opprime28

IF it were handled liberally, as in , someone coule still run three arcs per day (an arc being the equivalent of 5 missions) before hitting the cap, I'd be ALL FOR this soiution.

I'd heard a similar solution offered once that said they should simply add in reward timer silimar to what happens with TFs currently where after running x amount of arcs or MA missions your rewards are "frozen" and you stop recieving them. This would mean all "tickets and XP" wouldn't be awarded until mission completion however, which might be frustrating for some. I thought the idea had merrit, though, and think this does as well.

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Maybe the powers that be are hoping that the shiny "Architect Edition" boxes will bring in as many as they lose. Maybe they're looking farther down the road and hoping "Going Rogue" will bring in fifty times that many new players.


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The problem I see with that concept is that "Going Rogue" is going to appeal to current players, not NEW players who havent tried either hero or villain, so they don't even know that certain archetypes are limited, etc. You lose the current base, then Going Rogue will have the resale value of a new expansion to Star Wars Galaxies or Tabula Rasa.

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im with ya

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Ok. I loled.


And can lol be used as a verb?

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1) MA - 100% cool!

2) Dev handling of problems with it - 100% overreacted to.

I figure there's probably one other important percentage to go here:

3) Player Base Upset about #2 - .5%

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Statistics to back up above statements- 0

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As far as I can see, the only real mistake the devs made with their response to the exploiters was to hit people in leveling pacts.

However, leveling pacts themselves are ready-made powerleveling services; how are they supposed to know which ones were done purposefully and which ones were strictly happenstance?

I always wondered about the feasibility of leveling pacts myself. Now we've seen one of the bugs in it.

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The Devs haven't JUST made mistakes with exploitation issues, however.

Off the top of my head I can list the following problems I've noticed with Dev handling since issue 14, and again I stress that I LOVE this game and the things Im about to list are disappointing to me. Also Im not a farmer or exploitter.

#1: Before issue 14 was released, there were MANY known bugs which were completely ignored despite, literally, hundreds of posts about them in the forums. These included map issues, the known ninjitsu bug, the ability for blasters to snipe from a distance and kill minions with no ranged attacks, etc. The Devs posted a "We're almost ready for launch!" thread in the forums and it was followed by -SEVEN- pages of testers saying "guys, this isn't ready." It was still launched with the issues above known.

#2: The devs began dealing with some of the issues above AFTER they released the product, and then did so without (and in the case of changing the powers of critters, INSPITE of) player feedback. This caused people who had spent hours creating balanced custom critters under the first set of guidelines to suddenly find their critters completely unbalanced and, in many cases, unable to be balanced due to the seemingly arbitrary changes to some of the powersets. Seriously...minions with STACKING ice storms? That sort of stupidity made some arcs based around critter groups even MORE imbalanced than they were before.

#3: They pulled maps without any explanation, and without the courtesy of even listing which maps were pulled and why, so players who spent hours or days creating an arc very well could have had their arc invalidated without even knowing it without NOW spending hours testing their arcs. This mistake is a simple 2 minute action that could have, and SHOLD have, been taken care of.

#4: Positron posted a rant, and Im sorry but thats the only word for it, which prompted almost 700 pages of negative feedback before he responded, and his response, in my opinion, was just as rantish and unclear as his first. I GET that there were exploiters and some of what was going on was stupid, but don't get pissy about something you refuse to specifically clarify to your customers about, and even MORE importantly, don't claim that you won't be doing things that you then turn around and do, like blanket suspending accounst that were level pacted simply because they "levelled too fast" and then go DAYS without stating how or why that happened and what you plan to do to fix it. And no, I haven't personally had an account suspended.

#5: Don't give your public tools to do something then scold them for not doing it the way you intended. If you expect them to use a tool a certain way, create it properly BEFORE you give it to them. Meow farms were happening on test. If the Devs didn't want it to happen then it shouldn't have gone live until it was properly addressed, and since it DID go live, don't act disappointed and hack the hell out of the system that people who AREN'T farming put hard work in to when you knew it was going to happen. This is even WORSE when you refuse to spell out exactly what you DO expect because then you think THAT will be abused. Well guess what, if abused is going to happen either way, then at LEAST do your part and let us know when and what you see as abuse so we know where we stand.

Lets say I own two accounts, and I made two lower level characters and enter them into a levelling pact. I fall in love with one though, and, as I usually do, begin focusing on him and get him to fifty in three months. during that three months I've ignored the other one though...so when I log him in..."ding!" he's 50. Have I abused the system? In all honesty, at this point I truly don't know. If I have, then how so and what is the point of the levelling pact? If I haven't then why are people being banned for similar actions? Hire a frickin' public relations person already and get this mess cleared up. And please...PLEASE don't let it be Mod08.

All in all, I've seen the devs take what should have been a ground breaking moment in MMOs and handle it like a bunch of high school students in an economics class. It has been far from professional and, for the first time since I started playing this game years ago, I'm actually disgusted with the company that is running it.

I REALLY hope that this changes and they redeem themselves, but so far I haven't even seen them admit that they handled it poorly. Just hearing that would go a long way toward winning me back over.

I just wanted to say, amazing, educational and very informative post, OP! Thanks!

Yo-Yo Melee is clearly one aspect of the "playground Assault" powerset scheduled for the City of Children expansion.

Pogo Stick: +Jmp, +Def
Yo-yo strike: moderate smashing dmg, stun
Yo-yo swipe: Moderate dmg Foe Knockdown
Hoola Hoop: PBAOE minor damage, foe knockdown
Spitballs: ranged heavy dmg, Foe slow
Wet Willie: Foe taunt
Throw Voice: Foe Confuse
Nerf bat: Enemy -dmg, self + dmg
Indian Burn: Extreme fire DMG, foe fear.

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Really, the only people who complain about MA are the ones who miss the Rikti Comm farms. The average player still gets a lot of enjoyment out of them. I took my level 11 tank to it, picked out a mission that turned out to be a farm, and got quite a bit of tickets from it. I rolled for about 15 recipes, several trays full of salvage, and got half of my powers slotted. Normally, most of the recipes I'd get would be for common IOs. Here, I was able to frankenslot several of my powers.


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This is just patently false. I never made a Rikti Comm farm. I didn't meow. I didnt PL toons on the MA. Period. I published 6 arcs over the course of the first few weeks that I'd spent countless hours workin on. All of them were (and the ones still up are) averaging 4 star ratings or above with 20-50 ratings.

I'm still utterly disgusted by the way the devs have handled post i-14 stuff.

The worst part is, people's valid complaints about maps being yanked with no warnings, idiotic changes to powersets on custom critters that make things WORSE, not better, and blatantly false information like the fact that automatic suspensions wont happen when in deed they did...to people who were simply in perfectly legal LEVEL PACTS no less, are dismissed by comments like yours.

Look, its one thing to like a game. It's quite another to ignore when the devs do things that hurt players because it didn't personally affect you.

Seeing how the Devs have publicly responded to this whole mess is even more disheartening. It's like they haven't had a sophomore level public relations or even public speaking course.

I'm not crying DOOOOOM...but I am saying "Please...wake up." Im a long time veteran of the game, have 2 accounts because when my nephew stopped using the one I gave him for Christmas one year I took it over for more Justice slots (pre-slot buying) and spend far too many hours a week on the game. And you know what? i14 has actually made me, for the first time, think about trying Champions online when it comes out.

That's not meant as a threat. Really. But it should say something about the importance of the way things should be handled and the clusterhump that has been i14 handling.

You know, I've ALWAYS felt that Zombie Masterminds and the Zombie invasion forces should work...uniquely. The Zombie pets should have a confuse-aura that only works on the zombies from the invasions, and when the invading zombies get close to a MM's zombie, they become confused and start attacking each other.

Having power to control the dead should inherently give you a serious advantage in an invasion of the dead. Just sayin'...

For those arguing that "If SB didn't boost my speed I'd just skip teaming with kins altogether" I offer you the following thread.

https://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat...;gonew=1#UNREAD

The bottom line: You have zero control over how buffs from other players work anyway, so including a -speed increase +end increase (or other) enhancement probably wouldn't have the DOOOM factor you're saying it would anyway.

I think its a decent idea. My suggestion is limit the rewards, and instead of making it an MA interface, make it a "danger room" interface, so you gain prestige for the SG but not actual XP, or reduced XP, etc? Its more for SG training/bonding/toon testing, etc. than for running missions.

Anything deal with the Shadow Shard is an automatic -5 points interest for me.


I hate that zone with a passion. It would have to be an entirely non-Shard Rularuu TF for me to be interested.

And again, currently not every personl playing a powerset takes all of the powers of said powerset, so you theoretically have to ask "have you taken speed boost" or "Have you taken your rez power" etc. In other words, as I said before, you're saying it would cause a situation which already occurs.

For the record, I have three different level 50 kins, and LOVE speed boost, so that's not the issue. I have been on teams, however, where kins have either not taken speed boost because of its need to be spammed, or said "I don't speed boost." And I was annoyed, sure, but in the end it was their character, and I still had every power and ability on my character that I came into the team with, so I really had no reason to complain.

The game experience regaring external buffs isn't in anyones hands but the buffers, even as things are now. They decide whether to take a power or not, they decide when and how to use a power or nor (who hasn't teamed with someone who either doesnt announce their use of AM, or conversely doesn't have a power you think they should, etc.) and how to slot said power.

But that's already "out of their hands" so to speak. For example, I can slot Speed Boost with INCREASE run speed, something that might be equally as annoying to someone.

What you're arguing isn't, in my experienced, how ehancements currently work. I might slot one teammate buff (say Accelerate Metabolism) with a heavy emphasis on end modification, while you slot it with a heavy emphasis on recharge and increased speed since you often team with a stone tanker. Likewise, you slot Speed Boost with +Speed while I slot it for + End Mod. You slot ID with +Resist while I slot it with an end cost reduction, etc.

Anyone if there currently is, or if someone is working on, a Mids-style analyzer for custom critters in the MA? A mids style way to examine the combinations of powersets but not limited to current archetypal groupings and not using enhancements?

Could really help with balancing custom critter groups.

Since this was originally entered in two seperate forums, I'm copying and pasting the responses from the original forum (Powerset discussion) into this one for consistency.

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Being able to turn KB into KD by the use of new IOs or enhancements would be brilliant.

I sign^^

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This would be a really neat trick for DOs and would make them more interesting and more useful for longer. slightly better at one thing for a slight reduction in another.

Some would be really nice like + dam/- KB for some moves. others would make you think, like a +rech/-range or +hold/+end or something like that.

don't expect it to happen though.

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I found what I am thinking is the more correct forum after posting in this one. Sadly, there's no way to delete a thread you've entered. Lets all move the discussion to "suggestions" as Yuri suggested.

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There are already slow *resist* IOs out there... Some of these, I *believe* (I'd have to go digging) had already been covered by the devs as "not possible at this time," though.

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While Im not a programmer, since we already know that the coding exists to INCREASE the knockback of a power, I can't imagine any logical reason why you couldn't DECREASE it as well. For example, if the power has in its coding knockback = .27, and adding an SO +knockback enhancement increases that coding to knockback = .3059 (.27 increased by 33%) then what would stop there from being an ehancement that changes the codiing to knockback=.18 (33% reduction)? Then to deal with the +primary portion, you simply take the .1809 percentage of knockback reduction and transfer it to a +dmg of .1809 additional smashing dmg. granted these numbers are totally fudged for discussion's sake.


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(Like I said, I believe that's the case with things like your knockback reduction. Not 100% on that though.) Others are part of powers or IO set bonuses.

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While there are powers that boost damage, and also IO set bonuses that boost damage, we still have +damage enhancements, so I fail to see why that would matter. Secondly, the entire point is to tailor your OWN powers, not rely on others' powers. Some people have +slow resist, but what does that have to do with my desire to not have my powers slow others down, or speed up, etc. as much as they do.

Enhancements, to me at least, seem like a way to tailor your powers more to your liking and play style by increasing damage, or reducing their end cost, or quickening their recharge time, or boosting their accuracy, or increasing their endurance modification, increasing their taunt effects, or increasing their knockback. Im simply asking for more choices, like reducing some of the above that you can only currently increase, and increasing some of the above that you can, currently, only reduce.

Ok, I have long wanted some new types of enhancements introduced into the game. Not necessarily IO enhancements, but general effects that currently aren't offered.

I started thinking this way back while levelling my first 50. It was an energy/fire blaster. What I'd like to see is a MINUS knockback effect enhancement for powers. In other words, if you want to use energy blast, but don't want to deal with all of the constant knockback and positioning, use these for a reduction in the amount of knockback. If the coding would work, powers that traded damage for different secondary effect like knockback could simply see a slight increase in damage and reduction of knockback. The coding SHOULD work since we already have both Hami-O's that effect more than one aspect of a power (say damage and range) and also already have +knockback enahancements.

This got me thinking...what other enhancements could people want to deal with annoying secondaries in certain powers or powersets?

Im going to start a thread asking for ideas and lists. The + primary means that it will increase whatever the main effect of the power is (damage, -acc, sleep, etc.)


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New Enhancements We'd Like To See
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1: Knockback Effect Reduction: (-knockback, +primary)
2: Taunt Reducation: (- taunt)
3: End Drain Reduction: (-end mod, + Primary)
4: Damage Reduction: (-Dmg, + Primary) -say for Sonic's sleep, to remove aggro affect, etc.?
5: Slow Effect Reduction: (-slow, + Primary) -ID, stealth, etc. ?
6: Enhance Speed Reduction: (- +speed, + Primary) -Imagine it in Speed Boost, still able to boost people whose computers and lag can't handle the increased movement but would love the increased recharge, etc.)
7: Stealth Reduction: (-Stealth, + seconday) -want to keep the bonuses from Shadowfall but not be saddled with problems leading out captives? Want the +def from grant invis but not the actual invis?


Can anyone think of any others? Do these sound interesting to anyone else?

Ok, I have long wanted some new types of enhancements introduced into the game. Not necessarily IO enhancements, but general effects that currently aren't offered.

I started thinking this way back while levelling my first 50. It was an energy/fire blaster. What I'd like to see is a MINUS knockback effect enhancement for powers. In other words, if you want to use energy blast, but don't want to deal with all of the constant knockback and positioning, use these for a reduction in the amount of knockback. If the coding would work, powers that traded damage for different secondary effect like knockback could simply see a slight increase in damage and reduction of knockback. The coding SHOULD work since we already have both Hami-O's that effect more than one aspect of a power (say damage and range) and also already have +knockback enahancements.

This got me thinking...what other enhancements could people want to deal with annoying secondaries in certain powers or powersets?

Im going to start a thread asking for ideas and lists. The + primary means that it will increase whatever the main effect of the power is (damage, -acc, sleep, etc.)


________________________________________________
New Enhancements We'd Like To See
________________________________________________

1: Knockback Effect Reduction: (-knockback, +primary)
2: Taunt Reducation: (- taunt)
3: End Drain Reduction: (-end mod, + Primary)
4: Damage Reduction: (-Dmg, + Primary) -say for Sonic's sleep, to remove aggro affect, etc.?
5: Slow Effect Reduction: (-slow, + Primary) -ID, stealth, etc. ?
6: Enhance Speed Reduction: (- +speed, + Primary) -Imagine it in Speed Boost, still able to boost people whose computers and lag can't handle the increased movement but would love the increased recharge, etc.)
7: Stealth Reduction: (-Stealth, + seconday) -want to keep the bonuses from Shadowfall but not be saddled with problems leading out captives? Want the +def from grant invis but not the actual invis?


Can anyone think of any others? Do these sound interesting to anyone else?

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1: Categorized rating system - Please allow us to rate an arc on multiple factors (Perhaps on traits such as Story and Challenge).

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The more categories you add, the less likely I am to rate a mission. I'm not taking a job as an arc reviewer, I'm just playing to have fun. I'm not going to bother agonizing over the qualities of various aspects of the arc.

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2: Require the completion of an arc before it can be rated

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If I can't complete the arc due to being hit with several surprise elite bosses, I certainly want to be able to quit and give a poor rating. In fact, if I can't quit and give a rating, I probably wouldn't bother rating any arc that I can complete. I'd just throw out the rating system altogether.

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3: Require comments for ratings under 3 stars

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Comment: safdsadfsadf
Requiring a comment is meaningless, since you can't force people to form complete words and sentences.

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4: Remove the 0 Star Rating

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Okay. There are probably arcs out there I would give 0 stars to, but I think the feature isn't implemented very well.

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5: Append Comments To Arcs

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This sounds messy. I suspect they moved away from e-mails for a good reason.

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6: Unpublish all non-Developer's Choice arcs

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Well that would be unpopular. I don't care about that myself, but I think a number of players might be coming for you with a knife if you convinced the devs to wipe out their ratings.

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7: Include a system to contest ratings

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Creates excessive work for the GMs. Please consider the GM workload when suggesting something like this.

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Im sorry, but your arguments, to me at least, seem to be the stongest support YET for the OPs ideas.

If you don't care enough about the arc to give it a real rating, then frankly, I don't care what your opinion is. When I look for arcs to play, I don't want the opinions of someone who just felt like "eh, I'll hit this button" but want the opinions of people who actually felt a strong opinion about an arc.

This is why we pay people for movie reviews instead of just going by ticket sales. We want honest, though out opinions.

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A chain/whip set would be sweet. Course I've been saying that for 4 years now so...

Dual pistols as a complete set for blaster/defender/corruptors would be cool as well.

The ability to "create" your mm pets. Pick the power set you would like or a new one if it has to be. Then pick your pet from list in game or create like the AE option for creating villain groups. That'd be a fix all for everyone. You want clowns, I'd like snakes, also a set of thugs that didn't wear business suits or be tattooed out. Why must soldiers be soldiers...couldn't my "army" be a group of my red neck NRA buddies in hunting gear or a mess of grannies with guns.

Oh you make mm pets creatable and everybody will have a mm and everybody will have alot of fun.

MM set is just so freaking cool to be pidgeon holed into running zombies for dark set or ninja for ma open it up. Let us have the ability to skin them even at current scales. I hate the Uni and will never play ninja set because of his look alone. Now if I could change how he looks or soldiers or zombies or thugs I for one would buy a couple more slots to do that. (I realize robots are robots are robots) but the rest seems that you could tweak em if you wanted to...

Sorry gotta ranting there, would be happy with whip/chain set sigh.

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The problem would be lag. I mean major, major lag. If they did it via a non customizable list, though, that could work. similar to weopons customization, I guess.
Would be nice to have a set with all of the robot powers, but have them actually be advanced alien warriors, or have ninja powers but have them be a bunch of IRA agents instead.

Of course...if they did clowns, then the gang war animation would have to be changed. A small little car would need to drive up and they'd ALL have to climb out of that.

Just sayin'

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I've heard rumors of a Dual Pistols blaster, and was thinking how awesome it would be to have a Dual Pistols/Blade melee blaster.

The Blade Melee would need to be creatively done, complete with shurikens and a "handle butt" stun power since most blaster secondaries have a stun and/or an immobilize. It could also have a "throwing knives" additional ranged attack, a "sword swipe" PBAOE damage/knockback, a more original "sword shield" spinning sword +Def move, etc. The Redraw would suck, but no more so than on an AR/Devices.

You all gotta admit, having a bladed secondary for blasters would be bad arsed.

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Someone fell in love with the deadpool character in X-Men Origins I see lol. It might be fun at first but I agree with most on here that are saying it'll be redraw hell. Somethings are better left in movies and comics

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Yeah, except that #1, blade fights existed LONG before "deadpool" in Xmen, and even still, he's much more of a scrapper and
#2: That's the equivalent of saying to those who consistently request illusion be moved to dominators that they're just "fell in love with mesmero."

The bottom line is that there are several reasons why this. or a powerset similar to it, are a good idea, the primary one being conceptual. It makes little sense to try and make a blaster who ISN'T "super-powered" because, unless you want traps as your secondary, every other one is based around super powers.

As for the "redraw hell" issue...what you're essentially saying is that there's no feasible way to make traps work, or really, assault rifle, since the use of either require redraw. I think there there's quite a bit of evidence that you're wrong. A fire/blades blaster wouldn't require any more redraw than an AR/energy manip or a fire/traps, buth of which Ive seen used very successfully.

You have to admit though, blade melee makes sense for a blaster's secondary. I mean, you could have a couple of PBAoE attacks, a couple single target melee attacks, a stun and a knockback attack. All very similar to what you have in EM, or Electric melee, etc.

To be fair, I had a forum thread simply trying to consolidate players' concerns on MA affects on game culture. It specifically stated it wasn't a farming thread, and wasn't an exploit thread. Mod08 showed up and just closed the thread and said to move it to the appropriate forum with no explanation as to what that forum was.

By the way, in my thread, before Mod08 closed it, five people asked Mod08 to finally clarify where the "appropriate forums" are on threads he keeps closing.

So while this thread is in REALLY poor taste, it isn't entirely without merrit in its concerns and frustrations.