I16: Super-Sidekicking Explained
By
a tame rabbit,
Posted on: 2009-08-12 10:06 in Developers' Corner
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You lose 5 internets... or something... |
Originally Posted by Positron
But... but... I posted to twitter AFTER I made the post, and AFTER I made the link in the General Chat forum.
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Where to find me after the end:
The Secret World - Arcadia - Shinzo
Rift - Faeblight - Bloodspeaker
LotRO - Gladden - Aranelion
STO - Holodeck - @Captain_Thiraas
Obviously, I don't care about NCSoft's forum rules, now.
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Works well in LotRO, too. |
Originally Posted by Doctor_Arthos
Now, if we could get an in-game voice chat client (instead of having to rely on things like Ventrilo, TeamSpeak... or in some cases I've heard of people using Skype... OUCH!!!), that would be a real boon for fans of CoH/CoV, and group play.
It was one of the really great benefits of WoW, and it enhances the group experience immensely.  |
Where to find me after the end:
The Secret World - Arcadia - Shinzo
Rift - Faeblight - Bloodspeaker
LotRO - Gladden - Aranelion
STO - Holodeck - @Captain_Thiraas
Obviously, I don't care about NCSoft's forum rules, now.
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I know what datamining means. They used the same words in both situations. Not my mistake, but theirs. Again.
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Originally Posted by Schismatrix
i do not think datamining means what you think it means.
Data mining is generally done on the live servers since it's one way of analyzing activity and performance in the game on a large scale. While data mining can be used to find statistical outliers, it's not likely that anyone who discovered an exploit on test would repeatedly use it without sending a report. If they were intending to exploit it on live they would use it just enough to confirm that the exploits works and then stop using it, which would be hard to detect using data mining. In any event, data mining cannot detect exploits until they are discovered and used by players. i'm sure data mining has allowed some exploits to be found, but until the Devs have the capability to data mine the future it won't reveal most exploits until after the players find them. |
Put me in the group that is really pleased with this announcement. I love the sidekick update and the email filter is just pure WIN!
I have characters that I log in daily and others that log in once a month or less. Some of those once a month characters can have as many as 150 emails!! That's about 5 minutes of deleting each time (yes call me strange cannot stand seeing the red "email" tab).
The only thing I can say is put me in the group wanting email on per global friends. I am so stoked for issue 16 and it has me playing a lot of my 50s again thinking about how I want them tweaked!
A built-in VOIP would be awesome, but how - and who - would deal with the bandwidth involved?
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I've been thinking about this and it makes me wonder what the main reason is that many players are powering through L1-20 as fast as they can:|
Originally Posted by Positron
As for low level characters missing out on accelerated leveling speeds, we are increasing the rewards they earn from level 1 to 20 (about 20% across the board) so that every player can get through the lower levels faster, not just those that know the tricks.
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a) because they hate having so few powers and thus a lack of tactical options;
b) because they're bored of the existing newbie content, having seen it so many times;
c) because they hate the endurance issues that can make the game annoying to play at L1-20 (due to lack of Stamina and TOs/DOs/IOs at those levels being so much weaker than L22+ SOs/IOs);
d) because they hate feeling pushed into taking so many pre-requisite powers at L1-20 just to set up a travel power and to get Stamina by L20;
e) because they despise the levelling process entirely and just want to get to L50 as fast as possible (either for PvP, farming, some other perceived endgame reason, for bragging rights, or from a perception that that's how all MMOs should be played);
f) all of the above to varying degrees.
Speaking as someone who used the recent double xp weekend to get 4 blueside characters to L20, personally for me it's mostly down to c) with just a smidgen of b) and d), perhaps a little of a) with some archetype/powerset combos, and none of e). I expect Going Rogue will tackle b) and I can live with both a) and d) as we level so fast at low level now (and it's about to get faster). So increasing the levelling speed from L1-20 is helpful for all of the above issues, but it's not directly tackling problem c) which is the main issue I have with L1-20 in this game.
For me - and I suspect for many other players - this game is all about the journey, not about reaching the end as swiftly as possible (though maybe that will change if Going Rogue adds significant endgame content/progress), so I would rather see the Dev team tackle the end issues at low level rather than the speed of levelling.
As a very worthwhile side-effect this would also improve the new player experience immeasurably. I have a friend who still refuses to try CoH/V again, 3 years after last trying it, because he hated the early end issues so much (despite me telling him things got better at L20+, he wasn't willing to put up with that on every new character - or even on his first one) - to him this will always be "that game where you run out of mana all the time" (and yeah that's a quote, heh). I keep trying to convince him to come back, but I always have to be truthful and admit that really not much has changed on the endurance issues front at L1-20
There are a number of ways the Devs could have tackled the L1-20 endurance issues:
- Dropping the Rest power's base recharge rate to 30secs or less would be a good start.
- Weighting insp drops at L1-20 towards mainly blue insps would help too.
- Getting rid of TOs/DOs and scaling SOs down all the way to L1 might help as well - this would also simplify/streamline the game for newer players, though you'd still have the issue of outlevelling enhancements so quickly at lower levels that it's barely worth slotting them (maybe SOs could be changed to never go "red" and stay at -3 level effectiveness even after you've far outlevelled them?).
- Though my favourite option would be to simply increase the base recovery rate to 2.5 end/sec on every character (i.e. equal to what Base plus Stamina with 3 EndMod L50 IOs or 3 EndMod +3 SOs gives you), and then turn Stamina into a passive global endurance discount power (-10% or -20% to global endurance costs) - i.e. like a passive version of Conserve Power with a lower end discount value.
This change scares me a lot! I can't stop imaging all the vast amount of powerlevelers and farmers going from Atlas AE to RWZ, where they can powerleveler villains or heroes from level 1. Please as it has been suggested before move AE from RWZ (It got no sense to have it there) to Pocket D or they will mess with the raid, annoying the raiders with a full zone...
Besides that, what will happen to Task Forces, specially ITF?
I don't like the 1-20 XP boost either. Was it needed? I'm afraid I'll have to turn experience off to be able to play as I like without missing the Mayhems and Safeguards. Can we put those on Ouroboros? It's very very annoying to skip those...
What about people who doesn't care about leveling fast and want just to enjoy the content. Is powerleveling beign normalised and content hunters ignored in this issue? Please make a happy villain filling the SF's gaps
Proud member of Blaze of the Immortals (Heroes) and leader of F.O.E (villains)
Heroes:
Plumber, Ice Desert Girl, Doc Goodheart, Banana Machoman, Pavattone, Penguin Shark, Sting like a Bee
Villains:
Bricklayer, Savage Dentist, Fruit Cocktail, H. Yashida, Shesinellek
Quote:
lvls 1-20 faster by 20%?|
Originally Posted by Positron
As for low level characters missing out on accelerated leveling speeds, we are increasing the rewards they earn from level 1 to 20 (about 20% across the board) so that every player can get through the lower levels faster, not just those that know the tricks.
(These changes are currently being tested in the Closed Beta for Issue 16, and may be changed/modified by the time they reach the Live servers) |
Give it up for the Dev team, ladies and gentlemen...
That is FRIKKIN' AWESOME.
"The One"
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Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
The way you play changes your IO slotting..
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76 characters and Twenty-four 50s later, I still love this game.
AlienOne's Human-Form Warshade Guide (Old guide+New guide = 12,000+ views!)
I like the idea of no more sk leash, but the thing that kinda sucks is now it is gonna take people longer to get the sk badge unless u always own the mission but not everyone can.
I can see both the ups and downs of this, but if it gets all the AE broadcasts out of atlas, them I am happy. I don't like being there anymore, I start out in Galaxcy now just to stay away from the AE broadcasts.
Please excuse me for this question but, I see this term alot and still don't know what it means, can someone please tell me what "PUG" stands for? I feel I should and probally already know,, but my brain just isn't picking it up.
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Originally Posted by Golden_Girl_EU
I wonder how this will affect the mentor badges?
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Pohsyp already answered that.
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Just means all you'll have to do is turn your xp off for a little while. The rest of us will be extremely happy about this change... |
Originally Posted by SkarmoryThePG
AGAIN?!
I'll never get to play Heck's second arc at this rate >.< Hey, how about maybe throwing that into the first veteran reward or something? "Congrats, we know you've been through this before. Have a boost next time." |
"The One"
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Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
The way you play changes your IO slotting..
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76 characters and Twenty-four 50s later, I still love this game.
AlienOne's Human-Form Warshade Guide (Old guide+New guide = 12,000+ views!)
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But most of my non-scrappers really don't get arcs from their contacts (with a few cases like Levantera to get the Vanguard badge). So people won't be running my arcs.
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Originally Posted by Shadow_State
Pohsyp already answered that.
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My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
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Ironic that you should use that phrase. :P|
Originally Posted by SassySeduction
Please excuse me for this question but, I see this term alot and still don't know what it means, can someone please tell me what "PUG" stands for? I feel I should and probally already know,, but my brain just isn't picking it up.
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It is a Pick Up Group - a group made of random unconnected people.
"The Hamidon is a what what of what?" - Brian the mission guy.
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Thank you,,I said that I should have known,,lmao,, thank you again. |
Originally Posted by Leese
Ironic that you should use that phrase. :P
It is a Pick Up Group - a group made of random unconnected people. |
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I'd certainly pay for it with both accounts. |
Originally Posted by Tarkenchi
This is pretty awesome. You guys really need to offer a lifetime subscription option.
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"The One"
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Originally Posted by Infernus_Hades
The way you play changes your IO slotting..
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76 characters and Twenty-four 50s later, I still love this game.
AlienOne's Human-Form Warshade Guide (Old guide+New guide = 12,000+ views!)
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Or they could try and gear the game so Stamina is such a requirement. Seriously, does anyone feel super when they go through a mob and find that they have no blue bar? Being exhausted is something I'd expect after battling an AV, not piledriving through a mob of nobodies.|
Originally Posted by Lord_Mayhem
I've been thinking about this and it makes me wonder what the main reason is that many players are powering through L1-20 as fast as they can:
a) because they hate having so few powers and thus a lack of tactical options; b) because they're bored of the existing newbie content, having seen it so many times; c) because they hate the endurance issues that can make the game annoying to play at L1-20 (due to lack of Stamina and TOs/DOs/IOs at those levels being so much weaker than L22+ SOs/IOs); d) because they hate feeling pushed into taking so many pre-requisite powers at L1-20 just to set up a travel power and to get Stamina by L20; e) because they despise the levelling process entirely and just want to get to L50 as fast as possible (either for PvP, farming, some other perceived endgame reason, for bragging rights, or from a perception that that's how all MMOs should be played); f) all of the above to varying degrees. Speaking as someone who used the recent double xp weekend to get 4 blueside characters to L20, personally for me it's mostly down to c) with just a smidgen of b) and d), perhaps a little of a) with some archetype/powerset combos, and none of e). I expect Going Rogue will tackle b) and I can live with both a) and d) as we level so fast at low level now (and it's about to get faster). So increasing the levelling speed from L1-20 is helpful for all of the above issues, but it's not directly tackling problem c) which is the main issue I have with L1-20 in this game. For me - and I suspect for many other players - this game is all about the journey, not about reaching the end as swiftly as possible (though maybe that will change if Going Rogue adds significant endgame content/progress), so I would rather see the Dev team tackle the end issues at low level rather than the speed of levelling. As a very worthwhile side-effect this would also improve the new player experience immeasurably. I have a friend who still refuses to try CoH/V again, 3 years after last trying it, because he hated the early end issues so much (despite me telling him things got better at L20+, he wasn't willing to put up with that on every new character - or even on his first one) - to him this will always be "that game where you run out of mana all the time" (and yeah that's a quote, heh). I keep trying to convince him to come back, but I always have to be truthful and admit that really not much has changed on the endurance issues front at L1-20 There are a number of ways the Devs could have tackled the L1-20 endurance issues:
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That's why I never got why they called the slotting system "enhancing". A lot of the "enhancements" should be optional; IE "make you better" not a requirement like Stamina and slotting Endredux really are. This is why I like CO's system, I won't be playing the game as I dislike it's art style, but the concept of that you're basically never empty, and never without options, as you may run into in CoX, is a good idea. Especially at lower levels and fighting Mu guys, "well he sapped my endurance and recovery, guess I'll have to hope that he misses the next 5 attacks so I can get some endurance to maybe attack him once"
Follow this guys guidelines, or at the very least, also make it so that tier 1 and/or tier 2 attacks don't cost any endurance at all. Or perhaps do what a lot of other games put in, "out of combat regen/recovery". Great, you survived the mob, can I get my HPs/end back so I can move on without having to stop and take a breather every group? They can do this, per the one day job that increases your out of combat recovery, so why not boost everyones regen/recovery out of combat and just out right eliminate rest: resting is what you're doing when you're not doing anything anyways it shouldn't have to be something you actively have to do ffs.
These changes sound like all win. Now people will go back to spamming paying 10 mil for farm and I can go back to getting rich off them.
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Uh... they will be much easier to form?
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Originally Posted by Fruit_Cocktail
Besides that, what will happen to Task Forces, specially ITF?
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Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
If you always look at things negatively...
Do things ever look up for you?
All of Posi's post sound pretty good on the face of it. My only concern is if the team level will be tied to the level of the mission owner, then my initial thought is that there will be a lot of teams that only run their high level member's missions so they don't have to exemplar down to anyone.
So anyone lower level on the team gets their missions skipped over, and you're back to a 'skipping content' issues that some people have if they never go back to do them, or outlevel conctacts or what not. This is more of a social engineering issue than it is a coding issue though. And the Ouro-Flashback system helps somewhat with this too.
There's also times where even having someone a few levels above you helps the entire team (and not just the easy "lvl 50 clean the mission out" type of help) so I'm eagerly awaiting developments on Exemplared chars keeping powers.
Oh and another second to the motion of having the email system restrictions base off of global friends instead of your char's server friends list. Ever since global channels and friends, I haven't bothered adding anyone to any of my char's friends list. Even with the limitations on number of global friends.
global: @SuperSean
Undersecretary of Awesome
Very good news!
No 'lackey leash' which I know quite a few of my sgmates have an issue with (myself included)...no 'mentor tetris'...always nice...and exemps still get xp (with the option to get more infl. if they want)?! nice!
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
SSBB FC: 2062-8881-3944
MKW FC: 4167-4891-5991
I have always hated Mentor Tetris. I hate that to level on TF's (my fave way of getting to 30) i will have to run most of them twice over, but I am still happy about this announcement.
My wife loving her scrapper, and me wanting to play my MM means we can party in RWZ now, super.
But better than making MA IN Pocket D, why not make a new instanced map off of Pocket D that leads to a co-op MA dimension. That way all the broadcasts, locals, etc are on a map devoted to MA.
Or better yet, put MA computers and holodeck in the Paragon Dance Party (http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Bum) and link it to both sides. Then you use PD for all the events, RPing, etc... and PDP for co-op MA's.
I haven't read the entire 12 pages, but I just wish that Exemplering didn't take away your powers. I still haven't set foot in Oroporus because I refuse to play my level 50 with level 12 powers.
Exemplering should just give a debuff to the damge multiplier...Not take away powers, Enhancments and IO bonuses. Why would i want to play my favorite toon at a level he was not designed for?
This is why I always avoid teaming with lower level folks..No, I don't team much.
This sounds like a good thing, and a bad thing as well.
With the recent rash of "Power-level the AE way", this will make it even easier for people to "power-level" through the use of AE. It will help the players who are actually playing original content as well, but it will remain to be seen how much.
I think "Going Rogue" is gonna help things more. With the introduction of new options and content, the "Going Rogue" expansion could see the balance of players going back to explore content, instead of parking their butts in AE, and spamming the Broadcast Chat with such things as "lvl 21 blaster lf ae team".
AE has become like Shattrath and Dalaran were for me in World of Warcraft. HUGE Lag pockets of doom. You want to make your system run choppy... go to AE during the evening hours.
That'll do it.
Personally though, Positron... As a fairly new player to CoH/CoV (less than 3 months), I think the changes you have describe could be a possible windfall. Maybe people will be more likely to play in groups with these new changes, and the benefits they present to group play.
Now, if we could get an in-game voice chat client (instead of having to rely on things like Ventrilo, TeamSpeak... or in some cases I've heard of people using Skype... OUCH!!!), that would be a real boon for fans of CoH/CoV, and group play.
It was one of the really great benefits of WoW, and it enhances the group experience immensely.