je_saist

Um. Clarification:

I am not suggesting the devs implement "Receive this buff / Do not Receive this Buff

I am suggesting the devs "give us control over that that buff looks like.

Simple:

The majority of players in the game are not soft-capped to defense.

The majority of players in the game cannot take their stalker, stand in the middle of a mob, and scrap scrap scrap.

The majority of players in the game who have stalkers have to play stalkers via the designed hit-and-run tactics.

The fact of the matter is this: The kinematic advancement that has been mentioned for Titan Melee is said to be driven by landing successive attacks.

This means you, the player, have to stay in melee range in order to keep pulling these attacks off to build up the momentum to generate the faster animations.

It is very likely that this kinematic advancement is an extension of the technology used for the combo-system in Dual-Blades.

From the Dev's perspective it doesn't matter if the hard-core IO booster players can run their stalkers like scrappers, and thus sustain the attacks to drive higher animations.

The developers have to build power-sets to cater to more than just the hard-core players.

The result is that Titan Melee, as it has been described by the developers, does not fit the mechanics of gameplay as leveraged by the stalker.

Nope. Nor would I try.

Propel is a damage attack. Plain and simple. Against a mezzed target it's huge damage.

By the same token, lift is a damage attack. Yes, it has some soft control potential, but not really that much. Personally, it could probably do with the chain lightning treatment: that is to say give lift the ability to chain from one enemy to another. More damage and more soft-control, without having to change existing enhancement sets.

Force Field may not be the premier example you want it to be. Keep in mind that the majority's of the game content is found in level's 1 to 50... not in 50+

For the foreseeable future, that content balance isn't likely to change, and probably won't change.

The simple fact of the matter is this: Force Field offers Defense and Anti-Mez from levels 12 to 50 on a defender, and 20 to 50 on everybody else. With this in mind, Force Field has a lot to offer that Cold-Domination doesn't.

Now, keep in mind that the developers could add effects to the force-field powers without changing what those powers do. For example, adding -regeneration to Detention Field wouldn't change what the power does (isolate an enemy). By the same token, powers such as Repulsion field could also be modded. Imagine for a second Repulsion field offering a +defense to everybody in the bubble for every enemy pushed away.

Okay, fair point.

The problem with this point is that the most vocal advocates tend to come from the Ah W4N7 4 74NK M4G3 N0A! line of advocacy.

Yes / no / not really.

Gravity became unpopular years ago after it's exclusive and largely non-resisted damage was removed from the game.

Actually Gravity offers both soft and hard control. Trust me, I've got a grav / therm-rad.

Now, that being said, the problem with gravity is that the set has no initial encounter mitigation tools. Every other control set has some kind of mez effect, be it stun, to-hit, or Phantom Army that immediately draws the attention of the attacking mob and gives the controller time to set-up without being targeted.

A good case in point is Worm-Hole... which does provide a stun... after the attack has initiated and all enemies can turn and fire on the Grav player. Simply moving the stun

The "problems" with Gravity were known to Castle, Synapse, and Sunstorm. Last I heard they had some ideas they were playing around with, but nothing was working quiet like they wanted them to.

I don't know if Gravity is still on Black Scorpion's list of stuff to look at.

I don't think Memphis Bill called you wrongly on this.

The Cottage rule can be summed up very simply with one question:

Does your modification remove an enhancement type?

If you answered: Yes

Then you have broken the cottage rule.

If you answered: No

Then you haven't broken the cottage rule.

Now, I'm going to be very blunt here Jay. You need to go read this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=264829

To be clear Jay, you and every other player that wants to remove the cottage rule so you can run about making your Bloody Tank Mages and have the absolutely most perfect character ever with no flaws...

Need to go find a different Game. We won't let you pull that stunt with our game.

I really don't want to get involved in this thread, but I feel I have a point to make here.

If the developers set the precedent that the Players themselves can dictate how many or how few players are needed for any particular task or event, the player base will immediately respond by demanding that every other particular task or event with a specific-number-of-players-required-limitation have that specific-number-of-players-required-limitation removed.

Whether or not you, or Leandro likes it, the developers have to stick to their guns when it comes to minimum players in a task or event.

If that means shutting down a in-progress trial that has dropped to 11 players from 12? Well, sorry, them's the breaks.

Devs have said in the past they didn't want to give us joke weapons... hence no Frying Pans, over-sized lollipops, wooden-oars, bars of sheet iron, carp / trout melee, and so on and so forth.

The basic problem with Titan Weapons and Stalkers isn't so much the animations. I love the idea of smacking something from /hide with a rail-road sign as much as anybody else.

The problem is the unique attack mechanics associated with Titan Weapons. We've been told that as the players increase their attacks the animations will also get faster.

This goes contrary to the stalker-mechanic of hit-and-run.

Now, admittedly, very little of the team-game these days is played through hit-and-run. The mechanics of what Stalkers are supposed to do doesn't really fit well with the rest of the game design goals, such as the requirement that no content be in-completable with a specific archtype.

Granted, the developers could create further situations, such as the Barracuda task force, where a stalker would give a team a tangible benefit by completing "stalker" only objectives.

Electric is actually a better example for what they would do. The devs kept Lightning Rod in the Stalker Electric Melee, despite it being a full PBAOE attack.

Since the precedent is set, it's likely that Foot Stomp would be retained should the set be ported.

Something else that would be interesting for Stalkers would be Ice Melee...

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=244076

Your post indicates that the Stalkers themselves are the problem, and that the developers don't care about stalkers, or don't want to focus attention on Stalkers.

You. Are. WRONG.

The fact is this: The developers have done significant amount of work on Stalkers, giving them buff after buff after buff.

The problems with Stalkers are in how the game itself is played, and how the players treat each character. Those SYSTEMS issues are the issues that have to be addressed.

So you can drop your little F.U.D. propaganda tactic. It isn't going to fly around here.

That won't happen.

If super-strength was ported the set would get an assassin's blow, build-up, and placate.

It's built with Microsoft .NET

It's cleared the barrier of crapware with room to spare.

Depends on your own OS, applied service packs, and installed versions of Microsoft.net.

If you are up to date with Windows 7, yes, it is efficient.

If you aren't, it is not.

You don't know what a memory leak is do you...

Okay, fair enough. Point in it's favor, although this tech is exposed through SharpBITS and Xdelta rather than the launcher itself.

Nobody that I know of contests NCSoft's desire to have a central launcher for their applications.

All of the complaints about the launcher are derived from what the launcher is created with, specifically and to the point, C# / Microsoft .NET.

Now, honestly, I've been over it so many times before I'm getting sick of beating people over the head with .NET's status as Crapware, so I won't do it yet again.

I will point out that had NCSoft created the launcher is just about any other IDE / API toolkit, be it Java through Netbeans, Ruby on Rails through JRuby's support after Oracle decided to be a jackass, or QT, NCSoft wouldn't have had to create extra work for themselves by creating a completely different launcher inside of Xcode on OSX. Nor would NCSoft have knocked out support for City of Heroes Linux subscribers playing through Cedega or WINE. It's likely that NCSoft's other titles would also work under those translation environments without the .NET-crapware barrier.

*kicks the forum logout bug*

Now I gotta rewrite this.

Okay, Not happening.

After Null-The-Gull was revealed on Ustream one of the global channels there were a couple other server-level changes proposed and almost immediately shot-down.

• Using Null-The-Gull to change knock-effect
• Using Null-The-Gull to turn off costume buff effects

One of the problems to keep in mind about knock-effect is that it is a single calculation on an order of magnitude. Knock-back, Knock-Up, and Knock-Down all use the same mathematical equation to arrive at their conclusion. This connection between the 3 powers is why knock-effect powers can all create knock-back as determined by:

• The player's level
• The level of the enemy critter
• The enemy critter's resistance to knock-effect
• The enemy critter's protection to knock-effect
• The effect of a team-mate's application of knock-effect

As I understand it, this is a limitation of the AEGIA Novedex physics engine used by the game to calculate physics. Separating the knock-effects would require making changes to the underlying physics calculation to have 3 separate and distinct calculations of magnitude for each knock-effect.

What is unknown is whether or not the existing novedex physics engine can be changed in order to enable the separation of knock-effects, or if it just needs to be replaced. Given that I've been one of the vocal players calling for new physics system that has acceleration exposed through OpenCL, I think it's obvious which solution I favor.


Now, as to the flip side of the knockback-coin, that is to say the question of whether or not a power that does knock-back be changed into power that does knock-down or knock-up... the subject has actually been addressed by the developers.

At some point there was a forum posting by a developer saying that they had looked at an IO conversion for knock-effect, but had to abandon the idea as knock-behavior just wasn't consistent. Unfortunately, that post is now showing no access so I think it was in a beta section of the forums.

The conclusion would be then that the developers are least open to the concept.

I'm not entirely sure that such a change would be exposed through Null-the-Gull.

If anything, I'd expect it to be exposed through Power-Customization, which is a possibility given that the developers seem to be open to the concept of at least trying it.

One of the suggestions made by another player, a while ago, is that players get a slider when choosing a knock-effect power. Lowering the power's magnitude would also lower other other attributes such as damage and recharge.

I'm not entirely sure the devs would go for such a concept. With the inclusion of Incarnate Powers such as Musculature, Interface-Diamagnetic, and Interface-Reactive, on top of Invention Origin boosts, the DPS / DPA of a power is pretty much... irrelevant. Short of a drastically horrible diminishing return on damage / recharge for knock-effect there would ultimately be little, if no, final play difference at maximum level.

Quite simply, i would not want to be in the office when Black Scorpion, Synapse, and Sunstorm had to hammer out the details of exactly how a knock-effect to power behavior conversion would work... because it sure as hell would not be consistent from power-to-power.

Given that knock-effect conversions would be about as consistent as jello from power to power, my opinion is that the development staff would likely just leave the knock-effect powers where they are. If a power was designed with knock-back, it does knock-back. If a power was designed with knock-up, it does knock-up. If a power was designed with knock-down, it does knock-down.


Given that I'm running... well... actually pretty long on this response, I won't dive into the removal of costume-buffs unless somebody actually does make a thread on it... which likely is inevitable.

Suffice to say, allowing players to disable the visual effects of costume buffs, such as Thermal Shields, Cold Shields, Sonic Shields, and Force Bubbles... would set the precedent for allowing native-armor types to also likewise turn their effects off...

actually... I just had an idea. I think I'll post it: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=3724998

The problem with creating alt-powers for existing sets can be found in the Patron / Ancillary Power Pools, as mentioned above.

After the developers tried to remove powers Patron powers, resulting in the howls of complaints, and then went back and just gave each Patron Set they had removed a power from five powers... the developers then had to go back and give all Patron / Ancillary Power Sets an Extra Power.

In order for your alt-power suggestion to work the developers would have to go through and add another power to every single existing primary and secondary power set.

On top of that these new powers would have to follow the existing power-proliferation rules. Many powers that probably could be used as alternates are already in the Patron / Epic power pools. Using those powers as an alt-power would cause power-set duplication... which would mean that either the Patron / Ancillary power would need to be dropped and a new one created.

The reason the Villain Epic Archtypes can get away with these lockouts is because the V.E.A.T.'s were created from the ground up with the lockouts in mind. The lock-outs weren't shoe-horned in at a later date to please a min-maxer. Let's be honest here, that is what this whole suggestion is about.

The Original Poster's suggestion is made with the idea of creating a character with no flaws, no drawbacks, and no undesirable powers. The O.P.'s suggestion is made with the singular goal of creating a perfect avatar.

With that in mind, we can safely file this suggestion where it belongs. In the rubbish bin.

for some strange reason... my mind isn't blown.

Maybe I needed to have set my expectations for this thread lower.

Anyways, just out of curiosity, why exactly do you feel that inspiration alone needed a name change?

What's the justification for the name change that you, for whoever knows what reason, think is somehow a good name change?

Do you think that everything should be renamed so that it says something other than what it does?

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Issue_19...etual_Contacts

Oh trust me. You will not be the only one complaining.

Although I detest the new launcher for... other reasons: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=264446

It moved to "Steam users should use the NCSoft Launcher"

This actually happens for NCSoft's "other" titles such as AION. Steam downloads the installation files, and then the NCSoft patcher picks up from there.

There is a way around using the NCSoft launcher, and that's to launch the Cityofheroes.exe file directly: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Game_Client

However, you still have to add Cityofheroes.exe as a separate game file.

You'll also still need to run the NCSoft launcher in order to patch the game to the most recent version.

When it comes to adding software capabilities, time proceeded from a from a previous point in time is rarely a factor.

Such is the case here. "Too Late" simply does not exist in regards to your suggestion.

However, it isn't going to happen.

Back when Cryptic Studios developed City of Heroes the developers went out of their way to place players into the storyline separate from the existing NPC groups. Players, by default, are not part of any of the existing NPC factions outside of role-playing as one of those factions.

When Cryptic Studios developed the Hero Epic Arctypes the writing staff went out of it's way to place players into a canon storyline involving an Alien NPC race. As of yet the Peacebringers as embodied by Sunstorm and the WarShades as embodied by Shadow Star are not NPC factions unto themselves. While Kheldian opponents do exist in the game they belong to either the Council or the Paragon Police Department, neither making their own Kheldian faction.

When Cryptic Studios developed City of Villains the writing staff at the time went out of their way to create story arcs that placed the player-character separate from the existing villains. These plotlines also focused on the player escaping Arachnos's "Project Destiny". The storylines were also crafted to give several plausible reasons as to why Arachnos forces would target and fight against player characters, including but not limited to players taking part in existing infighting; orders from Arachnos with more authority; mercenary contracts; and allowing the player to tick off Arachnos on their own accord.

When Paragon Studios developed the Villain Epic Archtypes the writing staff didn't put much effort into the storyline. There's a pretty flimsy excuse for joining Project Destiny. The plotline holes are in some aspects hand-waved away via the original CoV story arcs which already were built to separate the player from the NPC factions.

When Paragon Studios developed the Praetorian mission for Going Rogue the writing staff at the time went out of their way to create story arcs that placed players in position of being separate from the NPC factions, while at the same time being part of two new factions. The developers created plausible reasons for the players to be working for the Resistance and the Loyalist factions at the same time.


If you've noticed a pattern here, you've seen why your faction idea isn't going to get considered for inclusion.

Between both Paragon Studios and Cryptic Studios the developers have had ample time and resources to implement faction-based systems in major expansions, as per other MMO's where players grind faction points.

Both development staffs, Cryptic Studios AND Paragon Studios, determined that the faction-grind systems as implemented in other games... was not for this game, City of Heroes.

The lack of a faction system is not because the engine cannot do factions, or the code needs to be added.

The lack of a faction system is because the Developers Do Not Want To Do Factions.

Good Catch!

Via the old updater.

The NCSoft launcher is pretty much a no-go, and will continue to be so.

Getting NCSoft to change their launcher to something that isn't multiplatform hostile before I21... well... I just don't know how likely that will be.

Also, as another note, since I see some new faces dropping by this thread.

I focus on Transgaming's Game-Tree-Linux over W.I.N.E. for commercial reasons. Most commercial game publishers hold a deep distrust of W.I.N.E. and W.I.N.E. derived technologies. By the same token most commercial game publishers also hold a deep distrust of Free-Soft licenses, be those licenses GPL compatible or GPL Incompatible. For these licensing reasons many major publishers are happy to work with Transgaming.

Commercial publishers also want somebody they can call up over the phone when something goes wrong, something community driven projects such as W.I.N.E. simply don't offer. While a company such as Crossover could provide such service, Crossover doesn't have the reputation or history that Transgaming has.


While the desired situation I would like to see is a native-linux client of City of Heroes, I'm not entirely sure NCSoft could be convinced to spend the resources to make a client. I'd also have a hard-time convincing NCSoft, as a player, that they should invest the cost as the game runs well enough within either the GTL or W.I.N.E. frameworks.

That being said, given the new Strike Force arrangement, I think NCSoft / Paragon Studios would see value in dedicating a strike force to maintaining compatibility running under GTL.

Maybe not an ideal solution for Free-Software advocates, but probably an acceptable solution for the average gamer.

And also depending on the speed of the processor.

Nvidia's flag-ship cards are helped a lot by Intel I7's topping 4.5ghz: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...rifire_redux/6

Unfortunately, the only Nvidia card I have on hand right now (6800 Mobile) is still a no-go for running CoH.

Rooming with Edsel?