Vty_EndlessNight

The problem i have with this is that groups aren't always going to be balanced.

Unless people patrol the arena with their fully optimised (SG) group of death, 'balanced' team battles will be just as few and far between as the 1v1 battles.

I know for a fact that my defending abilities as a dark/dark are far below that of a FF/kinetics/empathy or even that of a controller. because we are more of a jack of all trades we're likely to simply compliment what a group already has, a bit of extra control to go with a controller, a bit of extra debuff to go with the rad or stormies. and a small amount of damage and survivability to go with tanks/scrappers.

therefore a group containing 2 defs is a must of one of them is a dark or storm defender, because they simply aren't specialised enough to prop a group up like the buff specialists or the debuff specialist (rad)

I'm sure there are similar examples with other ATs, i just used the defender example because i can relate to it. I cant say they should make 1v1 balanced, because it never ever will be completely balanced. all that needs to be done that for any 1v1 situation both sides of the equation have to have some sort of chance against the other.

Currently certain scrapper and controller builds can pretty much dominate 80% of the other builds. there will always be exceptions to this, but im pretty sure that we will see some adjustments made to balance out encounters that include these builds.

in my experience the fear bug is the opposite way round.

i've seen a dark scrapper perma fear a number of opponents. but i've used fearsome stare on several teams and individuals. and a number of times against scrappers i've had to remember to step away from them as i continue to attack because they continued to attack me. the only thing i can see broken with fear and other hold type powers is the immunity timers.

The immunity timers appear to drop at the same time the auto/passive powers drop. so as soon as you die once, there is no immunity timer for anything. This is especially apparent when facing gravity controllers. and i've noticed it when using petrifying gaze that i can easilly hold someone after they've come out of a hold, ran a few steps only to be snared by one of my dark servants again.

I would wager that the immunity timers, like the break frees, have a magnitude limit. and that if the magnitude of all the holds stacked on the player is greater than that of the immunity/break free then you can still be held. it's impossible to get away from 2 singularities using breakfrees because the inspiration just doesn't bring you out of the hold, unless you want to pop 4 or 5 of them at once. and even then you're held a few seconds later when the break free duration runs out. that is rediculous if you ask me. i use a breakfree i should be out of all controlling powers straight away no questions asked.

The problem still remains tho. If i use this power on a group of tightly packed enemies and it doesn't hit all of them. how am i to know which are intangible and which aren't? because i sure cant tell the difference just by looks. By the time w've figured out which ones aren't intangible to attack them or subdue them by other means the affect has worn off and we're back to the way we were before and no better off.

I'll give you an example. I'm a programmer in VFP. I just set a fairly large and significant new aspect of our system into a live test environment at work. It took me a fair few weeks to finish it, test it, re-finish it, re-test it and so on before i was ready to unleash it. I made it available on the 12th of January...Today i'm currently making the finishing touches to the complete overhaul of the logic routes of this new mod, and it's about 3 times more complex than it was originally!

Some things just don't go to plan, one small oversight can lead to a very large dilema and a huge delay in implementation. I can completely sympathise

thankfully i'm only currently a week overdue. Software is VERY rarely finished on time or within budget, There just so much that cant be comepletely accounted for. The largest software development project in existance, Microsoft Windows has never finished on time or under budget, ever. And every version has been released with countless bugs and critical holes. It happens, we just have to be patient unfortunatly

oh yeah that'd be cool. forgot about the custom weapons thing. prolly down to my fear of weapons or sommin lol. Only thing is...the majority of powersets don't use weapons, and the colour of energy and other non weapon-based is hardly much customisation compared to what is likely to be available to weapons heroes. in fact only scrappers and tankers would benefit from this if you don't count assault rifle blasters.

Still be cool to see people runnin about with different weapons...rock on!

I imagine like every part of the development of this game. PvP has an entirely seperate team to develop it and won't detract from any other development time.

personally PvP is an inexaustable supply of high end content....you fight npcs...learn a tactic against them,, they do the same thing over and over...it just gets boring. Against real players you can develop more complex tactics, and will need to, because the other players will think far better and sneakier than anything any AI can produce.

Playing against another player is just about always different. No-one buys beat em ups to play them on their own, at least not for any great length of time, the online scene is designed to play with and against other people. otherwise it'd be an offline game with downloadable patches for content updates. I try and try not to come back to the whole "it's an online multiplayer game" arguement but every time i try and offer up something to the solo and storyline based community, it just seems to feel like it's in a wasted genre.

Like we should create an entirely different genre for that type of game. Because everytime a new MMO comes out, the reaction is the same, people want more solo content, people want more pvp content etc etc. And in all fairness it's just about business suicide to create a game entirely devoted to one of these genres.

I mean i think the skills system is an exciting addition, but it can wait for me. I was never a fan of crafting, i hate relying on weapons in a game, it's a constant battle that numbs my brain trying to have the best weapon and the best armour. The fact that all i have to do is decide how effective i want to be and develop my character accordingly is what i love abotu Coh. I like that i dont have to rely on a lucky drop or a random spawn to gain an advantage over people, i play to compete, to socialise and to enjoy. Not to sit whiling my time away doing crafting type things.

yeah the SSOCS is supposedly non-monotonous-puke-inducing mouse click grinding and i have no doubt that it will involve heavilly in the game. if you ask me skills will be more to do with PvP than you think. The very categories of skill throw a whole host of ideas up in my head about how they would be useful to storm bases and capture artefacts etc. thats why i think SSOCS has been put back, because it more closely ties in with CoV.

Plus the devs know that even the people that said they weren't interested in PvP will still play regardless. Just like the doomsayers and 'i quit' spammers. and as i said above PvP is a far more substantial aspect of content that is unlikely to be exausted quickly. People are still finding new ways to beat the NPCs imagine how long it'll take to exaust ideas against real thinking imaginative people. good call on the devs if ya ask me.

still...SSOCS prolly shouldn't have leaked so early if it's not right for it to go in yet...the SSOCS ifo has been circulating for months and months now. but then maybe thats part of the plan, keeps people interested and awaiting something big. Lets face it after pvp and SSOCS what else has been announced that people are waiting for? CoV is about all i can think of, maybe a few new powersets and ATs. i'm sure there's plenty waiting in the wings but it's not out in the open yet. Let's waiting and see. the way i look at it, once pvp is in, there is gonna have to be some more rumour mongering so that there's something else for people to look forward to

We'ew used to it by now. What really <insert more offensive term here> me is that we generally have to wait for 6 months to get the updates from the US versions simply because there are more languages and policies in europe. That REALLY is NOT acceptable to me. Lord of the rings and the matrix were released worldwide in every language simultaneously. there probably isn't much of a different in the number of translations needed tbh. If they can do it so can everyone else, they just choose not to. and it bites the big one.

I for one will not be buying a uk version. There is no reason for me to. delayed updates. initially the EU community will be far behind what i'm used to. the game will be full of dullards for months just like the US one till everyone catches up to the lvl us early subscribers are at. If we can transfer our characters to the EU servers it wont make much difference because not enough people will transfer to make the upper lvl community worthwhile. it'll be empty for weeks till the decent people get up to our lvl.

if you ask me any game that is not released worldwide is in for an uphill struggle with it's EU import customers. because no matter how it's handled the introduction of EU servers is only good for those people that are new starters. It's too much of a bakcwards step for us to switch to a new server and even more of a backtrack to start again.

I would welcome paying in Euros tbh, i was paying 12 euros to play Daoc which is the same as me paying US$15. £8. yes thats right it costs me the same to play CoH is it does to play Daoc. so bring on the Euros or any other currency for that matter, as long as brittain doesn't switch to the Euro anytime soon we'll be laughin to the bank =)

My overall personal favourite thing about the EATs is that it will make the lower lvls fun again. Its taken me since release to get to lvl 33 with my defender and lvl 21 with my blaster and the time up until that was spent mostly creating alts trying to find my 'nice' combination of AT and powers. The number of alts i created must be close to triple figures i swear lol.

And the problem i h ave is that now i have my defender aproaching the higher lvl stuff...the lower level stuff just seems a bit small fry. Not to mention i'm used to how effective and efficient SOs make my powers having spent so much time on every lvl, spoilt by SOs i guess.

But to have some more options to start again would intrest me greatly, i've tried numerous times to find another AT that i like to counteract the sometimes boring nature of my heavilly group based defensive dark/dark defender and if there are going to be a lot of people looking for groups that suits me down to the ground anyway, i play the game to socialise, compete with and against other people.

I'm not sure how i envisage the EATs working tbh. i have my ideas, but its difficult to form any sort of accurate description without knowing key factors like the definition of 'power boost' and whether the power boost affects all powers oronly a select few powers, only the pirmary or secondry. WHO KNOWS! not us, and probably not truly until we get a chance to test them.

epic pools....i'm a bit wary of this. i was especially suprised to see this statement by..statesman in the interview:

[ QUOTE ]
A Defender and a Blaster want personal defense powers

[/ QUOTE ]

well blasters, ok i'll give em that. but defenders wanting personal defenses? the only defender set i can see that has a real problem with personal defense is forcefields that hardly benefit at all from their own powers. Empathy as well to a certain degree but at least they can moderately heal and buff themselves. But the other 4 sets can benefit from just about all their own powers. If anything i would agree that the above quote and other similar quotes are true BUT, i would ask that not all the epic pools be based around those statesman interview posts.

I would want the option for more dmg and would actually prefer it. i would also welcome the ability for similar powers to other the defender sets. For example forcefield defs might like the ability to control mobs somewhat or have some form of ae heal. epic pools are the perfect set up for PvP if you ask me. rather than creating massive weakness of the paper rock scissors kind of scale like other PvP games, i have hopes that it will round off the ATs more solidly and offer anyone a chance to compete against any other AT, albeit to a lesser degree.

This however is assuming i will reach 50 this side of 2010

Here's an interesting twist type theory thing.

What if your university professor were to give you a mission that involved using your studied skills to complete it? difuse bombs in a 5th column facility for instance. you could take along a security expert to handle the doors, and a communications expert to confuse the patrols!

I'm liking it lots! much better than standard crafting.