The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme

To quote the usual gang of idiots:

"LOL - that never happened!"
"Learn to play, noob."
"You need to play a different character and use your Inspirations plus temp powers. That's why the Devs put them there, duh."
"Your doinng it rong."

Maybe you didn't come out and say it, but plenty of other people have had a definite "LOL U SUK" attitude about all this.

the sad thing is that it's used wrong

he's calling the people that want more challenge "Munchkins" when tabletop gaming slang has always used the term to describe people that want all the power and loot they can get with minimal challenge

in fact, judging by his arguments, he's closer to a munchkin than anybody else on this thread so far

I have to apologize here, I had and have a multi-arch storyline planned of which I've only gotten two archs out of...granted those are getting 4 stars, but life has interfered with getting to the third arc

no, munchkins don't generally have an interest in other people's playing skills...they simply complain if something is hard and the reward isn't high enough

the defining characteristic of a munchkin isn't "learn to play" it's more "low risk, high reward...and whine if not true"

the guy that wants to teach people to play is generally referred to as "l33t" or "leet", burrowing from internet talk

power-gamers simply enjoy the aspect of getting the most power out of the least cost, munchkins are generally power-gamers by definition, but power-gamers are not munchkins by definition

wargamers enjoy the strategic and tactical challenges more than the building aspect, but are generally skilled at it

min-maxer is a subset of power-gamer that works best in a high-mechanic, low RP setting such as an MMO

generalists and concept characters are generally more powerful and overall effective than min-maxers in a tabletop RP setting where the controlling computer is a human brain which is capable of reasoning through scenarios that weren't pre-planned or thought (for example, in all those 5th Column missions where all we're doing is eliminating the base personnel, why not destroy those air-recyclers you run across and then cave in the entrance, that'll do it)...though playing a successful concept character requires a good understanding of the mechanics of the rules in any case or else you'll find yourself gimped regardless

{{Maybe he markets OOC only?}}

Well, if they know they have JB for tank, they might.

I think I would, at this point.
Oh my, one or two powers being made situational!

That's like complaining Gunslingers make Caltrops, or other Auras, "useless" - and I've yet to see you complain about them.
And by the way, PToD do bite controllers more than doms, as it cuts their damage in half (outside of the pet, if they have one).

Because there is no need for it if people used the tools they've already been given to challenge themselves with the existing content.

You show me an all Blaster STF run with no Inspirations, no Enhancements, AT Powers only, no Temp Powers, no Travel powers, debuffed players, buffed enemies and no faceplants and I might concede that people seeking challenge have exhausted the tools given to them and maybe are entitled to special content.

Additionally, I don't think I should have to fund content I don't want in the game and I've been given no way show my support of content I do want to support beyond complaining loudly and causing a scene about what I don't like, which is what I'm doing and what I plan to continue doing unless I'm stopped not of my own free will. If you don't like it you can put me on ignore, urge the devs to get it together or leave yourself. Those three options suit me fine.


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Because setting to +4/x8 and standing in spawns doesn't get old.

You aren't entitled to make that call and are incredibly arrogant for thinking you are.

I think most of us would prefer if you left. We're fine with the content. You're not. You're with the outliers. If you don't want to fund it, don't. If it's really such a problem, bail out and find another game to criticize ad infinitum.

No u.

The challenge level of the content has been fine for years and until just recently when the devs got a bug up their **** and decided they need to ape WoW and try for some 'dynamic' battle like CO.


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To be fair, I did it wrong. SR can practically run right out of double-stacked caltrops, but once they get quintuple stacked or worse, you're a dead man walking unless you can kill enough of them fast enough to open an escape hatch. You're not supposed to let yourself get surrounded on all sides by KoA, especially if you've decided to play at x8.

I just made a mistake, and paid the price for making a mistake. It happens. At least, it happens to me. Often enough to know when a claim of invincibility has to be due to either luck or an exaggeration or a statement from a robot.


Interesting thing about caltrops, though. Caltrops deal 0.05 scale damage per second, and that is considered "trivial damage." Worth noting: a standard scale 1.0 attack has 4 second recharge. If the attack has about 1.0 second of cast time - fairly short as critter attacks go - a scale 1.0 attack would have 5 second cycle time and generate 0.2 scale damage per second. Except even minions only hit about half the time, which means that 0.2 scale damage per second is actually only about 0.1 scale damage per second of damage that actually lands. Caltrops, which are described as doing "trivial" damage, actually deal about half the damage as a minion with one attack would do. Typical minions have two attacks, which means a single patch of caltrops does about 25% of the damage of a typical minion. Another way of looking at it is that a KoA minion with caltrops is about as dangerous as a +1 minion (which would hit 11% harder 10% more often: 22% more damage). The difference between even con and +1 is essentially being described in the caltrops description as "trivial."

you know, I only show up on the boards for a week or two before fading to lurking again and forgetting its existence for the most part for the next two months or so before getting bored and coming back

it really says something that I recognize a name as a troublemaker...Johnny Butane in example

I know I'm going off topic here, but I do remember a tank player bashing Dual Blades. The bashing was something along the lines of calling it useless or a waste of dev resources due to it being unpopular among tankers. I'm not sure if it was Johnny or another tank player, but I wish I had saved that post somewhere. I've never leaned towards generalizing players but I may have to make an exception for tank players.

Some of my characters

Energy Transfer was fine for years, until they nerfed it to hell and back. Having separate green and yellow lines was fine for years, until they merged them. PvP was fine for years, until they rewrote it from the ground up. Defender damage was fine for years, until it got a boost when solo. We couldn't switch sides for years, until they added it. We didn't have inventions for years, until they added those.

Just because something has been like it was for a long time does not mean the devs wanted it the way it was. Maybe they just didn't have time to look at it before. Maybe they always knew what they wanted to do, but didn't have the time, budget or people to make underlying changes they wanted. You can't look at it from the perspective of long consistency and decide that they suddenly got a wild hair to change something for change's sake. It's pretty clear to me that you're presenting it from that perspective because you dislike the change, and describing it in that way suggests it was done with little planning or foresight. But you don't know that with any certainty; it's just posturing on your part.

This game hasn't been as static as you seem to be suggesting. It's been evolving for a long, long time. One of the earliest jolts in difficulty it got (after I1 added the original 41-50 content) was with I6 and the release of CoV, where the main NPC opponents were noticeably more obnoxious than CoH players were used to, and in some cases as hard in the 20s and 30s as some of the most challenging NPCs CoH had in its 40-50 game. (To this day, Arachnos are practically the gold standard in challenging foes, referenced as annoying and dangerous by people who pull some of the most consistently ridiculous stunts imaginable.) The player base has been evolving over the years, and the devs have been evolving with them. Fortunately, it hasn't been an wide-open arms race, and I don't believe it is even with this new content. But I do expect the Incarnate content specifically to be more blatant in its escalation of power. Unlike you, I just don't expect that to translate directly into broad escalation throughout the entire game.

actually, I was a tank player for a good five years or so...recently lost my feel for the class...

my older brother is just SOOO much better than me at it...seen footage of him tanking the old infinite-spawn demon gate in the Infernal mission, along with facing Infernal for the space of a dull pain followed by unstoppable when dull pain ended and another dull pain when unstoppable ended....somewhere around 6 to 10 minutes back when people thought Invuln was weak

No, the challenge has not been fine. Maybe for you it has, but obviously not for others.

What's so bad about adding more challenging end game content? It's not like they're ignoring everything else, just look at Going Rogue. As far as I know, one of the biggest complaints about this game throughout the MMO community is the lack of end game content. Again, why is it so bad to try and address this issue?

Removing stuff from the game and gimping yourself just to try to make the game harder gets old. Enhancements are a big part of the game I enjoy, but just to find a challenge I can't use them? I don't understand why you think our characters should get stronger, but not enemies along with us? Sounds like you won't be happy until you're able to stand still and one shot everything in the game with Brawl.

Actually, as long as you're willing to try and meet the minimum requirements (for example, having an Alpha boost slotted for ATF & TM2TF) i'd be more than happy to have you join up on any Incarnate content. Many of the people i play with will also invite almost anyone who wants to join for almost any content. Some of them will invite anyone who asks, and the rest usually do the same after first inviting anyone from the channel first and then fill in any spots left. (Nowadays i find most of my groups of friends tend to fall along global channel rather than SG lines.)

As far as i'm concerned it, whatever it may be, is for you if you want it. Dechs Kaison and Smurphy take the same approach for the most part as well, just to mention two others.

that camp has always been in the game "We're superheroes, we shouldn't have trouble with these guys."

Revisionist history. The "standard content model" for this game has evolved over the years, and I've been there every step of the way. Its always been the case that the standard difficulty was intended for "core, standard content." There has *always* been exceptions to the standard difficulty guidelines, whether its been Maria, or the LRSF, or the respec trial. The end game is another exception, and a predictable one. I've been saying this very thing since before any details of the end game system or end game content were released.

I also think its amusing to see you reference "dynamic CO content." Firstly, because of the notion that if the devss want to add more sophisticated content to the game, its because they have to be copying CO. It can't be, say, that they've been thinking about it for years before Cryptic went off to make MUO and then CO. Castle once posted in the open forums, in reply to a post I made regarding the reluctance the devs have for making certain kinds of advanced content, that in fact the devs are always looking for ways to do that, but practical limits of the game and the resources available to them were the limiting factors, not their will to do it (the specific subject: permanent dynamic environments).

Secondly, because of all those posts where you said CO was going to clean CoX's clock for a variety of reasons, most hilarious of which was that you knew based on conversations you had with him that Jack (Emmert) shared your game design philosophy and perspective on comic book gameplay. That's a quote I wish I kept, but I don't think I did, mores the pity.

The Incarnate system and the end game is really an outgrowth of the NCSoft buyout of 2007, when the shift to larger game system expansions than had been previously possible became priorities. Real Numbers, the Architect, Praetoria, and the end game and Incarnates are all fallout from that moment in time.

Development cycles are looooong. Most of this stuff goes back at least eighteen months if not more. The plans for end game probably predate CO's launch.

Enhancement Diversification. GDN. Troller 'rebalancing'. Travel Suppression in PvE.

Not everything is about you. Or me. It's just a game.

Invest effort to get better?

Or give up.

Either is fine.

Yes, I'm sure Kicking them in the Face will get you what you want.

Hmmm, sounds pretty selfish to me. The devs are adding content to their game to make it more favorable to a wider group of players as well as adding variable mechanics for *everybody*. Even if you don't want some additions or don't like some changes doesn't change the fact that what your dollar *is* funding is other stuff you *do* want like upgraded graphics, costume pieces, new maps, more play modes, etc.

It's like walking into a McDonalds to buy a McRib but thinking you should get a discount cause the secret sauce on their Big Mac isn't to your liking.

Or more relative, if the devs try to add some more to PvP, would you throw your arms up in a hissy fit just because it's not what you want?

Just because the devs are adding variable content doesn't mean they aren't adding more normal contacts, missions, TFs and GM/AV encounters for you. In the very same issue, did they not add more tip missions too?

How about getting off your duff and whining about forum-nazis telling you to 'lrn2ply' and start dropping some suggestions for regular missions/content? I can think of quite a few, like expanded tip missions, new/varied bank/safeguard missions and so on...Hell, it shouldn't be that hard since all you're looking for is the same old stuff that anyone can damn near duplicate for you in AE.

I think this important. It's one thing to essentially be excluded from content because of restrictions on how one plays the game that are not directly imposed by the game itself. This can range from not playing often on teams, or attending TFs or not dabbling in IOs or the market. Note that I don't assume that all these restrictions are self-imposed. Some folks play at times it's hard to get on teams, or can't set aside enough time to run a "typical" TF.

It's another thing to imagine that people are excluding you from content because of perceived elitism. There are, without a doubt, people who will do that. I do not think it is wise to assume that the majority of people who might be in a position to do so will do so. I'm pretty willing to play at least some of the time with anyone who's actually a nice person to hang out with. If they happen to be willing to pick up some tricks of the trade and become a better player over time, so much the better.

Mostly, in my opinion, being a good player means you're willing to pay attention to what's going on and do something helpful to your team. If someone can do that and and be fun to hang around with, I'd be up for playing with them often. Being a good player does not mean that you're able to bum rush four AVs and let them dance on you without dying. That might mean you have a good build, but whether or not you're a good player is often something completely different. (If you're a good player, fun to play with, and have good builds, you're a real gem in my book.)

You don't need top-end builds to do most of this stuff, by the way. If you don't have one, what you need are buffs and maybe debuffs. That's what teams are for. Pum's a good example. I don't think he does much in the way of IOs on his characters. He gives most of his phat l3wt away in contests. He runs with people many of whom IO their characters to the gills, and he does fine. He knows the game well, and our teams usually have plenty of buffs to pass around. And when he doesn't get enough buffs for the way he plays, well, someone usually has Vengeance. >.>