imported_Resonance

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Even if you look at that $15 as just a means to meet with your Supergroup in the base, that's not without precedent.

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Maybe. I'd find it easier to swallow perhaps if it was part of a hero expansion, rather than being an entire game I really don't want to play. That aside, though...

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In other games, if you don't buy an expansion, you might not, for instance, have access to entire zones, equipment, even buildings. How is what you describe -- being cut off from joining your SG-mates in the base -- really any different from being cut off from joining your SG-mates who are all off in another zone which is inaccessible to you?

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Generally, the lower level content remains available, and as long as you're playing at those levels, you can play with anyone else willing to play those levels with you, or the additional zones aren't at all critical.

For instance, back when I was playing Planetside, none of my gaming club's official nights used the cave areas after the expansion was announced, because not everyone available had the expansion. We could still play together, and really there was nothing essential down there.

This is more or less the same as having CoV come out, minus the base issue. You treat it more or less as a separate game, and your SG will end up enforcing its activity requirements on the hero side no matter what the activity is on the villain side, and either you still have enough members left to be self-sustaining or you don't. I don't really have a problem with that. I don't even have a problem with the extra villain-like costume options being made a separate purchase. None of that really drives a wedge into SGs.

What I do have a problem with is deliberately encouraging SGs to build and use meeting grounds that a chunk of the membership can't get into -- for no in-game reason whatsoever! If you're a RP SG, this gets doubly bad, because the bases turn either into OOC constructs, and become useless (how the heck do you explain the base security system randomly rejecting entrance to SG members -- in one case, a SG leader, even -- without any rhyme or reason), or split out all the hero players. The current advertisement is a continuation of such. The current system basically says that either you have a Hero SG consisting entirely of people who play villains, or you split up the area specifically designed for groups to get together into the villain players and the hero players, if they aren't willing to shell out money for a game they're never going to play.

It really is extortion. This isn't being aimed at people who want to explore new content together; it's being aimed at the people playing the same game together as they always have. Except that now a wedge is being driven in. Deliberately. Seriously, name a RP CoH SG that isn't using the new bases at this point. I play on Virtue, but I don't think there's one on any server. Pay $30 or we split your SG, with no other additional content to explore for your existing characters added. I don't know any other game that has done that, actually. Every single one of them added new high-end content at the same time, so there was some added value in there without actually abandoning everything you had done up until that point.


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I'm not saying I'm thrilled with the decision to restrict bases to CoV owners. I'm not, really. But considering all of the work they've already done on the original game, and considering that they ARE a for-profit business, it shouldn't shock anyone that they're looking for incentives for people to buy their new product.

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Incentives? How about having a decent product that people want to play? There are decent business decisions and indecent business decisions. This is really one of the latter. They may have a right to do it; that doesn't make it a right thing to do. Treating the long-standing players of one of your games as second-class citizens for not buying a different game as well... I can't think of any place where that's likely to inspire loyalty. It would be like Blizzard only allowing players who own Diablo II to have places for guilds to meet.


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Anyway, long ramble. The point is, it's pretty cheap to buy CoV, all things considered. If you object on principle, that is of course your prerogative. I would imagine you haven't played other MMOs to any great extent, though. Everything is relative, after all.

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I played Planetside for about two years, and Everquest for about the same. The former required too much coordination, and so I left when my club basically fell apart for reasons unrelated to the Core expansion, and the latter turned incredibly tedious for me before expansions became an issue. Regardless, I'd note that "hey, other game companies do things that suck, too" isn't exactly a compelling argument. There's a reason I'm not playing those games. I imagine most CoX players are also not simultaneously playing those games, as the sheer time investment is somewhat staggering. Making your game more like a game that your players didn't want to play strikes me as a rather questionable decision. It's much more about the principle than it is about the money, with me. Like I said, I get stubborn around extortion. If they allowed heroes to get into bases, and unnerfed them slightly, I'd probably buy a collector's edition CoV just on principle to show support. It wouldn't be the first time I bought a game I never intended to play to support a company doing things I liked. I remember buying four copies of Neverwinter Nights, with both expansions, for instance, just so I'd have extra sets I could give out to friends I wanted to play. I still have one extra left. I don't regret it. Bioware is a good company, for the most part. I pre-ordered two copies of CoH, one of which quickly went to a friend. I buy when companies earn good will. I stop buying when they lose it.

None of this answers my question, though. We're now just arguing justifications and philosophies, and truly, I'm surprised that anyone cares. All I really want to know is whether or not hero players are going to be allowed into bases anytime soon. They could make this decision for reasons completely unrelated to the reason I care about it. I'm really only interested in the outcome.

If Posi showed up to write one of his typical one-liners, "No, we're never going to let heroes have bases unless they're also villains," that's all I'd want to know. Then I'd know not to bother looking at any base improvements they put out, and would drop the topic.

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::sigh::

Go buy CoV for $30 at a store. "UPGRADE" your account and you get a free month.

Net cost: $15

That's $15 for four extra slots per server, a whole game's worth of new content, access to all of the SG Base features, and (probably in Issue 7) hero-access to the tons of new CoV costume options.

Seems like a pretty good deal to me...but that's just me. Obviously some don't agree.

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I'm one of them. Having played the CoV beta and received extensive further information from people who played it, I've discovered that I have pretty much no desire whatsoever to play on the CoV side. I'm also not hurting for slots (it's going to take me easily another couple years to finish up the characters I have now). Likewise, since all of my characters already have a look designed, new costume options are pretty irrelevant to me.

So that's $15 for being able to meet with my supergroup.

That comes off pretty much as "Heh, heh, nice supergroup you've got there. Be a real shame if somethin' were ta break you up. Like some of you not bein' able to get together anymore. But if you hand me just fifteen dollars, I can protect you from that fate."

Thanks, but I get a little stubborn around extortion attempts. If the devs were to change their minds (about this and a couple other things), I'd be more likely, not less, to buy CoV, just as a measure of general support. I've been here since the CoH beta, after all.

In any case, since neither you nor I get to make that decision, none of this answers the question of whether or not hero players will be able to get into hero bases. I'd like to hear back from someone official on whether that's planned for the next release or two.

Are there any plans to let Hero players get into their SG bases, as opposed to just Villain players that also play heroside?

None of this is at all useful if you can't actually get in.

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100 times out of 100 Longbow will beat Arachnos in the street fights in Siren's Call, if left to their own devices. I don't know what kind of tests you need to run to see that. I think I have seen the villain merchant in SC open once since CoV launched. And I go there almost every day.

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I'm not sure what server you're on, but villains hold the Virtue Siren's Call more often than heroes, and I remember a couple weeks going by without the heroes holding it a single day.

I've also seen Longbow vs. Arachnos battles get so one-sided in favor of Arachnos that not even my participation changed the outcome (admittedly, I showed up a little late, but never had a player villain oppose me, and the Arachnos just cleaned house) Especially the spot straight south of the hero base seems to generate villain wins if there's no hero involvement. I suspect that has to do with spawn placement.

If you want the fastest way to change the outcome, though, bring a Plants dominator. One or two shots of Seeds will pretty much guarantee a victory for your side unless there is major hero involvement. Heroes have absolutely nothing to match.

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Basically: if it was meant to be taken down by more than 1 team, it gives the badge. Mission versions are scaled down versions that are more like AV's, thus able to be defeated by a single team, and thus do not give the badge.

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You might need to buff Giant Monsters then. There's not one in the game that requires more than one team to defeat.

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Will do.

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Positron, this makes sense for some (See: Paladin, non-psychic Babbage,
Adamastor) but not for others (Lusca is kinda 9 in one, and regularly requires 20-30
heroes).

Also, for areas with MANY giant monsters (see Hive, some islands on Peregrine)
please leave those Giant Monsters as-is, because the threat is from MULTIPLES
of them.

Also, Hami Raids become more undesirable if you have a zone full of GMs that need
20+ heroes to beat, JUST to clear enough space to fight Hami.

In short, buff UNIQUE, NAMED Giant Monsters (except Lusca), but leave the
many Devouring Earth Giant Monsters alone.

(A hint: my level 50 controller with both HP accolades can only take ~2 shots from
an existing Hive GM, and sometimes the 2nd shot is enough to wipe him out.)

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Also, please make sure to convert the Kronos Titan in Founder's Falls to whatever scaled-down thing is supposed to be for missions. I got surprised by that coming out of a solo mission yesterday, and only brought it down only because I was able to bring nine people together to bail me out of trouble. Very unpleasant.

While you're at it, you may want to increase the rewards. As it stands, it's very hard to get a full team together to go after a giant monster, much less two full teams. There's not really all that much point, especially if you already got the badge. At a bare minimum, I'd suggest level+3 SO for everyone that participates.

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What with making heroes acting like the people they are fighting. I want them to be heroic and have some ideals. Having Blue Steel beat someone to near death and then shrug it off is not the kind of example that should be set.

We are the City of Heroes... please understand the word.

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*cough*Wolverine*cough*Punisher*cough*

Not all heroes believe that preserving the lives of criminals is a top priority.

Very old numbers for MoG as well.

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Couple of changes we're making in I5:

1) Instead of the first five levels being debt free, the first TEN levels will be debt free.

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Since this will make it a lot harder to see everything you want to see at the early levels, can you *please* make it a priority to get flashback or some way to exemplar to yourself in place to allow players to better control their rate of advancement? Right now, pretty much the only tool we have is to deliberately debt-cap ourselves and try to stay that way as much as possible.

I use shift+# a LOT, especially when playing my empathy defender, but also with my other characters. On the other hand, I made a point of unbinding control+# after a while, because the effects were so disruptive.

I bind almost all of my powers to shift+letter or control+letter already, though (on an esdf base), so adding a third tray won't do a lot for me. I absolutely will not miss the control+# keybinds, however.

Sometimes I do wish that I could make the power trays smaller, though, and having a third tray open would only make that worse. An option for half-size icons would be great.

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If you did not get a badge, then your character never did the mission.

We investigated several characters who claimed to have done badge-missions yet didn't recieve the badges retroactively. Upon examination, all of them had never done said badge-missions, usually because they outlevelled their contact before that mission was issued.

We ARE working on a system that will allow you to go back and do content you missed, but for the meantime you can Exemplar to a character that has a badge-giving mission and help them complete it. You will both get the badge.

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Positron, I have characters that seem to have gotten credit for *recent* missions, but not early ones. I'm fairly certain that I would have actually done the missions in question, as I went back and checked my contact bars, and all of them are full. In any case, I don't see how I could have possibly missed *all* of the missions in the 5-20 range that award badges, while simultaneously maxing out the contact bars for each contact (with the exception of one contact who I explicitly remember ran out of missions before the bar filled up).

I can post screenshots if you like.

Is there someone I should contact about this?

I know a couple other people who reported the same... I always thought that it was because the datamining wasn't finished yet, and the older mission badges would show up eventually. Should I start a petition for each character that seems to be missing all the early badges?

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1. Tankers will get a "provoke" like AOE effect on their melee attacks. The more a Tanker lands his blows, the more and more mobs he'll attract. The bonus here is that it's not exactly like Provoke (it's not ranged) - but it makes a lot of sense. Some huge monstrosity is bashing the heads of a villain group - they're going to get more and more concerned about taking him/her out....

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Anything that helps hold aggro will help, of course, but an inability to draw the attention of something at range will really hamstring the tanks that didn't take Teleport, because of the amount of time you have to spend immobilized at the higher levels.

Please, please consider either giving the Taunt power in the secondary sets an area effect, or having the AoE of the taunt component of the melee attacks not be a standard distance-based AoE (unless the radius is just huge beyond anything seen in the game so far), but a good chance to affect EVERY opponent who is engaged with ANY team member. This actually makes sense from a comic-book perspective -- as a bad guy, having one of your buddies scream in pain or aggravation may very well draw your attention even if you're all the way over in the next room. If possible, you might consider using the same detection code that you use to see if an attack would have *started* any aggro at the beginning of a fight, and for any opponent that would have started attacking the team if the attack that the tank made was the very first one that was detected, cause each of those opponents to have a 10-second taunt effect towards the tank (thus making the taunt effect less useful if the tank is stealthed, or the opponents have their backs turned).

Also, please please PLEASE give Mud Pots and Icicles the same taunt effect that Invincibility gets. If anything, those are the powers that SHOULD be getting the attention of the enemies. Invincibility is a subtle thing.

I have a vision...

...

Eldritch lightning arced across the room, dancing from body to body. She worked best striking from the shadows one at a time, rather than calling down the flashy, but devastating power that lanced through the room now, but they were running out of time. It wouldn't take the gang members more than a few more minutes to find the artifact they were looking for, and then it would be a whole new ball game.

The artifact... she was so distracted by the thought that she didn't see the figure that climbed back to his feet in a shadow and started to move outside of her field of view. Instincts, or perhaps a warning from one of her spirit allies, bought her just enough time to bring up her hands and start a warding spell as the spiked metal came down towards her head.

It saved her life, but not by much. Dazed and bleeding on the ground, her vision cleared to see the smirking figure above her, slapping his old-fashioned mace into a leather-gauntleted palm. "Yeah, that's right, [censored]," he snarled. "No matter how subtle the mage, a block of steel to the head will really crimp her style. Now say goodnight." He started to raise the weapon when he was interrupted by a loud whumpf followed by screaming. Her partner, a magma elemental that one of her friends had introduced her to just a few nights ago, had just vented superheated air onto another gang member, setting his hair and shirt on fire and causing him to drop his gun.

Grimacing, the man with the mace turned back towards the big moving rock, muttering, "Don't go anywhere, toots. I'll be right back as soon as I do some mining."

Painfully, she wiped blood out of her eyes and staggered back to her feet...

...

Pleasepleaseplease...


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2. As a Tanker lands more and more blows, he'll start doing more and more damage. The longer the fight, the more powerful the Tanker becomes. I can't say that the Tanker will do as much damage as a Scrapper - but it'll certainly be more than he does now. This ability really gets to the core of a comic book Tanker. He's extremely powerful - but at the start of a fight, he holds himself back some. As the battle progresses, he lets loose....I prefer this system to a power because this way it's inherent. It's simply the nature of the Archetype. And it also sets the Tanker apart from the Scrapper's criticals.

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I kind of like this, too, though you still have the problem of dealing with frontloaded damage caused by blasters... There generally aren't enough combat rounds for a Tank to work up to maximum damage in a group. On the other hand, this will help soloers a lot.


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Feel free to comment!

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Comments (and other things) above. Thanks for thinking about us.

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I'm going to approach all of these from the mindset of a controller, which means basically that I'm assuming a 10% buff from assault and tactics (easy number to work with) Its important to point out that scrappers, blasters, and tankers get a 7% and defenders get a 12.5%

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I just wanted to add to this thread that it's been discovered that these aren't the correct numbers. Blasters, Scrappers, and Tankers get 5% base, Defenders get 6.25%, and it's not known what Controllers get. In addition, the streak breaker code reduces the value of Maneuvers, possibly the most valuable of the set. This means that in real play, even a Defender only gets a 5% base defense bonus from Maneuvers, and the other archetypes get less. See this thread for details, at least until it gets autowiped.

This means that for the endurance cost, none of the Leadership powers are really worth taking.