at level 30 they're equal to Origin Enhancements, and they continue to increase in power from there.

Note: Training and Origin Enhancements expire and need to be "refreshed", Invention Enhancements do not.

This would mean a boost to power levels early on, and enemies could probably get a bit of a boost to compensate. However, remember that slots are still limited.

Feel free to poke holes in this idea. Should I post it in the Suggestions forum, or just forget it?

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This has been an age old problem since the early days of beta. How many subscribing customers have to get frustrated and lose the love for the game before this issue is addressed.

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This is a tricky issue, because new players always have problems and may get frustrated, that's part of being new to a game. It's applies as much to card games with your friends as to MMOs.

Trial and error is part of the new player experience. If a new Tank player is slotting their defenses while trying to solo, well, that's not a game problem, they just made bad choices.

That said, I'm definitely for an improved new player experience. In another thread I suggested a revamped tutorial that can last more levels (should you choose to stay) and uses branching dialogue to give specific help with your Archetype. Part of this would be tips on soloing and teaming.

I would also support changes to the TO/DO/SO system not so much to help early levels, but for the sake of simplicity.

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and then I saw how big of an impact lower damge modifiers had on actual endurance efficiency.

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That's just it- Tankers do less damage. This isn't an Endurance issue, it's just part of the Offense/Defense balance. Tankers use the same Endurance but their attacks do less damage. Scrappers use the same Endurance but their toggles/clicks give less defense.

And I'd argue that Defenders are even worse off. Yeah, they have powers available to them to deal with Endurance, but so do Tankers. More importantly, Defenders can't afford to slow down their attacks to recover a bit- if they let their guard down at all, they're faceplanted.

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i like how people seem to always skip over me when i post

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---keep the current taunt stuff in there
---60-80% reduction to end cost for all Tanker primary powers.
---add a bar that adds buffs to tanks based upon what they have aggrod:

0 aggrod = 49.99% damage buff
1 aggrod = 33.33% damage buff
2 aggrod = 16.66% damage buff
3 aggrod = n/a
4 aggrod = 3.33% buff to primary powers (kinda like power boost)
5 aggrod = 6.66% buff to pp
6 aggrod = 9.99% buff to pp
7 aggrod = 13.33%
8 aggrod = 16.65%
9 aggrod = 19.98%

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no one has anything to say about it?

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Players love damage, so this would be seen as rewarding Tankers for not aggroing enemies.

I don't think Endurance is a problem at all once you have Stamina (or Quick Recovery), at least no more than it's designed to be, and I think the Stamina debate is game-wide, it's not a Tanker issue.

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You've been pretending to play a heavy hitting powerhouse while in actuality he hits weaker than Daredevil.
Affleck's Daredevil.

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It's a role-playing game, we're all "pretending".

For some reason, while most of us are playing superheroes, you're playing weak rodeo clowns.

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I understand that complaint, it's been repeated many times over the years.


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That should be an indicator of something.

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Whatever it indicates doesn't matter. They're not going to massively overhaul Scrappers and Tankers at this point.

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The devs just need to create the right balanced mechanic to allow them to play and perform like the heavy hitting power houses you agree they're supposed to be.

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I've been playing a heavy-hitting powerhouse Superman homage for years. Good times.

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Great_Briton said originally and Starsman agreed:

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What seems obvious to me is that the Tankers - if we follow established Comic Book mythos - are designed for heavy damage one-on-one. The "Slug It And See" fighters. They're not particularly well-designed for fighting the masses. The X-Men send in Colossus to take out the single larger foe, for example.


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I'm firmly behind that to the extent that I think Tankers need to be better at taking out the single big bad by laying down the massive hits and they do not need to be better at slaughtering masses of lesser foes.

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I understand that complaint, it's been repeated many times over the years. But Scrappers have been "boss killers" for five years and Tankers have been at home in mobs of enemies for five years. This isn't going to change.

Tankers are the team powerhouse like Colossus, the Thing, etc. but they are filtered into a game, where all the characters must be balanced. That means the "tough guy" can't also be the "high damage" guy, but it doesn't make them any less powerful. It just means there's more to power than high damage numbers.

My Blaster does crazy damage and he still doesn't feel as powerful as my Tank.

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If Tankers are "holding back" for fear of hurting people, they wouldn't be unleashing it on masses of lesser enemies in AoE attacks. Guys who specialize in fighting guys weaker than them are bullies by my definition. Be it Giant Man or Colossus or the Thing, the lesser enemies swarming them are the ones they are going to use extra care on. The big bad is the one they cut loose against.

You say you understand this conceptually, but you don't act like it.

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That's because I understand this is a game, and the best designs are kept as simple as possible. The "holding back on minions, unleash on bosses" seems like an unnecessary level of complexity, plus it doesn't always make sense (such as versus robots.)

The game is already pretty easy for Tankers, adding more damage just makes it easier. I realize some would like that, but I think some challenge is needed to keep the game interesting. Saying "the game is even easier for Scrappers!" isn't a good argument either, because again, you're just asking for a less interesting game.

But with powerset and archetype proliferation, I do believe Tankers/Scrappers/Brutes could use some tweaking to keep them a unique experience. Making Tankers more Scrapper-like makes them less unique.

I understand the conceptual reasons for wanting higher single-target damage, but when it comes to separating Tankers from Scrappers and Brutes, I believe AoE is the way to go. The best example is already in the game: Combustion/Cremate.

Tankers are melee Controllers and I think that should be played up- their AoEs should hit more targets, possibly a have larger radius, and better mez/debuff effects (than Scrappers/Brutes.)

Not that I don't think the idea of "tagging" an enemy for extra damage is a bad one, I think it's neat. I'm just not sure if it's appropriate for Tankers in this game.

I'd like it if the final damage tick lined up with the animation. As is, you're still still punching away after you've stopped doing damage, which doesn't feel right.

Only 30 minutes away.

I'd just get rid of the crash altogether and have Rage lower MaxEndurance when running. Say by ten or so (would need testing), so you're welcome to double-stack it, but then your MaxEnd is dropped by twenty.

I'd apply the same idea to Hasten.

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I don't understand the Dev's ideas on what is and isn't villainous in terms of powersets. Pain suppression is apparently villainous, but roasting people alive, bathing them in radiation, and emptying machine guns into them are all neutral.

I disagree with the idea that any powerset in the game is inherently heroic or villainous. I think it's how you use it. Healing the Joker while Batman is trying to knock him out to keep him from harming innocent people is villainous. Severely weakening Solomon Grundy with toxic poisons so that Green Arrow can take him down before he destroys several city blocks is heroic.

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I agree, and it seems to me this is what Going Rogue is all about. The Empathy vs. Pain Domination debate now seems moot.

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Example: Somebody on one of my global channels reported last night that the market activity showed a Boresight common salvage sold for 80 million influence. Rich farmers are pricing regular people out of the market.

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Then someone was either transferring some money to an alt or they had one heck of a typo. You see that all the time.

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Possibly someone just being nice.