Issue 5 Features Preview: Forest of Dread
By
Accualt,
Posted on: 2005-06-29 09:18 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
*giggles madly and passes out on the floor from sheer happiness*
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All very cool, but I have one quibble.
Sonic Debuff? What a LAME name for a powerset.
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You'll have to speak up! I can't hear you, as I've been sonically debuffed (acoustically challenged, resonantly reduced, catastrophically cacaphoned...)
My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.
Big Deal.
All I want to know is when you are going to fix all the freakin bugs you introduced with I4. Maps dont work right, chats windows dont work right, ignores dont work right, Macros dont work right, crashes are still happenin...
205723: A Different DESTINY
When Soldiers of Arachnos got their names added to the Destiny List, Longbow managed to get a copy of the list and began rounding villains up. But one name on the list shocked them...
Outstanding... the new zone events and mission customization is going to help bring a more immersive and less same old same old feel...
Awesome.
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And the Level range of Croatoa, STILL needs to be bumped up 5 or 10 levels and a pox on anyone who doesn't fight with us for that change 'til it makes it's way to the Live Servers
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I am having a problem with posts like the above, complaining about the level of Croatoa. Everyone who has complained stated it's because they want a higher level zone. I have been playing since June of 04, and correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't the first new added zone, in Issue 2 - I believe, the Shard? And isn't the Shard a level 40+ zone?
Hmmm.. so the high level players got a new zone before everyone else.. and now the devs are creating zones for the other levels and people are getting upset.. seems like a poor reason to get your underwear in a knot.
And all of this new content is free... gee.. I think I'll complain that there isn't a new zone for levels 1-5 because I am so over GC and AP.
You don't hit smiling monsters - Sister Flame
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I've got to say that having powersets that are unique isn't a good enough reason to have a team want a Defender instead of a Controller. If they did, that implies to me that even on Defenders that power set is superior to the other sets, meaning only Defenders with the new set would get the love. I'm not sure you want to "fix" the perceived high-level game by adding in "golden child" Defender sets.
What you want is for Defenders to be meaningfully better at using their primaries than a Controller. You never see people asking for a Defender or a Tanker to increase the damage output of the team. Likewise they really shouldn't be asking for a Controller to increase the defense/buffs/debuffs of the team.
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The above explanation that you quoted is about why people thought these two powersets were defender-only.
What I want is for defenders and controllers to have access to powersets the other does not have. I do not think that defenders are all that unnecessary in the later game, or that people really take controllers over defenders quite to the degree that people talk about. It would simply be nice to have more distinctiveness for both. Please refrain from telling me what I want, but you are certainly free to suggest what might be a better idea.
I do think that defender buff/debuff sets should be about 33% more powerful for defenders than for controllers, but I also think defenders could use a bit of a damage buff - or at least a reexamination of the damage output on their secondaries.
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The trick is doing that without making Controller secondaries very gimpy indeed.
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Well, it doesn't strike me as a hard trick. There should never be a case where a defender and a controller use exactly the same power, and the controller gets equal effect. Making it 80% of defender effectiveness strikes me as too high, as some controllers have more effective damage-dealing options later in the game, and defenders end up with insufficient advantage over controllers, and a lack in terms of ranged damage.
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What you want is for Defenders to be meaningfully better at using their primaries than a Controller.
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Yep. That's exactly it. It's not the powersets, it's the degree of efficiency with which each AT uses them.
Who knows, maybe Defs will get better buff/debuff numbers than controllers with Trick Arrow, in much the same way that electric blast Defs get better End Drain results than electric blasters in the Arena.
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Oh, yeah, clarifying: I don't disagree with Uberguy's statement - Defenders do need to be meaningfully more powerful with their primaries. I just didn't like the, "what you want is..." bit.
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I don't know if its been mentioned (too many posts for me to look at) but if anyone has read Harry Potter or played WoW it mentions Red Caps little fairy imp type creatures (which are from Harry Potter) and Fir Bolgs which is in WoW. Did they steal some ideas? 
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Yes, from the same sources Harry Potter and WoW stole from.
Also, Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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I have more or less given up posting on this forum for a variety of reasons, but I feel the need to say two things:
1) Issue 5 looks quite interesting.
2) Some of you whine a lot.
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agreed...I think I may have to give up posting here and simply go back to enjoying playing the game.
Can't wait to see all you whiners in the CoV beta!
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Before I am chastised for this next comment I want to say that I am guilty of this too...
I find that when posters make sweeping comments about other posters whining, they leave themselves open to be accused of whining as well. In essence they are complaining about the whiners which some would says that is whining about the whiners. The first non-audible related definition of "whine" is "To complain or protest in a childish fashion."
I guess it depends on the interpretation. Is it "childish" to make a sweeping public accusation that 'a number of you are whiners'. That might be nit-picky.
I know I've been guilty of it, but it does make me think about my posting practices. I'm going to try to be a bit more diplomatic if possible.
To chime in about defender/controllers which I assume is the target of the whining comments. I've played primarily tankers and controllers and recently some scrap-i-tude... I have thought to myself, why play defender when controllers have access to most of the powers too. Controllers seem to have more flavor as utility characters to me. I still think a defender has their place. When I team I say play what you enjoy. We'll make it work. If i want blazing fast leveling I would just solo a scrapper, which I do on the side. It is a tough discussion to sort out. There is not solid or right and obvious answer.
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Well I hate to burst your bublle, but there is a timed Outcast mission where you have to save artifacts and hostages. And the artifacts are destructible.
I only manage to complete it successfully about half the time I do it because an artifact ends up getting popped.
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I am so sick of these missions. It might be the "rescue museum pieces from the Council" where the pieces are destroyed within a few seconds of aggroing the Council every single time. It's no fun if you have no chance to actually save them.
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This may have already been asked in this thread, but I must admit that I have no idea what trick arrows are, can anyone help?
Currently Playing:
Frozen Kat - Ice/Ice Blaster (Triumph)
Flaming Kat - Fire/Fire Blaster (Triumph)
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Well I hate to burst your bublle, but there is a timed Outcast mission where you have to save artifacts and hostages. And the artifacts are destructible.
I only manage to complete it successfully about half the time I do it because an artifact ends up getting popped.
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I am so sick of these missions. It might be the "rescue museum pieces from the Council" where the pieces are destroyed within a few seconds of aggroing the Council every single time. It's no fun if you have no chance to actually save them.
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I saved all but one of those when I did that mssion. Granted I was using Full Auto. But I've never realy noticed the destructables being destoried to quickly except when it was appearantly bugged. Upon entering a mission where Lost were destorying a part of the teleportation grid I failed. They had appearantly decided not to wait for me to aggro them. But that was back in I2.
Things like electric arrows (hold), or smoke grenade arrow (-Visibility, -Acc), glue arrows (Immob), maybe. Basically status effect arrows.
I dont think anyone really knows the details right now, and these are all just guesses.
Cap, the reason people are complaining about the level range for Croatoa is that they want something to fill in the known content gap in the high 30s. A lot of people run out of missions around L39, and have to go through a fair amount of boring grinding to unlock the L40+ content.
The expansion zones were planned out well before that content gap became known, however. It would not be a simple matter to increase the level range for a zone--just bumping the villain levels up isn't enough. Even if they did it, it would require extensive retesting internally. That means a substantial slip in the release schedule, and not just for this issue; at least one future issue, the one which is currently slated to hold a 30-40 or 35-45 zone, would have to be redesigned as well. It's not practical for the dev team to screw up months of work to appease a vocal minority of forumites who have characters in the high 30s. I'd rather wait than get two zones that had quick hacks in them to swap the ranges around.
In short, I understand why people are griping, but I don't expect them to get what they want. Maybe the devs will add some individual missions to existing zones in the 35-40 range to help them out--it's certainly a possibility with new mission types being added.
The Way of the Corruptor (Arc ID 49834): Hey villains! Do something for yourself for a change--like twisting the elements to your will. All that's standing in your way are a few secret societies...and Champions of the four elements.
I'm bumping this, because it needs to be seen again. I can't say it any better. Wahoo for enjoying the game!
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I really could care less that defenders are shaing their powersets with blasters and controllers. That allows for more customization amongst AT"s, which I think is very good. Sure unique powersets would be nice, but I honestly don't see why people are getting bent out of shape over them.
And the whole balance issue: "This powerset is stronger than this powerset. Why would anyone use this powerset? It's the weakest of the bunch!" I've never played this game with the mindset of making the most "uber" build, or choose powersets because I thought it was the most powerful or "the flavor of the month." (Heck, my primary uses Psychic Blast.)
I choose my powers because it fits with my character and I have fun simply playing the game. With every issue or "nerf" that comes around, I honestly have never had any major gripes or problems with them. Quite the contrary, I actually enjoy the game even more with every issue that comes by. And it's been that way for me consistently for the past year. Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I just wanted to let the devs know that there are those of us who genuinely enjoy what each issue has brought to the table.
May the Heavens smile upon you, fellow heroes! O;-)
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This may have already been asked in this thread, but I must admit that I have no idea what trick arrows are, can anyone help?
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I don't believe we have any specifics yet, but the usual comicbook theme is just like Batman's gadgets, only stuck on arrows.
I so hope we get a boxing glove arrow 
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Cap, the reason people are complaining about the level range for Croatoa is that they want something to fill in the known content gap in the high 30s. A lot of people run out of missions around L39, and have to go through a fair amount of boring grinding to unlock the L40+ content.
The expansion zones were planned out well before that content gap became known, however. It would not be a simple matter to increase the level range for a zone--just bumping the villain levels up isn't enough. Even if they did it, it would require extensive retesting internally. That means a substantial slip in the release schedule, and not just for this issue; at least one future issue, the one which is currently slated to hold a 30-40 or 35-45 zone, would have to be redesigned as well. It's not practical for the dev team to screw up months of work to appease a vocal minority of forumites who have characters in the high 30s. I'd rather wait than get two zones that had quick hacks in them to swap the ranges around.
In short, I understand why people are griping, but I don't expect them to get what they want. Maybe the devs will add some individual missions to existing zones in the 35-40 range to help them out--it's certainly a possibility with new mission types being added.
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On this note, does anyone else experience a grind around around 18, trying to get to 20. Since we don't have SOs we can't exactly go hunt 3 level higher baddens in Talos and IP. I was really hoping to see a small 15 to 25 zone in I5. Something with less spotty level 19 bad guy spawns a some missions to get us into our 20s.
Once you hit 20, between original missions and Striga there is plenty to do for a while.
meh. more content for the levels that already have way too much content to experience. so instead of going to striga we'll go to croakatoada or whatever. Things that would have excited me: post-50 content and/or the ability to flashback to missed content (which i guess is largely post-50 content) with outleveled contacts.
CoH exists because there's a little hero in all of us.
Ridolfo 50 DM DA.
& far too many alts
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I saved all but one of those when I did that mssion. Granted I was using Full Auto. But I've never realy noticed the destructables being destoried to quickly except when it was appearantly bugged. Upon entering a mission where Lost were destorying a part of the teleportation grid I failed. They had appearantly decided not to wait for me to aggro them. But that was back in I2.
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Solo, I3 and I4, I've had things get destroyed within moments of starting the fight. I've seen Warwolves practically one-shot the displays. In an eight-person team, forget about saving anything. When doing these missions, either the thing gets saved, or there was never a chance to save it because it happens too fast.
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meh. more content for the levels that already have way too much content to experience. so instead of going to striga we'll go to croakatoada or whatever. Things that would have excited me: post-50 content and/or the ability to flashback to missed content (which i guess is largely post-50 content) with outleveled contacts.
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Well, the ability to implement flashback is now in the game. It just needs to be implemented. The exemplar for TFs would do it handily. It may mean being literally unable to outlevel story arcs, though, as you'll probably exemp to your contact when you take their missions.
I would be unsurprised if it got into I5 or soon after, if it's going in at all.
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The absence of a toxic damage type at launch is borderline inexcusable, but I imagine other things took precedence.
What surprises me is the lack of ability to add new damage types to the game without monkeywrenching the code.
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It always wigs me out, too. I didn't get the idea that it was a lot of actual code being changed, but rather tables of attributes for various powers. In either case, it seems ... painful.
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When they first said it was very difficult for them to code in toxic defense, my original instinct was to say "[censored]?" also. My best guess for why that might be the case is that it has something to do with an encoding problem for holding or transmitting the defense flags around.
This sort of thing happens programmatically when someone allocates bitwise flags to represent state, and they run out of bits. If there is a "defense against damage type" value with eight bits, representing whether a particular defense is good against against smash,lethal,fire,ice,energy,negative,psi,all, then whoops, no room for a specific-to-toxic bit flag.
Its at least one way to explain why simply adding it in might be a major chore.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
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I don't know if its been mentioned (too many posts for me to look at) but if anyone has read Harry Potter or played WoW it mentions Red Caps little fairy imp type creatures (which are from Harry Potter) and Fir Bolgs which is in WoW. Did they steal some ideas?
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Yes, from the same sources Harry Potter and WoW stole from.
Also, Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings.
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Yes, that would be the Quarrymen.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
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Funny how I have seen inv tanks without tough hide die to stuff that tanks with tough hide surivived because they didn't get hit.
The only difference in these tanks was the prescence of tough hide. With it they survived more.
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Yeah, and maybe they had more coffee that morning. That's just not a convincing argument.
I have tried that power on my Scrapper and my Tanker, and after that and after reading up on testing by posters I trust to do things well, I dropped them like hot rocks.
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Guess Knives and Chimera's troops are not done by you or the shadow shard tfs.
Those are so far from the hospital and the battle so hectic a battlefield rez such as Rise of the Phoenix is most accepted.
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First of all, I fight Knives all the time. My Regen charater is my "see all the content" character, and I do every single mission with her. Every one of my contacts is maxed barring the ones the came out after I'd leveled past them. So I'm sorry your Regen Scrapper apparenly finds KoA a source of constant faceplant. I do not.
Yes, I considered the Shadow Shard. (You'll notice I did mention two other timed, far from hospital trials). I'm sorry, there's no way I'm going to expend a whole power slot to faciltate the dificulties in three task forces. That leaves 99.9999994% of the game wher such a power is of extremely limited use. That you would even suggest that taking such a power is good for anything but concept/fun is reasonable boggles my mind.
I never said the powers had zero utility. I said that that utility is so specialized, so rare, and so opposed to what I want to be experiencing (defeat) that any other power is a superior choice. Opportunity costs rule my builds. If you take that power you haven't taken something else that could have been more useful or interesting.
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You obviously don't understand where a regen revive would be of use. If they made it so the regen was unable to be hit and could slap on their toggles revive with MOG would be very usefull for large battles.
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Way to come off with a suprior attitude.
How about... when they die somewhere that:
*) The hospital is really far away
*) You don't have a rez or you are dying so much that you don't have enough of them
*) You don't have anyone along who can rez you
Let's look at those.
Outside a team I basically die rarely period. On a team big enough to get me killed with any consistency it's extremely common to have a rez-capable character or just have enough rez inspirations laying around to be gotten up. I can't tell you the last time I died more than maybe 4 times in one mission, and that is vastly more likely with my Defender or Blaster than any of my Scrappers. I don't play conservatively but I do play smart. I don't die a lot.
So, I die rarely, when I do die I can probably be rezzed, and the vast majority of the time that I die and can't be rezzed a hospital trip will take 30-60 seconds.
So to cover the times those things aren't true I should take a power that I can't use at all in any other situation?
Sorry, no.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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meh. more content for the levels that already have way too much content to experience. so instead of going to striga we'll go to croakatoada or whatever. Things that would have excited me: post-50 content and/or the ability to flashback to missed content (which i guess is largely post-50 content) with outleveled contacts.
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Well, the ability to implement flashback is now in the game. It just needs to be implemented. The exemplar for TFs would do it handily. It may mean being literally unable to outlevel story arcs, though, as you'll probably exemp to your contact when you take their missions.
I would be unsurprised if it got into I5 or soon after, if it's going in at all.
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Auto-exemplar is one-half of whats needed for flashback. Mission dropping is the other thing.
Otherwise, a level 50 might take a mission, discover it requires something - like additional people - and be stuck at the exemplar level. If the exemplar broke if you switched missions, say, that would also work, but if you were running three exemplar missions to clean up or run through lower arcs, or one or two and those were the only missions you had, you could also end up exemplar trapped.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
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Tough Hide doesn't suck. Trust me when you get defense debuffs piled on you Tough Hide helps to counteract the defense debuffs.
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Most reliable testing puts this power at around 5% defense with questionable stacking with Invincibility. That's not worth it compared to any other power in the set or many pool powers you could take (and slot) instead.
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Funny how I have seen inv tanks without tough hide die to stuff that tanks with tough hide surivived because they didn't get hit.
The only difference in these tanks was the prescence of tough hide. With it they survived more.
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Cant have been the only difference. Assuming that they are equal level, the tank without TH must have placed something else in that power slot. TH is only REALLY effective if slotted well, so the tank without must have placed those slots elsewhere.
Sure TH helps but it does not make a world of difference unless you are really herding close to or past your limit. A tank must know their limitations. In most situations TH mill only make a very minor difference.
Enough thread jacking . . .
Are they really looking to do I5 by August!!!!
HaloInc
Triumph:
Heroes: Lady Halifax, Miss Kia, WhiteLotus, Agent Immolate, Lady Empathy, Sylence Fyredancer, Maiden of Fire
Villains: Innocent-Ella, Aegis-Sprite, Midnight Dragonfly