If you could redesign a canon faction (or two)

Well, in my dream I would code them to just kill you. Everyone else gets to be alive with one less power for a couple of seconds.

(Although, in this dream passives would be stronger than toggles, but that's another story about how the original devs broke defenses, messed up mez, and made sure the playerbase would never allow any creativity in foe effects other than various color-coded versions of death.)

And when you hit them with knockback powers, they would break open and candy would spill out.

Uh...isn't that power called Lingering Radiation? Or any psy based attacks? I know whenever I get hit by LR or almost more than 1 psy based attack on most of my toons my rchg rate goes down to nothing and seems like no powers ever recharge until the debuff goes away

I understand what you are saying and trust me I don't like it either but I do feel it 'fits' with the hero genre. However just cause it fits doesn't mean it should be there...*shrugs* Would I like to see it? Sure I guess...like I mentioned above, it's basically a Malta Sapper (if you get hit with the end. drain that is) or Posi/someone throwing LR on you. Should it be on/in every mob group? No.



But back to the OP....


I have always been a supporter of having the Tsoo be in the higher lvl ranges (as well as BP)...both are pretty neat/interesting mob groups; especially the Tsoo, the bosses are varied and interesting while the Lts aren't as varied they are dangerous (Ancestor Spirits do some mean damage with their KO Blow!) and their minions are quite annoying too.

I also think the Vahz. should be in the higher lvl game too...they're quite a handful in the lower levels but would be neat to see them higher up.

The Family should definitely get some kind of upgrades or something.

I will say that the Goldbrickers are a pain...whenever I run a toon villy side I usually steer clear of them...multiple -res stacked on me? no ty! Now have them in the higher game where you can either have the shields/buffs/other powers to help deal with the -res? Okay now we're talking!

*subscribes to newsletter*

Oh and yes...this would be good!

Not to get too far off on a tangent (and I've said this before, just not recently) passive defenses should have always been the strong powers, and toggles the weak ones. What the devs focused on was endurance balancing, but that's the least important factor.

What is important is that passives can't be turned off, but toggles can: you can be endurance drained to zero, you can be mezzed, you can be detoggled. So every character with a defensive set can be in one of two states: passives, or passives + toggles. That's it. So the best thing to do is to make sure that when a character is detoggled, the right amount of protection comes off. And the right amount of protection is not "basically all."

Consider SR (its the easiest to consider in this case). Fully slotted with SOs, Sr has about 30.4% defense to melee, ranged, and AoE. With only the passives, its about 8.8% defense. With only the toggles, its about 21.6% defense. In terms of survivability, knocking out the toggles increases incoming damage by 110% - more than double. If it were possible to knock out only the passives, incoming damage would increase by only 45%. That's a lot more survivable.

In fact, if 75% of your protection came from passives and only 25% from toggles, on a survival adjusted basis (to give you an idea, that would imply the toggles would be offering about 4.9% defense *slotted*) then detoggling and mezzing would be much more reasonable. Instead, its almost a death sentence in many cases, and therefore the playerbase rightly dismissed detoggling as a viable game mechanic.

If you combine this with a linear returns mitigation mechanic (similar to the one that Champions Online uses for resistance, actually) then you wouldn't have soft-capping issues complicating matters, and people would not be able to exploit strong passives by skipping the toggles altogether.

Which is the objection to this idea: if the passives are so strong, won't the players skip the toggles altogether? And my reply is: since the toggles are so strong now, why don't the players always skip the passives now? And the answer should be obvious to the devs: because the game is balanced with them taking most of those powers on average. You can walk around with 21% defense if you want with only the toggles, or you can have 30% defense with the passives and be about twice as survivable. That's not much of an option.

Furthermore, if the players *do* decide to take just half the set, doesn't it make more sense to give the players the option to take just the passive half? After all, they are sacrificing half the set's protection: are you going to force them to eat all of its endurance costs anyway?

It makes a lot more sense to say, in effect, the first half is free, and the second half costs (end). Because then there's actually a valid endurance choice: do you want to pay more for more. But instead, the game offers this choice: you must pay endurance for the baseline protection, and if you want more, its free. That actually ironically trivializes the choice of managing endurance, because you have to pay it no matter what, so why skip the zero-cost protection powers?


Bah, I feel like the Nostalgia Critic reviewing City of Heroes.

For folks that play a super hero genre game, it is amazing how many of the things native to superhero comics they do not like.

The genre is full of things like power depletion, knockback, mez states...

Personally, I think more groups should be like the Malta. They represent just how such groups interact with metahumans in super hero comics. They're my personal favorite faction to play against, and they have some of the neatest stories. Most comics involve some form of power depletion or mez state because the villains, particularly those nearer to human power levels, just can't compete with a metahuman. The Malta represent that quite well.

The factions I would change would be most of the ones of the street gang variety. There are just too many of them and most of them are just not interesting. Having a few petty thugs to beat on is certainly something I would see as a requirement of the genre, but we have too many that represent no real threat to even the most nubile of superheroes. We're supposed to be in a setting where superheroes are common, and therefore I would think even street gangs would be more sophisticated to take on that threat.

To quote Coach Rockslide, "Lesson One: Sooner or later, a villain will whip out something like this gizmo. This baby is called a 'demetatizer'."
BZOWNT!
"All of your powers have just been temporarily neutralized. You are all mere mortals, and you are in my power. Blah-blah-blah."

Mind you, I'm don't particularly like the way mezzes work in the game. It's not because they don't fit the genre, however, it's because the way they're handled is rather inconsistent with both the genre and reasonable interpretation of our characters. Consider: in an actual comic, which is more likely to be vulnerable to mental control, a powerful psychic, or a really strong guy with tough skin? (Hint--it's the opposite of the answer in City.)

That, however, is a function of the way defensive powers were originally designed for the game, which Arcana has covered more eloquently than I could. As a result, I just accept it and work around it...and hope I can be forgiven a bit of a chuckle when I see a tank or scrapper get drained and toggle-dropped and bail them out with my defender.

You know, I really wish I had the continual patience for number crunching that you seem to display. It only comes to me in short-termed waves curiousity (such as how I haven't done the threat values for the powersets of ATs outside of Tanker yet). Sustained projects is something I can only do with writing and world building, and even then I have a tendency to spread myself thin and take on what some would probably say is too many projects at once.

I really like this idea. It would lend depth to these groups without trying to over-romanticize simple street thugs. In comics heroes face varying degrees of threat. From simple street thugs to masterminds trying to take over the world. I don't think that the backstory of the game needs to make every faction have some sort of clandestine goals. There are enough large, complex threats to the world in their backstory as it is. If you want to enrich a faction's story, making them flunkies for another more powerful group may be the way to go.

But also I think that sometimes a group of thugs is just a group of thugs and a group of mercenaries is just a group of mercenaries. There is such a thing as having to much backstory going on. It can really clutter up the narrative flow of a game if you have to many subplots.

That would make a nice Defender Inherent. A resistance based on your primary and secondary. I have no idea how that would work for Empathy or Trick arrow.

The idea of Cosa Nostra using tommyguns at any level in the City 'verse is pretty silly. They'd be the early adopters using any tech or weapons they could get their hands on to do the job. They'd also have as many metas as possible working for them. Properly designed, Family spawns should always have a mob or two with random superpowers.

I already redesigned Malta for my own purposes in my arcs (#4643 "Blowback", #257991 "Splintered Shields"). I fiddled with the concept behind the Legacy Chain in "Chains of Blood" (#4829) but only added one mob; I expect that arc to be Jossed as soon as the Chain gets any official attention. Edit: I also put together some "improved" Family sub-factions in "Two Households Alike" (#126582).

I'd redesign all of the "street gang" factions to make it absolutely clear that every single member of them has superpowers. Bone Daddies or no the Skulls as portrayed wouldn't last sixty seconds against an NYPD SWAT unit. I'd redesign every faction to make it clear all of their members have superpowers or technology or magical gear to emulate them. Not only is it weak to portray the players as having trouble dealing with (e.g.) punks with baseball bats (never mind rent-a-cops or 5th century troops) but it doesn't even make sense from a world-building perspective. Societies won't put up with superhuman vigiliantes if the cops are capable of handling crooks, so the crooks have to be too tough for the cops.

I'd redo Crey from the ground up with a new storyline to take into account the events of the current arc (tossing out the ridiculous statement from Manticore that the Countess not only beat the rap but wasn't even charged), and I'd borrow the tech the Vogons used to destroy every possible version of Earth in the last Hitchhiker's book to eradicate all versions of Nemesis in every possible parallel earth. For that matter, I'd destroy the parallels too.

That would do for a start.

Eh, I think the latter point is overboard. Of course the players who like the status quo don't want new ways for the AI to overcome them. To equate that with a desire on the part of players to actively stifle innovative mob design isn't really accurate. That's a symptom; the desire we see is a general desire to limit the ways the mobs can win, not to stifle innovation specifically.

Sure, we see this sort of thing in fiction. In fiction, the characters have a weapon players lack - an author who already knows how they will get out of the situation (assuming the author doesn't intend to kill them off). They can come out of the situation in a storybook in ways that we cannot - they can parlay, sneak out a window, be saved by their (off-team) friends ... all things that have no representation in the necessarily limited simulation we have here.

If the powers we have in this game were designed quite differently perhaps this would sound less annoying. Right now, singular powers are often singularly key to survival, and having them abruptly, effectively randomly disappear, with no real means to restore them even for a few seconds, sounds immensely irritating. Of course I despise tactics that rely on "denial" of other players in pretty much any game. I hate the unavoidable status effects that now exist in D&D 4e (you now generally must suffer through anything that hits you until at least the end of your next turn) and I always hated Blue/Black denial decks in Magic: The Gathering (such decks either took your cards away or blocked your attempts to play them).

I want to lose because I didn't play well enough or my foe outclassed me, not because I was prevented from playing.

(Yes, that means I also intensely dislike mezzes in this game, but the change from Disciplines to Break Frees means we can at least get back in the game as long as we have one on hand, so I'm mollified.)

They are already too baddass (read: tedious) as it is. Of course I play controllers mostly so I'm a bit pissed how some of them cheat and just kill me when held anyway. And with their crazy AOE stuns that keep me perma stunned and their robot thingys that hold me, they are already better controllers than I am. If I could throw a mag 3 stun that lasts 30 seconds, and throw one every couple of seconds, I'd be "badass" too.

Lewis

OMG. I'm not sure whether this was what you were actually trying to communicate or not, but I just had a brilliant idea. There isn't actually another side in this "Clockwork War", the Clockwork King is just fighting himself, fabricating an opposing force in his crazy little mind I like the Clockwork King, but I'd really like to find out more about his past and how he came to be so crazy XD

Wouldn't that be a little bit like the multiple Nemesis/Fake Nemesis problem?

Playing the game is dealing with those situations.......it is the rules of this particular game.

You are not prevented from playing, instead you are asking to play a different game because you do not like the rules of this one. This one does have power depletion and mezzing. In fact, those are central core elements to this particular game.

I suggest you find a game more suiting to you wants in which you don't lose your powers. Super Mario Bros comes to mind, although I'd avoid those goombas. I hear they take away your fire flowers when they touch you.

I'm not sure what you mean here. I think you're saying that Family should be low level only, which is fine with me. I like fighting them around Port Oaks. Higher level, not so much.

On a similar note, I don't care to fight rent-a-cops around Cap A Diable, espcially Cage Consortium around the Hellforge and the Pit. Those areas need some sort of super mutant ninja robot thing guarding them, not a guy with a revolver. And while it's ok for us to break up strikers, being evil and all, I do feel that the Scrapyarders should be Underlings at most.

I like the Goldbrickers. While kinda underdeveloped, they're got super suits and super weapons, which make them a bit more "believable" to be fighting. I see them as slightly incompetent minions (most of their comments around Cap A Diable are funny and a little "off") who have good equipment.

My 2 cp.

That's... exactly what they implied.

I'd like to see Lowbow change composition as you progress in levels. At low-levels, they're guys with gadgets and guns. At higher levels, as you suggest, you should start to fight a lot more wardens and other super-powered people. Longbow should call in heroes a lot more too, so you should be fighting super teams as well.

As you suggest, many Wardens should have a bit more personality in the way their costumes are designed.

Similar to what I mention above, the low-level gun-Longbow should be demoted to Underlings at higher levels, and then eventually to just basically stage props, no longer able to really hurt you. This would also give a feeling of progress and being super, as your former enemies are unable to touch you.

That's how I handled it - it worked out ok for me

I've always wanted to see the Banished Pantheon revamped as more of a global threat, befitting their lore, as they're rather sidelined in-game.

Oh absolutely - the BP need more content on both sides - a co-op mid-level revamp of Dark Astoria would be good, with a new higher level co-op port/coast zone attached north or south of that (which can also feature Coralax - with their Cthulhu-like background they'd work well atmospherically with fog). Also scale the BP to L50 more smoothly - the higher level BP rarely get used in-game and there are gaps in the faction's level scaling (evident in MA).

Also give the BP some new, more varied, minions (their bosses and lieuts are fine). Revamp them as a thriving cult (maybe like the death cultists in my Dev Choice arc), recruiting minions from Paragon's disaffected gangs and population (some of whom feel powerless after experiencing two devastating Rikti wars, so they are ripe to be suckered into the cult) and have them summoning undead mainly to poison the magic in Paragon City and the nearby Rogue Isles to prepare the world for their dark gods' return. That would put them in direct opposition with the Mu and Circle of Thorns especially, two warring factions who have very good reasons to fear the BP and perhaps even temporarily unite against this greater evil, seeing as their gods banished the Pantheon in the first place.

I want to see BP cultists actively trying to bring their "Old Gods" back, culminating in a co-op TF and a co-op raid where they almost/temporarily succeed. I want a 50ft tall BP Totem, an avatar for one of the BP gods like Rambetu, featuring as the GM in a Mothership/Hamidon-style raid. Have the early stage of the raid partially clear the fog (in DA and any new BP-heavy zone), then this 50ft totem wanders out of the clearing mist and wades in amongst the players - defeating him keeps the fog partially cleared for an hour or two.

Heck, beef up the Legacy Chain and scale them to L50 too and have them actively working against the BP on hero-side (with the Mu loyal to Arachnos being the villain equivalent) and drag in the Midnighter Club as the more neutral contacts for heroes/villains in the co-op war against higher-level BP (as they're underused too). Give us more atmosphere and awe - the BP lore is dripping with it and begs to be expanded on (more than the Praetorians ever did).

Personally, I think that the Clockwork King is crazy due to a combination of brain damage from the beating he took at the hands of Blue Steel as well as massive sensory deprivation.

Imagine if someone took away your sense of touch and taste, that the only way you had to hear or speak was through psychic or mechanical means, and that your visual acuity is probably sucky at best since your eyes are floating around in liquid without EYELIDS.

I can see a Civil War in the Clockwork Kingdom as CK's better and baser natures war with each other. (I'd give CK the Good an enhanced body that resembles the Praetorian Clockwork and have his old body still operate with an empty braincase ...)

I've always felt that the named Clockwork bosses that we fight are simply aspects of a Multiple Personality Disorder that CK suffers from. I'd like to see them have differering interests and abilities to suggest this, actually ...