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You are so dogmatic, so committed, and so very, very wrong.
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
You're using the word "wrong" in a strange way there - CO is Jack's "I was right, you were wrong" letter to the CoH players - condemnation is all it deserves.
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Originally Posted by Vyver
To be fair, the lack of aim and short circuit is made up by the set actually being worth a ****.
CoH's electric blast was gimped for its entirely pointless secondary sapper power. Which did absolutely nothing since enemies don't use energy the same way we do. Besides, Aim is pointless in CO. You never completely "miss". |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Different people mean different things when they say this, but in the literal sense this is not true: critters use endurance just like we do, and in fact use more endurance per attack than we do on a relative basis. They also cannot use a power if they lack sufficient endurance to use it.
The main difference between critters and players is that critters really only have to attack one thing with their endurance - us - and can use all of it to try to kill us. We have to manage our endurance so we have enough to kill the critters in front of us, and then be able to kill the next set of critters, and then the next set, and then the next. Edit: I don't know when we would have gotten to the point of doing anything with it, but literally the week of the sunset announcement I was talking to Arbiter Hawk about addressing the issues with drain, and he seemed open to the idea of discussing the subject, pending finding the actual time to do anything about it (the schedule was packed for the next couple of issues). |
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Wait, Jack was the Apostle Paul?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
If CO is a letter to CoH players from Jack, its a letter he wrote while never holding the pen, written in a language he didn't understand, to people he forgot meeting.
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At one point, a dev implied that the AI behavior was somehow tied to their endurance as well- like some powers wouldn't be used if endurance was below a certain point. The statement stuck with me because I never really noticed it. I know you're the powers guru, but know anything about the AI here?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Different people mean different things when they say this, but in the literal sense this is not true: critters use endurance just like we do, and in fact use more endurance per attack than we do on a relative basis. They also cannot use a power if they lack sufficient endurance to use it.
The main difference between critters and players is that critters really only have to attack one thing with their endurance - us - and can use all of it to try to kill us. We have to manage our endurance so we have enough to kill the critters in front of us, and then be able to kill the next set of critters, and then the next set, and then the next. Edit: I don't know when we would have gotten to the point of doing anything with it, but literally the week of the sunset announcement I was talking to Arbiter Hawk about addressing the issues with drain, and he seemed open to the idea of discussing the subject, pending finding the actual time to do anything about it (the schedule was packed for the next couple of issues). |
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I'm unaware of such a behavior, although AI has changed over the years. I contributed to the AI's attack selection algorithm myself just prior to I18.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
At one point, a dev implied that the AI behavior was somehow tied to their endurance as well- like some powers wouldn't be used if endurance was below a certain point. The statement stuck with me because I never really noticed it. I know you're the powers guru, but know anything about the AI here?
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My version of the attack selection algorithm basically took a much more complex, thoughtful, but potentially glitchy decision tree and turned it into:
1. Shoot 'em in the face.
2. GOTO 1.
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For those curious about my earlier post in the thread Ill spell out what RPers over in CO have simply come to call The Silence.
When you are either ignored or marked as a spammer by another player( yes I said just ignoring someone else puts a mark against them) you are given a point that the general CO community tends to feel has no wear off time. So no amount of time between them helps reduce it.
Further it has been proven a single person can induce this using ignore then un ignore and do it again, 20 times and a person will be hit with a 24 hour chat ban.
No the GMs never fix it over there, One of the most well known and player turned forum community rep Biff Smackwell was hit with a 24 hour chat ban several days in a row after saying Wolverine Sucks in zone chat in MC.
I myself( @SkyTomCar over there when/if I ever can stomach setting foot there, was then hit with a 24 hour chat ban while trying to explain the issue in detail in zone chat that ignore spammer was a tool meant only to be used for those trying to do the whole ebay gold seller BS.
Keep in mind newly made purely FTP accounts have the power to do this, so there is no fear of reprisal towards those who keep a few throw away accounts active for the purpose of Silencing.
In fact rumors there abound about a player SG known as The Silencers who spend their time actively traveling around known player hubs and targeting players at random just to be true griefers.
CO does have a few strong points if you cough up the cash to sub or buy a free form character slot, but the reailty is also this when certain changes happened to crafting many fun flavor items with unique effects where removed, but left in grandfathers to those who already had them. So literally new players although for numerical stat purposes wont be behind, Neither could you ever use a high lvl power replacer( no longer drop) known as the brainwave scrambler pistols to make a psionc based pistoleer like my character there psike( a sort of psionic homage to spike from cowboy bebop) Not only that but for those of you not familiar with free form who instead use ATs, only a few free ones have all the tools needed to be a competent stand on your own character which is the rule of survival in CO. There is no holy trinity there among the experienced each character is either a mage tank or gimp
I still recall the last time I bothered with a group for the resistance AP, and how only I and one other really participated in the final battle as the rest of the team just could not stay alive on their own against such a lengthy fight with a truly big bad.
And if you want to make a non super being mundane character in the theme of batman etc then good luck, with no self heals, or superior damage mitigation powers, all the tricks,devices, and melee ability in the world wont let you withstand something like a cosmic over there for long.
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I'm still trying to figure out how this feature passed design review. I wouldn't implement this feature in this form at gun point. I'd literally quit first and then publicly explain why, because I wouldn't want this to be on my resume. I've walked away from projects for a lot less cosmic-class stupidity.
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Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
For those curious about my earlier post in the thread Ill spell out what RPers over in CO have simply come to call The Silence.
When you are either ignored or marked as a spammer by another player( yes I said just ignoring someone else puts a mark against them) you are given a point that the general CO community tends to feel has no wear off time. So no amount of time between them helps reduce it. Further it has been proven a single person can induce this using ignore then un ignore and do it again, 20 times and a person will be hit with a 24 hour chat ban. No the GMs never fix it over there, One of the most well known and player turned forum community rep Biff Smackwell was hit with a 24 hour chat ban several days in a row after saying Wolverine Sucks in zone chat in MC. I myself( @SkyTomCar over there when/if I ever can stomach setting foot there, was then hit with a 24 hour chat ban while trying to explain the issue in detail in zone chat that ignore spammer was a tool meant only to be used for those trying to do the whole ebay gold seller BS. Keep in mind newly made purely FTP accounts have the power to do this, so there is no fear of reprisal towards those who keep a few throw away accounts active for the purpose of Silencing. In fact rumors there abound about a player SG known as The Silencers who spend their time actively traveling around known player hubs and targeting players at random just to be true griefers. |
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Quote:
So there's no watchdog system in place to keep track of how many times a single player ignores other players? Because it seems like if there was, you could recognize fairly quickly which players would be using the ignore function solely to grief other players.|
Originally Posted by Demetrios Vasilikos
Further it has been proven a single person can induce this using ignore then un ignore and do it again, 20 times and a person will be hit with a 24 hour chat ban.
[...] In fact rumors there abound about a player SG known as The Silencers who spend their time actively traveling around known player hubs and targeting players at random just to be true griefers. |
But it has the additional overhead of having to keep track of that in the first place, and then coming up with an algorithm to deal with abusers.
Seems it'd be easier and simpler to not have such an abuse-prone function at all.
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I was going to say something snarky about how Cryptic seems to be using CO as a means to train new devs on Cryptic's engine before they get moved to STO or Neverwinter and leave it at that.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm still trying to figure out how this feature passed design review. I wouldn't implement this feature in this form at gun point. I'd literally quit first and then publicly explain why, because I wouldn't want this to be on my resume. I've walked away from projects for a lot less cosmic-class stupidity.
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But I seem to recall that STO has (had?) the same system.
I think that, despite Cryptic's attempts to release nothing but fully realized, polished products, they sometimes slip into "git 'r' done" mode. And they clearly saw the need to have a system to ban spammers. And didn't have the bodies to manually review the flagged players' logs. And then ...
What's interesting is that, when MUO budded off CoH, the remaining CoH devs fixed i7, started cleaning up code, herded us into giving focused feedback during betas, and, in general, released their strongest string of updates, ever, from I8 through I12.
Paragon Studios rapidly changed its culture, but Cryptic wasn't able to ... at least for CO and STO.
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I wouldn't call that an explanation really. That would be like if I shot someone in the head, and someone asked me to explain why I did that, and I said "well, I was holding a gun, and my finger was on the trigger, and I squeezed with enough force to cause the firing hammer to release and strike the ignition cap on the bullet. And then basic physics takes over when the propellant waste products expand exothermically ... long story short, sometimes you just have to put a cap in someone's ***."|
Originally Posted by BurningChick
I think that, despite Cryptic's attempts to release nothing but fully realized, polished products, they sometimes slip into "git 'r' done" mode. And they clearly saw the need to have a system to ban spammers. And didn't have the bodies to manually review the flagged players' logs. And then ...
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What's interesting is that, when MUO budded off CoH, the remaining CoH devs fixed i7, started cleaning up code, herded us into giving focused feedback during betas, and, in general, released their strongest string of updates, ever, from I8 through I12. Paragon Studios rapidly changed its culture, but Cryptic wasn't able to ... at least for CO and STO. |
The split itself might have solidified the cultural differences. The people who left with Cryptic were skewed towards the people who wanted to always be involved in something new. The people who stayed behind were skewed towards the people who wanted to develop and expand on the existing thing. And so we ended up with a Paragon Studios whose philosophy was strongly bound around leveraging CoH, and a Cryptic whose philosophy was that there was always going to be the next big thing.
The fact that Cryptic hasn't released NWN yet might actually be a good thing. It suggests they aren't blitzing to push the thing out the door like they did with CO and STO, which may mean the culture has downshifted a bit. And conversely Paragon was trying to start something new when they got the plug pulled on them.
There are no perfect dev teams. But still, the chat thing? Sorry: that's brain dead. If an eight year old computer prodigy wrote an MMO entirely on their own on their dad's laptop and it had that feature, I would still slap him silly for being an idiot.
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I read a detailed interview with Jack where he detailed how Cryptic deviated from the standard design cycle to try to get CO (and I think STO too, but not certain) out the door faster, and admitted it was a mistake. I suspect they won't make the same mistake with Neverwinter, and hope it'll turn out well. I think that despite the obvious warts, they do show some promise.
ETA: And, yeah, the chat thing is ridiculous.
So, last night and this morning I popped on to CO and the CoX chat channel a little. There seemed to be an ongoing list of questions about freeform builds both times.
I'm not an expert at all. I've been too sick/injured to sit up and even play MMOs much over the last two years, so it had been over six months since I'd last logged in. However, the last time I was playing, I'd dug up a bunch of guides, and figured I may as well link those here.
Before I do, I'm going to repeat what I've said in other threads about the cheapest way to sub to CO: First, if you don't have an existing account you're returning to, you can get the game box on Amazon for three bucks. Second, if you want to re-sub an existing account or continue past the trial included with the box key, you can get game cards for $12.55 with shipping currently on Amazon. So, check there first if on a budget and desiring freeform builds.
OK, now some guides:
Demon Keypo's tips for balanced building
Building a Balanced Character 101
Guide to Spec Trees
Specialization Tree Info
ETA: Also, I think this link may have been posted earlier, but just to be complete, I'll repost it. It has links to guides on the Archetypes, which may be helpful when going free to play:
All-In-One Silver Guides Thread
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
In my opinion, and I've said this many times in different ways, Cryptic's culture is Jack's vision, which is heavily weighted towards designing, realizing, and launching MMOs, but not supporting them for the long term. That's the boring part.
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Originally Posted by Sureshot_Liberty
I read a detailed interview with Jack where he detailed how Cryptic deviated from the standard design cycle to try to get CO (and I think STO too, but not certain) out the door faster, and admitted it was a mistake. I suspect they won't make the same mistake with Neverwinter, and hope it'll turn out well. I think that despite the obvious warts, they do show some promise.
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http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...a_.php?print=1
http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/08...winter-and-a/4
Some choice quotes from Jack (read into them what you will):
Coming into the launch of STO and Champions, I made sure we had something for everyone. Here was the problem. By following that philosophy, nothing was polished. We ended up having lots of half-done features in some quarters. What I forgot was, inasmuch as a consumer or a player, if it isn't there at launch it might as well not be there, well if it's in half-done or half-done well, that's what you get remembered for. The fact that STO and Champions have gotten better since their launch, we've added content, we've fixed bugs, we've responded to players, all that stuff isn't as important or as forceful as that initial interaction with the game. So we have a very different mindset here. Right now, whatever we do, it's got to be the best possible quality we can.
---
We don't use that internal terminology; it's just a short-hand way of describing it. To be honest, I've been in charge of development for all these games, it's really been my fault because I assumed that what we did with City of Heroes and City of Villains was a model we could keep repeating ad infinitum. With Champions and STO, we did the same everything, and the review scores were dramatically smaller. (laughs) Both Champions and STO are far better than City of Heroes was at launch, and it's a different market now, we have to adjust. I'm not going to be one of those developers who starts ******** about the reviewers or ******** about the customers. That's stupid. We've got to change and this is what we've got to do to change.
---
JE: Well it's not that I thought the quality wasn't up to par, it's the customers and critics and everybody else, right? [laughs] All you have to do is go to Metacritic.com. It's not like we went out and said, "We're gonna make a really shi... mediocre game, and put in a box," no. We all thought that Star Trek Online was going to be phenomenal. We all thought that Champions was going to be phenomenal.
Even in open beta, the reaction we got from [Champions] was better than anything we ever did with City of Heroes and City of Villains. We were sky high. So believe me when the reviews came out, we were shocked, just shocked. Because there was nothing that would lead us to believe leading into it, from the data we had in beta, like the number of people playing, the number of downloads, how often they played and all that kind of stuff. It had exceeded anything that we had done previously.
So the reviews meant we had to have a reality check. The old way of doing things is very simple. We made City of Heroes in about a year-and-a-half. We made City of Villains in nine months, and both of which were successful, both of which were highly-acclaimed and reviewed.
And we looked around at MMO companies, and they were struggling. They were spending tens of millions of dollars, and we spent, what, $8 million on City of Heroes and $6 million on City of Villains. Here, we had a game, it was successful, we pumped 'em out, we had the technology, we had the tools, we thought we could be doing it forever, because we were like, "Yeah, we'll just keep making them every 18 months! We can!"
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We had the people... Oh wait. Most of them stayed behind to become the awesome studio we all know and actually give a pancake about.
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Originally Posted by BurningChick
And we looked around at MMO companies, and they were struggling. They were spending tens of millions of dollars, and we spent, what, $8 million on City of Heroes and $6 million on City of Villains. Here, we had a game, it was successful, we pumped 'em out, we had the technology, we had the tools, we thought we could be doing it forever, because we were like, "Yeah, we'll just keep making them every 18 months! We can!"
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@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
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Congratulations, you saw one half of one tree and missed the forest.|
Originally Posted by Vyver
To be fair, the lack of aim and short circuit is made up by the set actually being worth a ****.
CoH's electric blast was gimped for its entirely pointless secondary sapper power. Which did absolutely nothing since enemies don't use energy the same way we do. Besides, Aim is pointless in CO. You never completely "miss". |
My point was not whether Electric Blast was better or worse than the entire CO Electric Powerset.
My point was that blasting is your only option for a CO Electric character, with no equivalent of Electric Melee, Electric Armor, Electric Control, or even Electricity Manipulation.
And that point was itself secondary to noting that all elemental and energy-based powersets are like this in CO.
If you want to play an elemental character in CoH, you can play a Scrapper, a Tanker, a Controller, a Defender, a Blaster, a Corruptor, a Brute, a Stalker, or a Dominator, or a Mastermind - i.e., any AT.
If you want to play an elemental character in CO, you can be a blaster, period, the end, no other options.
THAT is my point, not a random unrelated discussion whether endurance drain mechanics are good or not.
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This bugged/bugs me to no end. Just one more reason I won't be installing it again.
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Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
If you want to play an elemental character in CO, you can be a blaster, period, the end, no other options.
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@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
Quote:
With CO, I am fairly certain that the launch day patch that a) made combat in what was supposed to be a fast-paced actiony MMO rather painful for everyone and b) made it impossible to reach the level cap with quests alone, resulting in guides so people could find and do every single quest in the game and minimize the grinding after running out of quests. I remember getting from 38-40 in Lemuria by during a circuit in the deepest darkest part of the zone where I could find the mobs that were my level. |
Originally Posted by BurningChick
Even in open beta, the reaction we got from [Champions] was better than anything we ever did with City of Heroes and City of Villains. We were sky high. So believe me when the reviews came out, we were shocked, just shocked. Because there was nothing that would lead us to believe leading into it, from the data we had in beta, like the number of people playing, the number of downloads, how often they played and all that kind of stuff. It had exceeded anything that we had done previously.
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The game is not like that now. If anything, defensive passives are close to where they were during beta and the early access weekend, and offensive passives are stronger defensively so taking one can still help survivability on top of simply killing everything faster.
I'm not really bitter about the launch day shenanigans, but I do think that this had a pretty profound impact on initial reactions to the game. When you basically had to walk on eggshells everywhere even after taking a defensive power and taking the specific superstats intended to support that power and getting shredded by a handful of henchmen, well...it's not going to get good reactions.
I think he has a point about half-finished systems as well. The level 40 lairs were not very well balanced, the "tells" were not consistent and many of the bosses were so large you couldn't see the tells until they added it to the UI as well as appearing over the mob's head. UNITY was an interesting idea, but: the need to run your full complement of UNITY missions to be able to get into a level 40 instance once (and god forbid if you leave for anything, as you can't get back in without another key), and some of the UNITY missions were simply broken and couldn't be completed, so you wouldn't get that every day.
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Well, a blaster with active and - if you want - passive defenses, self-heals, and even buffs or heals for the rest of the party. Or because of the active defenses and self-heals, you can reasonably survive with an offensive passive.|
Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
If you want to play an elemental character in CO, you can be a blaster, period, the end, no other options.
THAT is my point, not a random unrelated discussion whether endurance drain mechanics are good or not. |
But I agree with your point. Conceptually, one is limited. My DM/DA scrapper translated to CO became a bestial supernatural with a couple of darkness powers because melee was more important to me than having every single attack be a matter of darkness, and I could at least have some dark defenses (ebon void) and one dark melee attack (void step).
They have been adding more options to powersets - like the addition of more laser sword attacks to power armor to make melee a viable build path. I hope they do similar with the elemental sets. They did similar when they split supernatural into bestial and infernal, and gave might the chain attacks while giving infernal its own set of chain attacks.
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I did address this before and I kind of want to do it again, but with an expansion.|
Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
My point was that blasting is your only option for a CO Electric character, with no equivalent of Electric Melee, Electric Armor, Electric Control, or even Electricity Manipulation.
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For one... Not really. You can play an electric character with electric blasts AND melee attacks at the same time. I believe there are toggle powers which add elemental damage to all of your other attacks, though I can't speak for the visuals. And I'm not saying this by inference. I actually met a fellow City of Heroes player there who showed me a hybrid energy blaster martial artist whose fighting style looked AMAZING in action. I wouldn't have called it, but combining the two sets looked good. Good enough to make me want to see what Inna would have been like with those powers.
For another thing, a lot of City of Heroes' melee sets made almost no sense to me. I've gone over how silly I found the concept of "punching with darkness" and so on. Mind you, I'm not dising people who like it. I have numerous characters who do just that. But in a big way, I picked those characters because I wanted the element on a character who had status protection, not because I wanted melee. In fact, Inna herself, who is now an Energy/Will Brute, used to be an Energy/Energy Blaster. The thing is... I've tried to do it, and I can't visualise how someone would punch with energy in a way that doesn't involve shooting energy.
To a large extent, City of Heroes has trained us - trained ME - to look at super powers and costumes only a certain way. It was a very customizable, expansive game, but it had its limitations, and after eight years of working with it, I had stopped recognising that these limitations existed. That sort of familiarity makes adapting to a new game, no matter how good, excruciatingly difficult because... Well, it doesn't have the things you want, and you don't want to change what you were after.
I get that, and I'm not dismissing the problem, but I do believe a lot of the problems people have can be solved, so long as they're problems of concept. Can't really solve GAMEPLAY if you don't like
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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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Also, it seems to me from Jack's interviews that he realises he rushed both of Cryptic's main titles and they suffered for it. The man is right at least Champions Online, when it launched, was better than City of Heroes was in 2004... Except it didn't launch in 2004, it launched in 2009, and I can't say it was better than City of Heroes was in 2009, not strictly speaking. It could have been a much better game, but the thing is, they went and made Star Trek Online, instead, and I don't get the feeling that, despite all the "lessons learned," that'll change. Jack seems to have learned how to release a better MMO, but I don't get the sense he appreciates the demands of MAINTAINING an MMO.
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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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Yeah, to this day I find that decision mystifying. I mean, I understand the fear that you'll release the game with vastly overpowered players, and I understand the reasoning that big-time balance adjustments should happen sooner rather than later (all else being equal), because you don't want your playerbase to become accustomed to one thing and then hit them over the head with the other.|
Originally Posted by BellaStrega
With CO, I am fairly certain that the launch day patch that a) made combat in what was supposed to be a fast-paced actiony MMO rather painful for everyone and b) made it impossible to reach the level cap with quests alone, resulting in guides so people could find and do every single quest in the game and minimize the grinding after running out of quests. I remember getting from 38-40 in Lemuria by during a circuit in the deepest darkest part of the zone where I could find the mobs that were my level.
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I get all that, but why freaking launch day? Why not earlier, in Beta? Failing that, why not let it ride a bit? Adjusting so many things in so little time is bound to lead to unintended consequences. Worse still, Champions managed to find the worst of both worlds, with respect to launch-day surprises: the game effectively pre-launched in one state, and then all of the big-time fans who had played for 2-3 days prior to the official launch, on what they thought were live servers in their natural state, were hit with a giant bat.
Could it be that Jack was so effing paranoid about repeating Enhancement Diversification that he panicked?
Whether the balance adjustments were warranted or not, the launch-day nerf fest led to a lot of criticism, and a lot of players jumping ship, IMO. Personally, I played through it, and it wasn't nearly as bad, in practice, as it probably looked from the outside -- but given that CO characters are, if anything, stronger now than they were prior to the launch-day fustercluck, the urgency that spurred Cryptic's action back then seems laughable in retrospect.
If Cryptic had simply done nothing, balance-wise, at launch, I believe that people would have forgiven a lot of the polish issues that Jack laments in the interview linked above. It was the combination of Cryptic's bizarre 11th-hour nerf fest and the lack of polish that did CO in at the outset.
Which isn't to say that it's not a worthy game, or that it isn't financially viable now; it's just that CO never properly got out of the gate. First impressions matter.
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Originally Posted by Jack Emmert
And we looked around at MMO companies, and they were struggling. They were spending tens of millions of dollars, and we spent, what, $8 million on City of Heroes and $6 million on City of Villains. Here, we had a game, it was successful, we pumped 'em out, we had the technology, we had the tools, we thought we could be doing it forever, because we were like, "Yeah, we'll just keep making them every 18 months! We can!"
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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Then someone's been giving you bum information.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I did address this before and I kind of want to do it again, but with an expansion.
For one... Not really. You can play an electric character with electric blasts AND melee attacks at the same time. I believe there are toggle powers which add elemental damage to all of your other attacks, though I can't speak for the visuals. And I'm not saying this by inference. I actually met a fellow City of Heroes player there who showed me a hybrid energy blaster martial artist whose fighting style looked AMAZING in action. I wouldn't have called it, but combining the two sets looked good. Good enough to make me want to see what Inna would have been like with those powers. |
I've been looking through the Champions Wiki. There are no powers that add electric damage (or any energy or elemental damage) to melee attacks.
Here is the full Electric powerset in CO.
Out of fourteen powers, four of them are single-target blasts, four of them are multi-target blasts, one is a PBAoE, one is a hold (with an interruptible casting time), one is a passive buff to what CO calls "energy" damage and electric resist, one is a click buff to all damage, one is a passive that restores energy if certain actions are performed, and one replaces your Block with an electric block that reduces damage by less but damages nearby foes while its active.
That's it. There's no powers in there that adds electric damage to melee attacks, let alone any actual electric melee attacks. There's no electric-elemental immobilizes, stuns, or pets. There's no drains or heals (self or otherwise).
And I'm just using electricity as an example, mind you. Fire and Ice do have pets and Ice has a lot more self-buffs, but other than that they just have the same types of attacks.
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| For another thing, a lot of City of Heroes' melee sets made almost no sense to me. I've gone over how silly I found the concept of "punching with darkness" and so on. Mind you, I'm not dising people who like it. I have numerous characters who do just that. But in a big way, I picked those characters because I wanted the element on a character who had status protection, not because I wanted melee. In fact, Inna herself, who is now an Energy/Will Brute, used to be an Energy/Energy Blaster. The thing is... I've tried to do it, and I can't visualise how someone would punch with energy in a way that doesn't involve shooting energy. |
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To a large extent, City of Heroes has trained us - trained ME - to look at super powers and costumes only a certain way. It was a very customizable, expansive game, but it had its limitations, and after eight years of working with it, I had stopped recognising that these limitations existed. That sort of familiarity makes adapting to a new game, no matter how good, excruciatingly difficult because... Well, it doesn't have the things you want, and you don't want to change what you were after. I get that, and I'm not dismissing the problem, but I do believe a lot of the problems people have can be solved, so long as they're problems of concept. Can't really solve GAMEPLAY if you don't like
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That's like saying "You want to play Superman? Well, you can play Superman! You just have to change your concept of Superman from Heroic Flying Brick to Evil Orc Who Summons Demons, and... there you go! Problem solved!"
No. The problem is not solved.
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No, no, no. DCUO gives us the official word: A superman concept must be a fugly ice-golem looking dude!|
Originally Posted by Thunder Knight
That's like saying "You want to play Superman? Well, you can play Superman! You just have to change your concept of Superman from Flying Brick to Orc Who Summons Demons, and... there you go! Problem solved!"
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(And, btw, although it may be true that you can't add electric damage to melee attacks, you could use electric form in melee range. That'd approximate the aesthetic of an electric-themed melee character. The only problem is that electric form is an offensive passive, so you'd be limited defensively.)
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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You'd also be limited offensively, since all electric form does is buff Electric, Sonic, and Particle-type attacks, while punches and kicks are all Crushing damage.|
Originally Posted by Obitus
No, no, no. DCUO gives us the official word: A superman concept must be a fugly ice-golem looking dude!
(And, btw, although it may be true that you can't add electric damage to melee attacks, you could use electric form in melee range. That'd approximate the aesthetic of an electric-themed melee character. The only problem is that electric form is an offensive passive, so you'd be limited defensively.) |
So, basically, it'd just be a pretty visual with no actual effect.
The main difference between critters and players is that critters really only have to attack one thing with their endurance - us - and can use all of it to try to kill us. We have to manage our endurance so we have enough to kill the critters in front of us, and then be able to kill the next set of critters, and then the next set, and then the next.
Edit: I don't know when we would have gotten to the point of doing anything with it, but literally the week of the sunset announcement I was talking to Arbiter Hawk about addressing the issues with drain, and he seemed open to the idea of discussing the subject, pending finding the actual time to do anything about it (the schedule was packed for the next couple of issues).
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