Westley

But what WE think MIGHT make it happen. Remember, it's a whole new ballgame now, anything is POSSIBLE because of the sole ownership of the game now and the new resources.

That and Emmert's gone. I think he was the #1 thing in the way of giving FF any love.

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Knock down is turned into KB quite easily by using KB enhancements. Lowering the mag of Repulsion Bomb's KB actually /increases/ the power's utility by letting players slot (or not, as the case may be) in order to achieve the desired effect.

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QFT

I would love it if they just made a blanket change to the set and turned down ALL the KB numbers by default to just under 1 so that they are all KD by default. Then guess what? You slot in one KB enhancement or not, and it acts like a "switch" that turns it into knockback or not.

I REALLY think that this idea more than anything would make the set infinitely more playable to the average player.

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QQFTFT

"Anti-knockback" apparently isn't an option since it equates to giving knockback resistance to your foes. However, simply not doing knockback in the first place and doing knockdown instead gives you the option to do knockback if you want.

I can only assume that the devs have given this capability to meleers but not to Force Field because it is simply TOO powerful, and would make FF's knockback powers TOO useful. Repulsion Bomb particularly. They would rather add a slight chance of disorient and some damage than make the power able to reliably disable all foes with no negative consequences.

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Only being able to use it every 2 or 3 minutes is a negative consequence that I think we all could live with to have this functionality... wouldn't you agree?

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Knock down is turned into KB quite easily by using KB enhancements. Lowering the mag of Repulsion Bomb's KB actually /increases/ the power's utility by letting players slot (or not, as the case may be) in order to achieve the desired effect.

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QFT

I would love it if they just made a blanket change to the set and turned down ALL the KB numbers by default to just under 1 so that they are all KD by default. Then guess what? You slot in one KB enhancement or not, and it acts like a "switch" that turns it into knockback or not.

I REALLY think that this idea more than anything would make the set infinitely more playable to the average player.

Basically, people just want it to do what it's SUPPOSED to do consistently, instead of half-[censored] like it does now. And the people I've seen posting have been willing to accept an increase in the cost to get it to happen.

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* Increase magnitude so the defender version reliably cages AVs.

(Magicj's suggestion that didn't get included in the summary). If this isn't already so, it is a very good idea.


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There is no "mag" for the cage affect, there is only the chance to hit. If you have some extreme accuracy on the power, it will hit anything. Most people just don't add full accuracy to it. It's not like Holds or Sleeps that have Magnitude, there is no such thing as a "Cage Magnitude". Take a look at it's entry on RedTomax' site. The only "mag" the power has is called OnlyAffectsSelf, and AFAIK, there is no such thing as "resistance to OnlyAffectsSelf". I could be wrong.

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Repulsion Field :
The list of suggestions here is very chaotic...


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Not really chaotic at all, the list does NOT include repeat suggestions, and MOST people offered the same suggestion, which was this:
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*Increase the endurance cost per hit and increase the "pulse" rate of the knockback pulses, or change the pulse rate the same as that of Repel in Kinetics.


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The rest are miscellaneous "+Pie" that other people wanted to throw in there. Most people agree that this power would be more useful if it wasn't "pulses" but more like Kinetic's Repel, namely, "always on, always repelling".

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Repulsion Bomb:
Another chaotic suggestion list, which to me suggests that this power needs to be replaced entirely.

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Wrong again. This is what happens when you take out the "number of votes" for each idea and consolidate similar ideas into one. Again, MOST people in post after post requested the EXACT same changes to the power that they said would make them want to take it:

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# Decrease the animation and/or cast time SUBSTANTIALLY.
# Increase the chance to stun substantially, or change the knockback into knockdown.
# Increase the recharge time of the power to 2 or 3 minutes and/or increase the endurance cost. (Assuming that one or more of the items above are done as well)

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As a final note, I really, honestly, truly think that the idea of "throwing out" a power completely and replacing it with a new power is out of the question. Especially for an almost four year old set. I don't think such talk about replacing powers is constructive at all, and in my humble opinion, the suggestions where a power is completely changed into a new power are the least helpful type of suggestions.

No Cottages.

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Edit: As of now on test the short and long description has been modified to list damage as moderate.
The short description just states "Ranged (Targeted AoE)", the longer description still says "Projects an expanding Force Bubble around an ally that knocks down and Disorients nearby foes."

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Wow. They can increase the damage of the power tenfold, but they can't correct a text error in the power's description that's been around for two years?

Just wow.

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Patience is key...If you expect to make a killing this way right of the bat, then you are going to be disappointed.

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Then maybe you should rename the guide?

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Frozen Horizons' Guide to getting rich quick!

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Maybe to "Frozen Horizons' Guide to getting rich slow, with patience!"

NEW Consolidated List of FF Change Suggestions

These suggestions are in order of their appearance in the thread. All suggestions listed so far in the thread have been added here, whether I agree with them or not. MY favorites are listed in yellow.... just cause I can.

[u]General Requests[u]<ul type="square">[*]Add a Defense DeBuff somewhere.[*]Give us a way to add to the team's damage.[*]Suggested power: Force Wall, a placeable "wall" of force that cannot be passed, suggested 40 foot length.[*]Add "movement powers" to the set, like Kinetics has, justified as us giving ourselves and teammates "low friction".[*]Add more contextually-sensitive elements to environments that activate for various effects under various conditions. Similar to dynamite or light-able oil-slicks that already exist in-game.[*]Add a "combo system" to the powerset that would give team buffs or enemy debuffs depending on in what order powers were used.[/list]
[u]Power Specific[u]

Personal Force Field:<ul type="square">[*]Allow slotting for +Res.[*]Allow the field to be "suppressed", allowing the bubbler to fire through it with either a loss of defense or with a severe defense and/or resistance penalty.[*]Allow the user to affect allies while in the field.[/list]
Deflection and Insulation Shields:<ul type="square">[*]Switch the Defense percentages between Dispersion Bubble and Insulation and Deflection Shields.[*]Make them into PBAoE auras.[*]Add +Recovery to Insulation Shield.[*] Prevent stacking from same characters on zoning and make them last 15 minutes or until zoning.[*]Speed up the cast times.[/list]
Dispersion Bubble:<ul type="square">[*]Replace the sleep weakness with an immobilize weakness.[*]Add +Recovery to all allies.[*]Increase the size to the same as Force Bubble, or switch their sizes.[*]Add some defense debuff resistance.[/list]
Force Bolt:<ul type="square">[*] Add a low percentage chance to disorient, or a minor disorient.[*]Increase the toggle dropping ability.[*] Increase the knockback magnitude.[*]Add -Damage or -Resistance.[*]Add more damage to the power.[*]Add KnockUP Mag as well.[*]Add an immobilize component against AVs/EBs/GMs only.[*]Give it a 25-30 damage base.[/list]
Detention Field:<ul type="square">[*]Add a short-term placate effect to anyone that tries to attack the enemy that's detained.[*] Change to a timed toggle power so that it can be turned off at will but is forced off if left on too long. [*]Change the graphic to where its super super obvious that thing has been detained.[*]Add a power icon to the bubbler's status window to show when the field is about to lift.[*]Make the target of the field unable untargettable by anyone (possibly until 5 seconds before the power deactivate).[*]Make the detained target unable to affect itself as well.[*]Add -Regen to the detained target.[*]Allow it to target enemies or allies.[*]Make Cold, Fire, Energy, and Neg. Energy attacks directed at the detained target become small radius AoEs of the same damage type - a splash effect. [*]Change to a Mag 4 Sleep.[*]Allow player attacks to "move" the detained target even if they do no damage.[*]Change to an immobilize and adds -Accuracy to the enemy.[*]Make into a targettable AoE.[*]Make into a "reverse Personal Force Field". The enemy has high Defense and Damage Resistance but can't attack.[*]Add damage to the Detained enemy while it's inside the field.[*]Increase the immobilize magnitude and add -teleport.[*]Reduce duration and recharge, and allow us to slot it for duration.[*]Change to a toggle that has an increasing endurance cost to maintain.[/list]
Repulsion Field :<ul type="square">[*] Increase the endurance cost per hit and increase the "pulse" rate of the knockback pulses, or change the pulse rate the the same as that of Repel in Kinetics.[*]Add a knockback magnitude modifier that is based on the radius distance away from the PBAoE; the closer to the center of the PBAoE the higher the magnitude of the KB.[*]Either increase the magnitude to make it more powerful or decrease it to make it knockdown.[*]Add a small percent chance to disorient or a +Slow effect to enemies.[*]Add a "negative Power Boost" effect: reduces all enemy effects i.e. mez durations, defense buffs, heals, etc.[*]Give it a larger radius but decrease the pulse rate.[*]Alternatively, make it half the size of Dispersion Bubble and increase the knockback magnitude.[*]Change it to a PBAoE click power that disorients and knocks back all foes.[*]Change into a Defender version of Bonfire: It would be a placeable AoE knockback object.[*]Change it into a pet that follows you and has it's own PBAoE Repel ability.[*]Give it a 25-30 damage base, and add a ToHit check.[*]Add +Resistance to the user.[/list]
Repulsion Bomb:<ul type="square">[*] Decrease the animation and/or cast time SUBSTANTIALLY.[*]Increase the chance to stun substantially, or change the knockback into knockdown.[*]Increase the recharge time of the power to 2 or 3 minutes and/or increase the endurance cost. (Assuming that one or more of the items above are done as well)[*]Increase the damage the power does to that of a tier 1 blast.[*]Change it to an AoE or cone version of Force Bolt.[*]Change into a Defender version of Bonfire: It would be a placeable AoE knockback object.[*]Add a -Defense, -Resistance or -Regen.[*]Change it back to ally-targeted, or fix the description in-game.[*]Add a Transference effect.[*]Make it a placeable AoE or targeted AoE with a "reverse knockback" effect that sucks all enemies towards it.[*]Replace with a "Frostworks-Like Shield".[*]Change to a single target ranged 100% chance of Stun power.[*]Change it to be exactly like "the old Nemesis Staff".[/list]
Force Bubble:<ul type="square">[*]Increase the chance of knockdown/back.[*]Make it give +10% Resistance to all, or 5-10% Defense bonus to the FFer.[*] Make it the same radius as Dispersion, or switch the radii of the two powers.[*]Increase the magnitude of the Repel effect and/or add a +Slow component to the power.[*]Reduce the endurance cost or the recharge.[*]Change to a -Damage, -Speed, -Recharge, -Accuracy, -ToHit, or -Resistance aura. (Pick and choose your DeBuffs)[*]Add a +ToHit or +Damage, +Regen or +Recovery to allies. (Pick and choose your Buffs)[*]Make it exactly like Hurricane[*]Change to a 30 second click power instead of a toggle.[*]Give all allies within +perception.[*]Make mobs "stick" to the edge of the power.[*]Make force bubble into two bubbles: Inner bubble same size as dispersion and act as FB does now, outside bubble would be the same size as FB is now, but does KD instead of repel.[*]Similar to the previous suggestion but: an inner bubble that pushes out, and an outer bubble that pushes in.[/list]
All similar or identical suggestions were removed.

Please consider the following guidelines with your future suggestions:

No Cottages: The smaller the change, the more likely it is to become reality.
Maintain the Theme: Force Fields is known best for damage mitigation, it is also known for Knockback, Repel, and "Phasing".
Equivalent Exchange: For balance reasons, it's easier to give something up to get something. No free lunches unless something is vastly underpowered.

Please feel free to post your future suggestions here. I will offer no more negative criticisms of them.

Here is a shortcut so that you can refer to this post in the future as a new "starting point": http://tinyurl.com/3a8ly8

I have to agree, this is the best one of them all.

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- Jock Tamson, Who hopes he will be rewarded with inspiration.

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*hands Jock a Second Wind*

Enjoy.

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TOO SLOW! *points up*

I agree... I haven't seen one insult yet...

By the way, where's CDN_Guardian? Did he fall asleep?

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Yes, but you know there's always that naggy TWO WHOLE seconds where you have the whole attention of all the enemies around you before the PFF takes effect. That's not dangerous at all!


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You're just trying to get me to link my videos again, aren't you.

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Oh, the videos which show that you had to use an outside power pool to make up for a failure in the primary? Sure!

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What failure is that? It's not a failure to heal yourself. Even Tankers have been know to take a heal or two, you know. Some even take the Medicine pool.

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But no other primaries have to rely on Medicine to do what other primaries can already do. Sure FF can do things that other primaries simply CAN'T do, but the truth is that FF is really an "unstable" set. It's either working to full capacity or not working at all. As others have said, it's purely binary. You either have the shields on or not. You either use the OTHER powers or you don't. There is almost no middle ground in between. And that's not good.

The experts of the set know to take and use ALL the powers and know how to use them to the greatest effect. The newbies know to take the "big three" and don't know what else to do. The "mediocre" players gets nothing more from the set than a newbie does. All other primaries have more of a "gradual scale" to their "usefulness/easiness to learn". FF doesn't, you either know it all or you know nothing, there is really little ground in the middle for those that want to slowly step into the set. It's not a learning curve, it's a learning CLIFF.

Probably the best metaphor that I can give for this is that every other primary is composed of Skittles. They have all sorts of colors that bring all sorts of different flavors. ForceFields is Reese's Pieces, it's got about 3 different candy coatings, but when you bite into them, they're all peanut butter.

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

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Yes, but you know there's always that naggy TWO WHOLE seconds where you have the whole attention of all the enemies around you before the PFF takes effect. That's not dangerous at all!


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You're just trying to get me to link my videos again, aren't you.

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Oh, the videos which show that you had to use an outside power pool to make up for a failure in the primary? Sure!

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- Jock Tamson, Who hopes he will be rewarded with inspiration.

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Ask and ye shall receive!

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And that you can hit Provoke and then raise PFF.

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Yes, but you know there's always that naggy TWO WHOLE seconds where you have the whole attention of all the enemies around you before the PFF takes effect. That's not dangerous at all!

EDIT: I already stated my opinion. Most people have already laid out their "visions" for changes to the set. Those changes have already been consolidated, and not that many were added after the fact. Castle has presumably read it all, so all that's left to do is wait and argue with each other over what sucks the most about FF.


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So what's the next step PK? This is your thread after all.

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Pie fight?

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But if it doesn't, it needs to be able to do what it does better than anyone else, and that's mitigation.

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And it does. The only thing that can compete with PFF is a Stone Tanker in Granite.


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Sure, if you're solo, it's GREAT! Doesn't help a team though... As far as your little "Provoke+PFF" trick goes... when you're in PFF you can't Provoke. When you can Provoke, you don't have the protection of PFF. Sure you can do it, but it's not reliable on a team and it's not safe.

WOOHOO! So tell us your plan Jock, are you really going to spread it out over time or what?

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Statesman's view was laughably out of touch.

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A truer statement has never been made on these forums. Ever.

Statesman had the "executive's view" of the game and it's powersets. He was sitting up in la-la-land high on Cloud 9. I think Castle knows what he's doing.

I think he's also heard us and our desires now. He has PLENTY of ideas from all over the spectrum, from small changes to complete power changes. He has everything he needs. All that's left is to sit and wait and see what he does with what we've given him.

To all the rest of you:

These other conversations are sure interesting to watch happen, but I think the real conversation about FF power changes has long been over. But keep doing what you're doing, it is entertaining to watch and often times informative.

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FFers get very little benefit from it compared to other sets.

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Yet ANOTHER one of my impassioned FF "speeches" from another thread for your enjoyment. Damn I'm one heck of a bloviator! This thread was about the "usefulness of Vigilance", and UberGuy Didn't think it was particularly useful....

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Here's the problem I have with this perspective. It assumes that the Defender is not running these toggles already. If they are not, why aren't they? Why have they waited until their team is getting hurt to run them?


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Once more, if the Defender is holding back and that is causing the team to lose health they are not a good Defender. A good Defender should be using every tool at their disposal to ensure that their team is as safe as possible.

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If I ran Repulsion Field all the time and jumped into mobs, or even if I had Force Bubble just UP all of the time, more than likely I would be kicked off of 99% of teams. That's why.

FF Defenders are generally NOT ALLOWED TO use "all of their tools all of the time" because of the stigma of knockback and repel and the fact that most of their powers directly effect their teammates damage over time. If enemies are knocked back, they are generally also spread away from each other, which KILLS AoE DoT. That means that most teams hate knockback.

When the S**T HITS THE FAN however, the good FF Defender is "authorized" to cut totally loose and knock everything in every which direction and get them all on their butts and not attacking their teammates. This is where Vigilance and the benefits of it kick in the most. It makes FF the ULTIMATE damage mitigator for three reasons:

1) It knocks enemies AWAY from your allies and in GENERAL ranged damage from enemies is less than melee damage. What also helps with this is that enemies that are stuck in "melee" mode often times WON'T ATTACK BACK with a ranged attack, they will just keep running to try to get to you and attack you in melee.

2) Enemies ON THEIR BACKS aren't fighting and aren't attacking, so that means that with every knockback attack that you use on every enemy, that's about 5 seconds break you get from that enemy doing ANYTHING to you. Multiply that by the entire MOB getting knocked on their butts after you jump in the middle of them with Repulsion Field and your whole team gets a 5 second break to get out of there!

3) It draws the enemies attention AWAY from your teammates, allowing you to tank for a short time as the enemies turn to look at the guy that knocked them on their butt. Use Force Bubble and you will get the attention of almost the ENTIRE MOB! Then when the heat is on the FFer and the FFer looks in trouble due to their weak personal defense? Personal Force Field, BAM! The enemies try to attack the FFer and they can't TOUCH him. That gives the rest of the team another 5-10 seconds of protection as the enemies "discover" that this guy is untouchable. After they discover that, they slowly "peel off" of the FFer one by one and THEN try to find another target.

But my point is here, you couldn't do all of that half as well without Vigilance. After bubbling your whole team AND blasting all the time with your attacks, all of these knockback/repulsion/capture effects would be useless if you didn't have the endurance to use them.

Vigilance truly lets the FFer be "always vigilant". Vigilance lets FFers be more than a buffbot, it allows them to attack freely, knowing that they will have the endurance that they need to turn the tide of the battle when things get rough.

That is the power of Vigilance.

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And while we're on the subject of pathetic damage

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Huh. Just tonight I was fighting CoT in the Portal Corp parking lot. A Willpower/Mace tanker was fighting near me. We both attacked one of those "twin spawns" of Death Mages, you know, the ones where there's two Death Mages facing each other? Anyways, we both each attacked one of them. I had mine down a full minute before he had his down. I ran over to him and did an /emote sit, laughing at him while he was still attacking his mage.

I think Defenders, even FF Defenders can do pretty damn good damage, if you build for it....

tl;dr

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Controllers and Masterminds have better Defense values against Smashing/Lethal attacks than Defenders when epic powers are accounted for. Defenders can reduce some of the damage they take, but Controllers and Masterminds work around this by having substantially better chances of not being hit. Only when attack types are outside Smash/Lethal does the Defender show a slight Defense advantage over a Controller or Mastermind.


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That and the fact that Controllers can HOLD enemies, the ultimate defense... Masterminds have alot of bodyguards to soak up damage.... Defender's , especially FFers, don't really have those abilities to "complement" their Defense powers.

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NEW DEFENDER EPIC
41 Hand Clap, Knockback, Chance to Stun_____// There's no such thing as too much Knockback
41 Build Up, +DAM, +ACC__________________// Damage bonus
44 Temp Invulnerability, +DEF(S/L)__________// +DEF shields
47 Fast Healing, +REGEN___________________// +REGEN to counteract catastrophic defense failure

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The Power Mastery Epic has all of these except Regen. In fact two of the powers you mentioned by name ARE in that Epic set, Temp Invuln and Build Up. Hand Clap in that set is replaced with Total Focus, which is a highly damaging attack that has a GUARANTEED chance to stun (I know this because I use it on level 53 CoT Death Mages all the time). And instead of +Regen, the set gives you a power that can reduce all the endurance that you use for a while. I'd say the set already exists that's close to what you're suggesting, and it's the set that I use.

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Nice. With specific problems listed, we can do more than argue the merits of someones +Pie idea. Getting an "consensous" list of problems would go a long way to helping this thread.

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Isn't this what Starfox asked for like 9 pages ago? That makes me smile.

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"Solutions" are everywhere. But no problems.

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Keep in mind that these come from the observations I've made in MANY threads over a long period of time. I don't necessarily agree to them myself, but here they are.

Problems GENERALLY seen in ForceField related threads:
<ul type="square">[*]No way of increasing team damage - all other primaries have some way of doing this. [*]Knockback powers are hard to make useful in a team environment without spending hours mastering them. [*]Primary gives no way to actively assist in an AV or GM fight. [*]Several powers may be considered "redundant" because they perform the same or similar function. [*]FFer least protected member of the team. [*]Constant rebubbling leads to a "boring" or "annoying" playstyle to alot of people.[/list]
EDIT: Added last one.

Not bad at all, I like it.