Did You Know - Return of the Son of the Unofficial History Thread
By
Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2011-08-24 18:53 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Save for the part about Resistance resisting Resistance debuffs (which I'll still have to check for myself before I go spreading further misinformation), what I said certainly was right; I just used different function names (which you're calling apsects). Did you get those from you-know-who or did he get them from you?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Wait, that's not right.
This game has Attributes and each attribute represents some specific thing: a damage type, an attack type, regeneration, etc. Each Attribute has a set of Aspects. Those aspects include things like Cur, Abs, Str, Res, Max, and MaxMax (there are others). Cur and Abs are two different ways of looking at the same thing: the Attribute's *Value*. Cur represents the attribute value as a percentage of its maximum. Abs represents the attirbute value in terms of its absolute value. |
From a strictly mechanical standpoint, it makes more sense (to me) to say "In regards to Smashing Damage (effect type), modify Hit Points (function) by 85.83 (value)." That's how it's organized by the powers engine. Mechanically, the function that modifies HP also modifies Endurance, the brown bar for Domination/Fury, and it's been seen to grant Inf and XP during a certain closed beta. For that reason, I refer to it as Inflict.
In any case, Heal is a damage type (in the context of Modify HP via Heal), resistance debuffs themselves can't be buffed (but can apparently be indirectly resisted), and Hamidon Enhancements can be used in exploit to buff the wrong attributes of a power (since they're effectively the opposing sides of the same coin).
Specifically for the Hami-Os, it looks like this... Enhancement says "Enhances Damage," or "Smashing Damage (effect type), buff (function), 33% (value)." Slot into a click shield like the ones in Sonic or Thermal, and you're boosting a power by saying "Smashing Damage (effect type), resist (function), 33% (value)" instead of the normal 20% reserved for Resist Damage Enhancements. All the Enhancement looks at is effect type and value, function notwithstanding.
EDIT:
I suppose in the spirit of being hyper-technical, I should clarify that slotting a Damage Enhancement into a power actually boosts that power as a whole and any effects it has that pertain to damage types (the 8 standard types; including those of any summoned entities). On top of that, a power may Inflict damage or Resist it (among other things), in which case its base value is multiplied by whatever boost the Enhancement gave it.
Under normal circumstances, powers that grant Damage Resistance do not accept Damage Enhancements and vice-versa. This is what, say, the Alpha Incarnate Abilities checks to determine whether to apply its "buff to Damage attribtues": Musculature only works on Damage and Cardiac only works on Resist Damage. The Hamidon Enhancements, on the other hand, can be slotted into any power that accepts any of the individual attributes that they Enhance, meaning any other boosts come along for the ride and can do weird things like grant a Damage boost to a power that grants Damage Resistance.
Something to note when you're "checking" how Resistance interacts with resist debuffs:
In the case of 30% resistance, and a 10% debuff, consider the following:
Debuff is resisted by 30%: The net debuff value becomes 7%.
That 7% is subtracted from your 30% resistance: Your resistance is now 23%.
Without the debuff you were taking 70 damage from a 100 damage attack.
With the debuff you are taking 77 damage from a 100 damage attack.
77 damage is 10% more than 70 damage.
You can do the math yourself, but whatever numbers you plug in for debuff and resistance, the increase in incoming damage is always going to be equal to the percentage value of the unresisted debuff. In an odd way, resistance debuffs always have the same proportional effect: A -100% resistance debuff will always double your damage, even resisted.
In the case of 90% resistance, and a 100% debuff, consider the following:
Debuff is resisted by 90%: The net debuff value becomes 10%.
That 10% is subtracted from your 90% resistance: Your resistance is now 80%.
Without the debuff you were taking 10 damage from a 100 damage attack.
With the debuff you are taking 20 damage from a 100 damage attack.
20 damage is 100% more than 10 damage.
The trick is: Don't let this peculiarity of the math trick you into thinking that resistance isn't doing anything. It's likely saving your life. For an example, lets say in the most recent example of -100% resistance debuff versus 90% resistance, that the debuff was unresistable. Your resistance drops from 90% to -10%, and damage from a 100 point attack goes up from 10 to 110, 1000% more damage.
Thankfully, unresistable debuffs to Resistance are INCREDIBLY rare, the only example I know of offhand are Vanguard Sword Rangers and Eliminators, the Claw users, who apply unresistable debuffs to Energy resistance and are famed for shredding tanks who are caught off guard by large groups of them as the incoming damage quickly increases by a factor of 10 or more as the debuffs stack up.
Unrelated, but noteworthy:
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This is patently incorrect. Using defender Psionic Blast as the point of comparison:| To counteract this, Psionic powers are given a lower base damage than other blast powers. |
Mental Blast is 9.3 damage at level 1 on a 4 second recharge for 5.2 endurance: Directly comparable to Dark Blast, Charged Bolts, Power Bolt, Ice Bolt, and X-Ray Beam.
Subdue is 12.28 damage at level 1 on a 6 second recharge for 6.86 endurance: Directly comparable to Scream, and Dual Wield.
Telekinetic Blast is 15.25 damage at level 1 on a 8 second recharge for 8.53 endurance: Directly comparable to Slug, Lightning Bolt, Power Blast, and Ice Blast.
Will Domination is the possible exception: While it matches Bitter Ice Blast in Recharge time, it deals only 18.23 damage compared to Bitter's 21.2. But it also only costs 78.3% as much endurance, making it more efficient in that way, and has a 16 second Leutennant grade sleep at 80% proc rate attached, which is almost impossible to compare to Bitter's debuffs, and almost would slate this as primarily a control power if it weren't for the huge damage it deals.
Psychic Scream has better damage than Energy torrent for the same recharge time and endurance cost, though Scream's cone is narrower it is also much longer.
Psionic Tornado has slightly less damage than Neutron Bomb, on a longer recharge, but also with a wider radius.
Psychic Wail is similarly directly comparable to Nova, Black Star, and Dreadful Wail.
For completeness's sake, since the blaster versions are different:
Psionic Dart = Charged Bolts, Power Bolt, Ice Bolt.
Mental Blast = Lightning Bolt, Power Blast, Ice Blast, Slug.
Telikinetic Blast = Is actually weaker than the comparable Power Burst and Cosmic Burst, Dealing 7.6% less damage while only costing 2.1% less endurance at the same recharge.
Psionic Lance = Zapp, Sniper Blast, etc.
And Dominators' Psionic Dart is a clone of Thorny Darts minus the DOT chance.
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Did You Know - City of Heroes CCG Player Designed Card
When City of Heroes launched back in 2004, the Powers That Be were experimenting with cross marketing the game into other hobbies.
Jack Emmert had worked previously at Eden Studios, the pen and paper RPG publisher and he tapped them to design a PnP RPG for City of Heroes.
Similarly, Sean Fish aka Manticore, the lead story guy at the time, was friends with Dave Williams of Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG), the publishers of Legend of the Five Rings and other popular CCG brands.
AEG was tapped to produce a collectible card game based on City of Heroes that incorporated lore that was written or at least vetted by Sean and artwork that incorporated new art while also leveraging existing assets from the published CoH comics. (The citation for the "authentic" lore is long gone now, but I once had a PM from Dave Williams in reply to a lore question in which he assured me that the lore was solid because he was personal friends with Sean and it all came from the "horse's mouth", so to speak.)
AEG sponsored a "You Are The Hero" contest in which players described their character's origin in 200 words or less. The winner was a hero named "Ahnek Rah-Zul" and was incorporated into the CCG. Two sets of the game were printed - The first was named "Arena", and the second was named "Secret Origins". Ahnek Rah-Zul appeared in the second set.
These days, thanks to website reorganizations at AEG over the years, you have to use the Wayback Machine to see the original character model of Ahnek Rah-Zul.
Sadly, the CCG sold only moderately well. Meanwhile, AEG was caught up in the opening throes of the Great Recession that we're all still dealing with, so the game died a quiet death. No sets were printed beyond the initial imprint. The CCG was eventually even disconnected from AEG's main website, though many of the pages can still be called up if you know the links to them.
As can be seen by reading that page I linked from the Wayback, the initial idea was that the two games, MMO and CCG, would be cross-connected. You'd win codes at CCG tournaments for in-game MMO prizes, and the MMO might also somehow award you with CCG promos of one sort or another. That idea never came to fruition and is no doubt a big reason why the CCG never really caught on very strongly. It's a fine, quick battle game but it was intended to supplement the MMO and without that connection it didn't really appeal to a mass audience.
One point of interest - The Vanguard members make their first appearance in the CCG before they appeared in the MMO. Gaussian is implemented as a Sidekick, even. heh.
For those curious about the game mechanics, the Wayback page has links to the original GenCon demo decks that are still good. You can download those PDF files, print them, cut them out and play a battle with a friend.
The CCG was unique in one aspect - It incorporated "generic hero" cards that you could use to create your own personal tournament-legal hero to play with. AEG even created a "hero builder" on their website that is still operational. It's still fun to play with even if you'd have a hard time finding anything useful to do with it these days.
For the curious, more information about the CCG, including full card listings, can be found at Paragon Wiki's CCG page.
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Did you know that you could escape the terrain fairly easy back in the day? This is was fixed when a group of over 20 players (#s not guaranteed to be accurate) escaped the War Walls and began heading towards the sun. The Devs caught all but one fairly quickly, but that one made it 50 miles towards the sun before he was caught. Teleportation also let people get under the arena, and other places as well. One place that I discovered didn't require teleportation were various stores throughout Paragon City. For example, the natural (just 'Store' on the map), had a hole that you could jump through and land behind the counter, an off limits spot for players. By repeating jumping you could get inside, and then eventually outside the building into the black nether space surrounding it. I have a character parked next to one of the stores just for old times sake.
Did you know that character used to be able to cap damage without outside buffs? That's right, old school Hami-Os could enhance a power up by 50% in two or three attributes, and when you get six Dam/Acc Hami-Os into a power it would bring you to the damage cap of 400% (for some ATs, though the may all have been capped at this rate back then). This made the game trivial because even BU and Aim wouldn't help your damage. I actually think that with ED in place we should go back to the old school numbers.
That's all I have for now, but I've sure I'll think of more.
Did you know that for one very brief moment in time Peacebringers were the most OPed AT in the game's history? For a very short amount of time, there was a bug that allowed PBs to slot an infinite number of enhancers in their attacks, bringing them to much higher than the damage cap. A PB reportedly hit the ACTUAL damage cap, the amount of damage that is hard-capped as the maximum amount possible to deal (IE, even with 10^99 damage bonus you wouldn't deal more). This allowed said PB to two shot Hamidon. Needless to say, this was fixed quick and PBs were forced by karma to be the weakest AT in the game since.
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Yep I remember that on my DM/Regen Scrapper way back when. I was fighting the Crey Bosses that use the AOE shield ability from the Forcefield set and my miss rate was so high... or when the Sky Pirates used their shield generators..
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If an attack does smashing damage and energy damage, your smashing resistance resists the smashing damage and your energy resistances will resist the energy damage. But the defenses you can use have nothing to do with that. The attack itself has attack typing, which is the same thing as defense typing. If the attack is typed Smashing_Attack you can use your smashing defense against it. If the attack is typed Energy_Attack you can use your energy defense against it. If the attack is typed both you can use the better of the two.
And incidentally, "Smashing Defense" is the same thing as "Smashing attack type" - both are the same Attribute which is Smashing_Attack. That's what you buff when you buff what players call "smashing defense." Just to add a bit of Did You Know: Did You Know that this was not how the game was originally programmed? Originally, if an attack was typed Smashing_Attack and Energy_Attack the target didn't use the *better* of the two defenses, the target used *the sum* of both defenses. Today, we think scrapper melee sets that are all smashing or all lethal have a disadvantage to sets like Dark Melee which have substantial non-smash/lethal damage. But Did You Know that when the game was launched with the above rule, the players quickly realized that Dark Melee was at a strong *disadvantage* because while a set like Katana only had to deal with Lethal defense, Dark Melee had to deal with the combination of Negative defense *and* Smashing defense. Just try to hit something that had, say, a dispersion bubble up which had defense to both. The devs eventually decided this behavior was not intended, and changed it to the "use the single best defense you can" rule we have today. |
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And that same person go the Bug Hunter badge... was he the first? I believe he might of been.
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Originally Posted by Combat
Did you know that you could escape the terrain fairly easy back in the day? This is was fixed when a group of over 20 players (#s not guaranteed to be accurate) escaped the War Walls and began heading towards the sun. The Devs caught all but one fairly quickly, but that one made it 50 miles towards the sun before he was caught. Teleportation also let people get under the arena, and other places as well. One place that I discovered didn't require teleportation were various stores throughout Paragon City. For example, the natural (just 'Store' on the map), had a hole that you could jump through and land behind the counter, an off limits spot for players. By repeating jumping you could get inside, and then eventually outside the building into the black nether space surrounding it. I have a character parked next to one of the stores just for old times sake.
Did you know that character used to be able to cap damage without outside buffs? That's right, old school Hami-Os could enhance a power up by 50% in two or three attributes, and when you get six Dam/Acc Hami-Os into a power it would bring you to the damage cap of 400% (for some ATs, though the may all have been capped at this rate back then). This made the game trivial because even BU and Aim wouldn't help your damage. I actually think that with ED in place we should go back to the old school numbers. That's all I have for now, but I've sure I'll think of more. Did you know that for one very brief moment in time Peacebringers were the most OPed AT in the game's history? For a very short amount of time, there was a bug that allowed PBs to slot an infinite number of enhancers in their attacks, bringing them to much higher than the damage cap. A PB reportedly hit the ACTUAL damage cap, the amount of damage that is hard-capped as the maximum amount possible to deal (IE, even with 10^99 damage bonus you wouldn't deal more). This allowed said PB to two shot Hamidon. Needless to say, this was fixed quick and PBs were forced by karma to be the weakest AT in the game since. |
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Ah, that was from before my time then, I only started in Issue 3 with EU launch.|
Originally Posted by Liquid
Not quite.
 The ability to buy them from contacts was added after complaints about having to get them from drops below the level of the store-contacts. At first you could only get them via drops below 30. |
Consider me elightened
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
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Ah, yeah, that would explain it. I assume you know that all the Council arcs (not Striga, as that was added in issue 3) were originally 5th Column arcs, as was the Citadel TF (who was still named Bastion in Issue 3), but here are a few other things you might not be aware of:|
Originally Posted by Canine
Ah, that was from before my time then, I only started in Issue 3 with EU launch.
Consider me elightened |
When the game launched, Hasten was perma with 2 SOs.
Also at release, there was no damage resistance cap. The devs claimed there was a 95% DamRes cap, and most players believed it, but it didn't work. At level 22 I had 100% S/L resistance on my Invulnerability Tanker from 6 +3 SO slotted Temporary Invulnerability and Resist Physical Damage, and took 0 damage from Smashing and Lethal attacks.
At release, Super Speed had a massive (I think it was 50%) Def bonus on it, and a huge accuracy debuff (I think also 50%). This was heavily exploited by Tankers using Provoke-- which was autohit and had no target cap. Taunt, at the time, only hit one target.
I mentioned this above, but not the full details: prior to Issue 3, no Tanker had full status protection with the ability to move, except for Invulnerability once they slotted for perma-Unstoppable at level 34 (but that meant you crashed to 10% Health and Endurance every 2 minutes, which could get you killed if there was any psi damage around). Aside from that one case, only Invuln and Stone had full Status protection in Rooted and Unyielding Stance, but they couldn't move unless they had Teleport. Fire had its Stun Protection in Healing Flames, and didn't have Hold or Sleep protection at release (most took Acrobatics for its tiny amount of hold protection, and its KB protection), though it did have it placed in Burn in issue 1 (though it didn't work properly, and wasn't fixed until issue 2). Ice could move with Wet Ice, which didn't have sleep protection, and couldn't be used at the same time as the other armors.
Toxic damage and Toxic Damage Resistance didn't exist at release. Some "toxic" damage was untyped, which meant that no resistances would work against it (IIRC, DE Devoured's spit was one of these). The Vahzilok vomit was Fire damage, and Reaper/Mortificator Darts were Negative Energy until Toxic damage was added. Most people thought both of these were untyped.
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Toxic Resistance got added on top of other defensive powers at that time, too. It was usually granted by self heals for a few seconds after the heal itself was cast, but since Dark Armor's heal is so eccentric, they just plugged it into Dark Embrace instead.|
Originally Posted by Liquid
Toxic damage and Toxic Damage Resistance didn't exist at release. Some "toxic" damage was untyped, which meant that no resistances would work against it (IIRC, DE Devoured's spit was one of these). The Vahzilok vomit was Fire damage, and Reaper/Mortificator Darts were Negative Energy until Toxic damage was added. Most people thought both of these were untyped.
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To this day, there is no attack type for Toxic, so if you want to avoid things like Bile Spray or Poisonous Ray, you need positional Defense.
Toxic Resistance in the game is minimal, for the most part. The sets that resist it don't resist it a whole lot (save for the oddball ally shields in Poison), and protection from IOs for Toxic is harder to come by than Psionic. Electric Armor doesn't resist it at all. In fact, the only self shield with dedicated protection to Toxic damage is Scorpion Shield, and that's about as unusual as it gets.
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The primary thing I'm not sure you fully appreciate is that the "function" you mention is identical for all attribmods (power effects) separate from side effects: that function is addition. If there are any "functions" to how the value is applied, its due to the intrinsic nature of the aspects (and to some degree the attributes themselves) and how they work, and not how the actual power effects are applied to the target.|
Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Save for the part about Resistance resisting Resistance debuffs (which I'll still have to check for myself before I go spreading further misinformation), what I said certainly was right; I just used different function names (which you're calling apsects). Did you get those from you-know-who or did he get them from you?
From a strictly mechanical standpoint, it makes more sense (to me) to say "In regards to Smashing Damage (effect type), modify Hit Points (function) by 85.83 (value)." That's how it's organized by the powers engine. Mechanically, the function that modifies HP also modifies Endurance, the brown bar for Domination/Fury, and it's been seen to grant Inf and XP during a certain closed beta. For that reason, I refer to it as Inflict. |
The Attribute/Aspect distinction goes all the way back to Iakona, although my familiarity with them is somewhat more first-hand these days.
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| In any case, Heal is a damage type (in the context of Modify HP via Heal), resistance debuffs themselves can't be buffed (but can apparently be indirectly resisted), and Hamidon Enhancements can be used in exploit to buff the wrong attributes of a power (since they're effectively the opposing sides of the same coin). |
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Specifically for the Hami-Os, it looks like this... Enhancement says "Enhances Damage," or "Smashing Damage (effect type), buff (function), 33% (value)." Slot into a click shield like the ones in Sonic or Thermal, and you're boosting a power by saying "Smashing Damage (effect type), resist (function), 33% (value)" instead of the normal 20% reserved for Resist Damage Enhancements. All the Enhancement looks at is effect type and value, function notwithstanding. EDIT: I suppose in the spirit of being hyper-technical, I should clarify that slotting a Damage Enhancement into a power actually boosts that power as a whole and any effects it has that pertain to damage types (the 8 standard types; including those of any summoned entities). On top of that, a power may Inflict damage or Resist it (among other things), in which case its base value is multiplied by whatever boost the Enhancement gave it. |
The way damage buffs factor in is that before the attribmod is applied, the effect value is multiplied by, in this case, the caster's Smashing Strength. The caster itself has a Smashing Strength associated with it that includes the damage buffs applied to it. But the power itself might have Smashing Strength slotted into it. An enhancement is essentially a special kind of buff. Its effects are explicitly flagged to essentially only affect the power they are slotted into. So when the game engine sums up all the Smashing strength buffs before multiplying the power's effect by them, it includes the Smashing strength in that enhancement for that power but not for other powers.
This is controlled by flags. If a power has an effect that is *not* flagged as only affect power slotted into, it will actually buff the entire player. That's how some global enhancements work. You can actually make a damage enhancement that is flagged so that *every* power benefits from that buff, not just the power its slotted into if you want.
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| Under normal circumstances, powers that grant Damage Resistance do not accept Damage Enhancements and vice-versa. This is what, say, the Alpha Incarnate Abilities checks to determine whether to apply its "buff to Damage attribtues": Musculature only works on Damage and Cardiac only works on Resist Damage. The Hamidon Enhancements, on the other hand, can be slotted into any power that accepts any of the individual attributes that they Enhance, meaning any other boosts come along for the ride and can do weird things like grant a Damage boost to a power that grants Damage Resistance. |
And incidentally, effects that are not buffable are also not debuffable. Because as I said, technically speaking the game only knows how to add. Buffs and Debuffs are a matter of perspective for the player. Adding positive numbers to Damage Strength is a buff. Adding negative numbers to Damage Strength is a debuff. On the other hand, adding negative numbers to Mez attributes is a buff, while adding positive numbers to Mez attributes is a mez. So when you flag something as ignoring strength, that is both "buff" strength and "debufF" strength because the game doesn't know the difference.
I keep thinking I should make a flowchart for this, although I'm not sure what the devs would think about that.
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"Do we have spare cube wall space somewhere to post this?"
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I keep thinking I should make a flowchart for this, although I'm not sure what the devs would think about that.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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True story: on a lark, and because I could, I decided to make a flowchart of how all the animation sequences were connected together for BaB. However, scaled to be readable, the chart would have been six hundred feet wide.
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Originally Posted by Void_Huntress
"Do we have spare cube wall space somewhere to post this?"
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Incidentally, what happened to Iakona? I remember something about a ban for posting confidential Beta information and then nothing.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The Attribute/Aspect distinction goes all the way back to Iakona, although my familiarity with them is somewhat more first-hand these days.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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He was temp-banned when he posted inside info on the I9 Hamidon, but it was just a three day "please don't do that again" ban. He was around for I9, and I think I10ish, but then he decided to take a leave around I11 beta or so, and I haven't heard from him since then.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Incidentally, what happened to Iakona? I remember something about a ban for posting confidential Beta information and then nothing.
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To this day I still informally call the "don't post information about non-player powers that players couldn't theoretically test for themselves or the devs haven't explicitly mentioned" the "Iakona rule."
You know its been years now, and I'm still not sure what I should say or not say about Iakona and his data. Some people back then suspected several things, some of which were true, but technically speaking its still activity that could get anyone, including me, perma-banned in some circumstances.
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That may sound like a silly question, but... What's the harm in players knowing how enemies work? Are we banking on player ignorance to keep things balanced or something? And I say this as someone without your extensive knowledge of in-game operations.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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The part about the lower damage was already disputed, so I'll point out that this is inaccurate as well.|
Originally Posted by NightErrant
Did You Know? - The Power of the Mind
Psionic Damage is one of the most interesting damage types in the game.
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Powers from Mind Control and Illusion are non-physical (well, I suppose you could get into some fun arguments about Illusion's largely light-based powers, but...), and so they do not have a Positional component like most attacks do. This means that SR (or any other purely positional-based powers) cannot protect against them.
Psychic Blast on the other hand, does possess the usual Ranged/AoE components that you'd expect.
I'm a bit hazy when it comes to unique powers, though. I'm not 100% on things like the Carnival's mask powers or some of the higher level Arachnos Tarantula attacks (Cloud Senses, I think it's called?).
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The devs seem to be taking, in general, the attitude that if a player really, really wants to know, there are informal sources out there that can tell them. But they don't want to push that data onto the players that don't want to dig for them, so this game doesn't become a game where newer players are actually ostracized for not knowing the numbers. The vast majority of players don't know, and don't want to spend the effort to find out, and that's more or less seen as working by default.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That may sound like a silly question, but... What's the harm in players knowing how enemies work? Are we banking on player ignorance to keep things balanced or something? And I say this as someone without your extensive knowledge of in-game operations.
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There's a special case, though, and that's the Iakona case. The devs don't want to spend a lot of time constructing a puzzle for players to figure out like the towers in the STF or the mitos in the Hami raid, only to have someone like me come along and just hand the players all the information about them. The devs want players to experience the game before reading about the data, and I respect that position.
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Mask or Weakness (Steel Strongmen) and Mask of Vitiation (Dark Ring Mistress) are both NE, not Psi typed. I'm not sure right now about positional types (logged out of the game for the night, so can't check), but I think they're both Ranged/NE.
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Originally Posted by IanTheM1
I'm a bit hazy when it comes to unique powers, though. I'm not 100% on things like the Carnival's mask powers or some of the higher level Arachnos Tarantula attacks (Cloud Senses, I think it's called?).
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Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
Both of those Mask attacks are typed ranged and NE.
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On the flip side, there's the Trial participation metric (something else for a Did You Know, thread, by the way |
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
There's a special case, though, and that's the Iakona case. The devs don't want to spend a lot of time constructing a puzzle for players to figure out like the towers in the STF or the mitos in the Hami raid, only to have someone like me come along and just hand the players all the information about them. The devs want players to experience the game before reading about the data, and I respect that position.
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) which seems to be regarded as a company secret. My question here is why, in this particular case, are players not told they are being graded nor told HOW they are being graded? I get that the point is so players won't be able to game the system if they don't know the rules of the game, but isn't just blindly thrusting players into a situation where not only can they not tell what they're doing wrong and what they're doing right, but can't even tell what they need to do to improve... And them not knowing is working as intended... Kind of harsh?I guess the drive behind my question was "does knowing enemy powers and mechanics really give a knowing player a significant advantage? Does, for instance, my knowing that Chill of the Night is auto-hit and debuffs my defence a significant advantage that I have over a new player which a new player would feel ostracised by not knowing? This is an honest question, too.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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It is an advantage for me. But the question is would some players specifically Lord that knowledge over other players. And based on the fact we keep having discussions year after year about which builds and playstyles are legitimate, and which powers and abilities are supposedly necessary, I'm going to go out on a limb and say there probably are.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I guess the drive behind my question was "does knowing enemy powers and mechanics really give a knowing player a significant advantage? Does, for instance, my knowing that Chill of the Night is auto-hit and debuffs my defence a significant advantage that I have over a new player which a new player would feel ostracised by not knowing? This is an honest question, too.
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But what I also notice is that the harder it is to gain that advantage, the more likely it is for the person with it to not use that knowledge against other players. For example, all other things being equal, its not the min/maxers that are disproportionately the lrn2ply people: the better min/maxers tend to avoid that. Most of the people who have figured out the details of this game (and I'm not talking about myself specifically here) tend to want to share that information with no strings attached. The know-it-alls tend, on average, to be people who have been handed this stuff to them on a silver platter. That's a generalization, and like all generalizations you can find exceptions, but my impression is, for almost as long as we've a min/max community, the people that work the hardest to get information are the people least likely to attempt to inflict harsh judgment on other players.
I have theories on why this is the case, but they don't really matter here. What does matter to me is that this is a fortunate happenstance I would not want to tamper with unnecessarily, so I tend to tread lightly here.
To make sure I contribute to the premise of the OP, a few other unofficial history facts:
* Our understanding of how accuracy works owes a lot to the first Winter Event. The first Winter Event, which actually occurred at the beginning of 2005, was the first time the players had the ability to attack each other, using the snowball temporary power. This ability, which predates even the beta testing of the Arena by months, allowed some players (most notably Stargazer and Pennelope) to test how tohit and defense worked to a much better extent than previously possible.
* The original thread mentioned that Peregrine Island was an experimental city/hazard zone. I don't think it mentioned what that meant. PI used to have quad boss spawns. You could - very often - see four Warhulks or two Warhulks and two Fakes, or even four Master Illusionists spawning all over Peregrine Island.
* The Rikti Magus Elite Boss you see in ship raids made their first appearance in two missions in Angus McQueen's arc. Originally, and up to about Issue 9 or 10, one missions spawned one of them, and a second mission spawned nothing *but* them throughout the entire map. And this was true even if you attempted to solo the mission, and there was at the time no way to downgrade them.
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Did you know before Issue 5, aggro caps were non-existent? That's right, you'd have some (okay, a lot) unscrupulous heroes who herd the ENTIRE map of enemies in a 8-man team into one spot and burn them to death, because AoE caps did not exist either. :3
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Arc: 60092 - Supa Rumble in the Park
"Keep living the dream, and never let any jerk tell you what to do."
-- High-Roller
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The devs have been shown to make a push for participation in the Incarnate Trials and have set up a reward system that won't right-out grant the good stuff to the hardcore guys for being hardcore. Now, I disagree with their approach to "all Incarnate Trials all the time," but for what it's worth, keeping the exact details of the rewards system will keep people from bossing others around saying things like "If you go stand over there for 12 seconds, I have a better chance at a good reward so BUG OFF."|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
On the flip side, there's the Trial participation metric (something else for a Did You Know, thread, by the way
) which seems to be regarded as a company secret. My question here is why, in this particular case, are players not told they are being graded nor told HOW they are being graded? |
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I guess the drive behind my question was "does knowing enemy powers and mechanics really give a knowing player a significant advantage? Does, for instance, my knowing that Chill of the Night is auto-hit and debuffs my defence a significant advantage that I have over a new player which a new player would feel ostracised by not knowing? This is an honest question, too.
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Learning more about the powers we have is something the devs encourage, so you can get some pretty comprehensive resources like Mids or City of Data that don't so much break anything. However, revealing information of stuff found in the powers data before it's actually out there for people to see, well, that falls in the "leaks and sabotage" category.
For example, recently, someone (I won't say who due to privacy considerations) released a video showcasing the animations of an unannounced powerset (which I also won't mention because NCsoft doesn't want it announced yet). I don't know what happened with that exactly, but that video's gone now as well as the other information that came with it.
So knowing about powers, no, that's not a problem. Revealing information about unannounced game features? Yeah, that is.
Did You Know: The Salamanca Lake Monster
One of the many mysteries of the Zone known as Croatoa is the lake monster said to inhabit Lake Salamanca. "Sally" is prone to showing up only when you least expect it...
When Croatoa was in beta test phase, the discovery that there was an actual "lake monster' similar to Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster, was a source of vast amusement to many people.
In the beginning, Sally was an actual monster-class creature. I'm not sure if we still use that classification any more, actually, but on the scale of "bad guys" you pretty much had Minion, Lieutenant, Boss, Arch-villain, Monster and Giant Monster. Only the last level was truly the sort that required groups of heroes to handle. (I'm pretty sure this was before Elite Bosses were invented.)
A Monster could be handled by a small team or be soloed by a higher-leveled hero or by certain combos of archetypes and powers.
Anyway - Sally was a friendly sort, in that all she ever did was swim around on a very long timer. The problem, if problem you think it to be, was that there was a badge for seeing Sally and it tied into an accolade involving badges throughout the zone. There was not (and still is not, to my knowledge) any way to award a badge just for coming into close proximity with a NPC. The only way to collect the Believer badge was to attack and defeat her.
This led to a certain amount of controversy on the forums, with plenty of teasing by the badge collectors about Sally burgers, and plenty of impassioned arguments by the Sally backers about the needless hostility towards a rare mythical creature that wasn't even being aggressive, just to collect a badge.
Never mind that you have to defeat Sally TWICE to get the badge.
Nobody would likely be surprised that I was solidly in the "Save Sally" camp. In fact, the "movement" got dubbed as the "Save Sally" movement. LadySadako was one of its champions and she offered many fine arguments as to why there ought to be a peaceful way to get the badge. The controversy even brought the devs out to respond - ArcticSun, the web lore guy at the time, wrote a Paragon Times Article that purported to give a justification as to why Sally needed to be "defeated" for the safety of all Salamanca. heh.
Well, with the story laid out, the Save Sally movement at least got one of their demands, which was an explanation for having to fight her. However, the devs were suitably impressed and/or amused enough that they went further. When the issue went live, (or maybe some short time afterwards; it was years ago and my memory is faulty on good days) Sally had been altered. Instead of fighting back, she was revised to take one hit and then dive beneath the waves, "defeated". You still have to attack her to make that one hit and get your badge credit but with some things, game mechanics are game mechanics and you have to just go with the flow. Sally was "saved" thanks to the efforts of the players who didn't want to have to beat up a mythical creature just to say that they had seen it. 
On a related "Did You Know?" - It was once possible to use "Teleport Foe" to drag Sally up into Salamanca. It may even still be possible for that matter. It turns out that Sally is not much more than just a neck and head, in reality. It made for an amusing sight to see her "swimming" through town trying to get back to the lake. heh.
Did You Know? - The Power of the Mind
Psionic Damage is one of the most interesting damage types in the game.