If I Sat at Posi's Desk, thoughts from a Veteran Player.

I know the Devs are currently busy as hell with Rogue, but maybe they have a few minutes to peruse the Forums now and then. I don’t know if these ideas have been suggested before, I’ll assume some of them have. So with that in mind, here are a few thoughts, observations and suggestions from a veteran of almost 5 years. In completely random order:

1.) Fly is too slow, it should be at least as fast as Super Jump or Super Speed, please.

2.) Jacobs Ladder animation is too slow.

3.) Crey Pistol accolade power is pathetic, either increase it’s availability or give it some power or better yet… both.

4.) Mission Transporter power could have it’s recharge cut in half, a 2hr recharge is just ridiculous, better yet make it 30mins.

5.) Do away with Falling damage, I didn’t realize how much more powerful my characters felt until I dropped 300’ down over the edge in the ski zone to a mission door and took no damage.

6.) After level 15 you should only receive DO’s and after level 25 only SO’s as Enh drops.

7.) Do away with Trains as a means of inter-zone transportation, in a superhero game this is just … well I can’t even begin to say. Train stations could be converted to Tele-portal stations, like a scaled down mini version of Portal Corp only no clicking on it, pick a portal by the sign over the portal off you go, you’d just walk into it. If you have a mission selected in your Nav, any portal would automatically take you to that mission’s zone.

8.) Independence Port needs to be zoned better in mission descriptions, divide the zone into Indy North, Indy Terra Volta and Indy South. The whole zone is just shy of 3 miles long, presumably if your contact knows where the mission is they should be able to tell you what section of the zone as well.

9.) Contact cell phones need to be issued after the first mission, almost every contact you have is a referral or has already asked to work with you, why on earth would they not trust you enough to give you their number up front, isn’t time supposed to be of the essence ?

10.) There needs to be a Badge for taking out Snipers.

11.) There needs to be a Badge for rescuing people on the street, either that or tie these rescues into character reputation somehow.

12.) Winter Event Present Inspiration rewards, I wouldn’t mind having fewer drop but actually have them do something special, like Cap an ability for 20-30mins, maybe you can only have 2 things capped at any given time. Maybe a temporary power like SS, SJ or TP Friend or even a Temp Store where you can trade in so many presents for a Temp Power your char would normally not be able to have. It’s only a few weeks a year, lighten up.

13.) Archery Set, animations are too slow, range at 80’ is ridiculous, speed up the animations, increase the range to 100’ and give the snipe some damage, it’s remarkably weak compared to other snipes.

14.) Why do none of the Ranged Damage IO sets have any Range in them?

15.) The Devs need to monitor the Market better, there are whole segments of the market that have ZERO product available. When this happens for an extended period the game should automatically dump some product into the market, or better yet the game should increase the drop rates on the recipes that have depleted themselves. What good is an Invention system that offers nothing to invent?

16.) The Archery set desperately needs a bow based melee attack, and I don’t mean a pansy Stun, I mean a swing-your-your-bow-like-a-staff-whack-attack that does decent damage maybe even some knockdown or knock back. ( if you’ve seen the movie Avatar, you know what I mean).

17.) Dump Base rent, it’s dumb.

18.) How about a Dark Astoria Task Force that culminates in the fog being temporarily lifted from the whole zone for the members of the TF only for say, 12hrs?, along with a reobtainable (like Shivans) To Hit or Perception bonus. It’s a beautiful zone, and I bet most players have NEVER seen it.

19.) Increase the size of Giant Monsters to GIANT size. I want to see these menaces from half a zone away!, and give ‘em some crazy knock back that sends you flying a couple of blocks away when they whack ya. I’m talking about the scale of the giant mech-man in the Hess Task Force. It shouldn’t be “Where is AV So-N-So?”, it should be “Holy *&%^#$ !! This is gonna be amazing!”

20.) Now this one might be controversial but, character’s power should scale with age, I know it kinda does, but what I mean is, a level 50 scrapper that’s got 4 years of crime fighting under his belt should be more powerful that a relative nOOb who’s only been a Hero of the City for 1 year. I don’t know numbers, but say a 1 or 2% increase per month after the 1st year of becoming level 50 would be the best “Veteran Power” benefit I can think of, these percentages could go into a bank that you redistribute to specific attributes of YOUR choosing, ie: Hit Points, Defense, Resist, Mez Protection, To Hit, Recharge, Endurance, you get the idea.

Thanks for reading.

Re 5. There is no falling damage in the Ski zone. Go fall in a city zone.

Re 15. Except for PvP and Purple IOs, all others can be acquired via merits and random ticket rolls in AE. Just because they are not in the market doesn't mean the drop rates are wrong. It may simply mean they aren't worth selling for what the market will pay.

If I was sitting on Posi's desk I would be wearing a mesh camisole and offering thanks not suggestions.

Most of them I'm relatively ambivalent about but there are a few I'd like to comment on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cyyan 1.) Fly is too slow, it should be at least as fast as Super Jump or Super Speed, please.

This is a deliberate trade off, fly gives you perfect 3D movement so it's the slowest travel power overall. Super Jump gives decent 3D movement and is the middle in speed. Super Speed is the fastest but offers no 3D movement. If Fly was as fast as Super Jump there would be no reason to take Super Jump as a travel power except for concept reasons (or if you really, really want Combat Jumping rather than Hover).

Quote:

9.) Contact cell phones need to be issued after the first mission, almost every contact you have is a referral or has already asked to work with you, why on earth would they not trust you enough to give you their number up front, isn’t time supposed to be of the essence ?

Maybe not the first missions, but definitely by the second or third.

Quote:

13.) Archery Set, animations are too slow, range at 80’ is ridiculous, speed up the animations, increase the range to 100’ and give the snipe some damage, it’s remarkably weak compared to other snipes. 16.) The Archery set desperately needs a bow based melee attack, and I don’t mean a pansy Stun, I mean a swing-your-your-bow-like-a-staff-whack-attack that does decent damage maybe even some knockdown or knock back. ( if you’ve seen the movie Avatar, you know what I mean).

80' is the default range for all blast sets except for Assault Rifle. Ranged Shot does the same damage as all other Blaster snipes except for Blazing Bolt. I agree that some of the Archery powers could use a decrease in activation time. Finally why the heck should Archery get a melee attack? It's a Blast set, blast sets do not get a melee attack. The only semi-sensible way to do that would be to make an Archery Assault set for Dominators.

Quote:

14.) Why do none of the Ranged Damage IO sets have any Range in them?

Because there are very few occasions when people actually slot for range. The only powers that really benefit from range are cones where a range increase makes it easier to hit more targets. For most other attacks range is not really worth enhancing.

Quote:

15.) The Devs need to monitor the Market better, there are whole segments of the market that have ZERO product available. When this happens for an extended period the game should automatically dump some product into the market, or better yet the game should increase the drop rates on the recipes that have depleted themselves. What good is an Invention system that offers nothing to invent?

Randomly dumping new product onto the market is probably a bad idea. Increasing the drop rate for some items would be nice, but the fact that the devs haven't already seems to suggest that they're happy with those items being in very low supply.

Quote:

20.) Now this one might be controversial but, character’s power should scale with age, I know it kinda does, but what I mean is, a level 50 scrapper that’s got 4 years of crime fighting under his belt should be more powerful that a relative nOOb who’s only been a Hero of the City for 1 year. I don’t know numbers, but say a 1 or 2% increase per month after the 1st year of becoming level 50 would be the best “Veteran Power” benefit I can think of, these percentages could go into a bank that you redistribute to specific attributes of YOUR choosing, ie: Hit Points, Defense, Resist, Mez Protection, To Hit, Recharge, Endurance, you get the idea.

You're right it's controversial, it's also stupid. Why should a four year old character that never gets played be better than a new one that gets played alot?

<QR>

IMPO, as a veteran player, this thread is a lot of hair-splitting.

Certainly, some of these things wouldn't be hard to do on paper, like increasing Fly speed or decreasing recharge on a Freeze Ray, but what would the greater balance issues be with doing so?

More importantly, why drop base rent when the greater problem with bases is the lack of base raids and IoPs? Why muck around with rent when the whole system may have to be fixed wholesale anyhow?

I know many think that trams are just silly in a super hero game, but to replace them would require possible new art and assets, which would take time from those departments which may be working on other things, such as new power sets, new mobs, new zones, new mission maps, etc. And in the end, such a change would have little impact compared or benefit to other things that could be developed in the same amount of time.

Most of these are certainly just QoL improvements, like giving badges for fending off robbers and snipers. But I could never condone the devs messing with market stocking or pirce manipulation; nor coudl I condone capping any power or two, regardless of the limited duration during certain seasonal events. Such ideas don't take much consideration into the balance of the game as a whole, the intended difficulty of the game, etc.

Veterans need to keep the big picture in their heads, IMPO. Things that will greatly benefit the long-term evolution of the game are more important than adding short-term carrots that will easily be obtained and offer little in terms of long-term player interest. Although I'm for some of these ideas, other ideas need to be more thought-out before presented in such an ostentatious manner as "If I Sat at Posi's Desk".

Finally, peppering posts with negatively charged words like ridiculous, dumb, and stupid is probably the worst way to influence readers to one's point of view - especially the developers who supposedly made these things "ridiculous", "dumb", or "stupid". In short, you're back-handedly insulting the very same people whom you wish to influence. Many know how little BAB like to be called "lazy" for example; you're shooting your own ideas in the proverbial feet.

ohhhh AT his desk....my bad

If I sat at Posi's desk, I'd probably have a life expectancy about the length of "Move your a**, Michelle".

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite