Tweets of the PAX Panel

when did listening to player feedback become a bad thing?

I'm glad they're taking the time to improve the system rather than shoving it out the door before it's ready.

Getting kind of tired of this "they moved back all the Incarnate levels" stuff people are spewing in a few posts in this thread. Were you in i18 closed beta at all? If not, a lot of it will be lost, but even then Positron copied his CB post into the open forums for everyone to see regarding the SNEAK PREVIEW INCARNATE SLOT removal. He explained that it was a sneak preview, not a full release of the system, that it wasn't ever intended for GR, but was added in as a peek at what was coming/bonus. It got removed because they had to slap together a hacknied reward system to facilitate unlocking it, and there was no content to really use and test it on, because the content that goes with it wasn't there, as it was just a preview. Also, people in the CB complained (rightly so) that it didn't make enough of a difference to their characters, and that there was no "lore" to back up how we got the Incarnate abilities, or what allowed such a thing within the framework of CoH. Both of those are being addressed by pulling the slot, reworking it, and waiting until some of the content is there to support it. The one slot was the only thing covered. all 10 of them were not going to be released at the same time, and they still won't. Positron has covered this a few times as well. They've flat admitted that i19 is "The stuff we didn't have time for while working on GR". Just like i7 was basically "The stuff we couldn't work into CoV (i.e. Mayhem Missions, Level cap to 50 increase, PPPs etc.). That's no different than has ever happened before.

Sometimes I think people just complain to "hear" themselves talk.

Yes. This also. :P personally I'd have paid 20 bucks JUST for Ultra Mode. We ended up getting that "for free" so buying GR where I thought it was going to be in the first place was kind of a no-brainer. Also, JUST finished my first moral choice in Praetoria last night at the end of Cleopatra's arc. I was agonized staring at the screen trying to decide what to do. I felt like I was playing Mass....err...a certain Sci-Fi RPG that is single player. Except I wasn't, I was playing CoH! It was totally worth all the suffering with Pre-Order codes and stuff, and the money JUST for that one moment.

Funny you should mention this. If you look close, they ARE wearing SOME Vanguard pieces (Faultline has brown and gold vanguard tights under his jacket, and Fusionette has the boots and gloves)... but NOT the ENTIRE outfit.

I think the devs need to take a similar route. Maybe give him the shoulder pads and belt pieces, but that's all.

And plz give him back War Witch's sword.

Considering CoV -was- a closed beta, Issue 9 wasn't the first. Players also had to join the CoV closed beta forums (completely separate from the regular forums), and part of that process was agreeing to the confidentiality of the closed beta.

I agree with the Hamster.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

In the literal sense you are wrong. By definition of gaining three more powers unslotted or otherwise you will be more powerful situationally. How often the situation arises is the extent of the powercreep. I'll explain below.

On an individual level the power creep will be quite small for most combo's I can think of and I can think of a lot of combo's. Individual power creep would conceivably be the largest in pvp where phase and perception are both so important, but pvp is so terrible now that no one likely cares.

In pve the power creep for the individual will be at best (assuming you don't redistribute slots) 22.5% additional global rech. Or basically free quickness minus the runspeed increase and debuff protection for anyone that wants it and didn't already have in excess of 2 lotg's slotted. Or an unslotted weave, which in some cases could be pretty good still.

HOWEVER, the team power creep is through the roof. People content with the build sacrifices necessary to fit in stamina by 20 can now replace that with vengeance by 20.
-Ignoring the power of unslotted leadership toggles on a team for now because we are pretending people don't have much endurance to spare-
Even the weakest AT modifier puts out huge numbers for vengeance and will easily allow teams to tackle some of the highest difficulty settings and plow through them like they are on base settings.

No vengeance isn't becoming MORE powerful, but it is currently *balanced* (or pretends to be) by the rarity of it, which should be completely eliminated with this change. It will only take 1 or 2 (incase your main guy with the power is the one that dies) people on a pug with similar insight to me and the game will be stupid-easy from 20+.

Personally my builds are all excellent even with fitting in stamina, so for the majority of them this means veng by 20 as a straight swap. And this means any team I'm on (if I ever resub to this game) will be breezing through +2-4/x8 of pretty much any enemy faction from level 20 on with insane speed and reward rate.

You guys are right though, that's not really power creep, that is power leap . Provided roughly 20% of people think like I do so that most pugs will have a veng caster or two from now on.

P.S. even for the selfish player there is little reason not to go the leadership route as it will give you two lotg's as opposed to 3 with concealment. Unless you literally never team then taking leadership is a pretty simple decision for most toons as a straight swap for stamina's power picks imo.

Yeah, I19 is just the Alpha Slot, but now it has a storyarc that you do to unlock it and then you can do the Alpha Strike Task Force with it. The next part of the Incarnate System will be I20.

they don't.

people will use these 'free' powers for all kinds of random stuff they think is fun.
very few will use it on a 'not fun' power that takes a corpse to activate.

if my years around here have taught me anything, it's that very few players pay any attention to making efficient choices. I'll wager more people will use a stamina pick on Flurry than Vengeance.

We don't know for sure, no. However, from what I've gathered and the way I see it, we're getting at least one Story Arc that will be part of earning the slot (as opposed to the weird, hacknied "salvage system" we had in i18CB) which will help explain it. We're also getting the first of the content designed to be used with said slot (the Apex TF). There may also be other things we don't know about.

I thought that too, so went ahead and knocked one up. I originally went for more vanguard pieces, but then settled it down to shoulders and belt. I can see Apex changing before he goes live, I just think it's just a matter of how much chasing we have to do to get one we like.

Yesyesyes. I hear complaints about NPCs getting exclusive costume pieces, but I'd love it if Apex could have War Witch's sword on his back. Even better if he can whip it out in combat. Add some flavour to him.


Edit: I realise now that he wasn't particularly well known for wearing 'leather strap' boots. Ah well, I'm stuck with it now.

Little reason except maybe..."RP" "Concept" "Fun" "Character Broadning/Development" You know. Those little things.


Sure, there'll be people who'll always min-max everything, and will take powers that make no sense within the framework of their characters (then again, some people don't even build enough of a framework of concept or character to have those "limitations" in the first place. To quote a broadcast I saw last night in praetoria on Virtue: "So, which has the better pop on this server in this game, Heroes or Villains, cause I'm about to hit 20 later today and I don't want to gimp myself by picking the wrong side." I didn't bother to try to explain that, if mechanics is all you looked at, it didn't matter cause you could switch without too much work, or be a tourist and go to both...but...*shrugs* if that's fun for them, I guess it works.

Personally I'll be taking Superspeed (because it's RP-appropriate, even though I have fly as my main TP, and I dropped it in favor of taking hand clap back a while ago), RPD because it's the final power in my primary powerset, and probably either Group Fly for RP concept, or Combat Jumping which also fits, but is a bit more about the extra power.

I'm an RPer and a Concept builder, but I also have an amazingly good build who also CAN PvP fairly well, if I choose to.

It's worth noting what someone can do with Vengence or whatever, but not everyone even uses the leadership pool, because it's not thematic, or they don't want the end drain. I doubt even 20% of the players think like you. I can bet money 20% of the ones on Virtue don't.

I've actually put some thought into this. I have no intention of moving a significant number of slots around or changing my builds much. I do however intend to take advantage of the fact that I get A) three new power picks for free, B) an extra power pool on several characters. I have all kinds of powers I'm planning on picking up and adding which I can benefit from even without adding any slots. Not only is this not going to make my builds tighter, it will untighten some of my builds. I always wanted CJ on my Invuln Brute (she has Hover thematically but it's no use in combat), Aid Self on my Widow, and more recharge on my Dom.

Going over a short list of characters in Mids:

Plant/Earth/Fire Dom:
* Take three powers from the stealth pool in order to slot three LotGs

Elec/Invuln Brute:
* Combat Jumping (LotG and +DEF)
* Superior Conditioning (PS proc)
* Physical Perfection (+regen/+recov)

Necro/Dark/Soul MM:
* Recall friend, foe, and group TP

SS/WP Brute:
* SC, PP
* Resurgence

DS/Thermal MM:
* Power of the Phoenix, Thaw (I always skip these powers in tight builds)
* Assault

Energy/Energy/Force Blaster:
* Combat Jumping
* Power Push (just because)
* Group Fly (Hamidon and RP)

Soft-capped Widow:
* Assault (putting her at +60% DMG)
* Aid Other, Aid Self (even at base slot it'll help considering she's soft-capped)

If you think you have to take things like Hand Clap or powers that require a ton of slots, you just need to look more closely at your options. My melees are all growing more durable, my Dom gets more recharge, two characters will do more damage, and I get a few utility powers all around. That's pretty nice.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I was thinking Jump Kick and Presence Pool

I dont understand how you think moving fitness to inherent is going to make your build any tighter

No you wont have any additional slots... but you're coming at this like you HAVE to slot these 3 new powers you take in place of the fitness pool? Why?

Seriously your build isnt getting any tighter. You're getting 3 free mule slots for global IO's or some utility powers that are useful out of the box without slotting. Stop and look at it that way and you'll realize you're panicking over nothing at all.

I hope not. I used the name "Ramiel" for an MA arc last Christmas.

(#356477, "The Christmas We Get". ObPlug.)

The whole existing respec system needs to be taken out back, shot in the head and thrown in a shallow grave out past Terlingua.

Ideally the respec system should work like Dynamic mode in Mids: your character gets loaded up in its current state and you get to move things around until you're satisfied with them. Really ideally there would be a compatible offline editor that produced build files the in-game editor could read so you could work up your build, cash in a respec and just load it.

In no case should your trays change except to delete powers you don't have any more.

That's the beauty of it though not many people do need to think of what will give the best power increase for the least investment with this deal. 4 out of 5 people, well heck nearly 7 out of 8 people are free to nimbly wimbly their way into flurry or jump kick and it will still make vengeance a far more common occurrence. Heck most people can decidedly make their toons performance go down by injecting flurry and one person with veng will overwrite an entire team of people like that. Force multiplication and all that jazz that we've all been over hundreds of times and shouldn't need explained again.

It only takes one person per pug really. The beauty is not many people need to pick it for it to proliferate teams and allow a very sharp increase in the ability to tackle more difficult content.

I understand the kneejerk reaction, I expect nothing less from an assortment of people around here. I wouldn't have even brought it up if this wasn't something that could be leveraged even with very very few people thinking of how to optimize their toon in a team environment - and all for free now.

Also you are the first person I've ever seen state that vengeance is a 'not fun' power. It might not be fun for the person that dies (which has absolutely nothing to do with the vengeance power itself), but people do die and the devs have been kind enough to make death virtually meaningless.
*and now others will chime in about how proclaiming a vendetta when a team mate falls in the heat of battle is the least fun power out there...

Couldn't agree more.

Check the 2nd post in this thread

im sorry but i take full outrage fot this comment. ill choise what ever power i want. i had a friend that in his full "wisdom" choise to tell me how to spec out MY character. even went as far as telling our mutual friend to send through a respec trial. i went through ti and choise the so out of spite.
now you might think leadership is god. but to me its not. i would rather choise a "selfish power as you call it." to help me survive. ive soloed for 2 years in a row. in that time i made myself a good player solo and team. regardless od power choises.
now that i can have fitness i can choise the fighting power pool to fill in some of the holes in my characters.