Should the signature villains be AV rank?
By
Aura_Familia,
Posted on: 2009-06-16 09:15 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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1) AVs should have mez protection, but not the PTOD. If a Tanker has 17.3 MAG of protection, then give Statesman that, but not more. If he hit Unstoppable then he gets another 17.3. Still makes him hella hard, but fairly so. If Sister Psyche is Mind/FF then she gets the 6-9 FF defenders get and no sleep protection.
2) Tame the AVs regen rate. Unless they're a regen type character, AVs should not have such a high regen rate, IMO. This serves only to require [X] amount of DPS or -regen to take them down. And if the AV is regen, they they should not have much if any resistance (except in MoG)
3) Tame AV damage. Fighting an AV should be like fighting an expert and strong player. AVs being able to do 1700 HP in one swing is silly.
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I do not think that any of these suggestions would lead to more interesting fights in the game.
Briefly, most PvE content in this and other MMORPGs is already stacked heavily in favor of the player characters. The players generally get to choose when and how to engage NPCs in battle; the mechanics are generally strongly biased in favor of player characters; even in the worst case, players get to try a mission again if defeated, while NPCs can't.
That there are a few select encounters, then, that turn this balance upside down in order to add a degree of challenge or even risk to the experience does not strike me as particularly problematic; the players get to "cheat" in 99% of the game because of biased mechanics; if game-mechanics shift that bias slightly away from the players towards the NPCs (noting that the vast majority of the time the players still will not lose), that is nothing that worries me.
Of course, the most important practical issue is that a lot of standard AVs are already pushovers for a team of eight. If you make them significantly weaker, you diminish the experience of what is intended to be a fight out of the ordinary.
If anything, my preference would be to shift the balance in the opposite direction in general. While I don't think too highly of the AV mechanics (they are workable solutions for what they are meant to do, but far from perfect), I'd be strongly in favor of pushing the upper end of the difficulty curve up more, and make difficult content more common. I would, however, also prefer smoother scaling of difficulty with team size and difficulty level, especially for AV-class opponents.
By the way, that also means that I do not have a problem with a situation where player characters stand little or no chance against signature characters on Invincible while solo.
On a more technical note, the AV regen rate -- which, as a percentage, is only 1.5 times that of a lieutenant or boss, and just seems high because of an AVs total hit points -- has probably a separate purpose from what you list: it prevents "hospital zerging" an AV that you can't otherwise handle (this is in lieu of an "encounter reset" that CoX doesn't have).
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The thing is, even if my character is more powerful mechanically than a Signature character, it means nothing because I will still never be of that status in canon (unless I win a contest or something). I may be able to beat down Statesman solo ingame, but that doesn't mean my face will be on the next in-store box (and that's a shame, too, as I am much better looking).
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Very true, but I'm not asking to be on a box, nor be a signature character. Rather I'd like to see the mechanical and conceptual portrayal of signature characters move away from "Hero's Heroes" and towards "Example Heroes". Amusingly enough this is actually how the CoH comic portrays the phalanx at times (although it falls into the same traps from time to time too), Statesman gets KOed by a CoT suicide mage of all things. Most Tankers and Scrappers have likely *never* had that happen.
In game though they're not so down to earth, we have to go seek their sidekicks out to level, do their bidding because they're too busy standing around, and when the big bad decides to drain all the worlds heroes of their powers, we're not on the list because we're not important enough (yes an odd complaint I know 
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Contrast this with Guild Wars where the "Example Heroes" end up eventually being NPC party members, and are not at all mechanically different than the players (Assuming I'm remembering correctly, as I haven't played GW in years).
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It's not that I feel that having "heroes' heroes" means anything to the Devs or the critters, it's just that it's an unavoidable result of having a canon (and a marketing department) in the first place.
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They can still be the cover guys, but show us they're "normal" heroes too when the cameras are gone and its business as usual. Mechanically this is obviously doable, in fact they already "sorta" do it with EB scale downs, but when the chips are down and a full team shows up they suddenly go into overdrive AV mode without any explanation, once again reminding us even naturals like Manticore aren't exactly "normal".
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That said, I'm sure there are players in this game that have indeed soloed Statesman, or Recluse without the towers, despite their AV status. I just see no reason to weaken them even more so that my toggle-less Tanker Daisy Dukes can solo them.
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My goal has never been easier AV fights, extra EBs in addition to the signature character can easily keep a fight difficult. A different sort of difficulty, but definitely difficult.
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Even if the badge you get for beating alt future Lord Recluse added you to some sort of list that made it so that all Arachnos critters took a knee when you clicked on them, that would still mean little if all 150,000 players could get there and it would be 'unfair' if everyone couldn't.
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Lord Recluse is the leader of Arachnos, even if we kick his tail, he's still the leader of Arachnos. That has *nothing* to do with his conceptual power vs ours and everything to do with his political power. I'm not asking for more of that, nor would I imagine are most people.
Infatum on Virtueverse
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On a more technical note, the AV regen rate -- which, as a percentage, is only 1.5 times that of a lieutenant or boss, and just seems high because of an AVs total hit points
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There's also the issue of resistances.
The characters that are capable of soloing an AV tend to be, if not are exclusively, non-S/L oriented.
You can easily have two characters of the same AT, the same quality of build with the same expensive IOs, played by players of the same skill level, yet one is allowed to be able to defeat an AV and the other is not by virtue that they chose the "wrong" power set. That's not fair by any means.
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So if I'm getting this right, what you are saying is that it's okay if signature characters exist, so long as they are 'sample characters' and display the same general power level of a PC of equal level.
You also don't mind if 'Arch-characters' exist, so long as they aren't marketed as the signature characters.
So let me ask: what if the signature character of the game were, say, Mynx. And what if Mynx maxed out as a 50 EB (plus a sizable buff to compensate for any problems with the AI), but in the lore there was a more powerful character (Manticore) who was her mentor, and who didn't show up except for a rare appearances (say, on a villain SF where you get to bea down the Vindicators, only to have AV Manticore show up as the final boss, looking for revenge).
Is that what you are talking about?
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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Rather I'd like to see the mechanical and conceptual portrayal of signature characters move away from "Hero's Heroes" and towards "Example Heroes". Amusingly enough this is actually how the CoH comic portrays the phalanx at times
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In my opinion, they stopped being this the second they were given signature powers/attacks no player can ever get, not to mention breaking simple AT rules like Statesman having a ton of damage compared to the best Inv/SS Tanker ever, and Positron being tougher and having more HP than any Defender that ever was.
On a purely work invested vs returns level, I question the wisdom of creating custom powers, costume parts and effects for signature characters that a player will never enjoy themselves and will only see from 20 meters away during an encoutner that they're likely paying attention to their HP and endurance bars.
The time spend perfecting Reichsman's swirling purple Aura of Domination or Statesman's lightning attacks wasn't spent as wisely as it could have been if versions of those attacks/effects are not going to be made available to players at some point.
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/rolls Bots/Dark
>_>
<_<
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On a more technical note, the AV regen rate -- which, as a percentage, is only 1.5 times that of a lieutenant or boss, and just seems high because of an AVs total hit points
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There's also the issue of resistances.
The characters that are capable of soloing an AV tend to be, if not are exclusively, non-S/L oriented.
You can easily have two characters of the same AT, the same quality of build with the same expensive IOs, played by players of the same skill level, yet one is allowed to be able to defeat an AV and the other is not by virtue that they chose the "wrong" power set. That's not fair by any means.
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By 'an' AV here, do you mean 'any' AV?
If there were an AV that same build could beat with S/L damage, would that be better, or do both nearly identical builds, played bey the same player, have to be able to beat the same AVs without regard to resistances?
I think it's okay for different AVs to have different resistances, but if you are saying too many resist S/L too well, I am of two minds on the subject: it should not be unfair to builds, but at the same time it's hard to imagine a would beater that enough soldiers could take down with AR fire.
On the other other hand, I don't see a problem with some builds being 'AV killer' builds while others are not. If you are saying that there are some powersets that can't take down AVs...well actually I don't have too much trouble with the idea that the Empathy/Electricity powerset combo might be intended to be good at something other than AV destruction.
Now that I've said that, someone is going to pop up and say soloing AVs with Empathy/Electricity is easy...
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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Is that what you are talking about?
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Where to draw the line of EB vs AV conceptually is obviously not the simplest matter, but my feeling would be the following rules:
Flunkies
Anyone who is a flunky for someone else should be an EB (at best) in all but the most extreme circumstances (ie. Silver Surfer material).
Players
Could this character be mistaken for a player (taking into account background and appearance/powers), if so, they should be an EB. This blanket would cover the entire Freedom Phalanx and co. as well as Lord Recluse and pals. They're heroes and villains, we're heroes and villains.
Monstrous
Does this character *look* like it should take a team to fight? If so AV or Monster class is fine. Dr. Vaz in his flesh-mecha, the clockwork king and pretty much all the current monsters fall under this.
Story Excuse
Recluse has activated the web? AV. Aeon and his gizmo? AV. Romulus and his massive Nictus infusion? AV. Obviously this has to do with presentation, some will be more believable than others, but personally I'm just happy so long as they *try* to explain why we're fighting an AV instead of an EB.
That's it... yes there is wiggle room and yes it will vary based on the perspective of whose deciding, but again, I'd just be happy if they *tried* to go in this direction, even if I didn't agree with all their choices.
Infatum on Virtueverse
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If you want to go toe to toe with a signature character set your diff to level 4 and solo it.
Most of the Team vs AV fights I've been involved in have been extremely one sided, especially at the higher levels. The number of buffs and debuffs, and the sheer firepower a team can aim at a single opponent means that unless you're very unlucky, or the AV gets the drop on you before you're ready, you'll win. Make those AVs into EBs and we'd smack them aside so fast they'd lose all credibility.
It's a game mechanic to create some level of challenge to a team. I'd like to see the Strike Force AVs scale down to EBs, but only so I could try soloing them 
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There's also the issue of resistances.
The characters that are capable of soloing an AV tend to be, if not are exclusively, non-S/L oriented.
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That depends entirely on the AV.
Malaise, for example, has 50% resistance to psi and -20% resistance to lethal damage (and no other resistances). Black Swan has 50% negative energy resistance and -30% energy resistance (and, again, no other resistances).
I can agree with this: Presentation is key.
When I am fighting spats-wearing, tommy-gun-toting mobsters at level 20, there should be some kind of cue in the visual or other presentation as to why they are so much more powerful than the lower level Council member whos RPGs bounce off like raindrops. Warriors use magical weapons to enhance their honed skills, but their weapons don't have FX indicating why they are so powerful, etc.
There is some handwaving done, but not enough that many players don't get a completely wrong impression and can't understand why Trolls who can rip boulders out of the ground are less of a threat than some guy who doesn't know better than to bring an axe to a gun fight.
Many players have expressed the opinion that CoX characters are much less powerful than Marvel or DC characters, when I think they are actually MORE powerful in most cases (not Synapse, though )
Story Arcs I created:
Every Rose: (#17702) Villainous vs Legacy Chain. Forget Arachnos, join the CoT!
Cosplay Madness!: (#3643) Neutral vs Custom Foes. Heroes at a pop culture convention!
Kiss Hello Goodbye: (#156389) Heroic vs Custom Foes. Film Noir/Hardboiled detective adventure!
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If you want to go toe to toe with a signature character set your diff to level 4 and solo it.
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In a lot of cases, that doesn't work anymore. Newer AVs are significantly more of a threat to many solo characters than older ones like the Praetorians.
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Most of the Team vs AV fights I've been involved in have been extremely one sided, especially at the higher levels. The number of buffs and debuffs, and the sheer firepower a team can aim at a single opponent means that unless you're very unlucky, or the AV gets the drop on you before you're ready, you'll win. Make those AVs into EBs and we'd smack them aside so fast they'd lose all credibility.
It's a game mechanic to create some level of challenge to a team. I'd like to see the Strike Force AVs scale down to EBs, but only so I could try soloing them
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I agree. Something other than giving everything higher damage, nastier debuffs, and tier 9s. This just increases the level of challenge to a soloer, while not being significantly more difficult for a well-built team.
Most of the Strike Force AVs do scale down in the Mission Architect. You can solo them there.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
av's will always have ptod. without it they are trivial to any team with a dom or controller. this was an issue the first few months of this game where people THOUGHT that the powerhouses were scrappers and blasters, but the reality of the situtaion was controllers put them all to shame because they could hold all the av's and gm's they ran into and then proceed to solo them - with no danger of dying. that's a game balance issue.
concepts are one thing. i'm sure there's people out there who make a cahracter with nothing but power pool powers for concept reasons. doesnt mean it's a good idea for the game.
if they are too tough as an av, dial down your difficulty. TF's are easy enough as is for coordinated groups. they dont need to be any easier.
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Is that what you are talking about?
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Where to draw the line of EB vs AV conceptually is obviously not the simplest matter, but my feeling would be the following rules:
Flunkies
Anyone who is a flunky for someone else should be an EB (at best) in all but the most extreme circumstances (ie. Silver Surfer material).
Players
Could this character be mistaken for a player (taking into account background and appearance/powers), if so, they should be an EB. This blanket would cover the entire Freedom Phalanx and co. as well as Lord Recluse and pals. They're heroes and villains, we're heroes and villains.
Monstrous
Does this character *look* like it should take a team to fight? If so AV or Monster class is fine. Dr. Vaz in his flesh-mecha, the clockwork king and pretty much all the current monsters fall under this.
Story Excuse
Recluse has activated the web? AV. Aeon and his gizmo? AV. Romulus and his massive Nictus infusion? AV. Obviously this has to do with presentation, some will be more believable than others, but personally I'm just happy so long as they *try* to explain why we're fighting an AV instead of an EB.
That's it... yes there is wiggle room and yes it will vary based on the perspective of whose deciding, but again, I'd just be happy if they *tried* to go in this direction, even if I didn't agree with all their choices.
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Nearly completely agree with this statement.
Lord Recluse and Statesman are AV/Hero worthy if only because they're Incarnates.
However the rest of the Freedom Phalanx should be of similar power level to the rest of us, they have more experience heroing and survived a war but any level 50 player character has done their fair share of heroing and probably saved the world numerous times, they've also (especially if they were around at Issue 10 launch or been through any of the Rikti invasion weekends) survived the second Rikti War and a Zombie Apocalypse...
Which always peeved me wasn't the Freedom Phalanx or the Four Patrons but the fact that Ice Mistral, Wretch etc were AV status...they're sidekicks to sidekicks (Wretch being Ghost Widows sidekick while she is a sidekick to Recluse) and that is just all kinds of wrong. Present them all together as a team of EBs but don't notch them up to AV status...they're NOT Archvillains...they're regular villains.
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Leave AVs/Ebs as is. I like the challenge.
1) due to levels, the power level of enemies varies so much it makes any other consideration of "reality" irrelevant. A lvl 10 AV is less powerful than a lvl 40 minion. It's just game mechanics - you can't try to add realism into it.
2) Changing the rules like PToD or massive regeneration to prevent certain behaviors is bad. It punishes some and rewards others. It just makes some builds work better than others for fighting AVs and GMs. It breaks balance.
3) Signature characters are lame. They stand around as trainers not helping out in Rikti invasions. They are mentioned in stories - they are part of the background. Since CoV was added - signature heroes are the enemies for villains. Their power is based on being enemies to villains. It is game mechanics. Complaining that they change from EB's to AV's when their level changes and they stand around ignoring zombie and rikti invasions is a bit silly.
Personally, I'm largely satisfied with how AVs and EBs are balanced. If one wants to solo, then ignoring the existence of AVs is easy enough. If one wants to team, then that still either requires a big team or a highly-set difficulty level, so it's in the player's hands. As far as I'm concerned, though, when you team, all bets are off. Stuff has to be designed to take on the entire team regardless of what it was, so a mere flunky like Arbiter Sands ends up as an AV when he is required to provide difficulty to an entire team. Most of them are pretty much soloable, and outliers like Nosferatu are rare.
About the biggest problem I have with scaled-down AVs is the purple triangles nonsense. Control in general is very screwed-up in this game because it was designed from day 1 to be binary - stuff is either held or it isn't. We have some juggling around with lower-mag controls that need two applications, but those are exclusively (to the best of my knowledge) reserved for AoE control powers, usually toggles. Other than that, I deal mad 3 hold, the boss has mag 4 protection, my hold doesn't self-stuck by a meaningful amount, and even if it did, I'd still have to nearly double-overshoot his protection to affect him.
Control effects hit too hard and stack far too badly. That makes them next to impossible to balance, outside of a "can be held/cannot be held" situation. If they built up more gradually, or if their magnitude lingered after the actual effect had worn off, then maybe we could give AVs and scaled-down EBs a form of status protection that's inbetween immunity and crippling weakness weakness.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Scaled down EBs should have exactly the same status protection as regular EBs. Doms and Controllers solo too.
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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Lord Recluse and Statesman are AV/Hero worthy if only because they're Incarnates.
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And what of the members of the Phalanx that have gone toe to toe with Recluse or Statesman in the past? They're not Incrarnates.
What of Hero 1 doing the same? He's not an Incarnate.
What if they make Incarnate an epic origin available to players at some point? Should they then increase player abilities up that much further than regualar players?
States and Recluse have no more claim to be that much more powerful than everyone else based on their backstory than a player character does.
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yes but what I'd like to see is that States/Recluse remains the same but everyone else moves down a notch.
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Leave AVs/Ebs as is. I like the challenge.
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And what if that challenge changes form and presentation, but remains the same difficulty?
Because that is what's being proposed here.
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yes but what I'd like to see is that States/Recluse remains the same but everyone else moves down a notch.
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And I'm saying there's already too many "everyone else's" that can go toe to toe with either in the cannon to set States and Recluse apart and above just because of their particular origin.
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Is that what you are talking about?
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Where to draw the line of EB vs AV conceptually is obviously not the simplest matter, but my feeling would be the following rules:
Flunkies
Anyone who is a flunky for someone else should be an EB (at best) in all but the most extreme circumstances (ie. Silver Surfer material).
Players
Could this character be mistaken for a player (taking into account background and appearance/powers), if so, they should be an EB. This blanket would cover the entire Freedom Phalanx and co. as well as Lord Recluse and pals. They're heroes and villains, we're heroes and villains.
Monstrous
Does this character *look* like it should take a team to fight? If so AV or Monster class is fine. Dr. Vaz in his flesh-mecha, the clockwork king and pretty much all the current monsters fall under this.
Story Excuse
Recluse has activated the web? AV. Aeon and his gizmo? AV. Romulus and his massive Nictus infusion? AV. Obviously this has to do with presentation, some will be more believable than others, but personally I'm just happy so long as they *try* to explain why we're fighting an AV instead of an EB.
That's it... yes there is wiggle room and yes it will vary based on the perspective of whose deciding, but again, I'd just be happy if they *tried* to go in this direction, even if I didn't agree with all their choices.
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Of all things in this thread, I agree with this.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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Leave AVs/Ebs as is. I like the challenge.
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And what if that challenge changes form and presentation, but remains the same difficulty?
Because that is what's being proposed here.
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Depends on the form and presentation.
I would be against throwing more EBs at folks just cause we'd like a new form and presentation.
EDIT: Tediousness of having to deal with multiple EBs DOES NOT equate to fun or challenge.
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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Yes. Found that out learning the LRSF. I was just saying that an AV should have mez protection like a player does. If that closes the sleep hole in some cases, so be it.
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What about the Immobilize hole? That's pretty much the only reason Controllers can get containment against AVs. (I know you suggested lowering the status protection MAG.)
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Again, the point is that I don't necessarily agree with AVs being team content. They should be easier with teams.
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If they're not team content, what is? Besides, if you make them too easy, soloing them ceases to be an accomplishment.
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That's almost an exception that proved the rule situation.
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I can't argue with this.