Tweets of the PAX Panel

With Fitness being made Inherent. Maybe they should give us the option at lvl 49 to take (3)slots or a power. Maybe even 47 too.

Ok my take on the fitness thing. Let me preface it by saying I think its one of the best changes to come and all credit to Paragon Studios that 6yrs after release they still have the guys to make massive changes for the good of the game. It is the only way to keep games like this fresh.

I think Fitness being inherent is a great idea mainly because Power Pools were designed to be optional extras, ways in which to further customize and enhance your characters. Now since it was first discovered, Stamina has become widely mandetory on almost all characters because of the way it helps with endurance management. People saying that making fitness inherent will make the game too easy are completely missing the point, and its exactly for the reason EvilGeko has already stated. The (lack of) difficulty has NOTHING to do with endurance management, but instead to do with many other factors. Almost everyone already has stamina so there will be almost zero change in the difficulty of endurance management for the vast majority of players.

The people who are truly penalised by the current situation are true newbies, who through lack of knowledge about the game are probably suffering hugely by not taking up Stamina. Not to mention, stamina requires 2 pre-requisites. That is 3 powers between 1 and 20 that must be devoted to it. A further 2 for travel means a total of 5 powers. "The game begins at 20" is a well known phrase, and that is because the sub-20 game is full of almost mandetory powers which stop people from taking the fun choices. How is that good for this game, or any game for that matter?

This is a bold move by the devs of CoH, but one that is exactly what the game needs.


As for the difficulty of the game, my take is simple that the variety of skill in this game is massive. There is a huge range of players ranging from people who play casually, people who play regularly but don't have the knowledge of all the mechanics, and people who have played for a long time and know how to run circles around the ai and utilize every game mechanic advantage at their disposal. If you think running at +4/x8 is what most people play at when solo then I am sorry, but you are seriously deluded.

One of the great things about this game is the variety of difficulty. However I will say that the default, baseline difficulty these days for large teams is in my opinion, far too low and is one of the reasons there is such a widespread naivity about mechanics. 8 man teams should always by default fight at a minimum of +2. Every team I join these days fights at +0 because its easy and good for quickly running TF's for merits, as someone who could solo a x8 +0 spawn, I find this a little disturbing personally :-)

As for the rest, I am also extremely happy to see there will be at least some dev time devoted to sprucing up our much loved warehouses, sewers and offices.

Not to take away from the incredibly useful "stop being a bunch of pupled-out elitists" and "learn to play the game, you lazy dumb-dumbs" but any idea of someone might put a video up?

It is possible that these inherent powers unlock at fixed levels (swift and/or jumping at 6 : health at 14 : stamina at 20). If I were to recommend how to implement the system, that is how I would do it at least.

About the fitness pool being made inherent: I don't see how it's necessary honestly. We won't be getting any more slots for those power picks we're freeing up. Which means I'll be spending those three saved power picks on filler like Super Speed. Second, I predict Stamina will inherently unlock at 20, which won't do anything to speed up gameplay in the early levels of the game. And if making the Fitness pool inherent means that it either can't be slotted (doubtful) or that the effectiveness of the powers is decreased, no thanks. You take your inherent Fitness and shove it you-know-where.

Secondly: A new task force? Really? A new Task Force does not really constitute "more end-game content." It's nice to have but it's far from enough. Either you can do it in two hours or it's so long nobody wants to do it, and it leaves soloists out in the cold. Besides, everyone will set to the lowest difficulty and find the the best way to speed run it soon enough, sucking all the fun out of it.

A story driven Alpha Incarnate slot: Nice. As long as it's soloable. And by soloable I don't mean "by a melee character" or "with Shivans." No EBs that two-shot squishies from range and have Unstoppable, tyvm.

Primal Earthers in Praetoria: Yay badges. Hopefully this also means the Preatorian arcs will be available in Ouroboros, for those of us who don't have four new characters they want to make and solo all the way through.

More tip missions: Please. Hopefully also more morality missions.

Mission maps getting a "minor update:" hopefully this doesn't translate to "we'll be making them prettier, ie laggier" (unless it means "we'll be making them prettier in Ultra mode," in which case I don't care), and doesn't wreak too much havoc on people's AE arcs.

Getting Fitness as an inherent is great. I don't even really care if we don't get more slots. I'll just use my one-slotted "extra" powers on prerequisite things such as Aid Other that I wasn't going to slot anyway or other powers that really don't need extra slotting. Heck, even three extra unslotted powers are... well, three more powers than I used to have.