srmalloy
-
Posts
896 -
Joined
-
Quote:You can always rebind it with /bind F10 "em attack $$local [battlecry]" (replacing [battlecry] with whatever you want to use; that gets around the character limit of the stock battlecry.Originally Posted by Eva Destruction
The battlecry space is too small, and I am too uncreative, so a lot of my characters' battlecry is "f10!" just so I have something to yell at Rommy. -
Quote:It's for those powers that have to have a base consistency of appearance -- you can make bright blue flame or dark blue flame, but stone has to look like stone; you can brownish rock, or grayish rock, etc., but it's a color overlaid on the basic texture. You can't pick screaming eye-searing flourescent green for your stone armors -- you get the palette in this image. Similarly, you can't make screaming piss-yellow ice armor (for which many people will be thankful); your palette is limited to shading the basic ice appearance (as in this image). (pictures taken at the NCSoft booth at SDCC).Originally Posted by Blood Spectre
I'm having a hard time imagining what "color tintable" effects would look like. I cant wait to find out though!
And some power effects won't be colorizable, in order to keep things consistent. You can, for example, change the colors of your Radiant Aura power to red and yellow, but the heal visual on each friendly mob in its radius will still be green. -
Quote:If you run the Moonfire TF with an eight-player team, you stand a pretty good chance of getting both Slayer and Silver Bullet by the end of the TF.Originally Posted by Rodion
For example, to get the Atlas Medallion accolade you need 200 vampyri and 200 warwolves. If you do the right missions in the 25-29 level range on large teams you can get the vampyri relatively easy (I'm not sure about the warwolves -- you might get that one by doing the Hess TF). But unless you intentionally go after those missions you will almost certainly outlevel them before getting those badges. That means you'll have to do those missions in Ouroboros or farm in Striga (which is what I usually wind up doing).
-
Quote:Don't forget being outraged that, having finally figured out how to defeat one of the "challenges" he had put in the game, players didn't keep their 'solution' to themselves, but insisted on announcing it to the playerbase, so everyone could learn. Apparently part of the 'thrill' in CoH was that no hero ever told another hero anything.Originally Posted by KithDPine
He brought us this game, he poured a lot of himself into it, and I've no doubt some of the good things we have are his doing. The problem I had was with his game theory and NIMGYD attitude, he was fixated on the idea that players secretly want to lose. I still remember (though not verbatim) the story about him losing a dozen or so times to a chu-boss in a handheld game and rush he had when he finally beat it and how he wanted to make encounters in CoH exactly like that.
And not taking criticism well -- or having an overweening confidence in the infallibility of his dev team, one of the two. Most notably during one of the regular major reworkings of the Regeneration set, which was instigated by the internal testing showing that /Regen scrappers were able to routinely take out 8-man spawns of +7 mobs -- a declaration massively decried by the playerbase, and continued long after the implementation of the nerf, until he finally admitted that the devs had gone back and actually checked their internal testing server, and discovered that the code it was running decreased neither to-hit percentages nor damage against higher-level mobs, unlike the live server code... but that the changes to Regen, based on the results from this invalid testing environment, would remain, because they needed to be made anyway to balance the set.Quote:Originally Posted by ArcticFahx
The real problem Jack had is that he had horrible people skills. He was a great developer, but he did *not* know how to interact with people, and especially not with customers.
Admittedly, he was competent as a game designer and lead developer, but his insistence on gameplay following his vision to the extent that, if he found that a significant fraction of the playerbase had found a way to enjoy the game that didn't conform to his vision, he'd direct changes be made to the game to close off that 'loophole', soured me on his style. The NCSoft development team, while I may not always agree with their priorities, have over and over again showed themselves to be focused on making the game fun for the players, instead of just for the lead developer. -
Quote:As exemplified in the PVP Online webcomic back in June of 2004.Originally Posted by Strikezulu
Despite being a male player, most of my characters are female.
I used to joke that it was the "Lara Croft principle" in action, that if you're going to stare at your character's rear end all day, etc. etc. -
Quote:If you were going to do a hero-themed Mastermind class, you'd want to remove the Bodyguard ability, and give them a Defense or Resistance AoE, so that their henchmen had increased survivability when kept close to the MM; you'd probably want to bump the class' base HP some to account for their inability to spread damage out to their minions. Inverting the defensive AoE and giving it to the minions as an AoE defensive aura to other minions and their leader so they can overlap and stack would be an interesting option -- for example, a 2% unenhanceable Defense bonus in a 10-foot radius to other minions and their leader -- would give the character a reason to keep his minions a) close and b) alive.Originally Posted by Daemodand
Masterminds dispose of their minions without a second thought. They are seen as completely expendable and this is properly reflected in the Villain Masterminds. A Hero Mastermind presents a bit of a difficulty because they work just the opposite way: they don't treat their men like expendables, they treat them with care and dignity. They care about their troops' fate. Unfortunately, this won't be reflected in game mechanics (as far as I know) like the Villain Mastermind approach is. That's what makes Hero Masterminds a bit difficult to take seriously (especially those with living human troops). The suicide bomber power in Traps is especially thematically inappropriate for Heroes.
But it would take a lot of fiddling to make it work thematically; the inherent fungibility of Mastermind henchmen argues strongly against a blueside variant. -
Quote:However, the fact that the backstory of CoX is so narrowly focused on Paragon City and the Rogue Isles is what lets us be more flexible about backgrounds for characters that don't come from within those boundaries. For example, I have a number of characters with Russian backgrounds, and the lack of canon regarding recent history in that part of the world let me invent Soviet-era state-sponsored superhero groups like Народная Армия (People's Army), supervillains like Генерал Зима (General Winter) and Красная Угроза (Red Menace), and throw in references to actual scientific facilities, like the Институт эволюционной физиологии и биохимии им. И.М.Сеченова (I. M. Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry), Институт теоретической и экспериментальной физики (Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics ), and Институт физики высоких энергий и ускоритель (Institute for High-Energy Physics), then invent whatever super-soldier or superpower-evoking program comes to mind (after all, why postulate some ruthless corporation like Crey conducting clandestine experiments to instill superpowers in people when the state would be doing it officially?).Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Again, this is not to start an argument, just explaining my position. This world is interesting, but anything done in it has to either be smaller in scale, or DESTROY IT, which cannot be done with a static continuity. Even Recluse, by all accounts the biggest bad guy in the world, is still playing the UN and dancing to the tune of make-pretend diplomacy. Nemesis hides, the Rikti are cut off, Rularuu is off in his own dimension, the Kheldians and Nictus are largely inconsequential outside of a few shining moments, the Battalion are only hinted at, the doom the Shivans are supposed to bring never comes... And none of this will ever change, because suddenly turning the game into a permanent war zone and erasing several city zones is just not something that will happen.
*
*
*
It is possible to tell a lot of stories in this world, but other worlds and expressly their NOT being this world and the differences this entails is exactly what makes them so appealing.
Putting Cyrillic in my character backgrounds [i]does[i] eat double the space for each character (Unicode characters are 16 bits each), so I have to be more ruthless about trimming the background to fit, but I think it adds flavor to the characterization. And it gives me a reason to make up Cyrillic chat binds, like 'Привет!' for 'Hello', 'Добро пожаловать!' for 'Welcome', 'Да.' and 'Нет.' for 'yes' and 'no', 'Поздравления!' instead of 'Gratz!', 'Спасибо!' and 'Пожалуйста.' instead of 'Thanks' and 'you're welcome', and others, adding a little more characterization in play. -
I'll have to see if I can dig myself out of bed for the morning run; I can bring Ogon Moroza, my Fire/Ice Blaster.
-
Quote:Don't think that CoX is unique in running you all around Hel's half acre; I was playing in the beta of another of NCSoft's MMOs and got a mission that had me (without travel powers):Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Just a reminder to everyone that there's a reason lots and lots of players prefer the convenience of content that doesn't send you all over the world before handing you a carbon copy of the mission you just did.
a) run to a contact that required me to idle for several minutes for a transport to take me to an otherwise-inaccessible part of the zone where the contact was, run to the contact,
b) Get directed to a second contact, running back to where I again had to wait for the transport to take me back to the main part of the zone, run to the contact,
c) Get directed to a third contact in another zone, requiring me to run to the zone gate, switch zones, run to the contact,
d) Get directed to a fourth contact, who is conveniently imprisoned up in an area that is +5 or better to you when you can get the mission, fight and sneak my way to the contact, get given an object,
e) Get directed back to the third contact, fight and sneak my way out of the area,
f) Get directed back to the second contact, run back to the zone gate, switch zones, run to the contact,
g) Get directed back to the first contact, again running to where I had to wait for the transport to take me to where he was, run to the contact,
h) Get sent to a fifth contact, who is near the second contact, run back to the transport and wait for it, ride it back to the main part of the zone, and run to the contact, where I have some local interaction to complete the task.
All of which awarded no XP except for incidental defeats until I completed the whole sequence, and earned me less in XP than several other missions that didn't take me out of zone at all, and had me running around less. It gave me a whole new perspective on the 'Go there, come back, go there again, come back, ..." missions in CoX. -
Quote:People Eating Tasty Animals? Why would that make us lose?Originally Posted by Lady_Athyna
We've got PETA.
We lose. -
Quote:Well, of course, because Americans have to have their beer cold, and the British have to drink theirs warm because they all have Lucas refrigerators.Originally Posted by Steelclaw
When Britain hosts Royalty-Con 10 next to no Americans show up. When the Germans run Oktober-Con two weeks later they have to turn em away at the door.
-
Quote:Also that while the game has the name of the pencil-and-paper game, but none of its mechanics (including power design), since it was much less work for Cryptic to file the serial numbers off a game engine they'd developed for another game that didn't make it out of development than to recreate the pencil-and-paper game's wide-open flexibility and then rein it in enough to prevent abuse (which is hard enough for a flesh-and-blood GM to do).Originally Posted by Rubberlad
The buzz on the street regarding the "pen and paper" game is that it's terrible. Absolutely terrible. I've got a number of friends in the closed beta who are not at all happy with what they saw, and have no intention of buying in once it goes live. (Four of them are planning to reactivate their COH accounts once I16 goes live. Two already re-activated for the recent Double XP weekend.)
-
Quote:I have to agree; the sumptuary laws in most MMOs are the most ironbound straitjackets you've ever seen. You can get all kinds of character customization -- face shape, eye color, hair style, hair color, lip color, tattoos, distinguishing marks, body sliders, whatever -- and somewhere, deep underground, are the factories churning out millions of identical pieces of gear; every set of "Upper Body Chain Armor of the [insert descriptive phrase here] is identical to every other one, with all of your choices that make your character an individual disappearing under mass-produced armor and equipment. And you'll be each and every piece as soon as you get a replacement that has a better bonus.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
Know what really bugs me about most I've tried?
Being like everyone else.Yes, you come up with this wonderful character, and within five levels you're in the same "I'm not quite a nooblet any more" armor with the same "hey, this is almost sharp enough to cut warm butter" sword or what have you. Sure, you might have a little color difference here and there, but overall, there's no point to customizing your look - as within five levels, if you don't dump all your stuff for new, you might as well be wearing cottage cheese for armor and throwing loosely wadded paper at the enemy. -
Quote:It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Tanker inherent were changed to be loosely similar to the old Defiance mechanic -- a Tanker's damage multiplier goes up as they take damage. Not by being attacked -- that's part of how Brutes crank Fury -- but by being hurt. It occurs to me that this would have a better claim to the name 'Defiance' than the Blaster inherent; as a Tanker gets beat on, the beating he's taking inspires him to greater feats of violence in return.Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene
Doubling tanker recharge times and damage would be a huge buff to tankers, especially with access to IOs and global recharge reduction bonuses, which would push overall tanker damage into the stratosphere relative to every other AT. This is before you figure in the huge benefit tankers would suddenly get from red inspirations, their own damage boosts (build up, rage, fiery embrace), as well as team buffs and debuffs. It looks deceptively balanced, but the outcome isthat tankers would be seriously out of balance with the other ATs.
It would also introduce an interesting dichotomy into the build for a Tanker; the better the Tanker's defenses are, the less damage they take under normal circumstances, and their damage boost will be smaller as a result. -
Quote:I disagree; because you don't get salvage drops, and the best payoff for your tickets is to buy recipe rolls, the people farming MA missions -- whether for influence and tickets, or for that plus XP -- aren't accumulating salvage that gets dumped into the market, and the ones who are leveling via MA missions go out and jack the prices of salvage in the auction house by competing for the smaller pool of salvage that's being put in by the fraction of the characters that don't spend their lives inside an AE building.Originally Posted by Fleeting_Whisper
No, that's marketeers. Farmers either have no effect on the price of common salvage (some will just delete it because it's not worth enough, which is just as if they hadn't been farming in the first place), or they'll make the price come down by introducing a larger supply.
It occurs to me that the rationale behind influence/infamy was that it represented either your own personal resources (i.e., being rich) or your reputation in Paragon City/the Rogue Isles (which enables you to get assistance from suppliers; how does locking yourself away in some augmented virtual reality construct improve your reputation as a hero in Paragon City? As influence/infamy for defeating mobs is defined in the game, defeating hordes of simulated Nemesis soldiers while electronically staring into your navel might teach you how to fight Nemesis soldiers better, but it does nothing to impress the citizenry with your dedication to combating the depredations of Lord Nemesis and his minions -- so why do defeated mobs in MA missions award influence/infamy? -
Quote:Body sliders like CoH, face and hair selections, skin, hair, and lip color pickers, and a selection of minor facial variations (freckles, blush, etc.) and tattoo choices don't do much to change it from a "You are what you wear" game.Originally Posted by AmazingMOO
The problem with playing other NCSoft games is that Asian MMOs tend to be very, very grindy. Also, while they often have beautiful characters, the characters and costume options are so very similar that it's like swimming in an ocean of clones.
You'd have to convince me that Aion was at least 3/4 as customizable as CoH before I'd consider trying it and would then give it up pretty quickly if it required grinding or spawn camping. -
Quote:However, the highest bidder over the listing price buys the item from the person with the lowest listing price, which is where the incentive to lowball your asking price comes from -- if everyone else is listing a recipe for 50,000, and you list yours for 5, yours will sell before theirs. Of course, if everybody with open bids is trying to catch a lowball offer... but that's the risk you run.Originally Posted by Laevateinn
Not true. The highest bid always wins an item (except for certain extremely rare market glitches where bids don't seem to register after you've placed them). There is no way you can bid 10 influence and win the auction while anyone is still bidding 200m influence on the same item.
-
Quote:Unfortunately for the game, this.Originally Posted by Liz_Bathory_EU
why do you ever need a jetpack when you level in MA only!?
why would you want to get to the Hollows when the MA is just next door?
But even when I'm working up a lowbie, I rarely visit the Hollows any more before I get my travel power, because of too much of the "Go in via Atlas Park, mission door is in SE corner of zone, go in via Skyway, mission door is in NE corner of zone" shafting, and the revamp into a "kindler, gentler Hollows" that completely reworked the spawns on the south end of the map, eliminating most of its viability as a place to go hunting CoT for the arcane salvage drops from about level 10 through level 18. And with the easy PL availability right there in AP, no one else seems to want to bother going there, either. -
The build for my Fire/Rad Controller is a little odd; it was a complete respec from a pre-ED build, paid for almost completely by selling off the no-longer-used HOs (for example, before the respec, she had Radiant Aura six-slotted with Golgi Exposure HOs); after the rebuild, I could only use 27 of the HOs her build had previously used.
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.401
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Yadernii Ogon: Level 50 Mutation Controller
Primary Power Set: Fire Control
Secondary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Fire Mastery
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Char -- HO:Endo(A), HO:Endo(3), EoCur-Acc/Rchg:50(7), G'Wdw-Acc/Rchg:50(17), G'Wdw-Dam%:50(45)
Level 1: Radiant Aura -- HO:Golgi(A), HO:Golgi(3), HO:Golgi(7), RechRdx-I:50(17), RechRdx-I:50(27)
Level 2: Fire Cages -- HO:Endo(A), HO:Endo(5), HO:Perox(9), Enf'dOp-Acc/EndRdx:50(19), TotHntr-Acc/EndRdx:50(27), TotHntr-Dam%:50(29)
Level 4: Accelerate Metabolism -- Efficacy-EndMod:50(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg:50(5), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg:50(13), RechRdx-I:50(45)
Level 6: Radiation Infection -- HO:Enzym(A), HO:Enzym(9), HO:Enzym(13), RechRdx-I:50(46)
Level 8: Hot Feet -- HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(11), Dmg-I:50(11), EndRdx-I:50(19), EndRdx-I:50(34), EndRdx-I:50(46)
Level 10: Air Superiority -- Acc-I:50(A)
Level 12: Flashfire -- HO:Endo(A), Acc-I:50(15), Rope-EndRdx/Stun:50(15), Stpfy-EndRdx/Stun:50(33)
Level 14: Fly -- HO:Micro(A), HO:Micro(34), Winter-ResSlow:30(43)
Level 16: Swift -- Run-I:50(A)
Level 18: Health -- Numna-Heal:50(A), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+:30(46)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I:50(A), EndMod-I:50(21), EndMod-I:50(21)
Level 22: Enervating Field -- EndRdx-I:50(A), EndRdx-I:50(23), EndRdx-I:50(23)
Level 24: Lingering Radiation -- RechRdx-I:50(A), RechRdx-I:50(25), TmpRdns-Acc/Slow:50(25), P'ngTtl-Acc/Slow:50(29)
Level 26: Mutation -- RechRdx-I:50(A)
Level 28: Cinders -- HO:Endo(A), HO:Endo(31), HO:Endo(31), EndRdx-I:50(31), RechRdx-I:50(37)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx-I:30(A), RechRdx-I:30(40), RechRdx-I:30(43)
Level 32: Fire Imps -- HO:Nucle(A), HO:Nucle(33), HO:Nucle(33), EdctM'r-PetDef:20(34)
Level 35: Choking Cloud -- HO:Endo(A), HO:Endo(36), EoCur-EndRdx/Hold:30(36), EndRdx-I:30(36), EndRdx-I:30(37), EndRdx-I:30(37)
Level 38: EM Pulse -- HO:Endo(A), HO:Endo(39), HO:Endo(39), RechRdx-I:10(39), RechRdx-I:50(40), RechRdx-I:50(40)
Level 41: Fire Ball -- Acc-I:45(A), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg:46(42), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx:45(42), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg:46(42), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx:45(43)
Level 44: Fire Shield -- Aegis-Psi/Status:30(A), S'fstPrt-ResKB:10(45)
Level 47: Consume -- P'Shift-EndMod/Acc/Rchg:50(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg:50(48), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc/Rchg:50(48), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg:50(48), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc:50(50)
Level 49: Smoke -- HO:Lyso(A), HO:Lyso(50), DampS-ToHitDeb:50(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Clrty-Stlth:30(A)
Level 2: Rest -- RechRdx-I:30(A)
Level 1: Containment
------------
Set Bonus Totals:- 5% Defense
- 5% Enhancement(Immobilize)
- 22.9 HP (2.25%) HitPoints
- Knockback (Mag -4)
- Knockup (Mag -4)
- MezResist(Sleep) 1.65%
- 1.5% (0.03 End/sec) Recovery
- 22% (0.93 HP/sec) Regeneration
- 20% ResEffect(FlySpeed)
- 20% ResEffect(RechargeTime)
- 20% ResEffect(RunSpeed)
- 1.88% Resistance(Energy)
- 3% Resistance(Psionic)
- 5% RunSpeed
- 1% XPDebtProtection
-
Quote:However, at Comic-Con, only about half of the customization was done for powers, so they will either be pushing more art updates as the beta goes on, or the art department is about to fall over and die from overwork. ;9Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano
eh if it is that only closed beta testers can even log in...kinda lame.
Ah well, at this stage I seriously doubt any amount of moaning would help...but seriously, if people at the Comic-con could waltz upto machines, film the animations (and make us so happy that Punch and Haymaker are getting different animations *hugs Zek*) I really don't see the point in only having closed beta tests be able to fiddle about with the power customisation... -
Quote:I expect that I16 is going to be in beta for longer than normal, considering what's being added in this update.Originally Posted by Steel_Shaman
Very true. But to be honest I didn't think we'd even be at this point for at least another month, so that puts the Dev's ahead of my personal expectations. This makes me one happy little customer.
-
Quote:Remember, though, that 'expensive' can be measured several ways. It is 'expensive' to do the TFs to get the merits you need to buy the recipes frrom the Merit Vendors, but that's an expenditure of time, not infamy, and the inf you gain from the TFs will more than pay for the salvage you need to build the recipes. It all depends on how you consider the tradeoff.Originally Posted by Local_Man
[ QUOTE ]
Ok, so can anyone give me a typical ill/rad build that's not too expensive (read: No purples) but has perma PA?
Perma AM would be nice too.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is probably not possible -- because recharge bonuses are highly sought after, any Recharge oriented build is going to be expensive. Those Luck of the Gambler recharge IOs are VERY expensive. Same with sets that give recharge bonuses. Most of the folks with Perma-PA builds spend a LOT, unless they were really, really lucky with drops. -
Quote:I never found that it was badly underperforming in damage, although it does trade off some damage for safety. Where it falls down is a significant reduction in synergy between the primary and secondary; none of your team-buff powers do anything to Phantom Army, which means that you're only going to get full benefit from those powers in a team. However, without PA and Phantasm, you're going to find it very slow going if you can't get yourself a team.Originally Posted by Alpha_Boss
Illusion kin is a great team build but there very hard to solo(due to illusion being a not very damaging) but there a great with there buffs and debuffs in a team plus group invis comes in handy and confuse aswell but this looks like a fun build mate,might see how it hold solo.
-
Quote:With my AR/En Blaster, Boost Range+Build Up+Full Auto against a group of white minions -- I use this regularly against the formations of Nemesis in Peregrine Island -- will leave me standing at 40%-60% HP with a pile of Nemesis in front of me. FA by itself without the Blaster damage advantage is going to leave a Defender with a lot of annoyed mobs in front of him; Flamethrower then FA might be enough to drop them, but the added 'stand there and tough it out' time will likely get him faceplanted if someone else doesn't have aggro.Originally Posted by Rush_Bolt
That and the damage tics (and thus the sleep breaking) happens in a short, quick burst instead of a long, drawn-out, rooted animation.
With RoA, you fire it off and can move right about when the arrows are landing and thus the foes are waking up.
With FA, you're standing still for 3.3s. All while those enemies are now awake and returning fire. -
Quote:And when PBU+EMPA doesn't grab the boss, a quick follow-up with Ice Arrow will deal with the problem.Originally Posted by Rush_Bolt
Yes.
For reference, EMPA+PBU, once slotted, is a 65s Mag 3 Hold. Which also has a chance for +1 Mag, which is enough to hold most Bosses.
Plus PBU's also a decent +DMG boost. While it is on a pretty long recharge, it's nice to have for a really good hit.