The CO Community & You

It wasn't Jack's call, it was Roper's and Roper did a public mea culpa right after the patch hit, but said it was necessary for the game and would be staying. Jack was the idea guy for CO, but other people implemented the systems and did the balance passes. The confusion comes from Jack's willingness to place himself in front of the crap that gets flung at his developers.

This is a VERY, VERY good thing for a boss to do. I've worked for bosses who routinely throw their workers under the bus. And it sucks.

That said, I think he has a tendency to speak off the cuff (or with an incomplete knowledge of the situation) which gets him into trouble, but WTH.

CO is missing a lot of ****. We know. But you also have to think outside CoH ATs as well. For instance, your Dual Blade/Electric Scrapper, you could easily remake him with

Dual Blade attacks + sparkstorm (PBAOE) + electric sheath + whatever else you wanted to pick up

Same with the Invulnerability Brute, except switch out Dual Blades for Might.

The only thing not recreated would be your grav dom, and its not because you would have to make it a "blaster", but simply because CO doesn't have grav abilities yet. (unless you want to play the Force powers as grav. but I dont think you would go for that)


"Blaster" is not an archtype in CO. Wait, it kind of is for Silver players, but then again why would anyone choose to level on the restricted archtypes? It would be like playing CoH without enhancements

Yeah, Electric Form wouldn't do much for you unless you also mixed in a couple of electric powers. That said, the word on the street over there is that free form characters face heavy diminished returns; the additive damage bonus from offensive passives doesn't seem to add a whole hell of a lot once you've stacked your stats beyond a certain point (and even with relatively crappy stats when I first went back to CO a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that ranking up my offensive passive was almost certainly a waste of skill points). If you're in an offensive stance, you get a multiplicative bonus that puts the passive's to shame.

So if what you really want is an electric-themed character who can mix it up in melee, I don't think the damage-type discrepancy should be a deal-breaker. Pump up STR, offense, and crit and go to town with your glowy-fighty guy.

Not saying it's a great solution, just that you can make an electric-melee concept work in a pinch. Every game is bound to have conceptual limitations. CO is about six thousand light years ahead of DCUO in that respect, for what it's worth.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

No argument about any of that. I don't remember the particulars with regard to CO's launch. As I recall, Roper was a pretty powerful figure over there at the time.

Still, I'd think that a massive launch-day balance pass isn't purely a mechanical decision; it's also a significant PR decision. So I can imagine the higher ups over at Cryptic at least having been consulted on the matter. I don't for a moment think that Jack was elbow-deep in the numbers; I do think it's possible that he had a looong talk with Roper and crew about just how urgently the game needed to be rebalanced.

The timing is interesting, is all. It's suggestive of a development studio that was desperate to avoid having to drop the balance hammer after players got well and truly accustomed to the game's working a certain way.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

It hasn't bothered me at all.

*shrug*


Maybe I'll feel different after I apply that 60 day timecard I picked up on Amazon for eight bucks.

But I don't see the game getting hugely more entertaining for me- I'm not a person who generally appreciates a massive range of power options or perceives character construction as a major game draw. It'll still be WoW in tights whether I'm playing as The Inferno or some other, more involved template.

Probably people like me who barely had enough to sub for COH and now are waiting to see it's fate before deciding where to sub next (and the fact that there are two birthdays coming up, two Taekwondo promotions, a 5k family race, a women's conference for the wife, an out of town trip, and other things that escape me right now).

If COH does go under, then I'll eventually sub for CO. For now, though, I'm enjoying my archer and my radiant hero .

At the end of the day, that's all it really is here. Ultimately, damage is damage. Giving it a type is just fluff.

What was said at the time was that they had a massive spreadsheet that allowed them to adjust the balance for the game globally, by changing a few variables that would rebalance all the powers and gear everywhere, so that's why the launch nerf was so widespread: a global rebalancing decision made lots of changes all over the place to rebalance the game.

Not specifically to pick on whoever said that (I forget) because our devs have said some inexplicable things regarding the game's design as well, but there's no way that's true. Either its false and the developer who said it knew it was false, or its false and the developer who said it thinks its true. I'm not sure which possibility is worse.

You used to be able to add electric damage to melee attacks, but power replacers no longer drop, and keeping them equipped was problematic compared to the equipment that buffs your stats directly.

Good point. Now that you mention it, I think I remember that quote.

Do you think ... Maybe the quote's author is the same 8-year-old prodigy responsible for the automated muting system?

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Yeah, never bothered with them because the whole thing was poorly conceived from the get-go.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

The best thing they were good for was unlocking costume pieces.

I still have a few unused power replacers in my characters' inventories.

From what I can gather, Dark Melee was based on the concept of energy draining touches of undead creatures from earlier games like AD&D. Nothing "silly" about that.

You missed this guy's post and this guy's post didn't you?

This isn't 100% Accurate. It's technically accurate in that ALL melee attack powers are essentially just pretty attacks for the same thing, melee attacks. But you really can't say that Martial Arts/Street Justice and Electric Melee are exactly the same, save for pretty effects and damage type.

The sets were designed to have unique mechanics and behaviors to differentiate between them(even though I personally feel they never did enough in this regard, that's probably more engine limitations than anything else).

What many people are suggesting in this scenario is the Champions equivalent of playing a Street Justice character, Using a Combat Aura, and putting an energy damage proc in the tier 1. And then maybe taking an electric mastery epic.

I think you can understand that is nothing like the concept of "Electric Melee" when you compare it to an actual Electric melee set.

It's not even a pale imitation. It's a cow with a horn stapled to it's head and "Unicorn" painted on the side.

Think of it this way. The last time I played Champions a good bit of advice I was given about Power selection was to pick three or four "Bread and butter" attacks. The first two being your energy builder and the starter power, the third most likely some manner of AoE and the fourth being a "facilitation" power that helped you do what you needed to do, Like a Lunge or Pull power for melee characters. Then, of course, you pick your passive, your energy unlock, a heal, and that's about it. The rest was for "Flavor" or "concept".

What people hoping to have more "special melee"(and also control or support, this is getting lost in the conversation) need in this situation is for the "Bread and butter" powers to be the "Special melee" options. Having "Normal" Martial Arts punches and kicks, as the bread and butter, and electric blast attacks as "the flavor" is a different thing entirely from "electric melee" It's the Champions Equivalent of an Electric Blast/Martial Combat blaster. Again, not the same

I think the problem you're having is that you're sort of imposing your own, inaccurate interpretation on a very literal power concept that doesn't have much room for interpretation.

Interestingly, this is pretty much exactly my problem with Champions. Basically you're thinking "Why would someone use their energy blast powers to punch?" based on the assumption that there's only one type of energy power: blasting.

This is not the case, simply because it's fictional and obeys the rules set by the fiction. There are no types of energy powers until the fiction says so. And they only behave in the way that the fiction say they do. It's not "energy blast powers used to punch" It's "Energy Punch" that's the beginning and end of the power concept. Until it is stated otherwise, that is it. Just "energy punch"

What you think you are looking at is:
A man, with a gun strapped to his waist, choosing to fight hand to hand with all his enemies and never use his gun.

To which you respond:

"Why doesn't he use his gun?"

What you are actually looking at is:

An unarmed man fighting unarmed.

To which you respond:

"Why doesn't he use his gun?"(that he doesn't have)
The "yet" is a big thing here. Considering the way Champions plays now, there's very little reason for the sets to be designed as they are. They could have just as easily been One melee energy builder, one ranged, Two melee attacks, two ranged attacks, two or three control/debuff abilities, two support abilities, and the essentials.

What's interesting is, while Archetypes was an absolutely terrible way for the game to go free, it seems to have caused a shift in the thought process of the Devs.

Because Archetypes are designed with the intent to emulate popular fictional characters, it sometimes comes up that there is no "proper" power to express certain concepts intrinsic to the Character type. For instance The Fist and The Master would suit pretty much the same concept, but the need to display a difference in fighting style creates the differently animated but almost completely identical powers they have. It's pretty much just a Martial Arts Scrapper and a Street Justice Scrapper.
Another example is the Night Avenger Archetype. Which adds a few powers to both the fighting claws set and the Gadgeteering set in order to better flesh out the concept.

There also doesn't seem to be much of a balance consideration in regards to how many powers can be in a set, which is good, as it means more can just be added. It's likely that these concepts ("elemental melee/control/buff) will find their way in, eventually.

I've found that the biggest gap between Champions and City (excluding my personal opinion about both) is just one of content. Champions has power options that City of Heroes doesn't have, and City of Heroes has power options Champions doesn't have. As Both games release new power concepts, the gap changes.

When it launched, Champions had Dual Pistols Powers, and City of heroes didn't. City of Heroes closed that gap with the Dual Pistols Set. Champions allowed people to use dual pistols and martial arts together, and City of Heroes closed that gap with...... aw man...

Yeah, I was really looking forward to that secondary.

Elsewhere, games are designed without damage types. Here, that statement is about as wrong as saying all attacks autohit, some less often than others.

You completely misread the problem I'm having. To me, elemental melee powers (aside from elemental weapons, obviously) are things you can describe in words, but which TO ME make no sense in actual practice. City of Heroes may be visual, but it still suffers from a lot of the limitations of "verbal combat" like what D&D has. You can say you did a lot of things and you can craft systems around them that have them make sense, yet end up with things that just don't work when put into a movie or a cartoon.

The problem I have with this is that once I start writing free-hand fiction for my characters that have, say, Dark Melee, I run into a brick wall immediately. "Well, what does that mean?" Well, you could say it's just like punching, only your hands smoke evil, but that's visually very unimpressive, not to mention practically not terribly different from just punching people. There's a huge disconnect between what you SAY a character is doing and what you can SHOW a character doing in such a way that it makes a lick of sense visually.

You can say your character is a martial artist who uses kinetic energy attacks and I wouldn't argue with you for a second. However, when you put that character next to a martial artists who just happens to have magical glowing gloves that make him punch harder, you'll end up seeing the exact same thing. Once that's the case, I'm perfectly fine with giving just one Martial Arts set and handling the difference with hand auras. Which I have, actually, in City of Heroes itself.

I'm not saying Champions does it right, mind you. "Stone" powers there are tank powers, so they involve armours and punches, but no serious control powers like turning people to stone, liquefying the ground, raising dust storms and so forth. Similarly, stuff like "Celestial" powers are support-centric, offering you only a VERY small pool of attacks and a comparatively large pool of buff, heal and resurrect powers. That game has far too many sets pegged as doing only one single thing when they could do much more than that.

However, I don't need redundant powers that look the same but have a different hand effect. I don't need ten versions of Air Superiority with fire, energy, ice and other effects. One Air Superiority is fine if I can give it all of these effects. Damage types do matter, but most Champions PvE enemies don't have much in the way of damage resistance anyway, so you don't have to worry about cutting robots or burning fire enemies.

Basically, my problem is that you can't always SHOW everything you can SAY, and "punching with darkness" is exactly in that spot for me. In fact, that's exactly what Dragon Ball Z suffered from - everyone was supposed to have these different, unique, special techniques that only they could pull off, but at the end of the day, everyone was throwing seemingly the same fireballs and delivering seemingly the same knee and elbow strikes, with the only difference coming from how the gawking support characters would describe them. Sure, Son Goku's aura was red because his Kaio-Ken technique was red and Vegeta's aura was blue because... He was wearing blue tights, but again - that's a superficial difference.

What I'm saying is I'll never argue with how you explain something, but I might argue about exactly how specific that something's representation needs to be. I just wish Champions' animations didn't suck so hard.

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.

Really? Are you operating under the idea that palm thrusts are not a sensible physical attack? And I mean that as an honest question, because I'm pretty sure all of Raiden's hand attacks are all palm strikes.

You're talking about extremely old sets that all use the same animations. It's utterly alien to me how you can say Electric Melee is more about "interacting with electricity" when it has Air Superiority, two punches, a palm thrust, a jumping double axe handle and pretty much only a couple non-contact attacks, those being Lightning Rod and Jacob's Ladder. And again, the "non-punching" attacks ARE represented in Champions.

It's the punching attacks that are missing. If you're perfectly capable of imagining that Dark Melee never punches... Why is not having punches in a dark set a problem, then? That's exactly my point - I couldn't imagine my energy user punching people as her main mode of offence, so I went with ranged attacks. I would have done the same in City of Heroes if Blasters didn't suck. In fact, Inna was a level 50 Energy/Energy/Force Blaster before I rerolled her as an Energy/Will Brute.

Again, if you don't see Dark Melee as punching with darkness, why is it important to replicate punching animations with darkness in another game? Wouldn't that be your opportunity to pick something that corresponds to what you actually see?

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1uS2ztPaCU

Earth, Heavy Weapons, and Might all have powers to build an offensive (DPS) as well as defensive (tank) character. One of my beta characters was a non-tank might character that did a ton of damage.

Celestial actually has two powers that heal and do damage, and two pure damage powers, which makes it a bit less "tiny". It has fewer pure heals than it does damage-dealing powers.

There are also powers that do some of the control effects you've listed. Earth has quicksand, for example. What this game does not have is purely dedicated control to the degree that controllers have.