Issue 2X: old powersets revamp?

You're making it a lot more complicated than it is. I don't hate Devices because it's "different." I hate Devices because it takes me three times as long to achieve anything as it takes my Fire Mastery or Energy Mastery Blaster, and that's if I'm lucky and my mines don't fizzle. I don't dislike Dual Pistols because it uses Swap Ammo and not Build Up. I dislike it because its overall DPA is horrid and I keep getting killed winding up over-long animations that an AT of such fragility doesn't benefit that much from. I disliked Stalkers before the change because they were forced to play smarter and harder and still only ever match Scrapper and Brute performance, who could achieve the same by falling asleep at the keyboard.

What the goal of game balancing should be is to let every player reach the same level of progression and performance with roughly the same level of skill and involvement. Exactly what the player has to do to achieve this isn't relevant, nor is the specific difficulty of achieving it, what matters is that all ATs and all powersets strike if not exactly that kind of balance, then at least something close to it.

At the end of the day, I will not play an AT or a powerset that constantly makes me feel like I'm working twice as hard to do half as good as most of my other characters. I don't care if its playstyle is an outlier, unique or interesting. If the character can't perform up to par, then there's something wrong with that character. And if I can't fix what's wrong with the build, then something's wrong with how that character is balanced, and something needs to be fixed. It's really just that simple.

I don't believe in "hard mode" characters. Hard mode is easily achievable by increasing your difficulty, and you're even rewarded more for it. If a character is "harder" to play than others at the same difficulty, all that means is that character is levelling up more slowly. That's precisely what got Blasters to Defiance 2.0 - Blasters were dying more, playing less and levelling slower than all other characters by a significant margin. They were clearly and provably underperforming, so they were improved. Not enough in my book, but apparently enough for people to play them again.

Variety and diversity can still exist in a system where most characters using most builds do roughly as well as each other. They don't need to accomplish this in the same way using the same tactics, just so long as they level about equally as fast in the hands of the same player. It's not about preference, uniqueness or technique. It's about performance. Nail that and you can proceed to be as unique about how you do it as you want.

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.

Now see, I love DP's animations, I just hate it's really terrible DPS!

Proof devs can't win!

Sam, you seem to be missing a very important point.
Devices doesn't actually take that much longer, if you do it right.
If you set up enough mines, you can basically one-shot an Elite Boss (okay, two shot, if you shoot him to pull him into the mine field).
The amount of time it takes to lay all those mines is about the same amount of time it'd take to whittle the EB's health with regular attacks.
The biggest difference is... You do so without taking a shot from the EB.
You may not like this approach.
Others do.
That is my point. And you've proven it true with many of the things you've said.
What exactly does get balanced around is entirely up to the designers, but when we players talk about fixing things, many players completely dismiss different playstyles in favor of their own.
As you clearly display here:
And here:
You want it to work how you play and you don't want it to work any other way.
Exactly my point.
I'm not going to argue that you're wrong, because it is just a matter of opinion.
And it is the opinion of the designers (and their estimates for a good business plan) that makes the decision.

I've played and loved a game that had far greater differences in how you play the game and what you could do in the game - from arranging sequences in music or dances, to harvesting resources, to running and checking large machines doing things for you, to building things for yourself or other players with your own unique ingredients and customizations, to flying space ships, to fighting in melee, to fighting at ranged, to tracking down wild creatures for their very particular hides or bones or for sampling their DNA or to cautiously approach a young one and tame them and take them in as a pet and train them as they slowly grow into your attack beast, to fighting for political sides, to running a town or a city as a mayor... I've probably left out a few things.
This was all within the same game and all aspects of play were designed and intended to be a completely legitimate standalone aspect of play. You could never touch another aspect of gameplay other than the one(s) you wanted and you'd still be paying for (and playing) a game suitable to your wants.

City Of Heroes has some semblance of this as well, all through the different ATs and the very different powersets within those ATs.

When somebody says and thinks the way you do... that your personal preferences are the standard that all ATs and/or powersets should appeal to... then you're doing a disservice to true differentiation and the potential benefit of disparity.


Of course, I agree that an overall balance of fair value for your time should be kept (one option that just plain cannot compete is likely a very bad thing).
However, just because a particular player cannot make an option work, does not mean that it is out of balance or underpowered.

As I said... it is a difficult and elusive thing for people to understand, recognize and agree upon.

And, of course, I agree that any designer/developer is free to balance their game however they choose.

To me, it looks apparent that CoH was intentionally designed with a few outliers. Those outliers are not under-performing. They just take a different approach.

Some options are square pegs... and your playstyle is a round hole.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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...hmmm bring range down from 150 to 95 (120 for assault rifle) for defiance snipe and I see no issue with this.

--edit--
If it's reasonably possible in the engine to treat snipes like this.

No offense. But I call BS.

While FF doesn't have the damage/control output of Traps, it's ALSO not relying on destructible/duration-limited pets for defense. And the defense moves with the "owner". So you can't "outrun" it. This leads to a more stable defense profile than you have with traps.

It ALSO leaves the "owner" free to concentrate on damage output with their secondary.

I think the term you're looking for is "effortless", not "boring".
Unless you're really into clicking like a console-fiend OD'ed on both crack and caffeine.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

hmm... sounds like you're not actually familiar with the set. My main is broadsword/regen and is incredibly tough. I would prefer that the regen set not be touched. Not even slightly.

I thought sniping mechanics were getting looked at in the near-ish future, similar to how Assassin's Strikes got reworked. Not that the mechanic would be just like AS mind you, nothing to my knowledge has been said regarding that, but that sniper powers have been acknowledged to be a problem across the boards.

Thing is. IOs allow a FF'er to hit softcap for THEMSELVES. Allowing them to then concentrate on ACTUALLY helping the team by adding damage output through more consistent use of their secondary.

Also, while the defense boosts are nowhere as big as Destiny Barriers, they're more stable in the long run.

My current FF/Arch defender sits at 35.8/48.7/46.5 Mel/Ran/AoE and over 50% energy defense.

In addition to 60% S/L resist, 36.6% Energy resist.

If I laze off on teammate bubbles, they get +20% defense when in range.
If I take the time to use PBAoE bubbles, they get +42% when in range and +22% when away from me.

What do IOs mean to me? It means my teammates aren't REQUIRING me to be the lynchpin of the group in the same way they would have previously. And now, instead of taking a group of teammates with "okay" defense and making them "great", I'm taking teammates with "great" defense and making them "INVINCIBLE". And I'm doing that in a way that doesn't require them to hide behind my skirts (to use a metaphor) just to enjoy outrageous defense values.

Needless to say I spend the good majority of my time outputting damage.
Moreover, playing at Incarnate level, all my attacks (save one Melee attack) have +112% EndRed and 100% or better damage increase.

Moreover, I haven't made more than a cursory attempt to optimize my Recovery. I have a Numina in there. But I haven't dropped a Miracle in yet. Nor am I mounting PerfShifter procs.

But I can attack, pretty much non-stop, without endurance issues.

And if something gets in too close and seeks to get around my "weak" melee defense?

This is what Repulsion Field, Force Bubble and Thunder Strike from my Epic are for.

My Forcefielder is NOT rendered obsolete by Destiny Barrier. My Forcefielder allows others the luxury of taking something BESIDES the Destiny Barrier and can exemp down without losing it completely.

Anyone telling you that FF is obsolete or "lacking" because "Barrier does it better" needs to put the crack pipe down and actually LOOK at the numbers in-game and think about more than just "U putz bubblez around muh peepz".

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Honestly I'd be fairly happy if more sets had both visually simple and over the top animations; where applicable anyway. Give dual pistols a more realistic style and at the same time give a set like broadsword animations inspired by a kung-fu sword form or something equally flashy.

Ok so...if Traps isn't a better choice, why is it generally seen as better by most people that Forcefields. Forcefield is a boring set to play you buff the bots, turn on toggles then tell pets to attack (or wander into aggro if you're tankerminding it up), wait a couple of minutes, recast.

You call it 'effortless' I call that 'boring'. Horses for courses. Heck my namesake is Bots/Forcefield and sure he is the safest mastermind playstyle there is, the pets and me are softcapped but it's not like I'll be soloing a GM anytime soon which Bots/Traps, Bots/Dark and Bots/Poison can all achieve.

Oh and when playing at high level with IOs, that Forcefield generator easily outlasts the recharge period so you can usually just resummon one if it fails to catch up to you plus you can stack acid mortar along with the heavy -regen and chance to proc a mag level hold which can hold anything in the game from Poison gas trap.

That's not true even in the slightest. I've fought Terra with Trip Mines. I laid around 10 mines slotted for as much damage as I could manage and that only took out about a third of her health. The rest I had to fight traditionally. I can't imagine laying down 30 Trip Mines before they start exploding, considering those come with a 20-second cooldown and a 4-second set-up time. Even if you slot them for recharge at the cost of accuracy or damage, the time you're taking to set them down is CONSIDERABLY longer than most other Blasters would need to fight Terra the old-fashioned way.

Specifically, I'm comparing this to my Fire/Fire Blaster, who took her down in around 30-40 seconds with just Aim, Build Up and tossing attacks as quickly as they recharged. This isn't a question of simple preference. Setting down Trip Mines took me twice as long, if not three times as long as my Fire Blaster's entire fight, and all that did was take a third of Terra's health away.

And that, by the way, doesn't even compare to my Stalker. I didn't fight Terra with her, but I did manage to take down Adamastor in about 20 seconds. Build Up -> Assassin's Strike -> Placate -> Vengeful Slice -> Weaken -> Focus Assassin's Strike -> Attack Vitals -> Focus Assassin's Strike -> end combat. 20 seconds, if that. No set-up time, no hoping a minion won't run in and blow up all my mine, and I did it with considerably more personal protection on top of it.

Not only that, but Blasters don't fight JUST elite bosses. They spend most of their time fighting regular spawns and much of their time fighting on teams. In both cases, Devices either simply can't use many of its powers (like Trip Mine) or otherwise wastes more time doing it than that time is worth. You always need a corner to pull to if you're setting up mines, but there aren't always corners around, as is the case with many wide open outdoor instances. Devices, then, begins to depend on terrain where most other sets don't. You're also always running the danger of having just one weak minion run ahead and detonate all your mines, wasting your set-up time, which I've had happen far too often. You can try to set up a Caltrops field over the mine so you slow the minion down and get more enemies between the trigger radius and the explosion radius, but I spent six years trying to figure this out and the best of my efforts were still little better than crap shots.

I tool Devices to 50, then a second time up to 40. In fact, I still have my 40 Archery/Devices Blaster. At not a single point in time did I ever find Devices to perform better than very much any of my other Blasters. My Devices Blasters simply levelled up so... slow... And it always took them ages to clear out a simple mission. I'm no fan of Blasters in general, but I've played all of their secondaries, and none has been as slow to level as Devices.

That, and the thing has a whole host of nearly useless powers. Smoke Grenade barely has a reason to exist, Time Bomb is horrid even when you manage to hit anything with it and Cloaking Device offers about the same benefits as Stealth from the Concealment pool. As I don't accept that a set having "skippable" crap powers is a good thing, I consider this a drawback to the set, as well.

You're misreading what I'm saying. I don't want stuff to work exactly like how I say they should work. I want them to work AT ALL. I don't know how you can argue with a straight face that having to work twice as hard to be only half as good is anything but broken. That's not a matter of opinion nor a matter of preference. It's a matter of game balance. No player should be put at a disadvantage for picking a specific class or picking a specific set of powers, and in a lot of cases, that's precisely what happens.

That's precisely what happened with the old Stalkers, and I know a thing or two about it. With a Stalker prior to I22, you were always the black sheep of the team, there because you got a pity spot, or because you're friends with someone on the team, or because they had an open spot they didn't care too much about, but most people saw you as not contributing much BECAUSE YOU WEREN'T. And you weren't contributing much because your AT was fundamentally broken on a very basic level. You could circumvent the broken nature of the AT and just about break even if you were really luck and a very good player, but that's not a sign of good balance.

Certain things are considered "cheap" for a very simple reason - because a player can abuse them to great results with very little knowledge and effort, relative to what others can do. People don't like others using "cheap" tactics because it sucks for you to be crunching numbers out the wazoo, working your *** off and on top of your game and some yahoo with a kit-built Brute comes along and outclasses you, then laughs in your face, as I've had happen to my Stalkers. This is not a question of preference or opinion. The AT was clearly and very really under-performing irrespective of what you did with it. The best you could hope for is to break even with a LOT of effort while other people still excelled with no effort at all.

Yes, we all know about SWG. Most of what I've heard about it is very, very negative. I don't know how much of this is down to the game's own merit and how much of it is down to Sony's handling of it (people still spit at me when I mention "NGE"), but I'm really not sure what that has to do with City of Heroes any more so than trying to bring up MineCraft as an example. There is no farming for DNA or levelling up through dancing in City of Heroes because it is, at its core, a fighting game. The harder the mission designers try to pretend that it isn't, the worse the content they produce, as Dr. Graves and Twinshot prove to great evidence.

As a fighting game, City of Heroes' combat needs to be balanced such that no-one is ever left with a "non-combat" character. There is no room in City of Heroes for non-combat characters because combat is what the game is "about," mechanically speaking. Oh, sure, you may play an entirely harmless support character, but you're still supporting others in combat. You can't be a farmer or an entertainer or an inventor... I mean you can, you just can't make any progress in anything that way.

That's what makes at least the balance GOAL of City of Heroes so straight-forward: Make sure everyone levels up at roughly the same rate, and make sure everyone levels up with roughly the same level of required skill, knowledge and effort. There can be variances, of course, but they can't be wild. And all of this only speaks of what a character is capable of. HOW a character achieves this is not relevant, thus is never set in stone.

I'll give you a simple example - what matters for a Tanker is that he's tough to kill. Whether this happens through lots of hit points, lots of defence, lots of resistance, enemy debuffs or some combination of all of those isn't relevant, so long as it happens.

And when someone tries to obfuscate the very real and very necessary aspect of game balance with quasi-philosophical circular arguments like you do, that's doing a disservice to an actually functioning game. You can have all the high ideas and great vision you want. I'm sure Jack Emmert and Peter Molyneux would be proud. But when you game plain doesn't work, none of that matters. You keep trying to sideline the actual, real argument by using ad-hominem criticisms about what I "think" and what I "feel" and so forth, but all you're doing is ignoring the elephant in the room: When a character does is harder to play AND WEAKER than the others, that character is not balanced, and there's really no argument to be had about it.

That's not a case of "a particular player." Do you honestly believe that Blasters got Defiance 2.0 because "a particular player" couldn't make use of the suicidal and useless Defiance 2.0? No, of course not. Castle himself explained that the entire AT was underperfoming in all aspects, and under-performing badly. Do you honestly believe that Stalkers got the changes that they did - the SECOND set of changes - because "a particular player" couldn't make the best use of the horribly broken and gimped Stalkers of I6? No, I played those and they sucked. They sucked irrespective of your playstyle.

I played Stalkers before I22, as well. I knew they could perform at best at a mediocre level, some sets better than others. But if you were Martial Arts or Energy Melee, you were in trouble. You had to bust your butt just to get to the point where most other ATs even start at. There's a reason Stalkers were seen as just gimped Scrappers, and it's not because people like me were being sarcastic. An AT is NOT balanced when a player has to work twice as hard to be half as good. If a player should be forced to work twice as hard, then that player should be rewarded by being twice as good. That, more or less, is where new Stalkers are now. They're currently one of the most complicated ATs to actually play, but the performance they bring to bear is worth the effort.

You continually argue about variety and diversity and choice and all of that, but you also continually ignore that people will, more often than not, pick the option that WORKS first and foremost. Nobody wants to waste his time and throw a lot of effort into something that's never really going to measure up no matter what the player does. It's the same reason F2P games often come out as so unfair - when you bust your *** gathering "free" resources and finally get an even somewhat decent item to become competitive with, you just get creamed by some yahoo who joined yesterday but paid a ton of cash to get the best stuff out the door. Effort and complexity are not bad things, so long as they are actually worth it.

Then you're simply ignoring the long and arduous history of City of Heroes. When Geko designed many of the original powersets, he was pressed for time, apparently lacked enough experience with how people want to play City of Heroes and generally made a complete mess of quite a few powersets. Regeneration was hideously overpowered, leading to around three issues of reducing its power until Jack Emmert threw his hands in the air and just made Instant Healing a clikc instead of a toggle. SR was the laughing stock of the game and Elude didn't allow you to attack. It was only supposed to let you "elude" the enemies you were fighting, which is a complete waste of a final power. Oh, and Forcefields defences didn't stack with SR toggles.

Someone genuinely thought it was a good idea for the Vahzilok to use honest-to-god "untyped" damage which could never be resisted. That proved to be an idea so bad we got a new damage type - Toxic. That's also why we don't have corresponding Toxic defence. Blaster Nukes used to have a 5-second unresistable stun on them, too. You know, just in case anyone surviving your nuke wasn't completely guaranteed to kill you, the game left them five seconds of you being helpless to do it. Oh, and speaking of which, Blasters have had their damage strengthened multiple times. They started out with pathetic melee attacks which exposed them to great damage for little return. Those were improved significantly, which is why Blaster Bone Smasher is scale 2.12 whereas everyone else's Bone Smasher is scale 1.64. It took several years and lots of horrid Blaster performance to convince Castle that Blasters needed more ranged damage and to not be constantly chain-held and killed.

Oh, also, Gravity Control didn't use to have Singularity. It had I believe "Fold Space," which was a group teleport as far as I can remember. And now Black Hole will no longer suck after years of player complaints, and I hear Snipes might be made to not suck, either.

And I don't even want to bring up the "purple patch," where players went from being able to fight +10 enemies with relative ease to getting slaughtered by +3 enemies. Or the GDN, or ED, or the Experience Smoothing changes, or all of the other fundamental core game mechanics changes which were necessitated because the game simply didn't end up playing like the developers thought it would.

Yes, City of Heroes was designed with a few outliers, but in today's environment, there cannot be said to have been anything "intentional" about them. A few things in this game genuinely suck, and most of them date back either to 2004, or are otherwise at least several years old that no-one has had the time and will to fix yet.

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You're making this a lot more complicated than it has to be by putting "diversity" above "a working game." And a working game is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of numerical balance. Only AFTER the game has been made to work correctly can you start looking for diversity within the parameters required for correct operation.

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.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I assume that's stigma from when bubbles had to be handed out individually. I played Forcefields before the change, and it was a massive pain in the ***, to the point where I was often tempted to just throw my hands in the air and not bubble my stupid robots. That, by FAAAR, was Forcefields' greatest drawback. Now that that's gone, I really don't see a problem with it. It's a hands-off, relatively simple set.

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.

The Electric-Knight ______ Malfaz _____ Zox'Oculox

@Zethustra

"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan

www.pauldamonthomas.com - Original Music

I totally agree, If anything, i'd like to see less gimmicks, espeically in trials! Ahem!! If anything out of those sets, i'd Say Battle Axe could stand a look, possibly to up the number of targets its cones can hit, I dont understand why it was restricted in the first place.

Actually what broke forcefields slightly was inherent fitness. There is no shortage of power picks now, prior to this I had a FF/dark def (made for a set team, not a recommended build otherwise) who only picked the 3 shields from FF, plus a slew of pool powers, there is no need to do this now as I can "have it all". Giving your entire team some mez prot is also useful.

If someone holds that belief, then that someone doesn't have a leg to stand on. That someone is also not me, because that's not at all the argument I'm making.

I'm not talking about bringing things up to "my" standard. I'm talking about bring things up to an objective standard of performance that's at least somewhat standard. Again, you're mistaking the way a set is PLAYED with the way it PERFORMS. I really wouldn't mind setting down zillions of Tripmines if that actually resulted in a faster defeat of my enemies with greater consistency than just punching them. Of course I would. I tried to achieve exactly this result for years, and it is NOT faster and it is NOT more consistent. OK, I admit, it is safer... Somewhat, but if I wanted safety at the cost of performance, there are ATs which do this better.

I'm fine with playing other ATs in different ways, and simply not playing an AT at all if it has to be played in a way I don't enjoy. There's a reason I don't play Defenders, for instance, and it's not because they're poor performers. They just don't conform to how I want to play. But you don't see me suggesting to "fix" them. That's because I see them as different and NOT underperforming.

No. Of course not. "Boring" is not a balance concern. A "boring" set doesn't perform any better or worse than a "fun" set. This is that difference of opinion you were talking about, and I'm right there with you. I don't support changing a set for the sake of changing a set, just because someone would rather it went about things in a different way. Even though I find Repulsion Field to be the worst power in the game and Force Bubble to be situational at best. Even though Repulsion Bomb is a suspect attack. Even despite all of those things, Forcefields is a strong set that works. Exactly HOW it works really doesn't matter. So long as it works, it gets a free pass in my opinion.

Admittedly, I disliked the set for being a right pain in the ***, but this was elegantly solved without actually changing the core mechanics of the set. AoE buffs didn't force players to play a different way - you're still buffing allies with shields. It just made said gameplay simpler and faster, leaving time for all the other things the set could do, as well. If you have an argument about why this was bad, I'd actually be interested to hear it, and not just to argue against it. That's me being genuinely curious.

Um... Yes. Of course I do, or I wouldn't be making this argument. For instance, I say Snipes suck because they do. People have salvaged some use for them as pulling tools, but as an attack used for damage, they're a terrible waste of time and energy. Does that mean Snipes should be changed into something completely different? Not necessarily. If we want to keep the same gameplay behind them, we can, they just need better stats, which is to say faster activation and more damage.

What the developers are doing with them, I honestly can't say, but it IS possible to salvage things that don't work without stomping all over the cottage rule. Not always, of course, but most often, even if I do wish I my Build Up would build a cottage sometimes.

And what I'm saying is I want all of those different folks to have the same shot at being powerful and not having their time wasted. That's why I say preference and playstyle are irrelevant - because no matter what you like or how you want to play, you deserve a character that works, that levels up on par with the others and that won't get laughed out of most teams. Even if you do, indeed, prefer to spend most of your time laying Tripmines, you deserve to be able to enjoy this AND level up quickly.

My point is that no matter how you like to play (within reason, of course), you deserve a well-balanced game. You should never have to pay with performance or progress or outright fun just because of how you prefer to play the game. That's what balance is all about - not giving us one or two or five "correct" options out of a hundred, but making sure ALL options are correct, so that you CAN choose based on preference and not be forced to pick what works, even if it's not what you want.

I know what you're saying and I agree with it. Hell, I'm one of those people with a non-standard playing preference, keeping mostly to myself and trying to ignore complex Inventions as much as I can. Hell, this whole thread was started to suggest that sets I already like be made more "interesting" in ways that would make me like them less. I'm certainly not trying to step on anybody's toes.

What I disagree with that you seem OK with, however, is that it's OK for some sets to objectively suck so long as someone likes playing broken characters. This I will never agree with. You can ALWAYS improve a set without messing with what makes it unique. We don't have to take people's toys away in order to bring their sets to a more fair place. People should never have to "pay the price" for their personal preference if at all possible.

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.

My only experience with Forcefields is as a Bots/FF Mastermind, as well, and I don't really share your experience. I mean, yeah, FF is kind of hands-off, but a Mastermind isn't an auto-pilot AT with just a secondary. You still have your Mastermind pet controls, you still have your primary attacks, you still need to worry about resummoning and reupgrading henchmen, and even ForceFiends isn't entirely hands-off. You have Force Bolt if you took it, you have Force Bubble which shouldn't be always on, you even have Repulsion Field if you hate yourself, you have Repulsion Bomb... You have stuff to do.

To me, the only drawback to Forcefields wasn't that it's boring - I play Scrappers all the time. It was that it was just endless busywork. This doesn't make the set more fun or more compelling, it just means you have to do the same thing about either times in a row.

*edit*
Oh, and let's not forget Dispersion Bubble. That's always a lot of work keeping everyone in, especially with wonky henchman AI which sees them running all over the place at times.

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.