james_joyce

I'mna throw a semi-non-sequitur in here, as long as we're talking about reworking Illusion for Doms.

I think, thematically, Illusion steps on the toes of Mind Control far too much. Illusion as it currently stands (again, thematically, not mechanically) is like a half-baked mind control. It can't decide whether the controller is manipulating light or the target's thoughts. I'd like to see a set that's truly an Illusion set, as in light manipulation, and not Mind Control. More Mysterio and less Mastermind.

The powers that already fit into that mold are for the most part fine:
Blind, Flash, the Invisibilities (though I think you only need one), and the pets (though I think they can be improved).

Deceive could stay largely in tact with a twist: instead of confusing the target, it should confuse everyone else. Change the effect to some sort of translucent monster that overlaps the target, and enemies aggro on to it, rather than it onto enemies. This would, however, mean that the target could still attack you, though that could possibly be hand waved away.

Because it's now a clear light manipulation set, you could replace Spectral Wounds, for example, with a direct damage light attack, like the Legacy Chain have, or a laser projection attack. I'm not sure a DD power is desirable in that slot, though.

Some holds could be added that placed a decoy 'sparring partner' next to the target. Mechanically, the target is held, but it looks like their aggro has been redirected to an illusory ally next to them. That could even work as an AOE hold - add sparring partners for everyone in the group.

I also like the decoy idea - it fits with light manipulation - place a decoy that draws everyone's aggro toward it.

The pets are great, but I feel like they could be better with some graphical changes. Change them to some definite image, maybe random, that would attract enemy attention. Like gravity's propel, it might be fun to throw various character models in there as phantoms. Maybe a Statesman phantom shows up sometimes. Maybe a U'Kon. Make them translucent.

As for the invisibilities, I feel like you could get it down to just one if that one power simply affected you and the group. That would let you throw an extra power in there. As it is, I've always felt like they threw in two invisibilities because they couldn't think of nine powers. That's probably not true, but it would be more exciting, IMO, to have extra variety in the set.

You could add another team buff if you liked, +DEF, by having something like a "shift" power, that puts ghost images to the left or right of the player, with the description that you've shifted your teams' images so they're harder to hit. That might be redundant with Invisibility, but it would be a cool effect.

Anyway, I know that's off topic from the post, but I didn't feel like it warranted its own thread because it's pretty impractical at this point. Carry on!

[ QUOTE ]
I just wish there was a way to space the critter levels out so you can increase them as you go thru the mission just like they do in the real sewers.

[/ QUOTE ]

You could just do it in 5 missions. That would mean that to get to 10 you'd have to get 2 levels per mission. On a huge map with the difficulty cranked up, that's probably not a stretch.

[ QUOTE ]
I personally don't like the changes, it makes the toon easier you level from 1-50, but if it is already 50 it seems to be borking it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand, wouldn't an easier time leveling indicate that you were buffed? How would you then be borked at 50? I don't get it.

Not a big Dominator player - I don't really have a dog in this fight - but what about the change do you think does this?

I think it sounds great, and I look forward to what you have to offer. I don't know if you'll end up improving anything we currently have, but you might, and that's great. Go for it, and don't let the naysayers discourage you.

I'd scope out the best-of-breed, though. Mids' character planner, Leandro's mission creator, Red Tomax... see what you think is worth attempting.

Good luck!

Sorry, I forgot I had posted in this thread so this response is a bit outdated.

[ QUOTE ]
You also contradict yourself by saying "I don't want Trick Pistols" but you want all of these debuffing shots like crippling and -speed.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, I don't mean that I don't want the set to have any tricks - I do want that, I mean I don't want it to be Trick Arrows w/ bullets. I'm pretty sure that when anyone thinks of dual pistols, they're thinking of The Shadow, or Equilibrium, or Tomb Raider, etc - I can't think of a dual pistols wielder in any medium that fires cryo bullets for instance. Not saying that's a reason to dismiss the idea, but I do think it's an indication of what people probably want when they ask for dual pistols.

[ QUOTE ]
If you don't enjoy my idea (which is fine) then lets think of some other things we could add to dual pistols, or other sets that would keep them from being a vanilla set that was made back when the game began.

[/ QUOTE ]
I thought that's what I did?

[ QUOTE ]
i like your number 2 idea the most although i dont know how you would target two enemies at once like you said. It could be a chain-lightning type effect but then you wouldn't have the option of picking the second target.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I don't think there would be any way to have a power let the player target two things at once - my idea was trying to fudge it by giving the player an incentive to switch targets rapidly. Right now pretty much all powersets encourage you to focus on one enemy until they're dead, then move on to the next target. I thought it might be interesting to try to shake that up, especially since it matches the feel I get when I think of dual pistols.

[ QUOTE ]
the toggles dont necessarily have to be elemental damage. they could be (like others have said, not taking credit here) a chance to critical or a chance to stun. the possibilities are quite numerous, not limited to elemental damages although that is what i enjoyed about the gunslinger from Malta (evil little.. grr).

[/ QUOTE ]
Makes sense, but the thing is that I don't associate dual pistols with that type of secondary effect, and the only reason I was using secondary effects in my example was to try to encourage the player to switch targets. But as you point out...

[ QUOTE ]
Dual Psitols is also a damage set so people will most likely over look the secondary effects unless the damage is set to minor and the attack is specifically made for the effect. And history shows many of those kinds of attacks are chosen second to the primary damage attacks.

[/ QUOTE ]
You're probably right about this, but you can see what I was trying to do with the idea - encourage rapid switching. I'm sure there's a better incentive to do so if you think it's a worthwhile goal - not sure if people would find it simply annoying, though.

I do think the set should focus on relatively low damage, very fast recharge powers. I guess they could fudge it with a bunch of Flurry/Full Auto-type attacks, but that doesn't seem as ideal since those powers suffer from the miss-once-sit-through-the-whole-long-animation problem. It would seem to capture the feel more accurately to have a lot of rapid recharge powers.

So that's my obsolete response.

It probably has something to do with what the mapserver can handle. Or it could just be that they want to place some upper limit on what players can do to avoid some situation that they think will exist if they don't. I don't know what that would be in this case, so I'm sticking to the mapserver idea.

[ QUOTE ]
Unfortunately, it seems that I can't make a "collect" objective conditional upon some other objective (i.e. can't make the collect only spawn once the boss is down).

[/ QUOTE ]

FYI, you can do this in I15.

[ QUOTE ]
Trap room

When you enter, door's shut, then Turrets & what not pop up, blast away at you & some robots teleport in, etc..


But we can't have Turrets & Pop-up Guns for mobs.


JJ

[/ QUOTE ]

I could see them adding this at some point.

They'd have to:
- let us use turrets as mobs
- let us place spawns at least to the level of specific rooms if not specific spawn points.
- add either a "proximity" or "aggro" event, so you can trigger details off a location or when a particular detail becomes active.
- add the door detail, which is probably the most difficult to implement. But it would have to be a door you can place on the map that you can trigger to close.

Although I like the idea of giving dual pistols some gimmick like dual blades, I don't want the dual pistols set to turn into a "trick pistols" set, with cryo and incendiary rounds. I don't think that's what most people think of when they think of a dual-wielding gunslinger. Rather, they're probably thinking of something more like Equilibrium. So the toggle idea sounds fine to me, but I wouldn't like the specific effects you outline here.

When I think about dual pistols, I think about
1) extremely fast attacks
2) aimed at multiple simultaneous targets with
3) extremely accurate "called" shots at specific body parts for specific effect

to achieve 1 & 3, you could have something like
crippling shot: short immobilize, -speed
disarming shot: short soft hold, -recharge
head crease: short disorient, -tohit
etc
all with extremely fast recharge and relatively low damage.

achieving 2 is more difficult, but if you wanted a little more verisimilitude than just cone attacks, you would need to come up with a secondary effect system that encouraged rapid switching of targets.

You could possibly tie the secondary effects above with a second tagged shot with the same power and increase their recharges to medium. So if you want the secondary effect on the target, you have to hit them with the same power twice in a row. That would mean you have to wait a second to hit them again, but there are other shots you can take on other targets in the meantime. You cycle back to the original target when the power cycles back up.

I don't know if that would be too annoying for people - it would have to be tested.

I honestly lean a little toward implementing an XP/hour cap, although it would have to be extremely high. They'll drive off everyone who comes in under the cap, so they need to set it over what the non-exploitative max is. What it would do, though, is catch people that find exploits without needing to roll them back - and allow them to leave everything in the MA without fear of exploit.

I don't know if I really believe that they'd set it high enough, though. The temptation would be strong to set it to a spot that they were very comfortable with, and it would clearly need to be outside that range for them.

[ QUOTE ]
For instance, so you can't make a big empty map with a single glowy for no-risk insta-win.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know if every map allows you to fill the spawn points, but on this one point, I just want to point out that this is not actually a problem, since MA arcs don't give you any end-of-mission XP, and the end-of-mission ticket bonus is based on how many critters you killed in the mission. So a mission where you simply clicked one glowie to complete it would, AFAIK, give you no rewards at all.

don't know, but it'd be great.

[ QUOTE ]
ITT we all make sweeping generalizations about the playerbase.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree, but I actually think we make sweeping generalizations about ourselves as well. What I mean is, anyone who says they care only about the story is, I believe, wrong. Similarly to anyone who says they care only about rewards, or the graphics, or the gameplay.

To see what I mean, think about the extreme of any of these cases. What if the game told a great story but just required you to click the mouse every 10 seconds? What if the game had a great reward schedule, but was just lines and boxes? What if the graphics were amazing, but there was nothing to do?

I believe it's the interaction of all these things that draws each of us to game, regardless of what we say here, or what aspect of it we might be drawn to more. If it was only story, we would just watch a movie or read a book. If it was only gameplay, we'd all just play boxhead forever. If it was only rewards, we'd be on Progress Quest.

That's why I find the whole rewards-vs-story argument a bit silly. We need both or else no one's gonna subscribe for long.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't think we'll ever be able to make an MA mission resembling the "conference" mission from the RWZ. You know, the mission that starts out with a bunch of NPCs all milling around, some of which you can click for a box of dialogue. Then you go out and click that glowy which spawns a bunch of mobs around the map. Then you fight your way through them to save the hostage.

I really wish we could make a mission like that. Though I'd settle for the simpler "click a glowy in an empty map to spawn enemies" deal.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can sort-of do this, except that you can't place the NPCs as intentionally as that mission does. Just have a bunch of single-ally allies with "nothing" behavior that speak some dialog on rescue, have a glowie in the back, and chained off the glowie are a bunch of patrols of whatever-you-want. You just need to have enough patrols and allies to fill the map's spawn points so that it's not populated before you click the glowy. All we'd need to be able to do is to be able to place spawns - something I'm not sure if they'll ever let us do.

epic

This is a pretty good idea for a story element, though. I feel like surely someone is willing to make a list of maps that share a layout... or maybe someone can dig in the unmentionables and find a way to do it automatically.

[ QUOTE ]
I'd like to do an arc where the hero enters a building, does some stuff and, later, enters the same building only to have it "abandoned" (broken pillars, fire, whatever... you know the ones). But it'd look pretty dumb to have two completely different maps. Are there any "mirrored" maps that have both a clean and a ruined version? Heroside or Villainside, I don't care.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sure you can find this either with the tech maps or the office maps. There are clean/active and wrecked/abandoned versions of both. I would assume that some use the same layout, though I don't know that for sure.

That sounds... like a real pain to figure out, actually.

[ QUOTE ]
Good and evil are a myth. They are nothing but subjective descriptors of an event/motive.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think that's overstating your case. Or at least, the word "myth" is poorly chosen. Good and evil are certainly not myths even though they are almost certainly subjective descriptors of event/motive.

You could describe lots of things this way - active parts of our lives, certainly real, and probably evolved, though not physical or clearly definable - just emergent patterns, interactions between disparate parts that create a greater whole, spontaneous order, etc.

/lighter in the air

what were we talking about?

Coincidentally, I just rolled my first fire/kin the other day, mostly soloing her so far. I'm only level 8, though, so maybe my opinion isn't well formed. At these early levels, I find my self sending char at the biggest threat, then fire cages immediately. Then I cycle through my vet rewards, killing the easy ones first. I can duck around a corner when I'm low on endurance. That works really well, except when
1) char misses, or
2) fire cages picks up the group next door by accident.

So far, I haven't even found myself using transfusion or siphon power that much. The control chain with vet powers works really well. I just picked up hot feet, but if the reports of its endurance use are to be believed, I doubt I'll use it 'til much later.

So far, so good.

more fun on a Sunday night while the parents are away?

[ QUOTE ]
Does anyone remember what happened with the "Dev Only" maps from i14 beta? Were they eventually added to the regular map selection?

I want to use the burning lab map that is currently Dev Only on Test, but I'm not going to plan around it if it's unlikely to be made available with i15.

[/ QUOTE ]

No they were never added. If I recall correctly, they were the TF maps from the ITF. Catellum Quarters was one of them, pretty sure.

I don't think any maps have been pulled because of farming. They're usually pulled because of buggy or strange spawn points. The devs have said they'll fix the spawn points and reintroduce them, though I don't know how long that'll take. A lot of maps that were never introduced in the first place are TF maps that have TF-specific behavior that screws with the MA, or at least that's my understanding.

BIG THUMBS UP!

More stuff like the Ski Slope for special events, please!

[ QUOTE ]
I attempted to find a way to change either the names or the info on the critters in this arc last night, to no avail.

The mobs were already in custom groups, which was what a kind player had proposed, but unless I make them all boss encounters I can't find any way to give them custom names / infos.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can do this in I15. Log in to test and give it a shot.

You go into the custom group screen, highlight one of your dudes, and click the edit button - you can change their colors and names.

I agree that'd really add some nice flavor to this arc.

Also undocumented, you can change the color, name, and faction for many dev-created creatures. Pink-suited Council? Check!