Some Thoughts on Improving the Game

Let me start by saying that I'm really enjoying CoX. I started playing last September, right about the time Freedom went live for VIPs (and I am indeed VIP). I've been a WoW player for three years, but since I'm not a raider or serious PvPer, I've grown horribly bored with that game and came here looking for a replacement. I can happily say that CoX has been outstanding. I especially like the "The journey is more important than the destination" aspect of the game. As I mentioned above, I'm really not all that focused on max-level, "end game" content; I'm more story-driven and have been quite happy taking my time leveling while exploring as many mission arcs as I can (not to mention the fact that I'm a longtime comic book fan, and my favorite superheroes have always been the "solo" types, rather than the "team types"). I only got my first character to level 40 a couple days ago, and that's taken me since September. Granted, I already have a ton of alts, and that has slowed down my main's advancement, but that's okay with me. I'm having a blast.

Having said that, I do feel there is room for improvement, and have a couple suggestions. And just because I feel like it, I will present my suggestions using sarcasm, with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek

First off, I asked myself, "What one thing does this game need to make it even better than it already is? To really put it 'over the top'?" I gave this some thought, along with the fact that my main is a Blaster, and I came up with the answer: More knockback!

You see, when I think about what I enjoy most in video games, I realize that what I most look forward to is spending a large portion of my time lying on the ground and standing back up. The best part of lying on the ground is the complete inability to defend myself. Nothing says "epic adventure" or "heroic" like dying 15 seconds after entering a mission because the first group of three enemies I encountered immediately unloaded on me with knockback attacks, sending me flying all the way back to the door where I now can't even see myself due to the camera being embedded in the back of my head, and since I'm unable to either defend myself or pop an inspiration, I'm promptly stomped into paste. The excitement I feel while flying the full length of the zone from the hospital back to the mission entrance to try again is quite a rush!

The second improvement I have in mind involves adding more settings that don't work as advertised. The practical joke where I visit a Field Analyst and tell him, "I want to fight enemies -1 to my level*", and then the following missions primarily contain 95% enemies that are +1 to my level is pure comedy genius. Just yesterday, after double-checking my settings with a Field Analyst, my level 40 fire/fire blaster entered a mission where she discovered that every enemy (100%!) in the mission was level 41. Even better, all but maybe six of them were lieutenants. Engaging one of these enemies and only being able to get off two attacks (which missed) before being chain-knocked back-knocked down-held-immobilized-stunned and then dying without inflicting any damage on them had me howling with laughter!

All right, I got that out of my system. I'll try to be serious and constructive now.

The knockback issue just seems to be out of hand, from what I've seen in the game so far. I realize this is more of a problem for blasters, since we really have next to no defense against it, even at high levels, but even scrappers and brutes have trouble with it at lower levels. It's the primary reason I lost interest in playing any of my Praetorian characters after I got one of them to level 20 and she skipped town to take up heroing in Paragon City. Those crazy, drug-addled gang members (can't remember what they're called at the moment... "Destroyers"?) seemed to have nothing but knockback attacks. It was just frustrating and tiresome constantly falling down and standing up, falling down and standing up, over and over. I thoroughly enjoyed the Praetorian storyline; I just couldn't take the frustration of getting knocked down non-stop. The only thing I've found I can do for my blaster is plugging a Karma: Knockback Protection IO into her Combat Jumping pool power, though I haven't been able to do that yet. And if she didn't have Combat Jumping, she wouldn't even have a place to slot that IO.

The issue with the Field Analysts/Fateweavers and the difficulty settings has bugged me since I started playing. I discovered I had to choose "-1 to my level" simply to get enemies my own level. If I kept the default "+0" setting, I found that almost every mission was full of +1 enemies. This was mainly an issue when I was still brand-new to the game and figuring out how things worked — all my characters were low-level, and with only two attack powers, fighting +1 enemies, especially lieutenants, was too much. The "+1 when I chose -1" thing seems more recent, like it started a couple patches ago (I play on a Mac, so this may not be affecting Windows players), so it may simply be a bug.

I was trying to figure out why +1 lieutenants were giving me so much more trouble than +0 elite bosses. My conclusion was "preparation". Elite bosses usually spawn where I can see them before entering aggro range, so I can position myself, pop the requisite inspirations, and use my chargeup powers (and on my blasters, open up with a sniper attack for big damage). Lieutenants, on the other hand, frequently spawn, say, just around the corner at the top of some stairs, so I never even see them until I come around that corner and run smack into them, leaving me no chance to prepare before engaging. And if they're +1 to me, they have a much better chance of hitting me than I have of hitting them. So I'm affected by every knockback/hold/immobilize they attack with, while my own attacks frequently miss them and my blaster's one lonely immobilize power fails to immobilize them. What I'm getting at is that it's not "fun" getting repeatedly roflstomped by higher-level enemies purely because I can't do anything.

* Yes, I know, easy setting. Like I said, I'm more interested in going through the story, at least at this point. I'll increase the difficulty later.

There is a sub forum for ideas like this. Player Question forum is not the best place for game ideas.
Here the link to said forum:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/forumdisplay.php?f=603

Good post from a new player. It's valuable to see how new players perceive the game.

That said, on your specific issues:

Knockback: Universal Travel, Knockback protection. You can take a travel power at level 4, and slot this at level 7. Yes, I think it's like 100,000,000 on the market, but it's that good. Level a scrapper to 20, get 2 Alignment Merits, buy one and email it to your level 7 blaster.

Field Analyst: never heard of this issue; it sounds bugish. If you change your difficulty, a mission "in progress" won't change, because it's already been spawned. You have to "reset" the mission by Abandoning it, the talking to the contact again. That should respawn it at the correct level. If that doesn't work, it's likely a bug. What mission is it specifically? The mission itself might make a difference.

Perhaps Rik you could approach this by asking " How does a blaster avoid KB issues?"

One of my most beloved toons is a blaster who takes more of a beating then most tanks ever will and Ill be happy to share a few tricks to harden up your apparently glass canon.

First it sounded like you said a fire blaster and I wanted to laugh. Sorry but that is just to much heat and not enough substance.

you should be considering Debuffs and how they effect your potential survival. Sonic softens up your targets against dmg, making it both outright better dps then fire in any sustained battle but on a teams makes them do more to. Dark offers to hit debuffs making you effectively much harder to hit. Psi offers lots of lovely soft controls like psi tornado to keep hoardes bouncing up and down all day long.

2ndary wise I personally only recomend mental for drain psyche that power alone adds ALOT of lasting power to blasters. If you cant access IOs as a ftp or low tier preemee, then consider acrobatics as a way to help shore up against lower power KBs at least.

And no considering once you do learn the ropes you will like the rest zoom up so fast, saying its a long hard road to powers that offer mez pro in the scrapper/tank/brute lines is silly. till then its easy to get by on break frees. Thanks to merits its so easy to use even a mid lvl toon to twink a lowbie that there isnt even much of a good excuse for anyone talking about havinga 40+ and a stable of alts from lacking H/V merits enough to supply a few KB pro IOs.

It's worth mentioning that Praetorian mission content is generally quite a bit more difficult than Primal content from the same level ranges (even the newer Primal content).

The thing with difficulty settings is definitely not supposed to work the way you describe, nor does it in my experience. It should be noted that missions spawned at +0 actually spawn enemies both at +0 and +1, but if you're spawning it at -1 then you shouldn't be getting +1s at all. I know there was a bug ages ago where only Lieutenants would spawn in a mission, and I don't think it was ever fully quashed (I haven't seen it happen in a while though). That might be what you're running into.

Something else to think of: some enemy groups only come in specific level ranges. So even if you set your difficulty to spawn them at -1, they can only spawn at their lowest possible level.

And maybe look into taking Hover. My first blaster was an energy/energy. Hovering while not always the case on some maps will negate alot of knockback powers simply because you will not be in melee. And Hover can allow you to recover from kb effects faster though it isn't fool proof. You still will get flipped in the air and cannot act until righted, but you will still be able to see to react to where the enemies are.

Personally I would like to see MORE knockback. First it's a great soft mez. Second I think all powers that do smashing damage should do knockback if that attack defeated the target or if the amount of damage done is a significant percentage of the target's hit points.

As for knockback affecting me? All's fair baby but we do have ways to counter it.

What's your Global? Next time I'm on I'll email you a Karma -KB.
It should solve your KB issues.

First off, welcome to the game! Another thought on addressing your knockback issues is the lowly breakfree inspiration. Breakfrees protect from knockback. But of course your inspiration tray is valuable so I have an alternative storage idea. Email your global name however many breakfrees you want up to the limit. Any level 10 character can send emails.

Additional ways to store inspirations include SG storage racks and auction slots.

By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, the PvE mobs cheat.

You can be chain KBd until you are dead (ie: hit and KB'd, as you are standing up KB'd again, as you are standing up KB'd yet again etc. ad nauseam) all the while keeping you locked out of activating ANY powers or using any inspirations. You will notice that there is an occasional bug that if you are just beginning to activate a power and are hit with KB at nearly the same time you "may" be KBd but land on your feet. This is not a bonus as you still can't activate any powers for the duration of the KB (ie: the time it would take you to get back up again.)

PvE mobs on the other hand have KB suppression. They can be hit with KB and if they are hit again immediately (or shortly thereafter) are unaffected by the KB in that subsequent attack. They also are not locked out of activating powers immediately (notification and mob attack queueing apparently happen before the KB is applied and powers are locked out.)

PvE mobs also have a version of the above bug. They will sometimes be mid-power activation when hit with KB and will land on their feet. This does NOT lock them out of activating any powers as the power that was activating while they were hit will fire and they will frequently fire off another before they finish moving backwards. (The distance the mob is KBd in this instance is also much less than it should be.)

One other source of KB prevention that no one else has mentioned yet is Acrobatics from the Leaping pool. The problem with Acrobatics is that it requires 2 other powers from the leaping pool be chosen before it is "unlocked" for that character and it's .26 end/sec cost can be prohibitive. It provides mag 9 KB protection that can be enhanced somewhat (a single, Single Origin KB enhancement will increase that to mag 10.2) it also comes with mag -2 hold protection (with your inherent mag -1 this will allow you to avoid a single hold) and it gives 44.84% hold resistance (this is not really that much. It would reduce the duration of a 30 second hold to just under 21 seconds which is still 15 seconds too long to keep a blaster alive).

The reason that most people don't mention Acrobatics is that the opportunity cost is too high.

Aha, I think I may have solved my recent +1 mob mystery, after running into it again:

Malta. Would I be correct in guessing this enemy group starts at level 41? The Hero Morality Mission I mentioned earlier that was giving me trouble was full of level 41 Malta Gunslingers (lieutenants), and I got another Tip mission last night that had Malta mobs in it, and once again they were all level 41. The other Tip missions I ran that did not include Malta mobs were fine.

Fortunately, I'm only a couple bubbles away from 41 myself, so this shouldn't be an issue much longer.