goldbricker

Short form: I suggest adding a few bones to character models that sport capes, roughly positioned similar to where wing bones attach to the shoulder, so that capes can be subjected to a 'spread wide' posture at times where cape physics might lead to extreme cape postures.

Long form:

Capes as implemented currently in CoH are done pretty well. However, very often the cape physics twist the cape into weird and aesthetically confusing positions or postures. For example, when jumping off a building and falling straight down, the cape adopts a strained upside-down posture that looks, well, absurd. When twisting around in circles really fast the cape sort of coils around (but can't quite make it most of the time). Then there are many clipping situations. Sometimes it can seem that the tragic stories of capes recounted in The Incredibles are playing out in the streets of Paragon.

Looking a bit at Batman: Arkham Asylum, I notice how Batman's cape can there adopt a special posture for gliding that is far more rigid versus physics. Taking a cue from the basic approach there could add value here.

I suggest character models be altered so that adding a cape would consequentially include adding a set of wing-like invisible bones, attached to the capes near the shoulders and a bit along the cape sides. (Perhaps not absolutely on the edge of the cape, the bone can plausibly run a bit inside from the edge). I suggest these bones remain loose and flexible during periods of relatively low character movement, yet can affirm and spread out wide (like a gliding Batman) when the character ramps up into high-velocity or otherwise highly-dynamic motion.

It's of course difficult to tell if adding such bones could improve cape performance from an aesthetic aspect, or even how exactly such bones must be positioned to best create the effect. But there seems no doubt the current state of capes leaves room for improvement.

With the 6 year badge in the rearview now we're within a couple weeks of people hitting 75 months. Has there been any word what the next few vet badges will be? I can't filter out any obvious announcements on the site or in the forums.

I doubt there'll be much more than a respec token (if that) for a vet reward. I imagine the devs prefer to keep the bigger rewards for the yearly anniversary vets.

Short form:

I want craftable powers to be far less dysfunctional than they are now. There are many ways to do this, but I suggest a restructuring such as:

• all craftable powers given 50% efficacy boost, plus extra boosts on a per-power basis
• power recipe drops are gated similar to enhancements: common powers drop in early levels (like training origin enhancement drops), uncommon in mid levels (like DOs), rare in high levels; chance for drops is left unchanged
• all craftable power recipes are memorizable (making the powers essentially rechargeable)
• power recipe memorization is laid out into a structure of progression, such that achieving memorization of more effective powers requires memorization of one or more less effective powers
• all memorization of all recipes by all players are cleared periodically (suggest every 3 months); upon clearing, some of the power recipes are rotated out of the game and new ones are rotated in, and the progression structure is reworked as needed.

Longer form:

Ever since the drop rates on the craftable power recipes has been fixed to the point where they're dropping very frequently compared to other recipes, I've been frustrated with them. They cost so much in resources, time, and effort to get them into a situation where I can realize any in-game benefit from them, and when I do the benefit is very minor. They do not compare well to regular powers, and yet they fight for equal space in both my limited recipe inventory and in my overstuffed power trays.

They're simply not good. They should be better.

Surely there are lots of ways to make them better. And I have a few ideas:

1. Do a pass on all the craftable temp powers and make them far better. Then do another pass and improve again specific powers as needed.

Craftable powers should be as good as the Nemesis Staff or the Sands of Mu, if not even better. They should have effects that edge out the performance of tier 1 and 2 powers over all power sets. These are the kinds of powers that earn spots in a crowded power tray. And to keep those powers in their tray slot, they should be given a big buff to their charges (25 instead of 5) or expiry time (2.5 hours instead of 30 minutes).

Gabriel's Hammer should have every benefit the Ghost-Slaying Axe has, and more.

2. Add a gating structure to all craftable power recipe drops similar to how enhancement drop tiers are gated.

Enhancements used to drop every tier (and class) at every level, which the devs eventually were made to recognize was too much a burden for the player to deal with. The enhancement inventory got clogged far too easily and players were losing far too many useful drops because they couldn't keep inventory management up during chaotic encounters. The devs then changed the enhancement drop scheme so that only appropriate types of enhancements would drop for the level and class of the character, and this was *very* helpful.

Power recipe drops are now burdening the player in much the same way. And in much the same way they should be restricted to only drop certain types of recipes appropriate to the current state of the player. I would suggest restricting common-type power recipes to drop only for levels 1-25 (same as training origin enhancements), uncommon-type power recipes to drop only for levels 25-35 (same as dual-origins), rares to drop from 35-50 (same as single-origins), and possibly ultra-rares to drop from epic encounter successes (same as hamios et al).

I would keep the drop rate chances the same for each tier, as at low levels there's a need for extra powers to round out limited set powers, while at high levels any decently-built configuration of regular powers can handle almost everything, and only luxurious extra powers would be considered to add into that. Of course a player could sidekick up or down to get into any particular recipe tier if he really wanted.

3. Make all craftable power recipes memorizable in much the same way generic invention enhancement recipes are memorizable.

The worst detriment to using a temporary power is that it's so likely to expire before a player gets a feel for how best to use it. It's essentially way too easy to waste the power's benefits. And once it's wasted, it can't be recovered easily. This leads many players into worse never using a power they've crafted, because they never get a groove for incorporating it into their play, so it just sits in inventory forever.

Craftable powers need to be rechargeable, and easily so, if there is to be any hope of players getting into playing regularly with them. I suggest they be made memorizable.

If they were made memorizable, say after crafting the same power recipe 3-5 times, then a player could recover from expiring a power with just an investment of salvage. This would make it far more feasible for a player to consider putting the power into his power tray for good. Especially if the power icon doesn't disappear from the tray when it expires but simply remains unselectable with a warning that a recharge is needed.

4. Add a progression scheme to power recipe memorization.

If the craftable powers are going to be given efficacy boosts plus convenient rechargeability through memorization, I would suggest a progression system to help balance access to these powers. In addition to a prerequisite of crafting a particular recipe 3-5 times before memorization, I would suggest that each uncommon power recipe also prerequire 1-3 specific common power recipes to be memorized before it allows memorization. In the same vein, rare recipes would additionally prerequire 1-3 specific uncommon recipes, and ultra rares 1-3 (possibly all) specific rares to be first memorized.

Each recipe can still be crafted and used without the progression prerequisites. But cannot be memorized and thus are not easily rechargeable without satisfying the progression prerequisites.

Hypothetically this kind of system could prove to have some appeal to players, and might encourage more to play over a broad range of levels seeking specific drops at specific tiers to satisfy progression prereqs (*if* the craftable powers are made sexy enough...). And if players are indeed encouraged to play over a broader level range, I have to believe that would encourage players to consider how their build plays at every level, leading towards extra potential for artistry in build planning.

5. To retain the concept that these are temporary powers, I suggest all such recipe memorizations be cleared periodically, and the power recipe pool and associated progression charts be subject to rotations.

Making craftable powers become sexy and appealing and worthy of space in power trays means that regular powers start losing their shine and are at bigger risk of being forced out of use. Players may soon find that the basic power sets have a lot of dead powers in them since craftable powers are better.

A method to balance against this would be to periodically clear all memorizations from all players across the whole game. If a player knew that he could rely on a craftable power for the foreseeable future, he can be confident to incorporate it. And if a player knew well in advance that a craftable power was going to be reset, he'd be able to comfortably analyze and adjust how to compensate that loss with his other enduring powers.

I find it appealing then to suggest that recipe memorizations across the whole game be reset every season. This mimics both vet badge awards and business quarterly reports. Everyone is reset to their base powersets on a regular schedule, which naturally encourages meritous play and resists excessive damage from exploits over the long term.

Furthermore, if in addition to a seasonal reset of recipe memorizations, the recipe pool itself were shuffled so that some powers are removed and others are brought in, and the progression system changed as well to match, players could find the game enfreshened a bit every time. If the craftable powers are good enough, new strategies for pvp and/or epic encounters could interestingly ebb and flow and evolve over time. I would think there is significant potential for additional longevity for the game provided by this kind of system.

(Side note: I'd encourage *all* recipe memorizations to be cleared periodically. While it's debatable whether or not retaining memory of a damage IO recipe is important, clearing that memory would help unclog the recipe interface window, without making it too difficult to still generate a damage IO when needed.)

Hopefully that all makes sense and is worthwhile. If not, it's an easy idea to ignore.

I was just thinking about this, and I came to the following conclusion:

Short form:

I suggest that the trade window interface be modified so that it can be reused as the attachment for emails. I further suggest the respec sequence be adjusted so that any leftover unslotted enhancements, instead of being auto sold for inf, be instead automatically added into such a trade window attachment to an email automatically sent to the respec'ed character.

Longer form:

I essentially propose the email attachments be redesigned so that one attaches a multi-purpose container instead of a single item and/or a single quantity of inf. Coincidentally, the trade window acts as a half-decent multi-purpose container already, and probably already has a number of nice safety/tracking features already built in. Hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult to adjust the trade window interface into something that can be attachable by reference.

Emails could be hypothetically redesigned so that the attachment part opens up a (modified) trade window. The player can then add any number of enhancements or salvage or recipes or inf all in one container, and thus all in one email.

If this kind of attachment were to be produced, then it would be a very valuable quality-of-life effort to allow the respec system to use it as well.

Once a player is done with a respec, currently the game will auto sell any leftover, unslotted enhancements that were not moved to the limited-to-10 enhancement inventory. But with such attachment containers in the email system, it would be more valuable to the player if the game instead autogenerated a single email (to be delivered to the respec'ed character) and auto-packaged any leftover enhancements into the email's attachment.

This would mean a player can completely unslot a toon and recover all of the enhancements safely with just a single respec. This saves the player time (in many cases a *lot* of time) and headache and insulates the player from the cost of making mistakes.

One aspect of the trade window that would have to be changed is how the player claims the contents. Currently the claim action is all or nothing, and will fail if the player doesn't have enough inventory space for everything in the container at the same time. It would therefore be of high priority for the devs to add in a per-item claim function, so the player has the flexibility of selectively claiming what part(s) of the container he needs at any one time. And any per-item claim function would have to be properly fenced off so that regular face-to-face trade sessions are safe from bait-and-switch shenanigans.

Of course if the devs modify the trade window, it might be nice for them to throw in extra features like a button per item that the player can click to have the game do a quick search on the last 5 market prices for that item.

Personally, I find one of my biggest struggles in this game is that most of my toons are stuck in an obsolete and/or poor build, often caught with poor partial-slotting. I don't feel like I can get much fun from them because they're far weaker than I plan them to be. And it's just so hard to correct slotting problems or even to get inventory redistributed properly to the toons that need specific inventory. The very high difficulty inherent in managing this is enough to turn me off even trying to manage beyond one or two toons. This kind of change would be of profound help to me.

Short form:
Taking a page from Harrah's casinos, I propose CoH consider adding rewards for going through 'painful' gaming experiences. Essentially trying to make players feel like a million inf even though they've just lost 2 million inf.

Longer form:
Inspired by the Radiolab podcast series on 'choice'. One sequence in that series discusses a technique the Harrah's casino chain uses to keep its gamers happy despite everything about going to a casino is arguablly a bad choice.

The first half of the technique is tracking their players. They offer a loyalty card program to their players. When the players use their cards, the casino is able to track their habits and determine their 'pain points', essentially the point at which their losses are enough to convince them to stop playing, and presumably leave feeling bad about the casino.

The second half of the technique is to offer loyalty rewards with perfect timing. When the tracking system notices that a particular player is close to reaching his specific pain point, a friendly attendee is dispatched to the player, with a nice greeting and some loyalty rewards - some coupons to the steakhouse, some free tickets to a nearby show, or even small denominations of cashback - and the gamer is suddenly happier to leave on a high note (there's a Seinfeld reference there too...).

CoH could try a technique like that. When the game detects a player is near his limit for a session, a thank you reward could leave the player logging on a high note. A player is on a pvp losing streak? Give him a special cluster of merits. A team is taking twice as long as expected and with three times as many deaths as expected to finish an Imperious TF? Dispense a couple extra recipes.

Perhaps change the logout screen such that the player is given a summary of loyalty rewards he would earn if he remains logged out for different lengths of time. This way the summary could also incorporate existing similar elements like day job rewards. For example, say you were in a CoH session whereby you were trying to take on the rikti war zone ship raid but was getting wiped too much by maguses to the point where you're too frustrated to continue playing. The game detects your pain point and prepares a special set of rewards for you. The logout screen tells you that if you stay logged out for 4 hours, you'll get a loyalty reward of 40 vanguard merits in addition to your character gaining 4 hours worth of patrol xp. If you stay logged out for 8 hours, you'll get 80 vanguard merits and a bonus to recipe drop percentages for a small time (and patrol xp). The 12 hour mark can give you 120 merits, recipe drop bonus, and a psi-damage immunity temp power, (and patrol xp).

Determining the pain points is probably the trickiest thing, but I imagine the game has many good hooks in it to do so. Perhaps even sending in a verifiable /petition for in-game abuse can be enough for a gm to assign some loyalty rewards to the victims. The bug hunter badge would become no longer the only reward a dev can assign for good /bug reports.

It should be pretty obvious by now that CoH is far from a perfect gameplay experience whose imperfections won't ever really get fixed. But an effective technique to soften the inevitable imperfection impacts on the player can 'fix' a lot of what ails the CoH player.

When talking about years of time, best not to trivialize the changes that can happen to you as a person and as an artist in that time. What works for you now can easily fall by the wayside over 12 months. As you tackle this project, you should possibly attempt to anticipate how you want your own skill to evolve over this time.

In the comic industry, the most highly prized artists are ones that can deliver high quality on deadlines tighter than Invincibelle's brapieces. If you value artistic workmanship in the same way you should probably be trying to evolve as much simultaneous quality and speed as you can muster, rather than expecting to be satisfied with just one or the other.

In any case, if I were in grasp of your pencils, I might simply evaluate what approach might suit each individual issue. Some issues might be planned to be replete with stock or cliche imagery, and offer little in the way of opportunity for artistically-enhanced impact. Quality might be easily assured and thus a focus on practicing speed for that issue is useful. And then some other issues might be of great interest, having very curious or inspirational environments or plots, or might include some incredible single moments I really want expressed to their fullest. For those issues I might want to set speed aside and labor carefully and at length. It seems to me that if you can make each issue it's own complete object, even if it isn't exactly the same template as all the others, you can avoid chaining your artistic evolution to the limited bounds of your initial plan.

In the end it's hard to advise what to do. Just be the artist you are and stretch out your talents to their limits for as long as you can keep it up. Look at the plan in front of you, and look at yourself honestly, and then get to work.

It'll end up being great.

One (radical) option that most stalker players don't (emotionally) consider is skipping Assassin's Impaler. Usually stalkers just use it once per combat, and it's often wasting damage on overkilling the target. Stalkers can get by decently in combat when they have a decent attack chain available to them. Hides are often more efficiently spent on 2x damage crits on normal (especially aoe) attacks rather than a 6x damage super-slow tiny-range interruptable AS on a single target.

This is all applicable only to pve though. In pvp Assassin Strikes are a key element of stalker play.

If in the mid pve levels you're honestly hurting for power slots, and you have a decent attack chain with an aoe going anyway, consider respecing out of your Assassin Strike power. At least until you get to a level where you have some breathing room (buildwise) to retake it.

In terms of spines, my main 50 spines/nin just attack chains with two of impale/ripper/throw spines (with liberal placates) depending on the combat situation. With some Caltrops in play I'm pretty effective mowing down masses of enemies. Assassin Strike is reserved only for rare situations against lonely low-threat super-healthy targets (like the computer in the itf). It's just not anything more than a special-case (still good) power in my build.

Most players I know just wrinkle up their faces at the suggestion like they're being forced to eat some broccoli with their red meat. But realistically, it's not AS that defines the stalker. The CoH stalker is more defined by Hide and attacking effectively out of Hide. The stalker does not absolutely need AS to use Hide well, and if your stalker has a need more absolute than AS (like an earlier travel power or a lvl 6 Hasten), then AS should be logically expendable.

Well, how about this, just off the top of my head:

Give Defenders an inherent ability to ignore a chunk of the enemy's damage mitigation. That way the Defender's damage per second potential of their secondary blasts can still be left at a low level, but they have a guarantee (which no other class would have) of getting damage through.

This could be implemented in a minor way by saying 5% of all Defender attack damage is unresistable. Or this could be implemented from a more wrath-of-god viewpoint by saying 5% of the damage of the Defender's attack is converted into a mitigation-scheme-agnostic max-health-reduction for 120 seconds, (like how the Vanguard's Curse of Weariness power reduces max end). These numbers are certainly tunable; they could even be tied into the Defender's current Vigilance bonus.

Certainly this kind of mechanic doesn't sound all that 'defendery' in story terms, but on the other hand guardian angels have been known to go avenging from time to time.

...uptight and sterile though you may be. Clearly a kegger needs to be held all over you.

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Does anyone use this? How? Under what circumstance? And if you only have a single slot assigned to it, what would be the best choice of IO for that slot?


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Yes I use it on my ff/psi/psi def. The repel is a detriment but with practice there are techniques one can develop to minimize that (and even turn it into an unexpectedly decent tactic in the right situations).

One example where I use it is on the Statesman Task Force, on the 3rd (2nd?) floor of Aeon's tower (on the Cap map). The AV on that floor is in a sunken room with some nice geometry corners to repel all the minions against. I often combo TK with Force Bubble bursts in this case (to catch stragglers getting out of the corner).

Corners are the obvious tactic to use with TK. But there are other tactics that can give you combat advantage as well, so long as you're willing to put in the work to make it happen. I might suggest most players aren't willing to do that because in this case it seems to me the work required is disproportionally large when compared to the advantage gained, and CoH tends to be considered more as a game otherwise replete with much-more-easily-obtained rewards than that.

What I mean to say is, if you're really asking 'is TK a good choice for an I Win button?' The answer is no. But if you're asking 'is TK a decent power for a dedicated playstyle?' The answer is yes.

As to your other question, a single-enhancement TK likely requires a heavy emphasis on end redux, unless your build leverages an obscene amount of end boosts already. (My ff/psi/psi is currently built around maximizing Vigilance for example.) If you can get away with not slotting an end redux, then I would suggest a recharge redux is your next priority. Situations for TK may not come up often, but when they do, you often find TK useful for several things in a row, and that recharge time after it drops can be a significant problem to your tactics at that time.

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Now really, why aren't there Ghost Busters in this game?


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There are a bunch of ghost traps in Port Oakes already. *You* probably even already have the badge for using them. You are the Ghost Buster.

Hm... only $450? My account with a few more 50s and many more vet badges I would have hoped for much better market value. I guess I should wait for going rogue to pimp out my 50s before thinking seriously about selling it.

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The Defender is expected to overcome the same challenges as the Scrapper, yet he is significantly hindered by his lesser abilities.

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This part seems the weakest part of your argument. The Defender is expected to overcome challenges related to threats incoming to teammates and allies, (and to a lesser degree himself). The Scrapper is expected to overcome challenges more related to single enemies having higher than normal indefeatability. This interpretation isn't sophistry.

A Scrapper can certainly try to overcome incoming threat mitigation challenges, but his skills aren't a great fit for that, usually coming down to attempts to eliminate threatening enemies quickly or at least stealing some aggro. Also, a Defender can certainly try to take on overcoming strong enemy challenges but will obviously struggle in doing so.

At the same time, the game is set up to expect that players have to pursue enemy defeats in order to achieve rewards and progression. In this sense players that are Scrappers are much more likely to obtain core game rewards than Defenders.

I imagine this latter point is what you really want the discussion topic to be.

I've gone through a similar discussion before, regarding being a Force Field defender trying to find a way to obtain the 1 billion heal credit badge. It boiled down to the same thing, the devs designed a reward implemented to be a universally-accessible reward but at the same time forces a large subset of the audience into 'bad' gameplay to pursue it.

To correct the force field vs. healer problem, a similar reward should be designed that tracks damage mitigation efforts other than pure healing.

To correct the Scrapper vs. Defender problem, again, rewards similar to enemy defeat xp should be designed that rewards other styles of incoming threat mitigation. If my FF def bubbles a teammate, and because of that my teammate manages to avoid a big attack from a boss or something, my FF def should get every bit of an xp drop that a Scrapper should get for overcoming a boss' (artificial) advantage of higher than normal health.

At least from a theoretical perspective.

Spines is good. Somewhat slow, but has a lot to support monkey-style combat. Maybe not the most popular, but it's easy to have fun with it.

Blinding Powder. Very versatile for slotting. I don't use it as a primary combat power but I do use it often.

My dad is a real quiet guy, but very strong and very smart. I find he matches up with Black Bolt a lot. Except his voice (when he uses it) is very friendly and not a destructive force at all. I gotta say I learned a lot of my patience from my dad, (and I have a lot of fiery temper from my mom, so it's an interesting duality to live with).

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I case you all havent noticed I am still pretty nerd raged about this nerf because it was completely unjustified.


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I don't disagree with your nerd rage in this case, although, I wouldn't necessarily call the lack of justification 'complete'. +rech is something that pushes coh's current combat processing into very worrisome areas. It's not like mapwide-taunt that can be capped or stacked mez that can be purple-triangled. The engine itself starts to sputter as increasingly more things want to be processed in decreasingly small windows of time.

Let me put it this way. In part of this game review the point is made that game quality is very strongly served by a 1:1 input-to-game-response ratio between the player and the game engine. If you increase the quantity of input (for example because players/ai have less recharge delay between actions) and the game's ability to respond is not increased, game quality suffers. For a game like coh where much of the game's ability to respond to input is locked in (and would get lots slower if the devs put in even half of the crazy stuff the playerbase keeps asking for), +rech is a variable threat to the overall quality of their work.

The devs may not handle the pr side of +rech nerfs all that well, but if they really care about getting the best quality into their game's experience, then it seems they have some reasonable justification to aim nerf guns at abusive input situations.

Short form: Split the 5-star ratings bar into two 5-star ratings bars. One for 'Plot' and one for 'Risk/Reward'. Also, allow any mission/arc in the game to be rated by players.

Long form: It seems that one of the core causes of the Mission Architect abuse problem is that people who like aesthetic plot and people who like rewards are being lumped together as one type of player. When a mission is rated on the 5 star system, the intention is for that rating to represent the quality of the aesthetic content of the mission and not so much the quality of its rewards, but a majority of players rate on ease of rewards and completely ignore aesthetic factors.

So, maybe the problem would be better served by unlumping the two cross-purposes. Provide one rating bar for plot and one rating bar for rewards. Given the current ratio of high amounts of rewards-driven players to low amounts of plot-driven players, I might even make the rewards rating bar prominent and make the plot rating bar difficult to access.

If both rating bars were set up in this way, the missions list could then be capable of filtering for either rewards or for plot, potentially serving both player purposes. It probably wouldn't be perfect, but it seems like it would be at least a step forward.

Also, I might suggest for data mining purposes it would be interesting to see what ratings all the normal content in the game would get. My guess is that almost all missions in the game would average a(n unfair) 1 or 2-star rating in the current system over the entire current playerbase.