digdug_NA

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Still confused about one point: if (for example) you've got a three person team, each person on the team is 400' away from each other person, and person X defeats a bad guy -- does person X get "solo XP" or XP for being on a 3 person team?



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He'd get XP with the 3 person team multiplier...BUT that XP would still be divided appropriately between each teammate. The others, however, wouldn't receive their shares.

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This part of the system ought to be changed. Basically what it means is that for missions where your team splits up, say because you're scouting for bombs or just need to beat lots hundreds of skuls, you're actually losing experience per person doing that. Even though it makes perfect sense to split up in these cases, the entire team is being penalized experience because of the lost shares. The team multiplier does not make up for the loss of the split exp shares.

Instead, I think what should happen is people who get exp are treated as their own team for exp purposes. People who don't get exp because they're out of range and didn't do damage are treated as not being on the team at all. That way you're still encouraged to be in range to receive a share, but if you're not in range the people who are in range aren't penalized for having you on the team.

Otherwise I like the new system. This part of it should change, though. My two cents.

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Currently, I use Propel not for the damage but to knock opponents back toward the tanker, into ice patches, etc. If the speed of the power were improved it becomes a decent single target knockback. (By the way, unlike some people, I find knockback very useful. I just make sure I'm knocking the target in the direction I want, as opposed to firing randomly.)

And, of course, shortening animation/recharge likewise increases damage per second, which some people want. I don't care about that, though - I'd just like to be able to keep people off their feet more easily.


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If your secondary is FF, then Force Bolt will do what you want very nicely.

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And if your secondary isn't FF...? Mine happens to be Kinetics, and yes, I do sometimes use Repel for positioning in a similar manner. And I use Propel when Repel is down or a little too clunky (since it's PBAE and sends them REALLY far), or I feel like doing a little damage too.

Plus, even if your secondary IS FF, I would think alternating Force Bolt with a quickened-version of Propel would be a good thing, allowing you to knockback twice as much as normal.

So yeah, maybe another way of looking at it is make Propel more like Force Bolt. A quick cast knockback attack that does some damage.

A few suggestions in light of the recent changes to Gravity:

PROPEL -
The extra damage is ok, but personally I'd prefer the damage be left alone and the animation time greatly shortened. Alter the animation so the propelled object doesn't "slowly rise", but BAMF! It's there and flying toward the opponent.

By reducing the animation time, and maybe the recharge a little, you convert propel into a more useful knockback/knockdown power that you can alternate with Lift to keep opponents off their feet. Currently, I use Propel not for the damage but to knock opponents back toward the tanker, into ice patches, etc. If the speed of the power were improved it becomes a decent single target knockback. (By the way, unlike some people, I find knockback very useful. I just make sure I'm knocking the target in the direction I want, as opposed to firing randomly.)

And, of course, shortening animation/recharge likewise increases damage per second, which some people want. I don't care about that, though - I'd just like to be able to keep people off their feet more easily.


- DIMENSION SHIFT: I use Dimension Shift a couple of times a mission in most small teams to phase out unruly ranged opponents who are too far away to be caught in blaster and scrapper AE fire. So I don't think it's useless or even "team unfriendly", provided you know what you're doing.

Even so, I still think it would be more useful overall if it were changed to a single target power like Detention Field. With a single target phase you can phase out stragglers more easily without interfering in mobbed-together pulls, etc. I think if you made Dimension Shift single target, with the accompanying reduction in end cost and recharge speed to put it on par with Gravity Distortion, it would be useful in more types of fights than it currently is. In most fights there's a straggler or two that could be single-target phased without impacting the main melee that the damage dealers are focussing on.

So this is a case where making Dimension Shift single target instead of AE would, instead of being a "nerf", would make it more useful. Much of the problem associated with Dimension Shift stem from it being AE and interfering with AE damage.


- WORMHOLE: I could go either way on this. I like the single target version, because it's more precise. And the disorient on the AE wormhole isn't long enough to do much. So making this power AE doesn't really seem to be an improvement. It doesn't necessarilly make the power worse, but it doesn't seem to make it any better.

If the devs want to give gravity a second AE control power, they should increase the hold slightly on Wormhole to make it just slightly less than our current AE hold. (I think the duration should be slightly shorter since the positional portion of the AE wormhole does offer some value.) If my suggestion of making Dimension Shift single target were implemented, having AE Wormhole do a longer disorient would compliment it pretty well.


As an aside, I haven't had a chance to try, but it's possible that AE Dimension Shift and AE Wormhole might combine with a little synergy. You can phase a high level group, then AE Wormhole the phased group somewhere else. The already phased opponents will stay in place, while the unphased opponents will be teleported away into a corner for your team to kill. This might allow AE Wormhole to act like a sifter to seperate phased from non-phased opponents. Not sure how useful this tactic might or might not be, but it's interesting to think about.

I have a gravity/kinetics controller with Dimension Shift, and and a Dark/Dark defender without Black Hole (yet). So I thought I'd pipe in for a sec on this topic since the powers are, to my knowledge, identical.

Contrary to popular belief, Dimension Shift is actually pretty useful if used properly. The main thing to keep in mind is that, if you're in a situation where you or your team isn't doing much AE damage, or it's unsafe to do big AE attacks because the opponents are too high level, then it's much safer and easier to handle those opponents one at a time or in small groups then all at once en masse.

To that end, Dimension Shift and Black Hole are extremely efficient at splitting up groups of opponents that are spread apart. For example, if you have three or four opponents in melee and another three or four at long range firing rifles, you can phase out the gunmen and concentrate first on the melee opponents. Because Black Hole and Dimension Shift last so long and recharge quickly, they're very endurance efficient and fairly reliable.


I've found with my grav/kinetics controller that Dimension Shift works quite well with knockback attacks like Repel. If the opponents are all in a tight group, and it's not a good idea to take them all on at once, you can knock some of them far away with Repel then immediately phase them. That leaves half the original group phased and the other half attackable.

Dimension Shift also works well on red or purple opponents even if they're in a tight group because it hits only some of them due to lowered to hit chance. That means you can phase a tight group of reds and about half of them will be phased, the other half attackable. Provided you and your team can tell the difference (which is easy for Dimension Shift), you can usually take out the unphased ones before the phased ones return to normal.

My guess is that, for a Dark/Dark defender, Torrent plus Black Hole has a similar synergy. Use Torrent to knock half a group flying back, then Black Hole the furthest one out. That should phase out most of that group but leave the ones you didn't Torrent unphased. Not having Black Hole yet though, I haven't had the opportunity to try this strategy out.

I should also mention that you can use phased opponents as anchors for toggles like Darkest Night and Enervating Field. Even though the phased anchor himself is phased out and not debuffed, the power itself is there affecting everyone around him. That means that, if you use a phased opponent as an anchor, your teammates can't accidentally kill your anchor! (Woot!)


So I'm not saying everyone run out and respec into Black Hole or Dimension Shift. But depending on how you normally play they can be quite effective, so it's more a matter of perspective on how useful they are. I like Dimension Shift, and I use it on and off almost every session with my controller, so I'm finding it hard to believe Black Hole is as useless as some people claim.

Just my guess though.

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Gosh, Posi jumped on this thread quick, didn't he?

I agree with him, btw. If you were actually confused, you'd know it. One second, your teammates were to your left and the bad guys were 20 feet ahead, and suddenly they're all in different places? You'd realize your perceptions were messed up, or that everyone had suddenly been relocated.

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Actually, that's not what Poz said. He said the reason you need to visibly show confusion is that, if you don't, customer service would get deluged by players who think it's a bug. His post didn't say anything to the effect of "if you were confused, you'd know it".


In fact, if you were confused, you WOULDN'T know it! A good analogy is that if you're dreaming, or hallucinating on drugs, you don't know it. Sure, you'll realize after you wake up or sober up that you were hallucinating and, in fact, that penguins can't talk. But during the hallucination you honestly don't realize anything is wrong.

So, realistically, confusion would work the same way. You wouldn't realize your perception of reality is screwed up until after you start blasting your teammates.

Poz's point about customer service complaints from people who think it's a bug is valid, though, so unfortunately this is an instance where what might otherwise be a neat idea can't get in due to practical issues.

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Problem with this is that most players won't think they are Confused.

They will think they are the victim of a bug or some sort of exploit.

Letting the player know when they are Confused is the easiest way to prevent Customer Service from recieving tons of false bug and exploit tickets....

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Wow, didn't expect a quick reply from the devs on this. Thanks for the info, Poz!

Yeah, I can see your point about players, especially ones who don't read the boards, etc, thinking "confusion" is a bug. Darn, might have been a neat special effect (or lack thereof).

Given that confusion is going to randomly switch a confused player's targets, I suggest that, unlike other powers, confusion have no icon on that player's rack.

For instance, when you get held or debuffed, a small icon appears on the upper right of your screen showing you you've been held.

But for confusion to be effective, the confused player should not immediately realize he's been confused. He might realize it after he's blasted a few teammates, but he shouldn't get a warning beforehand. He should continue to think that everything is normal until he actually sees his buddy get hurt.

So no icon for confusion powers on the confused person's screen. Sound reasonable?

Great thread. A few things I think should be considered here:

PvP and PvE are inherently different games, and players look for different things in them. PvE centers around personal development and advancing through stories and increasingly harder opponents, while PvP focusses primarilly on players facing each other head on in competition.

To that end, levelling is a great tool in PvE to direct players through their journies. But in PvP, players want to be able to fight each other and stand at least SOME chance of fighting back. Things like level limits can make it pretty frustrating finding opponents. Players with high level characters want to be able to fight opposing players and be challenged, while players with low level characters also want to be able to put up a fight against opposing players even if their characters are different levels.

That's why first person shooters, for instance, keep everyone within the same relative power level. Even in persistent games, no matter long your avatar has been around gathering power ups or experience, brand new characters will still put up a fight. Older characters might have slightly better equipment, but pretty much any two teams of opponents can fight each other and have at least some chance of beating each other.

So for PvP it seems you would want higher level characters to have an advantage, but not an insurmountable one. That would allow anybody to fight anybody else and eliminate artificial restrictions on what level characters can fight other each other and trying to split all the PvP zones into tight ranges of "security clearance".

Unfortunately, as it stands, that would not be the case if characters fight each other as if they were NPCs. Even a 5 level difference means the lower level character can not, for all practical purposes, even hit the opponent, let alone win.

At a minimum, then, if you want everyone to be able to be effective at some minimal level against everyone else, certain aspects ought to be equalized, presumably by a sidekick/exemplar type system:

- chance to hit. Even if you don't want everyone to fight each other as "whites", having base chance to hit be in the green to red range could work. Your base chance to hit a high level opponent would be low but feasible.

- Above statement applies to base damage multiplier.

- Note that high level opponents already have an innate advantage in having higher quality enhancements and more enhancement slots, and have more powers available. Even if all other aspects were equal, these alone are sizable advantages.


My advice would be, when internally testing different systems, make sure to also test level equalizing. If that turns out to work out well in terms of playability and fun, then it also would work out a lot better than more restrictive systems at maximizing the number of potential opponents PvP players have at any given moment.


P.S. I saw a lot of posts one way or another arguing about whether or not this system is "realistic" or "comic book like". Frankly that's all a red herring, I think. The bottom line is players will probably judge PvP in City of Heroes by how fun it is and how easy or hard it is to find opponents to fight. They're not likely to care much about if the system stacks up to real life or comic books - only if they are having fun blasting each other.

So whichever system they go with, it should be the one that plays the best and is the most fun. Pick that, THEN rationalize all you want as to why it does or doesn't resemble how comics really work.

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The problem with scaling damage up or down based on target level is that you're basically denying the higher level player the just reward he's earned for leveling his character. If a level 10 shooting at a level 40 does 40th level damage, what's the point? They should not be on a equal footing. The 40th level player has presumably worked hard to earn his extra hp and his larger damage, so it is unfair to strip that from him. Scaling up the level 10's damage to the level 40's equivalent does just that. ...

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Actually, even if you scale the base damage up, the level 40 still has a couple of nice advantages over the level 10:

- The level 40 hero has more enhancements and better types of enhancements. His main powers could easily all be enhanced to 200-300% of their base ability, while the level 10 character would only be enhanced to maybe +50%. That's a pretty big difference, even if the base damage is the same.

- The level 40 hero has many more powers to choose from in a fight over the level 10. Greater flexibility and more options gives the level 40 a nice advantage. Especially in the case of a low level guy without travel powers, for example, or stamina, pets, etc.


Those are the two major advantages I can think of the level 40 guy has even if base damage and hit points are scaled to be equal. So it seems to me you COULD scale the PvP base stats without the higher level player losing other advantages he's earned. The level 10 guy would still have an uphill battle on his hands, although not an impossible one (as would be the case of a level 10 NPC versus a level 40 hero).


Just something to consider.

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...Now, log damage inflicted by a stamina'd mob that is started at full drain, vs. one that you don't touch with drain. I think you'll find that due to the very high damage value of "brawl-equivalent" NPC attacks, the drain reduces damage over time by AT MOST 20%. Now go see how well a knockback can keep something on it's back, or look at the values of slows. Bummer, eh?

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Even if you assume the 20% number is correct (which I have no idea if it is), the above argument overlooks that draining endurance prohibits all non-damage effects as well. So bosses/lieutenents drained of all endurance lose all their toggle powers and can't hold/sleep/stun/do AE attacks, etc. Note that even knockback won't turn off toggle powers like disorient fields, stealth and whirlwind. End drain is the only secondary blaster effect that will turn off a toggle power, short of killing the opponent of course.

So straight damage mitigation is only part of the story, even if you assume the damage mitigation isn't high enough.

I see many, many posts here complaining about end drain being useless against AVs. And I agree that I wouldn't mind seeing AV's be slightly more vulnerable to end drain.

But frankly AVs are a pretty minor part of the game overall. A much more important factor, for me, is that end drain is terrific against bosses. You can completely lock down a red or purple boss using end drain, and simultaneously do blaster-level damage in the process.

Bosses are usually a much bigger threat than their minions, so the ability to shut a boss out of the fight after he makes one or two attacks and do significant damage at the same time is quite nice. That was part of Statesman's point; end drain is not useful against minions, and only mildly useful against lieutenents, but is a boss-killer.

So frankly I don't think end drain is "broken", assuming you fight bosses on a regular basis. The only adjustment it could really use, in my opinion, is to tone down AV end and end recovery somewhat. If I were redesigning the powers from scratch, I'd also reduce the number of melee powers in the electric secondary, but that's not a huge issue for me.

My two cents