f13.net

Read all about it. (http://www.plaync.com/us/news/2007/11/ncsoft_acquires_1.html)

Matt Miller stays on as lead Dev.  NCsoft will be opening their own studio to continue to develop the game.

Edit:
Another link (http://www.plaync.com/us/news/2007/11/ncsoft_announce_23.html)
 And another (http://www.cityofheroes.com/press/a_new_age.html)

Could it be that we will finally get a reasonable xp curve?

I'm sure this has nothing to do with Cryptic working on the Marvel MMOG.

Looks like all the current CoX devs are staying on.


I imagine everyone staying with Cryptic had already moved over to the MUO project.  It also means that no, it's unlikely they'll change the exp curve since Matt Miller is still the lead dev.

Edit: Hmm, I missed that part at the end of the City of Heroes link in my first post.  They'll be opening up City of Heroes and City of Villains to everyone, even if they had only purchased one of the games and were previously locked out of the other.

That doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out. (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=general&Number=9560438&bodyprev=#Post9560438)


It'll be strange not having Jack Emmert as the face of City of Heroes anymore.

Ever have I  :heart: that game.  882 recorded hours (http://www.xfire.com/profile/geldonyetich/) worth of "ever".  However, I've recently decided it has enabled epic failure (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=Ideas&Number=9446725) due to lack of adequate self-perpetuating end-game activity.  This reads, "Cryptic decides to finally put City of Heroes out to pasture" for me.

Dual Blades is fun, though.  Fun enough that, when it hits the live server and months afterwards, I'm betting some obscene ratio of 80% of new Tanks, Scrappers, Stalkers, and Brutes will be using it.  (We all know how excellent my predictions are, right?)

That's why I am hoping that he was the one roadblocking an xp curve change.

Nope. Nothing about reducing the grind.

I find it interesting that the full CoH/V dev team (+1, apparently - pohsyb is also making the jump) is leaving Cryptic to stay with CoH/V.

I'll save my theories on this for the moment, but prima facie this sounds like a good thing for Cryptic, CoH/V and NCsoft.

It also paves the way for some kind of station pass with CoX, Tabula Rasa and maybe Lineage II and Guild Wars II (should it end up with a traditional monthly fee).  Personally I don't really have any interest in any of those other games (welll, maybe GWII if it ends up any good) but it's something I expect to happen at some point.

From a Korean company? There's not a large enough LOL smiley available. So, I'll go with a fan favorite.

 :awesome_for_real:

This just in: NCSoft sells City of franchise to EA.

You heard it here first.  :pedobear:


Is this a good thing, or a bad thing in the grand scheme of things?

IMO: good thing. NCsoft buys CoH/V IP and it's entire dev team. There has to be some serious sweetners for an entire dev team to up and move to a new studio.

Things could go bad, but it appears that NCsoft wants to expand the City Of ... franchise further, which wasn't happening at Cryptic. MUO and Cryptic's one or two other sekret projects were taking away the time required for that to happen.

Some forum people are linking together NCsoft's recent agreement with Sony to suggest a PS3 version of CoH/V could come out. I think that's a bridge too far right now, but it's a bigger possibility than it used to be.

Until they expand it to "City of Alts-without-grinding-them-up", I'm passing. I loved this game, I gave it *3* fucking chances -- I told them all 3 times the reason for quitting is that for a game that is so centered around trying new builds and creating new characters, they sure do have an unreasonable expectation of people who are willing to grind to the 'fun' parts.

The grind is different there.  300 hours from 1 to 50 is about on par with any casual MMORPG.  The power acquisition slows down way too quickly at about the level 14-32 point.  It's not until 32 that some builds will have enough powers to have a perpetually entertaining hero/villain.  At that point, the rest of the game goes quick as lightning.  If I were Cryptic NCSoft's Latest Acquisition, that level 14-32 range is where I would look into eliminating the suck.

The real shock, however, is yet to come.  Come level 50, the things you can do fall into the following categories:

• One-time things you could have done already. (Collect Badges, Task Forces, Do the missions you missed (Issue 11's Flashback System)).
• Things you need connections with a high-end Supergroup to do.  (Raids.)
• Things that are poorly balanced or simply broken to the point of not being implemented. (Shadow Shard, Superbase Artifact Aquisition)

So, yeah, despite City of Heroes being a fun game while it lasts, and despite all the paper trail of all these "issues" they've made, it's kinda interesting how Cryptic hasn't bothered to put in an end game.

Don't knock alting, it's apparently the only entertaining thing for a level 50 player to do in CoH right now.

Boy did you ever miss my point. Sharp as ever, I see.

Everyone alts. Everyone. Obviously. It's a major feature of the game. It's why they have such a lavish character customization and creation system. You'd think they would have made it easier and reduced the completely un-fun grind-until-you-get-some-cool-abilities for your new character somewhere in your mid 20s. They can do this by increasing the XP for people to level to the good parts faster. Is that clear enough for you?

300 hours from 1 to 50? One character? What the fuck? On par? How many casuals spend 300 hours in ANY game before moving onto the next? Almost none. You're looking at a year and a half, at least, to rack up that amount of time. That's batshit insane territory. How many people do you see running around with the nemesis staff? Not a whole lot, and it considers your subscription, aka all your characters together, not just a single one with time played. People ask what it is and where you got it all the time.

What's with the 2 anyway? Self-Banned once and back again? Oh goodie for us.

I really wasn't in any disagreement with you about the alting.  That last barb was just a disparaging word about the level 50 game: it's only good for alting right now, IMLTHO.  In saying that I would attack the 14-32 range, I think I'm in agreement that reducing the experience needed at those levels would be a good solution.

As for 300 hours from 1 to 50 being "batshit insane" territory, well, last I heard that's World of Warcraft.  Am I wrong?

You're not wrong. 300 hours is 12 days.  That's about the length of time it takes to level a character 1-60 in wow.. If you're a noob on a new server, and with no support network such as friends/ guildmates.   

And even then: 1) Blizzard is reducing it to make it go faster. 2) WoW doesn't have such a deep customization that everyone WANTS to try out 4-5 characters/ specs.  Only the hardcore/ addicts do that, and most folks have one, MAYBE 2 at the cap that they play with regularity.

A TR/CoX pass for $19 might just work.

300 hours can easily be a year though.  2 hours a night 3 times a week doesn't seem unreasonably high or low to me and yet that still is 50 weeks of gaming.

I'm not so bothered it might take a casual player a year to max out their character.  The real question is: Can the game keep them entertained for that period of time?

Bhodi and Merusk bring up a good point that City of Heroes is a game that makes alting fun.  Consequently, the pace of leveling should really support it more.  1 to 50 in 300 hours works for Blizzard because people are unlikely to need to roll an alt.  If we allow for the idea that there's likely going to be 3 heroes worth of alts per player, cutting that grind down to 100 hours per character achieves the same goal.  If I could counter that all, it might be to say that if players could get to level 50 that easily, maybe they wouldn't be so tempted to alt in City of Heroes.

Back to the first paragraph again, lets say the game could be entertaining for 900 hours where WoW manages 300.  In that case, 300 hours per character would achieve the same goal and net a lot more green.

That sounds really unlikely, but quantifying fun is tricky.  I can only play the best Legend of Zelda game for 40 hours until it's done.  Does this mean it's not able to produce as much fun as WoW?  I don't think so.  That being the case, what's the relation to time and fun anyway?

But they're all fun parts, as long as you don't turn everything after level 10 into a grindfest in pursuit of travel and stamina. You don't need a travel power at 14 with the jetpack and jump pack from safeguard/mayhem missions, and by the time you need stamina you have three powers you can drop to respec into it.

...PvP?

...utterly sucks in CoX.  This coming from someone who likes pvp in general and likes CoX for the most part.  But PvP in CoX needs a whole lot of fixin'.

Seconded, that.  The trouble with PvP in City of Heroes/Villain seems to be:

• Given the freedom players have at customizing their character, not all heroes/villains are created equal, and in the vast majority of cases there's somebody playing who is unable to be consistently beaten by you.
• "Rock/Paper/Scissors" PvP design emphasizes this more.  No, you cannot beat Rock, you are Scissors.
• It's fast.  To play a "Squishy" (low RES, low hitpoints) archetype, you can expect to be instantly killed by some guy you never saw coming regularly.

It's a pity, really - Cryptic put a lot of work into all these fancy PvP zones that are much more dynamic and interesting than the other zones.  (Take a visit to Siren's Call, check out what's going on.)  However, most people don't bother because the PvP is broken on the most fundamental aspect of the game.

This is why PvE games should avoid trying to diversify into PvP.

As a long time Blaster player, specialising in the uber-gimpy Assault Rifle / Devices powerset combo, I can say with certainty I will never ever be able to PvP effectively. Stalkers two-shot me and the only valid PvP tactic I have is laying out 10 trip mines out and teleport foe an opponent on top of them.

I don't mind dabbling in PvP, but my AT is so far off the pace that it will never catch up. CoH/V needs to include PvP as an option for players, but unless that discrepency between the top and the bottom is addressed, then the team focus of PvP will never see CoH/V's PvP system flourish.

You can level up to 60 in less the 48 hours solo in WoW. 24 hours or less was the record, IIRC. With the the latest patch the grind will be reduce up to 50%, I believe.

CoX grind is epic. It is on par with most free Korean MMOG out there but with less contents.

You'll have to divulge this amazing technique for getting level 60 in 48 hours in WoW.  I get the feeling it's not on the level.

CoX's grind is too long, not only because of the original level 14-35 drag I referred to before, but also because of the good point that rolling alts is something the game should support.  However, it's going over the line saying your average free Korean MMOG has more content.

Actually, never mind divulging the WoW technique.  I found it (http://www.wowguru.com/forums/showpost.php?p=60001&postcount=23) and wasn't impressed.  Truth of the matter is, if enjoyment-free, raw grinding speed runs are what we're talking about, City of Heroes clocks in just fine (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Number=9388941). 

There doesn't seem to be a <hyperbole> tag in this internets.

When he said free KMMOs have more content than CoH/V, he was either engaging in hyperbole, or else he's bought into it.

Either way. It's an exaggeration. CoH has plenty of content; if it seems light, it may be that one has rolled up a few too many alts.

It's true that there isn't enough content to avoid repeating at least some of it by your 3rd alt or so.

Here. It's not hard. Just a bunch of herding. You can find more videos on how to fast grind and what location is best per minute exp.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-903331917281359369&hl=en

The first person that reached lvl 60 took three days playing WoW IIRC. I think it was done by a Rouge, not sure tho been such a long time. WoW while it has grind it was design to be easy to level by casual players.

BTW I use to herd in CoH. In fact I probably power leveled half of the 50s characters in CoH while I was active on my server. Instead of making contents the developers nerfed and nerfed until the game wasn't enjoyable. Only SWG made a bigger mistake then CoH. Developers needs to understand that the more nerf and grind you put in the less subscriptions they will get. You look at WoW one of the fastest if not the fastest leveling MMOG out there and they are reaching 10 millions. So they must be doing something right.

I said never mind, but you know, I have to thank you.  That is, by far, the most entertaining video portraying absolute mind numbing tedium I have ever seen.

So, you're one of those guys with the "Cryptic nerfed my ability to pull entire maps and have AOE kill everything" chip on the shoulder, eh?  Well, you'll be happy to know that the members of your dubious brood that you've left behind have evolved to the added challenge that brought and are getting along just fine.

Although, I can see why you feel that way and we do partly agree.  There's at least two big nerfs that became problematic for CoH:

• The second (chronologically) was the one you mentioned: a Tank can't reliably hold the aggro of entire maps anymore (AOE only affects up to 16 targets at a time, at best).
• The first (way back near release) was when they severely hampered peoples' ability to hit or damage mobs about 4 or 5 levels or above.

In both cases, the intent was to plug power leveling loopholes, but the unfortunate side effect was that it reduced the challenge to the players.  They forced the players to confront less mobs and to confront mobs that are lower level.  In a "City of Heroes", that was a mistake, reduced challenge is reduce fun for the players who need it.

However, if leveling fast is all you care about, ways have nonetheless been found.  It's sort of a universal MMOG design rule that the shortest path to the cheese will inevitably be found, shared, and break the developers' intended balance.

Back just before they nerfed herding, I was getting ready to quit the game.  Every damn group was a herding group.  It was fun for the first few days, but jesus h. christ did that ever get boring fast.

I see your anecdotal evidence and raise you a smiley.  :awesome_for_real:

What is there to CoH? Nothing other then fight and fight. That's it. When I left that's all we had. That's why people herd because it was fun and have a change of pace. When they nerfed all the character classes, most people start leaving for WoW. I'm sure you weren't at the being of the game. When CoH started you have to wait in line to just get a train ride to the other zone. When I left the even the most popular zone was empty. Only SWG made bigger mistakes then CoH.

When WoW released it has four times the contents then CoH had at for six months. WoW do a great job on patch were they keep adding contents. On the other hand what CoH saw was nerfs after nerfs. All the fanboys back then keep saying that CoH contents were free but you know what so did WoW and other MMOG.

CoH try to put a PvP model that is clearly base on a PvE system. You do not put a PvP around a PvE core. It never work and that's the reason why CoX fail at PvP. I do not understand why developers keep trying to put PvP into a PvE core. If you're going put PvP into your game make sure the core system is PvP and not PvE.

Leveling is boring. Grinding is boring.

Alas, the next generation is picking up on Geldonyetich 1.0's wicked ways, and now I'm enduring the consequences.  So much conviction, so little objectivity.

I agree with jdun about City's lack of content. (Also, english motherfucker, do you speak it? If you're ESL, disregard that)

They've got half-assed crafting and PVP, and like, one raid... They need to be like all the other DIKUs and put out an expansion. Level cap up to 60, 10th primary available at 53, secondary at 56, add a fifth power to all the pools and release one new tileset. Hazard zones for villians too please, and ZOMG FFA PVP* AND PERMADEATH!!1!shiftone

*Seriously, a PVP server: connect some of the zones, take police drones away from zonelines, and launch. People would play there, if only because all the names would be free.

I have no idea why they don't do this, especially since they can even use the Giant Monster code to reduce overzealous gankers.

Probably because their whiny, mostly PvE playerbase, would scream their heads off about this even though it has nothing to do with them.

 :awesome_for_real:

That didn't stop them from adding what, 4 or so, PvP zones and spending a fair bit of time on the PvP game (not that it's particularly good, but it is there, and the PvP zones have a significant amount of work that was devoted to them)..

Yea, if there weren't PVP zones I wouldnt suggest it at all but...when Villians came out I always figured they'd put in a PVP server, but since 99% of the players are carebears it was barely mentioned on the beta boards.

CoH/V doesn't need a PvP server. It could certainly do with more PvP options, like PvP-orientated missions. It's been questioned for a while (occasionally) why they can't set up 'villains rob the bank / heroes protect the bank' style missions.

However, base raiding has never been popular (no real reason to since IoPs were only briefly in the game) and PvP zones have their devotees, but it's hard to be a casual PvPer given how far out of whack some ATs are in power levels.

Actually I started playing the first day of release, though I hadn't pre-ordered so I wasn't there for the head start.

And the reason the zones freed up wasn't because of fewer people- they increased the power of the servers so that what was once "heavy population" for an area wasn't anymore.

Herding was the most repetitive, boring type of PvE the game had.  Yeah, it was fun for about 2 days.  Very rapidly, however, it killed any variety in the PvE offered in CoH.  Any.  They were right to get rid of it.  Doing so allowed them to introduce variant strategies to PvE encounters.

I will grant that they did little to think outside the box on this, and WoW's PvE is definitely superior within instances (particularly BC instances) in terms of strategic difficulty, but herding was the ultimate in mindless PvE.  Every single mission was to be handled the same way- that is, of course, assuming you could find a group interested in doing any instance other than Shadowhunter.

People weren't herding because it was "fun and have a change of pace".  They were herding because it was the fastest, easiest way to level.  Doing it any other way was just hilariously inefficient by comparison.

Cryptic should have taken the hint from that and, as they removed herding, cut the grind by a decent margin.


PvP is just too unbalanced to be fun.  It had to be added with CoV, and CoV was the next logical step, but no one at Cryptic would argue that the game was initially designed with PvP in mind.  It was added by popular demand, at the request of the players.  I can't even imagine how to really make it work in that game, and believe me when I say that I used to play this game a lot and spent enough time in Siren's Call and, later, Recluse's Victory to be known by name by the majority of the regulars.

Fact is, travel powers alone impact the PvP game so much that I can't imagine a way to fix them that's fun (suppression sucks) and offers balance between them.  There should be a strategic advantage to each power, but really no matter what you are Super Leaping is the best option- it has the fewest counters and provides the greatest mobility/speed combo. The only potential argument is for a Stalker's Assassin Strike, but even then the only argument is that you can't use it mid-air, which you could only do with flight, which has a ridiculous number of counters and is the slowest option.

And that's just travel powers.  Nevermind Stalkers, Teleport Foe griefing, Bodyguard (still positive that my Mastermind could solo anything except a Storm Defender/Controller), and the numerous essentially useless PvP ATs.

But the point is this-  I know this game better than you do.  Herding was bad.  If they didn't fix it, you would've quit in another couple weeks over something else, and they would have lost my subscription as well.  Fact is, CoH just wasn't a deep enough game for most people in the long term.  Herding only served to shallow the experience of the one the thing game did offer- PvE.

Thirded.  When it comes to PvP in City of Heroes, it's not a matter of where it's happening so much as how unbalanced it is.  The main trouble is just that all heroes/villains are not created equal.  First, many are built to contribute to a PvE team.  Second, the choices a player has in selecting powers and slotting them makes a noticeable impact on the overall power of the character.

The Zone control model of PvP that City of Heroes uses is (in my opinion) the best compromise the MMORPG-world has come up with so far.   As a PvE player, if you don't want to get involved in PvP, you just don't go to the PvP zones.  Even PvP players can appreciate having somewhere to relax between tussles.  The model does still leave the usual population imbalance problem, though.

Regarding Herding vrs Gameplay now, I was probably wrong to say that the herding nerf actually reduced the challenge of the game.  On the contrary, being unable to reliably provoke more than 12 targets makes things considerably more challenging.  Getting the players to play the game as it was meant to be played (fighting only a few groups at a time) has not prevented them from learning how to take down groups rapidly, one after another, without resting.  So the fun is still there (at least what fun there is in a game with a somewhat overlong grind).

I'm apparently the only person (here) who doesn't think the grind is/was too long.

My primary issue with CoX is mission similarity, and a difficulty with selecting while kinds of missions I get.  The Radio fixed the latter, to a certain extent.  If I get a mission string of some monster type I suck vs, (like an all-lethal char vs. robots)  I can skip it and do other missions instead.  There's no 'run out of contacts, need to street sweep' thing after you get the radio at lvl 5, either.

The game does have some slow periods.  And exp definitely slows down post-35, which unfortunately co-relates to the level at which you start getting new powers more slowly.  However, typically by that level you have a set of powers that works.  There are relatively few builds that absolutely rely on the later powers in a secondary, or on Epic powers.  There seems less push to play through the later levels because there are so few powers left; but this ignores the power brought on by extra slots.  Levels 41-50 only add 4 new powers, at 41, 44, 47, and 49; but you get 18 additional slots, which is enough to seriously upgrade some powers.  The sad faces brought on by ED return to happiness with the IOs and sets.  Sure, I only have +95% dmg now, instead of +166%, but I also have +90% ACC, +75% end reduction, and +85% recharge time.  You can actually kill stuff faster due to having powers up more often, and having enough endurance more often, even though a power now does less damage.

I'm playing though with a pair of kheldians now, they are 13 and 10.  It's been interesting seeing new content added to the low levels since I last played.  Faultline, for example.

Alkiera

This is what I would call grind (yes, I did take many of your statements out of context, but I think you get the point - for the people who are calling this "grindy", those were some of the points that we just couldn't get past).

Said another way:  The first five levels, the player learns the game and how to use his abilities in a variety of situations.   With every significant new power he gains after that, it only takes about 10-15 missions before he is about as good with the new abilities as he is going to get.  All he has left at this point is different mobs to fight against, and waiting for the next new ability that requires some adjustment to the way he plays.  The news-papers derail this a bit because most players will choose to play against mobs that they know they can handle.  An unofrtunate feedback enforcement of this trend is that rapidly mobs doing new things == BAD!, in the form of perma-stun, perma-sleep, perma-hold.  So, if you are having problems with a particular type of mob now, in ten levels you'll REALLY have problems.

Further compounding this artificial narrowing of content is that there was no incentive to fight mobs that you have difficulty with (when I left the game, not sure if it's changed).

I really, really liked this game.  It really, really frustated me that I couldn't keep the magic alive.  If they could just figure out how to add more reasons to do things.

Issue 9 did help a bit there, by adding something resembling real loot in the salvage drops and recipes needed to craft invention enhancements or that will sell for (sometimes ludicrous amounts of) influence/infamy.

The trouble with the grind in City of Heroes/Villains is mostly a matter of pacing.  By the time one reaches 32-35, they should have enough powers in their hotbar tray to have a pretty entertaining experience.  However, from 14-32, one is basically playing an incomplete character.  It's often boring enough that rather than stick with it one will just roll an alt.

In my 880+ hours of logged XFire time in the game, I only brought a single character to 50, and the last 15 levels or so was done on a Double Experience Weekend.  All the other time, I was rolling alts.  I must have rolled over 50.

I played at the beginning of issue 9, I found the whole system very underwhelming.  I'm pretty sure that it wasn't entirely due to me already being burnt toast on the game.  The new stuff, where it seems like you can get different weapon graphics seems more interesting, in comparison.

I went back after issue 9. Finally got my main char to 50 and it was horrifically painful. Not only that the letdown  when you go, ok, I'm 50, now what, was pretty bleak.

And just like herding, the radio/newspaper missions appear to be a mixed blessing. Why wander 4 zones across the map when you can pop open the radio and have basically the same mission right in the zone you are in? If it wasn't for the complete boredom with the same 4 tilesets there'd be no reason to ever leave.  And I quickly found myself skipping groups like the Carnies due to their holds and the huge nerf to my resistance to holds.. In their wisdom, they changed the hold resistance in the regen line to yet another health regen.

I dont think I'd play another Cryptic game ever actually.

Eh? Integration still gives you Hold protection (20 mag or somesuch).

And it was always a health regen power, they just increased health regen on Integration to compensate for Instant Healing becoming a clicky.

I agree with Eldaec, Integration is a lot better than it was before.  Plus by level 28 you could have Integration, Resilience, and Acrobatics.  I almost never get locked down.  Of course I'm a spines/regen and I'm still having fun leveling, grouping, mission completing, and getting costume parts, but if I was on a low number server I don't think I would like it.

I don't want 40 hero/villian vs one epic critter (well maybe a few) but most comic stuff is about the one hero or small team vs the big bad bunchies that are trying to take over the world!

Well it sure didnt seem close to as good when I came back as when I left. I got hold lock killed by Carnies a ton until I started passing on their missions.
I held off on getting integration until I needed it, about the time you meet those nazi vampires in founder's falls and having it back then was great, Never got stunned after I took it but when I came back half the mobs in carnie missions would stun me and drop all my toggles, making them a pain in the ass to fight.

Now you pick up Integration at 16, for the stat resists and the bonus regen.

What? Carnies? What? Unless you've got Integration confused with Acrobatics (Acro only protects against holds, and the flashbulb blind Illusionists hit you with has a small overlapping AoE sleep) I have no idea how that could be working.

Normal and Dark Ring Mistresses do this thing that wipes out your endurance, and all Carnies pop a proximity end-drain on death. That'll wipe out your blue bar, which will cause your toggles to crash, but Ring Mistresses are bosses, and shouldn't be showing up every other group.

Maybe enough Illusionists (or Master Illusionists) stacked could lock down a Scrapper - Carnie minion attacks do have a small chance of stunning you / putting you to sleep momentarily as well.

It's been so long I really can't remember but I think it was illusionist bosses that pissed me off the most. I remember the end drain and some other hold that left me twiddling my thumbs a lot. Especially as the end drain would knock all my toggles off and I could never get interation back up fast enough. I'm positive it was a hold cause I remember using one of the quick buff thingies to remove it once.

Master Illusionists were particularly bad.  Psi damage, endurance drain (from them and/or all the minions, I can't remember), Illusionist pets, and on a few occasions they blasted through all my mez protections.  They were one of the few mobs I was weary of fighting as a tank.  Sappers being the other I can recall, although they seemed toned down a bit when I played my last free weekend.

Don't forget their intangability.

Re: Sappers - AFAICT they haven't changed but I usually Deceive them at the start :drill:

If you are getting hit with the five or so holds an illusionist needs to break through integration on a regular basis, then I'm sorry, but you're doing it wrong.

Happily it's easy enough to avoid Carnies, or any other villian group you have issues with.

Plus nothing stops you stocking up on 'break free' potions before you go in, I've never needed to do so on a scrapper - but if you are getting held a lot it might help. They cost basically nothing so it can't hurt.

I guess I pushed the intergration toggle button less skillfully than required then. Only trouble with stocking up on break frees was the only place I ever found them was on msisions. Never saw them on a contact for sale.

Any of your contacts that you've filled the bar on (or close to it) will sell them to you including your starting contact in AP (or GC if you made a mistake in selection). Also the bartenders in Pocket D and the Arena suppliers sell them.

I suspect he's clicking on contacts with insufficient skill, much like the underlying integration problem he appears to have.

I did have some problems on my SR scrapper against the Carnies back in the day.  Practiced Brawler wasn't a toggle, so it wasn't as bad, but every now and then I'd find myself Held through it.